LITMIR.BIZ

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Tom started heading in their direction.

      She wanted him to come and make her feel safe.

      More than anything, she needed the reassurance that Harry was safe.

      * * *

      Tom collected the new patient file from the central desk and was reading through the information Laura had provided about Harry as he walked to their cubicle. Perhaps that was why it came as a bit of a shock to look up and see Laura and Harry through the gap in the curtains.

      He saw Laura McKenzie almost every day he was at work but he’d never seen her looking like this. She was normally on her feet and always busy, caring for her patients or fully involved in an assessment or resuscitation scene. Even if she was taking a break, she’d be reading while she ate a sandwich, or chatting to one of her friends like Fizz.

      Right now, however, she was half on the bed with her son, perched on one side and lying across the pillows so that Harry was tucked under the shelter of her arm. She was gently smoothing the dark spikes of his hair, quietly watching as Harry made his plastic dinosaur hop slowly across the blanket she had tucked around him.

      Tom had never seen Laura staying this still, her body language shouting its focus on only one thing—her precious son. Or with an expression like that on her face. That mix of tenderness and concern—the picture of a mother’s love—hit him like a punch in the gut and Tom found himself swallowing hard. To get a flashback twice in one day was more than a little disturbing when he’d been so sure he was well past that part of his life. Or perhaps this was simply an aftershock of how he’d felt seeing Maggie and Joe with their newborn baby and getting dragged back into the past like that.

      It felt like longing, this sharp twinge of discomfort.

      Or a renewed flash of grief for a future that was never going to happen.

      Whatever it was, he knew he could handle it but it was certainly giving him a new perspective on this woman he’d worked with for so long. Someone he had learned to trust because she’d never attempted to get past the guardrails he had in place in his personal life. And, in this moment, he felt closer to her than he ever allowed himself to get to a colleague or a member of a patient’s family, for that matter. It was already under his skin. That note of tenderness. The knowledge that Laura was very vulnerable right now. All he could do was try and contain it. To make sure it didn’t grow any stronger.

      ‘Hey...’ Tom pasted a smile on his face as he pulled the curtain shut behind him. ‘How’s it going in here? Is Tyrannosaurus Rex finding enough to eat?’

      Harry hid his toy under the blanket. ‘He’s not hungry.’

      ‘Oh...’ Tom pulled out a chair and perched on the edge of it, so that he wasn’t looming over the bed. ‘How ’bout you, Harry? Are you hungry?’

      Harry shook his head. ‘I was sick,’ he told Tom. ‘At school. I was sick on the mat at story time.’

      ‘Oh, no...’ Tom could feel Laura’s gaze on his face but he kept his gaze on his young patient. ‘And you’ve got a sore tummy, too, I hear.’

      Harry was silent. His chin was going down and his head tilting further into the crook of Laura’s elbow.

      Tom raised his glance. ‘How long has the cream been on his arm?’

      Laura touched the clear plastic cover that was keeping the generous blob of anaesthetic cream in place over the easiest vein to get a blood sample from. ‘Needs another ten minutes or so.’

      ‘Okay. So, tell me about what’s been happening. This isn’t the first time for a sore tummy, is it?’

      Laura shook her head. ‘It’s been happening off and on for a long time. Almost since he started school, which made me think it was an anxiety thing, you know? Not wanting to go to school? The vomiting is more recent, though.’

      ‘What’s vomiting?’

      ‘Being sick, sweetheart. It’s what we call it here.’

      Tom was watching closely as Harry looked up at his mother when he asked the question. Was that a tinge of yellow he could see in the whites of Harry’s eyes?

      ‘Can I have a look at your tummy, Harry? Is that okay?’

      He could see the visible shrinking back further into his mother’s arms but, with Laura’s encouragement and reassurance, Harry let the blanket get pushed back and his tummy exposed.

      ‘I won’t hurt you,’ Tom promised. ‘If it’s really sore, you tell me and I’ll stop.’ He eyed the dinosaur in Harry’s hand. ‘Or T Rex can bite me on my arm, okay?’

      Big, brown eyes looked up at him. Exactly like his mother’s eyes, Tom thought. Harry hadn’t inherited Laura’s auburn hair, though. The ruffled spikes of Harry’s hair were very dark, almost black, which could be contributing to how pale that little face was. There was a hint of a smile there now, however.

      ‘’Kay.’ He lay back but kept the toy dinosaur in a raised hand, ready to strike if it became necessary.

      Tom was as gentle as possible. His hand looked so large against Harry’s abdomen as he carefully palpated each quadrant. He left the upper right quadrant till last, probably because he had that suspicion of possible jaundice at the back of his mind.

      ‘Can you take a big breath in for me, Harry? Like this?’ Tom demonstrated and Harry complied.

      And there it was...

      A firm, irregular edge to this little boy’s liver as he could feel it coming down with the lungs filling.

      ‘Ow...’ The plastic dinosaur tapped against Tom’s arm.

      ‘Sorry, buddy.’ Tom lifted his hand but his heart was sinking. That prickle at the back of his neck was something he recognised all too easily and it came from the instinct that there was something significantly wrong here. That Harry could be in trouble and it might be impossible to protect him from painful things to come. Pain that would be felt by his mother, as well.

      Tom didn’t dare catch Laura’s gaze just then. He didn’t want to scare her. Not until he was sure about what his instincts were telling him. Maybe he just wanted to put that moment off for as long as possible because he knew, all too well, how it could turn your world inside out and upside down.

      Destroy it even...

      Or maybe it was because he was suddenly aware of a desire to protect Laura McKenzie.

      Where on earth had that come from...?

       CHAPTER TWO

      THE REST OF that day became a blur.

      A desperate attempt for Laura to hang onto something solid enough to not allow herself to get swamped by a terror that was becoming more and more real as the minutes and then hours ticked past.

      Blood tests came next for Harry and they were still distressing despite the anaesthetic cream and how brave her little boy was being. Maybe it was so distressing for Laura because of how brave Harry was being. Her love for him was so huge, it was filling her chest to an extent that made it seem very hard to breathe.

      There was an ultrasound after that and even though Laura was not trained to interpret the blobby images on the screen, she could see that there was something in Harry’s liver that shouldn’t be there. That was when the real fear kicked in. Fear that had to be hidden from Harry because Laura knew how sensitive he was to how his mother felt. He had been right from when he was a tiny baby and Laura still felt guilty that his fear of strange men had been instilled in that part of his life due to the aftermath of the trauma from the abusive relationship she had escaped.

      Thank goodness Tom was there, at least until Harry was admitted for the raft of other tests he was going to need. It was Tom who introduced Laura and Harry to Suzie, a paediatric

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