Outback Sunset, page 21
‘Whoever is the most compatible. Dr Samuels and the recipient’s family usually decide that. I suggest we continue the medication on Kyle. He should be admitted to hospital where we can observe if there’s an improvement.’ He paused to shuffle a few of the papers in his folder. ‘But, we should also do blood tests and biopsies on close family members to determine which liver is the most compatible so, in the unhappy event that he needs a transplant, the best possible donor will be available.’ Bren’s restlessness distracted the doctor for a few seconds. ‘Sometimes it’s neither parent but a cousin or a grandparent.’
‘And the sooner the better, before Kyle deteriorates further?’ Vanessa heard herself say the words. How could she come to terms with the awful fact that her darling son’s life was in danger. She didn’t want to, couldn’t think about a life without her son, how bleak and devoid of meaning it would be.
‘Right. In Kyle’s case, time may not be on our side. While we wait to see how he responds we can do the family’s tests here, send the results to Dr Samuels, and if needs be, he’ll schedule a date for the operation,’ Dr Klemski informed them matter-of-factly.
Vanessa looked the doctor squarely in the eyes. ‘Dr Samuels, is he the best?’
‘The best and the most experienced with regard to this speciality in the country,’ Dr Klemski confirmed with a nod of his head.
Vanessa looked across at Bren who was standing side on, staring out the window. His outdoor tan had paled and his hands were trembling. He planted them in the pockets of his trousers to hide that they were. Like her he was shocked and distressed and, she feared, not coping well with this dreadful news. She ran a finger across her forehead to wipe away the sheen of cold sweat — it was fear. Never in her imaginings, when she had insisted Kyle be checked out had she expected this dire news. Her brain was in a whirl, a mass of tangled thoughts and anxieties dominating, and she had to blink several times to force the tears back. Now was not the time. Later, when she was alone, she could and would cry her heart out over her baby’s plight.
Keep focussed, she told herself, now was the time for action, for being positive, and for keeping her fears buried deep in her subconscious. ‘Very well. When can the tests be done?’
‘Tomorrow and the day after. I’ll organise appointments with a pathologist I know, and have my secretary call you. The results will take several days. You’ll stay in Darwin till then?’
‘Yes. You have our Cullen Bay address.’ She tried to smile but it was an utter failure. ‘Thank you. Having to give this kind of news can’t be easy for doctors.’ Awkwardly, with Kyle in her arms, she got up. Bren came and took their sleeping son, cradling him in his strong arms. She could see tears in her husband’s eyes and was hard pressed not to give way to them herself.
Shaking his head in sympathy, Dr Klemski watched the Selby family walk out of his office …
As they waited to see whether Kyle responded to the medication for biliary atresia, the family, including Hilary, Stuart, Curtis and Lauren, had blood tests, with Bren, Vanessa, Hilary and Curtis also having biopsies. After the results were collated, it came as a surprise that Curtis was the one with the highest compatibility rate, having an eighty-five per cent compatibility, with Bren and Vanessa at sixty-three per cent. Once Curtis knew, he offered himself as the donor and while Bren, pettily, wasn’t pleased that Curtis had the higher compatibility rate, Vanessa convinced him that if it were necessary, Curtis should be the donor because by then their son would need the best chance the higher compatibility rate would give him.
Luck did not go Kyle’s way … The medication did not improve his condition and, with time running out as Kyle’s health deteriorated, the transplant was scheduled to take place in Sydney, within two weeks …
Night time humidity hung in the air like an invisible fog. Day time temperatures were close to unbearable and, in the evening, not much better.
Vanessa tiptoed into Kyle’s room. Wearing only his nappy — that’s all he wore day and night in the heat — he was fast asleep, with the overhead fan rotating at full speed to keep him cool. Poor darling, he slept a good deal these days because he had so little energy. She looked at the change table. His case was packed and ready but not zipped up. It contained clothes plus several of his favourite toys. Tomorrow they would ‘hike’ to Sydney, a trip of approximately four and a half thousand kilometres which would take, with waiting time for connections, the entire day and part of the night.
