Page 27 of A Found Family at the Cornish Country Hospital

Being part of the A&E team in St Piran’s had always felt like finding a second family, but never more so than in the past week. That feeling of closeness also explained why they were all waiting with such anticipation for Danni’s scan results. The baby she and Charlie were expecting was important to the whole team, but Isla couldn’t help wondering how it made Aidan feel to see his friend getting closer and closer to becoming a parent. If he held any bitterness about it at all, he was doing a very good job of hiding it.

Dr Moorhouse, one of the A&E consultants, had been liaising with the neurology team, and Sarah had been given a bed in the Clinical Decisions Unit until they knew a bit more, but Isla was almost certain that Aidan was right about this not being her first seizure. Something was going on, but instead of questioningevery little symptom the way she usually did, Sarah seemed to be in denial. Maybe it shouldn’t have surprised Isla as much as it had. After all, she was doing more or less the same thing herself. With Sarah awaiting her own results in the CDU, Isla was now in the hospital restaurant with her colleagues, grateful for the distraction that Danni’s news would provide.

‘I decided to get four boxes of doughnuts delivered in the end.’ Aidan peered over the top of the stack he was holding. ‘Seeing as so many of us are here for the news.’

‘Has she told you what sex it is?’ Gary, one of the other nurses, looked at Esther as she came into the restaurant. Almost all the A&E staff who’d just finished their shift were there too, plus some of the staff from other departments who were particularly friendly with Danni. They included Gwen, and Gary’s girlfriend, Wendy, who’d recently been promoted to head of housekeeping. Danni had been through a lot before meeting Charlie, and anyone who knew her story wanted to celebrate her good news with her.

‘She texted to confirm that everything is okay with the baby, but I promise I’m none the wiser about anything else, which I’m secretly a little bit miffed about. Especially as I know Charlie promised to ring Joe straight after the scan. Just because he’s away at a conference, I don’t see why he gets to find out first.’ Esther smiled despite her words, and Isla knew that all that really mattered to her was that her best friend’s baby was okay.

‘I just wish my ex-husband would have been as upfront about his baby news. That way, our daughter wouldn’t have needed to find out from another student that her art teacher was having her dad’s baby. Apparently it wasn’t enough that he got caught having sex with one of our neighbours in a garden shed, at a barbecue she and her husband were hosting. As soon as they split up, he started dating a woman thirty years younger than him and within a few months he’d got her pregnant.’ Wendypulled a doughnut out of one of the boxes that Aidan had set down on the table. ‘Sorry, but after the week I’ve had, I need one of these to stop me from punching a wall, or running down my ex in the car he claims he needs more than me. Even now, he’s not man enough to talk to our girls about his new baby and he expects me to pick up the pieces.’

Aidan exchanged a look with Isla, as Wendy shoved almost the whole doughnut into her mouth.

‘Keeping secrets from people who deserve to hear the truth has a way of coming back to bite you in the bum, and I’m sure your ex won’t escape that. In the meantime, you can have my doughnut; I think your need is greater.’ Gwen handed Wendy another doughnut, and Isla caught Aidan’s eye again, but he looked away even more quickly than she could. She was keeping a huge secret and, even though she was certain she was doing it for the right reasons, it still had the potential to hurt the people she loved when it came out. Aidan must have been thinking the same thing and his mouth was turned down at the corners.

‘Here she is, the woman in question!’ Esther ran towards Danni as she came into the restaurant; the baby bump that had been invisible just a week or so before was now becoming more obvious. When Isla looked towards Aidan again, she’d expected him to look even more downcast, being confronted by something that he longed for so much, but he was smiling.

‘You can’t keep us in suspense for a moment longer. There are four boxes of Krispy Kremes we’re waiting to crack open here.’ He looked at Wendy, who’d already broken her second doughnut in half. ‘Wendy just agreed to do a taste test for us, but no one else is allowed to have one until you’ve spilled the beans.’

‘I can’t believe you’ve all stayed on after your shift, just to hear my news.’ Danni was close to tears as she looked around at everyone, and she didn’t quite make it to the end of her nextsentence before she started to cry. ‘But it looks like I’m getting myself another little Charlie!’

There was a chorus of congratulations after that, and within minutes it looked like a swarm of locusts had been set loose on the Krispy Kremes. Everyone was smiling and there was such an upbeat mood in the room that, for a few moments, Isla completely forgot about the fact that in less than forty-eight hours’ time she’d be meeting the haematologist to discuss the result of her tests. Then she spotted Aidan again and this time there was no mistaking the pensive look on his face. So much hung on the outcome of her tests, and it wasn’t only her life that was on hold until she found out what she was facing.

15

The very last person Aidan had expected to see on his doorstep was his sister. When the doorbell had rung, he’d assumed it was another of the million or so things Jase seemed to have ordered online over the last few months. They had more supplements to help improve their fertility and general wellbeing than a health food shop, and enough books about parenthood to fill a whole section of Port Kara’s tiny library. Except this wasn’t just another delivery, this was May, who should have been back home in Ireland, juggling life with three kids and a busy job as the office manager of a transport firm. She didn’t have time to hop over to Cornwall on a whim and Aidan’s heart dropped down to his boots at the sight of her. Something terrible must have happened.

