LITMIR.BIZ

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to go back home for their first night as a family.

      Weaving through the busy, inner-city streets to get back to her small, terraced cottage when she finally signed off duty wasn’t enough of a distraction, however. The ache was a little heavier today. Not just the empty ache of not having a baby to hold. There was the ache of not having a hand to hold. Having someone in her life who was her special person.

      It wasn’t that she wasn’t making new friends here. Good friends. It was because she was essentially alone. She had no family nearby. Her best friend was back with her husband. Sophia had no one who was always available to share the highs and lows of life. And a best friend could never take the place of a life partner, anyway. She had no one to cuddle up to at night.

      How stupid had she been, turning down that offer of a date with Aiden Harrison?

      Why couldn’t she be a bit braver?

      If only she could turn the clock back to that moment. She could see those dancing eyes so clearly. A mix of attraction and humour and … confidence that she would say yes?

      He hadn’t been upset by her stuttering refusal, though, had he?

      Maybe, by now, he was feeling relieved.

      Oh, for heaven’s sake. Sophia gave herself a mental shake. She needed to get over herself or she wouldn’t be contributing anything positive at tomorrow’s celebration. Maybe she needed to take a leaf out of Emily’s book and convince herself that the risk of loving was always worthwhile.

      Maybe she could even go down that track herself one day and think about fostering kids.

      ‘It’s only me.’ Aiden let himself into the big house in Brunswick—his usual stop on his way home. ‘Where is everyone? Nate?’

      A dark head popped out from behind a nearby door. ‘We’ll be out in a sec, Aiden. The other boys are in the lounge.’

      The lounge was a large room and, like all the other rooms in this converted house, it had polished wooden floors. Unlike most lounges, it had very little furniture, however, because the residents didn’t need sofas or armchairs. The four young men who lived here were all quadriplegics who needed a high level of domestic and personal assistance. The youngest lad, Steve, was only eighteen. Nathan, at twenty-four, was the oldest.

      Not that his younger brother intended to live here for long. This was a halfway step—a move towards the kind of independence he really wanted. At some point they were going to have to talk about it and maybe tonight would be a good time. While he hadn’t said anything yet, Aiden was worried about the idea of Nate living independently. He himself had a demanding job and he wouldn’t be able to drop everything and go and help his brother if something happened. At least here there were always carers on hand and it was a lot better than the residential home he’d been in for the last few years.

      Or was the anxiety about the future more like a form of guilt? That he hadn’t been able to care for his brother himself when the accident had happened because he’d only been a kid himself?

      That it was his fault that the accident had happened in the first place?

      That, if Nathan was capable of living in a normal house, he’d want it to be with him and then he’d have to take full responsibility. Oh, he’d have a carer to come in a couple of times a day to help with the transfers from bed to wheelchair and for the personal type care of showering and toileting, but what about the rest of the day? What would happen if Nate fell out of his chair or something and he was in the middle of a job like that obstetric emergency today?

      He wanted his brother somewhere he was protected and surely this was as good as it got? This was like a regular blokes’ flat, with a sports programme playing on its huge-screen television and guys sitting around, yelling approval at the goal that had just been scored.

      And then he saw what they were watching. Murderball. The loud, fast and incredibly aggressive form of wheelchair rugby that Nate was currently passionate about. Two of the other guys in the house were part of a local team and Nate was desperate to make the grade. Physically, he certainly qualified.

      Many people thought that quadriplegics—or tetraplegics—were always totally paralysed from the neck down but the repercussions of a cervical injury or illness were as individual as the people who suffered them and they were graded according to whether the impairment was complete or incomplete and by how much sensory and motor function remained.

      With the C6 spinal injury Nate had received at the age of ten, he had little movement or sensation in his lower body. Thankfully, the injury had been incomplete so he still had a good range of movement in his upper body and better hand function than many. If he got his strength up, he’d probably be lethal on a Murderball court.

      ‘Hey, Aiden. Wassup?’

      ‘All good, Steve. How ’bout you?’

      ‘This is our game from last week. Wanna watch?’

      ‘Sure. Not for long, though. I promised Nate I’d take him out for a beer tonight.’

      The young woman who’d greeted him came into the lounge. With her short, spiky black hair and facial piercings, Samantha was unlike any of the carers he’d come across in the years of Nate’s care so far.

      ‘He’s out of the bathroom, Aiden. You can help him finish getting dressed if you want.’

      Nathan’s face lit up as Aiden went into his room.

      ‘Hey, bro …’ The hand held up for a fist bump took away any awkwardness of the height difference between the brothers and Nate’s lack of hand strength. ‘What do you call a quadriplegic on your doorstep?’

      Aiden rolled his eyes. ‘I thought you’d given up on the quadriplegic jokes.’

      ‘Matt.’ Nathan snorted with laughter and then pushed on one wheel of his chair to turn it towards a chest of drawers. ‘What do you reckon? Leather jacket or the denim one?’

      ‘Either’s good. We’re going to a garden bar but it’s not cold out. Want a hand?’

      ‘Nah … I’m good.’

      Rather than watch Nate’s struggle to put the jacket on unaided, Aiden looked around his brother’s room. The poster collection was growing. Action shots of Murderball games, with wheelchairs crashing into each other and flipping sideways and the occupants only staying with them because they were strapped in.

      He waved a hand at the posters. ‘You could get really injured doing that stuff, you know.’

      ‘Nah.’ Nathan had one sleeve of his jacket on but it was taking a few attempts to get his other hand into a sleeve hole. ‘A cracked rib or a squashed finger, maybe. Wouldn’t be calling you out with any lights or sirens. Hey … any good jobs today?’

      ‘Yeah … Last call was the best. This midwife was calling for transport to take a home birth in to the maternity unit in the Victoria because it had been going on too long. I overheard the call and decided to poke my nose in just because it was handy and things were quiet. Thought I’d just be waving the flag but the minute I walk in, the woman has a contraction and, boof! Umbilical cord prolapse and it’s turned into an emergency.’

      ‘Wow. What did you do?’

      Aiden settled himself onto the end of Nathan’s bed. This would need a few minutes because Nate always wanted a blow-by-blow account of every interesting job. If he’d been able-bodied, he would have been a paramedic himself, no question about it. You’d think he’d only be reminded of what he’d never be able to do by hearing about it but he never seemed to get enough of hearing about Aiden’s professional exploits.

      Or anything else about his big brother’s life, come to that. He particularly loved to hear about the women he met and those he chose to date. What they looked like, where they’d gone on their dates and whether they’d stayed the night. He’d been careful how much he’d said about the midwife on today’s job because Nate would have picked up on that pretty

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