Read Online A Secret Shared... by Marion Lennox - Free Book Online Page A

individual child as if they’d retrieved it themselves.
    No pressure.
    Jack looked around at this motley group of parents and children. Some were overtly injured, scarred, frail. Some must be emotionally injured for there were no outward signs of what was wrong, but he’d seen the application forms. The only kids here were those whose need was strong.
    And for the first time since he’d had the phone call saying his sister was dead, he found himself feeling calm. Helen had been right: this was a good place for Harry to be.
    He could relax. Someone else was doing the worrying for him.
    Harry was digging his way to China.
    The therapists were playing keepings off, swooping off along the beach with a ragtag of children following.
    There was a stir just behind him, a cry. He turned and a woman was struggling to hold a child, a girl about twelve or thirteen.
    She was arching back in her mother’s arms, and her involuntary jerks told Jack she was in mid-convulsion.
    Harry stared. ‘Jack,’ he breathed, and this, too, was amazing. Not only had he registered something was wrong, he was expecting Jack to do something about it.
    Kate was in the water. The therapists were far down the beach, chasing children. With his medical training, Jack certainly needed to do something about it.
    The child was only ten yards away and he reached her fast, kneeling on the sand, automatically starting to check her airway as the woman with her tried to hold her still.
    Toby’s death yesterday was front and foremost in his mind. Another brain tumour? How many seriously ill children did Kate have here?
    But it was no such thing. ‘It’s all right,’ the woman managed. ‘It’s... Susie’s epileptic. She won’t take... I thought she’d taken but she hates...and she hates people seeing.’
    ‘I’m a doctor,’ Jack told her. ‘Let me help.’
    The kid was an almost-teen, Jack thought, automatically taking her from her mother’s arms and shifting her sideways. As an oncologist he treated kids of this age, and he understood their trauma. Sometimes the side effects of their illness seemed more terrible to the kids than the illness itself. Hair loss. Hospitalisation and enforced distance from their peer group. Being seen as different.
Different.
A fate worse than death for a teenager.
    ‘Put the beach towel down for me,’ he told the woman, and once again got a shock as Harry moved to help. The girl was rigid, arching, breathing noisily and seemingly unaware of her surroundings. If she was indeed epileptic, though, all they needed to do was keep her safe until the convulsion passed.
    He set her down, rolling her onto her side. Then checked his watch. Convulsions always seemed to last for ever. There was no need to worry if it didn’t go past five minutes but, watching a kid convulse, it was very hard to register time.
    ‘My husband’s gone to make a phone call for work,’ the woman sobbed. ‘He’s with the police; they’re always calling him, even though he’s supposed to be here, helping me care. And I don’t know what to do. I never do. I hate these attacks. Don’s better than me with coping. I can’t... Should I call someone? Kate?’
    But Jack had been here before, all too often. His little sister had been epileptic....
Both
his parents had hated her attacks. Jack had learned to cope early, and his medical training had reinforced what he’d learned the hard way. The only thing Beth had hated more than her epileptic attacks had been people seeing her having them, and this kid would be no different. He glanced across at Kate and then along the beach to the therapists. Any call would make everyone on the beach aware of what was happening.
    His body was blocking the view for the moment and no one else seemed to have noticed. If they could keep this private...
    ‘I’m sure I can look after her,’ he told Susie’s mum. ‘There’s no problem. Harry, can you give me a hand to shift these two beach shelters so we can get some