by Lilian Darcy
One part of her felt wounded by it, and she could easily have asked him, ‘What have I done? Have I offended you? Is something wrong?’
The rest of her knew how disastrous it would be if she blurted out those questions. She didn’t need to ask them. She knew exactly why he’d stepped back from their easy office friendship.
He’d recognised how hard she had to fight to keep herself from imagining something much closer and deeper, something that could never happen because of his commitment elsewhere. She even thought that he wasn’t immune to the awareness himself. It was one of those ships-that-pass-in-the-night things. In another life, they might have become involved. In this life, it was dangerous to even think about it.
She sat down at the multi-header, deliberately choosing the eyepiece closest to the window. Natalia brought in the slide trays and sat beside her, and Caroline was sure that Declan would choose the position opposite Natalia. He didn’t, though. Striding in front of him, Tom gave him no choice. Out of habit, Tom took the control position and found the slide Natalia had already put in.
They spent nearly twenty minutes on the case, with Tom flicking knobs and arrows and Declan talking them through what he’d already seen—the margins clear of any sign of tumour, the evidence which distinguished this form of breast sarcoma from carcinoma.
Breast carcinomas arose from the lining cells of the ducts, while sarcoma came from tissue such as the smooth muscle which supported the lining cells. The two were very different, and the microscope made the differences clear. Carcinoma cells were large and round, while sarcoma cells were long and thin, and looked a little like worms.
Declan’s voice seemed to fall on Caroline’s skin like a caress, like the massage he’d once witnessed. She couldn’t forget how close he was, couldn’t stop herself from wishing he was closer, and hated herself for it. Not just because it was wrong, but because it was such a hopeless, doomed longing.
Why do I spend so much energy fighting the wrong battles? she wondered.
The round window of bright, patterned light blurred in her vision and she surrendered the chance to learn, which she would normally have seized on. She thought about how she’d fought that losing battle to pass third-year medicine after Josh’s birth, instead of stepping back and deferring her studies for a year or two. She’d fought to keep her marriage alive for too long also. She’d tried to talk Robert into seeing a counsellor together even after he’d moved out.
Now she had another battle with Robert, sitting on a slow boil and currently going nowhere—the battle over Woodside. She had to make a decision soon. Concede? Or prepare herself for the realistic possibility of a court battle? Which would be least harmful to Josh?
Do I somehow make this stuff happen? she wondered. Or is it just bad luck?
She began the journey down a familiar road of self-doubt—a rutted, twisting road along which she seemed to recognise every pothole.
I’m not going down it again, she decided. Not over the Woodside thing, and not over Declan. I’m just not!
‘Thanks, Declan,’ Tom said, standing up. ‘That was fascinating.’
‘I’ll call the surgeons, give them the news.’
‘Nell Cassidy specifically asked to be told as soon as possible,’ Caroline reported.
‘Get Steph to arrange sending the slides to Westmead,’ Tom said. ‘I agree we want to be a hundred per cent certain on this one. Tell her GP what we’re up to, because this will delay things by a few days.’
Everyone went back to work, energised by the positive outcome to what had seemed such a hopeless case. Between them, Natalia and Caroline emptied their in-tray by lunch-time, when Caroline normally left now to pick up Sam from child-care. The two of them stopped off to buy groceries, read a story over lunch, walked to the playground and went to pick up Mattie and Josh at three.
When the boys were settled with afternoon snacks and a children’s show on the television, Caroline sat herself down, picked up the phone, took a deep breath and dialled her ex-husband’s home number.
She wanted to talk to Gail.
‘He never asked me about it, Caroline,’ Gail said.
‘He seemed to feel it would be unfair to you, and to Amelia. Maybe he didn’t want to put you in the position of being cast as the wicked stepmother if you felt you had to say no.’
‘Unfair to me, I can understand. Although I don’t feel that way, and he should have known that. I’d love to have Josh living with us during school terms. As for Amelia, she adores her big brother. Robert is over-protective of her, and of me, but he can’t see it.’ She sighed, then laughed fondly.
