THEY reached the wine bar, where Marco greeted Jacinta so warmly she thought maybe she didn’t look as disreputable as she’d imagined she did.
‘And Mike,’ he said, putting out both hands to clasp Mike’s with warm enthusiasm. ‘So many years we don’t see you here. You and Lauren, you do all your courting here and then don’t come back. She is well, your lovely lady?’
Jacinta did another uh-oh, though mentally this time, and looked at Mike to see how he’d handle it.
‘Very well,’ Mike said smoothly, ‘though she’s no longer mine. We parted ways six years ago, Marco.’
Was Marco thrown by this information?
No way.
In fact, he seemed pleased, turning to beam at Jacinta.
‘So now he comes with you, little one. That is good, no?’
‘We’ve been working down at the clinic—painting the walls in case you couldn’t guess—and need to eat, Marco. That’s the extent of the “with me” thing!’
‘You didn’t have to sound quite so negative about being with me,’ Mike complained, when Marco had bustled off to fix drinks and get a blackboard menu for them.
‘Considering it’s Marco, I probably didn’t sound negative enough. I don’t know what he was like back when you were courting your wife, but I only have to nod at a man I know, usually a patient, and he’s trying to marry me off to him. Marco’s a born matchmaker, and anyone wanting to steer clear of attachments should steer clear of him.’
She slipped onto a stool, which made her feel slightly taller, but she’d need to be ten feet to be able to handle this situation with anything even close to aplomb. First she’d let him hold her hand—hadn’t made the slightest effort to withdraw it—and now Marco was making suggestive remarks.
And Michael Trent was going to start asking questions she didn’t want to have to answer.
Mike studied her for a moment. She’d slipped onto the stool with the smooth movements of a woman at ease with her body—and with the image she portrayed. She’d spoken to Marco with genuine affection, but no hint of flirtation. In fact, there was no artifice at all in Jacinta—or none that he’d observed.
She didn’t even appear to be perturbed by the silence which had fallen between them. Certainly hadn’t rushed to fill it. Once again he had to search back through his mind to find what they’d been talking about, but when he replayed her words in his head, a new question arose. One which, for some unfathomable reason, bothered him.
‘Why do you want to steer clear of attachments?’ he asked.
She turned to him with a hint of amusement in her dark eyes, and he suspected he could hear a gurgle of laughter in her voice as she replied.
‘I was thinking about you when I said steer clear of Marco. I did some research on the big boss before I found you near the wart painting, and just about every article I read made it very clear that, as far as you were concerned, one marriage was enough for a lifetime.’
‘When you consider the high cost of divorce and the damage extensive settlement payments can do to a business, it should be enough for anyone,’ he told her—lectured her maybe—but, considering the disruption this woman had already caused in his life, it was best she understood his feelings on marriage.
‘I’m not blaming Lauren,’ he continued, pleased he could now—finally—discuss his divorce in calm, rational tones. ‘She encouraged me to expand into more than one clinic and was entitled to her share, but paying her out put a severe strain on the company’s viability for a few years. When you’ve worked for years to establish financial security, not only for yourself and your own family but for a lot of friends and colleagues and their families, you have to think carefully before putting it all in jeopardy.’
‘So you can’t afford a new wife in case things go wrong again? Isn’t that rather a defeatist attitude? Wouldn’t you be better working on the assumption that next time it will work out?’
Mike frowned at his companion.
‘Why should it?’ he demanded, and was going to point out that just as success could breed success, so failure could breed failure, when he caught sight of his companion’s ringless fingers. ‘And you’re what—twenty-six, -seven? And apparently not committed. So what gives you the right to lecture me on marriage?’
‘I’m thirty and at least I’m honest enough to admit I’m too involved with my work to have time for a relationship,’ she retorted. ‘Right now, with everything that’s happening, it wouldn’t be fair to any partner, who’d only get the scraps of my attention.’ She hesitated, then the brown eyes looked candidly into his and she added, ‘Though, to be honest, there’s more to it than that. My parents had a wonderful marriage—the love they shared was obvious to everyone. It shone and glittered like crystals in sunlight. So, somehow, I grew up expecting it would happen to me and I waited for it—for the gut-wrenching, heart-seizing, breath-taking advent of love. It never came. I didn’t ever feel that way about a man so, rather than settle for second best…’
‘You threw yourself into good works.’
