‘ARE you and that man an item now?’
Maddie put the last of the breakfast dishes she’d been drying into the cupboard and turned to face her niece. ‘That man has a name, Susie.’
‘Jonah Washington.’ Susie snorted. ‘Sounds like some kind of old-time American Civil War general to me.’
‘He’s a very nice man,’ Maddie declared tightly. A fact you would have discovered yourself if you’d talked to him last night, instead of disappearing off to your bedroom the minute he arrived.’
‘So you will be going out with him again?’
‘No,’ Maddie said, lifting the laundry basket so she didn’t have to meet her niece’s eyes.
‘But if he’s so nice and everything,’ Susie protested, ‘why not?’
Nell had said the same thing last night. In fact, her cousin had gone on and on at such length about Jonah that Maddie had eventually lost her temper and pointed out that it was a bit rich for Nell to protest when she clearly hadn’t wanted her to go out with Jonah in the first place, and Nell had gone home in a snit.
‘Susie, sometimes…’ Oh, heck, but this was so hard to explain. ‘Sometimes niceness just isn’t enough.’
‘No, he’s not boring,’ Maddie said. ‘He’s funny and kind, and interesting—’
‘If it had been that other man—the dweeb who was so snarky about Charlie’s story—I could have understood it, but if this Jonah is so wonderful then what’s the problem?’
Good question. An even better question would have been why she’d gone to bed last night and dreamt not of a kind man with soft brown eyes, but of the dweeb with the attitude problem.
‘Susie—’
‘It’s Charlie and me, isn’t it?’ her niece said suddenly. ‘Jonah found out you were stuck with us and he’s legged it, like Andrew did.’
‘Number one, I am not stuck with you,’ Maddie said emphatically. ‘I love you and Charlie to bits and if your mother and father hadn’t died I would have been the aunty from hell, driving you crazy with visits. And number two…Jonah likes children, and if I could go out with him again as a friend I would, but he…he…’
‘He wants sex and you don’t—or at least not with him?’
It was television and the movies, Maddie decided. That, or the fact that kids started sex education classes much younger these days, otherwise why else were her cheeks scarlet whereas her niece didn’t seem even one bit embarrassed by the conversation?
‘Something like that,’ she muttered.
‘But, Aunt Maddie—’
‘If you don’t hurry up, you’ll be late for school.’
‘But—’
‘We’ll talk about this later, OK?’
Much later, Maddie thought as her niece clattered belligerently out of the kitchen. A lot later. In fact, hopefully never.
A deep sigh came from her as she leant against the sink and gazed out of the kitchen window. Why, oh, why, had she ever agreed to go out with Jonah? Yesterday they’d been friends as well as colleagues, but now everything was going to be so awkward, so difficult, and the thought of seeing him again today…
Maybe she could call in sick. It was Saturday tomorrow and she didn’t work Saturdays, so she’d have a whole three days to prepare herself. Except three days wouldn’t be enough. Three months wouldn’t be enough, and resignation wasn’t an option. She needed this job. The bill from the garage had been horrendous, and there was the electricity bill due soon and a telephone bill, so she had to stay no matter how uncomfortable it might be.
‘You’re not leaving us, are you, Aunt Maddie?’
She turned to see Charlie standing in the kitchen doorway, and her heart sank. How much had he heard—how much had he understood?
‘Of course I’m not leaving you,’ she said firmly. ‘Now, I’ve got your gym kit all washed and ironed—’
‘I heard what Susie said,’ Charlie interrupted, ‘and I don’t want you to go away with that man. I know I sometimes mess things up, do things wrong, but…’
‘Sweetheart, I will never leave you,’ she said, getting down on her knees to look him straight in the eye. ‘You, me, Susie—we’re a team.’
‘But Susie said—’
‘Your sister got it wrong. Nothing and no one is ever going to split us up.’
‘Promise?’ Charlie said, his bottom lip trembling, and she drew him close to her.
‘I promise,’ she said huskily, ‘and now I have to go to work and you have to go to school.’
‘Why?’
