Dr Right For The Single Mum

Maybe that was what had given the level of trust between them such a solid foundation—that they both recognised those barriers and knew that neither was going to attempt breaking through them. They were workmates. Not quite friends, because they didn’t choose to spend any time away from work together, like Laura did with Maggie and Joe and Fizz and Cooper, but they were more than simply workmates because there was that trust on both sides. That confidence that it was totally safe to be near each other. And that meant they didn’t have to be on their guard on any level, which was probably why it was so easy to communicate, even without any words.

‘Let’s find him a cubicle,’ Tom said. ‘You fill in the paperwork and I’ll come and check on him as soon as I can.’

He smiled at Harry before he turned away. ‘Hey, buddy...who have you got there? T Rex?’

Harry clutched his plastic dinosaur more tightly to his chest and curled closer to his mother. Laura could feel the sudden tension in his small body from being too close for comfort to a man he didn’t know. But her heart squeezed hard when her son was brave enough to say something back to Tom.

‘His real name is Tyrannosaurus Rex,’ Harry whispered.

‘It is,’ Tom agreed. ‘Did you know that he had sixty teeth? And they were all razor sharp and could be this big?’ He held his hands with a large gap between them.

Harry’s eyes widened and his jaw dropped. Laura grinned at Tom. Way to go, she told him silently. He had just won the heart of a six-year-old who was passionate about dinosaurs and he might have even erased much of the fear that this small boy had of men he didn’t know well.

She headed towards the central desk, to pick up the forms she needed to fill in and to check the board to see what cubicle might be free.

Fizz was on her way out of the department. ‘Oh, no... Harry... Are you still feeling sick, sweetheart?’

Harry nodded.

Fizz caught Laura’s gaze. ‘Want me to stay? Cooper’s just gone with Harley to get the car but we could come back.’

‘No...we’re good.’

Fizz raised an eyebrow. She knew that Harry was shy with men he didn’t know. She also knew that her husband had won Harry’s trust very early on, when he’d been one of Laura’s flatmates.

‘You remember Cooper, don’t you, Harry? He helped you when you broke your arm last year.’

Harry nodded.

‘It’s all better now, isn’t it? Your arm?’

Harry nodded again.

‘Well, Doctor Tom will help make whatever it is that’s making you feel sick all better, too.’

‘He will,’ Laura agreed. ‘And who knew that he knew so much about dinosaurs?’

Fizz chuckled. ‘There you go. A match made in heaven.’ But her smile faded as she looked back at Laura. ‘Text me,’ she said, ‘if there’s anything I can do to help.’

‘I’m sure we’ll be fine,’ Laura told her. ‘You go and enjoy the rest of your day with your boys. I’m probably overreacting.’

‘I’d be exactly the same with Harley. And we both know that you need to listen when a mum’s feeling worried. Instinct should never be ignored.’

‘Mmm...’ But Laura didn’t want to think about a mother’s instinct. Because hers was trying to send messages that were too scary.

She just knew too much. She’d seen too much in this department. People that came in, occasionally, with symptoms that should be of no great significance but turned out to be something really awful.

Laura collected the paperwork and settled Harry onto the bed in a spare cubicle. She left the curtain open enough to be able to see what was happening in the department because she wanted to see the moment Tom started heading in their direction.

She wanted him to come and make her feel safe.

More than anything, she needed the reassurance that Harry was safe.

* * *

Tom collected the new patient file from the central desk and was reading through the information Laura had provided about Harry as he walked to their cubicle. Perhaps that was why it came as a bit of a shock to look up and see Laura and Harry through the gap in the curtains.

He saw Laura McKenzie almost every day he was at work but he’d never seen her looking like this. She was normally on her feet and always busy, caring for her patients or fully involved in an assessment or resuscitation scene. Even if she was taking a break, she’d be reading while she ate a sandwich, or chatting to one of her friends like Fizz.

Right now, however, she was half on the bed with her son, perched on one side and lying across the pillows so that Harry was tucked under the shelter of her arm. She was gently smoothing the dark spikes of his hair, quietly watching as Harry made his plastic dinosaur hop slowly across the blanket she had tucked around him.

