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‘They say the orthopaedic surgeon’s on his way,’ she whispered. ‘The emergency doctor, Beth, says he’s the best in Australia. He’ll set your leg and you’ll be good as new.’ Please.
‘But I’ll miss the championships,’ Jess moaned, refusing to be comforted.
The championships were the least of their problems, Kelly thought grimly. There was a real risk he’d lose a lot more. Please, let this guy be good.
And then the curtains opened and her appalling day got even worse.
* * *
The last time Matt had seen his brother alive Jess had been in drug rehab. He’d looked thin, frightened and totally washed out.
The kid on the trolley when Matt hauled back the curtain was...Jess.
For a moment he couldn’t move. He stared down at the bed and Jessie’s eyes gazed back at him. The kid’s damp hair, sun-bleached, blond and tangled, was spreadeagled on the pillow around him. His green eyes were wide with pain. His nose and his lips showed traces of white zinc, but the freckles underneath were all Jessie’s.
It was all Matt could do not to buckle.
Ghosts didn’t exist.
They must. This was Jessie.
‘This is Mr Eveldene, our chief orthopaedic surgeon,’ Beth was telling the kid brightly. The situation was urgent, they all knew it, but Beth was taking a moment to reassure and to settle the teenager. ‘Matt, this is Jessie Eveldene. He has the same surname as yours, isn’t that a coincidence? Jess is from Hawaii, part of the pro-surf circuit, and he’s seventeen. And this is his mum, Kelly. Kelly’s not your normal spectator mum. She was Jessie’s treating doctor on the beach. She’s established circulation, she’s put the leg in a long leg splint and she’s given initial pain relief.’
He was having trouble hearing. His head was reeling. What were the odds of a kid called Jessie Eveldene turning up in his hospital? What were the odds such a kid would look like Jess?
Sure, this kid was a surfer and all surfers had similar characteristics. Bleached hair. Zinc on their faces. But...but...
The kid’s green eyes were Jessie’s eyes, and they were looking at him as Jess’s had looked that last time.
Make the pain go away.
Focus on medicine, he told himself harshly. This wasn’t his older brother. This was a kid with a compromised blood supply. He flipped the sheet over the leg cradle and it was all he could do not to wince. The undamaged foot was colourless. He touched the ankle, searching for a pulse. Intermittent. Dangerously weak.
‘We took X-rays on the way in,’ Beth told him. ‘Comminuted fracture. That means there’s more than one break across the leg,’ she said, for Jessie’s benefit. ‘Matt, he needs your skill.’
He did. The leg was a mess. The compound fracture had been roughly splinted into position but he could see how it had shattered. Splinters of bone were protruding from the broken skin.
‘Blood flow was compromised on impact,’ Beth said softly. ‘Luckily Jess has one awesome mum. It seems Kelly was on duty as surf doctor. She went out on a jet ski and got Jess’s leg aligned almost before they reached the shore. The time completely without blood couldn’t have been more than a few minutes.’
So it was possible he’d keep his leg. Thanks to this woman.
He glanced at her again.
Kelly?
It was impossible to reconcile this woman with the Kelly he’d met so briefly all those years ago. This couldn’t possibly be her.
But then her eyes met his. Behind her eyes he saw pain and distress, but also...a hint of steel.
Kelly. A woman he’d blamed...
‘Well done,’ he said briefly, because that was all he could think of to say. Then he turned back to the boy. If they had a chance of keeping this leg, he had to move fast. ‘Beth, we need an ultrasound, right away. Tell Caroline this is priority. This blood flow seems fragile. Jess...’ He had to force himself to say the name. ‘Jess, you’ve made a dog’s breakfast of this leg.’
‘Dog’s breakfast?’ Jess queried cautiously.
‘Dog’s breakfast,’ Matt repeated, and summoned a grin. ‘Sorry, I forgot you were a foreigner.’ Gruesome humour often helped when treating teens, and he needed it now. The anaesthetist needed Jess settled—and he needed to settle himself. ‘It’s slang. A working dog’s breakfast is usually a mess of leftovers. That’s what this looks like.’
‘Ugh,’ Jess said, and Matt firmed his grin.
‘Exactly. We need to pin it back together and make sure enough blood gets through to your toes. That means surgery, straight away.’
The kid’s sense of humour had been caught despite the pain. ‘Cool...cool description,’ he said bravely. ‘Do you reckon someone could take a picture so I can put it on Facebook? My mates will think “dog’s breakfast” is sick.’
‘Sure,’ Beth said easily. She’d stepped back to snap orders into her phone but she resurfaced to smile. Beth had teenage boys of her own. Priority one, Facebook. Priority two, fixing a leg. She waved her phone. ‘I’ll snap it now if that’s okay with your mum. But then it’s Theatre to make you beautiful again.’
