‘We’re going to take your mum up to the catheter lab soon,’ Vanessa said. The cardiac surgeon had spoken to them in more detail and her mum had signed the consent form, and it was all too quick and too soon. Jasmine had just got used to the idea that she was terribly ill and now there was surgery to face.
‘Can I just take Simon back?’
‘Of course.’ And in the few weeks she’d been here, Jasmine found out just how many friends she had made, just how well she was actually doing, thanks to her mum. ‘Tell the crèche that I’ll pick up Simon tonight. He can stay at my place.’
‘You’re sure?’ Jasmine checked. ‘I can ring Ruby.’
‘It’s fine tonight. You’ll probably be needing Ruby a lot over the next few days. Let me help when I can.’
The crèche was marvellous too and told Jasmine that she could put Simon in full time for the next couple of weeks, and somehow, somehow Jasmine knew she was coping with a family emergency and single motherhood and work combined.
And she didn’t want to lose her job, no matter how hard it would be, working alongside Jed.
Except she couldn’t think about it now.
Right now, her heart was with her mum, who was being wheeled out of Emergency, a brusque and efficient Penny beside her, telling the porter to go ahead and hold the lifts, snapping at Vanessa for not securing the IV pole properly, barking at everyone and giving out orders as she did each and every day, while still managing to hold her mum’s hand as she did so.
And her heart wasn’t just with her mum.
It was with her big sister too.
The time sitting in the Theatre waiting room brought them possibly the closest they had ever been.
‘Is that why you were asking about Jed and I?’
They were two hours into waiting for the surgery to finish, an hour of panic, ringing around friends and family, and then an hour of angst-filled silence, and then, because you could only sit on a knife edge for so long, because sometimes you needed distracting, Penny asked the question that was starting to filter into both their minds.
‘For all the good it did me.’ Jasmine smiled. ‘How come we don’t gossip?’
‘I never gossip,’ Penny said. ‘I don’t do the girly thing and …’ Her voice trailed off and she thought for a moment, realising perhaps how impossible for her sister this had been. ‘You could have asked me, Jasmine.’
‘What if I didn’t like the answer?’ Jasmine’s eyes filled with tears and she couldn’t start crying again. She’d shed more tears since her mother had gone to Theatre than she had in a long time.
‘You’re still not asking me.’
Jasmine shook her head, because if the truth were known she was scared to. Not just for what it would do to her but what the truth might mean for her sister.
‘Nothing has ever happened between Jed and I.’
Jasmine felt as if a chest drain had been inserted, or what she imagined it must feel like, because it felt as if for the first time in days, for the first time since Vanessa had inadvertently dropped the bomb, her lungs expanded fully, the shallow breaths of guilt and fear replaced by a deep breath in.
‘Nothing,’ Penny said. ‘Not a single kiss, I promise you.’ And Jasmine could now breathe out. ‘Who said that there was something going on between us?’
‘It’s common knowledge apparently, though I only heard this week. My friend couldn’t believe that I hadn’t notice the tension between you two.’
‘The only tension between us,’ Penny continued, ‘is who might get the promotion.’
‘I thought you were worried about getting it and upsetting Jed.’
Penny just laughed. ‘Worrying about upsetting or upstaging Jed Devlin is the furthest thing from my mind—believe me. Do I look like someone who would step aside from a promotion for a man?’ She actually laughed at the very thought.
‘No,’ Jasmine admitted. ‘But you did say you weren’t sure if you wanted the job …’
‘Right now I’m not even thinking about work, I just want Mum to get well, that’s as far as I can think today. You have nothing to worry about with Jed and I.’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘It clearly did.’
But Jasmine shook her head. ‘I’m just glad I haven’t hurt you—Jed and I are finished.’
‘Jasmine!’
But Jasmine was through worrying about Jed. She didn’t have the head space to even think about him right now. ‘Let’s just worry about Mum for now, huh?’
‘How is she?’ Lisa asked when an extremely weary Jasmine made her way down to Emergency the next morning.
‘She’s had a really good night,’ Jasmine said. ‘They’re going to get her out of bed for a little while this morning, can you believe?’
‘They don’t waste any time these days.’ Lisa smiled. ‘How are you?’
‘Tired,’ Jasmine admitted. ‘I’m sorry to mess you around with the roster.’
‘Well, you can hardly help what happened. Have you got time to go through it now—did you want the rest of the week off?’
Jasmine shook her head. ‘I was actually hoping to come in to work tomorrow—Penny’s going to stay with her today and I’ll come back this evening, but I’d rather start back at work as soon as possible. I might need some time off when she comes out, though.’
‘We’ll sort something out,’ Lisa said. ‘We’re very accommodating here, not like the fracture clinic.’ Lisa winked.
‘Sorry about that.’
‘Don’t worry about it for now. We’ll have a chat when you’re up to it.’
‘Actually,’ Jasmine said, ‘do you have time for a chat now?’
She sat in Lisa’s office and, because she’d got a lot of her crying out when she’d told Jed, Jasmine managed to tell Lisa what had happened with her ex-husband without too many tears, and was actually incredibly relieved when she had.
‘You didn’t need to tell me this,’ Lisa said. ‘But I’m very glad that you did. I’d rather hear it from you first and it’s a good lesson to us all about being less careless with patients’ property. I can see why you panicked now. Anyway …’ she smiled, ‘… you can stop worrying about it now.’
Finally she could, and only then did Jasmine fully realise how much it had been eating at her, how much energy she had put towards worrying about it, running from it.
‘Go home to bed,’ Lisa said.
‘I will. But I just need to have a quick word with Vanessa, if that’s okay?’
Vanessa was one burning blush when they met. ‘Simon’s been fantastic. He’s tucked up in the crèche now and I can have him again tonight if you like.’
‘I’ll be fine tonight.’
‘Well, why don’t I pick him when my shift’s finished and bring him home to you?’ Vanessa offered, and as Jasmine thanked her she suddenly cringed. ‘Jasmine, I am so embarrassed.’
‘Why?’
‘All the terrible things I said about Penny. I could just die. I keep going over and over them and then I remember another awful thing I said.’
Jasmine laughed. ‘Believe me, you weren’t the only one, and you told me nothing about Penny that I didn’t already know—Penny too,