Page 5 of A Found Family at the Cornish Country Hospital

‘I know, because I’ve been looking into it for almost a year, and I’ve joined all kinds of forums.’ Isla was still holding his gaze, and he wasn’t sure he’d have been any more shocked if she’d suddenly peeled back the skin on her face and revealed an entirely different person underneath. ‘I said I didn’t have any interesting secrets, but I suppose there is one. My dad was born with the gene that meant he’d eventually develop Huntington’s disease and he had a 50 per cent chance of passing it on to any children he had. So, when he and Mum decided to start a family, they chose to use a sperm donor to conceive me and my sister. It would have been Dad’s sixtieth birthday this week, and I’ve been thinking for the last year about how I wanted to mark it. And I decided a while back that donating eggs to someone who might be in a similar position, or who was struggling to conceive, would be a lasting legacy for my dad, something that repays the debt and honours the choices he made. I know all the implications and all the risks, but I still really want to do it. My only concern was not knowing who’d be raising any childthat might be conceived, or how I’d navigate a relationship with the parents, if the child wants to get in touch when they reach adulthood. But, if it was you and Jase, that last barrier would be taken away. I knew you were going to use a surrogate, but I didn’t know until today that you were planning on using donor eggs. I wish I could be braver and offer to be your surrogate, too, but the women on Mum’s side of the family always seem to have horrendous labours! I really want to donate my eggs and, if you’d be okay with using mine, I’d love to do it for you and Jase.’

‘Oh my God, yes!’ All through her explanation, Aidan had been reminding himself not to get carried away, and to talk to Jase first, but the adrenaline had been running through his veins so fast he could hardly catch his breath. This could be everything they’d hoped for and more, the answer to a huge part of their prayers, and suddenly he was nodding, and crying, and pulling Isla in for a hug all at the same time. There was still a really long way to go, and finding a surrogate was probably the biggest part of the jigsaw. But knowing that someone as sweet and kind as Isla wanted to be a part of the process, suddenly made it feel like it really might happen. He just had to hope that Jase would be on board with the idea too.

3

Isla had been so close to telling her mother and sister about her plans to be an egg donor on her father’s sixtieth birthday. Her grandparents had gone out to the kitchen to open a bottle of champagne for the toasts, and Lexi’s husband was doing the same on their side of the Atlantic. So it was just Isla and her mother and sister on the video call for a few moments. It was the perfect opportunity to have the conversation she wasn’t even sure why she’d been putting off. But then Lexi had said something during the virtual celebrations that had stopped Isla in her tracks.

‘You’ll never believe what’s happened to one of the women in my antenatal exercise class.’ Lexi had been balancing a paper plate with a piece of cake on it, on the top of her already obvious baby bump, when she spoke. ‘She agreed to be a surrogate for her best friend, but the friend has now split up with her husband and has decided she doesn’t want to be a single mum. She doesn’t want the baby and now Misty is seven months pregnant, and has no idea what to do.’

‘Oh my God!’ Their mother, Clare, clearly hadn’t heard the story before either. She might have been thousands of milesaway, but her shock had been tangible. ‘How could anyone turn their back on a baby like that?’

‘It’s even more complicated because carrying the baby automatically makes Misty the mother, as far as the law is concerned, even though she doesn’t have a biological link to the child. It’s such a mess.’

‘I’m just so glad the law was different when we had the two of you.’ Clare had taken Lexi’s hand, reaching out to place her other hand against the iPad screen propped up in front of her, as if she could physically connect with Isla too. ‘I never had to worry about the donor being a part of our lives. It’s so much trickier now. I admire anyone who’s willing to be a donor, but I’m not sure we’d still have done things the way we did, if the law had been like that then.’

Lexi had nodded in agreement, and revealed more details about just how devasted her friend, Misty, was. The news that Isla had been so desperate to share had died in her throat. She couldn’t tell her mother that she was planning to donate her eggs after what she’d said. It was a world away from being a surrogate, but Clare had always been a worrier. She’d done her best to wrap both girls up in cotton wool their whole lives, terrified that she might lose them, especially when she’d known she was going to lose the love of her life. Clare had asked the girls to promise they’d never join a DNA website that might uncover who their biological father was. Sperm donation had been anonymous at the time of their conception, so a site like that was the only possibility of discovering where half their genes came from. It had been an easy promise for Isla to make, and she was pretty certain it had been just as easy for her sister. Nick Marlowe was their dad, and Isla had no desire whatsoever to discover the man who’d helped him become a father. Now things were different, and she could understand her mother’s concerns, but being an egg donor was nothing like as much of acommitment as being a surrogate. She’d just have to wait until another time to mention it, when Misty’s story wasn’t so fresh in her mother’s mind.