Another good question, she thought, putting her fingers to her forehead where she could feel the beginnings of a headache starting to form. Jonah would probably spend the entire day avoiding her, Nell would be frosty, and everyone at the Belfield would somehow know she’d been out with Jonah. In fact, the only person who wouldn’t give a damn would be Gabriel, which wasn’t nearly as comforting as it should have been.
‘Because I need the money and you need an education,’ she said as she helped Charlie into his coat.
‘BP normal, heart rate a little slow, but not worryingly so,’ Barry, the anaesthetist, declared as Gabriel stood waiting in the operating theatre beside tiny Diana Scott. ‘Ready to roll whenever you are, Gabriel.’
‘I’ve sterilised both a two-centimetre and a three-centimetre catheter,’ Sharon, the theatre sister, said, moving her trolley of surgical instruments closer. ‘Which would you like?’
What I want is to know how Jonah and Maddie’s date went last night, Gabriel thought grimly. I want to hear it was a complete disaster but the chances of that are slim. Jonah’s personable, good company and has dozens of nieces and nephews so he knows exactly what to say to children. Damn him.
‘Gabriel, I said which size do—?’
‘The smallest,’ Gabriel replied quickly, feeling his cheeks heat up behind his mask and seeing Sharon exchange a curious glance with Barry. Concentrate, Gabriel. Your mind doesn’t wander when you’re working. Not ever, so concentrate.
‘Do you want the smallest reservoir, too?’ the theatre sister said, and he nodded.
‘With the catheter and reservoir in place, I’m hoping we’ll be able to drain the excess fluid using a 23-gauge butterfly needle,’ he told them. ‘If we can’t, I’ll have to insert a shunt, and I really don’t want to do that until Diana’s both older and heavier.’
He didn’t want to do it at all. Once they’d inserted a shunt there was every likelihood Diana would have it for the rest of her life, and no child should have to live like that.
‘I hear Jonah’s dating your new secretary, Gabriel,’ Barry observed as Gabriel made a tiny incision into Diana’s head. ‘The girl with the odd-sounding first name. Portland…Waldorf…’
‘Madison,’ Gabriel said tightly through his face mask. Damn it, one date last night and already the entire Belfield staff knew about it.
‘Is that the girl who’s Nell Sutherland’s cousin?’ Sharon asked. ‘Smiley face, auburn hair, brown eyes?’
Tawny eyes, Gabriel thought. Eyes that glow when she laughs, and hair that isn’ t just auburn but has tiny flecks of gold in it, which you don’t notice until you’re standing really close to her. The girl who thinks I have all the sensitivity of a pig, and I’d give anything to correct that impression.
‘That’s the one.’ Barry nodded. ‘She used to be a nurse, but gave it up to look after her niece and nephew when their parents were killed in a car crash three years ago.’
Two years ago, Gabriel corrected the anaesthetist mentally, and I’ve bought a game to give to Charlie. A game I could take round this weekend but I don’t want to take it round. Not if Jonah is going to be there, as he probably will.
‘I hope it works out for Jonah,’ Sharon said as Gabriel carefully began inserting the catheter under Diana’s cranial skin. ‘He’s one of the good guys, and he’s not had much luck with his girlfriends so I hope he and Madison make a go of it.’
‘Look, could we have a little less discussion of my specialist registrar’s love life and a lot more concentration on the job in hand?’ Gabriel snapped, which silenced Sharon and Barry immediately. But it wouldn’t stop them thinking, and it was all Maddie’s fault that he now knew what they’d be thinking.
‘Put yourself in their shoes,’ she’d said. ‘Imagine what you would be thinking if you were in their situation.’
Miserable old bastard is what I’d be thinking, he thought bitterly, or—even worse—jealous old bastard. And the trouble was, he was jealous. Jealous of a man who’d been his best friend for years. Jealous because Jonah would have kissed her, touched her, might even have…No, he wouldn’t have made love to Maddie, not on a first date, not with her kids in the house.
But he might have.
‘Are you ready for the reservoir?’ Sharon said, hesitantly holding it out to him, and he took it without a word.
