Take a Chance (6 page)

He joined Jase in biting his tongue when visitors told Jase how lucky he was to have such a generous mother-in-law. They knew better. Coco had caused the problem and had solved it by throwing money at it, something she wouldn’t miss as she had plenty. Heaven forbid she gave something of herself.

It came as no surprise when Aidan was born that Coco had decided to stay in London after no invitation to visit had been forthcoming. Instead she had wanted them to come to her and couldn’t understand why her self-employed son-in-law wouldn’t leave his contracts for a month or why her daughter refused to fly to the other side of the world with two pre-schoolers and an infant on her own while they were in the middle of construction on their new home.

Eben rounded the breakfast bar and came up behind Jem. Her slashes had turned to doodling and he put his hands on her tense shoulders and looked to see what she had drawn. There wasn’t a picture but the o’s in Coco’s name had been turned into a’s. He grinned.

There was a change to her mother’s tone and Jem guessed that Coco’s current husband Phillipe had walked into the room.

“You know I would be there if there was anything I could do to help but
I’ll be busy until I’m back from my cruise. It sounds as though you and Jason’s friend have everything in hand but know that we will be thinking of Jess. I’ll send the card before we leave.”

There was a murmur in the background. Jem heard Phillipe ask if anything was wrong and Coco reply that Jess wasn’t well but Jem was helping her out by looking after the children.

Mistress of the Understatement,
Jem thought in disgust as her mother hung up without a goodbye.

Eben took the phone from her hand and hung it up.

“Is Caca still with the comb-over?” he asked as he turned Jem around to face him.

“Yes,” Jem replied.
“But I think his days are numbered. She’s found an oil baron called Derek.”

She smiled
tightly in return and Eben felt her shoulders tense so left his hands in place and started rubbing the knots he could feel under his thumbs.

“That
will make him husband number what?”

“Not sure. We weren’t invited to the last few weddings so he could be
number seven or eight but then she doesn’t marry them all.”

Coco’s relationships seldom lasted more than a year or two and being fond of whirlwind weddings, she had sometimes forgotten to invite her children. They had found out more than once from the newspaper’s society pages.

“At least he’s a trade-up from Jim,” Eben said, thinking of Jess’s disparaging comments about a past ex-stepfather.

Jim
had owned a large cattle station and probably still did in the middle of nowhere, Northern Territory, Australia. Coco had been attracted to his money and the amount of land he owned until she found herself living on it, almost two day’s drive to the nearest mall. Because of the isolation Jem, Jess and Freddie had all been sent to boarding school in New South Wales. 

During the school holidays
she and Jess had always felt uncomfortable in Jim’s leering presence, something Freddie must have picked up on because he was their shadow while Jim was around.

When Jess
told her father Toka about the situation he insisted upon all three children moving to live with him in New Zealand on a rural sheep farm up the coast from Gisborne. Coco made a token play at wanting custody but didn’t try too hard in case Toka changed his mind.

The culture shock had been big. Suddenly they had been taken from exclusive schools and absorbed into an extended Maori family in a different country. Instead of being expected to keep clean and quiet and out of the way at home while others took care of everything they were now expected to help out.

When Jess’s cousins got into mischief they were looked at sideways if they weren’t participating. Toka’s sisters would cluck their tongues in disbelief when their clothes were still clean at the end of the day and would tease them about not having played hard enough.

From being in a society where you were only accepted on the basis of your pedigree and parent’s earning power to one where you were accepted for being you was heady stuff. It made no difference that Jem and Freddie were not related by blood to Toka and his family. They were included in all the work and the fun that always followed. For the first time in their lives they were all
settled and happy.

It didn’t even bother them that Coco declined having them to stay with her when the next holidays rolled around. By then Coco had left Jim for a Greek olive oil exporter and was busy holidaying on his yacht somewhere.

Jem sometimes wondered how her life would have turned out differently if her father had chosen to take custody of her. Her parents had separated before Coco knew she was pregnant and Coco had contrived to marry Toka less than a year later. It was apparent to anyone with eyes that Toka wasn’t her biological father but that had never mattered to him.

Her father was another story. He had remarried within a few years of his divorce and had another daughter and son. She had visited him a few times when she was younger but the visits had always been uncomfortable for all. He and his wife didn’t like the reminder of his youthful “mistake”. Their contact was limited to sterile letter-less Christmas cards written by his wife that Jem had worked out years ago were only sent after receiving hers.

Eben’s hands stilled on her shoulders.

“Would you like to go and visit Jess? I’ll keep an eye on the kids,” he offered.

Jem turned in his arms to face him. “I’d appreciate that.”

She closed her arms around his waist wanting the comforting contact of a hug. Surprised, it took Eben a moment to return the hug and neither let go. It was the first time in the eight years they’d known each other for her to initiate physical contact with him.

