But there hadn’t been any evidence of strange chemicals in any of her blood tests—at least, nothing beyond the sleeping tablets and paracetamol that they already knew about.
She shook her head, at a loss to know what to think. It was already aching enough with out this mental stress, but that was probably because she’d been on her feet far too much already today. It certainly wasn’t what she would want a patient of hers to do after such an incident.
Into the silence of the car came the unmistakable sound of Dan’s pager and he cursed softly under his breath as he tried to find a break in the busy traffic to pull over to the side of the road.
Once there, it only took seconds before he’d used his mobile phone to call the unit and Sara suddenly realised that it was the first time she’d heard him speak since they’d left the garage.
What had he been thinking while her brain had been strangled by conflicting ideas? Had he dismissed her claim that she’d recognised Zara as her assailant now that he’d seen that there was no real evidence or was he, too, worried about the ramifications for the children she was carrying if their mother-to-be had really tried to injure them?
‘That was your mother,’ he announced as he ended the call and pulled back out into the traffic. ‘She says that we need to go back to the hospital straight away. Zara’s next set of tests results have come in.’
‘Is she worse?’ Sara demanded anxiously, because, no matter what she’d done, Zara was her twin and she loved her.
‘Your mother didn’t say. All she told me was that we had to go straight to the hospital, so …’ He shrugged, his eyes never leaving the road as he navigated the quickest route.
‘Mum. Dad. What’s happened? What’s the problem with the latest results?’ Sara asked as soon as Dan pushed her into the unit in a hastily purloined wheelchair and found her parents just inside the doors, as though they’d been waiting impatiently for them to arrive.
‘What took you so long?’ her mother demanded, whirling to hurry up the corridor. ‘Mr Shah has got the results in his office and he needs to have a word with us.’
Sara suspected that the consultant was waiting to have a word with Dan rather than her parents. After all, as her husband he was legally Zara’s next of kin.
‘Daniel, come in, come in,’ the dapper gentleman invited, but it was Audrey who pushed in ahead of the wheelchair and took one of the two available chairs, closely followed by her husband. Daniel was left to prop himself up on the wall beside Sara to wait for Mr Shah to open Zara’s file sitting on his desk.
‘The nurse said you’ve had some more results, and I want to know when we’re going to be able to take our daughter home,’ Audrey said with the air of a general firing the opening salvo in a war she fully intended winning.
An expression of annoyance slid briefly across the consultant’s face, probably at the knowledge that a nurse had been giving out more information than she should have. Sara could imagine that before the shift was over her superior would be having a sharply worded conversation with whoever was responsible.
In the meantime, the man’s face had settled into the sort of bland expression that always preceded less-than-welcome news.
‘Unfortunately, the news isn’t good enough for us to be able to give you that sort of information,’ he said quietly. ‘Her liver function tests are giving us more cause for concern and it looks as if there may be more necrosis than we’d expected.’
‘Necrosis?’ Audrey pounced on the word. ‘What’s necrosis?’
‘It means that sections of her liver have been damaged and are dying, so they are no longer able to perform their proper function.’
‘So it’s the same as what you found on the last tests,’ she summarised for herself.
‘Yes and no,’ he prevaricated. ‘Yes, it’s the same condition but, no, it’s not the same as before because the condition has worsened.’
‘So, what are you going to do about it?’ Frank asked, and Sara wasn’t surprised to see how pale he was looking at the thought that his precious daughter’s health wasn’t improving the way they’d hoped.
‘I’m afraid we can’t do much more than we’re already doing as far as infusing the antidote into her system and supporting her and keeping an eye on the concentration of various components in her blood. It’s still very much a case of wait and see, but I thought you would want to be informed of the results so that you would know to prepare yourselves in case—’
‘Would a transplant cure it?’ Audrey interrupted, clearly unwilling to hear that particular eventuality even as a theory.
‘Well, yes, we can do liver transplants in some conditions—for example, in people with cirrhosis or hepatitis and also in some cases where the patient has had medication toxic to the liver—but the success rate is not as good as for kidney transplantation and there’s still the problem of finding a compatible liver donor while there’s still time to do the operation.’
‘Well, that’s not a problem, then … not for Zara,’ her mother announced with a beaming smile. ‘Sara will give her one of hers. I’ve seen it on television and they said that identical twins are a perfect match. Once you operate, Zara will be as good as new.’
‘No,’ Sara said sharply, and her mother turned on her with a look of utter disbelief on her face.
‘What do you mean, no? Sara, you can’t refuse to help your sister if she needs one of yours.’
‘Mother, I’ve only got one liver, so I can’t give it to her. The operation would mean chopping a chunk of mine away and that’s major surgery. Anyway, I doubt if you’d find a surgeon willing to do it because I’m pregnant and it wouldn’t be good for the babies.’
‘Well, then, you’ll have to get rid of the babies,’ her mother announced with a breathtaking lack of feeling for the unborn lives nestling inside her. ‘You can’t refuse to help save your sister’s life. She could die.’
‘But you would be quite happy for me to murder my babies to save your baby?’ Sara couldn’t believe the pain that thought caused, her heart clenching inside her chest as though every drop of blood had been wrung out of it.
Ever since she’d seen those two hearts on the ultrasound screen, beating so valiantly in spite of the recent trauma, it had brought the reality of her pregnancy home to her the way no amount of reading pregnancy books had done. She felt so connected to those tiny beings, so protective, that the thought of deliberately scouring them out of her womb and flushing them away was anathema.
‘So.’ She lifted her chin and stared her mother right in the eye. ‘What if I refuse to do it?’
‘You can’t refuse because they’re not your babies, they’re Zara’s, and if she needs them to die so that she can live—’
It was Sara’s turn to interrupt and she did so without a qualm.
‘They might be babies I’m carrying for Zara, but they’re growing in my body and from my eggs … and what’s more, it’s my liver you’re talking about and no one can have it if I don’t want to give it.’
Her mother broke into noisy sobs and no matter what her father said she wouldn’t be consoled.
Sara felt dreadful.
She now knew firsthand just how fiercely a mother would defend her child and couldn’t really blame her own mother for wanting to do everything she could to give her daughter a chance of being well again.
But she was a mother, too—at least while those two helpless innocents were still inside her—and she was going to fight every bit as hard for their survival.
Poor Mr Shah didn’t seem to know what to do for the