The soft eyes hardened.
‘I did no such thing. I just happen to believe there’s more to medicine than handing out pills and potions. And that doctors in general practice are in the perfect position to help with community problems.’
She sighed, and her voice softened again as she added, ‘There’s so much to do, Mike, to help kids like Dean and Will and Fizzy, and that’s just one area of concern.’
Once again he heard the commitment in her voice, and wondered where, along the line, he’d lost his own inner fire. He’d found challenges in expansion, in diversifying, but, as today had proved, in so doing he’d lost touch with where and what he’d started. Lost touch with the people who worked for him. Was that why the fire was gone?
He was pondering this when Marco arrived with a light beer for him and a glass of wine for Jacinta, and began his explanation of the featured dishes.
By the time they’d ordered, Mike had forgotten what they’d been discussing—again—mainly because even while deciding between a smoked salmon and avocado sauce or a tomato, olive and anchovy sauce on her penne, Jacinta had poked that little tip of pink tongue between her teeth, and he’d had a sudden flight of fancy about that tongue-tip touching his—perhaps exploring other parts of his body as well.
You don’t get involved with staff, he reminded himself, so even if she was your type, which she isn’t, she’d be off limits. He tried harder to recall the conversation, then remembered an earlier unfinished one and grasped it.
‘Fizzy and the boys. You were going to tell me more about them.’
‘Deliberate change in conversation, Dr Trent?’ she said. ‘A switch to something less provocative?’
Provocative? Damn it all! What had they been discussing?
‘However, since you ask, I met Will not long after I started work at the clinic. I’d been working late one night and when I went out to my car I found the security lights weren’t working and I all but fell over him.’
‘He was sleeping in the back yard? In the car park of the clinic? He could have been run over if someone had driven in late at night.’
Jacinta sipped at her wine, then smiled at him.
‘He wasn’t sleeping there, but looking for someone he thought might be using the place to doss down. He’s got a very over-developed sense of responsibility and apparently one of the younger kids hadn’t turned up at the shelter that night and Will had gone out looking for him.’
Mike shook his head, unable to assimilate the thought of these youngsters, many of them still children, fending for themselves on the street.
‘So I helped him look.’
She made it sound as if it was a normal thing to do—to walk around back alleys with a street kid she’d only just met! Mike was about to protest, when she continued.
‘We went on foot first, all around the city centre, then took my car and drove around the parks and outer edges of the city. He was near a bar down the end of Ransome Street, prepared to sell himself for a feed.’
‘Or drugs?’
Jacinta nodded, the smile gone and a look of such sadness on her face Mike reached out and rested his hand on her shoulder.
‘Or drugs,’ she admitted. ‘Twelve years old and already addicted. He died a couple of weeks later. By then Will and I were friends, and Dean had joined us in our nightly patrols. They were both clean—free of drugs—and Dean admired the way Will took care not only of the younger kids but of older ones who needed help.’
‘They’re how old, those two boys?’
She smiled again but shifted slightly so that his hand slid away.
‘Dean’s fifteen, Will fourteen. They’re both small for their age.’
She didn’t have to explain why. Malnourishment was the most obvious cause of a child failing to thrive.
‘And do you still patrol the streets with them?’
Jacinta studied him for a moment. Did he really want to know or was he just making conversation?
‘Sometimes,’ she admitted. ‘They’re more organised now and have a roster of people who help. Volunteers can phone the different youth shelters to see if any of their regulars haven’t turned up. The shelters share information better, so the volunteers know where to look. Will and Dean still take their turns and that’s how they found Fizzy. They were looking for someone else.’
‘But overnight shelter isn’t enough for these kids!’ Mike protested, and Jacinta beamed at him, diverting his mind, momentarily, from the explanation.
‘Of course it isn’t. It’s a stop-gap measure, but it’s a starting point as well. The shelters have heaps of information they give out. Kids who want to get off the street can find out about the help available. The next stage, for them, is permanent accommodation, but it’s hard to organise that when you’re living on a minimum youth allowance.’
