CAITLIN woke with a feeling of disorientation. The room was dark and shadowy, and she had a sense someone had watched her as she slept. Clutching her host’s bathrobe about her body, she stepped quietly out to the veranda and looked around.
The day had all but disappeared, leaving a wash of brilliant colour across the western sky, while the stillness dusk brought in its wake seemed to hover over the hospital complex. She listened but could hear nothing beyond the occasional growl of a car engine on a distant street and the hum of an air-conditioning plant—presumably over at the main building. Was Connor still working?
Connor. The name curled around her tongue and she allowed it to float softly from her lips. Perhaps he’d looked in to see if she was awake—that would explain the feeling of another presence in the room.
Either that or his predecessor’s ghost, Caitlin joked to herself as she went back into the bedroom to find clean clothes. She’d have another shower, wash away these fancies, then tidy herself up and go across to her temporary quarters. The sooner she was unpacked and could get down to work the better.
He was home by the time she emerged, for a light was on in the kitchen and the sounds of a string quartet drifted through the air.
‘Feeling better?’ he asked as she came into the big room and once again dropped her bag on the floor. There was no string quartet in evidence, but an elaborate stereo set-up on a shelf against the far wall suggested he used this room more than any other.
‘One hundred per cent,’ she assured him, her gaze drawn again to his eyes—but only to check their colour. ‘If you point me towards my home, I’ll go over and settle in.’
‘I’ll feed you first,’ he offered. ‘You can usually scrounge a meal in the hospital kitchen but it’s getting late and Nellie will be packing up for the night. As well as toast, I do a mean steak and salad if you’re prepared to risk it.’
She hesitated, knowing it was a sensible suggestion. They also had to discuss the reason for her visit to Turalla—the one subject they’d managed to avoid earlier in the day. Yet instinct told her spending too much time with Connor Clarke might prove unsettling—even dangerous.
Nonsense, her sane inner self retorted.
‘If you let me help,’ she said aloud, mentally crossing her fingers and hoping the inner self was right. ‘I’m a dab hand at washing lettuce.’
Connor reached into the refrigerator and pulled out a lettuce. He set it down on the bench then stepped away. Images of his visitor had floated in his mind all afternoon, distracting him as he’d dealt with patients and prescribed medication to ease their aches and illnesses.
Now the real thing was back in his kitchen, lovelier than his images, making faded blue jeans and an overlarge white shirt look elegant and sexy at the same time, her long blonde hair shimmering to her shoulder blades like an ad for a shampoo commercial.
He could understand the poor guys who’d explained the blonde jokes. It seemed incredible to a male mind that brains could come in such a stunning package.
‘I asked if you had a bowl.’
He stared at her, trying to compute the words. Pity he hadn’t a few more grey cells himself to replace the ones she’d knocked askew. He was the least sexist man he knew, so why was he standing in his own kitchen thinking such sexist thoughts?
‘Yes, under that bench. Drawers pull out and there’s an assortment of sizes. I’ve got some sprouts and tomatoes and other salad stuff in the refrigerator.’ He paused, then added, ‘I usually eat on the veranda. There’s a table out there near the barbecue.’
It wasn’t what he’d wanted to say but it filled the silence, and when he carried the plate of steak and sliced onions out on to the open area beyond the kitchen, she followed him.
‘Country air always smells so clean,’ she murmured, setting the salad bowl on the table and leaning out across the railing as if to take in more air than the house could offer. ‘And verandas right around the house—I love the openness of it.’
‘So the city that lured you at sixteen didn’t steal your heart?’ he asked, and she shook her head, blonde hair shimmering as light from the lamp reflected off it.
‘No,’ she said slowly. ‘But what I found in the city did. Science stole my heart—permutations and combinations and searching for answers.’
Connor felt coldness settle in his stomach well before he asked the question, but it had to be asked. Should have been asked earlier.
He held his hand above the barbecue plate to test the heat, then threw the onions on to sizzle so the noise provided a background when he did say the words.
‘And is that why you’re here? Searching for answers?’
Caitlin didn’t respond immediately and the coldness grew, sending icy shards through his veins, pricking and cutting at the flesh inside him.
‘Looking more at permutations and combinations,’ she said at last. ‘I think answers are still a long way off.’
He dropped the steaks onto the grill and flipped the onions, concealing the rage and despair jostling for supremacy in his mind.
‘I don’t suppose it’s anything other than the incidence of leukaemia that interests you?’ he asked, his voice as cold as the blood within him.
