A/N: I am not a doctor and this is not a medical story, so I'm going to try and avoid as much of it as possible while still bringing you guys a good yarn. Thanks for sticking with it!
~0~
There was little to be done for Thomas once they got him settled in a hospital bed, and Lucien was just about beside himself feeling useless. A broken leg could be set straight, a bullet wound cleaned and stitched closed, but it seemed that for all his clever skills and varied experiences there was little to be done for a broken heart.
Whispers were starting in the medical world about surgery that would unblock the arteries, but even if Lucien was brave enough to attempt such a thing – which, he realised with great pain, he was not – the treatments were experimental at best and not yet on the radar of a small country hospital in Victoria. A part of him couldn't let his own father be a test subject anyway, even if it meant saving him, and so he worked with the attending physicians to get his father more aspirin and make him as comfortable as possible while they waited to see if a secondary attack would finish him off.
Lucien called Jean at home as promised. He asked her to stay away. He hoped to find a way to repay her for looking after Li for him and wished he could join them at home and not be at the hospital at all. But she agreed to keep Li occupied while they all waited for Thomas to recover, and for that he was beside himself with gratitude.
His father slept. So long and so deep that Lucien poked him occasionally just to watch him snuffle and prove he was still capable of consciousness. They wouldn't know until the following day if he was out of the woods just yet, and once they did he would need to walk around to keep the remainder of his heart tissues working and healthy. But after the flurry of initial activity Thomas mostly slept.
"Still avoiding me, dad" said Lucien to his relaxed face. But there was no bite in it, only chilling relief that he could bait the old man at all. And then, when the nurse left for the change of shift and the ward quieted for the evening; when Thomas was deep in restful sleep and the lights were all low in the hall; then Lucien allowed himself to feel the weight of the day, and he wept long and hard for what might have been. Everything about the day shook him to his core – the reminder of his father's mortality, his last surviving parent; Li's need to have a family, and Lucien's need for the same, though he would never frame it the same way; Lucien's ability as a doctor called into question and yet he was rendered hopeless in the face of a common and deadly ailment. Sitting in the chair by his father's bedside, Lucien placed his hand over his mouth as tears flowed freely for the events of the day and he was loath to stop them. This was normal, he knew. This was the let-down of adrenaline that followed a stressful event; the reaction he was allowed to have here, in Ballarat, in safety and warmth. This was the relief of a son who still –despite everything between them – needed his father.
Lucien didn't hear the door open until a gentle hand rested on his shoulder, and he jolted and looked up to the face of the night nurse, a young women with deep brown eyes that seemed to understand.
"Go home, Doctor Blake" she said gently. "We'll call you if anything changes. But go home and sleep tonight"
A part of him protested against it – he was a doctor and he had a duty of care; he was a son and this was his father – but he knew she was right. Thomas had stabilised over the course of the day, and the longer he rested the less likely it seemed he would have a second attack. And even if he did, the men and women of the hospital were just as equipped to deal with it, certainly better than Lucien himself with his exhaustion and worry. He wouldn't be of any use being strung out and irritable tomorrow from lack of sleep. Better to go home and try to rest in his own bed – make sure Li was okay and thank Jean for the umpteenth time, and just generally hope for the best.
None of which made rising from the chair and saying goodbye any easier.
He stood by his father's bedside and watched him sleep for a moment. His face was slack in a way that looked exhausted and not at all peaceful – bottom jaw hanging slightly open and slouched to one side so that a droplet of drool sat on his lip about to fall. He was propped up on pillows that seemed to engulf him from the shoulders up and made him look very small. He looked every bit his age and then some; with a start Lucien realised he looked like an old man. Gone was the giant that stood above him and ushered him onto the taxi bound for Melbourne without so much as a hug. Gone was the brute who demanded Lucien abandon his foreign love and return to Australia. Gone was the dour gentleman who sat around corners and in shadows steadfastly ignoring his son and granddaughter.
In his place was a frail old man, so wrapped in his pride and his fear. So close to death today that it rattled the foundations beneath all of them.
"Don't you go anywhere, dad" whispered Lucien softly. "We still have a lot to talk about"
Lucien would be furious at his father if he didn't obey. With a final squeeze of his hand where it rested on the sheets, Lucien turned and walked out of the room, determined not to look back, just in case.
~0~
He met Jean in the kitchen, where her worried eyes tried to give him a smile. It was late enough that she had retired into her pink fluffy gown with her hair net on, and was fussing by the sink putting away dishes that had been left to air dry. No doubt she had called the hospital more than once to get an update, but she hadn't asked the nurse to pull him from his father's side, and for that he was in her debt.
"Li went down fine" she said, getting right to the point, her eyes searching him. "Though she was very quiet all day"
He nodded at her. He didn't have the energy or the heart to pick apart his daughter's own demons brought forth by the ruckus. She must have been terrified, and so conditioned to obey and to carry on without fuss that Lucien hadn't thought that it wasn't a good thing. Jean had dragged her off to the kitchen and spent the day with her, and the weight of guilt crushed him as he wondered what she must have thought. So young and already having lost so much – endured so much; he felt he had failed her, and yet Jean's words echoed in his ear. You can't do it all yourself, she had said, and today he knew he made the right choice. The doctor saw to his patient, and the father left his child in hands he knew were more than capable. It was a compromise he made without a second thought, and one he would do again in a heartbeat, no matter the repercussions that may rear their ugly head later.
