‘Jasmine. Your husband’s mum is ill, possibly seriously. How can you not go with him? You know how people had to just drop everything when Mum was sick.’
‘You’re mid-treatment and I promised you—’
‘You made a bigger promise to your husband when you married him.’ Penny was incredibly firm. ‘I will be fine.’ Jasmine gave her a very disbelieving look. After all, she was the one who gave Penny her injections and knew just how bad she was. ‘I will be,’ Penny insisted.
‘You’ll stop the treatment,’ Jasmine said.
‘I won’t. I’ll ring the clinic now and make an appointment or I’ll go to my GP. Jasmine, you know that you have to go with Jed.’
She did.
There really wasn’t a choice.
But what Penny didn’t tell her was that there was little chance of her getting to the clinic by six and even if she did, tomorrow she was on midday till nine.
‘Are you okay?’ Ethan frowned as she joined him at the nurses’ station.
‘I just had some bad news,’ Penny said. ‘Jed’s mother has had a stroke.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that.’ He saw tears starting to fill her very blue eyes and her nose starting to go red. ‘Are you close?’
‘No.’ Penny shook her head. ‘They live in Sydney, Jasmine is on her way there now.’
‘I meant close,’ Ethan said, as Penny seemed a little dazed, ‘as in are you close to her?’
‘Not really. I just met her once at the wedding.’ Penny blinked. ‘She seemed pretty nice, though. Ethan …’ Penny took a deep breath ‘… could I ask …?’ No, she couldn’t ask him to cover for her now, because even if he said yes to tonight, what about tomorrow and the next day? ‘It doesn’t matter.’
She went to walk off to her office and Ethan sat there frowning. Really, all he did was frown any time he spoke to Penny. She really was the most confusing woman he had ever met.
Cold one minute and then incredibly empathetic the next.
Ethan looked up and qualified his thought.
Make that empathetic one minute and a soon-to-be blubbering mess the next. Her face had gone bright red and she had stopped in the corridor by a sink and was pulling paper towels out of the dispenser, and her shoulders were heaving.
He didn’t know very much about Penny, she’d made sure of that, but from the little that he did know, Ethan was quite sure she would hate any of the staff seeing her like that. She was trying to dash off, but Lisa was calling out to her and he watched as the trauma registrar came into the department and caught a glimpse of her and, patient notes in hand, went to waylay her. Ethan stepped in.
‘I need a quick word with you, please, Penny.’ He took her by the elbow and sped her through the department into one of the patient interview rooms, and the second they were inside Penny broke down.
‘PLEASE, GO, ETHAN.’
He just stood there.
‘Ethan, please, just go.’
‘I’m really sorry about your sister’s mother-in-law.’ He saw her forehead crinkle and then intermingled with sobs she let out a strange gurgle of laughter.
‘It’s not that.’
‘Oh.’
‘I’m not that nice.’
Ethan stood there awkwardly, not knowing what to do. He could handle tears from patients and their relatives but this felt more personal than that. She had a handful of paper towels so he couldn’t even offer her a tissue.
Then she blurted it out.
‘I’m having IVF.’
And any fledgling thoughts that possibly he might rather like Penny in that way were instantly doused. Still, at least, in this, he did know what to do. My God, he did, because he wrapped his arms around her and gave her a cuddle. As he did so he was filled with a sense of déjà vu, because his twin sister had been through it so many times and had taught him what to do. Often Kate had wept on him, on anyone who happened to be passing really.
Except there was no feeling of déjà vu when he actually held Penny in his arms. She was incredibly slim and, he was quite sure from her little wriggle to escape, that she wasn’t someone who particularly liked to be held. ‘It must be horrible,’ Ethan said, because Kate had told him that that was a good thing to say when he’d messed up a few times and said the completely wrong thing.
‘I’m a mess,’ Penny mumbled.
‘You’re not a mess,’ Ethan said. ‘It’s just that your hormones are crazy at the moment.’ He would ring Kate tonight and thank her, Ethan thought as he felt Penny relax in his arms. Then he ventured off the given script. ‘So that’s what’s been going on?’
She nodded into his chest and Ethan realised then that her on IVF was the only Penny he had ever known. ‘It’s my second go. That’s why I was away when you started here. I should have taken time off this time.’
He realised now why she’d been so inflexible with the roster on other occasions, all the appointments she would have been juggling would have made it impossible to change—and yet yesterday, at short notice, she had. ‘Why didn’t you just say?’
‘I didn’t want anyone to know. But now I’m just being a bitch to everyone.’
‘You’re not.’
‘Everyone’s saying it.’
‘No,’ Ethan lied, ‘you just come across as a bit tough.’ He gave in then. ‘I bet you’re normally a really nice person.’ He held his breath, worried that he had said the wrong thing, but he felt her laugh a little. ‘I bet you’re a sweet, warm, lovely thing really.’
‘No,’ Penny said. ‘I am a bitch, but you’ve just met the exacerbated version.’ And then she started to cry again. ‘You missed going to the football with your cousin because of me. I’m a horribly selfish person.’
‘Penny, stop it.’
Except she couldn’t stop crying, just wished she could take back that day and he could have had that time with his cousin.
‘Phil and I often went to football, it really wasn’t a big deal, and remember Phil got to spend precious time with Justin that day.’
Finally she felt herself calming, embarrassed now at being held, and she pulled away.
‘You need to go home,’ Ethan said. ‘Were you at the clinic this morning?’
Penny
