Liam’s parents wished for reassurance she could give them. If she could, she’d give them their son’s life back, but some things were impossible.
Instead she’d give them what this man asked of her. Faith in hope.
* * *
She was perfect.
Sam stood in the background while Zoe talked softly to Liam’s parents, showed them her scar, talked them through what had happened to her, talked them through where she was now, her hopes for the future—she even showed them a corny picture she’d made him take with her phone, of her first wobbling stand-up on his surfboard.
‘I can do anything I like now,’ she told them. ‘I have my whole life in front of me but, you know, there’s not a day I don’t think of the boy who gave me my kidney. The boy whose parents’ loss meant my parents didn’t have to face that loss. The boy I’ll love for ever, because he’s part of me.’
‘Do you have to be...careful?’ Liam’s mother whispered, holding Zoe’s phone and looking at the blurry photo.
‘No,’ she said, and suddenly she was almost fierce. ‘At least, not any more than I ought to be even if I hadn’t had a transplant. Do you have a clear image of Liam on that last day, on the beach?’
‘I... Yes,’ his mother whispered. ‘Of course.’
‘And he was happy?’
‘Yes,’ his dad said, with a fierceness that matched Zoe’s. ‘He was in heaven. He had the whole beach, sand, sea, sun on his face. He used my phone to send pictures to his mates, boasting of how he was in Australia in the surf. We were mucking round in the waves; he was standing on my shoulders, diving. It was the best...’
‘That’s what I want,’ Zoe said as the big man’s face crumpled and as his wife moved to hold him and Sam moved to hold her. ‘I want the best. Liam and I...we’re going to go out happy.’
‘We shouldn’t have...’ the man said, and Zoe shrugged Sam off and reached and grabbed the guy’s shoulders.
‘Never say that,’ she said. ‘It was a freak wave. It could have happened between the flags; it could have happened anywhere. Liam died having the best holiday of his life, and if you decide on organ donation then others will have the best holidays of their lives, too. But right now others don’t matter. This is all about Liam, all about you. You talk about it and you make the right decision for you and for Liam.’ She hugged them both.
‘Sam and I are leaving you now,’ she told them. ‘This decision is yours, but know that we’ll be thinking of you every step of the way, as almost everyone in this hospital is. No blame,’ she said again, even more fiercely. ‘You do what you need to do for the future. You do what you need to for Liam. You’ll know what that is because you love Liam, he’s your son, and whatever you decide, whatever the future holds, that love lasts for ever.’
* * *
Sam guided her out into the corridor. He closed the door on the grieving parents and then he took her into his arms and kissed her.
It was a long, loving kiss, a kiss of affirmation, of strength, of healing, and when he finally drew away Zoe knew that Sam wanted her as no man had ever wanted her.
He loved her.
And she let herself be loved. The emotion of the last few moments had been heart-wrenching. She let herself lean on his chest, taking strength from him, feeling his heartbeat, feeling...him.
It couldn’t last. They were in a main hospital corridor. He was in his gorgeous suit, consulting cardiologist, and she was in her nurse’s scrubs.
She needed to blow her nose. Somehow she managed to tug away, to find a tissue and blow, hard.
When she finished he was grinning at her, and a couple of orderlies walked past and grinned, too, and she thought she may as well stand on the rooftop and declare they were engaged.
Engaged? There was a strong word.
Scary? Definitely scary, but the way he was looking at her... Engaged? Definitely possible.
If he asked, would she say yes?
Not yet, she thought, suddenly panicked. There were still doubts. There was still...life.
She thought of Liam’s mum’s words.
‘Do you have to be careful?’
No.
So should she fling herself into Sam’s arms and stay there? Surely that wasn’t being careful?
He was gorgeous. He was kind and clever and capable. If she took him home, her mum and dad would almost swoon with delight.
They’d think he was safe.
‘Dr Webster?’ It was Callie; of course it was Callie. The lady was almost a part of the walls in this hospital—or maybe it was just that she was a friend and Zoe was aware that she cared for her and was watching with interest to see what would happen.
