Penny Jordan's Crighton Family Series. PENNY JORDAN
Читать онлайн книгу.
Only Jenny stood alone, somehow positioned so that the specialist was closest to her, and perhaps for that reason he addressed himself more directly to her than anyone else. To an unaware onlooker it might have seemed as though Jenny were the sick man’s wife and Jon and Tiggy the married couple.
‘He’s had a very serious heart attack,’ he continued, pausing briefly as Tiggy sobbed audibly and clung harder to Jon, ‘and in fact he’s very lucky to be alive. But he is alive and …’ He paused again and it was Jenny who stepped into the silence.
‘What exactly is it you’re trying to tell us?’ she asked quietly.
‘David is a very seriously ill man. The next twenty-four hours will be critical. Until then, we won’t know—’
‘You mean there’s a danger that he could have a second attack? Is that what you’re trying to tell us?’ Jenny demanded.
‘It does happen,’ the specialist warned them gravely, ‘but hopefully …’
‘Can … can we see him?’ Jon asked huskily.
The specialist shook his head. ‘No. I’m afraid that won’t be possible. Not at this stage. It’s imperative that he’s kept calm and sedated. In fact, the best, the only thing you can all do for him right now is to go home and try to get some sleep, because …’ As he saw the quick, frowning look Jenny gave in Ben’s direction, he beckoned to a hovering nurse, then took Jenny aside and said reassuringly, ‘I’ll prescribe something for your father-in-law. I know his own heart’s not as strong as it might be.’
‘Tiggy’s very upset, Jenny,’ Jon announced ten minutes later as Saul started to usher everyone back into the corridor. ‘She can’t be left on her own. I think I’d better go back with her tonight, just in case she needs me.’
‘Yes, of course,’ Jenny agreed, quietly refraining from reminding him that Tiggy had a house full of Chester relatives to turn to should she decide she needed a shoulder to cry on during the night in addition to her daughter and her daughter’s boyfriend.
What would be the point after all? Jon simply wouldn’t understand. He would expect her to accept, just as he had always accepted, that David’s needs and wishes and therefore the needs and wishes of David’s closest relatives must automatically take preference over everything and everyone else.
As she got back into the car, she remembered that he had never commented on her dress. Silly to cry over something as senseless as that when she had so many more important things to cry over. Appallingly selfish of her, too, to even be thinking of her own hurt at Jon’s lack of response to her tonight, to have that at the forefront of her mind rather than, if only momentarily, David’s heart attack.
It wasn’t that she wasn’t concerned for David; of course she was. He was, after all, Jon’s brother and as such … She and Jon hadn’t even managed to have a dance together; she couldn’t, in fact, recall the last time they had danced together. This was so wrong. She shouldn’t be thinking about her own selfish needs when David was so desperately ill. Why hadn’t Jon said anything about her dress? Hadn’t he liked it? Didn’t he …? Stop it, she warned herself. You’re not a teenager any more; you’re an adult.
‘Well, at least the specialist seems pretty optimistic that David’s over the worst.’
Olivia turned towards Saul.
‘He’s over the worst,’ she agreed, ‘but Mr Hayes has warned us that it’s going to be some considerable time before he’s completely out of danger—they’re keeping him in intensive care until the end of the week but he won’t be allowed home immediately. Mr Hayes says there’s no question of his being able to go back to work for at least three months, and even then …’
‘No,’ Saul returned gravely. ‘It’s going to be hard. What will Jon do, do you think, hire a locum?’
‘I don’t know. No one’s really discussed what’s going to happen with the practice as yet,’ Olivia admitted. ‘We’ve all been too concerned about Dad, but something will have to be done.’
‘Mmm … I wish I could offer to help out myself, but …’ He spread his hands expressively. ‘It just isn’t possible. The company’s heavily involved in negotiating some new contracts with Japan. I can’t go into details, but from the legal point of view it’s proving pretty complex. Hillary’s always complaining that she hardly sees me any more, or rather she used to. I get the impression these days that the less she sees of me the better.’
The bitterness in his voice made Olivia wince. It had become increasingly obvious over the past three days, when Saul had elected to remain in Haslewich with his family until the immediacy of the crisis with David was over, that he and Hillary were no longer happy together. Olivia felt very sorry for him. It was plain that he adored his three children and she suspected that he struggled to make his marriage work more for their sake than his own.
They were in the drawing room of Queensmead along with the rest of the immediate family who had gathered there to hear the latest bulletin from the hospital on David’s progress.
It had been Olivia’s turn to see him today. She and Jon had been taking turns in accompanying her mother to the hospital on her daily visits to see her husband who was now conscious and able to communicate, although still quite heavily sedated and in intensive care. It had been tacitly acknowledged by the family that Tiggy was far too shocked and distressed by her husband’s heart attack to endure the trauma of seeing him without some family support.
Hugh and Ann had remained at Queensmead until the immediate danger was over but had had to return home as Hugh was due to sit on the Bench. Saul, though, had opted to stay on in his father’s stead, telling Olivia wryly that he might as well use up what little holiday allocation he had left.
‘I had hoped we might get away, take the kids on holiday somewhere, but Hillary says the last thing she wants to do is spend any length of time cooped up with them and me. She was talking about flying home to see her family on her own.’
His face had been bleak as he delivered this last piece of information and tactfully Olivia had made no comment. Besides, she had enough problems of her own to worry about.
Caspar had moved into her room following her father’s heart attack and last night … She closed her eyes, not wanting to have to think about the problems that were surfacing in her relationship with Caspar or the mixed-up feelings of panic, resentment and anguish they were causing her.
How was it possible for their relationship to have changed so much? Yes, of course she had been aware of Caspar’s leftover feelings of rejection from his childhood. He had talked quite openly about them, as she had done about her own. She had thought that she understood Caspar and that he understood her and that even whilst he occasionally drew attention to her inability to verbally admit to her feelings for him, he knew that her fear of actually saying the words ‘I love you’ in no way lessened her commitment to him just as she had thought that his own wry awareness of his need to rewrite the emotional history of his childhood by placing himself first in her emotions meant that he had come to terms with it.
Now she was not so sure. It had shocked her to discover that far from being the mature adult she had believed him to be and someone she could lean on and respect and even look up to as she had never been able to do with her father, Caspar was just as capable of behaving emotionally and irresponsibly albeit in a different way. Just as able to be selfish and demanding, just as able to ignore her needs and focus on his own. Just as masculinely capable of putting pressure on her to get what he wanted from their relationship without giving a second thought to what she might want or need. Just as he had done last night …
Tensing, she wrapped her arms around herself. It had been at her suggestion that Caspar had moved into her room. She missed the comfort of his body in bed, his warmth … just knowing that he was there. Dismaying,