‘Of course I will, you chump. Right after I’ve checked your drip and reattached those leads. Chances are Benjie’s been given something to sedate him and he’ll be asleep by the time I get there, so you might see Jenny back here before you see me.’
Sam settled his patient back in bed, and made sure he was as comfortable as possible with all the leads running from his body.
‘Sedation works,’ Ben told him. ‘Benjie’s got a bit of asthma but he gets upset when he gets an attack.’ He gave Sam a slightly shame faced grin. ‘Guess I could do with a bit as well,’ he said, then added in a more serious voice, ‘But not just yet, Sam. I need to know the boy’s all right.’
Sam heard the love in Ben’s voice and felt a momentary pang of jealousy. For all the suffering he might have been through, Ben still had a loving wife and four children to hold to his heart.
He, Sam, had nothing.
Not even a heart, he sometimes suspected.
He shook his head. He’d been so upbeat about coming back to the Bay so why the maudlin mood swings?
‘Sam! Oh, Sam, it’s good to have you back.’
Jenny cast herself into Sam’s arms and gave him a huge hug as he walked into the children’s ward.
‘When Ben told me, I could hardly believe it!’ She’d stepped back and now she looked up into his face. ‘So you made it through medical school—you became a doctor! It’s what you always wanted to do, isn’t it?’
Sam grinned at her.
‘You’re the first person who’s remembered that ambition. Everyone else I’ve seen has wondered that I’m still out of jail.’
‘That’s only because you went crazy that last summer, Sam. But I knew you for a lot longer than one summer holiday.’
‘And believed in me,’ Sam said softly.
Jenny smiled and tucked her arm through his, leading him towards a cot where her little boy lay sleeping, an oxygen mask strapped across his pale face.
‘First Ben, now this little fellow,’ Sam said gently, and Jenny squeezed his arm.
‘We’ll cope,’ she told him. ‘We’ve got good at coping—the Richards family.’
‘Good on you,’ Sam said, easing away so he could bend over the cot and look at the tiny child.
In spite of the slight malformation in the facial features caused by the errant gene in Benjie’s make-up, Sam smiled to see the resemblance of the little boy to his dad.
‘He’s Ben all over again,’ he said to Jenny, reaching out to tuck the little starfish hand beneath the sheet.
‘Spitting image,’ Jenny agreed. ‘Everyone talks about it.’
‘And the leukaemia?’ Sam asked gently.
Jenny drew in a deep breath.
‘We’re fighting it, Sam. That’s all we can do. Benjie’s a fighter, too. Although I know the chemo is so much easier to take now, it still knocks him around for a day or two, but then he bounces back and is his normal, boisterous self. Although today—’
‘It might just have been the asthma attack.’ Sam was quick to assure her, although he was wondering whether Benjie had seen his father collapse with pain—seen the ambulance—and, little though he was, understood some of the significance of it.
‘I hope so,’ Jenny said, bending to kiss her son, then turning to Brad, who was the only child still awake in the ward. ‘I’m leaving you in charge,’ she told him. ‘You ring for someone if he wakes.’
Her instruction made Sam turn towards the desk, wondering if perhaps the hospital was so short-staffed a patient had to keep watch. But the nurse at the desk just smiled at him, leaving Jenny to explain as she accompanied him back to Ben’s room.
‘Brad’s been in and out of hospital so often he thinks he owns the place,’ she said. ‘So it’s natural to kid him around.’
She paused, then added, ‘And he loves Benjie, so he will watch over him.’
‘It sounds to me as if everyone loves Benjie,’ Sam said, and saw Jenny’s smile bring a glow to her cheeks.
‘Oh, they do,’ she whispered, then she went ahead, entering Ben’s room, eager to tell him his little son had settled down to sleep.
CHAPTER THREE
SAM sat in his office for a while, pretending to read the information in the files on his desk, but his mind wasn’t taking in much, wondering instead what time Meg might get home—and whether it would still be early enough for him to explain.
In the end he gave up and wandered back to the children’s ward where Jenny was sitting talking to Brad while keeping a watchful eye on her sleeping child.
‘Could I see Benjie’s file?’ he asked the nurse, who lifted a bulky package off the desk.
‘All of it or just the recent admissions?’ she asked.
He looked at the full file and realised he wouldn’t have time to read it all tonight. Maybe Jenny could explain.
She’d kissed Brad goodnight and was back by Benjie’s bed.
‘Ben’s fretting and I really need to be with him, but I hate leaving Benjie.’
‘He’s sleeping soundly, so I would think keeping Ben’s anxiety levels down would be the main concern,’ Sam said, resting his arm on her shoulder as she watched her sleeping child.
‘Come on,’ he said, turning her with a slight pressure of his hand. ‘As we walk back you can tell me about Benjie. How old is he and where’s he up to with his treatment?’
‘Don’t they call that diversion therapy?’ Jenny said, smiling at him as they walked into the corridor. ‘He’s two, diagnosed three and a half months ago. Dr Chan, the paediatrician here in the Bay, picked it up straight away and we did go to Brisbane for the initial intensive treatment, then for his catheter to be put in and for the five day block of treatment in the second month. What we’re up to now—the fourth month—is one daily 6-mercaptopurine tablet, weekly tablets of…Is it methotrexate?’
Sam nodded, remembering the protocols from his stint in paediatrics as an intern.
‘He comes in for monthly injections—I forget what that drug is—and later in the month we do five days of steroids. While he’s at the hospital for that day—tomorrow, it’s supposed to be—they do more blood tests and the results of those tests will determine if the tablets need to be changed.’
‘The dosage altered,’ Sam confirmed, as they paused outside Ben’s room to finish the conversation.
The curtains had been drawn across the internal windows so it wasn’t until they entered the room that he noticed Meg sitting by Ben’s bed. Again!
Sam watched as she stood up and kissed Jenny on the cheek. Watched as she carefully avoided either looking at him or acknowledging him.
‘I wondered if you wanted me to stay with Benjie tonight so you can be with Ben,’ she said, and Jenny’s smile and warm hug provided all the answer anyone needed. ‘I was filling Ben in on the SES meeting while I waited for you. He agrees we need a new captain but old Ned’s been there so long, no one has the heart to tell him it’s time to leave.’
The conversation continued for a few minutes, giving Sam the opportunity to watch the two women. They were obviously close friends—because Benjie was hospitalised so often?
‘Jenny was great to me that Christmas,’ Meg