LITMIR.BIZ

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boarding house, dumped her luggage and booked accommodation for the next night. That was tonight, she thought, glancing at her watch. She could have the room from ten.

      But it was five hours until ten o’clock, and she was so tired she was asleep on her feet.

      Her stomach hurt.

      She stared at her locker, trying to make her mind think. The thought of finding an all-hours café until then made her feel ill. There’d be an on-call room somewhere for medical staff, she thought. Probably there’d be a few. There’d be rooms for obstetricians waiting for babies. Rooms for surgeons waiting for their turn in complex multi-specialist procedures.

      Rooms to sleep?

      Just for a couple of hours, she thought. Just until it was a reasonable time to find breakfast and book into her boarding house.

      Just for now.

      He had a whole hour of thinking he’d done it right. One lousy hour and then the phone went off beside his bed.

      ‘Problem.’ It was Finn. Of course it was Finn—when did the man ever sleep?

      When did Finn ever wake him when it wasn’t a full-blown emergency? Luke was hauling his pants on before Finn’s next words.

      ‘It’s Jessie,’ Finn snapped. ‘It seems he has a congenital heart problem. No one thought to tell us, not that it would have made a difference to what you did anyway. His heart’s failing. You want to come in or you want me to deal?’

      ‘I’m on my way.’

      She woke and he was right beside her. Luke Williams, plastic surgeon. He looked like he’d just seen death.

      The on-call room was tiny, one big squishy settee, a television, a coffee table with ancient magazines and nothing else. She’d curled into a corner of the couch and fallen asleep. Until now.

      The man beside her wasn’t seeing her. He was staring at the blank television screen, gaze unfocused.

      She’d never seen a man look so bleak.

      ‘What’s wrong?’ she breathed, and touched his arm.

      He flinched.

      ‘What are you doing here?’ His voice was harsh. Breaking. It was emotion that had woken her, she thought. Raw grief, filling the room like a tangible thing.

      ‘I don’t get into my boarding house until ten,’ she told him. ‘So I’m camped out, waiting. But what is it? Jessie?’

      ‘He died,’ he said, and all the bleakness in the world was in those two words. ‘Cardiac arrest. He had a congenital heart problem and no one thought to tell us. As if we had time to look for records. The admission officer didn’t even read the form, she was too upset. We patched him up, we made him look like he might even be okay, and all the time his heart was like a time bomb.’

      ‘There was no choice,’ she managed, appalled.

      ‘There was a choice. If I’d known … I could have taken the flap off, thought about grafts later, concentrated on getting his heart stable first.’

      She took a deep breath. What to say?

      This man’s anguish was raw and real.

      A congenital heart problem …

      If Luke had known he might well have decided not to try and save his face, but without that immediate operation Jess would have been left with a lifetime of skin grafts. With a face that wasn’t his.

      ‘What sort of life would he have led?’ she whispered.

      ‘A life,’ he said flatly. ‘Any life. I can’t bear …’

      And she couldn’t bear it either. She took his hands and tugged him around to face her.

      There was more to this than a child dying, she thought. This man must have lost patients before. He couldn’t react like this to all of them. There was some past tragedy here that was being tapped into, she guessed. She had no idea what it was; but she sensed his pain was well nigh unbearable.

      ‘I killed him,’ he said, and for some reason she wasn’t sure he was talking about Jessie.

      ‘The dog killed him,’ she said, trying to sound prosaic. ‘You tried to save him.’

      ‘I should have—’

      ‘No. Don’t do this.’

      He shuddered, and it was a raw and dreadful grief that took over his whole body.

      Enough. She pulled him into her arms and held him. And held and held. She simply held him while the shudders racked his body, over and over.

      This couldn’t just be about this child, she thought.

      Something had broken him.

      He was holding her as well now. Simply holding. Taking strength from her. Taking comfort, and giving it back.

      A man and a woman, both in limbo.

      The events of the past two days had left Lily gutted. Her mother … The vicar…. Losing her job. The judgement of the town.

      The Ellis women.

      She held to comfort, but he was holding her as well and she needed it.

      Jessie’s death. The trauma of finding what her mother had done, planned to do. Forty-eight hours with little sleep.

      If she could give comfort …

      If this was what they both needed …

      He shouldn’t be here. He shouldn’t be holding this woman.

      But he wasn’t thinking of now. He was thinking of Jessie, four years old and red-headed.

      The past was back with him. Four years ago, walking into their apartment after surgery that had lasted for fourteen hours. Exhausted but jubilant. Calling out to Hannah. ‘I’m home. It’s over and she’ll live. Hannah …’

      Walking into the bedroom

      Ectopic pregnancy, the autopsy said. Fourteen weeks pregnant.

      By her side, a letter to her mother in Canada.

       ‘Tonight I’m finally telling Luke I’m pregnant. I’ve been waiting and waiting—I thought a lovely romantic dinner, but there’s no chance. He’s been so busy it’s driving me crazy but now he’ll have to make time for us. I want a son. I’m hoping he’ll be red-headed like me. I want to call him Jessie.’

      Tonight, four years later, he hadn’t been able to save a red-headed boy called Jessie.

      The woman in his arms was holding him. She smelled clean, washed, anonymous, clinical.

      But more. The scent of faded roses was drifting through, like some afterthought of a lovely perfume. The silken threads of her fair hair were brushing his face.

      She was an agency nurse. She didn’t know him.

      She was warm and real and alive.

      He’d come in here to sit, to try and come to terms with what had happened. He had two hours before his morning list started. He needed to get himself under control

      Jessie.

      Hannah.

      They were nothing to do with the woman who was holding him.

      She shuddered and he thought, She’s as shocked as I am. He tugged away a little and searched her face.

      Her sky-blue eyes were rimmed with shadows. Her shock mirrored his. She looked like she, too, was in the midst of a nightmare.

      ‘Lily …’ It was the first time he’d used her name and it felt like … a question?

      ‘Don’t,’ she said. ‘Just hold me. Please.’ And she tugged him back to her.

      He

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