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?
