Page 65 of A Wedding in a Week

“What’s that big man smiling at, Daddy?”

I look up to find a family watching from the bench opposite, their ice creams melting in the sunshine, and it’s me—I’m the big man beaming for once outside a building where my heart’s stopped more than a few times before. Now it skips because I know who this grin is down to.

Marc.

I have to tell him, but it’s no easier getting my phone out of my pocket now than at the start of the week. I slip out of my sling to do it, then slip it back on, and perhaps that few extra seconds of wrestling with it is for the best. It gives me time to register what my phone shows me—there are only a few minutes to go until Marc’s due to start his presentation.

It also shows that I’ve missed calls from Lukas, and for once, my brother’s picked the perfect moment to finally surface from Destiny’s bed.

Good. I’ll tell him instead.

I go to return his call, only Lukas calls again before I get to. He also speaks over my greeting, sounding hoarse for some reason.

“Finally, thank fuck.”

He’s also breathless again against a backing track of beeping.

For once, I don’t mentally picture the gym. His tone sets different alarm bells ringing that means I listen harder.

“Stef, where are you?” Lukas asks as I finally grasp what I’m hearing—what I’ve heard during his other phone calls lately—and those alarm bells don’t only ring.

They clamour.

That’s a heart monitor, not a gym treadmill.

Maybe that should make sense given his career choice, but he isn’t due a clinical placement anytime soon, and definitely not in summer when he should be taking a last chance to recharge his weak-heart batteries.

I also realise what’s behind that hoarseness.

He’s scared shitless.

That’s so wrong from him it’s terrifying. I’ve only heard him sound this frightened twice before. Three years after the first occasion, fight or flight kicks in the same way as when he’d run across fields to find me.

This time, I don’t run with him to do heart compressions until the medics stop me, wringing wet with sweat, tears, and that same desperation I know fuels my brother’s studies. Today, I lurch to my feet, remembering the second time I heard him frightened.

The suddenness of my movement scatters pigeons. I don’t register their flutters. Not right away. I only register this awful edge of panic from my brother that I last heard before his heart procedure.

For another heart-stopping moment of my own, the last week comes into a different, deadly focus.

Lukas brought Marc home to help when all we needed was one person to supervise the first cut.

I replay Marc hefting bales my brother would usually insist on trying to tackle. Had Lukas left the heavy work for once because he’d actually been feeling weaker?

He also left the farm in a hurry, calling it a date with Destiny, but he’s been cagey about the details.

I replay each one of our conversations in the space between my brother’s questions, in the space between each beat of my own heart that, like me, is cart-horse strong. Lukas had sworn his heart was strong too now, but this breathlessness was top of the list of heart-failure symptoms that used to be my bedtime reading.

We learned about that too late to help Dad—a symptom he put down to ageing. Mum watched us like a hawk for the same breathlessness until our tests came back. Then she watched Lukas until his repair was completed.

Did Lukas lie about his repair holding?

“Stef,” he asks next, still sounding awful. “Are you with Marc?”

“Marc?”

“Yes. He isn’t answering when I call him. Are you close to him?”

I can’t parse what he’s asking, but like a compass needle, I’m pulled in Marc’s direction while Lukas makes what sounds like a final request. “Can you be with him?”

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