Rescued by the Dreamy Doc / Navy Officer to Family Man

by Amy Andrews / Emily Forbes

  Would Sam want to give their children another mother? Someone who bought him green T-shirts that matched his eyes. Someone to plait Kate’s hair just as she did now. Someone to cook pancakes for Edward.

  Juliet had always been so terrified of Sam going off to war and getting himself killed. She’d been terrified of becoming a widow like Maggie. But what if she was the one who died?

  She hadn’t really wanted a divorce but her pride and stubbornness had led her down that path before she’d realised where she was heading, until all of a sudden there had been no turning back. Part of her still thought they could salvage the situation. If they couldn’t, she knew they would make the best of the hand they’d been dealt, but what if she wasn’t even around? She didn’t want her children to need another mother. She didn’t want someone else taking her place.

  She wanted her kids to know she loved them. She wanted that to mean something.

  She lay in her hospital bed, physically and emotionally bruised. The truth of the matter was that she loved her kids and she still loved Sam.

  What a fool she’d been. How much damage had she done? Could she fix things? Thoughts whirled around in her head, colliding with each other, confusing her.

  Should she try to mend things or was it just circumstances making her feel melancholy? Had there been an opportunity to save their marriage? Had they really tried as hard as they could have?

  She shook her head in a physical attempt to stop the mental battering her thoughts were giving her. When they’d separated she had been adamant they’d done their best. She couldn’t afford to have doubts now.

  The fairy-tale was over. End of story.

  2007

  Juliet had told people that she and Sam couldn’t agree on where to live, couldn’t agree on what was best for the children, but it was more than just a disagreement

  over location. But she’d never spoken the whole truth to anyone.

  They had left Darwin in 2000 and moved to Sydney. That had suited Juliet perfectly as she’d been close to Maggie who was still recovering from her husband’s death. Kate had been born that year and Edward two years later. Life had been good for their little family.

  In 2003 Sam had been transferred to Melbourne. That move had also been easy but they had begun discussing what they would do once the children started school. Juliet didn’t want to move them every three years for ever—she didn’t think it was fair. Sam had said it hadn’t bothered him when he was growing up as a defence force kid but Juliet didn’t want to point out that, after his mother had died when he had been just seven, he’d been dealing with bigger issues than moving house.

  She also knew that while Edward would cope with frequent moves, Kate, with her more serious and introverted personality, probably would not. She wanted Kate to have time to settle into school and make friends. She didn’t want to be uprooting her every few years.

  At the end of 2005 they were looking at another transfer, this time to Adelaide. It was defence force policy to move their people every three years. This transfer didn’t constitute a promotion for Sam, it was just a scheduled transfer and Juliet put her foot down. Kate was about to start school and Juliet wanted her transition to be as smooth as possible. Kate had been diagnosed with suspected dyslexia and Juliet wanted her to start school with her friends from kindergarten, not be moved interstate, as she thought Kate had enough to deal with. They had been working with a tutor and she and Kate had established a good rapport. Juliet wasn’t prepared to disrupt that. She refused to move their family, and while she wasn’t mean enough to make Sam leave the navy she did want him to explore other options. Sam, to his credit, did try to work with her demands, at least initially. He took a six-month leave of absence from the navy, something the defence force was always happy with. The navy figured it was better to give people leave than to lose them all together. The defence force human resource department even helped to find Sam a civilian position through their contacts. In this instance being magnanimous worked out perfectly for the navy—they looked like the good guys and within six months they had their officer back.

  The job they found for Sam was with an oil company that had drilling operations in Bass Strait, south of Melbourne. It sounded ideal but the only problem was that he didn’t get to go out to the oil rigs, he didn’t get to go out to sea, he didn’t get to fly in choppers. He was a desk jockey. His work was operational trouble-shooting and he was good at that. He’d had plenty of experience in planning, scheduling and problem solving, but there wasn’t enough variety or physical work to engage him. He missed the danger and excitement of the navy.

