Page 40 of A Found Family at the Cornish Country Hospital

‘I don’t think anything could make us feel better after that.’ Joe swallowed so hard Aidan heard it. ‘I wish we couldhave done something more. It seems impossible to think he was standing there one minute, talking to Chooky about his daughter’s next appointment, and the next he was just gone.’

‘Hopefully he didn’t know anything about it.’ Aidan was desperately searching for a tiny ray of light in the midst of something so awful as they all sat around a table in the hospital restaurant, half an hour after Mark’s body had been removed from The Sycamore Centre.

‘His daughter did though.’ Isla’s voice was small, and she was biting her lip as Aidan reached out to take her hand, hoping it might offer some kind of comfort.

‘That’s the worst part of it all. She’s got a lot going on with her mental health as it is, and this is going to be really tough.’ Chooky wrapped her hands around the tea she’d abandoned moments earlier. ‘It’s so unfair.’

‘It is, but it’s really made me think.’ Joe adjusted the position of his glasses. ‘I’ve been doing my best to be sensible and wait whatever the allotted amount of time is supposed to be before asking Esther to marry me, but I don’t want to do it any more. After what happened with Lucas, I promised Danni I wouldn’t rush things and put any pressure on Esther to take a next step she might not be ready for. But how can I know if I don’t ask? I don’t want to miss out on having a single day I could have had with her. My sister might not be very happy, but I’m going to ask Esther to marry me. I’ll just tell her that she can say no as many times as she likes until she’s sure she’s ready.’

‘That’s great, Joe!’ Aidan clapped his friend on the shoulder. The pain Esther’s ex-fiancé had caused her was the stuff of legend around the hospital, but it was easy to see how happy Joe made her. And sometimes you just had to ask the question, even if you couldn’t be certain you’d like the answer. As Aidan looked at Isla, he knew there was a question he needed to ask her too, but now wasn’t the time to put her on the spot. They neededprivacy to talk about it, and she needed time to really think about her answer. For now, he’d have to try and find the words to help her realise that whatever she decided would be okay with him. The words he was about to say were directed at Joe, but he hoped the sentiment resonated with Isla too. ‘Sometimes you have to be honest about what you want, even if that means going back on an agreement you made when things were different.’

An unreadable expression crossed Isla’s face as he spoke, and he put his arm around her, hugging her tightly, hoping she’d understood what he meant, and silently praying he hadn’t thrown away the best chance there’d ever be for him and Jase to become parents.

23

Isla had seen patients younger than Mark die before, and it was always hard to get that image out of her mind, but the reason she knew she’d never be able to forget him, was because she could still hear the sound of his daughter sobbing when she got back to her flat. She’d cried until she felt as though she had no tears left, when her own father had died, and she’d known his death had been inevitable, although sooner than they’d expected. But there hadn’t been heart-wrenching shock to accompany the pain of losing him. For Mark’s daughter it would be different. His death had been completely out of the blue; her father was there one moment, and then just gone, without any warning. It was no wonder witnessing that had made Joe rethink his own life, and reassess his priorities.

It had made Isla think too. As an A&E nurse, she knew that tomorrow wasn’t promised to anyone, but since her diagnosis she’d forgotten that, and she’d suddenly felt as though she was the only person in the world who had no guarantees for the future. But that wasn’t true, and in the wake of Mark’s death, when her thoughts had returned to his daughter again and again, she realised that what she wanted was a partner anda family of her own, despite her fears. Her grandmother had always said that grief was the price of love, but it was a price she’d been willing to pay ten times over to have had her son. Isla hadn’t really understood it before, but to have been loved the way Mark and her father were loved, meant they’d had lives worth living, even if they’d been cut far too short. And she didn’t want to miss the chance of building her own family with someone she loved that much.

It had made her realise something else; she’d been living half a life for far too long and fear had made her self-sabotage her own happiness. She’d been so scared of loving someone new, in case she lost them, but what was the point of a life without people to love? She had to stop living in fear and she had to find a way to stop living for everyone else too. Maybe it was time to get selfish and work out what she really wanted and how to get there. It sounded easy in principle, but letting go of long-held fears wasn’t something that could happen overnight, and she still didn’t know if she could tell her family about her diagnosis. At least not yet. The anger she felt about having CML kept bubbling close to the surface, and sometimes she felt as if she was trapped in a maze, trying to work out how to move in the right direction, but finding barriers in her path at every turn. She couldn’t help wondering if it would be easier trying to navigate all these difficulties with someone by her side, but when she thought about that she could only picture one person. And Reuben didn’t need her dropping her messy life into his lap. She had to work this out herself, and stop pretending she was happier hiding from the prospect of love, just because of the risk it brought.

