‘Oh, my God! I’ve been asleep for an hour!’
‘You needed a rest.’
‘I thought you’d only be five minutes. I only sat down to wait for the jug to boil.’ Holly shook her head in disbelief, pushing a long, single braid of dark hair over her shoulder. ‘I’m so sorry, Ryan. This is awful!’
‘It’s no big deal. Don’t beat yourself up over it.’
‘Falling asleep on the job is a pretty big deal in my book.’ Holly tried to stamp on a fear that had been gnawing at her for days. The fear that things were getting worse far too rapidly to control now. That she was reaching a point when she would have to admit defeat. She could only hope that fear wasn’t showing in her eyes as she looked up at Ryan again. ‘Why on earth do you put up with me, Ryan?’
The gentle smile broadened into the closest he ever came to grinning as he sat down beside Holly.
‘What is it they say on the wrinkle-cream ads? “Because you’re worth it”?’
‘Ha!’ But Holly couldn’t help smiling back at Ryan. He’d always made her feel like that. Mind you, he made everybody feel like that. His small patients, their parents—even their siblings. Ryan was just one of those amazing people that made anyone they spoke to feel special. Holly had never known him to complain of any personal cost he suffered and she had to be running up a fair account by now. ‘You have to juggle on-call rosters because half the nights I’m unavailable. I have more time off work than any normal registrar would be allowed and now I’m falling asleep on the job, for heaven’s sake!’
‘You had a big morning.’ Ryan raised his coffee-mug in a salute. ‘Well done again, by the way. When I think back to what my first patch was like on a VSD, I’m impressed all over again. In fact, I think I was only allowed to do half of it before my consultant muttered darkly about having to call in a plumber to fix the leaks and then took over.’
‘I don’t believe that for a minute.’ Holly’s glance at Ryan was very direct. ‘Why did you let me do it?’
‘Because you could.’
‘You didn’t know that. I didn’t know that. I’ve never done it before.’
‘You have more than enough ability. You’ve got to stretch your wings some time.’
‘But something might have gone horribly wrong.’
‘Of course it could. Something could have gone horribly wrong for me as well. That fear is always there.’ Ryan’s expression was quizzical. ‘You’ve had your heart set on a surgical consultancy for as long as I’ve known you, Holly. And that’s, what…two years now?’
She nodded. ‘Off and on.’
‘And as a consultant, you take that risk and responsibility on board and do the best you can. Your best is more than good enough.’
‘I’m not talking about the risk of complications or error.’ Holly stared into the depths of her coffee-mug. ‘I’m talking about the lack of physical ability. What if I’d blacked out or got the shakes badly enough to create a disaster?’
‘You didn’t.’
‘You took a hell of a risk, though, Ryan.’ Holly swallowed hard. ‘And while I’m enormously grateful, I don’t think you should do it again.’
‘That’s my call.’
Holly shook her head sadly. ‘I’m not so sure about that. Not any more.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Maybe it’s time I faced reality here. The odds are stacked pretty high against me getting where I want to go.’ Holly took a deep breath. This was hard to say. To admit that her fiercely defended independence wasn’t as great as she’d believed. ‘Maybe it’s just not fair that people like you have to keep propping me up.’
Ryan was giving her an oddly wary look. ‘You’ve been battling those odds for as long as I’ve known you and I’ve never heard you come even within spitting distance of admitting defeat. What’s changed?’ He frowned. ‘Did I put too much pressure on you this morning? If I did, I’m sorry, Holly. I never meant to—’
Holly shook her head again, interrupting any apology. ‘It’s not that. You’ve never put too much pressure on, Ryan.’ She smiled. ‘You seem to know how to put on just enough to push people into discovering what they’re capable of without destroying their confidence. You’re a brilliant teacher, you know.’
Ryan shrugged off the compliment. ‘So what is it? Are you just tired?’
‘I’m always tired.’
‘What’s changed, then?’ Ryan persisted. Hazel eyes seemed to darken with concern. ‘Are you needing dialysis more often?’
‘Probably. I’m due for blood tests today.’ Holly eyed the remains of her coffee. Should she use up that much of her daily fluid allowance now or save it for later? She took another small mouthful and then sighed. ‘I’m doing it four nights a week already, Ryan. Soon all I’m going to be doing is coming to work and going home to sleep with a machine.’ She tried to throw in some of the customary humour with which she had always lightened such conversations. ‘I really shouldn’t tick the single box on forms, should I? I’ve had a partner for years.’
Ryan didn’t appear amused. ‘It’s a temporary relationship. You know that a normal life will be entirely possible when you get a kidney transplant.’
‘Yeah.’ Impossible to keep her tone light now.
‘That’s it, isn’t it?’ Ryan looked as though he wanted to slap his forehead for being obtuse. ‘That’s what’s changed. I thought you brushed off that disappointment last month rather too easily.’
Holly couldn’t deny it. ‘It’s caught up with me now. To get that far…’ The disappointment cut more deeply than ever right now. ‘I kept telling myself it was better to have the plug pulled then than to go through the surgery and then have to wait to see if the transplant would work and then battling rejection and dealing with failure and the knowledge that another transplant would be that much more difficult, but I was kidding myself. To actually get prepped for surgery and then sent home was awful.’
‘The donor kidney was found to have kidney disease that hadn’t been diagnosed, hadn’t it?’
‘Yeah. Polycystic. Same as me. Ironic, eh?’
‘No.’ Ryan reached out to cover Holly’s hand with his own. He gave it a brief, gentle squeeze. ‘Incredibly disappointing. You’d waited so long.’
The empathetic touch would have been enough to generate tears in someone other than Holly, but Holly Williams had never cried about her illness. She had simply got on with the most important things in her life and refused to even consider letting it slow her down. Until now, anyway.
She touched the second pager she wore clipped to her pocket. The one that had only sounded once in all that waiting time. ‘It’s been more than two years,’ she said quietly. ‘I went on the waiting list as soon as I had to start regular dialysis.’
‘You haven’t fallen off the list,’ Ryan reminded her. ‘You’ll still be at the top. A compatible organ could come up any time.’
‘With my blood group? I’m O, Ryan—but in my case that’s not really O for ordinary.’
He smiled. ‘I could have told you that.’
Holly’s smile in return was wry. ‘I’m a universal donor but I can only receive from another O. And that’s just the blood group. There’s tissue and cross-matching factors to complicate things as well. Which reminds me, I’m due to send in the monthly