  He was bored. Bored and unhappy. He missed the ocean and he missed the diversity. While he loved routine in his home life, he discovered he hated it in his job. He was miserable at work and he brought that home with him.

  He joined the country fire service, a volunteer emergency services organisation, looking for something to satisfy his need for adrenaline bursts. Endless meetings and training exercises took over his weekends and weeknights, not to mention the actual emergencies that took him away from the family too. Bushfires, storm damage, flooding, trees falling onto houses and across roads all seemed to need the services of the CFS. And Sam was always available. He needed the excitement.

  To Juliet it seemed as though Sam was home even less than before. He couldn’t get his fix of adrenaline from his work or his family and he got more and more involved in the CFS. His need for excitement and danger and the ever-decreasing time he spent with his family made Juliet suspect he was punishing her deliberately and she grew resentful and bitter. She couldn’t believe he needed to spend so much of his time with the CFS and she started picking arguments. She could hear the accusations in her voice but she couldn’t seem to stop herself. Their conversations became terse until they almost stopped conversing altogether. Eventually Juliet realised this life was never going to be exciting enough for Sam.

  At the end of Sam’s leave of absence he was offered a six-month secondment to Singapore on a training mission. The family could go with him and he thought that was a perfect solution.

  ‘I’m not prepared to move the children every three years?what makes you think moving every six months is any better?’ Juliet argued.

  ‘We can stay together this way,’ Sam countered. ‘If I was going off to combat, you couldn’t come too. Isn’t this better?’

  ‘If you were going to war, we wouldn’t have to move anywhere.’ At that stage Juliet thought that sounded like the better option and the thought horrified her. She’d always been terrified that Sam would be sent to a war zone and never come back, and now she was thinking that was a better scenario. She must be mad.

  ‘I’ve accepted the position.’

  ‘You’re going? We’re not discussing this?’ Sam had taken it without consulting her? ‘I have given up everything to follow you—my home, my career—and you know why I can’t keep doing this. If it was just me, that would be different, but this affects our children too. I can’t believe you would do this to them.’

  ‘I think you’re being melodramatic. I haven’t gone into this blindly. The schools are world class. Kate will be fine.’

  ‘Melodramatic!’ Sam hadn’t been listening to anything she’d said. ‘You want to move us to Singapore for six months and then what? Where will we be six months after that?’

  ‘I can’t tell you that.’

  ‘Because you don’t know, do you? It’s all in the hands of the defence force.’ It was obvious to her then that they needed a break. ‘I’m not going to let the navy dictate our lives any more.’

  Sam had a different opinion. He left for Singapore. Juliet knew he was eager to get back to navy life and that thought hurt her more than anything. She so badly wanted to be enough for him. Wanted their family to be enough, and she thought, hoped, that when he returned to the navy he’d realise he missed them, realise he was missing the opportunity to watch his children grow up. In Juliet’s mind it was a trial separation and sh
e accepted that, confident that Sam would eventually return to them.

  But things turned out differently.

  The six months in Singapore was extended to twelve and, in hindsight, Juliet realised she should have gone with him, but she’d made such a big deal about keeping the children settled she couldn’t then back down. Once again her stubbornness and pride got in the way. Her mother used to say that pride came before a fall, and she was soon to find that was true.

  At the end of the year Juliet wanted him home. She filed for divorce, thinking it would make Sam realise what was important, but that backfired spectacularly. Sam chose the navy over his family.

  That was her interpretation. Juliet knew Sam saw things differently.

  CHAPTER SIX

  October 2008, a Friday

  JULIET was nervous. Her palms were clammy, she could feel every beat of her heart pulsing in her throat and her stomach was in knots. Her second round of chemo started today, she was due at the hospital in an hour, but that wasn’t causing her nervousness.

