Chapter 8 #3
‘I’ve got a patient. Well strictly speaking she’s the mother of a little boy who’s my patient, but she’s homeless and clearly in the grip of some kind of addiction and I’m scared that if she leaves the hospital with nowhere to go, it won’t end well.’
‘Right.’ Felix couldn’t stop his shoulders from slumping.
After Meredith’s call, he wished to God that Eve wanted something else from him.
Anything but his support in trying to help another addict, but she was looking at him with so much sadness in her eyes and maybe this time would be different.
Maybe they would be able to help this woman.
After all, wasn’t this why he volunteered with the charity?
If it wasn’t, he’d have to admit that his motivation came from somewhere else – guilt at feeling like he’d failed Meredith – and he didn’t want that to be true.
‘If you can tell me as much as you know, I can put a call into the team at Domusamare. I’m sure there’s something they can do to help.
’ He smiled and, as Eve began to outline the situation, he willed his words to be true.
He couldn’t bear the thought of letting one more person down and he wanted to lift some of the sadness that Eve seemed to carry around off her shoulders. Whatever it took.
* * *
The team at Domusamare had swung into action and found Sophie a bed, as well as a key worker, assigning a staff member to oversee her stay and support her in accessing the services she would need, in order to take the steps she’d claimed she wanted to take towards getting clean.
Felix knew only too well how easy it was for addicts to ‘talk the talk’, and Sophie was far more convincing than Meredith had been when she’d called him.
Once upon a time, Meredith had made the same kind of promises that Sophie was currently making, but she couldn’t even do that any more.
He’d heard them far too many times to be fooled, and she seemed to know that.
Instead she’d used the threat of something happening to her as leverage, but something was going to happen to her either way if she didn’t get help.
It was a vicious cycle and the only way to break it was for Meredith to decide she wanted to change, even more than she wanted the drugs.
She clearly wasn’t there yet and the real tragedy was that he didn’t think she ever would be again.
There was still hope for Sophie. She seemed to have the motivation to help herself, in the shape of her little boy, and as Felix and Eve crossed the car park, outside the Domusamare hostel where they’d left Sophie in the care of the staff, Eve voiced the same thought that was going through his head.
‘Do you think she’ll take the help they’re offering?’
‘I hope so.’ He wished he could give Eve more than that, but he wasn’t going to paint this as an easy fix, or promise her that there were any guarantees for Sophie, even though Domusamare had agreed to support her.
‘Me too. Her little boy…’ Eve shook her head. ‘He could so easily have died and I think it shocked her to the core, but she’s tried to beat this before and it hasn’t worked.’
‘It often doesn’t.’ There he was again, being far more downbeat than he wanted to be and he didn’t miss the look of disappointment that had clouded Eve’s face.
‘Sorry, I’m being a proper misery.’ He forced a smile.
‘The team at Domusamare are brilliant and she’s getting the best possible help.
They’ll liaise with the mental health team at St Piran’s and all the other services she’ll need.
In the meantime, they’re giving her somewhere safe to stay and three decent meals a day.
She couldn’t ask for better than that and she’s really lucky you were at the hospital when her son was admitted and that you cared enough to want to help her.
Not everyone would do that for her in those circumstances.
A lot of people couldn’t see past the danger she’d put her little boy in. ’
‘I’m not sure I could have done if she hadn’t told me about her past. I lost my mum when I was fourteen and I never really felt secure about anything after that.
’ She paused for a moment, before meeting his eyes.
‘At least not until I met Max, and I came to really feel like part of a family again. I don’t think Sophie has had that for a long time and no one has ever put her first from what I can tell. ’
‘I’m sorry you lost your mum.’ It was his turn to hesitate and he wanted to take the opportunity to ask her more about Max, but that had to come from Eve, if and when she was willing to share it.
‘I think it takes a degree of personal experience to really understand what could drive someone down a path of addiction and retain sympathy for their plight. Most people see it as self-inflicted, but it’s rarely as simple as that. ’
‘It must have been hard for you and Eden.’ She stopped again and gave him a half smile.
