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His eyes swept over her. The flannel shirt—incongruously heavy for the day’s temperatures—was open over a lightweight top and trousers, but it was as the young woman messed with her sleeves again that Max caught sight of the scars that lay on her forearms. Multiple thin, parallel lines of silvery-white scars from razor blade or knife lacerations.
Hastily the young woman pulled the sleeves down again, her eyes sliding away from his for a moment, before changing her mind, standing a little taller and making herself meet his glare.
The tacit action garnered his respect, but still he was guarded.
‘The transplant went very smoothly,’ he answered finally. ‘Dr Parker responded very well to the procedure.’
The young woman’s relief was visible.
‘Good. That’s good. Great, in fact. Where is she staying? Can we come and see her?’
‘She needs her rest,’ Max cut in pointedly. Evie hadn’t once mentioned expecting a visit from an ex-patient to him.
‘I know she’s still recovering,’ the woman agreed. ‘I just wanted to know she was all right. They won’t tell me anything, even though Dr Parker said she’d put my name down to visit as soon as she was cleared for visitors.’
‘She doesn’t need her focus to be split right now. Do you understand?’
The young woman’s brow furrowed in confusion. He suppressed a stab of frustration and smoothed his voice out.
‘Dr Parker is very committed to her work, I appreciate that, even though she hasn’t practised for quite a few months now, but she needs to take the time to recover and look after herself. If she feels she’s needed somewhere else then she’s going to try to rush the healing process in order to get back to work.’
He was surprised to see the woman offer a soft smile of recognition.
‘Yes. I can just see her doing that. Well, can you tell her that I was here because I wanted to know she was okay? We all did.’
‘All?’ It was Max’s turn to frown.
She jerked her head towards the waiting room chairs down the hall where a group of kids, surrounded by a cluster of small bunches of flowers, home-made fruit baskets and cards waited. They were all watching the exchange between Max and the woman intently, without crowding the two of them, which was why he hadn’t noticed them before.
‘Who are they?’
‘Some of the kids from the centre.’
A lot of the kids from the centre by the look of it. And gifts from even more of them, judging by the mini-mountain. Max stared in shock.
‘You look surprised, but Dr Parker has helped so many of us turn our lives around. That’s a big deal.’
She narrowed her eyes, assessing him, then clearly decided she had nothing to lose.
‘You saw my scars.’ She lifted her still-covered arms before dropping them back down to her sides. Nevertheless she met his stare head-on, her chin tilting defiantly.
‘I used to self-harm for years, ever since I was a kid. I couldn’t even admit it to myself, let alone tell my family. Eight years ago I met Dr Parker and I’ve been cut-free for seven years now, and I’m working on keeping it that way.’
‘Understood,’ Max acknowledged.
Max considered the strong young woman standing in front of him, surprised at her inner strength and matter-of-fact way of talking to him.
‘So you’re all here just to see how Evie...Dr Parker is?’ He eyed the group with fresh eyes.
‘Yes. Dr Parker was there for us, supporting us, when we needed her. Now we all have good futures and she was hugely responsible for that. So we just felt this was our chance to be here for her, now.’
Evie clearly meant a lot to them, and he knew the feeling was mutual. Having to resign her post must have been an agonising decision for Evie to have made.
‘So, will you give the gifts to Dr Parker, and tell her we were here?’
The woman’s voice broke into his musings.
‘Of course.’ He dragged himself back to the present but his words were sincere.