He’d expected her to defend herself so when she didn’t reply he continued.
‘Look, this town has suffered enough. It’s just getting over the divisions caused by the last round of experts. How do you think they’re going to feel about you coming and poking your admittedly beautiful nose into their business?’
The anger remained but the despair had turned to the nameless kind of fear he’d felt earlier—not for himself, or the town, but for the woman who was about to stir up old animosities. He turned the steak then looked across to where she was standing, propped against the railing.
‘Perhaps we could discuss this rationally,’ she suggested bluntly. ‘Leaving out all the emotive stuff about the town and divisions and considering one basic fact. It is only through continuing research that puzzles like leukaemia—any cancer, in fact—will eventually be solved.’
‘You can’t leave people out of the equation,’ he objected, slapping steak and onions onto a plate and dumping it on the table. ‘Researchers sitting in labs might be dealing with bundles of mutating cells but those cells came from living human beings who hurt and cry and feel the pain of others.’
He headed for the kitchen, grabbed cutlery and returned, anger still burning.
‘What do you hope to find that the other so-called experts failed to discover? There’s been no new case of leukaemia in this town for three and a half, nearly four, years. What can you possibly do at this stage?’
Caitlin felt the force of his anger but kept a clamp on her own temper. She understood what fuelled his rage but why were scientists always the bad guys? Why were they seen as passionless, unemotional people not affected by the pain and tears of others?
She sat down at the table and helped herself to salad, then, choosing her words carefully, said, ‘The other experts tested external factors—water, soil, air—seeking something that may have caused the problem. I’m not here to look into possible causes, but to try to trace genetic links between the families.’
‘Leukaemia as an inherited predisposition? I thought the latest research on leukaemia was centred on the possibility of viral causes.’
He joined her at the table, glaring across it as he rebutted her statement.
She nodded, glad he was up on the latest research.
‘A virus that causes leukaemia in mice has been discovered, and an enormous amount of work is being carried out based on this find. No actual human virus has been isolated as yet, although the animal work points to the possibility of it. At the moment, scientists are studying a number of suspect viral infections which could be linked to cancer.’
‘Can I hear a “but” hovering at the end of that sentence?’
A lightening of his voice told her he was calming down, perhaps even becoming interested. She tried some steak while she formulated an answer that wouldn’t set up more barriers, and found it melting in her mouth. It was all she could do to stop the whimper of sheer pleasure.
‘This is delicious—beautiful meat. I’d forgotten how good real food could be.’
Obviously startled by her statement, Connor lifted his head and studied her closely, eyes bright with disbelief.
‘You don’t eat real food?’
She grinned at his astonishment.
‘Not for the last month or so. Once this project was mooted, I had to finish what I was working on and also do an enormous amount of preparatory work, not only searching out all the latest papers that might help but boning up on the history of each patient. I’ve lived on take-aways delivered to the lab, and breakfast cereal on the rare occasions I was home.’
He smiled and she felt her body relax, the tension generated earlier melting away. Mind you, it wasn’t so surprising, the man had the kind of smile that would melt metal. The thought was so unexpected she found her cheeks grow warm and determinedly turned her attention from his smile and back to her dinner.
‘Patient histories?’ he repeated. ‘Is that where the “but” comes in?’
‘You’re not an easy man to divert, are you?’ she said. ‘And as I’m eating your food, I guess I have to answer.’
She put down her fork and leaned forward across the table, using the clean tip of the knife to draw squiggles on the tablecloth as she spoke.
‘With the virus that’s been isolated, researchers haven’t been able to transmit it from one animal to another through normal procedures like physical contact or air transmission.’ She paused and looked up from her squiggles, wanting to see his reaction as she continued. ‘With the lab mice, it’s transmitted vertically through families, Connor, though not inevitably. Sometimes it passes from one infected female to one or all of her embryos at a very early stage in their development yet at other times the offspring are not affected.’
His dark eyebrows drew together in a puzzled frown.
‘But what about siblings?’ he demanded. ‘Surely if it was passed down from parent to child all the children in the family would suffer and that doesn’t happen.’
‘We’ve known for some time there’s a higher statistical likelihood of a twin contracting the disease, but the fact that some do and some don’t, as with the mice, seems to suggest that, while there must be a degree of genetic involvement, the virus is only one of a number of things leading to malignancy.’
