Will and Sophie exchanged glances.
‘I’ll call in again Monday, Bella.’
The patient was breathing slowly. She appeared to be asleep, so the two doctors quietly left the room. Will made a quick phone call to Shelley before they went downstairs.
‘Bye, Brad,’ Sophie called as they let themselves out the front door.
The boy acknowledged their departure with a grunt and continued his game.
‘How is Brad coping with his mother’s illness?’ Sophie asked as she buckled her seat belt in the passenger seat of Will’s roomy old car.
‘I don’t think he is.’ Will sighed and started the engine. ‘I’ve tried to talk to him but he seems to have shut everyone out—including his mother. Bella worried about him at the beginning of her illness—she was diagnosed with cancer a week after Brad’s fourteenth birthday—but she doesn’t talk about him now. I think it upsets her that she can’t give him the support she wishes she could. She told me a while back she’d run out of emotional energy.’
A painful mix of sadness and helplessness churned in Sophie’s gut. The combination of poverty, illness and social isolation had delivered a cruel blow to this family. It wasn’t fair.
‘Isn’t there anything more that can be done for Bella?’
‘What do you mean?’ Will frowned.
‘She needs twenty-four-hour care … It’s not fair on her son. There must be somewhere like a hospice … In Sydney—’
Will’s grimace deepened.
‘We’re not in Sydney.’
Her boss seemed to want to wind up the conversation, but Sophie was determined to have her say.
‘Isn’t there residential care for the terminally ill here?’
Will began to back out into the street but braked at the kerb as a car sped past, the young driver going way too fast. He put the gearstick in neutral, wrenched the handbrake on and took a deep sighing breath.
‘I wish there was … for patients like Bella.’ Will’s voice was thick with emotion. ‘Do you think I don’t know that Bella, and hundreds of people like her, deserve pampering and dignity in their last days? Or at least to have the choice of where and how they die. Particularly those who have little in the way of family support.’ He paused. ‘But who pays?’
Sophie looked away and began fiddling with her watch band.
‘The government?’ she suggested quietly.
Point made. Sophie felt foolish, naive and totally put in her place.
The hospice she was familiar with was a private facility attached to one of the major private hospitals, paid for by wealthy patients and their health insurance funds.
Will put the car in gear, released the handbrake and looked in the rear-view mirror but he didn’t start reversing. He hadn’t finished.
‘The only government-funded hospice in this city is always full and is basically a converted wing of an old, now-defunct psychiatric hospital. And palliative care seems to be way down the list of priorities for Heath Department funding. I honestly think Bella is better off staying at home. At least for now.’
Will eased the car onto the road.
‘She has access to twenty-four-hour advice, home visits through the palliative care service, and both she and Brad have chosen the home-care option.’
Will accelerated.
Sophie understood his frustration. She had a lot to learn—not only about working in Prevely Springs but about how much of himself he gave to his patients. She glanced at her companion. He had dark rings under his weary eyes and his tense grip on the steering-wheel indicated he wasn’t as relaxed as his tone suggested.
What drove him to work so hard? As an experienced GP, surely he could choose a less demanding job. No one was indispensable.
But looking at Will … He seemed attached to his work and his patients by steadfastly unyielding Superglue.
Maybe she could be the one to ease his burden, to help him discover that there was a life away from work, to bring on that gorgeous smile she’d seen light up his face at least once that afternoon.
Purely as a friend, of course.
As if sensing Sophie was watching him, Will glanced at her as he slowed, approaching a corner.
‘What’s up?’ he said, crinkling his brow in a frown.
Nothing that your amazing smile won’t fix.
‘I’m concerned about Brad.’ Which she had been before she’d become distracted by the enigmatic man sitting next to her. She continued. ‘What sort of life does he lead? What’s in store for him in the future?’ She paused to take a breath, aware she had Will’s full attention. ‘How can a fourteen-year-old shoulder the responsibility of being the primary carer for his mother? It should be the other way around.’
Will accelerated around the corner and Sophie recognised the street where the clinic was located. ‘All valid concerns.’ He sighed as if the weight of the whole world’s problems rested on his shoulders. ‘He seems to have shut the real world out and replaced it with a virtual one, I’m afraid. I’m at a loss as to how to help him.’
‘Would it be okay with you if I tried to talk to Brad?’ Sophie knew it was an impulsive offer, and any support she gave would be a drop in the ocean compared to the Farrises’ hardship, but the boy seemed so isolated and withdrawn. She wanted to do something positive for Brad and Bella.
‘You’d have nothing to lose because I’ve got little to offer him at the moment.’ Will looked almost as weary as Bella. ‘Maybe twelve or eighteen months down the track …’
His voice trailed off, as if he’d started a conversation he didn’t want to finish, but Sophie was interested.
‘What do you mean?’
‘It’s a long story.’
‘I’m not in a hurry.’
He rewarded her with another of those charismatic smiles, apparently surprised she was interested.
‘I’m in the process of trying to get a youth-focused community centre up and running.’ Will parked on the road, a block away from the clinic. ‘See, over there?’
Sophie looked in the direction he was pointing. On the far side of a sports field a building of about the same vintage as the clinic stood neglected at the end of a weedy driveway. Several windows were broken and the parts of a low front wall that weren’t hidden by metre-high weeds were covered in graffiti. It had a chain-link fence around it, displaying a ‘DANGER KEEP OUT’ sign.
‘Looks like it’s ready for demolition.’
Will’s scowl suggested he didn’t agree.
‘That’s exactly what the council wants, but they haven’t got the resources to replace it. Since they closed the place down about a year ago they took away the one place local kids, like Brad and his mates, could hang out without getting bored and up to mischief. But if it’s up to bureaucracy, it’s unlikely to happen.’
Will tapped his fingers on the steering-wheel and for the briefest moment he looked desolate. Why was finding the fate of a rundown old building so painful?
‘So what’s going to happen to it?’
‘I’m trying to save it.’
‘How?’ Will was a man who seemed to have an insatiable need to take on projects that most people would discard into the too-hard basket. Surely he had enough to do, looking after the health needs of Prevely Springs, without