‘What is it? Is it Mammy? Or Da?’ As hard as things had been between Aidan and his father, the thought that the conversation they’d had in the pub might be the last thing they ever said to one another made his chest ache. He’d carried a tiny grain of hope in his heart for most of his life, that one day something would happen to make Sean change, and finally accept his son for who he was. If that hope was extinguished for good, he was goingto grieve for all the things he’d dreamt their relationship might one day be. And if he’d lost his mother, it would break him in a different way. When he’d walked out of the pub, she’d called his mobile, begging him to come back and try to find it in his heart to understand the things that drove his father’s behaviour. But he’d had enough of making excuses for a bigot. Just because Sean had been brought up to believe something, it didn’t mean he couldn’t question it. He could see for himself how much joy Jase brought into his youngest son’s life, and yet he’d reduced the man Aidan loved to nothing more than a housemate. This time, it wasn’t about Aidan, it was about Jase, and that’s why his resolve to walk away hadn’t wavered, even as his mother had sobbed and told him how much she loved him. He didn’t want that to be their last conversation either, because that would mean he’d lost her, but at least he’d told his mother that he loved her too. He’d never exchanged those words with his father and, regardless of the news May was bringing, he was almost certain now that he never would.

‘It’s not about either of them. It’s you, it’s me, and it’s all the things I should have said and done over the years.’ There were tears streaming down May’s face, as she held her arms out towards him. He still didn’t understand why she was there, but he pulled her towards him all the same. He hugged her in the doorway of his house until her tears finally subsided, and she managed to speak again.

‘I’m sorry, I had this big speech all planned, but when I saw you. I just couldn’t get the words out.’

‘Will you come inside, or we’ll be giving the neighbours far too much to talk about.’ Aidan smiled, despite the lump that was lodged in his throat. The air felt as though it was charged with emotion and he still didn’t really understand why she was there.

‘I was starting to wonder if you were ever going to ask.’ May gave him a gentle nudge in his side, as she must have donehundreds of times before. They had always been the closest as kids. Play fighting and pushing one another into the dyke that had run along the back of their garden, whenever they could catch each other off guard, had all been part of that. But that closeness had drifted away after Aidan had left home, and he’d felt as abandoned by May as he had the rest of his family. He’d buried the hurt of that, because he wasn’t sure he could have carried on functioning if he’d given those feelings air and allowed them to be as raw as they’d been in those first few years.

Aidan put the kettle on, after he’d shown May into the sitting room, which was filled with photographs of Jase’s side of the family. While he was waiting for the kettle to boil, he fired off a quick text to his husband.

You’re never going to believe it, but May has turned up at the house. I’m not sure what’s going on, but she keeps apologising. I’ll be on my way in for the night shift by the time you’re home from work, but I don’t know if she’s got anywhere to stay. Is it okay with you if she stays here, if she needs to? I know it might be awkward, since you hardly know each other, but I can’t just send her away. Love youxxxx

More often than not, Jase seemed to spend his entire working day in meetings, so Aidan had no idea when he’d pick up the message, but by the time he dropped two teabags into mugs, his phone was pinging with a response.

Of course she should stay with us. Oh my God, I can’t believe she’s actually here! I love you so much and whatever she’s come to say, I want you to remember that. Call me when you canxxxx

Sending a single love heart in response, Aidan set down the phone and breathed out. Whatever the reason for May’s visit, and however difficult it might be to hear what she had to say, it would be okay because Jase would be his rock, the way he always was.

In the end, it took half an hour for his sister to tell him all the reasons she was there. May had talked almost non-stop, all the guilt she felt tumbling out as tears streamed down her face and she refused to let him comfort her. She talked about how she should have supported Aidan when he came out, and stood up to their father when he’d spouted his venom about the life Aidan was living, and most of all her regret at not being there when he married Jase. He’d told her that it didn’t matter, but she’d picked up a photograph from the day, of Aidan and Jase, with Tash sandwiched between them, as they each planted a kiss on her cheeks.

‘This is Jase’s sister, isn’t it?’ May’s eyes were glassy as she looked up at him and he nodded. ‘I should have been there, and no excuse I try to make about being busy with the kids will ever allow me to forgive myself for missing the most important day of your life.’

‘Like I said, it doesn’t matter, we’ve got a chance now to forget that and move forward.’ He reached out for her hand, but she shook her head.

‘It does matter! That was the biggest moment of my little brother’s life, and I couldn’t make the effort to be there for you,because I was so bloody worried about disappointing Da.’ May balled her hands into fists. ‘I hate that I can’t undo it, but my God, things are going to change from here on out, I promise you that. And it’s not just me. I’ve never seen Mammy as angry as she was the day you left the pub. She was inconsolable, shouting at Da and telling him she’d leave too if he didn’t stop driving a wedge between you and the family. He expected me to take his side, but I told him I was done being the daughter he wants me to be and that I wish I’d never tried, because there’s nothing I regret more than losing the closeness you and I always had. Niall stood up for you too, asking Da if he wanted what happened to Cian to happen to you. I thought Da was going to hit him, but then he just stormed out.’

‘It means a lot that you all tried so hard, but nothing’s going to change him, May.’ Aidan moved to take her hand again, and this time she let him. He wasn’t sure he’d ever felt such a mix of emotions in his life. The idea of two of his siblings and his mother, standing up to a man whose word had always been law in their house, filled him with the kind of warmth he hadn’t felt towards his family in years. Yet there was still an aching void, in the place his father’s love and acceptance should have occupied and it was the kind of emptiness that nothing else could ever really fill.

‘Maybe not, but there’s no way I’m going back to how things were before I spoke my mind, and I don’t think there is for any of the rest of the family either. He’s in danger of losing us all if he carries on, and there’s something else I need to say.’ As May held his gaze, the feeling of dread he’d experienced when she’d arrived on his doorstep rose up inside him again. ‘Mammy told me about you and Jase wanting to start a family, and I found your journey to parenthood page online, where you were talking about looking for a surrogate. I want to do it for you, carry the embryo that the two of you create. I know I’m not as young as Iwas, but I can still carry a baby. I’ve done loads of research, and even grandmothers have carried their grandchildren, when their daughters couldn’t for some reason.’

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