anything?’
He shook his head. ‘Are you going to tell me what’s going on? I’m going crazy here.’
She reached over and touched his hand. It didn’t matter how upset she was right now. She’d even pushed aside the conversation she wanted to have with him right now. ‘Callum, do you trust me?’ Drew was the only thing that currently mattered.
His eyes flitted from side to side. Panic. Total panic. He ran his hand through his hair. ‘Yes, of course I do, Jess. Why do you think I brought Drew here and asked to see you? There’s nobody I trust more.’
The horrible reality right now was that she understood. She understood that horrible feeling of parental panic. That out-of-control sensation. She did. More than he would ever know.
She wrapped her other hand over his. ‘Then just give me five minutes. Let me have a look at a chest X-ray for Drew. I promise, I’ll explain everything.’
She saw his shoulders sag a little, saw the worried trust in his eyes.
She was telling herself that she would do this for any parent. That she had done this for any parent. But her conflicting emotions were telling her something else entirely.
The X-ray only took a few minutes and she pushed the film up onto the light box. It took her less than five seconds to confirm her diagnosis.
‘Can you stay with Drew?’ she asked the nurse.
‘What is it?’ The stricken look had reappeared in Callum’s eyes, but she shook her head, pulled the chest X-ray down from the box and gestured with her head for him to follow her.
She opened the door to a nearby office and pushed the film back up on the light box inside. She flicked the switch and turned to face Callum.
‘Drew has a condition called situs inversus.’
‘What? What is that?’
She took a deep breath. ‘It literally means that all his organs are reversed, or mirrored from their normal positions. Everything about Drew’s symptoms today screamed appendicitis. Except for the positioning of the pain. Most people have their appendix on the right side. One of the true indicators of appendicitis is pain in the right iliac fossa.’ She pointed to the position on her own abdomen to show him what she meant. ‘But Drew’s pain is on the other side—because his appendix is on the other side.’
‘What does this mean? Is it dangerous? And how can you tell from a chest X-ray?’
She placed her hand on his shoulder. ‘Slow down, Callum. One thing at a time.’
She pointed to the chest X-ray. ‘Drew’s heart is on the right side of his chest instead of the left. I can see that clearly in the chest X-ray.’ She pointed at the lungs. ‘I can also see that his left lung is tri-lobed and his right lung bilobed. That’s the reverse of most people. This all gets a little complicated. It means that Drew’s condition is known as situs inversus with dextrocardia, or situs inversus totalis.’
She tried to explain things as simply as she could. ‘This is a congenital condition, Callum, it’s just never been picked up. It could be that either you or his mother has this condition. It seems less likely for you as it would have been picked up in a routine chest X-ray.’ She gave her head a little shake. ‘It could be that neither of you has it. It’s a recessive gene and you could both be carriers. Around one in ten thousand people have this condition.’
‘Is it dangerous?’
She bit her bottom lip. ‘It can be. Particularly in cases like this, when things can be misdiagnosed. But Drew’s been lucky. Some people with this condition have congenital heart defects, but as Drew’s been relatively unaffected that seems unlikely. It’s likely if he had a congenital heart defect he would have had other symptoms that meant the condition would have been picked up much sooner. We’ll do some further tests on him later. Right now we need to take him for surgery. His appendix needs to come out. How about we take care of that now, and discuss the rest of this later?’
He was watching her with his deep green eyes. She could see that he’d been holding his breath the whole time she’d been talking. He let it out in a little hiss. ‘Will you do the surgery?’
The ethics of this question were already running through her mind. She had treated the children of friends on a number of occasions. It wasn’t something she particularly liked to do—but in an emergency situation like this, the child’s health came first.
‘I’m the physician on call tonight. So it’s up to me to perform the surgery. Would you like to find someone else to do it? That’s always an option if you feel uncomfortable.’
He was on his feet instantly. ‘No. Absolutely not. I want you to do it. I trust you to do it.’ He looked her straight in the eye. ‘There’s no one else I would trust more.’
Things were still bubbling away inside her. It wasn’t the time or the place, but she still had to say something.
‘This isn’t exactly ideal, Callum. And I’m not entirely comfortable about it. The surgery isn’t a problem. There will be a registrar and an anaesthetist in Theatre with me. I’ll need to go over the risks with you and get you to sign a consent form.’
She hesitated and let out a sigh. ‘I kissed you a few days ago, Callum, so that complicates things for me. Obviously I didn’t know about Drew…’ she held up her hand as he tried to interrupt ‘…because you chose not to tell me. So, because I haven’t met your son before, and don’t have a relationship with him, that makes things a little easier.’
Her hands went to her hair and she automatically started twisting it in her hands, getting ready to clip it up for Theatre. She kept her voice steady. ‘I’ll perform your son’s surgery and look after him for the next few days. I’ll take the time to explain his condition and give you all the information that you need. After that? I have no idea.’
‘Jess, please just let me explain.’
‘No, Callum. Don’t. Don’t make this any more complicated than it already is. I’ve got more than enough to deal with right now.’ She pointed back through the open door towards the curtains, where Drew was still lying on the trolley with a nurse monitoring him. ‘Make yourself useful, go and sit with your son.’ She walked out of the room, muttering under her breath, ‘You don’t know how lucky you are.’
Callum watched her retreating back and took her advice.
The nurse gave him a smile as he appeared back at Drew’s side. ‘You were lucky,’ she said. ‘Our Dr Rae is a fabulous paediatrician. Not everyone would have picked up that diagnosis.’
He gave a little nod. That didn’t even bear thinking about. If he’d taken Drew elsewhere and some other physician had missed this…
It made him feel physically sick to his stomach.
He stroked his hand across Drew’s forehead. His son was a little more settled, the morphine obviously helping to a certain extent. Drew was the most precious thing in the world to him. He couldn’t stand it if something happened to his son.
It was obvious he’d hurt Jessica’s feelings by not telling her about Drew. And he wished he could take that back.
But
