Sarah positioned herself close to his head and took a small hand in hers.
‘All set?’ Mike was gowned and gloved. He had a syringe full of local anaesthetic in his hand.
Sarah nodded. She focused on Josh’s face rather than watching the needle. She saw the crease on his forehead that let her know he was aware of his skin being pierced. The deeper frown and tiny whimper that told her the bone was now being frozen.
Despite the sedation and all the local anaesthetic, the next part of the procedure was painful. Not that Josh would remember any of it, thanks to the medication, but Sarah would. The sleepy groans and embryonic sobs brought tears to her own eyes and she ended up having to sniff audibly.
‘You OK, Sarah?’
‘Yes.’
‘Not much longer.’
‘That’s good.’
It was probably just as well that Rick had backed away from any involvement with Josh at the moment. If he was watching this, he’d know exactly what was in store for him if it came to donating bone marrow. There’d be more than one puncture site, too, because they’d need a couple of litres of his liquid marrow. Josh only needed a tiny amount to cover the slides a technician was ready to prepare at the nearby trolley.
Would Rick opt for a general anaesthetic? Hardly likely, given the small but significant risk. IV sedation like Josh had had? That also didn’t seem likely. He was a surgeon and having to abstain from making any important decisions or doing medical procedures might be a huge inconvenience. She wouldn’t be at all surprised if he opted to just tough it out with local and that thought was enough to make her shudder inwardly.
She couldn’t do it. Of course, it would be his choice but it was a lot to ask of anyone. Except that if it came to that, Rick wouldn’t be just anyone. He’d be Josh’s father. His dad. And it was a small thing to ask if it could save his son’s life.
Mike had finished aspirating the marrow. Now he needed to do the biopsy.
‘Almost done, short stuff,’ Sarah whispered. ‘You’re being a wee hero.’
As he always was. He was such a brave kid. As if it hadn’t been enough to lose his mum when he was only six and have to go and live with an aunt he hadn’t seen nearly enough of. She wished she’d been there more for him when he’d been little but Lucy had gone back to their small home town after their mother had died and it had been her older sister who’d pushed her to stay in big cities and keep taking her career to the next level. Not to make the same mistakes she’d made.
At least she hadn’t been a total stranger when tragedy had struck. Her love for Josh had been genuine but, even if she hadn’t loved him as her nephew, he would have captured her heart totally over the last year with his courage and resilience.
‘I’ll get better,’ he often reassured her. ‘Don’t worry, Sarah. One day I’ll be big and I’ll look after you.’
Sarah had to sniff again. A nurse passed her a tissue and Mike looked up to give her a sympathetic smile.
‘We’re all done. Looks like a good sample. Not too much cortex.’
‘Great.’
‘We’ll head on up for the MRI before the sedation wears off. I’ll give him some pain relief, too. He’ll be a bit sore when he wakes up.’
‘He’ll be OK,’ Sarah said. ‘I don’t think he’s ever really complained after one of these.’
Rick would be in even more pain after this procedure but he’d get over it soon enough and as far as he was concerned, that would be the end of his involvement. And…dammit, that really wasn’t acceptable, Sarah realised.
‘He’s an amazing kid,’ Mike was saying warmly as he pressed a gauze swab to the puncture site. ‘One out of the box.’
So true. And if Rick was Josh’s father, he needed to spend enough time with him to see what an incredible person his son was. Everyone who knew this child fell in love with him. Josh deserved to know that his own father was amongst that number.
If Rick thought he could make up for refusing to acknowledge his son merely by going through a medical procedure then he had another think coming his way, courtesy of her. This was what had been niggling at her ever since he’d walked off earlier. Where her anger was stemming from. He was dismissing Josh as a person without seeing how special he was. He should be proud to claim him.
And surely Josh had a right to know who his father was? But how could Sarah tell him if there was rejection in store?
One step at a time, she reminded herself, walking beside Josh’s bed on their journey to the radiology department for the MRI scan. She squeezed his hand, reassuring herself as much as the drowsy child. The next step couldn’t happen until the test results came through and that gave her plenty of time to think about exactly what that step should involve.
The thirteen-year-old boy lay, white and still on a bed in the intensive care unit. Flanked by monitors, IV tubing, medical staff and two distraught-looking parents.
The mother was crying again. The father put his arm around her. ‘He’s still alive,’ he said, his voice raw. ‘It’ll be OK, you’ll see. The doc knows what he’s doing. It’ll be OK.’
He looked down at his son but the glance was brief. The sight was still too horrific. The swathe of bandages around the head. Eyes so swollen you couldn’t see eyelashes even, and then there was the awful bruising and a split lip to cap it off. He must be virtually unrecognisable even to his closest family.
This was the kind of case Rick found particularly gruelling. A whole family torn apart because of a dreadful accident. Simon had been on his way home from school and had been knocked off his bicycle by a speeding delivery van. He had a badly fractured leg, supported by a slab of plaster and padded by pillows until the boy’s condition was stable enough for further surgery. It was much less of a concern than his head injury at this point in time. Right now, Simon was on a ventilator, unable to breathe on his own, and the surgery Rick had just performed held no guarantees for either survival or a good long-term outcome.
Simon’s parents were a mess. Shocked and terrified but desperate to be with their son. This had to be every parent’s worst nightmare and Rick had seen it all too often.
Was this why he’d never given serious thought to having a family of his own? He wasn’t totally averse to the notion like Jet was, but neither could he imagine embracing the concept as Max had done. He was somewhere between the two. The desire was there but still dormant. Weighed down, perhaps, by the legacy of his own childhood.
Along with the logistics of attaining the state of parenthood, the motivation to deal with the downsides of parenting had made it all too easy to shove the whole concept into the ‘too hard’ basket and leave it there. And if it stayed in there so long it was too late to do anything about it, the whole issue might just quietly go away and he’d be able to take comfort in the thought that he couldn’t have really wanted it badly enough in any case.
It was getting late by the time Rick left the ICU, but for a while he hung around the wards, reviewing his inpatients. He was reluctant to head home because it would mean a visit to his office to collect his keys.
Had it only been a few days ago when he’d been less than happy with the company of his mates and had wanted time alone to get his head sorted? Now, when he’d had enough of himself, there was no opportunity to obtain the kind of company he needed.
He’d assured Max that he would be absolutely fine. That Max couldn’t possibly postpone the week in Rarotonga that he and Ellie and Mattie had lined up for their honeymoon. He’d meant every word of it at the time, of course, but then he hadn’t known that Jet would receive a summons back