think she’s a little more than that to you…or a lot. Isn’t she?” he pressed.
The boy turned towards the window. “I think I’ll go find her.”
“This is for her sake, Toby. I need to know.”
Toby didn’t turn back, but the way he rubbed his neck told the doctor he’d rather have him stick pins in him than answer these questions. “We’ve been friends for five years, since Charlie took me home to meet the family. She was only eleven. She was like one of my little sisters to me. I moved in with the family a year later.” He didn’t elaborate why, and Dr Evans realised Toby was as secretive as Lia.
“When did it change for you?” the doctor asked, gentle but remorseless.
A long silence followed. Then, slowly, he said, “When she came here. When she collapsed. I knew then.”
“Knew?”
He frowned fiercely out of the window, as if something there offended him. “I’m going to marry her.”
Five blunt words, but from the mouth of this boy, so young and yet so old beyond his years, they didn’t seem romantic, melodramatic or ridiculous. It was a vow made all the stronger for the unemotional way he’d said it.
And that only made the doctor’s task harder now. “You can’t tell her.”
Toby wheeled round. The doctor shrank from the unaccustomed ferocity in the boy’s face. “Why not?”
And the doctor knew he’d chosen the right time. Toby had been about to show Lia the feelings he’d been bottling up for months during her recovery.
“Because you’re her ‘it’ person. She needs your friendship to live.”
“She’ll always have it.”
The doctor refused to step back this time, even when he saw Toby’s massive fists clench—even as he imagined the rookie fireman breaking down burning walls and doors with a single punch. “Will she?”
“Yes.” No protests, no outburst of teenage anger or indignation, and again his simplicity made him all the more believable.
“She can’t be expected to make a decision of this calibre now, Toby. She’s lost so much this year. That she’s recovered to this point is a miracle in itself, and a testament to her inner strength and your devotion.” Aching with pity, he forced himself to go on. “For the sake of her future health, you must take your cues from her. If she ever tells you she wants more than friendship, I’ll be happy for you both.”
“And if she doesn’t?”
The rough pain in Toby’s voice made the doctor’s ache even stronger. “Then you can’t, either.” He sighed, turning away; it hurt to look at him. “She needs you in a way I’ve never seen an anorexic patient need a single person before. Though everyone loves her, and she gives to everyone, you’re the only one who knows her heart and soul. She trusts you to be there. If you ever withdrew the friendship, or broke her trust—”
“It won’t happen.”
“What if she doesn’t feel the same way?” he asked quietly. “Will she still have your unswerving devotion when she brings home a boyfriend, a lover? Will you still give her everything she needs when she’s sleeping with another man?”
For as long as he lived, Dr Evans would never forget the look on Toby Winder’s face at that moment. Just the thought of Lia with another man turned this bronzed young giant pale and shaking, his eyes blank with devastation.
“She’ll still have it,” was all he said.
Many times in the past five months, the doctor had wished he’d known love the way this boy did. Now he was glad his heart was a little shallower.
“She’s almost better now, but former anorexics need their trusted support systems through the greatest stresses in life—moving, death, weddings. Childbirth,” he pressed. “If she married another man, but still needed your friendship, can you say with absolute certainty that you could devote yourself to her? Losing your friendship could send her back into anorexic behaviour patterns. The danger will always be there. Like alcoholics, they never completely recover. It’s a stress release she’ll always be tempted to return to. Intense stress, fear, loss or shock will lead to vomiting—and she’ll remember the comfort of losing weight. It’s a sense of control for her when the world spins out of control.”
“I know all that,” Toby said, his voice tight.
Hating this, Dr Evans added the final words to convince him. “Even thinking she could lose your friendship might send her back here. Next time, it could kill her.”
Toby’s face whitened even more and his eyes darkened, but he didn’t speak, didn’t move. After a long wait, a single nod was all he gave in answer— but every line of the boy’s body, the perspiration on his neck and forehead, told the doctor how very close to the edge he was.
Moved with pity, he reached out to touch his shoulder again, but Toby moved to the door. “She’s coming.”
He was out before the doctor could say another word.
The doctor moved to the window where Toby had been standing, and opened it.
The tall, slender girl, almost recovered now, was dressed in the anorexic ‘uniform’ of concealing trousers and a windcheater. She wandered the flowered paths, head down, with the listless, puppet-like attitude she always displayed until…
Toby walked towards Lia across the sunlit grass in the pretty, hilly gardens of the centre. When he came close, he spoke her name.
She looked up; her eyes lit. A smile was born, and filled her face until she was radiant. Her tumbled dark curls glistened in the sunlight. All the ethereal beauty lost inside her withdrawn nature when he wasn’t near her came to life. She came to life.
The doctor shook his head in wonder. He wasn’t an emotional man, but whenever he saw these two he thought of Juliet with Romeo, Isolde with Tristan.
Toby opened his arms and Lia ran into them.
A lump filled Dr Evans’ throat. The joy on the boy’s face as he held her, the serenity and completion on hers, almost convinced him he was doing the wrong thing. Could he throw out the rule book on love the way Toby had with healing her? Could he let them just be? Because the incandescence of this boy and girl when they were together was something he’d never seen before, and probably never would again.
But what if he was right? What if?
Despite her secretive nature, Lia had given some sweet memory, some piece of tender wisdom, to every person at the centre, staff or patient. She was one of those people everyone loved. From the first day Dr Evans had met Lia, every instinct had screamed at him that this girl had to live…and Toby Winder had made her want to live. He had to be there to catch her when she fell.
No, he couldn’t risk Lia’s life because a boy was in love now.
Yes, he’d done the right thing. But the doctor knew that he’d continue to question the wisdom of his decision until the day he died.
CHAPTER
