felt as if I was listening to him describe his labour,’ Ethan said, and was rewarded by the sound of her laugh. ‘Hold on a second.’ The microwave was pinging and he pressed Stop on the microwave rather than ending the call, not that he thought about it. ‘Look, thanks a lot for tomorrow. I hope it wasn’t too much trouble.’
‘It was!’ Penny said, which had him frowning but sort of smiling too. ‘Don’t rush back.’
‘I’ll be back by one.’ Ethan really didn’t want to stand around chatting and drinking and talking about Phil in the past tense. He would be glad of the chance to slip away and just bury himself in work.
‘Whose funeral is it?’ Penny asked, and not gently, assuming, because he was fine to dash off from the funeral by one, that it was a patient from work and her mind was sort of scanning the admissions from the previous week as to who it might be, when his voice broke in.
‘My cousin’s.’
Penny closed her eyes, guilty and horrified too, because she’d been so upset tonight she had almost forgotten to ring him. ‘You should have told me that! Ethan, I assumed it was a patient. You should have told me that it was personal.’
‘I was just about to call you and do that,’ Ethan admitted.
‘Is that why you’ve been so …?’ Penny’s voice trailed off.
‘That’s fine, coming from you,’ Ethan said, but it actually came out rather nicely and Penny found herself smiling into the phone as he continued. ‘Yes, it’s been a tough few days.’
‘How old?’
‘My age,’ Ethan said. ‘Thirty-six.’
‘Was it expected?’
‘Sort of,’ Ethan said, and felt that sting at the back of his nose. ‘Sort of not. He was on the waiting list for a heart transplant.’
There was silence for a moment. ‘Was he the one you were going to go to the football with?’ For the first time he heard her sound tentative.
‘Penny …’
‘Oh, God!’ She was a mass of manufactured hormones, not that he knew, and this news came at the end of a very upsetting day. ‘He missed the football match because of me.’
‘It wasn’t something at the top of his bucket list.’ Ethan actually found himself smiling as he recalled the conversation he’d had with Phil when he’d told him that he couldn’t get the time off, the one about the sympathy vote.
And, no, he didn’t fancy Penny, he’d just had a bit too much to drink, he must have, because he was telling her that they’d often gone to watch football. ‘He went anyway—with Justin, his son.’ And he told Penny about the illness that had ravaged his cousin. ‘He got a virus a couple of years ago.’ And he could understand a bit better why the patients liked her, because she was very matter-of-fact and didn’t gush out her sympathies, just asked pertinent questions and then asked how his son and wife were doing.
‘Ex-wife,’ Ethan said, and he found himself musing—only he was doing it out loud and to Penny. ‘They broke up before he got ill, she had an affair and it was all just a mess. It must be hell for her too and she’s coming tomorrow. She’s bringing Justin.’
‘How old is he?’
‘Six,’ Ethan said.
She asked how his aunt and uncle were.
‘Not great,’ he admitted. ‘They’re worried that they won’t get to see Justin so much anymore. It’s just a mess all round.’
And he told Penny the hell of watching someone so vital and full of life gradually getting weaker. How he hated that he had only just made it to the hospital in time. He let out more than he had to Kate, to anyone, and during that conversation Penny found out that it had been his sister who had dropped him off at work, but there was no room for relief or dousing of red-hot pokers, or anything really, as she could hear the heartbreak in his voice.
‘Thirty-six,’ Ethan repeated, and was met by silence. He would never have known that her silence was because of tears. ‘So, while I suppose we were expecting it, it still came as a shock.’ He didn’t really know how better to explain it. ‘And it will be a shock for Justin too.’
‘Poor kid,’ Penny said.
‘Anyway, thanks for swapping.’
He hung up the phone, poured his spaghetti on the toast and then frowned because it was cold. He’d surely only been on the phone for a moment and so back into the microwave it went.
They’d actually been talking for a full twenty minutes.
At five a.m. Penny stood, bleary-eyed, under the shower, trying to wake up. She got out and then dried her hair. At least she didn’t have to worry about make-up yet, given that she would be crying it all off very soon.
And normally the terribly efficient Penny didn’t have to worry about what to wear because her work wardrobe was on a fourteen-day rotation, except it wasn’t so simple at the moment because her arms were bruised from all the blood tests and so her sleeveless grey top wasn’t an option.
Even the simplest thing seemed complicated this morning.
A sheer neutral jumper worked well with her black skirt, except it meant that she had to change her underwear because it showed her black bra, and with all her appointments and tests the usually meticulous Penny’s laundry wasn’t up to date. Racing the clock, she grabbed coral silk underwear that she’d never usually consider wearing for work and then raced downstairs, so rushed and tired that by mistake she added orange juice instead of milk to her coffee and had to make her drink all over again.
Still, Penny thought, she was glad to have been able to help out Ethan, and there was just a flutter of something unfamiliar stirring. Penny hadn’t fancied anyone for ages. Not since she and Vince had spilt up. Well, that wasn’t strictly true—she’d had a slight crush on someone a while ago, but she certainly wasn’t about to go there, even in her thoughts. She drove for what felt like ages until at last, at a quarter to seven, she lay with her knees up, loathing it despite being used to it, as she underwent the internal scan to find out how her ovaries were behaving. And if that wasn’t bad enough, afterwards she headed for her blood test.
‘Morning, Penny!’
They all knew her well.
Penny was determined not to make the scene she had yesterday. She was there willingly after all. But her resolve wavered as she sat on the seat and one of the nurses held her head as she cried while the other strapped down her arm—it was just an exercise in humiliation really.
‘I’m not doing this again,’ Penny said as she felt the needle go into her already-bruised vein.
But she’d said that the last time, yet here she was again, locked in the exhausting world of IVF.
Penny sorted out her make-up in the hospital car park and was, in fact, in the department well before nine.
‘Morning, Penny.’ Mr Dean was especially pleased to see her, because it meant that he could soon go home. ‘I
