make sure that ‘friends’ is all it is.
It will be. Anyway, she’s not my type.
She couldn’t be much more than five feet three inches, whereas the girls he’d dated had always been nearer five-ten. Her hair was mouse brown and cut into a short bob, not blonde and falling almost to her waist. Her eyes were warm and brown, not cool and blue. And beneath the baggy long-sleeved sweater and loose jersey trousers she wore, he had a feeling that Zoe Kennedy was all lush curves rather than the rail-thin type he usually went for. A pocket Venus.
Yeah, definitely Venus. She had a heart-shaped face. Cupid’s-bow lips.
And she’s not Lara, the voice in his head reminded him. If you rush straight in to find Lara’s opposite, you’re not the only one who’s going to get hurt.
‘Mr Hutton?’
Then he realised that the object of his thoughts was talking to him. ‘Sorry, Dr Kennedy—Zoe, isn’t it?’
She nodded.
He held out his hand. ‘Brad. I prefer working on first-name terms.’
She shook his hand and he almost flinched as a large dose of static electricity discharged. At least, he assumed it was static electricity. The alternative was something he didn’t want to consider right now.
‘What can I do for you?’
‘I’d like a second opinion on a case.’
‘Sure. Though from what I’ve seen of you this morning, you don’t need it.’
‘Um. Thanks for the compliment. But…’
Those pink spots in her cheeks were cute. She looked young for a registrar, which meant she was clever. But the blush at his compliment proved she’d kept at least a trace of humility, so she’d treat her patients as human beings, not just academic cases. ‘OK. What have you got?’
‘Michael Phillips, aged twelve months. According to the notes, he was a floppy baby. He’s had problems feeding right from the start, with poor sucking and chronic constipation; he smiled late and didn’t roll over until he was eight months old. He’s just starting to crawl now, but it’s commando-crawling—’ in other words, he lay on his stomach and propelled himself along with his arms, like a commando under a net ‘—and if you hold him up to stand, his reflexes aren’t what you’d expect.’
‘And you’re thinking?’ Brad prompted.
‘Cerebral palsy. Probably a mixture of spastic and athetoid.’
That would account for the late development. ‘What do the parents think?’
‘The mum’s worried sick because he’s not hitting the milestones in her parenting books. The dad’s in denial and saying everyone’s making a fuss over nothing, his son is perfectly all right and will catch up by the time he goes to school.’
‘OK. I’ll come over.’
Zoe introduced him to Jenny and Dave Phillips. Brad examined little Michael. ‘Tell me, does he have any problems eating?’ he asked.
‘Of course he does. He’s a baby,’ Dave said. ‘They all dribble their food, don’t they?’
‘Michael doesn’t like finger food,’ Jenny said. ‘He likes yoghurt and he’ll eat purées, but he’s not keen on lumps.’
‘He’ll grow out of it,’ Dave insisted. ‘You’re making a fuss, Jen. He’s perfectly all right.’
She shook her head. ‘There’s something wrong, Dave. I know it.’
‘Tell her, Doc,’ Dave pleaded. ‘Tell her she’s fussing over nothing.’
‘Actually,’ Brad said, ‘I think she’s right.’
Panic flowed in Dave Phillips’s eyes. ‘What’s wrong with him, then?’
‘We’re pretty sure it’s cerebral palsy,’ Brad said.
‘But—Are you telling me my son’s…?’ Dave trailed off, as if not voicing his fears would mean that it wasn’t true. That it was only a bad dream. That everything was going to be all right.
Zoe squeezed his hand. ‘You’re both right, actually. Michael will be fine—but he’ll need some help as he grows older.’
‘But…cerebral palsy? He doesn’t even look like a retard! He’s bright, he points to things,’ Dave burst out. ‘It can’t be that!’
‘Cerebral palsy’s a motor disorder,’ Brad explained. ‘It’s Michael’s movements that are affected, not his intellect.’
‘A lot of children with cerebral palsy have normal or above average intelligence. There’s every chance Michael will be able to go to a mainstream school rather than a special school,’ Zoe added. ‘The condition really varies—it can be very severe, but it can also be so mild that you hardly notice.’
Dave didn’t look convinced. ‘So what is cerebral palsy, then?’
‘There are three types,’ Brad said, ‘and they all jumble the messages from the brain to the muscles. The most common form is called spastic cerebral palsy, and it’s caused by an impairment in the cerebral cortex—that’s the outer layer—of the brain.’
‘Spastic?’ Dave squeezed his eyes tightly shut. ‘Oh, no. At school, we used to say…’ He stopped, his face bright red with what Brad guessed was a mixture of shame and embarrassment.
Zoe must have guessed it, too, because she stepped in fast. ‘The word “spastic” just means “stiff”. It’s referring to his muscles—they get stiff and shorten, so the child finds it hard to control his movements. It means he has to work harder than the average kid to walk or move.’
‘The second sort’s called athetoid cerebral palsy, and it’s caused by an impairment in the basal ganglia area of the brain,’ Brad said. ‘It affects the child’s posture and, because the muscles change from being floppy to being stiff, it causes these jerky movements and the child doesn’t have any control over them. A child with athetoid CP often has speech problems because it’s hard for him to control his tongue, vocal cords and breathing. He might also have problems eating and may drool. And he’ll seem restless, as if he’s constantly moving—as if he’s only really relaxed when he’s asleep.
‘The third type,’ he continued, ‘is really rare and affects less than ten per cent of children with CP—it’s called ataxic cerebral palsy, and it’s caused by an impairment in the cerebellum part of the brain. This affects the child’s co-ordination and balance. He often has shaky hand movements and his speech is irregular, and he’ll find it hard to judge the position of things round him.’
‘Which type has Michael got?’ Jenny asked.
‘It’s very hard for us to say,’ Brad admitted. ‘The condition affects each child individually and he might have more than one type, in varying degrees.’
‘So he’s
