Euan
Her fingers lingered over the keyboard, heart thudding. Finally, she typed:
I like you...but I've been burnt before. Can we take it slow?
The three dots appeared almost at once.
We'll take it as slow as you want, lass.
She exhaled, shoulders easing, the tension she hadn't realized she was holding in loosening a fraction. Maybe, just maybe, this wasn't another trap; maybe it was something she could step into at her own pace.
The hospice was nothing like Sage had expected. She had imagined shadowed corridors and the smell of antiseptic. Horace walked beside her down the bright corridor, his stride unhurried, his hands folded behind his back.
"We like to keep things cheerful here," he said, nodding towards a volunteer arranging flowers in a vase at the reception desk. "No one needs more cold in their lives—not the patients, and certainly not the families."
He pointed out the dayroom, where a pair of women were playing cards with a man in a wheelchair. "That's Elsie and Joan—volunteers, both of them. They are retired nurses. They'll tell you the trick isn't what you do, it's how you listen."
Sage smiled faintly, tucking her hands into her sleeves.
Horace caught the gesture. "Don't feel you have to be a nurse, Sage. We've got a team of palliative specialists for that. What we need from you is time. You'd be surprised how much that matters."
He slowed as they passed another doorway, lowering his voice. "You'll find most of our volunteers are retired—teachers, social workers, even a postman who spent forty years on the same route. They've learned patience the long way. And they'll tell you the same thing I will: everyone here matters. Staff, patients, families, volunteers, you included. We are like a family here. It is hard on everyone when the person you spoke to the day before is gone when you clock in the next day."
Sage felt the knot in her chest ease slightly.
Horace gave her a warm smile. "The whole secret is in the small details. Learn their names. See them as people, not their diagnosis. You'll be just fine."
Sage was younger than most of them, and in the beginning, she felt like an interloper, clumsy and uncertain. But the palliative nurses were kind, guiding her gently, "You don't need to fix anything, just be there and listen."
Callie was one of the first Sage was asked to sit with. She was only in her early fifties, not much older than Sage, with a wry sense of humour and sharp, dark eyes. Breast cancer had ravaged her body, leaving her fragile and wasted, but her mind and spirit were still luminous. The cancer had spread—widespread metastases, the nurses had said—and her pain was managed with a cocktail of medication that left her drowsy, drifting.
At first, Sage didn't know what to do with her hands. She offered tea and adjusted pillows. Then, she sat awkwardly by thebed. But Callie caught her fumbling and said, in a voice as dry as autumn leaves, "I don't need another nurse. But it would be nice to have someone who doesn't look at me like I'm already gone."
So, Sage tried to still her nervous hands and began to simply listen. Callie talked about her garden, the roses she'd left untended, the way her son still came down from university every Sunday like clockwork. He brought her hummus because she still had an appetite...well, a memory, if not an appetite for it. Some days she wanted to talk about pain, the fear of leaving such a young son and the unfairness of it all. Other days, she wanted silence, just the soft background of another human breathing beside her.
One afternoon, Callie asked if Sage would read to her. "Something trashy," she said with a half-smile. "None of that spiritual stuff they think we want at the end."
Sage found her Kindle, and gave her a list of options. She came up withFrayed Imagesby S T Moors, to which Callie agreed to let go of the trashy and proceed with the angst. Sage read aloud until Callie drifted into sleep, her hand slack but still warmed by Sage's own.
Walking out of the room, Sage realised that she wasn't thinking about her own pain. She was thinking about Callie's roses, and her son, and how small a thing it was to give another person your time and how much it returned to her.
Chapter 36
The front door clicked shut just as Sage heard the pounding of footsteps on the stairs. David brushed past her in a blur, his face pale, and slammed his bedroom door so hard the frame rattled.
She froze, her heart thudding. "David?" She had been coming down the stairs and changed direction and went back up. She hesitated before knocking. "Sweetheart, is everything alright?"
No answer.
"David, open the door right this instant."
The bell rang. Ronin was supposed to come, and they were planning to go to David's football match together. She hurried to let him in, still distracted, and he had barely stepped inside when David's door opened again.
David stood there, red-faced, his hands jammed deep in his hoodie pocket. "Mum," he blurted, his voice a little shaken, and he wouldn't meet their eyes. "Amanda has been showing up at school."
Sage's blood went cold.
David swallowed hard. "She's been showing up after school. At first, she was just sad. She wanted to know where Dad had moved to, and I just shrugged her off. I didn't want to—" He broke off, eyes darting between them, guilty. "I should have said something sooner. I just didn't want to worry you guys."
