‘OD?’
‘Unlikely.’
‘But not impossible?’
‘Nothing’s impossible.’
They sat quietly.
‘I’ll check on him,’ Toula said eventually. ‘Make sure he doesn’t do anything stupid before your exam.’
‘I can’t put that on you. You’ve got Jackson to look after.’
Toula chuckled. ‘You ever known anyone to put anything on me, Kel?’
‘Fair point.’ Kelly held her friend’s hand. ‘Thanks, Touls.’
Toula squeezed Kelly’s hand and smiled. She looked at her pram again, this time with narrowed eyes.
‘I didn’t hear anything,’ Kelly said.
‘You’re about to.’
A second later, Jackson gave out a tiny sigh, then a gurgle and a lazy cry. Not distressed, just enough to let his mum know he was awake.
Kelly shook her head in wonder. ‘He didn’t make a sound. How did you know?’
‘Mother’s instinct.’
‘Wonders never cease.’
After Toula had fed and changed Jackson, she lay him on Kelly’s bed in just his nappy. He’d been burped and was now chatting happily away to himself, his voice so fragile, it was like an ultra-thin pane of glass. Beautiful. Ethereal. Breakable.
Kelly tapped him gently on his nose, which he screwed up like a rabbit in a cartoon. ‘Thank you for volunteering to help me with my clinical exam,’ she said.
Toula was watching from the other side of the bed. ‘I thought you weren’t supposed to talk to the patients.’
‘I’m not. But this one is just too cute.’
‘Can’t argue with that.’
Kelly did stop talking then. She ran through her mental checklist, working her way along Jackson’s little body. His chubby arms, round belly, even chubbier thighs. His vital organs barely protected by ribs so small Kelly could surround them in her open grip. There was a comical moment when she opened his nappy to check his hip joints and he stared at her as though she’d crossed a major line, an indignant protruding bottom lip that was only tucked away when the nappy was securely fastened.
‘He’ll grow out of that,’ Toula said.
‘Sshh, I’m trying to concentrate.’
When she finished, she tapped Jackson on the nose again and was rewarded with a smile. ‘You’ve been an excellent patient. Thank you, sir.’
He looked up at her with trusting eyes, but Kelly knew it would be a different story if Toula left the room. Throughout the examination, he had periodically turned his head to check that his mother was still there; her presence the only reassurance he needed that he was safe. That the world was in order and he was out of harm’s way. She thought of Finn.
‘They never really change, do they?’ she whispered to herself.
‘What?’ Toula said.
But Kelly didn’t answer. Her phone had started to ring.
Evan Banbury was calling.
