‘Josh, you don’t understand,’ she said with a quiver in her voice. ‘Mr Kasarian has to operate. He’s trying to save Pam’s life.’
‘But…I don’t understand.’ He was having to blink hard against the hot threat of tears. ‘She was all right this morning. We had breakfast together and she said she was going to walk to the shops after I went to school. She was going to buy some things for the baby, and…and…’
The expression on his mother’s face evaporated the words off his tongue, the desperation there telling him that, no matter what he said, it wasn’t going to change what was happening now.
‘She collapsed in the shop, Josh…in the ladies’toilets… And nobody knew she was there until the cleaner heard noises in the cubicle and realised that the door had been locked for a long time.’
‘Wh-what’s wrong with her?’ His heart felt as if it was fluttering wildly against his ribs, like the little bird that he’d rescued from next-door’s cat. It was going so fast that it was making him feel quite light-headed, as if he was going to be sick. ‘What’s he going to do to her?’
‘Her blood pressure’s gone up much too high—it’s called eclampsia and that’s why she collapsed,’ she explained briefly, and he was struck that, even now, she’d remembered that he always wanted to know why things happened. ‘And the only way to make the blood pressure come down is to take the baby out of her…quickly.’
‘But, Mum, you said…’ His thoughts were such a panicky jumble that it was hard to find the words he needed first. ‘The baby…Pammy’s baby! It isn’t time for it to come out yet.’ Her face looked all blurry as he tried to put his thoughts in order, so he knew he was crying now, but he couldn’t help it. Ever since he’d been told that his mother’s best friend in all the world was expecting a baby he’d been so…so excited. And as soon as Pammy had told him that he was going to be able to help her to look after it…to feed it and protect it…it was all he’d been able to think about.
None of them knew whether it was a girl or a boy… Pammy said she wanted to wait until the baby was born to find out, the way she always waited till Christmas morning to open her presents. Josh had already persuaded her that it should be called Daniel if it was a boy, but if it was born too soon, it wouldn’t be able to live and it wouldn’t matter what it was called because it would never survive long enough to know that he would have been the best big brother ever.
‘Josh, they have to operate,’ his mother said in a funny choked voice, and he felt even worse when he saw that she was crying, too. She and Pammy had known each other for hundreds of years…ever since they’d met in that group home when they were little. They always said that they might not have been born sisters, but they were sisters now. Better than sisters.
‘If they don’t operate quickly, Pam will die,’ she continued urgently. ‘She might die even if they do, and then the baby would die, too, so Mr Kasarian really doesn’t have any choice.’
He flung himself into her arms and they clung together, sobbing and terrified that they were going to lose the only family they had in the world.
‘I’m sorry, Sister Weath—Meredith,’ Mr Kasarian interrupted himself, the grey pallor of defeat dulling his stubble-darkened golden skin and robbing his dark eyes of their usual sparkle.
Josh had never seen him like this before; had usually seen him smiling as he answered one of the millions of questions Josh peppered him with, even though he wasn’t supposed to be visiting the unit. ‘Even though Pam didn’t work in this particular department, she was one of ours, too, so you know that we did everything we could…’
‘Of course you did,’ his mother agreed softly from behind a shaky hand, her other hand tightening painfully around Josh’s. He didn’t care how tight she squeezed. Nothing could hurt worse than the pain inside him.
‘If only someone had found her sooner,’ the consultant continued. ‘By the time we got her to Theatre she’d already been convulsing for so long that…’ He shook his head. ‘She was already going into multi-organ failure. All we could do was to try to save the baby.’
‘So they’re both dead,’ his mother mourned, her voice so choked with tears that Josh could hardly understand the words. ‘My best friend and her baby, both gone in one day when we’d got so many plans to—’
‘No!’ the consultant interrupted, suddenly quite flustered. ‘I’m so sorry, Meredith. I can’t have made myself clear. I lost your friend, but her baby is still alive…for the moment, at least.’
‘What? It’s alive?’ Josh wasn’t certain whether he’d spoken or if it had been his mother.
‘Yes, Josh. It was a little girl, and she’s very small, but she’s a real fighter.’
‘A girl!’ Josh didn’t know whether to be disappointed that it hadn’t been Daniel, the little brother he’d wanted, or just to be pleased that Pammy’s baby was still alive.
‘Can we see her?’ his mother asked, and for one horrified moment Josh thought she was asking to see Pammy, and the idea that he might see the woman who had been an extra mother to him the whole of his life lying there, dead, made him feel sick.
‘Of course you can, Meredith,’ the consultant said with a reassuring smile, and with a silent sigh of relief, Josh realised that he and his mother were talking about the baby. ‘Just as soon as she’s been settled in the unit and… well, I don’t need to tell you any of that,’ he added with a shrug. ‘You probably know just as much about that side of things as I do…probably more. You’ve been working in the unit long enough.’
‘Oh, Josh,’ his mother murmured when Mr Kasarian left, and when he saw her eyes filling with tears again a feeling of panic filled him in an overwhelming flood.
All his life it had been the three of them coping together against the world, him, his mum and Pammy. He’d never known his own father because he’d died in a motorcycle accident before he’d been born, and he’d never met the father of Pammy’s baby either, but there’d never been a time when Pammy hadn’t been there to help him cheer his mother up when she was sad. Now there was only him, and he had no idea what to say to stop her crying, not when he felt so much like giving in to the tears, too.
‘We’ll manage, Mum,’ he said shakily as he patted her arm, wishing he believed it even as he voiced the words that Pammy had always said. ‘We’re the three musketeers, remember? And we’ll still be the three musketeers…only this time I won’t be the youngest.’
‘The three musketeers,’ Josh murmured as he hung his stethoscope around his neck and stuffed a notepad in the pocket of his white coat. ‘What on earth made me think of that today?’
That scene had taken place at least twenty-seven years ago and had been a pivotal point in his life. The first moment he’d seen that tiny, almost transparent scrap of a baby he’d known exactly what branch of medicine he wanted to concentrate on when he was all grown up.
It must have taken some determination on his mother’s part to survive in those early years, going from a household consisting of one child supported by two wage earners to one of two children supported by just one SCBU nurse. He never did know how she’d persuaded the authorities to allow her to adopt Pammy’s baby, but he did know that she was a formidable woman when she set her mind to something. By his early teens he’d become very adept at finding employers who would overlook the fact that he was underage for a job by playing on the fact that he was tall and blessed with a responsible attitude. But even though he was helping to support their little family, nothing was allowed to interfere with his grades at school; nothing was permitted to get in the way of his eventual acceptance into medical school and the first step on the road to becoming a paediatric consultant.
The ring of the