No doubt about it.
Sana put her hands on Jayne’s shoulders, forcing her to meet her eyes.
‘Jayne.’ Sana’s voice was kind—loving, even. ‘You need some time off. What about your parents? They’re out near Oxford somewhere, aren’t they? Surely they’d love a visit from their surgeon daughter?’
Jayne shook herself free of Sana’s hands. Her relationship with her parents had altered irrevocably the day Jules had died. She knew they loved her, but Jules had been one of those rare souls who’d taken people’s breath away for all the right reasons. Beautiful, vivacious, crazy, smart...
Risk-taker. Unsettled. Adrenaline junkie.
All the things Jayne wasn’t.
‘My parents tend to go away in the summer.’
It was Scotland this year. Was it the Outer Hebrides? Somewhere remote, she knew. The fewer cars the better. She had the address in her phone, but the remit was always the same. No cars. Her mother, who’d once shone with a bright passion for life, had been all but literally wrapped in cotton wool ever since the accident.
‘Friends, then?’ Sana persisted. ‘Surely you’ve got someone back in Whitticombe who’d love to see you?’
‘Not really,’ she lied.
Her bestie, Maggie, would put her up in a heartbeat.
As if Sana’s inquisition was wringing the truth out of her, she silently admitted there were two very simple reasons she hated going home.
One: she couldn’t think of Whitticombe without thinking of her sister’s death. A death that never would have happened if she hadn’t asked Jules to come home that day to celebrate her engagement. Which led to reason number two. The only thing more painful than helplessly watching the life slip away from her sister had been handing her engagement ring back to Sam.
Urgh!
Sana’s suggestion was impossible. Six whole weeks of avoiding The Romance That Might Have Been? The Marriage She’d Always Wanted? The Life She Could Have Had?
Impossible.
She’d missed that boat a long time ago—had practically thrown him the oars. Besides, if Maggie’s newsy emails were anything to go by there’d been a whole lot of water under Sam’s bridge over the last few years. A marriage. A divorce. His mother’s death.
And yet here she was, still stuck on That Day...
If she shut her eyes she could see it all in fine detail. It had been sunny. Tourists had been beginning to flood into town to enjoy the iconic sandstone cottages and, of course, the beautiful stone-lined river that lazily wound its way through the heart of the village. It had been early June, as it was now. The usual riot of flowers had been in bloom.
She’d had a shiny new diamond solitaire on her finger.
Jayne had come home from med school to see Sam and he had proposed. Of course she’d said yes. He was the love of her life. Had been since the first perfect kiss they’d shared the day she’d turned sixteen.
Jules had dropped everything and raced home from London. The family’s golden girl. They’d all adored her. As usual, she hadn’t wanted to settle for anything simple like a toast to celebrate. Jayne had suggested they ride their old bicycles down the lane and on to the pub they’d visited when they were in pigtails. Only this time they’d order a glass of fizz instead of the squash they’d used to ask for.
Jules had been pulling out their bicycles as soon as the suggestion was out there.
Their father had thrown them a distracted wave from his easel—another landscape. Their mother had laughed from her sculpting table and, before waving them off, had done what she’d always done—kissed them each on the cheek, then told them to be safe.
Then she’d thrown in an extra warning to Jayne, as though they were still kids rather than grown women, ‘Keep an eye on your sister. You know what she’s like.’
Stop at the end of the lane. Check for traffic a hundred times. Proceed to pub. That was the procedure.
Only this time Jules hadn’t followed it. She’d taken off at high speed and turned it into a race.
Three hours later...after the ambulance had gone and neighbours had flooded the house to make her parents cup after cup of sweet, milky tea... Jayne had slipped the sparkling ring on and off her finger.
A few months later she’d taken it off for good.
She’d changed in those months. No longer had she been the carefree, optimistic girl Sam had asked to marry him. In her place had come someone more steely-eyed, driven, determined to fulfil the dreams her sister never would.
Jules had always been a bit mad. Her interests wide and varied. But the one thing—the only thing—that had captured Jules’ high-octane energy had been her desire to perform a paediatric heart transplant.
As the days and then months of grief had built and festered after her death, Jayne had felt every bit as helpless as she had performing CPR on her sister, waiting for help to arrive. Her failure to overcome her sister’s catastrophic injuries had set something alight in her that had steered her away from the life she’d planned. A fierce, intense need to make amends for causing her sister’s death. To live the life her sister wouldn’t. Perform the surgeries her sister wouldn’t. Save the lives her sister wouldn’t.
She had done that today. Fulfilled her dream. It was meant to have drawn a line in the sand. Loosened the reins on the strict, driven intensity with which she had pursued this goal. Instead it had only proved what she had feared all along—that she hadn’t moved on at all.
‘Dr Sinclair.’ Sana’s voice forced her back into the operating theatre. ‘If you don’t take care of this...’ she pointed at Jayne’s heart ‘...you aren’t going to be able to look after your patients with this.’ She pointed at Jayne’s head.
Jayne shifted from one hip to the other, then pretended her phone had buzzed.
‘Dr Sinclair at your service!’ Jayne gave Sana a cheeky wink and mouthed Sorry, pointing at the phone. ‘Yes! Absolutely. No. No... Nothing on my schedule. I have all the time in the world.’
Sana rolled her eyes.
A code red sounded. Their eyes clashed. They both knew whose room it belonged to. They both knew exactly what it meant.
* * *
Three days later, when Jayne heard her own hollow voice call the time of death at the end of Stella’s bed, she looked straight into Sana’s eyes. She saw everything she needed to know.
It was time to go home.
Sana was right. She had to heal her heart before she could care for any more patients. They deserved her absolute focus, and Stella’s death had thrown her right back to the starting line of a race she’d thought she’d finally finished.
Trying to outrun her past was impossible. She almost laughed as she thought of the advice she regularly