"I will see to her in the morning" said Lucien to Jean, a quiet acknowledgement that he was too bone tired to deal with it that moment. Jean only nodded once.
"Tea?" she offered. Her voice was whisper soft, lacking any of the bite he had come to expect in her. Her kindness nearly caused the last of his resolve to shatter.
"No" said Lucien, fighting tears. "No, I think I will turn in for the night"
"Very well" she said, and didn't seem at all surprised. "If you need anything…"
He smiled at her – a very gentle and genuine smile, one that butted against all the prickliness he wanted to feel, and one that had shone through to her more than once on their walk through Ballarat just the previous day. It was a peaceful smile; Lucien felt warmth when it happened, radiating from his sternum like the feeling of coming home.
"I know where to find you" he said, still holding that smile, and Jean turned almost bashful under his gaze.
She nodded at him once again. "Well. Goodnight then"
She turned around to start preparing the kettle for her own cup of tea, and Lucien lingered for just a moment to consider her. He didn't think, at the time, that she would be very affected, but it suddenly struck Lucien just how much Jean had to lose if his father hadn't made it to the hospital, and how much she still stood to lose if the unthinkable happened. This was her home; watching her in the kitchen was evidence of that, as it was obviously her room and nobody else's. In the sunroom there were endless pots of flowers taking bloom, and even the garden was starting to take some shape, a bright orange thing next to the window that was never there before.
Jean's knitting sat in the living room and the fruit of her labour in the house could be felt all around; if Lucien looked for them, he would find her handwriting on the patient files stacked neatly in the cabinet, and the upstairs rooms had been carefully prepared for new people to arrive. She was everywhere here, and he wondered why it took him such a painful day to notice.
Yet she had not asked after Thomas. She knew the answers, of course, because she no doubt kept abreast of the situation over the phone, but she did not burden Lucien with her worries. Instead she asked after him, and offered tea and a friendly shoulder; reassured him that Li was well and that this house, at the very least, would still be standing in the morning. She gave all of that so selflessly that Lucien was rendered near speechless, this time not in gratitude but in awe. Wherever his father found such a remarkable woman as Jean Beazley, Lucien could only be grateful for it.
"Goodnight, Jean" Lucien muttered in answer to her, and then turned and left the kitchen and took himself upstairs before the magnitude of her kindness finally caused his tears to fall.
~0~
In his room Lucien was overcome with a feeling of helplessness. He was so tired, mentally and physically working to make sure his father was okay, and yet his mind buzzed with a nervous energy that made the very thought of sleep untenable. Li was in the single room – fondly thought of as her room now, and the idea that he would be staying for a long time to come, that Li would make a home here, was not as terrifying as it once was – and so Lucien's room was left all to himself.
He couldn't sleep, and he didn't want to face Jean downstairs by going to get a cup of tea or a snack to calm his nerves. But there was one demon he knew he could face here, and one task that he knew he should complete while he had the chance, and so he walked over to his bed and sat on the edge, fishing from underneath it the old tin box that housed his few meagre memories. On the top was the parcel Jean had placed so gently in his hands just last night and Lucien held the letters with a reverence he hadn't shown them before.
They seemed so inconsequential now; so small in the grand scheme of things. And yet his father may have died today, and there would have been nothing left of him save these meagre few words written years ago. Lucien was terrified of what they would contain, and hadn't the courage to open them the night before after such a perfect day with Jean and Li. But now Thomas lay in a hospital bed after cheating death once, and only time would tell if he would do so again any time soon; now seemed as good a moment as any to face his fear head on.
Silently Lucien pulled at the string holding them all together, and watched as they fell onto his lap, the oldest letter on top. He unfurled it, skimmed it to skip the pleasantries and get a feel for when this must have been written, and then focussed on a paragraph half way down on the first page.
This house is rather large with just me here. I think I may need to bring on a boarder or two to fill the rooms. Perhaps I will even consider a live-in housekeeper, though I doubt Mrs Keeley would accept the offer.
Mrs Keeley was the housekeeper for most of the years Lucien was living in Singapore, a sour old Irish woman with as many grandchildren as teeth, so this letter must have been sent right after their fight in a bid to rebuild rapport.
I will leave yours free, of course, but there is too much space here for just one man, it seems wasteful not to use it. Perhaps when you next visit we can discuss it together.
It was a strange thing for his father to write, but Lucien was no fool; he could read between the lines. The polite interest, the casual invitation home, the attempt to draw Lucien back into the fold like it was a place he had always belonged. Like he wasn't a lost young soul on the other side of the world making a life for himself that decidedly did not include his father. Lucien had been independent since he was a child, a fact he used to pride himself on and make jokes about; a past that shaped him into the doctor and the soldier and the world traveller.
