as they could. Finally, Anouk had a chance to update the girl’s mum, but it was still only the sister, who couldn’t have been more than ten or eleven herself, who was waiting outside the bay. Anouk remembered how Isobel had asked for Katie, and not her mum.
‘Katie, isn’t it?’ Anouk asked softly, going over to the worried little girl and sitting on the plastic seat next to her.
The girl nodded.
‘Mum isn’t here yet?’
‘No.’ Katie shook her head before fixing Anouk with a direct gaze, her voice holding a level of maturity that set warning bells off in Anouk’s head. ‘But you can talk to me. I’m eleven and I can answer any questions you need me to about my sister. I’m responsible for her.’
An image of Sol and Katie exchanging a concerned look crossed her mind.
Was the girls’ mum at work? Uninterested? She knew those feelings all too well. Still, she had her own protocol to follow now.
‘I understand that, and you seem like a very good sister,’ Anouk confirmed, standing back up. ‘But I think it’s better if I talk to your mum when she gets here.’
‘No, wait.’ Katie stood up quickly, glancing at her and then across to the team.
It took a moment for Anouk to realise that she wasn’t looking at her sister so much as looking at Sol.
‘You know each other?’
‘I need to speak to him.’ Katie nodded.
‘He’s just looking after your sister right now.’
‘I know, he’s a neurosurgeon.’ The young girl clucked her tongue impatiently as though she thought Anouk was treating her like a baby. ‘And you’re probably going to be taking Izzy to scan her head and see if there is any damage from her fall.’
Anouk tried not to show her surprise.
‘We will be.’
‘Well, when he is free, Sol will come and talk to me,’ Katie said confidently, but Anouk didn’t miss the fear that flashed briefly in the girl’s eyes.
As if sensing the moment, Sol lifted his head and looked straight at them. Then, with a quick word to one of the senior nurses in the team, he made his way over.
‘You doing okay, Katie?’
Quiet, professional, compassionate. It had been one thing to see Sol working from across a ward, to know of his reputation as a good doctor, a good neurosurgeon, but it was another actually to witness it first-hand.
Her mother had always ranted about the beauty of a brilliant actor playing a different role from the one the world was used to them adopting. That moment when the audience suddenly realised that it had forgotten who the actor was and got lost in the character.
Watching Sol at work made it almost impossible to remember his reputation as a womaniser.
And it certainly wasn’t helping to smother her inconvenient crush on him.
‘The doctor won’t tell me anything,’ Katie replied flatly.
‘I’d rather explain to Mum.’ Anouk bit back her irritation as Katie and Sol exchanged a glance, hating the feeling that she was missing a vital piece of information.
‘Bad day?’ he asked Katie simply.
She bit her lip. ‘She can’t even get up today. But she was resting so I thought Izzy and I could have an hour at the park before we went back and started our chores. There’s no way she will be able to get here on her own.’
‘I’m on call so I can’t leave.’ He rubbed his face thoughtfully. ‘But I could call Malachi. He can help if she’d be happy about that?’
‘Yes.’ Katie’s relief was evident. ‘Please call him. I’ll text Mum.’
Shifting her weight from one foot to the other, Anouk tried to control her heart, which had decided to pick up its pace as she listened to the conversation. It was aggravating feeling as though she wasn’t entirely following, but the tone of it seemed all too painfully familiar. Or was she just reading too much into it?
Still, she had nowhere else to be for the moment; a nurse was with Isobel and they were waiting on a few results before they could move her to CT.
‘In the meantime,’ Sol’s voice dragged her back to the moment, ‘let me try to explain to Dr Anouk here why she can speak to you.’
Katie narrowed her eyes uncertainly.
‘You’re going to have to trust her,’ Sol cajoled. ‘I do.’
They were just words to ease the concerns of a kid, Anouk knew that, and yet she was helpless to stop a burst of...something from going off inside her chest.
‘The more I understand, Katie, the more I can help.’ She fixed her gaze on the young girl, whose penetrating stare was unsettling.
‘Okay,’ Katie conceded at last, before turning back to Sol. ‘But you’ll call Malachi?’
‘Right now,’ Sol confirmed.
For a moment it looked as though her face was about to crumple, the pressure of the decisions clearly getting to her. But then she pulled herself together, sinking down onto her chair and fishing out a mobile phone to begin texting. As if there wasn’t time for self-indulgent emotions.
As if she was a lot older than her years with far too much adult responsibility.
Anouk fought back the wave of grief that swelled inside her. All too familiar. All too unwelcome. Coming out of nowhere.
‘Anouk.’
She snapped her head up to find that Sol was beckoning her, his eyes on Katie to ensure she was preoccupied as he moved across the room.
Wordlessly, Anouk followed, letting him lead her around the curtain and into the central area, keeping his voice low.
‘Katie and Isobel are young carers. They look after their mum, who suffers from multiple sclerosis. Some days are good, some not so good. Today, unfortunately, is a bad day, which means Michelle can’t even get out of bed without their help.’
‘I see.’ Anouk breathed in as deeply and as unobtrusively as she could and tried to fight back the sense of nausea that rushed her. Her own situation had been vastly different from the girls’, but the similarities were there. ‘Dad?’
‘Died in an RTA two years ago. He’d just popped out to get cough mixture.’
She exhaled sharply, the injustice of it scraping at her.
‘Who’s Malachi?’
‘My brother. He’ll go round and help Michelle. See if there’s anything he can do to get her here. Otherwise you keep me informed throughout and we’ll agree as much as we can tell Katie. She’s mature, but she’s still only eleven and she has enough to deal
