Chapter 21

Karen opened her eyes and tried lifting her head from the familiar pillow. Even the slight movement she made turned her stomach and she felt herself starting to retch. Suddenly she felt Rob beside her stroking her back and gently putting an old washing up bowl below her. She could feel from her stomach that there was nothing left to vomit, and this was confirmed as the final bits of bile came into her mouth. She quickly spat them into the bowl before trying to wipe away the tears coursing down her cheeks. Yet they were coming faster than she could wipe.

"Stop…" Rob's voice was gentle and calming, there was no malice in his word. Instead he leant her back into his arms and started rubbing her aching body in an attempt to calm her down. He stroked the damp hair back from her face before placing a gentle kiss on her forehead.

"Sorry…" The word finished with a gulp from the tears. She looked into his soft eyes and couldn't help but wonder why he was still there with her. After the procedure he had bought her home and nursed her. A mixture of the anaesthetic and stress she had been through had meant a nasty reaction and Karen hadn't left the bedroom for 48 hours. She had barely been awake.

"Don't ever apologise for this darling…not ever." He slowed the pace he was rubbing her back as he heard her retching subside. Gently he took the bowl away and helped her into a more comfortable position on the bed. He wiped away the tears from her cheeks with his finger before taking one of her shaking hands in his.

The sensitive actions made Karen cry even harder. For so many years she had been facing all the pain in her life on her own. For Rob to have done half of these things to look after her was making her heart ache. Looking around and seeing the clock she realised that she had been asleep for nearly two days. She was sure that if her stomach hadn't been complaining so hard about the anaesthetic that had been pumped into her body that the growls of hunger would have been rolling around the room as well. Then something stirred in her mind that made her ask another question. "The kids?" She had realised that the house was quiet, and the time on the clock meant that they were in the middle of the school day.

"I managed to persuade Harry and Jess that they needed to be in school." He smiled at her.

Karen opened her mouth again to ask another question but it was quickly covered by a yawn that she couldn't prevent escaping. She gently shook her head. She had already been off school for three days, and she hated the fact that she was sure they would all be talking about her absence.

"School think that you've got a stomach bug, and they all know that you're staying with me…so naturally they're all assuming that I've picked it up from you and we're currently both out of action…and of course. I'm not going to put them right on that one." He gently got up from sitting next to her on the bed and filled her water glass from the sink in the en-suite. "So darling all you need to worry about is looking after you…no worrying about school or the kids. We need to focus on you first and then we can start thinking about other people."

Weakly Karen nodded as she felt her eyelids start to close again. Her body was screaming at her that it needed more sleep, and she felt too weak to argue. Instead she let Rob help her further down into the bed and slowly she drifted off into a deep sleep, but not before he had taken one of her hands and was gently rubbing it in a motion to help send her off to sleep.

Rob sat gently holding Karen until she fell back into her sleep. He waited until he felt her body relax under him and she was sure that she was fast asleep before he moved. It had been so hard to get her any sleep recently that he wanted to make sure he wasn't going to wake her. Even when he did move it was only to another chair. Despite Karen not wanting to admit it, he knew that she had been having nightmares. She kept waking up screaming out during the night. The first couple of times Jess had come running in as well. Rob had managed to calm and soothe Karen before convincing Jess to get some sleep as well. He couldn't imagine what the teenager was going through at the minute, but he did know that Karen would want them all to try and keep going with their normal lives for as long as possible.

Rob couldn't help but be amazed about how Karen's kids were dealing with everything. They had all left their home behind, the Jess he saw when they were eating dinner was a completely different girl to the one she wanted people to see her as at school. He could see how much she was hurting about everything and he knew how hard she found it having him around looking after her Mum. They had talked about it and Rob knew that Jess felt she had let her Mum down by not being able to completely look after her Mum on her own.

Rob sat watching Karen sleep. He knew that part of him felt like they had to look at the future and what was going to happen, but at the minute he needed to make sure that Karen was ok. It he could try and be there even a small amount through this then that was everything he would do. He knew though that they would both have to be back in school before the end of the week. There was no way they could stay out any longer without there being too many questions, but as he watched Karen sleeping he promised himself that he would always be there for her until she said she didn't want him there anymore.