The Unsung Hero

He looked down at his son but the glance was brief. The sight was still too horrific. The swathe of bandages around the head. Eyes so swollen you couldn’t see eyelashes even, and then there was the awful bruising and a split lip to cap it off. He must be virtually unrecognisable even to his closest family.

This was the kind of case Rick found particularly gruelling. A whole family torn apart because of a dreadful accident. Simon had been on his way home from school and had been knocked off his bicycle by a speeding delivery van. He had a badly fractured leg, supported by a slab of plaster and padded by pillows until the boy’s condition was stable enough for further surgery. It was much less of a concern than his head injury at this point in time. Right now, Simon was on a ventilator, unable to breathe on his own, and the surgery Rick had just performed held no guarantees for either survival or a good long-term outcome.

Simon’s parents were a mess. Shocked and terrified but desperate to be with their son. This had to be every parent’s worst nightmare and Rick had seen it all too often.

Was this why he’d never given serious thought to having a family of his own? He wasn’t totally averse to the notion like Jet was, but neither could he imagine embracing the concept as Max had done. He was somewhere between the two. The desire was there but still dormant. Weighed down, perhaps, by the legacy of his own childhood.

Along with the logistics of attaining the state of parenthood, the motivation to deal with the downsides of parenting had made it all too easy to shove the whole concept into the ‘too hard’ basket and leave it there. And if it stayed in there so long it was too late to do anything about it, the whole issue might just quietly go away and he’d be able to take comfort in the thought that he couldn’t have really wanted it badly enough in any case.

It was getting late by the time Rick left the ICU, but for a while he hung around the wards, reviewing his inpatients. He was reluctant to head home because it would mean a visit to his office to collect his keys.

Had it only been a few days ago when he’d been less than happy with the company of his mates and had wanted time alone to get his head sorted? Now, when he’d had enough of himself, there was no opportunity to obtain the kind of company he needed.

He’d assured Max that he would be absolutely fine. That Max couldn’t possibly postpone the week in Rarotonga that he and Ellie and Mattie had lined up for their honeymoon. He’d meant every word of it at the time, of course, but then he hadn’t known that Jet would receive a summons back to his elite army medical unit. A three-month stint that would see him involved in training exercises and deployment to any areas that might need the specialised skills of the unit. He’d left town yesterday, with his personal belongings in a backpack, his bike under cover in Rick’s garage and the satisfied gleam of impending adventure lighting his features.

Rick had no one to talk to.

About the rough day he’d had at work.

Or about the envelope that had landed in his in-box this afternoon, seconds before the call to the emergency department where Simon had been waiting.

He knew what was in that envelope.

The DNA results.

The slip of paper inside could be a passport to freedom but it could also be a life sentence.

Being a father might not be a choice he had the luxury of making. It might be about to blindside him and, despite thinking he had found a solution that would work for everybody involved, he still had no idea how he was going to react if he discovered he really was Josh’s father.