‘Oh, I’m glad you can, though. He actually suggested…’ Caroline began.
Then she stopped. Gail obviously had no idea that Robert feared Josh might bully his baby sister, or worse, and from what she’d already said, she wouldn’t think highly of such fears. The two of them had a good marriage. For all sorts of reasons, it would be better for Caroline to keep Robert’s words to herself. She quickly manufactured an entirely new ending to her sentence.
‘Suggested, well, that if I happened to get married again to the right sort of man, who’d provide more of a positive male influence for Josh, he’d look at the situation differently. That’s somewhat over-protective, in my opinion.’
‘I love him for it, but I’m not going to let him get away with it,’ Gail concluded. ‘We’ll talk about it tonight, and I’ll tell him how much Amelia and I would love Josh living with us. Don’t worry, Caroline. I absolutely understand your qualms about him boarding at Woodside, and I’m sure I can talk Robert round.’
‘Th-thank you, Gail. I really appreciate it. This has been tying me in knots for a while.’
‘You’ll still miss him, though, won’t you?’ the other woman suggested gently.
‘Oh, too much to express.’ Her throat tightened. ‘But at least I won’t worry so much.’ It seemed like the best compromise she could hope for, and she had to learn not to fight those losing battles she’d spent herself on in the past.
‘And I’ll work on the rugby thing, too, after I’ve bided my time a bit,’ Gail said.
‘The rugby thing?’
‘I could see Josh didn’t enjoy the coaching weekend.’
‘Could you? Oh, I’m so glad.’ This was more than Caroline had dared to hope for. If Gail had the perception about Josh that Robert lacked, she would breathe so much easier.
‘Robert could see it, too, but he’s not quite ready to give up yet. He has such high hopes for Josh, Caroline, and he’s so proud of him, even if he shows it in all the wrong ways sometimes.’
And that’s why Gail and Robert are happy together, when Robert and I never were, Caroline thought after she’d put down the phone. Gail finds the best in him.
CHAPTER EIGHT
IN THE northern hemisphere, today would have been the summer solstice—the lightest day of the year. In Australia, it was the winter solstice, but Declan couldn’t take the season seriously at all when it came in a package like this. Crisp nights, mild and sunny days, an occasional bite of wind, and none of the rain that everyone in the district, farmer or not, would have celebrated.
It was more than six weeks since he’d ended his relationship with Suzy. Six whole weeks. Nobody in Glenfallon knew about it yet, and didn’t it damn the whole nature of the relationship that he could quietly shift his entire future and say nothing about it, without causing a ripple of comment or awareness?
He’d spent a weekend in Sydney at the end of May, but he and Suzy hadn’t seen each other. Instead, he’d taken a hotel room at Darling Harbour and soaked up the city on his own, trying to work out what he wanted, why he’d let this whole mess happen in the first place. He’d reached certain conclusions, but he hadn’t tested their validity as yet, and he didn’t know what his conclusions told him about the future.
Should he plan on going back to London as soon as Tom Robinson could find a replacement for him? Tom was attending a conference this week, and hop
ed to get someone interested in taking over his own position when he retired. Declan could speak frankly to him, suggest that he should be on the lookout for two people.
There was no reason, on paper, for him to stay in Glenfallon. Even if he didn’t return to London, it would surely make more sense to sit those Australian exams, a year or so from now, and build a life in Sydney.
He understood, now, that he hadn’t loved Suzy and she hadn’t loved him. Or not by any useful, meaningful definition of the word ‘love’ anyway. He’d talked to Caroline, weeks ago, about what it was like to be a middle child in a large, poor family—how you grabbed what was on offer before you’d worked out if you wanted it or not.
He’d done that with Suzy. She’d offered. Herself, and then Sydney. He’d grabbed. He’d discovered too late that he didn’t want what he’d only ever half held in his hands, in any case.