Three weeks ago he’d been happy with his life. His one concern had been the efficient running of his department, and then an auburn-haired girl had asked him to stare at her and his heart rate had kicked up in a most unexpected way. He’d tried to tell himself it was nothing. He’d tried to convince himself that he’d simply been very tired, but when the same girl had said she was working on forgiving him, and then smiled at him with lips that had looked soft and moist and, oh, so kissable, all of his resolve to stay celibate had suddenly gone right out the window.
‘Are you going to be much longer, Gabriel?’ Barry asked. ‘Only Diana’s BP’s starting to fall and I don’t want to keep her under longer than I have to.’
‘A couple more minutes, and I’m finished,’ Gabriel replied.
In more ways than one, he thought with a deep sigh. Even if Jonah hadn’t asked Maddie out, he knew she would never have wanted to go out with him. Not with the man who’d hurt her nephew, the man her niece considered a dipwad.
‘OK, that’s it,’ he said, stepping back from the operating table, rolling his neck to ease the tension knot he could feel there. ‘I’ll wait with you in Recovery, Barry, and then go back with Diana to NICU.’
Where, irrespective of how he felt, he was going to have to ask Maddie when it would be convenient for him to bring round Charlie’s present, because he could just imagine her reaction if he posted it.
‘It’s a shame you won’t be going out with Jonah again,’ Lynne said, her normally smiling face pensive. ‘He’s a really nice man and he adores kids.’
‘It wasn’t a proper date,’ Maddie said through gritted teeth, wishing the ward manager would just go away. ‘More a thank you for some work I did for him.’
‘You don’t think you could have been a bit hasty?’ Lynne continued as though she hadn’t spoken. ‘Calling it a day after just one date?’
Maddie counted to ten but it didn’t help. Why did everyone assume she’d dumped Jonah? Nell last night, Susie this morning, and now Lynne. By the end of the day she probably wouldn’t be able to find anybody in the Belfield who didn’t think she’d dumped Jonah, and it was so unfair. She hadn’t dumped him. They’d just sort of come to a mutual agreement not to go out together again.
Oh, get out of here, a little voice whispered in the back of her head. What mutual agreement? He kissed you, got zilch response for his efforts, so why in the world would he ever want to go out with you again? He’s dumped you, but he’s too much of a gentleman to tell everybody that.
‘Lynne, about Jonah—’
‘I have to run,’ the ward manager interrupted. ‘Diana’s due back from OR any minute, and Gabriel wants to put a cast on the baby who came in last night—Toby Merton, the full-termer with the clubfoot?’
Maddie nodded, but she doubted if Lynne even noticed. The ward manager was already walking away, leaving her with nothing to do but remember last night and cringe.
Work, she decided as she booted up her computer. If she worked she wouldn’t think about Jonah, but whoever said databases were engrossing had clearly never tried to work on one with a headache. By half past twelve her head was pounding, and she was just about to concede defeat and go to lunch when she noticed a young woman in a dressing-gown go past her office. There was nothing unusual about that—she often saw new mothers bringing their expressed milk down to NICU—but when the woman had passed her office for the third time Maddie got to her feet and went out into the corridor.
‘Can I help you at all?’ she said, seeing the young woman jump nervously at her approach.
‘My son was born last night,’ the girl replied. ‘He was transferred down to Special Care, and the nurses in Maternity said…They said I could come down, visit him—feed him.’
‘Of course you can.’ Maddie smiled. ‘Did they forget to give you the security code?’
The girl shook her head. ‘I have the code, but…’
‘But?’ Maddie prompted.
‘I just…’ The woman looked at her helplessly. ‘I just never imagined when I was pregnant that there’d be something wrong with my baby.’
‘Are you Toby Merton’s mother?’ Maddie asked, and when the woman nodded she said quickly, ‘Please, don’t be worried or upset about his clubfoot. All that’s happened is the bones in his foot haven’t formed properly. It’s actually quite a common birth defect, with boys being affected almost twice as often as girls.’
‘But why?’ the girl protested. ‘I took folic acid before I got pregnant. I took all the vitamins and supplements I was supposed to take. I don’t smoke and I didn’t drink, and neither did my husband, so why did this happen—what did I do wrong?’
