my exams looming. My parents live too far out for me to get to the hospital when I’m on call so I guess I’m going to have to find a motel.’
Tom didn’t like her chances. ‘You’ll be lucky to find a place if every house is as badly affected as yours.’
‘Are you trying to cheer me up?’
He could imagine the mess she was sitting amidst and his heart went out to her. Before he’d thought it through he heard himself saying, ‘Go pack up your textbooks and computer, throw some clothes in a bag and come back to my place.’
What the hell have you just done? You live alone. You’ve always lived alone. More than ever you need to live alone.
I can’t just leave her here and it will only be a few days. I can handle a few days.
Her hand touched his cheek and then her lips pressed hard against his mouth. ‘Thank you. I’m so glad you’re here bossing me around because I’m not sure I would have known where to start.’
‘Bossing people around is what I do best.’ He dug deep and managed to muster up a smile to cover how useless he felt and how he hated it that he couldn’t do more. Once he would have been on the roof, lashing down the tarpaulins, or wielding a broom and sweeping out the mud and muck left by flood waters or removing sodden plaster. Now all he could offer in the way of help was phone calls and letting her stay for a bit. It was a poor man’s offer and it didn’t feel like he was contributing at all.
Finn Kennedy gripped the silver arm of the pool ladder with his left hand as every muscle in his body frantically tried to absorb the lactic acid his obsessively long swim had just generated. He’d started swimming soon after the hail storm, ploughing up and down the Olympic pool, willing his neck pain away. Or at least giving the muscles in his neck some rest by supporting them in warm water. He’d rather swim for an hour than wear the damn cervical collar Rupert Davidson forced on him. It was bad enough that the staff at The Harbour were whispering about him and giving him furtive glances. He sure as hell wasn’t giving them an obvious target like a soft collar so they felt they could ask him questions.
Pressing his foot into the foothold, he swung up and stepped onto the pool deck, the air feeling chilly after the heat of the water. He scooped up his towel and hurried to the locker room. He reached the door just ahead of Sam Bailey, The Harbour’s cardiac surgeon, who raised his hand with a smile. Avoiding eye contact, Finn gave a brisk nod of acknowledgment before heading straight to the showers. He cranked up the hot tap until the temperature was just shy of burning and let the heat sink into his skin and the constantly stressed muscles below. After doing his neck exercises under the heat of the shower, the skill lay in getting dry and dressed fast so his clothes could trap the heat for as long as possible. It was almost as good as the anti-inflammatories and he used it once a day to stretch out one time period between the pills.
With his towel looped low on his hips, he quickly grabbed hold of the combination lock, spun the black dial three times and then pulled down hard to open the lock so he could retrieve his clothes. The silver U stayed locked. ‘Blast.’ His fingers felt thick and uncoordinated. He tried again, but still the lock stayed firm. He slammed his hand hard against the unyielding door and the crash resonated in the cavernous room.
‘These locks can be bastards,’ Sam said quietly, having appeared at the locker next to his. He spun his own lock slowly and methodically. ‘If you don’t hit the exact spot, they won’t open.’
‘You don’t say,’ Finn ground out as he tried again, feeling the sideways glance of his colleague along with the fast-fading power of the heat from the shower. Beads of sweat formed on his forehead and one trickled down into his eye. Hell, he was a surgeon. He could sew the finest and smallest stitches so that his patient was left virtually scar-free. He sure as hell could open a bloody lock.
A registrar rescued you when you couldn’t tie off that bleeder.
That was once. It hasn’t happened again.
It’s happening now.
His fingers on his right hand were doing exactly what they’d done during that operation and he couldn’t control their gross movements let alone make them execute a fine task. He brought his left hand up to the lock, and in what seemed like slow motion he finally got it to open.
Sam slammed his locker shut. ‘Will I see you in the gym?’
Finn shook his head. ‘I’m done.’
‘Catch you later, then.’
Finn didn’t reply. With a pounding heart he pulled his clothes on, wrapped a scarf around his neck and with legs that felt weak he sank onto the wooden bench between the lockers, dropping his head in his hands.
You can’t even open a blasted lock.
He rubbed his arm and swore at the offending fingers. He couldn’t deny it was happening more often—this loss of sensation that had him dropping things. Hell, he’d already had some time off and rested exactly as Rupert had suggested. He hated following instructions, but he’d done everything the neurosurgeon had suggested. On his return to work he’d cut back his surgery hours so he wasn’t standing for long periods. He’d taken up swimming, he’d even tried Pilates, which galled him, and none of it was working. He was still swallowing analgesia tablets like they were lollies and he refused to think about his Scotch intake.
He ran his left hand over the back of his neck, locating the offending area between cervical vertebrae five and six. Wasn’t it enough that the bomb had killed Isaac, stealing his only brother from him? Apparently not. Its remnants now lingered with him way beyond the pain of grief. The blast that had knocked him sideways, rendering him unconscious, had jarred his neck so badly that the soft nucleus of the cushioning disc now bulged outwards, putting pressure on the spinal cord. That something so small could cause so much chaos was beyond ironic. It was sadistic and it threatened to steal from him the one thing that kept him getting up in the mornings. His reason for living. The one true thing that defined him.
Surgery.
So far he’d been lucky. So far he’d been able to survive without mishap the few times his weak arm and numb fingers had caused him to stumble in surgery. So far his patients hadn’t suffered at his unreliable hand and they wouldn’t because he now made sure he only operated with a registrar present.
His gut sent up a fire river of acid and his chest constricted as the horrifying thought he’d long tried to keep at bay voiced itself in his head.
How long can you really keep operating?
HAYLEY was exhausted, but at least she was now warm. It always amazed her how therapeutic a hot shower could be. She’d finally got back to Tom’s place at eight p.m., after the SES guys had boarded up her windows and lashed a tarpaulin over her roof. She still couldn’t believe that ten minutes of freaky weather could wreak so much havoc. She smiled and hugged herself whenever she thought of how Tom had quietly and methodically organised things, including helping her neighbour, a single mother with a young baby. Thea had rushed in crying and he’d calmed her down, asked Hayley to make tea for everyone and had then made phone calls for her as well.
Hayley knew that if she’d been on her own she would have made herself cope with everything, but having Tom deal with the SES and the