‘So?’ he asked, and she felt his hostility returning, although he was continuing to eat his meal as if unfazed by her words. She watched him for a moment, wanting to connect with the man on a friendly basis yet knowing it might not be possible, given his antagonism to her presence in the town and the job she was here to do.
‘One way we might be able to take the research further—and translate it from the animals to humans—is through retrospective research.’ The words sounded weak in her own ears. She tackled the salad, deciding the sooner she finished eating, the sooner she could get out of his house. Maybe when he’d had time to think things through…
‘Looking back at people who’ve had or still have the disease?’
Caitlin nodded. ‘That’s right. And seeking possible links between them. You know how science works. You build up a theory then proceed to shoot it down.’
He actually paused in his eating as if this might be worth considering, but when he spoke she realised he’d only been gathering ammunition for another attack.
‘But there must be other places in the world where leukaemia victims have been grouped in one area. In fact, I know there are. And other types of cancer in clusters. It’s a well-known occurrence, although in many instances inexplicable. So why Turalla?’
She tried another smile but it was a strain.
‘In places like Hiroshima after the war and Chernobyl after the nuclear explosion there were explainable incidences—radioactive contamination of both air and water—but to find new leads, science has to look for answers in the clusters where no contamination has been found—in towns like Turalla.’
Silence! A lack of response that went on so long Caitlin felt her own anger build. Once again she reined it in, though not tightly enough to stop having a small shot at him.
‘It’s the old Nimby attitude, isn’t it? Not in my back yard. Everyone would like an answer but don’t let the research affect my town.’
‘Hell!’ he muttered, and stood up, pushing back his chair so quickly it tumbled over. By the time he’d picked it up, he seemed calmer.
‘It’s not that at all. I know what you’re saying, and I understand the need for research, but haven’t these families been through enough? Haven’t studies been done elsewhere that could be related to this particular area without dragging these families into it?’
She watched Connor pace up and down beside the railing. He moved with the fluid grace of a big cat and once again she was touched by a shiver of some prescience she didn’t understand. She couldn’t match him for strength and wasn’t about to react to his anger. Use the facts, her old professor had stated over and over again, not emotional arguments.
‘Work has been done on what might be considered familial cancer in two strains of the disease, one prevalent in Africa and one in China. Both forms appear to be transmitted by a virus similar to the glandular fever virus. Scientists are trying to explain why some family members who contract the virus escape the cancer and others don’t. That’s the closest to what I want to study here.’
He stopped his pacing, as if struck by a winning argument.
‘But what can you do here if no virus linked to leukaemia has been isolated as yet?’
‘I can study the genetic make-up of all the members of the families involved, and eliminate the similarities. What’s left will be the differences and perhaps, even without a virus, those differences will tell us something.’
Caitlin watched as he digested this information. Not a man to give in easily, she decided. Where would he attack from next?
‘Do you realise not all the children had the same type of leukaemia? As I said, I wasn’t here at the time, but from what I can remember of their files, there were different diagnoses.’
Conceding his point with a nod of her head, she gestured to his chair. Although the thought of beating a hasty retreat was appealing, it would be better if they could sort out their problems now. To achieve any measure of success she needed this man’s support. Without it, she doubted she’d get much co-operation from the families concerned. It was time to try conciliation.
‘Look, we have to thrash this out between us. What if I make coffee and we sit down and talk it through?’
‘I’ll make coffee,’ he said gruffly, and disappeared through the door into the kitchen.
Caitlin collected up their plates and followed him.
‘Go and sit down,’ he said, shooing her out of the kitchen with a wave of one hand. ‘I’ll do the dishes later.’
Dismissed, she walked back onto the veranda. The moon had risen while they’d been eating and now hung, suspended, like a misshapen Chinese lantern set in the branches of the peppercorn tree.
A faint scent of eucalyptus filtered through the air, and somewhere an owl cried as it journeyed through the night in search of food. For all her haste to get away from her own home town, she felt the special ambience of a small country town settle about her. The unchanging rhythms of daily living far removed from the stress and pressures of the city were like a benediction on her soul.
‘They have a special kind of innocence, country towns,’ he said, as he returned with a coffee-pot in one hand and two tall mugs dangling from one finger of the other.
‘You stole my thoughts,’ she murmured.
The serenity of the evening seemed to envelop her, but it couldn’t last, any more than innocence could—not in the face of evil or a hidden scourge like cancer.
Connor set down the pot and mugs.
‘Milk or sugar?’