‘You didn’t do anything wrong,’ Maddie said gently. ‘We don’t know why some children are born with a clubfoot, but Mr Dalgleish—the neonatologist in charge of our unit—is going to put a cast on Toby’s foot today, and hopefully that will straighten it out.’
‘What if it doesn’t?’ the girl said tremulously.
‘In 50 per cent of cases it cures it completely, but if it doesn’t then your son will have surgery when he’s a little older.’
‘Then he’s not…he won’t be…?’
‘Left with a clubfoot for the rest of his life?’ Maddie shook her head. ‘No, of course he won’t, so why don’t you go along to the unit now and say hi to him?’
The new mother managed a smile and Maddie waited until she’d gone safely through the security door, but when she turned to go back into her office her heart sank. Gabriel was leaning against his consulting-room door, watching her.
Here we go again, she thought. He’d probably heard every word she’d said and was going to launch into yet another of his ‘You’re wasted as a secretary’ speeches. But to her surprise he didn’t.
‘Thanks for reassuring Mrs Merton,’ he said instead. ‘Maternity should have explained it all to her but obviously they didn’t.’
‘They’ve probably been rushed off their feet this morning,’ she said. ‘I just happened to see her passing my office and guessed she must be worried about something.’
‘I’m glad you did.’ He cleared his throat. ‘I’ve bought a game for Charlie and, as I’m not working tomorrow, I wondered if I might come round and give it to him.’
He wanted to come round tomorrow? But that meant she’d only have this evening to prepare Charlie and she’d hoped to get him used to the idea gradually.
‘Of course, if tomorrow’s not convenient…’ Gabriel continued, clearly sensing her dismay, and she bit her lip.
‘I didn’t mean—I didn’t say…What time do you want to come?’
‘Would ten-thirty be OK?’
Ten-thirty tomorrow. It could have been worse. Gabriel could have wanted to come round that night.
‘Right.’ She nodded. ‘Fine,’ she added, fully expecting him to go back into his consulting room, but he didn’t.
He stayed where he was, almost as though he wanted to say something else but didn’t know how, which was crazy because he normally had far too much to say.
‘Is there something else?’ she said, only to immediately wish she hadn’t, because he moved a step closer, and being closer to him was not a good idea.
Being closer meant noticing all the things about him she was trying to ignore. Like how broad his shoulders were, how thick his black hair was, what a beautiful mouth he had, and…
She sucked in her breath as his eyes caught hers. Oh, hell, he had that look in his eyes again, that dark, hot look. That look that made her heart kick up into her throat. But this time it was worse. This time she could feel a wave of heat rolling over her. A heat that made her long to reach out and touch him, to bring him closer to her, and he was everything she should avoid. He was Andrew and Colin all over again, and she’d done that script, and to go down that road again to certain heartbreak…
She backed up a step, unconsciously shaking her head. ‘Gabriel, I don’t…I can’t…’
‘Maddie, what’s wrong?’ he said. ‘You’re…Dear Lord, you’re not afraid of me, are you?’
There was horror in his face, and she backed up another step. ‘No, of course I’m not, but…’
‘There you are, Maddie.’
Oh, somebody shoot me now, she thought as she glanced over her shoulder to see Jonah striding towards them. She’d managed to get through the whole morning without meeting him and now he was here, and Gabriel was here, and all she needed was for Nell to come out of the unit and her misery would be complete.
‘I’m really busy, Jonah,’ she said, hoping to head him off, but it didn’t work.
‘We need to talk, Maddie.’
No, they didn’t, she thought. It would be much better all round if they both just tried to pretend that last night had never happened, but Jonah looked like a man with a mission, a man who wouldn’t be deflected.
‘My office,’ she said, and to her relief Jonah followed her. But he didn’t even give her a chance to marshal her thoughts. The minute she closed her office door he was off and running.
‘Maddie, I know there’s always a certain awkwardness on occasions like this, so I just want to say that I had a very pleasant time last night and I, for one, would be more than happy to do it again.’
