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Her mother watched everything with wide eyes before finally starting to talk rapidly, gesturing towards Joe.
Joe’s eyes were taking everything in. He still hadn’t asked her any questions. He’d just come in and tried to assist. She watched as his gaze settled on a photograph in the corner. It was her. Dressed in her cap and gown when she’d graduated from university.
She saw him stiffen, the jigsaw pieces falling into place in his mind. He turned towards her, his mouth slightly open and his eyes wide. ‘Are these your parents, Lien?’ he whispered.
She automatically bristled becoming defensive. ‘Yes, this is my mother and father.’
He reached into his bag and pulled out a tympanic thermometer. He held it up. ‘Will you let your father know what I’m going to do?’
Tears pooled at the sides of her eyes. She had been so busy with the hospital the last few days she hadn’t had time to see her parents. When her mother had phoned in a panic to say her father was unwell she’d just run from the hospital. She knelt beside her father’s fragile body on the lumpy sofa and spoke quietly to him, before nodding to Joe to put the thermometer in his ear. It beeped a few seconds later and Joe turned to let her see the reading.
As suspected, her father’s temperature was high. She’d already heard the crackling and wheezing in his lungs. The pulse oximeter showed his saturation level was low. Joe turned the oxygen tank on, and gently placed a filtered mask over her father’s face.
‘How soon can we get him to the hospital?’ he asked.
She smiled tightly, mirroring the feeling in her chest. ‘He won’t go.’ She let out a sharp laugh. ‘He hates hospitals. He always refuses to come. I treat him at home for just about everything.’
She gestured to Joe’s bag. ‘I’d probably have had to go back to the hospital to collect some supplies.’ She took a breath. ‘Thank you for bringing them.’
Joe gave a nod. He pulled out some paperwork. ‘Well, I guess you shouldn’t really be prescribing anything for your father, so let me write the prescriptions.’ He automatically started charting things on the paperwork. She watched the chamber on the IV drip, drip, drip the antibiotics into her father’s vein, praying that this medicine would make a difference to him.
He was dangerously stubborn—always had been. He meant it when he said he didn’t want to go into hospital. Any other person with an infection like this who refused to be admitted for treatment would probably die. She was pulling out all the stops for her father. Of course she was. But so was Joe.
The unlikely doctor from Scotland had made his way through the back streets of Hanoi to help her. To be by her side.
She wanted to believe that this meant something. She wanted to believe he wasn’t just being a good colleague. The one part of her life she’d kept hidden. Now, for all her polite conversations, he could see exactly where she came from. But what if, deep down, he was just like Reuben and the thought of spending time with someone from such a poor background made him turn and run in the other direction?
Everything she knew about him said that wouldn’t happen.
Every patient interaction, the way he responded to his son, his ideas for taking medicine to the people who needed it. It all told her he was an entirely different man from the one she’d spent time with before.
But those nagging self-doubts always persisted. It was like a tiny, insidious voice, whispering away inside her brain. No matter how much she tried to rationalise and push them away, they remained.
She hated them. She hated the fact they were there. She hated the fact that something that had happened years ago still had an impact on her life today. She was brighter than that. She knew so much better than that.
Reuben wasn’t even a shadowy memory any more. He was a real, live, breathing person who she saw every week. She’d faced him down. She’d spoken to him. She’d even put him in his place. But still those horrible feelings of inadequacy persisted.
Would she ever get away from this? Would she ever be able to shake this off?
Joe continued to work away quietly, watching the monitors and her father’s condition. He nodded gratefully when Lien’s mother brought him some jasmine tea that she’d made.
He didn’t even look at her, and the tiny hairs on her arms stood on end. Was he embarrassed by her background?
She looked at her watch. Time was ticking past and it was close to midnight. ‘Maybe you should get back to the hospital,’ she said quietly. Then her head flicked up. ‘What about Regan? Who’s looking after Regan?’
‘Hoa,’ he replied swiftly, ‘and Khiem is taking care of the patients.’
He looked up and met her gaze. ‘Everything is under control, Lien. This is where you need to be, and I’ll stay as long as you want me to.’ His voice was steady, soothing, like a warm blanket spreading over her shoulders.
He’d been asking to speak to her all week. Even now, he was letting her know that she was still in charge, and he’d only stay as long as she wanted.
He hadn’t even tried to argue, or persuade her father about the admission to hospital that was clearly needed. She could tell from his face he didn’t think this was the best idea, but it was clear he was going to respect her father’s wishes and, in turn, hers.
With the storm raging outside, the temperature in the room had dipped. Lien’s mother pulled out some blankets, tucking one around her father, then handed one to Lien and one to Joe.
She looked at Joe curiously and asked him his name. It was one of the few phrases that Joe had managed to conquer while in Vietnam. He gave Lien’s mother a tired smile. ‘Joe,’ he replied as he shook her hand.
Lien’s mother cast her eyes back to Lien as she shook her head, putting both her hands over his. ‘Joe,’ she repeated thoughtfully. ‘Ah, Joe...and Regan?’
There was no point pretending that her mother didn’t recognise the name. Lien looked hurriedly at Joe. ‘I’ve mentioned you,’ she explained.
‘You have?’ He seemed shocked and she couldn’t be surprised about it.
‘I wish you’d brought us to meet them,’ he added. ‘We would have liked that.’
He said the words without a hint of criticism but with some disappointment. His gaze stayed on hers.
He didn’t understand. He truly didn’t understand her reservations and worries. He just looked hurt. As if she hadn’t wanted to introduce him to her parents because there was something wrong with him, not with her.
Her father groaned and she moved quickly back to his side. ‘Rest easy, Dad,’ she said. ‘It’s going to be a long night.’
She pulled the blanket up around her shoulders and settled on the chair next to him, kicking off her shoes.
The rain thudded against the fragile window frame, already a few drops leaking in around the edges.
Joe stretched out his legs in front of him.
‘Do you want to leave?’ she asked, her stomach clenching.
He shook his head. ‘Regan will be fine with Hoa.’ He gestured towards her father. ‘My patient is here. This is where I’m staying.’ He raised a weary eyebrow at her. ‘Unless I get thrown out.’
She wanted to smile. She wanted to smile because at one of the worst moments of her life he was here, and he was by her side.
But as she listened to the gurgling from her father’s chest she knew the last thing she could do right now was smile.
It was going to be a long, long night.
CHAPTER TWELVE
IT TOOK DAYS for Lien’s father to get better. Pneumonia wasn’t easy for anyone to shake off, let alone a patient with an existing chest condition with no real reserves.
Joe made arrangements with Lien so that both of them checked on him morning and night. At first she’d been surprised. But Joe could see the strain she’d put herself under. He wouldn’t let any colleague do something like this alone. So between them the
