‘Things went okay for a few years,’ he said. ‘There were long hospital stays and chemo and a bone-marrow transplant. Everybody was completely determined that Pippi would get through it. Nothing else mattered. No one else mattered.’
Oh, God. Could Kate hear the self-pity that came through in the rough edge to his voice? How selfish was it, even after all these years, to feel that he’d been abandoned unfairly?
‘Things went downhill when Pippi was six,’ Connor went on relentlessly. ‘I was lined up along with everybody else in the hope of finding a better match for a bone-marrow transplant. That was when my details got recorded, I guess, though they didn’t contact me until I was over eighteen about going on the register.’
Turning his head again, Connor suddenly remembered they were sharing this room with a dead person. He really did have to get out of here.
He faced Kate. ‘Pippi died about six months after that and it broke what was left of my family. I wasn’t quite ten years old when it happened. By the time I was fifteen I knew that I’d never want to have my own kids. They’re a potential bomb waiting to go off and destroy a whole family. It’s not a risk I’m ever going to take.’
Connor shook off the memories he’d never intended airing. ‘A risk Iamprepared to take is giving away some of my bone marrow in the hope that the same agony doesn’t destroy the lives of others. If you think that’s unhealthy or unprofessional, that’s your problem, not mine.’ The silence was unbearable.
Connor turned to leave. ‘Oh… what I actually came down for was to tell you that the new microscope’s arrived. I told them to leave things in the boxes because I thought you might want to supervise the unpacking tomorrow.’
He didn’t give Kate a chance to respond.
‘See you later,’ was all he said. And then he walked out.
* * *
Very few people got put back together after an autopsy as neatly as Kate’s latest research trial case.
She was working on autopilot and taking her time because she had too much else to think about.
Too many feelings welling up and swirling into a confused mess. It was comforting to let her hands do something as practical as suturing and cleaning instruments and tidying up.
Connor hadn’t wanted her sympathy, that was for sure. He hadn’t even given her a chance to say anything at all. She’d caught a glimpse of his face as he’d gone past on the other side of the glass window and the sadness on it had broken her heart.
Or it would have, if her heart hadn’t already been broken by his story.
She could so easily imagine him as that little boy who knew his mother had only ever wanted a daughter. And no one else had mattered after Pippi got sick? That was easy to imagine, too. A household revolving around the hospital visits or taking care of a precious, sick child at home.
How much older than Connor were his brothers? Enough for them to have been a pack of their own? Maybe a pack that had stayed intact after the rest of the family got broken.
What about the forgotten child?
Kate’s heart wasn’t just broken. It was bleeding. Connor had felt unloved, hadn’t he? She knew what that was like. Oh, God, she knew.
Kate wanted to reach back through the years. To pull that small boy into her arms and tell him thathewas special too.
Loved.
He was loved now, she realised. Because all she wanted to do was find him. And hold him. And tell him that she understood.
That he was the most amazing, special person she’d ever met in her life.
No wonder he went far more than the extra mile for all his small patients and their families. For others that he barely knew apart from something like being bald and having a beautiful smile.
Kate could understand his determination not to have children of his own. Or for avoiding the risk of an intimate, long-term relationship. To give so much and make yourself so vulnerable only to have that love not returned or to get ripped out of your life. Heavens, he almost had a better reason than she did for being so determined. Something else they had in common that very few other people would.
It made them perfect for each other.
Didn’t it?
Maybe… Kate finally turned out the lights and clicked the door of the morgue closed behind her.
If she could just…
She barely heard the farewell from the lone technician in the lab. Kate kept walking, her head down. Then she found herself straightening her back and looking ahead. Her stride lengthened.