Tom had never seen Laura staying this still, her body language shouting its focus on only one thing—her precious son. Or with an expression like that on her face. That mix of tenderness and concern—the picture of a mother’s love—hit him like a punch in the gut and Tom found himself swallowing hard. To get a flashback twice in one day was more than a little disturbing when he’d been so sure he was well past that part of his life. Or perhaps this was simply an aftershock of how he’d felt seeing Maggie and Joe with their newborn baby and getting dragged back into the past like that.

It felt like longing, this sharp twinge of discomfort.

Or a renewed flash of grief for a future that was never going to happen.

Whatever it was, he knew he could handle it but it was certainly giving him a new perspective on this woman he’d worked with for so long. Someone he had learned to trust because she’d never attempted to get past the guardrails he had in place in his personal life. And, in this moment, he felt closer to her than he ever allowed himself to get to a colleague or a member of a patient’s family, for that matter. It was already under his skin. That note of tenderness. The knowledge that Laura was very vulnerable right now. All he could do was try and contain it. To make sure it didn’t grow any stronger.

‘Hey...’ Tom pasted a smile on his face as he pulled the curtain shut behind him. ‘How’s it going in here? Is Tyrannosaurus Rex finding enough to eat?’

Harry hid his toy under the blanket. ‘He’s not hungry.’

‘Oh...’ Tom pulled out a chair and perched on the edge of it, so that he wasn’t looming over the bed. ‘How ’bout you, Harry? Are you hungry?’

Harry shook his head. ‘I was sick,’ he told Tom. ‘At school. I was sick on the mat at story time.’

‘Oh, no...’ Tom could feel Laura’s gaze on his face but he kept his gaze on his young patient. ‘And you’ve got a sore tummy, too, I hear.’

Harry was silent. His chin was going down and his head tilting further into the crook of Laura’s elbow.

Tom raised his glance. ‘How long has the cream been on his arm?’

Laura touched the clear plastic cover that was keeping the generous blob of anaesthetic cream in place over the easiest vein to get a blood sample from. ‘Needs another ten minutes or so.’

‘Okay. So, tell me about what’s been happening. This isn’t the first time for a sore tummy, is it?’

Laura shook her head. ‘It’s been happening off and on for a long time. Almost since he started school, which made me think it was an anxiety thing, you know? Not wanting to go to school? The vomiting is more recent, though.’

‘What’s vomiting?’

‘Being sick, sweetheart. It’s what we call it here.’

Tom was watching closely as Harry looked up at his mother when he asked the question. Was that a tinge of yellow he could see in the whites of Harry’s eyes?

‘Can I have a look at your tummy, Harry? Is that okay?’

He could see the visible shrinking back further into his mother’s arms but, with Laura’s encouragement and reassurance, Harry let the blanket get pushed back and his tummy exposed.

‘I won’t hurt you,’ Tom promised. ‘If it’s really sore, you tell me and I’ll stop.’ He eyed the dinosaur in Harry’s hand. ‘Or T Rex can bite me on my arm, okay?’

Big, brown eyes looked up at him. Exactly like his mother’s eyes, Tom thought. Harry hadn’t inherited Laura’s auburn hair, though. The ruffled spikes of Harry’s hair were very dark, almost black, which could be contributing to how pale that little face was. There was a hint of a smile there now, however.

‘’Kay.’ He lay back but kept the toy dinosaur in a raised hand, ready to strike if it became necessary.

Tom was as gentle as possible. His hand looked so large against Harry’s abdomen as he carefully palpated each quadrant. He left the upper right quadrant till last, probably because he had that suspicion of possible jaundice at the back of his mind.

‘Can you take a big breath in for me, Harry? Like this?’ Tom demonstrated and Harry complied.

And there it was...

A firm, irregular edge to this little boy’s liver as he could feel it coming down with the lungs filling.

‘Ow...’ The plastic dinosaur tapped against Tom’s arm.

‘Sorry, buddy.’ Tom lifted his hand but his heart was sinking. That prickle at the back of his neck was something he recognised all too easily and it came from the instinct that there was something significantly wrong here. That Harry could be in trouble and it might be impossible to protect him from painful things to come. Pain that would be felt by his mother, as well.

