give it the right length, if there’d not been too much tissue damage, then the kid might...
Not the kid. Jessie.
The thought did his head in.
‘I think we’re fine here,’ Caroline growled. ‘Decent colour. Decent pulse. He’s all yours, Matt.’
But as Matt moved in to take control he knew it was no such thing.
This kid wasn’t his at all.
* * *
The doors swung open and Matt Eveldene was in front of her. He looked professional, a surgeon in theatre scrubs, hauling down his mask, pushing his cap wearily from his thatch of thick, black hair. How did he have black hair when Jessie’s had been almost blond? Kelly wondered absent-mindedly. He was bigger than Jess, too. Stronger boned, somehow...harsher, but she could still see the resemblance. As she could see the resemblance to her son.
This man was Jessie’s uncle. Family?
No. Her family was her son. No one else in the world qualified.
‘It went well,’ he said curtly from the door, and she felt her blood rush away from her face. She’d half risen but now she sat again, hard. He looked at her for a moment and then came across to sit beside her. Doctor deciding to treat her as a mother? Okay, she thought. She could deal with this, and surely it was better than last time. Better than brother treating her as a drug-addicted whore.
The operation had gone well. She should ask more. She couldn’t.
There was only silence.
There was no one else in the small theatre waiting room. Only this man and her.
There were so many emotions running rampant in her mind that she didn’t have a clue what to do with them.
‘Define...define “well”,’ she managed, and was inordinately proud of herself that she’d managed that.
‘Caroline had to graft to repair the artery,’ he told her. ‘But she’s happy with the result. We have steady pulse, normal flow. Then I’ve used a titanium rod. You know about intramedullary nailing? There wasn’t enough bone structure left to repair any other way. But the breaks were above the knee and below the hip—well clear—so we’ve been able to use just the one rod and no plates. He has a couple of nasty gashes—well, you saw them. Because the bone fragments broke the skin we need to be extra-cautious about infection. Also Caroline’s wary of clotting. He’ll spend maybe a week in hospital until we’re sure the blood flow stays steady. After that, rest and rehabilitation in a controlled environment where we know he can’t do further damage. You know this’ll be a long haul.’
‘It’ll break his heart,’ Kelly whispered. ‘It’s going to be six months before he’s back on a surfboard.’
‘Six months is hardly a lifetime,’ Matt said, maybe more harshly than he should have. ‘He’ll have some interesting scars but long term nothing a surfer won’t brag about. Depending on his growth—at seventeen there may or may not be growth to come—we may need to organise an extension down the track but the rod itself can be extended. Unless he grows a foot he should be fine.’
So he’d still be able to surf. She hadn’t realised quite how frightened she’d been. She felt her body sag. Matt made a move as if to put a hand on her shoulder—and then he pulled away.
He would have touched her if she’d been a normal parent, she thought. He would have offered comfort.
Not to her.
It didn’t matter. He’d done what she’d most needed him to do and that was enough.
She made to rise, but his hand did come out then, did touch her shoulder, but it wasn’t comfort he was giving. He was pressing her down. Insisting she stay.
‘We need to talk,’ he said. ‘I believe I deserve an explanation.’
She stilled. Deserve. Deserve!
‘In what universe could you possibly deserve anything from me?’ she managed.
‘Jessie has a son!’
‘So?’
‘So my brother has fathered a child. My parents are grandparents. Don’t you think we deserved to know?’
‘I’m remembering a conversation,’ she snapped, and the lethargy and shock of the last few hours were suddenly on the back burner. Words thrown at her over eighteen years ago were still vividly remembered. ‘How could I not remember? Make no contact with your parents. Do not write. Never tell your mother Jess and I were married. Keep myself out of your lives, now and for ever. You said there were a hundred reasons why I should never contact you. You didn’t give me one exception.’
‘If you’d told me you were pregnant—’
‘As I recall,’ she managed, and it hurt to get the words out, ‘you didn’t want to know one single thing about me. Everything about me repelled you—I could see it on your face.’
‘You were a drug addict.’
She took a deep breath, fighting for control. ‘Really?’ she asked, managing to keep her voice steady. ‘Is that right? A drug addict? You figured that out all by yourself. On what evidence?’
He paused, raking his long, surgeon’s fingers through his thatch of wavy, black hair. The gesture bought him some time and it made Kelly pause. Her anger faded, just a little.
The present flooded back. This man had saved her son’s leg. Maybe she needed to cut him some slack.
But it seemed slack wasn’t necessary. He’d gone past some personal boundary and was drawing back.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I made...I made assumptions when Jess died. I know now that at least some of them were wrong.’
Her anger had faded to bitterness. ‘You got the autopsy report, huh?’
‘You need to realise the last time I saw Jessie alive he was in drug rehab.’
‘That was years before he died.’
‘He told you about it?’
‘Jess was my husband,’ she snapped. ‘Of course he told me.’
‘You were seventeen!’
‘And needy. Jess was twenty-four and needy. We clung to each other.’ She shook her head. ‘Sorry, but I don’t have to listen to this. You never wanted to know about me before, and you don’t now. Thank you very much for saving my son’s leg. I guess I’ll see you over the next few days while he’s in hospital but I’ll steer clear as much as I can. I need to go back to our hotel and get Jess’s things, but I want to see him first. Is he awake?’
‘Give him a while. We put him pretty deeply under.’ He raked his hair again, looking as if he was searching for something to say. Anything. And finally it came.
‘You weren’t on drugs?’
‘You