‘If your mother agrees,’ Matt said.
Jess’s mother. Kelly. Doctor in charge at the world surf championships.
Kelly Eveldene. The undernourished waif curled up in a funeral director’s parlour eighteen years ago?
The images didn’t mesh and Matt didn’t have time to get his head around it. The boy’s leg was dreadfully fractured, the blood supply had already been compromised and any minute a sliver of bone could compromise it again. Or shift and slice into an artery.
‘You have my permission,’ Kelly said, her voice not quite steady. ‘If it’s okay with you, Jessie?’
What kind of mother referred to her kid for such a decision? But Kelly really was deferring. She had hold of her son’s hand, waiting for his decision.
Jessie. This was doing his head in.
Maybe he should pull away; haul in a colleague. Could he be impersonal?
Of course he could. He had to be. To refer to another surgeon would mean a two-hour transfer to Brisbane.
No. Once he was in Theatre this would be an intricate jigsaw of shattered bone and nothing else would matter. He could ignore personal confusion. He could be professional.
‘Matt, Jessie’s mother is Dr Kelly Eveldene,’ Beth was saying. ‘She’s an emergency physician trained in Hawaii.’
‘Mr Eveldene and I have met before,’ the woman said, and Matt’s world grew even more confused.
‘So it’s not a coincidence?’ Beth said. ‘Matt...’
Enough. Talking had to stop. History had to take a back seat. These toes were too cool.
‘Jess, we need to get you to surgery now,’ he told the boy. There was no way to sugar-coat this. ‘Your leg’s kinking at an angle that’s threatening to cut off blood supply. Caroline Isram is our vascular surgeon and she’s on her way. Together we have every chance of fixing this. Do we have your permission to operate? And your mother’s?’
Finally, he turned to face her.
Kelly Eveldene had been a half-starved drug addict who’d been with his brother when he’d died. This was not Kelly Eveldene. This was a competent-looking woman, five feet six or seven tall, clear, grey eyes, clear skin, shiny chestnut curls caught back in a casual wispy knot, quality jeans, crisp white T-shirt and an official surf tour lanyard on a cord round her neck saying, ‘Dr Kelly Eveldene. Pro Surf Medical Director.’
Mr Eveldene and I have met before.
‘Are you a long-lost relative?’ Jess asked, almost shyly. ‘I mean, Eveldene’s not that common a name.’
‘I think I must be,’ Matt said, purposely not meeting Kelly’s eyes. ‘But we can figure that out after the operation. If you agree to the procedure.’
‘Dr Beth says you’re good.’
‘I’m good.’ No place here for false modesty.
‘And you’ll fix my leg so I can keep surfing?’
Something wrenched in him at that. Suddenly he heard Jess, long ago, yelling at his father over the breakfast table. ‘All I want to do is surf. Don’t you understand?’ And then saw Jessie arriving home from school that night, and finding his board in the backyard, hacked into a thousand pieces.
But now wasn’t the time for remembering. Now wasn’t the time to be even a fraction as judgmental as his father had been.
‘I’ll do my best,’ he said, holding Jessie’s gaze even though it felt like it was tearing him apart to do so. ‘Jess, I won’t lie to you—this is a really bad break, but if you let us operate now I think you’ll have every chance of hanging ten or whatever you do for as long as you want.’
‘Thank you,’ Jess said simply, and squeezed his mother’s hand. ‘Go for it. But take a picture for Facebook first.’
* * *
She’d been a doctor now for nine years, but she’d never sat on this side of the theatre doors. She’d never known how hard the waiting would be. Her Jess was on the operating table, his future in the hands of one Matt Eveldene.
Kelly had trained in emergency medicine but surfing had been her childhood, so when she’d qualified, she’d returned. Her surfing friends were those who’d supported her when she’d needed them most, so it was natural that she be drawn back to their world. She’d seen enough wipe-outs to know how much a doctor at the scene could help. Even before she’d qualified she’d been pushing to have a permanent doctor at the professional championships, and aiming for that position after qualification had seemed a natural fit.
But she’d spent time in hospitals in training, and she’d assisted time and time again when bad things had happened to surfers. She knew first-hand that doctors weren’t miracle workers.
So now she was staring at the doors, willing them to open. It had been more than three hours. Surely soon...
How would Jess cope if he was left with residual weakness? Or with losing his leg entirely? It didn’t bear thinking about. Surfing wasn’t his whole life but it was enough. It’d break his heart.
And Matt Eveldene was operating. What bad fairy was responsible for him being orthopaedic surgeon at the very place Jess had had his accident? Wasn’t he supposed to still be in Sydney with his appalling family? If she’d known he was here she would never have come.