For several minutes her gaze browsed over the contents of his room, as if memorising how the contents epitomised her son’s emerging personality. He loved soft toys and had a large collection of various sized teddy bears on a shelf. And he was almost sitting up, so his car collection appealed to him. He especially loved his Tonka cement mixer. Over near the window was the sports collection he would play with as he grew — a much used and dented cricket bat that had once been Curtis’s, a soccer and rugby ball, a tennis racquet, and paddles to play shuttlecock.
She blinked back tears as he rolled onto his side. She tried not to speculate on the next few days and how awful they were going to be. Walking to the window she looked out. A light in Curtis’s cottage was still on. Undoubtedly, he was finding it hard to sleep too. His generosity in offering a portion of his liver to save Kyle was something for which she would be eternally grateful. He was giving her son the gift of life and that made her feel closer to him.
She left Kyle’s room and moved down the hall towards her bedroom but stopped when she heard a voice in the office. She went to see who it was. Bren was on the phone. She managed to catch a few words before, on seeing her, he said a quick goodbye and hung up.
‘Talking to Stuart? A bit late in the evening for a chat, isn’t it?’
‘Just catching up,’ he said evasively, his gaze unwilling to meet hers.
‘Really?’
Her unconvinced tone made him retort, ‘Talking to others, like Stuart, about Amaroo’s problems helps me to deal with Kyle’s problem.’
‘I have serious doubts that Stuart knows too much about what happens on stations these days. Hasn’t he been off Amaroo for over thirty years?’ She could have added but didn’t, that she and Fran were the ones who’d done most of the caring and worrying about Kyle. Keeping a sick baby amused and interested, trying to stimulate his appetite, was no easy task. As well, she had the sneaking belief that Stuart put strange, unworkable ideas into Bren’s head because he was such a nosy, annoying man, and she objected to his sly attempts to interfere with the management of Amaroo. She and Curtis were aware of Stuart’s undue interest in the station and didn’t like it, but they trod warily around Bren because he didn’t consider Stuart’s input a problem, and would have been offended had the suggestion been made that Stuart was influencing his decisions.
‘The timing isn’t appropriate, Bren. You could have been more helpful with Kyle instead of wasting time chatting to your uncle …’
There, she had said what she had wanted to say for several weeks without worrying if it bruised his feelings. At times he became so self-absorbed that he could block out everything other than what interested him and when he did, it hurt. She expected more compassion and caring and his lack of it reinforced an opinion she was coming to of late, that in many ways Bren’s nature was close to his uncle’s. Stuart, according to gossip, appeared to care little for Diane’s feelings or sensibilities and Bren was developing similar traits.
‘Well, that’s great!’ It only took an instant for his tone to turn aggressive. ‘You think I don’t care about our son being ill.’
‘I didn’t say that,’ she retorted, her spine tightening with tension. ‘I said you could have been more helpful. That’s not quite the same.’
Bren dropped the pen he’d been fiddling with and thumped his fist on the desk. ‘Damn it, Vanessa, I’m doing the best I can to deal with … Kyle. It … it isn’t easy, seeing him so lethargic, disinterested. He is usually such a lively, scrappy baby.’ He ran frustrated fingers through his hair and shook his head as he admitted. ‘I don’t know how to handle it.’
‘Do you think it’s easy for me?’ she threw back. ‘It’s torture but somehow one makes the best of it.’
He reached for the whisky glass standing to the right of his hand, and took a swallow. ‘Women are better at that sort of thing than men.’
‘I won’t argue with that.’ Her disdain evident, she watched him down the last drop of whisky. ‘Go easy on the alcohol, Bren. We’ve an early start tomorrow and it’s going to be a long day travelling.’
‘Christ,’ he exploded again. ‘Can’t a bloke have a drink without being made to think he’s an alcoholic?’
Stung by his irrationality, and knowing it wasn’t his first drink of the evening, she hit back. ‘I would think you’d have more important things on your mind, such as Kyle’s health, than choosing to get sozzled.’