‘You…you would?’ she stammered, her eyes flying to his. ‘But—’
‘As a friend, Maddie. If you’re feeling low, and want to get out of the house for the evening, I’m your man. If you want some furniture moved, give me a call. If you need somebody beaten up, just say the word and I’ll batter seven bells out of them. I mean it,’ he continued as she began to laugh. ‘Think of me as your helpful Aunt Elsie but without the dress and the handbag.’ He frowned slightly. ‘Although if it’s for the beating up, maybe you should think of me as your helpful Uncle George.’
He meant it. She could tell from the concern in his gentle brown eyes that he meant it. If she had any sense she’d grab hold of this man, and never let go. He was kind and honest, and he would never hurt her, but it wasn’t enough, she knew it wasn’t.
‘Jonah, you’re a man in a million,’ she said.
‘But not the man in a million for you,’ he replied, and she shook her head sadly.
‘I wish you were, Jonah. I do honestly wish you were.’
‘So do I,’ he said, ‘but we can’t always get what we want in life, can we?’
Tell me about it, she thought.
‘Now, I don’t know about you,’ he continued briskly, ‘but I’m starving. How about joining me for lunch in the canteen?’
He couldn’t be serious. ‘Jonah, if we have lunch together in the canteen everyone will think…they’ll think…’
‘That we’re an item.’ He nodded, his eyes gleaming. ‘So how about we confuse them a little?’
For a moment she hesitated, but what harm would it do? Plus she had a horrible suspicion that if she hung about debating the matter Jonah would probably ask Gabriel or Nell to join them for lunch, which would send her headache into full migraine mode.
‘OK, you’re on,’ she said, and he grinned.
‘I like a girl with spirit.’
It’s not spirit I have, she thought. It’s a healthy sense of self-preservation.
‘Good grief, but it’s busy in here today,’ Maddie said as she and Jonah ate their lunch in the canteen and watched the queue at the counter getting longer and longer.
‘What we really need is a new state-of-the-art infirmary,’ Jonah replied. ‘The Belfield was never designed to accommodate the number of staff it has now.’
He was right, but Maddie couldn’t deny she preferred the homeliness of the Belfield’s Victorian dilapidation, even if lunch hours could sometimes be fraught.
‘So, you’re hopeful Kieran Thompson might be able to go home in a couple of weeks?’ she said. ‘That should please his parents.’
Jonah nodded. ‘He’s doing really well. It’s a pity we can’t say the same about his twin.’
‘Nell’s not happy about him,’ Maddie observed. ‘She still feels something’s being overlooked, but she doesn’t know what.’
‘I’d back Nell’s gut instincts any day,’ Jonah murmured. ‘She has a built-in sixth sense when it comes to preemies.’
‘She was the same at the Hillhead,’ Maddie began, only to realise Jonah wasn’t listening to her but frowning at something in the queue. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘I never thought I’d see those two together again,’ he murmured.
‘What two?’ she asked, swivelling round in her seat.
‘Gabriel and Evelyn Harper. They were an item last year until they parted somewhat acrimoniously.’
Maddie pushed her empty lunch plate to one side and took a sip of her coffee. Don’t ask. It’s none of your business…Oh, what the hell. You want to know, you know you do.
‘In what way acrimoniously?’ she asked.
‘She wanted to get married, he didn’t.’
She obviously still did, Maddie thought as she watched Evelyn beam up at Gabriel, her long blonde hair glinting in the afternoon sunshine, her white coat clinging to her perfect figure.
‘She’s very pretty,’ she said grudgingly. Actually, she was gorgeous.
‘Smart, too,’ Jonah said. ‘The youngest orthopaedic surgeon in Scotland.’
She would be. No, that wasn’t fair. Evelyn Harper was probably very nice, even if she was practically climbing inside Gabriel’s shirt.
‘So, Gabriel’s the love-them-and-leave-them type, is he?’ she said, trying and failing to keep the waspishness out of her voice.
‘Nah, he just dates the wrong women.’
‘Oh, yeah, right,’ Maddie declared. ‘The poor man just wants to have sex with no strings attached and all these unreasonable women keep expecting him to marry them.’
Jonah let out a snort of laughter which he quickly converted into a cough. ‘No, he honestly does date the wrong women. He has an unhappy knack of attracting the over-achievers—women like himself who need to be the best at everything—which, of course, is a recipe for disaster.’