  Sam was back from his six-week exercise in the Timor Sea. He was flying into Melbourne this morning. He was coming to spend a weekend with the children and they were going to a beach house on the coast, but when he’d found out she had an appointment he’d offered to take her to the hospital. He was due to arrive at her house in fifteen minutes and she was getting herself into a right state.

  He hadn’t seen her since the surgery.

  He hadn’t seen her flat-chested.

  He hadn’t seen her since her hair had started falling out.

  Juliet was scared of his reaction. She didn’t expect him to vocalise his thoughts but she was terrified that she’d be able to see them reflected in his eyes. She was afraid she’d see herself reflected there and she was fearful of what that might look like.

  Her own reaction had frightened her at first and she thought she’d been prepared. For twenty-three years she’d been an hourglass shape and suddenly she was a pear, all hips and no breasts. Her tops hung loosely on her frame, making it obvious, in her mind, that something was missing, almost accentuating her new shape. She hadn’t done anything about buying special bras yet, ones that would give her a false profile because she hadn’t thought it was a priority and her chest was still too sore to contemplate the idea of wearing anything firm against it. But now, with Sam’s visit looming, vanity was getting the better of her. She didn’t want to look different, not to him.

  She stood in front of her wardrobe, wrapped in the comforting warmth of her old dressing-gown, as she tried to find something to wear. She grabbed a black shirt dress. She didn’t want to wear anything figure hugging—that would only make things worse—and slipped her arms into the dress, fastening the buttons. The shape was okay but it made her look like she was going to a funeral. Not the look she was after. She took it off and threw it on the bed. She continued to rummage through her clothes, searching for something that made her feel confident.

  The pile of discarded clothes on her bed grew higher. Sam would be there in five minutes. The next thing she found would have to do. She gave up looking through the clothes on hangers and searched the drawers. She found a light woollen top in a navy, grey and white argyle pattern. She grabbed it from the pile, hoping the pattern would cover a multitude of sins, pulled on jeans and a T-shirt and dragged the jumper over her head.

  She glanced quickly in the mirror, still not completely comfortable with confronting her own image. The top wasn’t a bad choice as the pattern did camouflage her flat chest to some degree. Anyway, it would have to do, she was out of time.

  She cleaned her teeth and ran a brush over her hair, trying to ignore the strands of hair that clogged the bristles. In the last week her hair had started to fall out. Not enough that anyone looking at her would notice, but she was finding hair on her pillow in the morning, in the shower and in her brush. She consoled herself with the thought that at least the chemo was targeting cells and she just hoped it was getting the cancer cells too.

  There was a knock on the door. Juliet took a deep breath. She’d had four weeks to get used to her new look and she still found it confronting. How was Sam going to react?

  He wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting to find when he saw Juliet. He’d expected her to look different but he wasn’t exactly sure what changes might have occurred. He’d prepared himself to be surprised, shocked even, but she looked just the same. Her chestnut hair was still long and thick, framing her heart-shaped face. Her blue eyes were enormous in her pale face and her freckles were perhaps more prominent against her skin, but otherwise she still looked like his Juliet. She was still beautiful.

  He stepped through the door and bent down to hug her. His greeting was automatic and it was then that he felt the difference, felt the change. She was skin and bone, the comforting softness of her breasts gone.

  Juliet sucked in a breath, short and sharp, as he hugged her.

  ‘I’m sorry, Jules, did I hurt you? I wasn’t thinking.’ Had he hurt her? He couldn’t believe he’d been so careless—being hugged was probably the last thing she wanted.

  She shook her head as she pulled out of his embrace. ‘I’m fine,’ she said, but he noticed she avoided eye contact. What didn’t she want him to see?