He enjoyed the feel of her in his arms and the homey scent of dinner that faintly competed with the scent of passionfruit from her shampoo. They stood for long moments before Jem reluctantly broke free.

“I’d better go.”

Eben nodded and watched her gather up her shoulder bag and keys then followed her down the hallway where she collected her trench coat from the stand by the front door. He was still looking at the door to the garage that she’d gone through when he heard the exterior garage door rumble shut.

“You’ve got it bad,” he muttered to himself. He turned and faced the family room with a sigh.

“I’ll keep going until I liberate the couch,” he grumbled.

At the hospital Jem had braced herself for Jess’s appearance but was still shocked by the number of monitors hooked up to her sister and the sight of her bruised and bandaged face underneath the ventilator. She felt the back of her nose tingling which meant tears were imminent and sucked in several deep breaths before sitting in the chair beside the bed. She carefully reached for Jess’s hand, the back of which was attached to a drip.

“
Hi there,” Jem said to her sister quietly, conscious of the nurses bustling between the bays attending patients.

Not knowing what else to say she burst out with the first thing she thought of.

“You have to get better. We all need you.”

Despite her best intention
s tears fell from her eyes and Jem placed her free hand over her mouth to stifle a sob. She bit her lip to help her get herself under control, knowing that crying wouldn’t help anyone. On the bedside table she saw a box of tissues and pulled out a fistful which she used to wipe her face and blow her nose.

“Lucky I don’t wear makeup,” she said with forced cheer
to her motionless sister “or I’d be an even bigger mess now.”

From her jeans pocket
her cell phone dinged to indicate a text message had been received. Still holding Jess’s hand, Jem dropped the tissues in her shoulder bag, pulled out her phone and read the message. It was Mark from work wanting information on a potential client that she hadn’t finished compiling the information for. She texted back and told him she’d email the document overnight.

While she did this
someone lifted the chart hooked at the foot of the bed. He made a few notations on the chart then put it back. Then he looked at her, saw what she was doing and frowned.

“Excuse me but you need to have your cell phone turned off in ICU.”

Startled, Jem looked up to see a tall man with closely cropped fair hair wearing a navy pinstripe suit over a grey tie and white shirt looking at her.

“Pardon?”
Jem asked.

“You need to turn off your cell phone in ICU as it has the potential to interfere with the equipment,” he said and indicated a picture on the wall of a red circle with a diagonal line crossing the centre over a picture of a cell phone.

“Oh. Sorry,” Jem said and quickly switched the phone off and stuffed it back in her pocket. “I’ve just got here and hadn’t seen the sign yet.”

Pleased that she was following his directions the man smiled and stepped forward.

“I’m Mr Carstairs the consultant on Mrs Reardon’s case,” he said and offered his hand.

Jem
released Jess’s hand, stood up and offered him her hand in return.

“I
’m Jem Flint, Jess’s sister,” she said.

After shaking hands he stepped back.

“Ah yes, it was you who phoned earlier.”

Jem nodded.

“Would you mind coming with me as I have a few things to share with you,” he said.

Jem looked back at the sight of her
uncharacteristically pale sister on the bed.

“Can’t you tell me here?” she asked.

“I can explain better in my office,” he told her.

Reluctantly she picked up her shoulder bag and followed him past the nurse’s station to a small office just beyond the entrance to ICU. After they were both inside he shut the door behind him and offered her a seat.

Jem sat down feeling worried about what he was going to tell her.

Please tell me she’s going to be okay.

“I’m sorry to take you away from your sister at this time but there is always the chance that she can hear what is being said despite being heavily medicated. I just want to explain how she is at the moment and then you may ask any questions you have.”

Mr Carstairs then proceeded to explain
that Jess would be kept in an induced coma for a day or two to provide relief from the pain of her injuries and give her body time to heal. He gave her details about what the accident had done to Jess and what they had done in surgery to repair the damage but because Jem wasn’t medically trained some of the things he talked about went over her head.

He told her that they were still waiting to receive Jess’s
file from her GP and asked Jem to share any medical information that she knew about Jess. Jem spent the next few minutes telling him things that he scribbled down. When they finished he thanked her and escorted her back to Jess’s bedside.

Jem s
pent the next few hours trying to be cheerful, rambling of inconsequential things while the nurse regularly came in and copied details from the machines to the clipboard hooked on the foot of the bed. She began to feel soothed by the rhythmic pumping of the ventilator and the various bleeps coming from other machines.

A few minutes before eleven o’clock
one of the bleeps became erratic for several moments then continuous. Jem looked up to see a flat line on the heart monitor.

Acting without thinking, Jem reached for the buzzer looped to the bed frame above Jess’s head and held it down. In what seemed like hours but were in fact mere seconds
, two nurses appeared wheeling a trolley between them. Mr Carstairs and another nurse appeared behind them. He started giving directions to the nurses with the trolley while the nurse who arrived with him escorted Jem to a bench near the door of ICU then hurried back to the bay Jess lay in and pulled the curtain around it.