In a defiant gesture and expressly to annoy her, he picked up the bottle of Johnnie Walker and poured another generous measure into the glass. ‘Oh, leave me alone, Vanessa. Just … go away.’
She didn’t say anything but stayed in the room long enough to stare him down. When he dropped his gaze, feigning interest in the drawings on the desk, she turned on her heel and left.
Coldly furious, Vanessa showered and got into bed, lying on top of the sheet. If she lived to be one hundred she would never understand men and in particular, Bren. There was something lacking in her husband, a sensitivity of feelings. She had once thought him sensitive but as time passed she was learning otherwise. Curtis, surprisingly, showed more of an emotional response to things and circumstances, than his older brother. Anxious and irritable, she lay listening to the whir of the overhead fan for a long time before she drifted into a dreamless sleep …
The week following the Selby family’s arrival in Sydney flew by in a flurry of activity. Admission, tests, more tests until, finally, the day for Kyle and Curtis’s surgery arrived.
Not a moment too soon for Kyle, Curtis observed as, in his theatre gown, he stood at his nephew’s bedside while Bren and Vanessa murmured encouraging words to the drowsy baby. The youngster’s skin tone had become quite yellow because his condition was deteriorating quicker than the doctors had expected. And it was obvious to anyone with reasonable vision that he was a very sick baby. Curtis glanced at his brother and his heart went out to him. He could only imagine what Bren was suffering mentally — the worry, the anxiety. His gaze moved on to Vanessa, the courageous one. Talk about stoic! She was shedding a few tears now but this was the only time he had seen her cry. Oddly, her sorrowful features didn’t seem to make her any less beautiful.
‘Mr Selby, Curtis,’ a sister came up to him. ‘You should be in bed. You’ve had your pre-med,’ she tuttutted at him. ‘We don’t want you falling down and injuring yourself before surgery, do we?’
Sister Bennett was a good-looking woman, around forty, he guessed. ‘I wouldn’t mind, Sister, if you’re the one who’d be picking me up,’ he answered flirtatiously.
‘No such luck, Curtis. The male sisters get to do that and they’re not half as gentle as the female ones.’
Taking note of that, Curtis scooted back to bed. If he were honest with himself, he wasn’t looking forward to surgery. Dr Samuels had explained in great detail that he might have considerable post-op discomfort, possibly more than Kyle. But he accepted that because he knew the cause was right. Besides, had the situation been reversed and Regan been ill, Bren would have done whatever he could to return his daughter to good health.
He would have plenty of time to think while he recuperated, he realised as he stretched under the hospital sheet, about where life was taking him. Of late he had been doing a bit of that and as a consequence a strange restlessness hung over him, something he had never before experienced. He was sure as to what he wanted from life, wasn’t he? If he saw more of Regan it would make a difference; he’d be more involved with watching her grow, and helping her to learn things, which would give his life a certain purpose but he was coming to believe that he wanted more — someone to share his life. But … who and where and how could he meet women, isolated as he was on the station? Still, when this — the operation and convalescence — was behind him he would make a sincere attempt to find that special someone.
As he put his hands behind his head he could feel his body relaxing, the pre-med injection finally kicking in. His eyes drooped, closed. He opened them and saw Vanessa standing in the room’s doorway. She came up to the side of his bed and gave him an encouraging smile.
‘I know I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again before you nod off. Thank you for what you’re doing. We’ll see you when you wake up,’ she said softly.
Curtis drifted into oblivion with the image of her face in his mind …
The next twenty-four hours, then thirty-six hours were a stressful time for Bren and Vanessa who had been briefed by Dr Samuels and his team as to what to expect by way of Kyle’s recovery rate.
When her baby son opened his eyes for the first time, a few hours after the operation, saw her and smiled, Vanessa had to exert all her self-control not to burst into tears. The transplant team had deemed the operations on both Kyle and Curtis a success but she couldn’t accept that Kyle’s was until her son’s smile. Her baby boy was still smiling, weakly, but Bren wasn’t there to see it because he was with Curtis. They had been taking turns to sit with each of them as both became more alert.