‘Sarah’s reporting that Liam’s parents want to go ahead with organ donation,’ she said. ‘Sam, they’d like you with them when they turn off life support.’
‘I’ll come,’ Sam said.
‘And they said to tell you thank you,’ Callie said, eyeing Zoe warmly. ‘Zoe, only Sam and I know what you just did, but we thank you, too. I guess...Sam has just been thanking you personally?’
‘I... Yes.’
‘Are you okay to go back to the wards? I’ll make your excuses if you need time out.’
‘I’m fine,’ Zoe said, and managed a bright smile. ‘Just a bit...’
‘Discombobulated,’ Callie said. ‘Gutted about Liam’s death, like we all are—but with a few layers of emotional confusion on top. Sam, let the lady go. Give her some space.’
‘Thank you,’ Zoe said, with real gratitude, and gave Sam a quick, hard hug because what he was about to do was one of the hardest things a doctor would ever need to do.
She turned and headed back to her sick kids.
A girl had to do something. Discombobulation didn’t begin to describe it.
* * *
Alice’s wedding was truly lovely. It took place in a tiny chapel in the grounds of one of the Gold Coast’s most spectacular beachside hotels. Alice and her brand-new husband were spectacularly in love. The reception was in the hotel grounds overlooking the beach. The weather was balmy, the band was fantastic, and Sam took Zoe in his arms and danced with her, and she thought heaven was right here, right now.
But she felt funny. She’d woken feeling a bit off. She’d shrugged it off as unimportant—there was no way she was missing this wedding—but the more the night wore on the more she felt like she was floating in some sort of fuzzy, hazy dream. It was like she’d been drinking, she thought, trying to keep a handle on what was happening, but she’d had half a glass of champagne early and had switched to mineral water because of the way she was feeling.
Could hormones do this to you?
‘Are you okay?’ Sam asked at one stage as the number the band was playing came to an end more suddenly than she’d expected and she found herself stumbling. He had to catch her and hold her up.
‘I’m fine.’ She smiled up at him. ‘More than fine.’
‘You look more than fine,’ he said, and stooped to kiss her. ‘You think we should go for a quick walk down to the beach?’
‘How about a slow walk down to the beach?’ she said, because the way she was feeling there was no way fast was coming into it.
‘If you guys are escaping, can I come with you?’
Callie. Of course it was Callie. She was looking fabulous, in glorious scarlet, in a dress that made Zoe’s home-made effort look...well, home-made, but Zoe didn’t begrudge her. In the few short weeks Zoe had been at the hospital this woman had become a real friend. She was a solid friend of Sam’s as well, so not at all a third wheel.
Even though Zoe suspected Sam might feel she was right now. The way he was holding her...
Too bad, Zoe thought, and realised she was grateful for Callie’s presence. She was feeling strange. The way Sam wa
s looking at her was making her feel even more weird. She felt weak at the knees and if Sam took her into his arms in the moonlight and asked her to marry him—as Dean had done on just such a moonlit night—she might even say yes.
‘Of course you can come,’ Zoe said, before Sam could say a word. ‘Are you up for a paddle? I’m so hot.’
‘It’s not hot,’ Sam said.
‘It is so,’ Callie retorted. ‘And if you’re not hot now, you go and stand next to Dr Hotshot Cade Coleman. That man is an arrogant bottom-feeder.’ Her anger seemed almost palpable.
‘You mean he knocked you back?’ Sam asked, and Callie glared at Sam and Zoe stared at Sam in shock.
‘Sam!’
‘Callie’s a mate,’ Sam said, holding Zoe but smiling at Callie. ‘Mates don’t take offence.’
‘No,’ Callie said. ‘They don’t. And it’s true he might have just told me where to get off.’ She giggled suddenly, her anger fading. ‘Okay, I might have just had one champagne too many, and there might just have been a dare from the theatre girls involved. Whoops,’ she said. ‘Now I’ve shocked your country mouse, Sam.’
