on more than one occasion. ‘Honestly, I don’t have a clue. They both threatened it over the years, but neither carried through... Maybe in some twisted way, for them at least, the marriage worked...’ he speculated with a mystified shake of his head ‘...or it could be that they were just too stubborn to admit they’d made a mistake.’
Elizabeth nodded. ‘Some people should not be together.’
‘Marriage is a leap in the dark,’ he countered cynically.
‘What about your investments? Don’t they involve the same thing?’ she teased gently.
He angled a narrow-eyed look at her face. ‘Are you trying to get in my head, Mrs Gray?’
She smiled. ‘Call me Elizabeth.’
‘Risks are easy when you’re only dealing with money, Elizabeth.’
‘You know, I think I might have that coffee, Ben.’
He sprinted for the lift, silently cursing the estate agent who’d made him late. He glanced at his watch—had he missed the doctor’s round?
It was all the estate agent’s fault. The guy had been creating problems where there were none, as far as Ben was concerned. He had zero interest in getting the best deal or calling anyone’s bluff. If the vendors wanted more money, they could have it.
In the end, he’d had to spell it out.
‘Give them a blank cheque. I don’t give a damn, so long as I have the keys for tomorrow.’
The guy had looked at him as though he was insane.
‘Blank cheque?’ he’d echoed, sounding scandalised by the suggestion.
Ben had silenced him with a look.
This morning the guy had been sitting with his commission cheque in his hot hand, telling Ben that it had been a pleasure doing business with him and apologising profusely for having one last paper for him to sign.
Walking down the long corridor that led to the specialist unit, he passed a couple he recognised and nodded before continuing on. His stab of sympathy was mingled with a feeling of relief. It was weird, but you quickly got to know when people had had bad news, simply from their body language.
Buzzed onto the ward, he did not hurry the hygiene rules. The strict measures to protect the vulnerable child from infection had become second nature to him over the past couple of weeks. Shrugging on the gown, he almost collided with the two figures standing outside Emmy’s room.
Ben felt as if someone had reached into his chest; the icy fingers tightened around his heart as the implications of what he was seeing hit him. He froze as Lily, oblivious to his presence, her head on her mother’s shoulder, continued to weep uncontrollably.
For the past couple of weeks she had kept a constant vigil at Emmy’s bedside, refusing a bed when one came up in the purpose-built block that housed parents of children who arrived at the specialist centre from all over the country. It was the best; Ben had made it his business to find out. During that time her cheerful, positive façade had stayed firmly in place. On the couple of occasions it had slipped and she’d needed to vent, he had been philosophical about taking the flak—at least he was good for something and there was precious little else he could do.
He had suffered moments of black doubt, but not Lily. There had never been any if, it had always been when Emily Rose got better.
While the doctors had been upbeat about the outcome, apparently it was rare for a parent to be a full match but he was. They had warned that compatibility, even full compatibility, did not guarantee success. They spoke a lot about multiple factors affecting the outcome.
Had Lily heard them? Or had she, as he suspected, tuned out anything she couldn’t cope with? The latter, he suspected. It had been obvious from the outset that she was in denial and intended to stay that way.
Ben had tried not to think how she would react if the worst happened...now he knew. The sound of her sobs tore at him, as did his sense of total, utter helplessness.
Less than three weeks ago he hadn’t known he had a child. He hadn’t known what he’d feel; not feeling anything had been his biggest fear. Yet when he had walked into the room and seen the tiny, terrifyingly frail figure lying asleep in the white hospital bed, her eyelashes fanned out across cheeks that might have once been rosy but were now pale as milk, emotions he had not known existed, feelings he hadn’t known he was capable of, had welled up in his chest. So strong he’d felt as if he were drowning.
He had hoped, he had prayed that he could learn to love his child, to prove himself worthy, but there was no learning involved. It was as genetically pre-programmed as breathing.
These were feelings that he’d never have known. Fear that he was as selfish and cold as his mother, or as uninterested as his father, would have kept him from experiencing them if Lily hadn’t fallen pregnant.
Their two-year-old had shown more guts than he had! He should have thanked Lily instead of blaming her. Whichever way you looked at it, half the responsibility and blame was his. Was it any wonder she had been and still was wary of his attempts to be part of Emmy’s life? It was not a right, it was a privilege and one that Ben had set out to prove himself worthy of.
Too late. He closed his eyes, drawing in a deep shuddering breath, seeing a stream of images. They hurt but he prized each one. For the past two weeks, since Emily Rose had been infused with his cells, he had seen her every day. He had felt despair and anger as he’d watched her suffer, helpless to do a thing about it. His face-to-face contact was limited to a few short periods when Lily ate or showered; how she coped remained a mystery to him.
She smiled but her eyes held a haunted look that no amount of optimism could disguise. And, in unguarded moments, a sense of helplessness and despair he recognised all too well.
There were times when, to vent his anger or frustration, he wanted to hit something. Instead Ben channelled his energies to more practical things.
A firm believer that knowledge was power, and for once in his life he felt he had precious little of that, Ben read up on the disease so that he had a better understanding of the information the medical staff disclosed.
He set himself achievable goals. Sometimes they seemed pathetically small, like making Emmy laugh twice a day. He was not Daddy—it was much too soon—so he was the funny man. Encouraging her to eat at least two mouthfuls of everything on her meal plate. And making sure that when the time came they wouldn’t find themselves in the same situation as other families—whose discharge had been delayed because they lived outside the area that allowed quick access should an emergency arise—hence his meeting with the estate agent.
When did I start thinking of us as a family?
The solution to the last problem had been simple: buy a suitable house. Today he’d ticked that off his list, but his quiet sense of satisfaction vanished the moment he saw Lily’s tears. He felt the implication like a fist landing with the force of a sledgehammer in his solar plexus. He stood frozen, immobilised by the emotions that broke free inside him.
As she drew back from her mum’s embrace a movement in the periphery