But when he looked at Li his rage came back, and he wondered what he would think if she so prided herself on being that independent of him. Lucien had gone to great lengths to reclaim Li's childhood for her after her years in the orphanage. That had been a cruel and difficult place, void of any warmth, and it could so easily have come to pass that she wound up like Lucien; young and alone on the other side of the world, without her parents and fiercely determined to survive.
He looked at Li and couldn't fathom how he could put her in a cab and send her off to even Ballan for a day let alone Melbourne for a full school term. And to have his father invite him back after all the awful things they said to each other the last time was a kick in the stomach he wasn't expecting. The house was empty because you banished me from it, thought Lucien, and didn't notice he had curled the letter into his clenched fist until it tore on one edge.
Flattening it out again to preserve it for now, Lucien put that letter aside. It wouldn't tell him anything of importance, and indeed felt more like a sorry attempt to mend bridges long burned. Instead he picked through the pile to the next letter, uncertain if he would be strong enough to read them all tonight. The intense need to honour his father's words was being replaced by the old memories of anger and resentment, and in the wake of such tumult Lucien once again felt the pull of fatigue in his bones.
He unfurled the next one, skimmed the first lines of pleasantries once more, and then focussed on the first paragraph of any substance. This one, he was shocked to find, was almost laughable in its frankness.
I didn't approve of your match at the time, and if I may be indulged my honesty, I still don't. If you only knew the price it could cost you, Lucien, to marry someone so different from yourself. I meant what I said; you stand to lose everything. You may feel I spoke out of turn, and I certainly can't change your mind now, but I can only hope that you are happy, and that Singapore is treating you well.
This time the anger didn't bite as before. Instead he checked the date on the letter again. If he had opened this at the time it arrived it would have made he and Mei Lin laugh together, sitting on their bed mocking the old man from half a world away. She was newly pregnant then, and they were deliriously happy; passionate in ways he never knew married people to be, living at the height of Singaporean society, with her family welcoming the respectable white Doctor into their arms as only Colonial Singaporeans could. They would have put on voices to each other as they bandied Thomas' words back and forth for years to come; it would have become a joke between them – care to change your mind about me, darling? – and they would never have given another thought to the differences between them. Thomas truly had no idea what kind of marriage Lucien and Mei Lin had, and any loss of family that Lucien endured was done by his own father. No, this letter didn't bring forth the same contempt as the first, because in reality it was written without any authority at all. And so Lucien read on, just to see what he had to say.
Regardless of what was said, I would so love to meet your wife someday. I also don't like the rumblings I hear about Germany. I hope you don't go getting caught up in such things. Please, Lucien, come home now. Bring your wife with you if you must. It would be wonderful to show her the town in which you grew up.
Where he expected to feel rage at the obvious disrespect Thomas was showing Mei Lin – a woman he never met, and now never would – he was surprised to find he felt only pity. There was at least one sister of Thomas' that still lived near Ballarat, was unbelievably wealthy, and who Lucien had only very briefly met. His recollections of the woman painted a very grim picture; stern, and cold, and accusatory of Genevieve in a way that an eavesdropping young boy didn't understand. Thomas had given up his entire family and been wiped from them because of his love of a French woman. In some ways, and with hindsight, Lucien knew what his father was trying to say that night they screamed vulgar things at each other, and he knew what the letter in his hand meant. All of it weighed up to an apology that Thomas didn't know how to give. An attempt to pretend like their estrangement never happened.
The offer to bring Mei Lin was misguided. Singapore, at least when this letter was written, was treating them very kindly indeed, and together they had forged a marvellous life full of intrigue and grand parties and a love of culture and each other. But it was an olive branch that Lucien wasn't expecting, nonetheless. Thomas had reluctantly opened his door to the foreign daughter-in-law he believed spelled the ruin of his only son, and in doing so Lucien found in him a level of kindness under the surface that he'd never seen before. The same kindness that invited Jean and her wayward sons to live in his house for the convenience of it all. The same kindness that embraced Lucien when he walked in with Li late that night, and offered an unconditional bed for as long as they both needed it.
Lucien knew he wouldn't find all the answers he was looking for tonight. He would have to speak to his father face-to-face for that. And he also knew that he couldn't read another letter now, as his arms grew heavy and his back ached to lie down. But he had gained enough; understood enough from just two correspondences to know that regardless, that conversation needed to happen.
When Thomas was well enough, they would have to talk, if only to clear the air as to what their next steps forward should look like. There would be patients to attend while Thomas recovered, and they would need to ensure the estate was in order should the unthinkable happen next time. All of them would have to make changes to diet and make Thomas walk into town more often, and none of it would be easy to enforce on a man who was so prideful and stubborn. But Lucien felt now more than ever the burden of being the master of the house, and for the first time in his life calmness overcame him at the thought. It would not be easy, but for now he would have to see it through to its natural conclusion, if for no other reason than to prove that his own stubbornness was a fierce creature indeed. Like father like son, thought Lucien ruefully. If he decided he and Li should move on after that, well that was a conversation for a different hour, but in the meantime he was resolute in seeing his father recover and seeing Li settled into a new life in Ballarat.
Part of him was absolutely certain that Jean would help him with his endeavours, and that thought brought a smile to his face as he packed away his things and got ready for bed and the days ahead.