Tom didn’t dare catch Laura’s gaze just then. He didn’t want to scare her. Not until he was sure about what his instincts were telling him. Maybe he just wanted to put that moment off for as long as possible because he knew, all too well, how it could turn your world inside out and upside down.

Destroy it even...

Or maybe it was because he was suddenly aware of a desire to protect Laura McKenzie.

Where on earth had that come from...?

CHAPTER TWO

THE REST OF that day became a blur.

A desperate attempt for Laura to hang onto something solid enough to not allow herself to get swamped by a terror that was becoming more and more real as the minutes and then hours ticked past.

Blood tests came next for Harry and they were still distressing despite the anaesthetic cream and how brave her little boy was being. Maybe it was so distressing for Laura because of how brave Harry was being. Her love for him was so huge, it was filling her chest to an extent that made it seem very hard to breathe.

There was an ultrasound after that and even though Laura was not trained to interpret the blobby images on the screen, she could see that there was something in Harry’s liver that shouldn’t be there. That was when the real fear kicked in. Fear that had to be hidden from Harry because Laura knew how sensitive he was to how his mother felt. He had been right from when he was a tiny baby and Laura still felt guilty that his fear of strange men had been instilled in that part of his life due to the aftermath of the trauma from the abusive relationship she had escaped.

Thank goodness Tom was there, at least until Harry was admitted for the raft of other tests he was going to need. It was Tom who introduced Laura and Harry to Suzie, a paediatric surgeon who was absolutely lovely, and he was there when the paediatric oncologist was also called in for a consultation. As Laura’s world was being tipped upside down, Tom’s presence felt like an anchor. Something safe when almost nothing else could be trusted any more. That something solid that she could hang onto.

‘Can I call someone for you?’ he asked when an orderly came to wheel Harry’s bed up to the paediatric ward. ‘Have you got family?’

Laura shook her head, stepping far enough away from Harry not to be overheard. ‘No one close. It’s just me and Harry.’

Tom was frowning. ‘What about his father?’

‘Not in the picture. Never has been.’ Laura wanted to shut down this line of conversation. She’d been alone for a very long time, apart from Harry, and she preferred it that way. More than preferred it, actually. Changing it had never even been an option to consider.

‘Friends, then.’ Tom’s frown had deepened. ‘Maggie? I know she wants to know what’s happening. She asked me to tell you to text her when I went up to visit her earlier.’

‘She doesn’t need to know right now. For heaven’s sake, Tom. She’s probably just arrived home with her brand new baby. It’s okay, I can cope.’

She could. She’d coped before. Because, when you had to, you just did. You took things one step at a time and did your absolute best. But...it was kind of nice to have someone who wanted to help and the expression in Tom’s eyes suggested there was something more than purely professional concern for her as a colleague. As she held his gaze for a moment longer, Laura almost had the impression that he was struggling with something. He felt compelled to offer assistance but he wasn’t actually that comfortable about it, was he? Because they’d never stepped out of that “colleague” zone into a “friend” zone?

She needed to let him off the hook.

‘As soon as Harry’s settled, I’ll pop home and get everything we’ll need. And I’m sure it won’t take long for him to feel happy there.’ Laura pasted a smile onto her face. ‘It’ll probably be an adventure for him with all the toys and games they’ve got available and with other kids to play with and we both know how wonderful the staff are up there.’

Tom’s smile only caught one half of his mouth. He knew how hard she was trying to make the best of this situation. He also knew how difficult it was and he wanted to be able to help. More than wanted, in fact. He looked as though he wasn’t about to give up until he could do something. And, suddenly, Laura knew what that could be.

‘I’ve got a day off tomorrow,’ she told him. ‘But, if you really want to help, could you look at my roster for the next few days?’

‘Of course. Take all the time you need. Just let me know how I can make things easier.’

‘Thanks.’ Laura simply nodded. She couldn’t spare any head space to think about how much paid sick leave she might have available. Or how much she had in her savings account to cover unpaid time off work. She did know that it was unlikely to be enough but that was an added level of fear that couldn’t be allowed to matter at this point.