  ‘We’d better go. Parking might be hard to find.’ She turned round to grab her car keys from the hall table and Sam could see the change now. Juliet’s familiar profile had been replaced by one he didn’t recognise. The familiar swell of her breasts had disappeared and in their place was nothing. He’d known what a double mastectomy meant yet he still hadn’t pictured the reality. Hadn’t been able to imagine it. And now he didn’t need to imagine any more; he could clearly see just what this cancer had done to Juliet. He had felt it and he’d seen

  He tried to hide his surprise as she turned back and handed him the car keys. He hadn’t expected such a dramatic change. And if the physical changes were so obvious, what about the emotional strain? How was she coping with that? He knew surgery had been her choice but were the changes worse than she had expected too? How was she managing on her own? Maggie was back in Sydney and Juliet was responsible for the normal family routine again. Was it too much for her? Did she need more support? He didn’t really understand what was involved with regard to her treatment. He knew that the lymph nodes that were excised during the mastectomy had tested negative for cancer cells and that her first dose of chemo had gone smoothly, but he wasn’t up to speed on the process of chemo or the potential side-effects. How much of an effect did the chemo have on her physical capacity?

  Sam knew he had to do something, had to offer some kind of support, but he hadn’t been able to work out what to do or how to do it. He didn’t know what Juliet needed or what she’d accept. He needed more information about what she was going through and how she was coping, starting with what happened today. He took the opportunity to ask questions as he drove her into the hospital.

  ‘Do you see the surgeon today?’ he asked as they waited at a red light at the corner of Swan Street and Punt Road.

  ‘No. Dr Benson is the surgical oncologist, I’ve finished with him.’ She paused. ‘Hopefully. The medical oncologist is in charge of the chemo. That’s Dr Davey.’

  Sam had looked at various websites, trying to find information about chemotherapy, and he tried to recall what he’d read. He didn’t suppose it mattered to him which doctor was which, he just wanted to know what they were going to do for, and to, Juliet. ‘What does he do exactly?’

  ‘One of the first things they’ll do today is take some blood. It gets tested and once the test results come back, Dr Davey will see me and review my treatment.’

  ‘What are they testing it for?’

  ‘To see if my white blood cell count is okay. If it’s too low, it lowers my resistance to infection and they’ll send me home and give me some more time for my count to build up. But I’ve been feeling okay so hopefully I’ll get my second dose. I don’t want any delays, I want to
get this all finished before Christmas.’

  ‘Would you like me to come in with you? Keep you company?’ he asked as he navigated the right-hand turn into Punt Road.

  ‘I’ll be at the hospital for the best part of four hours. You don’t want to sit there all that time, do you?’

  ‘I’ve got no commitments until Kate and Edward finish school and kindy.’

  She didn’t answer immediately. Would she rather be alone?

  In his imagination Sam could picture Juliet sitting in a room full of strangers, everyone hooked up to various machines and monitors, all looking tired and ill. Juliet looked well—if he could ignore the fact she’d lost her curves. She was still gorgeous and he couldn’t imagine her sitting alone in a group of sick people. He didn’t want her to sit there alone. He wanted to be with her.

  Should he have told her that? He wasn’t sure. He didn’t know if she would have felt obliged to let him accompany her and, as much as he wanted to go with her, he didn’t want to put her in a situation that made her feel uncomfortable. He tried a different explanation. ‘I’d like to understand your treatment?if the kids ask me questions about what’s happening it’d help me if I’ve seen what goes on and it would help to clarify things for me.’ He flashed her a smile. He knew how she felt about his smile and he just hoped that hadn’t changed. He knew he wasn’t playing fair, using the children in his bargaining, and hopefully using his smile to his advantage, but he wasn’t sending her in there alone.

  She shrugged and nodded. ‘If you’re sure,’ was all she said in reply. Sam took that to mean yes.

  Juliet directed him to the most convenient parking garage and then led him to the oncology unit. She was signed in and once the nurse collected her it was a slow but steady process through a battery of tests. Juliet introduced him to the nurse as her ‘support person’. He noticed her slight hesitation before she clarified his position and he wondered what she’d been about to call him. He wasn’t sure what he wanted to be but he supposed ‘support person’ was probably the best he could hope for at the moment.