The intensive care sister, checking several of the monitoring machines above his hospital cot, grinned at Vanessa. ‘That’s a good sign,’ she said, patting Kyle’s head. ‘It’s a little too soon for liquids like water or milk but you can give him a little crushed ice. I’ll go get some.’
Vanessa smiled with relief as the sister walked away. Instinct, love, desperation or perhaps a mixture of all three emotions told her he was going to be all right. The relief wended through her body and into her soul, diluting the worry, the fears that had caused her so many sleepless nights. Her imagination had been working overtime from that day in Dr Klemski’s rooms when they’d learned of Kyle’s condition, conjuring up all kinds of dreadful scenes. All she had been able to think about and concentrate on, was her baby, how sick he was, and that he might die. It was an experience she prayed never to go through again.
The scope of Curtis’s generosity, given unstintingly in his no fuss way, strengthened her respect and liking for the man she had once loathed. They had travelled a long way down the friendship road from the day of the wedding reception in Darwin. It hadn’t always been easygoing between them with differences of opinion aplenty, but of late they were very much in agreement, with regard to Amaroo, and Kyle. She wasn’t religious but on occasions she said a prayer and when she did she would remember Curtis for the gift he had given to her son. It was interesting too, that while being uncle and nephew, the bond was now a lot closer because they both shared part of a vital organ.
As she spoon-fed a sleepy Kyle pieces of crushed ice, she thought how this crisis had taken its toll on Bren and was still doing so. He’d been distraught after the operation, fearing the worst, unable to lift his morale or to be optimistic. She knew he couldn’t help it because sometimes he became either hyped up or depressed. However, while she felt sympathy for him, she also experienced waves of frustration. Her husband was a man of strength and determination in many ways, but Bren hadn’t been dependable in this regard, and that he hadn’t been, confounded her. It would have been a comfort for him to be her ‘rock’, but too often she was the one with the stiff backbone who was leant on rather than vice versa.
Five days after Kyle’s transplant operation Dr Samuels advised the family that his prognosis was a positive one. His small body hadn’t rejected the donor organ, something that often occurred within thirty-six hours of receiving it, and if he continued to recover at the present rate he could go home and lead a reasonably normal life within weeks with the proviso of regular medical checks for several years and having to take anti-rejection drugs, probably for the rest of his life.
For Curtis, the recuperation period took longer and was hampered by him suffering a blood infection that kept him in hospital for another week after Kyle’s release.
Kyle and Curtis’s return to Amaroo was a good reason to throw a welcome home party. Those attending were close neighbours, the Johns from Linford Downs Station, plus the Selbys from Broome, Lauren and her family, and Hilary, who’d brought Regan with her. It took place during a lull in the annual wet, before Christmas, which made it a double celebration for everyone.
Curtis, with his fifteen-centimetre scar, was still too weak for normal duties and had been relegated to attending to the station’s paperwork. Kyle, amazingly, was almost back to normal, and had begun to crawl, getting into lots of mischief, and trying to copy the antics of his cousin, Guy, who at four was the closest to him in age.
However, if any one person could be regarded as the happiest, it was Bren. He liked nothing better than a party and having family around. He knew that he had been less than one hundred per cent supportive of Vanessa during Kyle’s illness and his inability to cope depressed him as much as his son being sick. Children, Bren had come to see, were a huge, ongoing responsibility and he couldn’t help it that he disliked the ‘baby phase,’ and had little patience with their crying, their puking and the demands made on the mother. Vanessa, having to spend more time with Kyle, meant less time for him. You’re a selfish bastard, Bren Selby. He was but he couldn’t and didn’t want to change and that was that.
Sipping his beer, his gaze followed Vanessa, good hostess that she was, as she mingled with everyone. She was the best thing that had happened to him and, damn it, why wasn’t he more appreciative of the fact? It amazed him, when he took the time to think about it that she, with her personality, talent and charm, could love someone as ordinary as himself. A bloody miracle, he reckoned. He watched Vanessa fuss for a few minutes over Curtis, who was sitting in a comfortable wooden chair near the barbecue.