‘No, thanks, just plain black,’ she said, returning to the table and waiting while he poured the coffee. Standing close to him like this, she realised he was taller than she’d thought. The top of her head was five feet eight inches from floor level, yet he stretched at least six inches beyond that.
And solid height, well muscled by the look of the tautness of shirt across his torso, good strong neck—
‘OK—so talk!’ he said, moving to sit back down in his chair and waving her to the other side of the table.
Caitlin took her seat and sipped at her coffee, trying to gather thoughts that had strayed too far. For heaven’s sake! She’d been examining the man like a buyer at a cattle sale might examine a likely beast! What had they been discussing earlier? Her mind grappled for an answer.
He must have sensed her inattention for he prompted helpfully, ‘Not all the children had the same diagnosis.’
‘Of course!’ she muttered, still scrambling to recover the threads of the conversation. ‘Actually, four had acute lymphocytic or lymphoblastic leukaemia, the type they call ALL, and the other had one loosely tied to it—non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. These are cancers where the possibility of a viral trigger is very strong, because the peak age for contracting them is between two and six, the age where children first come into a lot of contact with other children at playgroup, kindergarten or school. As in most cases of childhood leukaemia, something goes wrong with the production of lymphocytes.’
She looked up from her study of the coffee and added, ‘But you’d know all this.’
He half smiled his agreement. ‘Tell me again,’ he suggested. ‘It’s a long time since I actually studied it.’
Was he really interested? Caitlin was wary of assuming too much. The man’s moods swung like a pendulum.
‘Within both ALL and non-Hodgkins there are subgroups depending on the type of cell affected—B-cell, T-cell, etc. Because of similar cell involvement it’s often hard to differentiate between non-Hodgkin’s and ALL. In children, the malignant cells tend to grow in a diffuse pattern, not in the lumps and clumps we usually associate with lymphoma.’
‘So what you’re saying is, the five are more closely related than I’d thought. If that’s the case, why did one child die?’
He’d looked at her while he’d been speaking, but before she could reply he swung his head away, gazing out over the railing to where the moon had now risen above the trees and was casting its silvery light across the little park, softening its drabness.
‘Perhaps resistance to the treatment—or even a late diagnosis,’ Caitlin said, then added quickly before he could take offence, ‘The symptoms are so vague—pallor, loss of appetite, a general lassitude. Parents will often take a child to the GP two or three times before a blood test is ordered.’
His head turned towards her and he nodded slowly, then she saw a small, tight smile stretch his lips.
‘Not in this town—not now! I take blood if there’s even a suspicion it might be leukaemia.’
‘Yet you’re against me doing some research here that might help alleviate the curse of it for ever.’
Connor sighed, then stood up again, as if his body couldn’t contain his emotion when it was seated.
‘I’m not against your work but sceptical of what good it can do. The thought of stirring up old enmities again if there’s no chance of some end result…’
‘Need old enmities be stirred?’ she demanded. ‘I’m not here testing water or chemicals, I’m here to talk to families. If there’s some kind of genetic link—’
‘If!’ he snorted, disbelief so evident Caitlin wondered if the subject was worth pursuing. ‘And if you do, by some miracle, happen to find a link, what can you do?’
‘Nothing at the moment,’ she admitted, ‘but that’s no reason not to keep trying. Let’s simplify this to a hypothetical. Say, for instance, after DNA testing of the families involved, we find a strand of chromosomal material with five bumps on one side, then find that all the children who contracted cancer had only four bumps, while the children from the same bloodlines but with five bumps didn’t—’
‘Bumps? Now, there’s a precise scientific term!’ he muttered, but he’d come closer and seemed interested. ‘OK, let’s stick with bumps. Are you saying you could add another bump?’
‘Not right now, but immunologists are already working on ways of transporting killer T-cells, the cancer-fighting lymphocytes, into humans with cancer, and geneticists are working on infecting bacteria which can enter genetic material and actually alter it. It’s being done in test tubes, so eventually it can be done in human patients and at least we’d know what to work on, wouldn’t we?’
‘A bump-producing germ that could virtually inoculate at-risk children?’ he said quietly. ‘Put like that, I suppose I can’t object to your presence. What do you need from me?’
Connor asked the question but his heart quailed within him as he gave tacit agreement to this woman’s presence in Turalla. No matter how discreetly she went about her business, the reason for her visit would soon be known all over town. Was he wrong in anticipating trouble? Raising ghosts with his sense of apprehension?
‘Do you know the children? Their families? Anything about their history? What I’d like to do is work out some kind of genealogical chart and see if anything connects.’