Isla had been sent a health assessment by the fertility clinic, and was due to have a session with their counsellor to discuss the implications of egg donation in the next week. If the counsellor signed her off as being ready to donate, there’d be a screening process with blood tests for genetic conditions and infections. It had felt like she was already a long way into her journey with the clinic she’d chosen, but the conversation with Aidan had thrown all of those plans into question. She hadn’t hesitated in making the initial offer. It had seemed so natural, such an obvious solution to Aidan’s dilemma, and something that might even calm her mother’s fears. Her friendships with the whole A&E team were growing quickly. She’d built a particularly good relationship with Amy, one of the other nurses, but Aidan was someone everyone wanted to be around, and he’d made sure she felt welcome in the team from the beginning. He was funny, even on the toughest days, and could find something positive in every situation. It must have been so hard for him to hear how easy it was for Danni to fall pregnant, but he didn’t let it show, and the joy he had for his friend had been obvious.

But, by the time she’d got home, she’d started to wonder if maybe she’d been too hasty. Fertility treatment was hugely demanding physically and emotionally, which could put strain on any relationship – let alone a new friendship like hers and Aidan’s. She couldn’t imagine him blaming her if it didn’t work out, but no one could really be sure how they’d react in a situation like that. Then there were the implications if Aidan and Jase were lucky enough to become parents. Would they want Isla to have some part in their child’s life? Or would they cut her out completely, not wanting to risk a bond developing that they might feel uncomfortable with. Those were all the things theyshould have spoken about, long before she opened her mouth and made an offer it now felt impossible to take back. But it was too late for that, and all she could do was hope that she wouldn’t live to regret it, anywhere near as much as Lexi’s friend had.

Fortunately, work provided the perfect distraction from all her worries, as it almost always did. And, two hours into her shift, Isla had decided she was getting too far ahead of herself, worrying about things that would probably never happen.

‘Sarah Vardy is in again.’ Amy frowned as the double doors that separated the waiting area from the rest of A&E closed behind her. ‘It’s retinal cancer this time, apparently. She’s been triaged and told to wait until she’s called, but she’s refusing to move away from the reception desk, and she keeps knocking on the glass, telling them she needs to be seen before she goes blind.’

‘Oh God. What are her symptoms?’ Isla could guess even before Amy answered that there’d be a very long list. Sarah Vardy was one of their ‘regulars’. Every emergency department had them, and every ambulance crew did too. The root of the issue for most regulars was poor mental health, and Sarah had health anxiety and carcinophobia: a crippling belief that she was suffering from cancer, which no amount of tests seemed to alleviate. Her records showed regular visits to A&E throughout her adult life, but the carcinophobia seemed to have escalated at around the time St Piran’s had opened, and Sarah came in at least a couple of times a week. She was under the care of the mental health team, and the problem seemed to have got worse after she’d lost her elderly mother to colon cancer. Mostly she seemed to think she was suffering from either that, or lung cancer. So retinal cancer was a new one.

‘She says she’s got wiggly lines in her vision and a lump on her eyelid.’ Amy pulled a face. ‘There is a lump there, although it looks more like a gnat bite than anything sinister. But you knowSarah; that won’t stop her believing she’s dying, and nothing I said in triage helped. Even telling her that retinoblastoma is almost unheard of in adults just seemed to stress her out even more. I’m going to put a call into The Sycamore Centre now, but I don’t know when they’ll be able to send someone down.’

‘Shall I give it a try?’ Isla looked at her friend, who nodded. The Sycamore Centre was the hospital’s mental health unit, but the demand for their services seemed to be getting greater with every passing week. As a result, A&E often had to deal with patients who needed specialist help for far longer than was ideal. For some reason, Sarah had taken a shine to Isla, and she seemed more willing to listen to her than the other nurses. Maybe it was because Isla had confided how much losing a parent had affected her too. None of the team dismissed Sarah’s fears. Just because they were irrational, it didn’t mean they didn’t feel real to her. But it was hard sometimes, with a backlog of people needing urgent treatment, and the resulting frustration had a way of coming to the surface for Isla’s colleagues at times. It was different for her. She’d seen firsthand what living with the fear of a deadly disease could do to a person. Some people couldn’t just push the fear of something like that to one side and get on with life, whether they’d been diagnosed with an illness or not. It consumed Sarah’s whole life, and Isla was happy to help in any way she could.