Mike shook his head. His meal looked delicious but he knew he wouldn’t taste it, his mind too full of what Jacinta had forced him to consider to recognise messages from his palate.
‘So what’s the answer?’
‘Working together,’ she said promptly. ‘The government, the churches and other various charities do what they can, but until recently the whole system lacked cohesion. Some shelters didn’t know others existed, and most of the kids had no idea of the range of options available to them.’
Talking hadn’t put Jacinta off her food. She was eating her penne—with the smoked salmon sauce—with obvious enjoyment. Mike ate a little of his seafood lasagne, then had to ask.
‘So what happened recently?’
She shot him a look he’d already seen—guilt and doubt combined with a small spark of hope. Then she smiled as if that might make everything OK.
Which it very nearly did.
‘We started a thing called, for want of something smart or clever, “Optional Extras”. I worked through government funding agencies and charities to contact all the youth services in and around the city, while Will and Dean scouted through the street kids for those they knew wanted to get their lives together.’
She paused but this time the smile was far more doubtful.
‘We actually had the first meeting at the clinic—after hours, of course.’
Luminous brown eyes were fastened on his face, pleading with him to understand, so he knew darned well what was coming.
‘We still meet there,’ she admitted, and paused, waiting for a reaction.
Mike said nothing, wondering just what else might be going on at Abbott Road, then was distracted by the way the colour of her eyes almost exactly matched the colour of her hair.
‘I tried to contact you to get permission but, as I think I explained last night, it’s probably easier to speak to the Queen of England than to get through to you.’
The eyes were no longer pleading. In fact, they were daring him to tell her she’d done wrong.
But she already knew that.
‘The clinic managers are in charge of the physical space at the clinic. You could have asked—’ he knew this one, after all he only had six clinic managers, ‘—Carmel.’
Jacinta gave a long-suffering sigh and rolled her eyes, then returned to her penne with renewed gusto.
‘She has the authority to allow such meetings,’ Mike said, on firmer ground now as he’d personally been involved in drawing up the duty statements for different staff positions.
Still no answer. Jacinta was ignoring him, fishing through her side salad, presumably in search of something. An olive apparently, for, having found it, she speared it with her fork and raised it towards her lips.
‘As if!’ she muttered, then the olive disappeared, though the pip was discreetly removed by her small, slim fingers and dropped onto the side of the salad plate.
Mike was stymied. He knew he couldn’t discuss one staff member with another. He might not have his finger on all the pulse points of his multi-tentacled empire, but he did retain some common decency. He ate a little more lasagne.
‘So, what does the coming together of all the disparate groups achieve? What can your “Optional Extras” offer?’
‘Information mainly,’ Jacinta replied so smoothly he realised she’d been asked the question more than once. ‘Information about the various sources of support and funding avail-able—for both the services and for the kids. Information on how to get help, how to ask for help, where to go to ask.’
She looked up and studied him for a moment, as if checking his reaction to what she was saying.
‘It’s all available, the information, but before “Optional Extras” there wasn’t any one place where people could access it all.’
‘So Abbott Road Clinic became the place?’
Again she turned those searching eyes on his, scanning his face.
‘Not during office hours,’ she assured him. ‘On Tuesdays we have “Talk Nights” when anyone can come and ask questions, or get help to fill out forms.’
‘So once a week my premises are being used for illegal purposes?’
He saw the colour bleach from her skin and regretted his remark, but Jacinta didn’t want his sympathy—she came back fighting.
‘Hardly illegal!’ she snapped. ‘You make it sound like a brothel or a gambling den! And it’s not doing the clinic any harm—in fact, since we started meeting there we’ve collected a number of new patients.’
All street kids, no doubt, Mike thought but didn’t say.
As far as her employment contract was concerned, she’d been doing the wrong thing—and she knew it! But how to deal with it? He needed to think about it, and as his brain didn’t seem to be thinking too well right now, he changed the subject.
‘What are you doing about Fizzy? Did you ask the obstetrician to do a DNA profile on the foetus?’
Jacinta pushed away her plate and slid off her stool.
