Page 64 of Prognosis So Done

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR - 0600 HOURS

Gill sat on the edgeof his bed beside his packed bag. He held his copy of the divorce papers in his hand. He was staring so hard that the words irreconcilable differences duplicated

themselves before his tired eyes. Harriet’s bitter don’t bother echoed through his head.

He’d had a good hard think about his life since Harriet had

asked him to go. He didn’t want this. He’d never wanted it, had only signed the damn papers because she’d wanted it. But the events of the last twenty-four hours had made him reassess

their supposed differences.

So much had happened in such a short space of time. It was like each thing that had happened had been part of some grand plan, bigger than him, to make him see the error of his ways. Unbeknownst to him, each wake-up call had given him a piece of a

puzzle. A puzzle that he hadn’t been able to figure out until all the pieces were in place.

His first wake-up call had been the divorce papers. After two months when he had thought they’d been reconciling, the paper had come as a surprise. They’d made him really look hard at the things Harriet had been asking of him over the last two years. And had made him question the strength of his beliefs.

Were they really worth losing Harry over?

Next had been his grandfather falling ill. The news that his fit and healthy grandfather had succumbed to a massive heart attack had been a shock. He’d always seemed larger than life, like he’d live for another eighty years. But...he was old and Gill realised that he’d neglected his family over the last decade.

Sure, his grandfather didn’t mind in the least, was proud

of his humanitarian-minded grandson and encouraged him to continue the aid work. But family was important, too, and it had taken this one last day to make him realise that.

Next had been Nimuk. The baby’s death had affected them all but particularly Harriet. Her distress had reached inside and clawed at his gut. But more surprisingly had been the way he’d identified with the mother. Looking at her, mute with grief, had scared the hell out of him.

The emotional vulnerability of parents was frightening. A fact that he’d confronted a mere two hours ago when he’d been unable to protect his unborn baby.

And then a really startling wake-up call. The death of Peter Hanley and the aid team, shot out of the sky by the very people they were here to help. It was easy to forget his job was dangerous. Potentially, anyway. He’d never felt unsafe, or rarely anyway, but a tragedy like that brought the safety issue into the spotlight and Harriet’s worry about him continuing his work in such areas had made him think more seriously about the dangers.

After that, there had been Gillian.

Wake-up call number five. Puzzle piece number five. His reaction to seeing Harriet holding the newborn had been unexpected. Suddenly, out of the blue, he’d been able to see her holding their child. A child he’d been fighting with her about for two years. A child he’d had no interest in.

But he had passed Gillian to her and he had seen the whole fairy-tale. He’d seen what happened after happily ever after. And it hadn’t been awful.

In fact, it had looked kind of nice.

And then the biggest wake-up call of all. Harriet. Even thinking back now to how much blood there had been and how another ten or fifteen minutes down the track and she could have been dead was unbearable. And knowing that somewhere in all the blood had been the fragile cells of new life that he and Harry had made together.

A child he hadn’t even known about, but its embryonic death and having to excise it from her body had left him with a deep, deep sadness. And worse, a gut-wrenching helplessness. The sort he had seen on the face of Nimuk’s mother.

And afterwards, when Harriet had been so distressed and angry, lashing out at him because he had done his job, no matter how much he wished it hadn’t been his to do. Her angry since when have you cared had really hit home.

Since the divorce papers and his grandfather and Peter and Nimuk and Gillian. Since being inside her, her blood everywhere, scared that she could die and feeling so helpless that he hadn’t been able to keep his baby safe.

He cared. It’d just taken an extraordinary amount of wake-up calls.

But he was fully awake now - despite being up all night. More awake than he’d ever been. The puzzle pieces had fallen into place. He wanted a baby with Harriet. He wanted to watch her flat belly burgeon as their child grew inside her. He wanted to deliver it. He wanted to watch her breast-feed. He wanted to bath and play and rock their baby to sleep.

He wanted it all.

And he knew it would be more difficult for them to conceive now. But it didn’t matter. Whatever it took. Fertility treatments. IVF. Hell, they’d adopt if conception wasn’t possible.

But he wanted it all. The whole fairy-tale. The bit that came after the happily ever after.

Hang the 2 a.m. feeds and the botched social life and the absent sex life. They’d slept enough hours and they’d gone to enough restaurants and they’d had more sex in seven years than most people had in a lifetime. There was a time for those things and there was a time to settle down and reproduce, and he felt the urge grow stronger with each passing minute.

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