He remembered how he’d planned, back in April, to tell Suzy that he’d ‘consider’ marriage if she would meet him halfway, if she’d give a little more, if she’d make a commitment to more than simply having fun together.
Crazy! A man shouldn’t ‘consider’ marriage. The word was just wrong. Having seen his parents happy together for forty years despite his father’s weaknesses and his mother’s blind spots, he believed in love. He just didn’t know quite how he’d recognise it if it happened.
As soon as he had realised that what he felt for Suzy most definitely wasn’t love, he hadn’t wanted to be with her any more, even if what their relationship had offered in the short term was as good as it had ever been. He’d tried to break the news without hurting her. Had he succeeded? Hard to know.
She’d reacted angrily. ‘Because I didn’t smile in the right way at your cancer case in the supermarket yesterday morning?’
‘No, but—’
‘That’s ridiculous, Dec.’
Maybe it was. He’d managed to articulate some more of what he felt, resorting to a poetic, Irish whimsicality of phrasing that she didn’t appreciate. Stuff about the high noon of your life, and the twilight, about two kinds of magic, and the kind that faded first. He didn’t really know what he was trying to say. Lucky she was the writer, not he.
Then it turned out that she had a heavy flirtation going on with one of the other writers working on the TV mini-series. ‘I should have slept with him after all, instead of pulling it to a screaming halt and leaving both of us frustrated as hell. Why I thought it was necessary to have any scruples about fidelity, I don’t know!’
‘If you think fidelity is about getting to the brink in another man’s arms before the scruples kick in, then your definition of the word is very different to mine!’ he retorted, and things got pretty nasty after that.
She stormed off. They hadn’t talked since. He’d wanted to go to Sydney just to prove that the woman and the city…or the whole country…didn’t have to stay linked in his mind. This place had other things to offer without Suzy. This time he had to work out exactly what he really wanted before he grabbed.
It was two in the afternoon now. The short day, a Monday, had already tipped past its zenith and into its slide towards dusk at around five o’clock. He stretched at his desk, heard a crack or two in his spine and shoulder joints. Wooden slide trays still sat piled up beside him, and he’d promised to tackle a post-mortem for Tom this afternoon. Meanwhile, Natalia would be expecting him across the corridor soon to review any abnormal Paps, urines and sputums she and Caroline had come across since yesterday.
He left his desk, but instead of seeing Natalia when he pushed open the cyto technicians’ office door he found Caroline, and he couldn’t stop the rush of pleasure he felt. She looked good. A little tired, maybe, with all the extra work she was putting in, caring for her nephews. But still good.
And she made him feel good, too, the same kind of good he felt in the evening after a long day, when he sat down with a glass of wine, music on the CD player, a hot curry from the House of Siam and a page-turning book—content, replete, relaxed, expectant, just good.
Hiding it, as he’d been hiding it for six weeks and more, he asked her, ‘Not with the boys today?’
Smiling slightly, she answered, ‘I’ll have to leave just before three to pick them up, but Natalia had another commitment and we would have slipped behind if I hadn’t filled in for her. Sam’s staying on at child-care for an extra two hours. They’ll be going back to the farm on the weekend. Sandie’s giving herself the week to recover from her third treatment cycle, but she’s insisting she’ll be strong enough to see them by Friday. As usual, she’s desperate to be with them again.’
‘I’m sorry the treatment is giving her such a rough time.’
‘And she has three more cycles still to come.’
‘Are there any signs that she’s responding?’
‘Her nodes have gone down.’
‘That’s good. That’s the most concrete thing you can hope for at this stage. Much for us to look at here?’
‘A few things.’
He saw that she’d already filled in the sheet that recorded their sessions at the multi-header, and the reason for them. ‘Review abnormals’ was the most common notation, and that was what she’d written today. She’d put down her initials in the attendance column, and he added his own with a quick scrawl. When the session was finished, she’d note the amount of time they’d spent.
She sat down opposite the control position and gave him the first slide. Their fingers touched, and his surging physical reaction to her mere presence and to this tiny flicker of contact told him he couldn’t keep up his careful façade for much longer. Maybe it was time to let it go, in any case.