The chance to build a family was what Aidan and Jase wanted too. But she’d heard what Aidan had said about people needing to do what was right for them, even if it meant going back on an agreement. He obviously didn’t want Isla to gothrough with the egg donation; he’d said as much to Tash on the night of the barbecue, but he was too nice to come out and say it. So she was going to make it easy for him and Jase and give them the chance to walk away without having to be the ones to pull the plug on the process. All she had to do was tell them that she’d changed her mind, and to promise to find a way to repay them for the treatment she’d had so far, and the cost of freezing her eggs. She could stop the treatment and talk to her consultant about the possibility of a referral to an NHS-funded clinic, but that would have made everything that had happened so far completely pointless and it would delay her starting the inhibitors for even longer. At least this way she might eventually be glad she’d made the decisions she had. It sounded so logical when she thought of it like that, and she had no idea why it felt as though she was grieving the loss of something she loved.

Within an hour of getting home from work, Isla had started a loan application – she wanted to have all the plans in place when she told Aidan she wouldn’t be going ahead. Making it business-like was the best chance she had of taking the emotion out of it, but her head already ached from trying not to cry again, and she had no idea how she’d get through the conversation when she was face to face with Aidan.

She was just trying to calculate the sum of her total monthly outgoings, the spreadsheet swimming in front of her eyes, when there was a knock at the door. It was already eight-thirty, so it wouldn’t be a visitor. It was probably just the pizza delivery guy, getting confused by the numbering system in the chapel flats again.

‘Reuben.’ Seeing him standing there took her breath away, and not just because she was so surprised that it was him.

‘Sorry, I know it’s late just to drop by, but I was passing and…’ He shook his head. ‘That’s a lie. I wasn’t passing at all. I knew you were working today, and I was at Aidan and Jase’shouse when he got in. He said you’d both had a tough day and I wanted to check you were okay. I thought if I called first, you’d just say you were fine.’

‘I’ve been doing that a lot, haven’t I?’ There was something about him that made it almost impossible to keep up the pretence and, when he nodded, she stepped back and opened the door a bit wider. ‘Come in.’

‘I’ve bought you some sunflowers, and some strawberries. Nan made you a lemon drizzle cake she wanted me to drop round, and you left the cup she bought you behind.’ Reuben set everything down on the kitchen counter, and Isla picked up the mug.

‘I can’t accept this.’

‘I know it’s probably a bit cheesy, but she means well.’

‘No, it was lovely.’ Isla dug her fingernails into the palm of her hand to distract herself from the emotion bubbling up inside her again. She had to convince him that the decisions she’d made were what she wanted, and he was never going to believe that if she started to cry. ‘It’s just that what happened today made me realise some things. I can’t go ahead with the egg donation, because it’s not what Aidan and Jase want…’

‘What do you mean it’s not what they want?’ He furrowed his brow. ‘They’ve barely talked about anything else since you made the offer.’

‘But things changed when I was diagnosed. I tried to pretend they hadn’t, but the truth is they changed for me too, and I don’t think it’s what any of us want any more. I heard Aidan telling your mum that they were having doubts.’

‘They’re probably just worried about you, and I know they’re happy to wait until you’re sure you’re ready.’

‘I know, but my head’s such a mess at the moment, and I’ve probably attached too many of my hopes for the future to Aidan and Jase’s plans. It started to feel like it might be my only chanceof ever having a baby. I don’t know if that’s what freaked them out or not. But if it didn’t, it should have, because if I’d said that to the clinic they’d never have let me go ahead.’ Isla gripped the handle of the mug, enjoying how sturdy it felt.

‘Anyone would have been knocked sideways by what you’ve been through.’

‘One day I’m certain of what I want and what I think, and the next day I’m not.’

‘Are you still talking about the egg donation?’ Reuben’s eyes never left her face, and a huge part of her wanted to say that her feelings for him were the one thing that hadn’t wavered. But she’d meant what she’d said about him deserving more than to be caught up in the chaos.

‘I don’t want Aidan and Jase to wait around while I see if I can sort my head out, and go back to being the person I was before I had my diagnosis. And I don’t want you to have to do that either.’

‘I didn’t even know the person you were then. It’s the you now that I want to be with, however messy that might be.’ He was so close she could have reached out to him, and made everyone and everything disappear again, but it would all still have been waiting for her on the other side. It wasn’t fair to drag him along for the ride. If they’d been together years when she was diagnosed, it would have been different. Relationships were all about accepting the bad times as well as the good. But right now, she wasn’t sure she could offer him anything good.

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