Caitlin sounded so earnest he forgot the ghosts and smiled.
‘Setting up a theory in order to shoot it down?’ he teased, and won a smile that did peculiar things to his internal organs.
‘Exactly! It could well be a wild-goose chase, you know, but having this cluster is a unique opportunity to test this particular theory. Look, you’ve got to start from the fact that the usual incidence of ALL is thirty-three children in every million. What if we ignored the high incidence here in Turalla, and an opportunity to learn something new was lost?’
He glanced down at her hands, clasped around the coffee-mug, and noticed her whitened knuckles. Could she really care so much?
‘Is learning something new so important to you?’ he asked. ‘The be-all and end-all of your life?’
She shrugged but it was a half-hearted attempt at nonchalance.
‘Yes, it’s important to me,’ she stated flatly. ‘Whether it’s the be-all and end-all I don’t know.’
He dropped into his chair so he could see her face.
‘Then it’s never been tested, has it?’ he said. ‘You’ve never had to choose between your chosen path and someone else’s?’
He heard his own lingering bitterness in the words and was surprised, thinking it had burnt out long ago. She’d heard it too, for her eyes held questions he certainly wasn’t going to answer, but all she said was, ‘No. Perhaps I’ve been fortunate.’
Her voice was dismissive, as if the subject wasn’t important, but he couldn’t let go of it, couldn’t help needling this super-composed woman fate had seen fit to send him.
‘And if it ends up just a target, your theory, how do you handle that?’
Caitlin chuckled and he knew she’d fielded that question more than once.
‘I set up another, and another and another,’ she told him. ‘Who knows which one will prove correct, which strand of thought might lead even a small way towards the centre of the puzzle? But we were talking about the children, the families…’
‘Lucy Cummings, Harry Jackson, Aaron Wilson and Annabel Laurence.’ If he added the child who died, Jonah Neil, it would make two girls and three boys, right on the button statistically as incidence was slightly higher in boys than girls.
But he didn’t mention Jonah.
‘Naturally, as I’m the only doctor in town they’re all my patients, but I rarely see them. I take blood when they’re due to go down to the city for follow-up appointments, three-monthly at first, then six-monthly. I think all of them are on yearly visits now. In fact, I seem to remember someone saying Harry doesn’t have to go back for two years.’
Simple background information, nothing even vaguely medical, yet the uneasiness returned. Stronger than uneasiness because it had his subconscious considering a holiday—or perhaps a transfer to a hospital a few thousand miles away.
Connor knew he wouldn’t leave Turalla when trouble in this beautiful package was standing on its doorstep, hand raised ready to knock—but it didn’t stop him wishing!
‘I’m sorry, I was miles away,’ he said, when her voice recalled him from his wayward thoughts.
‘Or wishing you were,’ she suggested, a half-smile tilting one side of her mouth upward and pressing a dimple into her cheek. ‘I was saying I’ve already spoken to Lucy’s parents about this. I met them when they were down for her check-up last week. I didn’t go into details, just said I’d like to look at family backgrounds.’
‘And how did they react?’ he asked, surprised he hadn’t heard anything of this. The rumour mill was usually super-efficient. Perhaps the Cummings family had stayed on for a holiday in the city.
The half-smile became a whole one—neat, even teeth gleaming in the moonlight.
‘A bit like you,’ she admitted. ‘They’d love to have answers to the “why” question all parents ask, but they’re dubious that anything could be found in past histories. Like most people, they feel if it’s genetic their other children would be at risk and they don’t want to even consider that thought.’
Surprise, surprise! Connor rubbed his hands through his hair, kneading at his scalp in an effort to find the words he needed. Perhaps he could still dissuade her.
‘Added to which, anything genetic, to a parent, seems to imply parental blame,’ he said. ‘Have you considered the ructions that could cause? Husbands and wives sniping at each other because he or she carried a defective gene? Or taking it further, what about the implications to young people in love—will their marriage plans be thwarted by one of your errant genes?’
She nodded her agreement, but had an answer all ready for him.
‘There’s a town in the United States where a similar study was done on the incidence of Huntington’s chorea. Over there a social worker was available to counsel people who felt at all apprehensive or distressed. Your local counsellor has already been contacted and has agreed to work with me on this, and provide counselling if needed. And genetic counselling is becoming a more accepted part of people’s plans for the future. If some link is discovered, isn’t it better for a couple to be aware a danger could exist and have their children tested regularly? Children with some forms of leukaemia now have an eighty to ninety per cent chance of being completely cured—testing of children considered at risk could make those statistics even better.’