‘You’re a star.’ Amy was already opening the door out to the waiting area. ‘I think she’s in danger of having a full-blown panic attack, but hopefully you can get through to her.’

‘I’ll give it my best shot.’ Isla moved past Amy and through to the waiting area, Sarah’s head turning towards her, as soon as she heard the doors open.

‘Oh thank God!’ The older woman ran a hand through her hair as she spoke and it would have been easy to believe she was every bit as unwell as she believed herself to be. Her hair wasthinning, to the point of being able to see her scalp in places, and her mouth was set in such a grim line that her lips seemed to have disappeared altogether. She looked pale and exhausted too, but the truth was that she spent so much of her time worrying about her health that she’d stopped taking care of herself in other ways. Sarah had admitted before that she sat hunched over her laptop for hours on end, convincing herself that every tiny twinge she experienced was the cancer taking hold. She’d had ten times more scans and tests than most people would experience in their lifetime, but the relief of a negative test never lasted long. ‘They won’t listen to me Isla, but everything I’ve read online proves I’m right. I’ve got cancer in my right eye and, if they don’t treat it soon, it’ll spread and I’ll go blind, or even die!’

The desperation in Sarah’s voice wasn’t an act, or a way of seeking attention. She genuinely believed she was going to die if someone didn’t take action soon. Other patients were looking in her direction, a couple of whom were laughing at how melodramatic she seemed to be. But it was clearly making some other patients anxious. ‘Okay Sarah, let’s get you through to a cubicle so that I can take a proper look at you, and we’ll take it from there.’

‘Thank you.’ Sarah’s body slumped with relief and, if Isla hadn’t put an arm around her, she had a feeling she’d have fallen to the floor.

‘Are you okay to walk?’

‘My heart feels like it’s beating twice as fast as it should and I keep going dizzy. I’m terrified it’s because the cancer is already spreading.’

‘I think it’s because you’ve been so worried, but I’m going to get a wheelchair to take you through to the cubicles. Just in case.’ Thankfully there were a couple of wheelchairs available in the waiting area, and Isla quickly helped Sarah into one. But evenafter she was sitting down, her whole body was trembling. ‘It’s okay Sarah, I’m going to get you the help you need, I promise.’

‘Thank you.’ The older woman grabbed hold of Isla’s hand for a moment, pressing it against her cheek, before letting her hands drop back down onto her lap. The kind of help that Isla was going to get might not be what Sarah was expecting. But, either way, she was determined that when her patient left the hospital she wouldn’t be feeling anywhere near as awful as when she arrived. A cure might not be possible, but there were things that could help, and the hospital’s mental health team had already been alerted. Isla just had to try and keep Sarah as calm as possible until they arrived.

Joe Carter, one of the consultant psychiatrists from The Sycamore Centre, had come down to see Sarah, and had given Isla an update on the plan for further treatment. Joe was Danni’s older brother, and Esther’s boyfriend, so Isla had got to know him quite well in the time they’d both been working at St Piran’s. He radiated kindness, and it made Isla feel much better to know that Sarah had someone like him to turn to for support.

‘She’s been having CBT for a couple of months, but I think we need to look at something else. She’s been keen to avoid medication in the past, because she thinks it will increase her chances of getting cancer, but she can’t go on like this. Otherwise, she could be at risk of having panic attacks on a regular basis, and her anxiety could get really out of hand. She’s already missed out on so much because of it, but it seems to be getting worse.’ Joe kept his voice low. ‘You did a really good job of making her feel heard, and helping her calm down. If you everfancy a change from A&E, we could always use nurses like you in my department.’

‘It’s something I have thought about, and I want to do a Master’s eventually, so maybe I could look at specialising then. Although I’m not sure I could bear to leave emergency medicine completely.’

‘Esther’s the same.’ Joe smiled. ‘I think it turns you all into adrenaline junkies working here.’

‘You’re probably right, although I’m sure your department has its share of drama.’ The previous autumn, one of Joe’s patients had experienced a psychotic episode and had abducted Esther. Thankfully no one was hurt, but it had been terrifying just hearing about it, let alone what it must have been like for Esther and Joe to go through it.

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