‘I’m not his country mouse,’ Zoe said with an attempt at dignity, and wondered just how many champagnes she’d had. She was sure it had only been half a glass. If she hadn’t been among friends she’d suspect something had been put in her drink.
‘Are you okay?’ Callie asked sharply. Of all the questions Zoe hated, that was the worst.
‘I’m fine. I want a paddle.’
‘I’m not interrupting anything?’ Callie asked, and Zoe figured Callie knew very well that she was but she was interrupting anyway. And Zoe was grateful.
‘Of course not,’ she said, and linked one arm into Callie’s and one arm into Sam’s and they headed for the beach.
* * *
Cade watched them go.
Zoe was almost as new at this hospital as he was, he thought grimly, but she was one of the team already. He, however, was an outsider. He was always an outsider.
Once he’d used women as an escape from himself, but that had been one woman and one baby ago. No more.
And tonight...Callie Richards had come on to him. First she’d insulted him, telling him within days of his arrival at Gold Coast City to steer clear of Zoe Payne. Now, tonight, she’d apologised, asked him to dance and had then made it very clear that if he wanted more...
He didn’t want more. He was here to do a job, steer clear of gossip and scandal, retrieve a reputation, block out the past and get on with life.
He shouldn’t have come tonight.
He stared after the group of three, Zoe in the middle with Callie and Sam on either side of her, weaving down to the beach, and he suddenly felt an almost overwhelming surge of longing for...something.
The ability to be just a friend?
It wasn’t going to happen. Not back in the States. Not here.
He watched them disappear into the darkness and he headed off to find the bride’s parents and make his excuses. There was an emergency back at the hospital—he was sure of it.
He wanted an emergency right now.
* * *
The water felt delicious on Zoe’s toes. She kicked off her sandals, lifted her long skirt to knee length and let the waves wash over and over.
Cool was good. Cool was glorious.
If only the fuzz would disappear.
Callie and Sam were talking behind her, talking to her, but she wasn’t sure what they were saying. The night was getting blurrier and blurrier.
‘It’s time for the speeches,’ Sam decreed at last, stepping in between waves to tug her out. He and Callie had left their shoes on and she couldn’t figure it out. It was so hot. ‘Come on back, love.’ Then, as she didn’t move fast enough and there was a wave coming he wanted to avoid, he tugged her and she staggered and would have fallen.
She didn’t. He swept her into his arms and up to dry sand while she tried to get her bearings.
‘I’m okay,’ she muttered, before he even asked, but even as she said it, she knew she wasn’t.
‘Zoe?’ It was Callie, reacting to the strange way her words had come out, maybe reacting to Sam’s snapped concern. Sam was holding her in his arms. Callie reached for her hand and winced. ‘Sam, she’s burning.’
‘I’m fine,’ she said, but the night was spinning. ‘I’m really, really fine.’
‘You’re ill,’ Sam snapped. ‘Zoe, what the...? Why didn’t you tell us?’
‘I’m fine,’ she repeated, like a stubborn mantra. How could she not be fine? Sam was holding her. She was in Sam’s arms and the night was drifting away—and she wasn’t fine at all.
CHAPTER EIGHT
SHE WAS SUFFERING from influenza, courtesy of one bout of mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on a guy who had been suffering from flu before he’d had his heart attack.
Infection was an occupational hazard for medics. It was an occupational hazard for Zoe now that she was a healthy member of the workforce.
But she wasn’t healthy now. She spent twenty-four hours in bed in her apartment. Sam and Callie and nearly every other medic Zoe worked with popped in and out, and Bonnie slept on the end of her bed. Zoe felt not quite as ghastly when Bonnie was with her, but she still felt ghastly and bed rest didn’t work.
After twenty-four hours, Sam listened to her breathing and demanded chest X-rays. Pneumonia. She then found herself in the third-floor general medical ward. That wasn’t very different because the same faces were around her and the same dog was on the end of her bed, but there were intravenous drips and injections and fuss.
She hated fuss.