For the past six weeks, he’d needed it as a protection for both of them. He didn’t want to hurt her, and he didn’t want to make another mistake like Suzy. You reached a point, however, where you couldn’t know what you wanted, or how deep something might go, unless you took the risk of trying it, making it real. He’d already hurt Caroline by backing off so much from their initial friendship. It didn’t make sense to wait any longer.
Moving the lens across different sections of the slide, he found the dot of white she’d placed to the left of the group of abnormal cells.
‘Yes, stop there. Those are the cells I didn’t like,’ she said.
‘OK,’ he murmured. Her knees were directly opposite his, clothed in a swish of navy skirt fabric.
He focused his gaze more accurately through the eyepiece. Under the microscope, that tiny, delicate dab of white he’d seen her place on so many slides over the past three months looked like a big grey blob, and just to the right of it he could see exactly which cells had concerned her. They both studied the untidy cluster in silence for a moment.
‘Yes, they’re atypical,’ he agreed. ‘Not quite clear what they are.’
‘No, nothing to panic about.’
‘But definitely not right.’
‘And this test is a follow-up twelve months after she had the same result on her previous test,’ Caroline pointed out.
‘You’re suggesting I recommend she sees a gynaecologist?’
‘With two results like this in a year, yes.’
‘I’d agree. It may be hormonal changes that need to be looked at.’
Caroline moved the lens to a different section of the slide. ‘This area looked atrophic, to my eye.’
‘Again, yes, I’d agree. More evidence that it’s secondary to hormonal changes. Anything else on this one?’
‘No, but this next one’s more serious, I think. I’d report it as CIN 3.’ She used the shorthand they were both familiar with. It stood for cervical intraepithelial neoplasia, grade three, and no one wanted to utter that mouthful any more often than they had to.
The slide came into view, full of pink and purple washes of colour, draped like chiffon scarves across the circular golden light. Again, the dots she’d placed beside more than one group of cells showed as opaque grey blobs.
Looking at the cells, he had
to agree with her. There was strong evidence on this slide of high-grade abnormality in the skin layer of the cervix. If this patient had been having regular normal smears until now, as her records showed that she had, the cancer should be pre-invasive, treatable and curable. There were several options for treatment, including freezing, burning or surgical incision.
The real problems came when women avoided seeing their doctors for the test, because an abnormality like this could progress, if untreated, to squamous cell carcinoma of the cervix. A ‘silent’ condition until well advanced, it was usually fatal.
‘I’ll recommend a colposcopy and biopsy.’ He knew by this time that the colposcopy procedure could be done in Glenfallon, probably by Gian Di Luzio, and that the biopsy samples would be sent here for analysis. Further treatment would be dictated by what his own study of the cells revealed.
‘And this last one?’ They both lifted their heads from the microscope and she passed another slide across.
Their fingers touched again. Deliberately, Declan let the contact continue for just a fraction of a second longer than it should have, and saw Caroline’s eyes dart to his face then drop quickly.
‘Sorry,’ she said, as if she thought it was her fault. ‘I’ve been a bit clumsy today. Sam had me up twice in the night, and I’m tired.’
‘Don’t apologise,’ he said, and she looked at him in alarm once again, hearing the caress he’d put into his voice. ‘You’re always blaming yourself.’
‘Can we look at the slide?’ she asked. ‘I’ll have to go soon.’
‘My turn to apologise?’ he suggested. He’d certainly destroyed the relaxed yet focused atmosphere between them in this quiet office, with only the hum of the computer as background noise.
‘No, not at all.’ She took a breath, changed her tone quickly. ‘This one seemed pretty clear to me. HPV.’
Again, he understood the medical shorthand at once. Human papilloma virus. It was a condition that could predispose the cervix to developing pre-cancerous cells, which in turn could progress to a more serious cell abnormality. He focused on the cell cluster she’d highlighted, and found the distinctive enlarged atypical cells.