‘Sorry, you probably don’t want to talk about all of that with someone you hardly know, but she’s told me a little bit about your mum’s problems with alcohol and how that affected her, and I guess it was the same for you. ’
‘Yes, it moulds who you are and it wasn’t just Mum.
’ Felix was so close to telling her about Meredith that he could feel the shape of her name in his mouth, but then he shook his head, pushing all the feelings that came with talking about her, back down again.
‘We worried about Dad a lot as well and he spent so much time covering up for Mum that it felt as if neither of them were ever going to find the strength to make a change. Thank God they did, but I know the impact that addiction can have on families, and I really hope that Sophie can do this for her sake, as well as for her son.’
‘Me too.’ Eve stopped as they reached her car and she smiled, her amber-brown eyes almost sparkling, in a way he wasn’t sure he’d seen before, and he found himself wondering if she’d looked like that all the time, before Max had sustained his head injury.
He felt an inexplicable and ridiculous stab of envy that Max might have been on the receiving end of that smile every single day, but Eve really was beautiful, her dark hair shining in the glow of the streetlight above their heads.
‘And, thank you, Felix. I owe you a big favour for sorting this out. I bet the last thing you wanted after a long shift was me knocking on your door and asking for help. If there’s anything I can do in return, just name it. ’
He came so close to suggesting that going for a drink together would more than settle the score, he had to inhale sharply to draw the words back in before they could escape.
It would be such an inappropriate suggestion, given what he knew about her relationship with Max, not to mention the fact that he was Max’s OT.
He also knew from his sister that Eve could be a closed book, and it had taken her a long time to even begin to open up.
But he really liked her, and if all they could ever become was friends, he knew he wanted that.
He didn’t want to risk doing anything that might put a stop to that.
‘You don’t owe me anything, I’m always happy to help, but if Gwen ever brings one of her cakes into the hospital shop and you get to it while there’s still some left, then you’ll have my undying gratitude if you grab me a slice, and I promise I’ll do the same for you. Trust me, it’s not to be missed.’
‘Oh, I know, I was this close to proposing to her when I tried her lemon drizzle cake.’ Eve pinched her thumb and forefinger together, with just a tiny gap between them, the matching dimples on either side of her mouth making an appearance as she grinned.
‘You’ll have to get in the queue. I’m first if her husband Barry ever does a runner.’ Felix laughed, although he had to admit it was no joke.
It wasn’t that he genuinely wanted to be Gwen’s second husband, of course, but he did want to find the kind of relationship she had with Barry.
They’d been married for fifty years, but he’d seen newlyweds with less excitement at being around one another.
The first time he’d met them, he’d asked Eden if they were as mad about each other as they seemed, and his sister had told him everyone talked about their relationship being something special.
They just seemed to get each other and to find adventure in the every day. So many people strove for a big house, or to jet off on as many trips as they could, but Felix knew those things didn’t buy happiness.
They certainly hadn’t for Meredith. He’d thought they could learn to be happy with the simple things, just because they were together, but Meredith had carried this emptiness inside her that nothing seemed to fill.
He’d tried so hard and he hated that he’d failed, but he knew know that she had to want something to fill the emptiness; something that wasn’t drugs.
Maybe these things were pre-destined, wired into the DNA, and he just hoped that next time he entered into a relationship he’d be able to spot the signs if the other person was damaged so badly that they didn’t want to be helped.
Maybe it was for the best that between work and volunteering he didn’t have time to do anything about meeting someone else, at least for now. But as he looked at Eve, all he knew was that spending time with her felt good. ‘So is that a deal?’
‘Absolutely. I promise to always get you a piece of Gwen’s cake when it’s on offer.
’ She shook his hand and he tried to ignore how much he wanted to know what it would feel like to kiss her.
The last thing Eve needed was him hitting on her and even if she hadn’t already got a fiancé, his head was all over the place after Meredith’s call.
He might have needed to leave the US for the sake of his own sanity, but that didn’t mean he could just stop caring.
The day he did that, would be the day he knew he was in the wrong job.
People like him and Eve had to care, even when it caused them pain.
It was what made them who they were, and all they could do was hope they helped enough people to make all the hard days worth it.
They were both counting on Sophie’s ability to turn her life around, more than Sophie herself would ever know.