‘That’s wonderful,’ Minnie’s mum said.
‘It’s our pleasure,’ Dan told her. It was true. It wasn’t great for anyone at the best of times if a child had to visit A&E or be admitted to the paediatric ward, and it seemed even worse over holiday periods, especially if it meant that a family was separated.
Of course, he was separated from his own family pretty much every holiday season, by choice. He wasn’t six years old, though, and since he was that age he’d learned that his father was a total arse.
‘You make a superb leprechaun,’ Zubin told him fifteen minutes later as he peeled the costume off.
‘Thank you.’ Dan bowed. ‘Couldn’t do it without my magical carrot helper.’
Zubin, who’d squeezed himself into a random carrot costume that he’d found in the store cupboard – and that was meant for someone a lot smaller – and followed Dan round with the bag of chocolates, grinned. ‘I’ll take any excuse to wear a pair of orange tights. Time for a quick pint later?’
‘Definitely.’
* * *
Twenty-four hours later, Dan was in a place far removed from the convivial fish-and-chips and beers evening he and Zubin had ended up having last night with another couple of friends at the pub along the road from the hospital.
He closed his eyes and took a deep breath as he felt bile reach his throat and his palms grow clammy.
He needed to rise above this.
Zachy, the boy on the other side of the door Dan had just closed, needed him. Zachy’s family needed him. Dan needed to shove all memories of Max’s accident back in the compartment they normally rested in and focus on the here and now.
God, though.
Zachy was about five years younger than Max had been when he’d had his accident, but the backstory was hideously similar – he’d been rugby tackling his cousin on a pavement and had fallen into the road. His main injury appeared to be a very badly fractured leg, as Max’s had been. And his mother had mentioned several times that he was a talented footballer – training with a top club – as Max had been at Zachy’s age. And there was every chance that his future in football would now be in doubt. Or possibly ended, as Max’s athletics career had been.
God, the memories. The screeching of brakes. The screaming. The terror that Max might be dead. The terror that Max’s brain might have been injured. The terror that Max would never walk again. The realisation that he would walk again but he’d never go back to the exact way he had been physically.
And the knowledge that it was all Dan’s fault and the realisation that their mother couldn’t deal with the fact that one of her sons had maimed the other, so she was going to pretend for the rest of time that it hadn’t happened the way it did.
He took a glance at the clock on the other side of the paediatric emergency waiting area. It was nearly the end of his shift. Hecouldhand Zachy over to someone else and turn round and walk out. Grab a beer with a friend and re-bury those memories.
He shouldn’t, though. He should stay.
He took another big breath and turned the handle of the door.
He pulled a phenomenal effort out of the bag and smiled over at Zachy, lying on the bed against the opposite wall.
‘Right, mate,’ he told him, ‘we’re going to give you something for the pain and then cart you off for an X-ray and get you sorted once we know the exact damage. It hurts now but you’re going to be fine.’
Three hours later, two and a half hours after he should have ended his shift, Dan left the hospital, not confident that Zachy was going to recover fully, but at least confident that he was in good hands, in surgery for his leg. Lisa, the orthopaedic surgeon doing the operation, was going to message Dan later and let him know how things were.
It could have been worse. Zachy could have been more severely injured. ButGod. You went into medicine to try to help people and make them better. And it was shit that sometimes you couldn’t work miracles and you couldn’t do everything you wanted to.
He aimed a vicious kick at an empty can littering the pavement. The can flew into the air and clattered against the railings separating the pavement from the road. He walked over and picked it up and shoved it into the top of an overflowing rubbish bin just along the road.
He was pretty sure that there was some kind of metaphor for his life in there but he was too tired to work out what it was.
Anyway, he needed to stop wallowing, go home, eat something vaguely healthy – now he thought about it, he was starving – and get some sleep.
* * *
Late morning the next day, Dan squeezed in a quick visit to the paediatric inpatient ward to check on Zachy. The operation had been a success and he’d definitely walk again, but he probably wouldn’t be back to football at the same standard ever again, and he might need more surgery. Heartbreaking.
And Dan didn’t have as much time as he’d like to spend with Zachy, because over lunchtime he was meeting Hannah and her mother at a fancy private clinic along the road for Hannah’s anomaly scan.
‘Good afternoon, Dan.’ Hannah’s mother, a slim woman with shoulder-length, very sleek, grey-blonde hair and wearing a pale pink jacket over a black jumper and black trousers, put her hand out. ‘I’m Julia. How do you do?’