The only thing that mattered was Harry. Finding out exactly what was going on and how they were going to deal with it.

‘I’ll know more in a day or two and I’ll come and have a chat about work then. It could be tomorrow, even. Suzie said something about the possibility of a biopsy straight after the CT scans.’

Even saying the words made the terror of this too real. For an awful moment, Laura felt an urge to throw herself into Tom’s arms and just burst into tears. She didn’t dare catch his gaze again now. He was feeling uncomfortable enough just offering personal assistance. Forcing him to offer comfort would be doing more than crossing interpersonal boundaries—it would probably irreparably damage the trust they had between them.

Those unspoken rules that had never, ever been broken.

No flirting.

No really personal conversation.

Physical proximity and touching only if unavoidable in professional circumstances.

Laura needed those rules to be in place just as much as Tom did because they were the perimeters that created the safe space she had needed for so long. It was a good thing that Harry’s bed was on the move beside her. Even if she hadn’t been able to control that urge to seek comfort from the touch of another human, there was no chance to do so right now.

‘Mummy?’ The anxiety in Harry’s voice was more than enough to ensure that Laura took instant control of any emotional weakness that might be trying to persuade her to beg for comfort.

‘I’m coming, sweetheart. Just wait until you see what they’ve got painted on the walls where we’re going. I think there’s even going to be some dinosaurs somewhere.’

* * *

Three days later, Tom emerged from one of the resuscitation rooms in ED to see Laura at the central desk. Fizz appeared to be hugging her friend fiercely.

He’d been expecting this.

He hadn’t expected to feel a wash of something that felt oddly like relief at seeing her again, mind you. Had he been missing seeing Laura around the department more than he’d realised? Or was he feeling guilty that he hadn’t been up to the paediatric ward to visit them? He’d felt a bit awkward, actually. Caught somewhere in the space between being simply a colleague or someone more like a friend who had good reason to demonstrate the kind of concern he was feeling. He had excused himself by keeping very busy and reassured himself that Laura was getting all the support she needed from her group of very good friends.

It was Fizz that Tom had been relying on for updates about what was happening in the paediatric ward and he always checked to see whether any extra help was needed. He knew that Harry had had all the relevant tests, including a biopsy. He had also been told that Laura was coping amazingly well, all things considered, and that she would be coming to talk to Tom, as head of department, regarding any time off she was going to need.

And here she was.

And, as Tom walked towards her, he wanted nothing more than to do exactly what Fizz was doing. To take Laura into his arms and give her a hug that could convey his empathy and encouragement and offer support all at the same time.

The urge to do so was disturbingly out of character for Tom. So much so that it was probably the reason he found it difficult to find a smile as Laura turned away from her friend. He might have even been frowning, he realised, as he saw the way Laura was collecting under his gaze as he came towards the desk. She was trying to hide any show of emotion that could be considered inappropriate in a work setting, wasn’t she? Straightening her back and brushing both her forefingers beneath her eyes as if erasing any evidence of tears being shed.

She looked pale. So pale that Tom could see freckles on her nose and he’d never noticed them before. He could see stray wisps of hair escaping from the loose plait her long hair was in, as well, which was a far cry from the normally sleek way she tied up her hair, but what struck Tom the most were her eyes. Maybe she’d lost a bit of weight in the last few days, which made them look larger. Or perhaps it was the light she was standing beneath that made him notice the subtle variations in colour that made them a really golden brown.

No...in the moment Tom broke the eye contact before it became long enough to seem far more significant than it actually was, he realised it was neither of those things. It was the pain he could see in them that touched a part of his own heart.

He knew that pain.

He needed to straighten his own back now. To remind himself that just because he recognised how tough things were for Laura, it didn’t mean he had to go back to that part of his own life and relive something he had finally moved on from. His heart sank a little, however. Even a professional chat with Laura was quite likely to be a lot more difficult than he had anticipated.

‘This is good timing,’ he said to her, by way of a greeting. ‘Come into my office, Laura. Fizz? You’ll know where to find me if you need me.’