‘Fizzy! I’m sitting here talking and she’s probably thinking I’ve deserted her. They’ve such fragile egos, these kids. It doesn’t take much to plunge them into despair.’
She fished in her handbag for her purse, but Mike caught hold of her wrist.
‘I’m paying, and you didn’t answer my question.’
Jacinta looked down at his hand, at the lean fingers effortlessly encircling her wrist. Tingles were happening again, but even more disconcerting was her recollection of his question.
‘DNA profile? No, I didn’t ask, but I still can. I asked the obstetrician to take foetal blood to test for abnormalities, though he’d have done it anyway. Normal procedure with such a late miscarriage, in case there’s some genetic problem Fizzy should know about later in her life.’
She hesitated, then added, ‘But DNA?’
‘It would prove who had fathered the child.’
‘But her stepfather…’ The meaning of his words washed across her like a wave of cold water. ‘You don’t believe her story?’
She saw his doubts in the subtle movement of his shoulders and felt anger at his cynicism, but before she could argue he stood up, signalled to Marco for the bill, then said quietly, ‘Whether I believe it or not isn’t the point. At some time she may need proof her stepfather abused her, and having a DNA profile of the baby is the first and most necessary step.’
He was right, though Jacinta was still too aggravated by his attitude—and by the fact she hadn’t thought of it—to admit it. She was the one who should have been thinking rationally. She had to set aside emotion. It was the only way to tackle the problems of these kids.
And definitely the only way to tackle the attraction she felt to Michael—Mike—Trent.
‘I’ll ask the obstetrician,’ she said, halfway to admitting he was right.
He smiled, as if he knew exactly what she was thinking, and she lost the rational plot immediately, reacting to the smile with emotion—if tingling stomachs and goose-bumped skin could be called emotional reactions.
‘Come on. We’d better get back to the clinic. You have to collect your car and I have some paintings to hang.’
He signed the credit-card slip Marco had produced, then took Jacinta’s arm.
Thinking rationally, she accepted his hand on her elbow for as long as it took to be polite, then she moved away, out of the ambit of his body space—out of harm’s way—or nearly!
The boys had gone and Fizzy was asleep when Jacinta returned to the hospital. The sister on night duty was warm and friendly, and had obviously pried most of Fizzy’s story from her.
‘Don’t worry,’ she told Jacinta as they stood by the nurses’ station. ‘I’ll keep a close watch on her overnight, and if she wakes I’ll tell her you came in. She’ll probably be discharged in the morning. Is there somewhere she can go? Someone who might pick her up?’
‘She can come to my place—my mother will collect her. I’ll call in and see her in the morning. I’m due at work at seven-thirty and she won’t be discharged before then.’
The sister nodded, and returned to whatever she’d been doing when Jacinta had arrived. As she walked out of the hospital memories of their arrival earlier, with Mike recurred and an image of him, bare-chested and paint-splattered, popped into Jacinta’s head.
Get out of there! she told him, not wanting to think about the man—or the way her body behaved in his presence. She’d think about Fizzy and the other kids. About the new beginnings she’d helped put in place for all the youngsters who haunted the city like small, displaced ghosts.
Though she might have to think about what Mike would do next. Would he, even after meeting Fizzy, Will and Dean, forbid her to use the clinic for ‘Optional Extras’ meetings?
Would he sack her?
Now, there was a thought worth considering! If anything was going to cure her physical reactions to the head of Trent Clinics, the prospect of unemployment would surely work.
And would have if she hadn’t started to wonder if he’d do it in person—so she’d have the opportunity to see him again.
The opportunity came sooner than Jacinta had expected. Even after visiting Fizzy and squashing the teenager’s doubts about accepting help, Jacinta still arrived at work in plenty of time for Carmel’s regular Monday morning medical staff meeting. And found her usual parking space taken up by a large, dark green Jaguar.
‘Wow!’
Mark Sargeant, who job-shared with an older doctor while studying for a further degree, was standing by the car, admiring its lines, polish and, no doubt, price.
