LITMIR.BIZ

       CHAPTER FIFTEEN

      ‘I’M SORRY!’ LISA walked in just as Jasmine was blowing her nose and doing her best to stave off tears. ‘I really tried to speak to you first before you found out.’

      So Lisa knew too?

      ‘How are you feeling?’ Lisa asked gently. ‘I know it’s a huge shock, but things are a lot more stable now …’ She paused as Jasmine frowned.

      ‘Stable?’

      ‘Critical, but stable,’ Lisa said, and Jasmine felt her stomach turn, started to realise that she and Lisa were having two entirely separate conversations.

      ‘I’ve no idea what you’re talking about,’ Jasmine admitted. ‘Lisa, what am I here for?

      ‘You don’t know?’ Lisa checked. ‘You seemed upset … just then, when I came in.’

      ‘Because …’ Because I just saw my sister in Jed’s arms, Jasmine thought, and then she wasn’t thinking anymore, she was panicking, this horrible internal panic that was building as she realised that something was terribly wrong, that maybe what she had seen with Penny and Jed hadn’t been a passionate clinch after all. ‘What’s going on, Lisa?’ Jasmine stood up, more in panic, ready to rush to the door.

      ‘Sit down, Jasmine.’ Lisa was firm.

      ‘Is it Simon?’ Her mind raced to the childcare centre. Had something happened and she hadn’t been informed? Was he out there now, being worked on?

      ‘Simon’s fine,’ Lisa said, and without stopping for breath, realising the panic that not knowing the situation was causing, she told Jasmine, ‘Your mum’s been brought into the department.’

      Jasmine shook her head.

      ‘She’s very sick, Jasmine, but at the moment she’s stable. She was brought in in full cardiac arrest.’

      ‘When?’ She stood to rush out there.

      ‘Just hold on a minute, Jasmine. You need to be calm before you speak to your mum. We’re stabilising her, but she needs to go up to the cath lab urgently and will most likely need a stent or bypass.’

      ‘When?’ Jasmine couldn’t take it in. She’d only been gone twenty minutes, and then she remembered the patient being whizzed in, Lisa taking over and calling Mr Dean, Penny calling for Jed’s assistance.

      ‘Penny?’ Her mind flew to her sister. ‘Did Penny see her when she came in?’

      ‘She had to work on your mum.’ Lisa explained what had happened as gently as she could. ‘Jed was caught up with the meningococcal child and I didn’t want you finding out that way either—unfortunately, I needed you to be working.’

      Jasmine nodded. That much she understood. The last thing she would have needed at that critical time in Resus was a doctor and a nurse breaking down before help had been summoned.

      ‘And Penny told me to get you out of the way.’ Jasmine looked up. ‘She told me you were her younger sister and that you were not to find out the same way she had … She was amazing,’ Lisa said. ‘Once she got over the initial shock, she just …’ Lisa gave a wide-eyed look of admiration. ‘She worked on your mother the same way she would any patient—she gave her the very best of care. Your mum was in VF and she was defibrillated twice. By the time Mr Dean took over, your mum was back with us.’

      ‘Oh, God,’ Jasmine moaned and this time when she stood, nothing would have stopped her. It wasn’t to her mother she raced but to next door, where Penny sat slumped in a chair. Jed was holding a drink of water for her. And to think she’d begrudged her sister that embrace. No wonder Jed had been holding her, and Jasmine rushed to do the same.

      ‘I’m so sorry, Penny.’

      She cuddled her sister, who just sat there, clearly still in shock. ‘It must have been a nightmare.’

      Penny nodded. ‘I didn’t want you to see her like that.’

      She had always been in awe of Penny, always felt slightly less, but she looked at her sister through different eyes, saw the brave, strong woman she was, who had shielded the more sensitive one from their parents’ rows, had always told her things would be okay.

      That she’d deal with it.

      And she had. Again.

      ‘It’s my fault,’ Penny grimaced. ‘Yesterday she was ever so quiet and she said she had indigestion. It must have been chest pain.’

      ‘Penny.’ Jasmine had been thinking the same, but hearing her sister say it made her realise there and then what a pointless route that was. ‘I had indigestion yesterday. We all did. You know what Mum’s Sunday dinners are like.’

      ‘I know.’

      Jasmine looked up at Jed. His face was pale and he gave her a very thin smile. ‘I’m sorry to hear about your mum,’ he said, and then he looked from Jasmine to Penny and then back again. ‘I had no idea.’

      ‘Well, how could you have?’ Penny said, and then turned to Jasmine. ‘Can you go and see Mum? I can’t face it just yet, but one of us should be there.’

      ‘Of course.’

      ‘She’ll be scared,’ Penny warned. ‘Not that she’ll show it.’

      ‘Come on,’ Jed said. ‘I’ll take you round to her.’

      Once they walked out of the door he asked what he had to. ‘Jasmine, why didn’t you say?’

      ‘She’d made me promise not to.’

      ‘But even so …’

      ‘I can’t think about that now, Jed.’

      ‘Come on.’ He put his arm round her and led her into her mum’s room, and even if it was what he would do with any colleague, even if she no longer wanted him, she was glad to have him there strong and firm beside her as she saw her mum, the strongest, most independent person she knew, with possibly the exception of her elder sister, strapped to machines and looking very small and fragile under a white sheet.

      ‘Hey, Mum.’

      Jasmine took her hand.

      ‘I’m sorry,’ Louise said, but for once her voice was very weak and thin.

      ‘It’s hardly your fault. Don’t be daft.’

      ‘No.’ She was impatient, despite the morphine, desperate to get everything in order before she went to surgery. ‘I haven’t been much support.’

      ‘Mum!’ Jasmine shook her head. ‘You’ve been wonderful.’

      ‘No.’ She could see tears in her mum’s eyes. ‘Most grandmothers drop everything to help with their grandchildren.’

      ‘Mum,’ Jasmine interrupted. ‘You can stop right there. I’m glad you’re not like most mums, I’m glad Penny is the way that she is, because otherwise I’d be living at home even now. I’d be dumping everything onto you and not sorting my own stuff out, which I have,’ Jasmine said firmly, and then wavered. ‘Well, almost.’ She smiled at her mum. ‘And that’s thanks to you. I don’t want a mum who fixes

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