Jem sat on the bench in shock with her hands over her mouth disbelieving what she had seen. Beside her the ICU doors were pushed open and a woman and man in white coats were directed to Jess’s bay by the nurse at the nurse’s station. They briskly
strode over and disappeared behind the curtain.

Although she could not see what was going on, Jem still heard the continuous sound from the heart monitor. She could feel her own heart racing as she silently willed whatever the doctors were doing to work.

Come on Jess. You can’t leave us.

Jem heard a thump then the machine made a couple of bleeps before making a continuous sound again.
She found herself wringing her hands while tense voices behind the curtain issued instructions. The sounds were repeated several times before being broken by an uneven pattern of bleeps.

Had they disconnected the monitor?

Jem sat there anxiously watching feet moving under the curtain surrounding Jess’s bay.

No one is standing still
. That’s a good sign, right?

A short time later the trolley was wheeled out and the two people in white coats followed the nurses pushing the trolley. They didn’t appear to be in any hurry and Jem couldn’t tell from the expressions on their faces whether she was going to receive bad news or not.

Ashen faced, she stared straight ahead, barely noticing Mr Carstairs walking towards her.

I don’t
know if I’m ready to hear this,
she thought as he stopped in front of her.

She looked up
at him anyway.

“Your sister likes to keep us on our toes,” he told her wryly.

Her mouth feeling dry, Jem swallowed.

“She’s okay?” Jem asked.

“I wouldn’t go that far,” Mr Carstairs said “but give her time and we’ll see.”

Jem nodded dumbly.

“You can go back and sit with her if you want,” he said.

She stood and nearly fell over but before she could Mr Carstairs pushed on her shoulders to seat her again then lay the palm of his hand against the nape of her neck and pushed her head between her knees. When he was sure she wouldn’t resist, he took his hand away.

Jem sat there gulping breaths of air between her knees and felt foolish.

“Perhaps you can go in a few minutes when you’re ready,” he suggested as though nothing untoward had occurred.

She bobbed her head.

A nurse who saw what had happened brought over a plastic cup filled with water.

“Have a few sips of this. It’ll make you feel better,” she said kindly and pushed a cool cup into Jem’s hand while her head was still down.

The cool plastic felt soothing in her hand and the cup made a
crinkly sound when she gave it a little squeeze. After a minute when she felt she could sit up without feeling faint she did so and took a sip of water.

Assured she was okay
, Mr Carstairs moved on and the nurse returned to the nurse’s station. Jem drained the cup wishing it had contained something stronger to provide false courage. She was scared to return to her sister’s bedside, fearing she wouldn’t be able to handle something like that happening again.

One minute turned to five and Jem tossed the cup in
to a bin nearby.

You can do this
, she told herself.

She got up and forced herself to put one foot in front of the other until she was once again by Jess.

The luminous numbers of the car clock were coming up to
2.00am as Jem pulled into the garage. She felt completely drained after the events earlier that night. Although Jess hadn’t flatlined again there had still been the odd erratic bleep on the heart monitor which kept Jem on edge.

Dumping her shoulder bag on the breakfast bar in the dim glow
coming from a table lamp in the family room, she tiredly realised she still had that report to prepare and email to Mark before going to bed. With a groan she reminded herself that she had to be up to get the kids ready for school and kindy in the morning. Mentally estimating how long the report would take she hoped that fewer than four hours sleep would be sufficient.

Jem
noticed the pocket doors to the lounge were closed as she walked as quietly as she could through the largely cleared family room. Eben must have spent hours tidying while she was at the hospital.

She
switched off the lamp and slipped into the empty guest room, grateful that Eben had allowed her to have it alone despite his threat of sharing. After closing the door she pulled her old laptop out of her suitcase. It was something she had wanted to upgrade for a while but she kept forgetting to ask Jason for his recommendation since she seldom needed to work remotely seeing as she was no longer a sales rep.

Jason had several computers in his home office she knew he would be happy for her to use but she didn’t want to waste any time finding out whether she would be able to log on or not.
She considered going back into the family room to work but she assumed Eben was sleeping on the couch in the lounge and didn’t want to make any noise which might wake him.

Instead she plugged the laptop into a nearby outlet and sat
near the head of the bed with the laptop on her knees and pillows supporting her back. As she worked she repeatedly drummed her fingers against the edge of the laptop every time she had to wait for the computer to execute an instruction which was unfortunately often.

When she finally finished she set the alarm clock, changed into her nightshirt and wearily slid into
bed. She reached over and turned out the bed light feeling exhausted but she had so many things running through her head she thought she’d never sleep.