And pretty well rules me out, Maddie thought, because he’s always telling me I’m wasting my ability, my talents.
Yes, but, then, why is giving you those hot looks? her mind demanded. And they are hot looks. Hell, those looks could blister paint.
‘What Gabriel needs is somebody to show him there’s life outside the hospital,’ Jonah continued. ‘Somebody who will encourage him to smell the roses.’
‘I wouldn’t say he looks as though he’s missing any roses at the moment,’ Maddie said tightly as Gabriel laughed at something Evelyn had said. ‘In fact, I’d say he looks like a man who wouldn’t much care if the entire world was paved over.’
Jonah sat back in his seat and gazed at her thoughtfully. ‘You think about him a lot, don’t you?’
‘Only because we all suffer if he’s in a bad mood,’ she floundered, annoyingly aware that her cheeks were heating up, ‘so it’s best to be prepared—forewarned.’
‘Uh-huh,’ Jonah said with a look that told her he didn’t believe her. ‘Maddie—Oh, damn,’ he continued as his pager began to bleep. ‘No, finish your coffee,’ he added, seeing her half rise to her feet. ‘There’s no sense in us both missing out.’
She wasn’t missing anything, she decided when Jonah had gone. One sip of her coffee had been enough to tell her it was as revolting as usual, and even if it had been the finest cappuccino in the world, the last thing she wanted was to sit here drinking it while simultaneously trying not to notice that Gabriel was chatting up an old girlfriend. And he was chatting her up. Evelyn was hanging on his every word.
Probably because he’s hitting her with one of his hot looks. She sighed, feeling her heart dip. The looks she’d stupidly thought he reserved for her. Well, maybe this was what she needed, a wake-up call, a reality check. Hot looks might set her pulses racing, but what she needed was stability, commitment, and commitment wasn’t something a man like Gabriel would be offering to a woman like her with two children.
Well, she might be a closet masochist but even she didn’t want to sit here and watch proof positive of her own stupidity. She’d go back to the unit, cadge a coffee from Lynne and see if there were any chocolates left from the box one of the mothers had brought in earlier in the week as a thank-you gift.
‘Nothing beats chocolate if you’re angry or unhappy,’ Nell was fond of saying.
‘Too damn right,’ Maddie muttered as she left the canteen, and if she hadn’t worked out yet whether she was angry or unhappy it didn’t matter.
All that mattered was she had to start growing up. She was twenty-nine, for heaven’s sake, and she should have realised years ago that frogs never turned into princes. It was time for her to grow up, and she was starting right now.
Gabriel swore under his breath as he scanned the canteen. One minute Maddie had been laughing and joking with Jonah, then a crowd from Haematology had obscured his view, and when he’d looked for her again she was gone.
‘I’m sorry, Evelyn, but I have to go,’ he said, cutting her off in mid-flow. ‘I’ve just seen somebody I need to speak to.’
Evelyn said something in reply but he didn’t stop to find out what. All he was interested in was in finding out what he’d said, or done, that had caused Maddie to back away from him in the corridor earlier, looking for all the world as though she was afraid of him.
Hell, he knew he had a sharp tongue and a brusque manner, but never would he have wanted anybody to be afraid of him, and especially not Maddie. He needed to talk to her, to find out what was wrong, but when he went out into the corridor his heart sank when he saw her standing by the lifts, surrounded by at least a dozen members of staff.
Sod’s law, he decided when a lift arrived and everybody squashed in.
Definitely Sod’s law, he thought as a chorus of voices shouted out, ‘Fifth floor, please.’
If there had been any fairness in the world they would all have been getting off at the second floor but, no, they were all, bar a couple of nurses, going to the fifth. Well, he might be stuck in a lift with an audience of a dozen members of staff, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t talk to her, he decided, forcing his way to the back of the lift where she was standing sandwiched between the wall and a portly porter.
‘We should have taken the stairs,’ he said, smiling down at her.
‘Yes.’
Just ‘Yes’. Nothing more, and she didn’t even look up at him, but kept her eyes fixed on the safety poster on the wall beside her.