‘Don’t tell my parents.’ She must have said it a dozen times to Sam and finally he made a poster-sized sign and hung it in the place reserved over her bed for the ‘Nil by mouth’ sign used for surgical patients—only Zoe’s sign said: ‘Don’t Tell Mum and Dad.’
It was a joke, but she couldn’t bear it if her parents knew—for Sam was fussing enough for both of them.
‘Why didn’t you tell me you felt foul?’
‘I don’t tell people,’ she retorted. ‘I don’t want fuss. I just want to be normal.’
‘It’s normal to tell people you’re ill.’
‘It’s not normal to be ill. Sam, leave it. This is not a big deal.’
‘This is a big deal,’ he said stubbornly. ‘I should never have let you—’
‘What? Breathe for the guy?’ Three days on, she was recovered enough to argue. She’d had it out with herself. She’d known the guy had had flu. She’d had the choice—to wait for a mask and risk him dying, or breathe when he’d needed breath.
What else could she have done? Cardiac compressions while Sam breathed? That made no sense, because Sam was so much stronger than she was.
‘I could have done both,’ Sam said, for what must be the tenth time, and she was fed up.
To tell the truth, she was fed up with more than Sam’s self-blame. She didn’t like being back in hospital as a patient—she didn’t like it one bit, and she didn’t like the way Sam was treating her. It was flu, for heaven’s sake, not plague.
‘We need to put you on the surgical roster when you’re recovered,’ Sam said. ‘You need to stay out of medical wards. You don’t need to be exposed to any more viruses.’
‘I’m a nurse,’ she said. ‘Exposure to viruses is part of my job.’
‘You could have died.’
‘And so could you if you’d caught pneumonia.’
‘I wouldn’t.’
‘You know very well you could,’ she snapped. ‘I caught flu and it turned to pneumonia. I’ve been unlucky. And if you think that this has anything to do with me having a renal transplant—and I know that’s what you’re thinking, Sam Webster, you have it written
all over your face—you can think again. Poor frail little Zoe. I’ve been there, Sam, and I’m never going there again.’
‘I understand that,’ he said carefully, ‘but you need to be careful.’
‘There’s care and there’s stupid. My mum and dad refused to let me use public transport so I couldn’t visit my friends. The mango thing was only part of the stupid restrictions they placed on my life. And Dean...Dean even started carrying antibiotic wipes and recleaning my cutlery at restaurants before I ate. When I told him to stop, he did it by stealth. The last straw was when he rang them and asked them to do it before I got there. The waiter came racing out just before I ate with a mea culpa because he’d forgotten. If Dean knew how close he came to wearing my soup...’
He smiled but it was a worried smile. ‘I understand how worried he must have been.’
‘Do you?’ she said dangerously. ‘You’re justifying bug-kill wipes?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘But I can see why he was worried.’
‘I want to go to Nepal,’ she said, and he looked at her like she’d announced she was heading for a Mars landing.
‘Sorry?’
‘Nepal,’ she said, watching his face for his reaction and not liking what she was seeing. ‘I told you—it’s on my list. You can walk all the way to the Annapurna base camp without needing specialist training. Not now,’ she said as she saw his face. ‘I may need a couple of years to save, but I will get there.’
‘Good for you.’
‘There’s a nice patronising statement. That’s what Mum used to say when I was sick and I’d say as soon as I feel better I’m taking the train to Melbourne to see the new Kylie show. Good for you, she’d say, and then when I was feeling better she’d give me the latest Kylie DVD and organise three nice girls to come over and watch it with me. Only not a fourth girl who was my best friend because Robin kept getting colds and Mum wouldn’t let her near. Robin got so fed up that we stopped being friends.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘I don’t want you to be sorry.’ It was practically a yell and the sound of her own voice brought her up short.
What was she doing? What was she saying? She was risking everything. But she felt like she was on a runaway train. The doubts had built to the point where she had to have this out with him, and there seemed to be no going back.
Gold Coast Angels: A Doctor's Redemption Page 13