‘OK, I’ll grant you that round—although while genetic counselling might be discussed in some places, it’s hardly an everyday topic here in Turalla,’ he said, hating the fact that the medical Connor was swaying towards her arguments while the emotional man who shared the doctor’s skin still felt an inexplicable sense of dread about the whole idea. ‘But is there no other way than through the families?’
He didn’t say ‘all the families’ although the dread was finding focus in the child he hadn’t mentioned and the strange, religious, upright man who’d fathered him.
Ezra Neil, husband of the silent Mrs Neil.
The reason the silent Mrs Neil was so silent?
Connor didn’t know, but Mrs Neil’s behaviour suggested there was a problem somewhere in her life, and Connor couldn’t help linking it to Ezra rather than the loss of her son.
‘Does it have to be so personal?’ he persisted, the wedge of fear again prodding at his rib cage.
She looked into his eyes and he saw a plea in hers—and noticed how her knuckles had whitened again as she gripped the coffee-mug. Did it mean so much to her? Was her job, her livelihood, dependent on it? Why was she so determined? He watched her formulate her reply while his mind pondered those unspoken questions.
‘I know there could be problems, but genetic heritage is the obvious place to start because through DNA studies we can link chromosomal similarities to blood lines,’ she said quietly. ‘I do understand the human side of it, Connor, but is that excuse enough to ignore an opportunity of making a breakthrough in something that is the most common life-threatening disorder of childhood?’
Connor acknowledged her words with upraised hands of surrender and tried not to think about how his name had sounded—kind of husky—on her lips.
‘That was a low blow, Caitlin O’Shea, and you know it. I thought scientists shunned emotive arguments.’
She relaxed enough to smile and pushed the coffee-mug away as if she no longer needed its dubious support.
‘This scientist might be different,’ she said lightly.
Her gaze snagged his and held, and a spark in the depth of those dark, dark eyes suggested she was flirting with him.
He ignored a purely physical response he hadn’t felt for quite some time and refused the challenge, saying lightly, ‘Outwardly perhaps. You hardly meet the absent-minded, horn-rimmed-glasses image of a scientific nerd—but I’m not fooled by the front, Dr O’Shea. I’ll reserve my judgement. And I’ll be watching every move you make and whenever possible monitoring your consultations with the families. If this situation even hints at volatility, I’ll pull the plug on it and let my conscience cope with the consequences.’
She seemed startled and he wondered if her looks were usually enough to ensure she got exactly what she wanted.
‘Hardball, huh?’ she said, a smile lighting up her face once again.
‘Very hard,’ he assured her, rising to his feet as she stood up so they were eye to eye across the table.
‘Now, shall I walk you home? I took your car over earlier.’ He fished in his pocket and produced her keys, glancing at his watch as he handed them to her. ‘Hell, it’s after ten. I’m sorry I kept you here so late when you’ve got gear to unpack. Would you prefer to spend the night in my spare bedroom and get yourself settled in the morning?’
Caitlin replayed the words in her mind and realised there was no warmth in the casual invitation. The man had decided she was trouble and he wanted her to overnight in his house about as much as he wanted her staying on in this town.
‘I’ll go across to my new home,’ she told him. ‘But you don’t have to come. Just point the way.’
He walked back into the kitchen and she followed him, blinking in the brightness after the soft light on the veranda.
‘I’ll walk you home,’ he repeated. ‘I go over about this time each evening to do a ward round so I’ll show you through the hospital if you like and scrounge you some supplies from the kitchen so you don’t starve to death on your first morning in town.’
She found herself grinning at his words and, as he bent down and hefted her bag on to his shoulder, she said, ‘Mightn’t that be a good thing? It would rid you of your problem.’
He swung around and caught her smile, answering it with a one hundred watt effort of his own.
‘It’s a point, but think how bad it would look for the staff,’ he protested. ‘Visiting doctor wastes away on hospital doorstep! The town would never live it down.’
‘Give the locals something else to talk about,’ she replied, following him down the steps. ‘It might even divert them enough for the divisions you talk of to heal over.’
She spoke lightly, joking with him, more relaxed than she’d been all evening, so when he stopped and spun to face her, she was startled. His eyes, dark shadows in his face, seemed to peer into her soul, and the words, when he uttered them, were as bleak and hard as bullets—as cold as death itself.
‘The last death didn’t heal them.’