Page 2 of Mending Hearts at the Cornish Country Hospital (The Cornish Country Hospital #6)

Sometimes the fierceness of his affection got the better of Teddie, and he’d sink his teeth into Eden’s shoulder because he didn’t have the words to tell her how big his feelings were.

It hurt, a lot, but she’d realised a long time ago that when it came to Teddie, she had to take the rough with the smooth, and she wouldn’t have traded those hugs for anything, even if they occasionally came at a cost. In the groups she belonged to for parents of autistic children, it had soon become clear that not all of the children were able to demonstrate affection, and it would have broken Eden’s heart if Teddie had been one of them.

All the hard days, the battles for the support he needed, and the looks from people who didn’t understand his behaviour, faded to nothing when he put his little arms around her neck and squeezed her tight.

It would have been so much harder without that.

Drop off at the nursery always went the same way.

Eden would take Teddie over to ‘his’ corner of the nursery.

It was an area that had been specially created for him; it was cordoned off with half-height wooden panels, almost like an indoor Wendy house, without the roof.

It had sensory toys, with light, texture and sound to engage Teddie, and most of all it afforded him space away from the demands of other children, which were often too much for him.

Shannon, who managed the nursery, and who was on Teddie’s very short list of those who deserved his hugs, was someone else Eden was incredibly grateful for.

She’d understood Teddie’s needs from day one and she didn’t view him as some kind of burden, like the staff at his first nursery had, and Eden loved her for it.

‘How did he sleep last night?’ It was the same question Shannon always asked and until recently the answer had often been the same too.

Terribly. For the past two months there’d been some more variety in Eden’s response.

Teddie’s paediatrician had prescribed melatonin, because of the difficultly he had with sleeping, like many children with autism.

It had been a game changer for all of them.

It didn’t mean that every night was a good one, but sometimes he slept as much as ten hours without disturbance.

The first time he’d had a good night, Eden had woken up with a start, sitting bolt upright in her bed, gripped with fear about why he hadn’t woken.

Teddie had been fine, but it had taken some getting used to, and there were still nights when neither of them got anywhere near as much sleep as they needed.

‘Pretty good and he managed some toast and peanut butter this morning.’ Eden smiled.

‘But if there are any issues today, please can you call Mum, rather than me? She said she’s willing to risk getting banned from the golf club by taking a call on the course and I’m not going to be able to get away from work, not when we’ve got the inspection. ’

‘Of course, but there won’t be anything we can’t handle, will there, Teddie?

’ Shannon brushed a hand over the blond curls that were so like his father’s and such a stark contrast to Eden’s straight, dark brown hair, although he had the same sky-blue eyes as his mother.

Even as Shannon ruffled Teddie’s hair, he didn’t look at her.

He’d just started responding to his name, but it was still pretty hit-and-miss, and it required a lot of tenacity just to get him to react.

‘Thank you.’ Eden’s shoulders relaxed a little bit.

It had been a few weeks since Teddie had experienced one of his meltdowns, when no amount of comforting could take the edge off his heightened emotions.

There was nothing that could be done other than to let the feelings play out, but that wasn’t fair on the other children.

So, when it happened, either Eden or her parents would collect Teddie and take him home.

She really hoped today wouldn’t be one of those days.

She looked over at him now, as he tipped one of the sensory toys upside down, watching bubbles of colour drip slowly in the opposite direction, mesmerising him.

‘I’m just going to slip away, while he’s not watching. ’

Eden almost whispered the last words, knowing Shannon would understand why she wasn’t saying goodbye to her son. If she slipped away, she’d be out of sight and out of mind, but if she made a big fuss of leaving it might cause him unnecessary distress.

‘See you later. He’ll be fine, don’t worry.

’ It was the same assurance Shannon gave her each time, and Eden knew it was true, but that didn’t stop her worrying every spare moment she got during her working day, about whether Teddie really was okay without her.

The upside of a job as demanding as hers, was that she barely had any of those spare moments when she was on shift and it was just one more thing Eden was thankful for.

* * *

The emergency department was busy as usual, and Eden glanced quickly at the patients waiting to be seen.

They were a mixture of ages, from the elderly to very young children, one of whom was sobbing loudly, his face buried against his mother’s chest as she tried to soothe him, looking as if she might be on the verge of tears herself.

Two rows in front of them was someone Eden recognised.

Ali was such a permanent fixture of the emergency department that he should have had his own chair, and she didn’t need years of training to guess the reason for his visit.

Hurrying through to her locker, despite the fact she was early for once, Eden dropped off her rucksack and took a deep breath to ready herself for the shift ahead, and to try and put aside her worries about Teddie for long enough to focus on her job.

He’d be fine, deep down she knew that, but having sole responsibility for worrying about him almost from the moment he was born had changed Eden.

Her parents worried about him too of course, and they’d shouldered a lot of responsibility for his care since she’d come home, but when push came to shove it was down to Eden to make sure her son was okay.

She hadn’t planned to be a mother, hadn’t felt ready, but from the moment he’d come along he’d become the reason for everything she did.

Despite the reality, at work it was easier to be the carefree version of herself she’d been before she met Jesse and her world had been upended in a way that had left her fearful about whether she’d even survive the experience.

It was why she’d had to take Teddie and run while they had the chance.

Jesse had taken away her freedom bit by bit.

It had started by him guilt tripping her every time she did something that didn’t involve him.

He became paranoid and threatened to hurt himself if she didn’t do what he wanted, saying he couldn’t cope without her there, playing on her sympathy for the trauma he’d experienced as a child.

It had meant she hadn’t ended the relationship when she knew she should.

Then the behaviour had escalated, and he’d lied to her so much she was no longer sure if any of their relationship had been based on truth.

He’d told her he couldn’t have children, due to treatment for childhood cancer, and then she’d fallen pregnant with Teddie.

It had added a whole new layer of control and guilt tripping.

Did she really want to be the one who came between Teddie and his father, when both she and Jesse had been put through so much by their own parents?

It was only when she could see Jesse’s behaviour negatively impacting on Teddie, and his complete inability to put his son’s needs before his own, that she realised staying with him would do Teddie far more harm than good.

In the years with Jesse it hadn’t felt like she’d had a life of her own and even now it sometimes felt as if her only identity was as Teddie’s mother.

She didn’t resent that, because it was the most important part of her life, but work provided the respite that Eden had to admit she needed.

When she was nursing, she didn’t have to be the mother fighting to find her son a place in a school that could meet his needs, and being told there weren’t enough spaces to go around.

It seemed insane for the local authority to want to put him in a class with children who’d be learning phonics and writing their names, before Teddie could even say ‘Mama’, and she wasn’t prepared to accept it.

Going along with it wouldn’t be fair, not to Teddie, the other children, or the teachers.

She’d fight tooth and nail to get specialist schooling for her son if she had to, and advocating for Teddie brought out the tigress in her.

On shift she was another version of herself altogether, the Eden who liked nothing better than a laugh with her colleagues, hearing about the minutiae of their lives and offering up her advice when she was asked for it as though she knew how to make the best kind of decisions.

The truth was that most of the decisions she’d made in the past had been because she thought they were right for other people, rather than for herself.

It was partly a legacy of the issues she’d had with her mother when she was growing up, but her tendency to put other people’s needs before her own had rocketed to a whole new level during her relationship with Jesse.

He’d robbed her of the ability to fight for what she believed in, because it was easier to go along with what he wanted.

Becoming a shell of who she was had robbed her of her confidence too, but all of that was changing.

Now she did what she thought was best for Teddie and for herself, because Eden had finally come to realise that if she didn’t look after herself, she wouldn’t be able to look after him either.