Jonas.
And her blasted emotions were stirred all over again.
‘What have you done with the kids?’ she asked. She raised her eyebrows at Jonas, and then smiled down at Anna in mock indignation. ‘He’s a fine babysitter, I don’t think.’
But Jonas was indignant in his turn. ‘I haven’t abandoned them. Jim’s taken them out for pizza.’
‘Jim?’ Em’s eyebrows rose still further. ‘Jim Bainbridge?’
To her surprise-and delight-a faint trace of colour was sweeping over Anna’s pale face. Well, well. So it wasn’t all one way.
‘He offered,’ she said defensively. ‘And the kids know him. He just lives over the back fence. He…’ Her colour mounted still further. ‘He came up to Blairglen but I didn’t want to see him. Then he waited for a couple of hours to see me here. In the end, I had to say I’d see him. And he wanted to do something so much.’
‘I think it’s a fine idea,’ Em said soundly. She picked up Anna’s observation chart to do a quick check and smiled down again at her patient. ‘Sometimes it takes courage to accept that people want desperately to help. I think, often, it’s easier to be the giver than the receiver.’
Anna nodded. ‘I’m not used…to receiving.’
‘Now, how did I guess that?’ Another smile, this time including Jonas. ‘These obs are good. The trip here doesn’t seem to have upset you too much. Everything’s looking fine, Anna. Now I’ll leave you with your brother,’ Em said gently, but Anna shook her head.
‘I’d like Jonas to leave, too,’ she said. ‘Please… I want to be alone.’
‘She always wants to be alone.’
Back in their shared living room, Jonas was pacing like a caged tiger, his frustration showing. ‘Hell. How can I let her see how much I want to be near?’
Em watched him pace. Robby had just woken and she was cuddling him. The baby was crooning his happiness to be reunited with her and she was undergoing all sorts of pain herself-but she felt for Jonas.
And she also felt for Anna.
‘Your parents hurt her badly,’ she said softly. ‘As they hurt you. She’s learned the hard way to be independent.’
‘If I was in this situation-’
‘Would you depend on other people?’ She looked at him thoughtfully. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘Of course I would.’
‘Emotionally?’ She rose and hugged Robby tighter. The baby snuggled against her breast, and Em’s heart twisted. ‘I’m not sure whether you know the meaning of the words emotional dependency.’ She certainly did.
But Jonas was turning on her, confused. ‘I don’t know what you’re trying to say.’
‘Of course you don’t.’ She took a deep breath, trying to figure the best way to say it. ‘Jonas, do you need Anna?’
He stared at her blankly. ‘She’s my little sister.’
‘I know that. But do you need her? Have you ever shown her that?’
‘I don’t need her,’ he said, his voice still uncomprehending. ‘Of course I don’t. I’ve always been the strong one.’
‘Because you’ve had to be. But emotional dependency works both ways.’ She took a deep breath and looked down at Robby. ‘Take me and Robby.’
‘Now, that’s another thing-’
‘Robby needs me,’ she said, ignoring the interruption. ‘At least, he needs someone to love him to bits. Which I could do so easily. But I have the honesty to acknowledge that I need Robby, too.’
‘You don’t need Robby. He’s a baby.’
‘But he gives.’ Em looked down at the child in her arms and her face changed. ‘Every time he grins at me, every time I have to hurt him when I change his dressings or massage his little limbs, and he doesn’t cry because he knows if I hurt him a cuddle will follow, every time he snuggles into me-that need grows. That’s the sort of need I’m talking about. I’m talking about love, Jonas. Anna has learned to survive without it. And I think…so have you.’
‘That’s ridiculous.’
‘No. It’s the truth.’ A knock sounded through the house and she sighed and put her emotions on the back- burner. ‘This’ll be Jim, bringing the children home. He’s another one like me. Who loves-and needs-and who doesn’t stand a donkey’s chance of being loved and needed in return.’
Jonas stared at her blankly, not having the faintest clue what she was talking about. He was so blind! ‘You’re over-dramatising.’
But as Em went to answer the door she knew she wasn’t.
She loved and needed. And she was desperate to be loved and needed in return.
And it wasn’t just the little boy in her arms who was engendering these dangerous emotions.
It was Jonas Lunn!
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE days after Anna’s operation became a week. And then two.
Work and domesticity settled into a pattern Em found almost acceptable-if only her stupid emotions didn’t get in the way.
Once Anna’s drainage tube came out, she was allowed home. Her children went with her. She refused to let Jonas stay with her-he stayed on with Em, whether Em thought it was wise or not-but Anna
That was something, at least, Em thought. The prickly Anna of old wouldn’t even have allowed that.
And as for Jonas…
Jonas was frustrated with the little help he could give his sister. There was so little he could do!
He did insist on spending time each day with Ruby and Sam and Matt, using his wish to establish bonds with them as a way to give Anna much needed child care. He also threw himself into working for the town. He did what he could.
For both the women he was helping…
At least Em was a skilled doctor, he thought as he worked on beside her. He could trust her to look after Anna. And at least, with him staying on as her temporary partner, she had time to do it properly. Do house calls. Care…
She would have done it anyway, he knew, but in the equation without him, there would have been no time at all for Robby, or for Em herself.
She would have worked herself into a breakdown.
It wasn’t that she was driven to work, he decided, although he knew doctors who were consumed with their jobs. Em wasn’t like that. She simply found it impossible to reject pleas for help. She never said no, and it made no difference how tired she was, or how long the queue waiting in the surgery.
So he’d saved her from that-temporarily-but the more he saw of her-the more he saw of her medicine and her caring-the more he wondered how he could possibly leave at the end of Anna’s radiotherapy.
An idea was starting to stir and shift at the back of his mind…
Physically, Anna was recovering brilliantly, though neither Jonas nor Em were so sure about emotionally.
Anna read all the literature, and then deliberately left it behind in the hospital. Well over ninety percent survival, the books said, which backed up what the doctors had told her. She could live with that. Sure, the oncologist had said her chances would be even better if she had chemotherapy, but that meant months of depending on others for help, and she rejected it out of hand.
So live she did, but on her own terms. She went about organising the radiotherapy but, despite Jonas’s offer to rent an apartment in Blairglen for them all, she made the decision to travel to Blairglen every day.
‘So I can still be independent. Lori will look after the kids during the day and I can still be with them at