‘Her liver? What’s wrong with her liver?’ Frank demanded with a look of disbelief. ‘She’s never been a big drinker, not like some of these girls who go out and get drunk all the time.’
‘Partly she’s having the problem because she’s underweight,’ Mr Shah explained patiently. ‘Her liver didn’t have enough reserves, so when her body started to break down the paracetamol, it began damaging the tissues of the liver.’
‘So, how bad is it?’ Frank was suddenly very subdued, as though the severity of the situation was only now coming home to him. ‘And is it going to get any worse?’
‘The damage means that her liver will develop areas of necrosis—that means the tissue dies,’ he explained hastily when he saw their puzzled expressions. ‘We don’t know yet whether it’s going to get any worse. It’s just a case of wait and see.’
‘How long will we have to wait? Weeks? Months?’ Audrey asked tearfully, clutching her husband’s hand like a lifeline.
‘Not as long as that. Usually, it’s no more than a few days before we can tell whether the liver is damaged beyond repair.’
‘What happens then?’ Audrey was pale and shaky but clearly intent on fighting for her precious daughter. ‘What are you going to do to make her well again? Will she need medication or dialysis or what?’
‘Dialysis isn’t an option—it can only be used for kidney failure—but some patients with quite severe liver damage can recover with the right diet and support. For the rest, there are surgical options, but we won’t go into that unless it becomes necessary.’
The meeting broke up then, with her parents hurrying off to spend time with Zara while Sara was left trying to manoeuvre wheelchair and crutches out of the office without taking a chunk out of the door.
‘Let me,’ Dan said, and took over the propulsion again. And even though being this close to him caused every nerve in her body to tense up, she wasn’t about to refuse the loan of some muscle power to get her to the lift.
‘Thank you,’ she murmured, careful not to look in his direction while they waited for the lift to arrive. She was grateful they weren’t the only ones in it this time—the more people sharing the space the better if she wasn’t to risk making a complete fool of herself. How long would it take before he realised that she’d never got over him, even though he’d abandoned her in favour of marrying her sister?
She could have groaned when he insisted on pushing her across the expanse of the main reception hall and out of the electronically controlled doors.
‘Where do you want to go?’ he asked, absent-mindedly flicking the keys in his hand against his leg.
‘I can get a taxi,’ she pointed out with a glance towards the couple already waiting outside the front of the hospital, their drivers chatting to each other with the ease of long acquaintance.
‘Ah, but will it be driven by someone willing to stay long enough to make sure you get up your stairs safely? Are you willing to risk falling down and breaking something else—or injuring the babies?’
He didn’t play fair, Sara grumbled silently as she tried to make herself comfortable on the plush grey upholstery. If he hadn’t mentioned the babies, she would have stuck to her guns, she told herself as she tried to get her cast into the footwell, grateful that he’d thought to slide the passenger seat back as far as possible to accommodate her lack of mobility.
She breathed a sigh of relief when she was finally able to click the seat belt into position then regretted it when she drew in that tantalising mixture of soap and man that would forever signify Dan.
Think of something to talk about, she told herself sternly as he pulled out of the car park, but the only topic that came to mind was Zara. Still, it did prompt an idea.
‘Nice car,’ she commented blandly. ‘What sort is Zara driving these days?’
‘I didn’t think you were into cars.’ There was a hint of laughter in his voice, the laughter that she’d loved to share with him when she’d believed they’d had a future together. ‘You don’t even own one, do you?’
‘I didn’t see the point of buying one for the sake of it,’ she said stiffly, fighting off the memories. ‘I live within walking distance of the hospital and the shops, and if I need to go further afield, there’s always a taxi or the train.’
‘So, why the interest in Zara’s vehicle?’
‘Just wondering if you ever let her drive yours.’ That was bound to get her the information she wanted. She knew how much he loved his bad-boy black BMW with its pale grey interior, had been with him the day he’d taken delivery of it, the first new car he’d ever owned.
‘No way!’ he exclaimed fervently. ‘But she insisted that she needed to be able to get about and wanted something equally sporty, so …’
‘His and hers? Matching cars?’ she teased and held her breath.
‘Well, yes,’ he admitted uncomfortably, then added, ‘Except hers is metallic silver with black upholstery.’
‘Big difference!’ she teased again, although how she found the words she didn’t know. A silver car with dark upholstery. That was an image that would be imprinted in her memory for the rest of her life.
But there must be thousands of silver BMWs. It could have been any one of them, said the corner of her brain that didn’t want to believe that her sister could have done that to her. Except, she argued with herself as her fingers crept up to trace the scar on her forehead, you know what she was capable of when she was just a little girl. She’s grown up now, but has she grown out of such tendencies or has the scale of them grown with her?
‘I hope you won’t mind if I stop off at my flat first,’ he said, and she was so relieved that he was interrupting the darkening spiral of her thoughts that she would have agreed to almost anything. ‘It shouldn’t take me long, but you can come up and wait for me if you like.’
‘And have to go through all that effort of posting myself back into the car? No, thank you,’ she said. ‘If you park in the underground car park, I’ll be quite safe while I wait for you.’
He tried to change her mind but she was adamant, a new plan already fully formed in her head.
As soon as he disappeared from view she opened the passenger door and began the time-consuming struggle to extricate herself from the car. All the while her pulse was racing, afraid that she wouldn’t have time to achieve what she wanted to before he came back.
‘A silver BMW with a black interior,’ she muttered aloud, having had to admit defeat with the crutches when her recently dislocated shoulder refused to take the pressure. Anyway the pain was too great and she didn’t dare to do it any more damage or it could be a problem for the rest of her life.
So it was her eyes rather than her feet that set off along the row of cars while she leant against Dan’s, her eyebrows lifting a little more with each expensive model she recognised, but in spite of the fact that there were two other BMWs, neither was silver with a black interior.
‘So much for my idea of seeing whether there was any damage on her car,’ she grumbled as she made her halting way back to Dan’s vehicle. But if it wasn’t here, where could it be? Zara certainly hadn’t driven herself to the hospital in it.
‘Sara, what’s the matter? Why did you get out of the car?’ She hadn’t even heard the lift coming down but there was Dan hurrying towards her across the oil-stained concrete.
‘Um … I had a touch of cramp and needed to get out to move about a bit,’ she invented clumsily, hating not to tell the truth, but how could she make such an accusation without a single shred of proof?