Page 122 of A Home Among the Snow Gums
She raced around to the check-in counter, held up her phone so the barcode could be scanned and was waved through.
It wasn’t until she sank into her seat at the back of the plane that she realised she’d not given a thought to drawing attention to herself. She just hadn’t cared.
CHAPTER
48
Tom returned his gaze to the ceiling after the surgeon left the room. Eighty-one punch holes in each ceiling tile, forty ceiling tiles, that made—crap, now his maths skills were packing up too—three thousand two hundred and something?
The surgeon had been in for the final talk. The anaesthetist had visited with questions about allergies and medical histories and risk. Both of them had spoken in that upbeat, jocular tone medical staff liked to use, which was both patronising and comforting in equal measure.
Kind of like his and Josh’s kindy teacher, now he thought of it. Mrs Howdy-Doody, they’d called her, but that couldn’t possibly have been her real name.
He returned to his brooding. He had a will, of course. Bruno and Mrs L to inherit.
Regrets … he had a few. Oh, man, did he justsingthat? Perhaps the anaesthetist had slipped a little something into the drip attached to his arm—a little pre-surgery pickling fluid.
He went back to counting the dots in the ceiling tiles.
He was somewhere in the six thousands when he heard raised voices in the corridor, then a laugh cut short. It had to be the big nurse, Samuel. He was always bursting in and out of rooms spreading his personal brand of cheer. Like Santa in scrubs.
A scratch at the door, then it was being pushed open and he braced himself. The orderly, come to wheel him into the operating room where his future would be decided.
Only … it wasn’t the orderly who poked a nose around his door.
It was Hannah.
‘I’m coming in,’ she announced. ‘I don’t care what you say.’
He really must have some sort of drug percolating through his system, because he found his will to resist had entirely deserted him. He held out his hand and she sobbed and ran to him.
He blinked. ‘Am I hallucinating or are you wearing something really … er … I mean …’ Words failed him.
‘My high school formal dress. Yes, I am.’
His eyes skittered over the dull pink bodice, the straining seams at the waist, the huge marshmallow skirt, all of it fashioned out of some sort of waxy fabric the colour of … he gave up. ‘What do you call that colour? Looks like putty.’
She did a little twirl. ‘My mother made it for me over a decade ago. I thought you might like to see what I’d’ve looked like if you’d worked up the courage to ask the girl youwantedto take to your formal.’
He leant his head back on the pillow and closed his eyes against the sting. ‘Dodged that bullet.’
She brought his hand up to her mouth and held it there, so he felt her lips move against his skin. ‘You can stop lying to me, Tom.’
He breathed in, then out, then thought of absolutely nothing he could say.
‘I think you are a mighty fine liar and I think you’ve been lying to me six ways from Sunday about all the reasons why you’re not interested in me.’
She had him. She’d called his bluff.
‘You can ask me now.’
‘To be my date to the formal?’
She squeezed his fingers. ‘I’m waiting.’
He opened his eyes and looked at her. Problem was, he wasn’t eighteen anymore. He was a man who knew what deep regret felt like. Who knew what injury or illness could do to a man who felt robbed of his life’s dreams.
No way could he do that to Hannah. He was Bruno’s son, after all. Who was to say he wouldn’t become just as much of a bitter, angry man as his father had when his legs failed him?
