next to useless. To be an efficient doctor was an impossibility when the patient was so close.
And if hard decisions had to be made… if life support systems had to be shut down…
Well, Abbey was coming!
Ryan was so shocked he didn’t speak again until they were halfway to the hospital.
When he did he sounded sick.
‘Tell me Dad’s medical history, Abbey.’
With Ryan’s help, Abbey had hauled herself into the back seat again, her leg stretched out before her. Her position hadn’t been achieved without cost. From the hip down, her leg was starting to ache as it had before the morphine, a dull, rhythmic throb.
‘Don’t you know?’ She shifted and winced.
‘I didn’t even know he had a heart problem.’ Ryan swore savagely. ‘So tell me!’
Ryan didn’t know? Abbey shook her head in concern. How much didn’t he know?
‘Well, Sam’s like Janet,’ Abbey said slowly, ‘only it’s more drastic. He desperately needs by-pass surgery but he won’t have it’
‘Why not?’
Abbey shrugged. ‘He says it’s because he doesn’t want to leave the farm. Myself, I think it’s more than that.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean he’s a lonely old man with no family,’ Abbey said gently. ‘He’s fond of Janet and Jack and me, but we’re all he has and we’re not enough. I don’t think he wants to live to a ripe old age.’
‘But that’s…’ Ryan shook his head. ‘That’s…’
‘Nonsense?’ Abbey shrugged. ‘Well, I guess you’d know better than I do. You’re his son, after all. But, then, you’re his son and you didn’t even know he had a heart condition.’
‘I write.’ Ryan said explosively. ‘I write every week.’
Abbey screwed up her nose. She knew about those letters. ‘Yes, you do,’ she said gently. ‘I’m sure your concern does you credit.’
‘Abbey…’
‘Why has he had a heart attack now?’ Abbey asked, staring into the middle distance over Ryan’s shoulder. ‘Has he been stressed?’
‘How the hell should I know?’
‘There you are, then.’
‘Damn it, Abbey… ’
Abbey ignored his mounting anger. Someone had to lay the truth before Ryan Henry. A letter once a week… Sam had shown her a few. Proudly. And Abbey had felt sick inside when she’d seen them.
They were formal, punctilious letters, describing Ryan’s career, the weather, the news wherever Ryan happened to be in the world. Always a polite enquiry after his father’s health at the end.
They were duty letters. The fact that Sam had been proud of them had made Abbey cringe inside.
‘How was he today, though?’ Abbey probed. ‘Was he happy to see you? Relaxed?’
‘I haven’t seen him yet,’ Ryan said explosively. ‘I hit a bicyclist on the way into town-remember?’
‘Oh, yes.’ But Abbey didn’t sound apologetic in the least. She kept right on probing. ‘So-did he mind when you let him know you’d be late?’
‘I didn’t let him know… ’
Silence.
‘You mean…’ Abbey’s voice grew softer. ‘Ryan, Sam told me he was expecting you about midday. He’s been talking of nothing else for weeks. He’s been talking of his son coming home. Waiting. And what time is it now? Eight? He’ll have been pacing the floor-’
‘I was milking your cows, dammit.’
Abbey bit back her anger with real difficulty. ‘I know and I’m grateful but… Ryan, how long would it have taken you to phone him-to tell him you’d be eight hours late? How long, Ryan Henry? You didn’t even think.’
‘I had to milk your cows. And you didn’t tell me-’
‘I didn’t tell you that your father has a bad heart and you should ring and reassure him?’ Abbey took a deep breath. Her leg was on fire and her anger was building to boiling point. She’d watched Sam Henry pine for his family for almost twenty years and she hadn’t been able to do a damned thing about it. And now Ryan was sitting in the driving seat, practically saying it was her fault Sam had this attack.
She wasn’t going to yell. She wouldn’t!
‘How could I have said that to you without sounding like a patronising adult talking to an uncaring, unthinking child?’ she asked finally, and her voice was deathly quiet. ‘I wish I’d known that’s exactly what you are!’
And after that there was nothing-absolutely nothing-left to say.
CHAPTER FOUR
SAM HENRY was in Intensive Care when they arrived. His worry and anger building to a crescendo, Ryan abandoned Abbey in the car and strode down the hospital corridor fast, the night charge sister by his side.
Ryan looked every inch a doctor, Abbey thought as she watched him go, walking as all hospital staff were taught to move in an emergency. Walk fast-never run. Never risk barrelling into patients and making things worse.
There was more than the way he moved that showed the world Ryan was a doctor, though. Ryan Henry exuded authority and competence. The night sister automatically deferred to him when they arrived, without once looking at Abbey for confirmation of his authority.
All Ryan needed was a white coat and stethoscope hanging around his neck and he might have been the doctor in charge here for years.
He was all doctor, and Abbey hardly knew him. This man she had once known almost as well as she’d known herself…
Once, long ago, Abbey had loved Ryan Henry, she thought sadly as she watched him disappear around a turn in the corridor. The boy Abbey knew had loved his father absolutely and would never hurt him.
Where was the boy Abbey had loved now? Had he disappeared for ever?
It didn’t matter. It couldn’t matter. The old Ryan was part of her childhood. Nothing more.
Abbey had been abandoned in the car in the casualty entrance and now there was nothing to do but wait. Her leg hurt too much to move unless she had to. She knew if Ryan needed her he’d remember her presence and send someone out to fetch her.
In the end, he didn’t need to. The ward attendant came out to move Ryan’s car-and stopped in astonishment when he saw her.
‘Doc Wittner!’
‘Yeah,’ Abbey gave him a reluctant grin. ‘Hi, Ted. Do you think you could help me inside?’
‘Sure.’ Ted stared down at her, his face creasing in concern. ‘But… I didn’t think you were supposed to be here. Aren’t you supposed to be home in bed? Eileen said you’d been injured.’
‘Just a bruised knee. And I want to know what’s going on inside.’
‘Doc Henry’s looking after his father.’
‘Sam’s OK?’
‘I dunno,’ Ted admitted. ‘All I know is they haven’t called me to shift him to a slab yet so that’s gotta be a good sign.’
Abbey grinned. Ted was a wizened Korean War veteran who’d been a semi-invalid ever since. Lonely and miserable all his life, when Abbey had offered him the job as ward attendant he’d been astounded. ‘Who, me? I couldn’t do anything like that in a pink fit.’ It had taken all Abbey’s skills at persuasion to have him give the job a go.
Since then Ted had been Abbey’s most loyal employee. He lived in a tiny apartment at the back of the hospital and the hospital was now his world. But there were no greys in Ted’s world. There was black and white. Dead or