‘Sure thing.’ Fizz had no trouble finding a smile for Laura. ‘Come and find me again after you’ve had a chat with Tom. With a bit of luck, we can grab a coffee in the staffroom.’

Tom’s office was down a corridor, between the staffroom and the meeting room. It was a small space, lined with crowded bookshelves and a desk piled with paperwork that took up most of the rest of the space. There was a big office chair behind the desk and two smaller chairs on the other side, which were padded but not exactly inviting. He waved a hand towards the smaller chairs.

‘Please, have a seat, Laura.’

Closing the door behind him, Tom hesitated momentarily. Putting the barrier of that large desk between them didn’t feel right but sitting close beside her on the other small chair was going too far in the other direction—as if he was planning to offer a counselling session rather than the kind of professional discussion about rosters and leave that they needed to have. He solved the issue by shoving a pile of journals to one side and hooking his leg over the corner to perch on the edge of his desk. Then he took a deeper breath.

‘So... I heard that the biopsy results were going to be available today?’

Laura nodded. ‘It’s a hepatoblastoma. They thought it might be hepatic cancer because the age range for a hepatoblastoma is usually under three but...but apparently it’s a good thing because the stats are better. The survival rate is...is around eighty-six percent.’

Tom used his nod in response as a cover to close his eyes for a moment. He could actually feel the strength that Laura was hanging onto as she spoke. This was her own child she was talking about, not a patient they had in common. How hard was it to try and focus on the positive side of the equation?

‘And the MRI showed that there’s no sign of metastatic tumours so that’s really good news, too.’ The wobble in Laura’s voice signalled how hard it was for her to keep the lid on her emotions but she clearly wanted to give him all the information she could and Tom could only silently applaud her courage.

‘Have they done the pretext staging?’ The pre-treatment extent of disease was an important part of how the team would decide to tackle Harry’s treatment.

‘It’s Stage two, but only just big enough to be in more than one section of the liver. They want to give him a few cycles of chemo to try and shrink it so that it’s only in a single sector and then they’ll be able to remove it totally with the surgery.’

‘So surgery will be at least a few weeks away, then? Or more depending on how many cycles of chemo are needed?’ Tom reached for a notepad and pulled a pen from the pocket of his scrub suit. ‘Let me make a note of how long you’ll need to be away for.’

But Laura was shaking her head this time. ‘I don’t need to be off work the whole time. They’re going to keep Harry in for a few days to see how he tolerates the first dose of the chemo but the aim after that is to keep life as normal as possible for everyone and they tell me that if Harry tolerates it well enough, there’s no reason he can’t keep going to school at the moment. Apparently most children do tolerate it well and he’s desperate to get back to school and his friends and our normal routine. Hopefully I’ll just need days off to be with him when he comes in for the infusions and I should have a calendar for that later today.’

Tom’s eyebrows rose. ‘You really want to keep working?’

‘I realise that I will need a lot more time off when it’s time for the surgery and that it could be a problem in the next few weeks if I have to cut shifts short or something to collect him from school if he gets too tired or is feeling sick, but it’s not simply a matter of what I would prefer... I have to keep working, Tom. I can’t afford not to.’

For a split second, Tom thought he had found a way to help Laura and still keep a safe distance. How easy would it be to offer to help her financially through this rough patch? Catching her gaze, however, he just as instantly dismissed the idea. He could read the look in her eyes just as easily as the kind of silent communication they could have regarding a patient. She didn’t want financial help. She was fiercely proud of her independence and she intended to cope. Alone, thank you very much.

‘We’ll work around that, then,’ he found himself saying. ‘I know I won’t be the only person in the department who wants to support you as much as possible, Laura. And... I have to say I think your attitude is...commendable.’

More like amazing, Tom thought. He’d always known that Laura was capable. One of the best nurses he’d ever worked with, in fact. He also knew she was totally reliable and trustworthy and, although he never listened to gossip, he’d picked up that she was a single mother. But he’d never put the pieces of the puzzle together, had he? He’d never wondered how she managed her life or how hard it might have been over the years. He knew virtually nothing about her private life and hadn’t wanted to know. Until now...