The radio on the alarm clock switched on and the room filled with the banter between the DJ and a caller. Jem stifled a groan.
Surely it couldn’t be morning already?
The blankets pulled at her side and the radio abruptly cut off. Had Drongo got on the bed last night and knocked the clock?

Stretching an arm out from beneath the covers she reached across the bed and came up against a large warm object. The contact woke her far more effectively than the clock had. Startled, she looked at Eben who was tucking his bare arms behind his head. The motion knocked the blankets down and she saw his bare shoulders.

Is he wearing anything?

Pulling back she looked at him. He looked as tired as she felt.

“What are you doing in this bed?” she demanded.

“I told you this was my room,” he answered as he absently ran his fingers through his hair.

Her scowl told him she wasn’t satisfied with his explanation.

“I’m not about to sleep in Jase and Jess’s bed and the couch is too short. Besides the kids make too much racket in the morning and
this room is warmer than the lounge and the door can be locked.”

Eben sleepily grinned at her. “I figured that we can both be adult about this and share.”

Jem silently fumed as she reached for her dressing gown and tied it across her short nightshirt. She wasn’t sure what annoyed her most, the fact his argument was reasonable under the circumstances or that his eyes were drifting shut and he didn’t appear interested in ogling her.

Her mood wasn’t much better when she got out of the shower and dressed in the ensuite to find Eben had sprawled in his sleep towards her side of the bed.

He must be really tired. I wonder what he had been doing last night to come to bed so late.

Her eyes swept over the clock near his head and she gave a start when she realised how little time she had left before Jeremy had to be at school. She closed the bedroom door softly behind her and took the stairs two at a time.

Getting the kids ready was a nightmare. Daisy went back to sleep despite being woken twice. When Jem realised she still hadn’t come down she left Jeremy in the kitchen and went back upstairs to supervise getting her dressed. Arriving back downstairs she found Drongo sitting on the bench purring happily as he lapped up the milk Jeremy had spilt while pouring it on his cereal.

“What would you like for breakfast Daze?” Jem asked as she nudged Drongo off the bench and wiped up the milk with a cloth.

“Ice cream,” said Daisy as she plonked herself on the stool next to Jeremy at the breakfast bar.

“Uh uh,” said Jem.
“Breakfast food only.”

“I
never
get ice cream for breakfast,” said Daisy and chose toast instead.

Jem was busy for the next few minutes. She made Daisy buttered toast as requested and cut the slices into little triangles,
not squares
and filled their lunch boxes under Jeremy’s critical eye. Despite protests, his lunchbox included an apple and not nearly as many biscuits as he wanted. Between comments to Jem he still managed to wind up Daisy.

“He’s looking at me, Aunty Jem,” Daisy complained.

“Don’t look at him then,” Jem advised as she wrapped the sandwiches for the lunchboxes.

Jeremy smiled.

“He’s smiling at me,” Daisy complained.

Jem looked up and caught Jeremy changing his expression to one of innocence.

She grabbed his empty bowl. “Go and brush your teeth and do your hair.”

Daisy grinned at Jem’s terse command.

“She’s smiling at me,” Jeremy complained.

“Well you won’t see her from the bathroom,” Jem said as she loaded the bowl and spoon into the dishwasher.

Daisy’s smile went up a notch and Jeremy thumped her on the shoulder as he went past.

“He hit me!” Daisy complained.

Jem belatedly realised the noise the kids were making could wake Eben and decided to give a response which should halt any further escalation of the argument.

“He’s gone now and I’ll step on him like a bug if he annoys you again.”

“Good,” said Daisy.

After putting the lunch boxes and drink bottles into the respective bags Jem raced up the stairs to get Aidan up. When she came down she found Daisy watching TV instead of eating her toast. She switched it off as she walked past.

“Mummy lets us watch TV,” Daisy complained.

“You can watch it if there is time
after
you’re ready for kindy.”

“I
never
get to watch TV.”

Jem gave Aidan his coco puffs and groaned inwardly as he spilt chocolate milk down his top as he drank from the bowl after the cereal was gone. She took him upstairs to change and silently hoped she could get the chocolate milk out of his light blue skivvy.

“Come and brush your teeth,” she briskly instructed Daisy upon her return who instead of getting ready had found her my little ponies and was spreading the herd around the family room.

“I
neve
r get to finish my game,” said Daisy as she reluctantly trudged upstairs.

By the time she got them cleaned, groomed and in the car Jem
glanced at the car clock and was relieved to see they could just make it to school before the first bell. She was even more pleased the children were all still alive. There had been moments...

She turned the key in the ignition as the garage roller door lifted.

“I want to go to the toilet,” said Aidan.

“We’ll go when we get to school,” Jem told him.

“I want to go now!”

With a sigh Jem turned the ignition off and turned to look at the three faces in the back seat. “Anyone else want to go?”

“I do,” said Jeremy and Daisy together.