OK, he thought. Work. He’d talk about work, and see if that got her attention.
‘Have we received any emails from a Duncan Lindsay this morning?’ he said. ‘I met him at a conference last month and he expressed an interest in publishing an article I’ve written on retinopathy in premature babies.’
‘You have an email from Elliot Mackay of the Royal Infirmary in Edinburgh, one from the BMA, but nothing from a Duncan Lindsay.’
‘I hope he’s not going to leave it until the last minute to say yes or no,’ he said as the lift lurched to a halt at the second floor and the two nurses got out. ‘It’s quite a lengthy article and I’ll need you to type it out before I send it.’
‘Yes.’
‘Sometimes I think these editors don’t realise we have “proper” jobs,’ he continued determinedly.
‘No.’
‘In fact, they probably think we have nothing better to do than sit about all day waiting for them to ring or email.’
‘Probably.’
Oh, give it up, Gabriel, he told himself as he stared down at her and realised she hadn’t once turned her head in his direction. She’s not interested in you—she’s never going to be interested in you.
Evelyn was. Evelyn had made it abundantly clear that she’d be more than willing to resume their relationship, but he didn’t want to resume the relationship. He wanted the girl standing next to him. The girl with the white face and strained eyes who was now staring fixedly at the lift buttons as though willing them to change faster.
‘Maddie—’
‘I’ll see if anything has come in for you from Duncan Lindsay during lunch,’ she said over him as the lift doors opened on the fourth floor and she pushed her way out.
‘There’s no hurry,’ he called after her, but she was already hurrying away and he clenched his teeth with exasperation as he followed her.
She would never have dashed off like that if Jonah had been in the lift with her but, then, with umpteen nieces and nephews Jonah knew exactly what to say to kids. Damn and blast him.
‘Gabriel, can I have a word?’
Only if you’re going to tell me you and Maddie had a really lousy time last night and you’re not going out with her again, Gabriel thought as he saw Jonah walking towards him, a broad smile lighting up his face.
‘I’m a bit busy, Jonah—’
‘It’s about Ben Thompson.’
‘What about Ben?’ Gabriel demanded, all thoughts of Maddie vanishing instantly from his mind.
‘I had an emergency call during lunch because he’d stopped breathing, and while Nell was waiting for me to arrive she realised his ventilator tube was blocked so she took it out, inserted a new tube and administered heart massage.’
‘Is he all right?’ Gabriel said, beginning to head towards the unit. ‘The longer he wasn’t breathing—’
‘Gabriel, he was back to normal within minutes, and his blood-oxygen saturation improved even when his oxygen was reduced from 100 per cent to 40 per cent. The tube was blocked with five centimetres of debris and fluid from his lungs and my guess is it’s been gradually building up over time.’
‘So Sister Sutherland was right,’ Gabriel said slowly. ‘We were missing something.’
Jonah nodded. ‘Smart girl, Nell. In fact, if you weren’t so set on Maddie taking over as Ward Manager, I’d recommend Nell to take Lynne’s place.’
‘I’m surprised you’re not pushing for Maddie in the circumstances,’ Gabriel said, more caustically than he’d intended, and Jonah looked puzzled.
‘What circumstances?’
‘Well, you and she…’ Gabriel’s jaw tightened. ‘You’re dating, aren’t you?’
A flash of anger darkened Jonah’s face. ‘Maddie and I are not dating, and even if we were, I would never allow my private feelings to get in the way of my professional judgment, and I take great exception to you suggesting it.’
‘You’re not dating?’ Gabriel repeated. ‘But you went out together last night, didn’t you?’
The anger on Jonah’s face faded, to be slowly replaced by a look of dawning comprehension. ‘Maddie and I went out to dinner as friends. End of story.’
‘I see,’ Gabriel said slowly, and Jonah nodded.
‘I think I do, too. And now I have a ward round to do, so if you’ll excuse me…’
Gabriel muttered something in reply, but what he really wanted was to punch the air in relief. He had a chance now. OK, so it wasn’ t a very good one, and the possibilities of him screwing up again were limitless, but he had a chance, and he was going to grab it with both hands.