The notion of being surrounded by friends and community buoyed her up much more than she could have expected. Every so often, she remembered that Dan was walking down to her mother’s cottage and taking Dora for a long walk each day when he really didn’t have to. He’d struck up a friendship with Niall too and even if she still worried about her son, at least he had something to ground him here in Ballycove for now.
Her mother was being extremely chipper and while that might not come as a surprise to people like Elizabeth, Lucy knew that even the most positive people buckled at some point under a cancer diagnosis. If Jo had down days, she managed somehow to hide them from the people around her and Lucy figured that took some special kind of bravery or love for your nearest and dearest.
The fundraiser was doing a lot to keep them all positive. It was something to aim for and regardless of what Elizabeth decided to do with the surgery, Lucy had made up her mind she would be in Ballycove for as long as Jo needed her.
The surgery? That was another question that hung over her. Lucy had a feeling that if she sold up her little house in Dublin and added to the money she had left over from the sale of the rather affluent address she’d shared with Jack, she probably had enough money to buy both the house and the business. The problem was that even if she was sure it was the right thing to do, Elizabeth needed all the cash together – now. Lucy and Jo were probably the only two people in the village to know the extent of the debt hanging about Elizabeth’s neck.
Eric O’Shea had been a drinker and a gambler and he was much more prolific at both of these than he had been successful as a country GP. The end result was that his wife was left with a shell of a house, the remains of a business and a string of debtors who could foreclose at the first sign of a jugular exposed. To be honest, she could see the potential in the surgery. With a little investment in the property and equipment, it could be a really good way to make a living.
She could, if she wanted to, make her permanent home here in Ballycove; she could easily settle in here for the long haul. There were worse places she thought; actually, there was probably nowhere better. The roads were free of clogged-up traffic, you were a stone’s throw from an unpolluted empty beach and she knew everyone and knew they were good people. She would be welcomed here, not just because they needed a doctor, but because she was one of them.
Still, it seemed none of that mattered. The timing was terrible and she couldn’t think beyond Jo’s cancer – whereas Elizabeth needed a solution sooner rather than later. Lucy had no idea what her future held and so, how on earth could she make promises of the sort that required sinking her life’s savings and her whole future into a village at the far end of civilisation. Anyway, she couldn’t think about that now; her only priority was Jo. Really, all she could do was keep treading water: going to work, coming home, waiting, waiting. Sometimes she wondered what exactly she was waiting for, but then she’d raise her head from her busy day and remember.
Her mother had faded away to a fraction of the woman she’d always been. She barely ate now and what she did never stayed down for very long, so her weight had plummeted and her skin held that grey colour that only smokers and the very ill wear without the knowledge that it marks them out. Her medication was so strong that although it kept her pain at bay, it also tired her out, so she spent most of her day sleeping. It was as if she used up her whole store for Niall – he was, for both of them, the highlight of each day. Lucy and Elizabeth still met each evening for the Ladies’ Midnight Swimming Club. Jo managed to join them on rare nights when her body seemed intent on taunting them all with a burst of energy that vitalised her into the woman she’d always been.
Last weekend, it seemed she’d wizened even further into herself and there was the addition of a rather stubborn cough that halted somewhere in the back of her throat. Lucy had taken her temperature, filled her with as many oranges to increase her vitamin C as she could and said a silent prayer, even though she’d never been one much for God.
They were four weeks off the Dip in the Nip and really, Lucy couldn’t see how Jo could possibly go into the freezing waters of the Atlantic Ocean without perishing – literally. She was adamant there was no point asking the consultant before that and even if she didn’t agree, silently, Lucy knew she was right.
‘Oh, Lucy, you worry far too much about me,’ Jo said and put her hand up to stop her saying another word. ‘It’s really sweet, but you have to stop. It’s going to be fine; I’m made of tougher stuff than you realise.’ She shook her head.