Jacinta parked beside it, taking the place usually occupied by the vehicle of Rohan Singh, the third GP in the clinic. Another space was reserved for Carmel, but if Rohan arrived first he’d take it without a moment’s hesitation. Rohan had a sublime belief that whatever he did was right, and he’d somehow conned Carmel into believing it as well. She might nag at Jacinta and Mark about what she saw as infractions of the clinic rules, but in her eyes Rohan could do no wrong.
Jacinta and Mark walked towards the rear door, unlocked it and realised they weren’t the first people here. There were lights on in the hall and the alarm had been disarmed.
‘If it was Carmel’s car, she’d have parked it in her own space,’ Mark mused. ‘Rohan, too, for that matter.’
But an uneasy feeling, not quite a tingle but close, in the pit of Jacinta’s stomach told her whose car it might be.
There was no sign of him—only of Carmel, fussing at papers behind the high reception counter.
‘She must have ridden her broomstick in this morning,’ Mark murmured to Jacinta. ‘For heaven’s sake, don’t trip over it if she’s parked it somewhere awkward.’
‘Is that all you’re going to say?’ Jacinta demanded. ‘Look at this place!’
She waved her arms around, indicating the refurbished waiting room.
Mark glanced around as if noticing the change for the first time.
‘Yeah! It looks nice. Bright! Actually, to be honest, I can’t remember what it looked like before.’
Jacinta shook her head in disbelief. She knew all about men’s and women’s brains being wired differently, but she found it hard to comprehend anyone not noticing how terrible the waiting room had been.
‘Come on, you two, I want to get started early,’ Carmel called to them, then she waved them into the reception office.
He was sitting in a chair behind the high counter, which was why Jacinta hadn’t noticed him until she was well into the room. And though dressed respectably, and totally paint-free, she was still put out enough to trip over the leg of one of the desks and practically stumble into his arms.
‘I believe you’ve met Dr Trent, Jacinta,’ Carmel said in a cool voice, while Jacinta attempted to recover both her balance and her breath. ‘Dr Trent, this is Mark Sargeant, our third doctor. Mark, Dr Michael Trent.’
Jacinta watched Mike put out his hand to Mark, and heard the deep, seductive voice say, ‘It’s Mike, not Dr Trent, though I don’t seem able to convince Carmel of that.’
Carmel gave a little laugh which, if Jacinta hadn’t known better, could have sounded flustered. But flustered wasn’t in Carmel’s repertoire of emotions.
Was it?
‘So, how’s our young friend Fizzy this morning?’
Jacinta registered that Mike’s question had been directed at her, but her mind was still getting over his presence in the clinic. Actually, other bits of her were getting over it as well.
‘Fizzy? That’s the pregnant girl? Fiona Walsh? What happened to her?’
Carmel’s questions saved Jacinta answering, but Mike’s explanations caused more problems.
‘You had those unemployed layabouts in the clinic after hours?’ Carmel demanded, and Jacinta, only too aware of the thin ice on which she’d been skating, had to grit her teeth really tightly to prevent an argument with the clinic manager.
‘Should we get on with the meeting?’ Mark saved the day. ‘Rohan should be here any minute but while we’re waiting for him, I’d like to congratulate Jacinta on the fine job she’s done with the waiting room.’
He turned to beam at Jacinta, as if he he’d known all along she’d transformed the place. ‘Love the paintings especially. Did you bring them from home?’
Mike saw through Mark’s diversionary tactics and wondered if the young male doctor was in love with his colleague.
Wondered also how Jacinta would answer the question.
She didn’t. She simply smiled her thanks at Mark, before turning to Carmel. ‘It’s not like Rohan to be late. Is he coming or has he phoned in sick?’
‘Rohan’s working at one of the other clinics this week,’ Carmel replied. The words had a bitten-off sound to them as if she didn’t approve of this change in personnel. ‘Dr Trent will be working here in his place.’
Mike had seen patients take bad news more calmly than Jacinta accepted the last statement.
Colour flowed into her cheeks, then ebbed back out, leaving her face pale but her fighting spirit undaunted.
‘But he can’t. He hasn’t practised for years!’
‘I’m still registered,’ Mike assured her, though he wondered why she was so upset. ‘And I’ve kept up my professional training, making sure I attend the requisite number of seminars and information sessions, as well as keeping abreast of recent developments through journals.’
