Not such a bad idea.
‘You don’t have staff to cover the little boy on a one-on-one basis?’ he asked. The awkwardness between them had increased since he’d mentioned the sister thing. It was like a glass wall—solid and impenetrable—but talking medical matters made pretence at normality easier.
‘Not unless the child is desperately ill. I’ve spoken to Kristianne, the doctor on duty, who, with Dr Chan, his paediatrician, admitted Benjie, and he’s OK, though I don’t know what the oncologist will say tomorrow.’
‘You have an oncologist come in just for him?’
Meg’s smile made him realise how incredulous he must have sounded. It also managed to penetrate the glass wall and cause quivers in his chest.
‘We have one on-line—a direct link so we can talk to him and he can talk to us. Kristianne took more blood from Benjie when he came in, and we’ll flick those test results through to the oncologist as soon as they’re available. It’ll be up to him whether Benjie has treatment tomorrow or not.’
It all sounded quite sensible to Meg, so why was Sam frowning at her? Was he thinking about that ridiculous statement he’d made earlier?
‘You went to an SES meeting,’ he said, accusation biting into the words. ‘So how come you know all this? Who admitted him—taking blood, all the details?’
‘I rode back to the hospital with Bill, who’s also in the SES. I guessed your page meant some kind of crisis and I don’t like to have stuff happening that I don’t know about.’
Sam smiled at her.
‘You never did,’ he reminded her, and though she knew she shouldn’t be feeling anything for Sam, she found herself smiling back.
They stood by Benjie’s bed, looking down at the sleeping child. Meg leant forward to adjust the blue striped beanie the little boy wore.
‘Local football colours, aren’t they?’ Sam asked, feeling strange that he and Meg should be standing beside a small child’s cot.
Strange, yet somehow right…
And he didn’t do emotion?
‘Bay Dolphins,’ she confirmed. ‘They’ve adopted Benjie as a mascot. They donated all the gate takings from their final game towards the Benjie Fund that helps out with the expenses of the family.’
‘Did they win?’
Meg turned and smiled, then thrust her arm in the air as she said in a loud whisper, ‘You bet they did. Go, Dolphins!’
‘For someone who only ever spent holidays in the Bay, you’ve become a local from the look of things,’ Sam said.
But it was Brad who answered.
‘That’s because she cares about stuff apart from just patients in a bed,’ the child informed him.
‘Do you?’ Sam asked directly, turning his clear-eyed gaze from Brad to Meg.
‘Of course I do, but so does everyone else in the profession. Most of the people in your profession, too, I would have thought.’
‘Not entirely,’ Sam argued, pleased that, with the help of two children, they’d managed to find their way back through the glass wall, to some kind of neutral territory. ‘I’m not saying specialists don’t care about the whole person, but they do tend to become quite focussed on their main interest. Look at orthopods who only operate on hands.’
‘But they’re doing their best to achieve a positive outcome for the patient, not just his hand.’
‘Maybe,’ Sam said so dubiously that Meg laughed.
‘There always was a touch of the cynic in you,’ she told him. ‘Now, can you help me move this chair?’
She pointed towards a big reclining lounge chair.
‘To over here by Benjie?’ Sam asked.
‘No, that I could manage myself. I want to take it through to Ben’s room for Jenny. There’s another one near Brad I can use.’
‘Don’t the other wards have facilities for family staying over?’
Meg studied him.
‘Do you really want an answer or was that just a conversational question?’
‘Why wouldn’t I want an answer?’ Sam had moved towards the chair and was now manoeuvring it towards the door.
‘Because you’re acting super—not here permanently. Most people passing through wouldn’t care.’
He frowned at her.
‘Well, I do, OK?’
Taking up a position on the other side of the chair brought her closer to Sam—this new caring Sam—closer than she liked, so it was good to have something to explain.
‘Because serious cases are transferred on to larger hospitals we rarely have patients ill enough to warrant family staying with them. But I believe parents should be able to stay with their sick kids so recently Bill found the funds to buy these chairs.’
Blue-green eyes met hers across the chair as they pushed it through the door, and she saw the faint mark on his face where her stick had struck him.
He’d thought she was his sister?
Disbelief was yelling the question in her head, but if Sam could behave as if he hadn’t delivered that deadly blow only hours earlier, so could she.
‘Working on getting them for the other wards, are you?’ he was asking, and though his lips weren’t smiling she could see a teasing gleam in his eyes. A teasing gleam that melted her bones and made her heart do little tap dances in her chest.
Oh, no, not again! You cannot fall for Sam again!
But is it again—or still…?
‘It wouldn’t be a bad idea,’ she said, stiffly formal as she tried to hide the effect he had on her. ‘But money’s always tight.’
Together they managed to get the chair to Ben’s room and when Jenny began to question Sam about Ben’s heart attack, Meg slipped away.
He’s not here for ever, she reminded herself. You can handle it.
But could she?
She went through to the children’s ward and shifted another big chair, this time close to Benjie’s cot. The little boy was still sleeping peacefully, and would probably stay that way throughout the night. They had a monitor on the mattress, the device usually used for babies with suspected sudden infant death syndrome. It had an alarm that would sound if Benjie stopped breathing. But for Jenny and Ben’s peace of mind, Meg would stay by his side.
She drew a fingertip along his arm, marvelling at the super-smooth skin.
‘Keep fighting, Benjie,’ she whispered to the little boy, then she sank down into the chair beside him.
Exhaustion, both physical and emotional, flooded through her as she let her body relax in the soft recliner. The physical she could explain. She’d been doing double shifts for a week now.
The emotional exhaustion was also explainable but far less easy to set aside. If she felt this way after Sam’s first day in the hospital, how was she going to feel after a week—or a month—or however long he intended working here?
But it wasn’t so much Sam’s presence causing emotional havoc as the sister thing. Why hadn’t she stayed when he’d told her? Listened to him explain?
Because she’d been too shocked to think straight!
How could such an impossible, inconceivable, horribly revolting idea have got into his stupid head?
She thought back—way back—but even after thirteen