Had she broken her promise by being here?
You keep yourself out of our lives, now and for ever.
She’d cashed the cheque and that had meant acceptance of his terms. The cheque had been Jessie’s insurance, though. Her husband’s insurance. Surely a promise couldn’t negate that.
The cheque had saved her life. No, she thought savagely. Her Jess had saved her life. Her husband. Her lovely, sun-bleached surfer who’d picked her up when she’d been at rock bottom, who’d held her, who’d made her feel safe for the first time. Who’d had demons of his own but who’d faced them with courage and with honour.
‘We’ll get through this together, babe,’ he’d told her. ‘The crap hand you’ve been dealt...my black dog... We’ll face them both down.’
But the black dog had been too big, too savage, and in the end she hadn’t been able to love him enough to keep it at bay. The night he’d died...
Enough. Don’t go there. In a few minutes she’d have to face his brother, and maybe she would have to go there again, but only briefly, only as long as it took to explain that she hadn’t broken her promise deliberately. She and Jess would move out of his life as soon as possible, and they’d never return.
* * *
It took the combined skill of Matt Eveldene, a vascular surgeon, an anaesthetist and a team of four skilled nurses to save Jessie’s leg.
‘Whoever treated it on the beach knew what they were doing,’ Caroline muttered. Gold Coast Central’s vascular surgeon was in her late fifties, grim and dour at the best of times. Praise was not lightly given. ‘This artery’s been so badly damaged I have no idea how blood was getting through.’
She went back to doing what she was doing, arterial grafting, slow, meticulous work that meant all the difference between the leg functioning again or not. Matt was working as her assistant right now, removing shattered slivers of bone, waiting until the blood supply was fully established before he moved in to restore the leg’s strength and function.
If Caroline got it right, if he could managed to fuse the leg to give it the right length, if there’d not been too much tissue damage, then the kid might...
Not the kid. Jessie.
The thought did his head in.
‘I think we’re fine here,’ Caroline growled. ‘Decent colour. Decent pulse. He’s all yours, Matt.’
But as Matt moved in to take control he knew it was no such thing.
This kid wasn’t his at all.
* * *
The doors swung open and Matt Eveldene was in front of her. He looked professional, a surgeon in theatre scrubs, hauling down his mask, pushing his cap wearily from his thatch of thick, black hair. How did he have black hair when Jessie’s had been almost blond? Kelly wondered absent-mindedly. He was bigger than Jess, too. Stronger boned, somehow...harsher, but she could still see the resemblance. As she could see the resemblance to her son.
This man was Jessie’s uncle. Family?
No. Her family was her son. No one else in the world qualified.
‘It went well,’ he said curtly from the door, and she felt her blood rush away from her face. She’d half risen but now she sat again, hard. He looked at her for a moment and then came across to sit beside her. Doctor deciding to treat her as a mother? Okay, she thought. She could deal with this, and surely it was better than last time. Better than brother treating her as a drug-addicted whore.
The operation had gone well. She should ask more. She couldn’t.
There was only silence.
There was no one else in the small theatre waiting room. Only this man and her.
There were so many emotions running rampant in her mind that she didn’t have a clue what to do with them.
‘Define...define “well”,’ she managed, and was inordinately proud of herself that she’d managed that.
‘Caroline had to graft to repair the artery,’ he told her. ‘But she’s happy with the result. We have steady pulse, normal flow. Then I’ve used a titanium rod. You know about intramedullary nailing? There wasn’t enough bone structure left to repair any other way. But the breaks were above the knee and below the hip—well clear—so we’ve been able to use just the one rod and no plates. He has a couple of nasty gashes—well, you saw them. Because the bone fragments broke the skin we need to be extra-cautious about infection. Also Caroline’s wary of clotting. He’ll spend maybe a week in hospital until we’re sure the blood flow stays steady. After that, rest and rehabilitation in a controlled environment where we know he can’t do further damage. You know this’ll be a long haul.’
‘It’ll break his heart,’ Kelly whispered. ‘It’s going to be six months before he’s back on a surfboard.’
‘Six months is hardly a lifetime,’ Matt said, maybe more harshly than he should have. ‘He’ll have some interesting scars but long term nothing a surfer won’t brag about. Depending on his growth—at seventeen there may or may not be growth to come—we may need to organise an extension down the track but the rod itself can be extended. Unless he grows a foot he should be fine.’
So he’d still be able to surf. She hadn’t realised quite how frightened she’d been. She felt her body sag. Matt made a move as if to put a hand on her shoulder—and then he pulled away.
He would have touched her if she’d been a normal parent, she thought. He would have offered comfort.
Not to her.