‘I hardly think you’re in a position to question Dr Trent’s capabilities,’ Carmel put in, and Mike saw Jacinta’s soft lips close on the new objection she’d been about to voice.
But suspicion sparked from the dark eyes and the small, neat chin took on a stubborn tilt. As far as Jacinta was concerned, he was in for an uncomfortable time.
‘I thought you wanted me to see Abbott Road for myself,’ he murmured to her when the meeting had finished and they were walking across to their consulting rooms. ‘What better way than by working here?’
‘After how many years of not practising?’ came the scathing question. ‘Is that offering the best possible service for patients?’
Confusion, brought on by her attitude, triggered anger. He’d already had his business manager, his accountant and Chris, his best mate as well as an employee, telling him he was mad, so he didn’t need this pipsqueak of a woman adding her two cents’ worth.
He glowered at her, then tried a different tack, saying in silky smooth tones, ‘Ah, but you’ll be right next door, ready to offer support, advice and encouragement—just as you would to any temporary staff member, surely?’
Jacinta delivered what she hoped was a sufficiently fierce glare and stomped into her consulting room. Patients were already drifting in, queuing at the reception desk, the regulars commenting about the improved appearance of the waiting room.
Mike was right. She had wanted him to see the place for himself, and what better way than by working here? Maybe there was more to the man than the ‘business tycoon’ image suggested.
But working right next door to her? Just through the wall? His presence permeating the air throughout the clinic?
She breathed deeply, defying the tainted air, and told herself she could handle the situation. It was a physical thing, this attraction she felt for him, and there was no way she was going to give in to it.
No more tingles.
No more goose-bumps.
No more time wasted thinking about him—picturing his lips, his unusual eyes, imagining softness in those eyes as his lips…
A patient card sliding into the box outside her door brought her up short. The day had begun. As soon as she opened her door and lifted the card, Carmel’s eagle eye would notice and her voice would announce the appropriate number and direct him or her to Jacinta’s room.
Number twenty-seven was a harassed-looking woman with a small child in tow.
‘It’s Bobby. I went to drop him at the childcare centre on my way to work and they say he’s got a cold and can’t stay there because he’ll pass it on to all the other kids. Yet he must have caught it there. No one else in the family has a cold.’
The unspoken problem, Jacinta knew, was that the mother couldn’t go to work unless Bobby was miraculously cured of the runny nose and sneezing fits he appeared to be suffering.
She knelt in front of the little boy.
‘Let’s take a look at you. It’s not much fun, having a cold, is it?’
She took his temperature, slightly raised, listened to his chest—clear considering the amount of fluids issuing from his nose—checked his throat—not infected—and sighed.
‘It is just a cold,’ Jacinta told his mother—Mrs Armitage, according to the card. ‘But he is infectious and I can understand the childcare centre staff not wanting him sneezing all over other kids. And there’s really not much you can do, apart from giving him plenty of fluids and a mild children’s analgesic if he complains of a headache. Is there anyone else who can mind him? A relative perhaps?’
Mrs Armitage glanced at her watch.
‘One of the older kids could have stayed home, but they’ll have left for school by now.’ She sighed. ‘I guess it means me. I’ll have to phone my boss and tell him, and who knows what he’ll say? It’s hard enough getting a job these days, but keeping one, when you’ve got kids as well…’
‘Would you like to use my phone?’ Jacinta suggested, knowing Carmel wouldn’t offer. ‘Save you dragging him up the mall to the public phone.’
She got an outside line, handed the receiver to Mrs Armitage, then knelt down to occupy Bobby while his mother made her call. She found a small truck in the box of toys she kept for children, and was buzzing it across the carpet when a knock sounded on the door.
‘Come in,’ she called, shooting the truck across to Bobby.
The door opened and Mike appeared, just as Bobby, not satisfied with running the truck on the floor, turned it into an airborne craft and flung it across the room.
Jacinta ducked and it banged harmlessly into the wall, but as she scrambled inelegantly to her feet she could feel the heat of new embarrassment stealing into her cheeks.
Fortunately, Mrs Armitage finished her call and bent to lift her son into her arms.
‘Come on, little nuisance,’ she said, though her voice was loving. ‘Thanks, Doctor.’
Mike held the door as the pair departed.
‘Thanks for nothing!’ Jacinta muttered to herself, then she looked at Mike. ‘What this city needs is a place where kids who aren’t too well can be cared for while their parents work. I’m not talking about really ill children, just those with coughs and colds who aren’t acceptable at their regular childcare centre.’
The puzzled expression on his face stopped her fretful comments.
‘I’m sorry. I was thinking out loud. Did you want something?’
Mike considered a range of replies, the most surprising of which, he found, was a single word. You!
Ridiculous!
He couldn’t possibly want Jacinta Ford.
Look at her! A small, neat woman with an admittedly shapely body, but packed with problems. There she was, frowning at the door, worrying about a woman she’d probably never met before and planning more good works. He’d met women like her, women who put the welfare of others before the comfort and well-being of their own families.
Though why he’d think of family with Jacinta…
‘You can’t solve the problems of the entire inner city,’ he told her, but when the dark eyes turned his way, and the twin arcs of her eyebrows rose, he found himself adding, ‘Well, not overnight.’
She smiled, conceding his point—and starting an argument in his head about why he shouldn’t want her.
Because she’s not your type, and she’s been trouble from the word go, and—
‘Can I help you?’
‘No!’
The reply was automatic, given the way he was thinking, so he had to amend it.
‘Actually, yes. Do we have a policy for patients who want prescriptions for strong pain relief?’
‘The ones that say, “Doctor, I’m in agony from my back. It happened ages ago and a doctor gave me a tablet called something forte.” That kind of thing?’
Jacinta had repeated almost word for word what Mike’s first patient had said, then shrugged as if this was one problem she hadn’t yet solved.
‘We don’t have a policy, but most GPs are aware there are addicted patients who go from doctor to doctor with the same story. I usually tell those patients it could be something worse, like severe kidney disease, which a high codeine concentration could exacerbate. Then I send them off for X-rays and suggest they might need an ultrasound as well. Usually they take the X-ray form but never have it done.’
‘And what if they’re genuinely in severe pain from a back problem?’ Mike asked, secretly impressed by this very practical strategy.
‘Then they’ll be only too happy to have the X-ray, which they can do within an hour at the radiology clinic just up the road. They can bring the X-ray and the report back, then I see them straight away, and if there is a problem, I prescribe.’
She sighed.
‘And I know I can still be conned. I know they can go to another doctor in a couple of days and do exactly the same thing and get more codeine to feed their habit. But at least I’ve seen an actual problem.’
Jacinta frowned at him.
‘Have you someone waiting in your consulting room, while Bobby’s been throwing trucks and I’ve been prattling on?’
Mike smiled at her concern.
‘No. I actually thought of the X-ray thing for myself and sent him off, but I checked his file and saw he came in to see Rohan for prescriptions regularly.’
‘Some patients do,’ she said, and again he read her commitment to her work in the way she frowned as she said it, as if this was one more problem she’d like to solve. Though whether it was the doctor who prescribed the drugs or the possibly addicted patient she was frowning over, Mike couldn’t guess.
She walked to the door and took up a new card from the box outside, and Mike heard Carmel call instructions to the next patient.
He took Jacinta’s movement as dismissal, but as he returned to his temporary consulting room he was more confused than ever.
The number thing would have to go—that much was clear. It was downright impersonal.
And maybe he’d have to figure some way to check on the performance of the doctors in his practices. If someone was over-prescribing, would it show up somewhere in Trent Clinics’ records, or would the firm only find out when a law suit hit them?
While as for Jacinta Ford…
He set that question aside—after all, what he felt for Jacinta was only a passing attraction. But getting back to basics as far as the clinics were concerned, maybe that was something he should have done some time ago.
He lifted the phone, got an outside line and phoned Chris. He could explain Mike’s decision to the other executives because he’d be less shocked by it. Chris tried to spend a month doing hands-on work in one of the clinics each year, because, he said, he wanted to know the kind of workload the doctors he employed had to handle.
Though if he’d worked with someone as feisty as Jacinta, surely he’d have mentioned her…