MAC FELT AT a loss, arriving at the hospital the next morning to find it an Izzy-free zone. A quick check of the rosters showed she wouldn’t be on until two, which was, he decided, probably a good idea.
But a recent idea?
He checked again and, yes, there’d been a shuffle in the rosters.
Was she avoiding him?
Had she spent the night reminding herself of all the reasons why getting involved with him could harm her adoption plans?
His night had been tortured not by nightmares but by thoughts of a single kiss, and by images of where that kiss might lead in the future.
Not that he had reason to be optimistic. He was well aware just how important Nikki was to her, and understood her reluctance to jeopardise the adoption process.
But even if they had to wait—surely what was just paperwork couldn’t take too long...
‘Are you with us or off with the fairies?’
He looked up from his desk where he’d been staring blankly at Izzy’s name on the roster, and assured Abby he was all present and correct.
‘Very army,’ she said. ‘Anyway, there are people stacking up in the ED for antibiotic shots and although Aisha—a local GP, have you met her?—is helping out, it’s getting hectic.’
‘Yes, I’ve met Aisha and, yes, I’ll come,’ he said, pushing himself up from the chair, pushing away memories of a splinter of time beneath the huge old tree, and turning his mind to what lay ahead.
At least he’d checked on Rhia and the Watsons when he’d first arrived, pleased to see the little girl was no worse.
Somehow he and Aisha got through the flood of panicky residents, many of whom, he guessed, hadn’t had any contact with the Watsons, and by the time they stopped for a late lunch things had settled down. But Izzy’s arrival coincided with the local ambulance, bringing in a ten-year-old boy who’d fallen in the school playground, suspected broken arm.
Izzy heard the ambulance approaching as she walked down to work. No flashing lights and sirens but she knew its noise as well as that of her own car.
Would Mac be in the ED, alerted ahead of the new arrival?
She’d woken in a stupid panic, unsure how to face a man with whom she’d shared such a fiery kiss the night before, and, given how the rosters had been disrupted the previous day, it had been easy to switch her shift time.
But she had to face him sometime—face him in daylight or the bright lights of the hospital—and put the kiss behind her. Behind them both.
The ambulance attendant was bringing a small boy through the doors, a white-faced, frightened small boy clutching at his right arm, which was stabilised in a sling.
Izzy went to him immediately, all thoughts of kisses gone from her head.
‘And what have you done to yourself, Kurt Robson?’ she teased, kneeling beside him and putting her arm around his shoulder.
‘Fell over, that’s all, but it hurts.’
‘Of course it does.’
She looked up at the ambo.
‘Have his parents been contacted?’
‘His mum’s on the way.’
‘That’s great, isn’t it, Kurt?’
Kurt’s face suggested it might not be that great.
‘Mum might be angry,’ he muttered. ‘When I hurt my foot she was. She said I was playing too roughly, but this time, truly, I just fell over.’
‘That’s okay, we’ll sort things out with Mum.’
‘We gave him seven mils of paracetamol for the pain but that’s all he’s had,’ the ambo said, handing the paperwork over to Izzy and heading for the door, and probably a late lunch.
Kurt’s mother and Mac arrived at the same time, one through the front ED entrance, the other from the hospital.
‘He had a fall,’ Izzy told Mac, trying desperately to remind her body that this was work and she could handle colleague-to-colleague stuff for all that her blood was singing through her veins at the mere sight of him.
Who knew what a casual touch might do?
Turn her brain to mush, that’s what, she realised when he brushed against her as he, too, knelt to talk to the boy.
Okay—enough’s enough!
She breathed deeply and moved away to greet Mrs Robson, then Mac was by her side, speaking quietly to her.
‘It should just be a simple X-ray; we do that here, don’t we?’
Izzy nodded, the deep breath not quite stabilising her yet.
‘I can actually do a bit more than that. With my pre-med degree I added a thirteen-week radiography course—before Nikki. We don’t have an MRI machine but we can most other radiography.’
‘Wonder Woman!’ Mac teased softly, undoing the small amount of good that deep breathing had effected.
‘Not really,’ Izzy responded, letting a little of the irritation she was feeling because of him seep into her voice. ‘You’re probably just as capable of most radiography stuff as I am. Every doctor can do a simple X-ray.’
He grinned at her but she refused to be charmed.
Colleagues, they were colleagues! She’d work out the rest later.
Much later...
But thoughts of charm and singing blood disappeared when Izzy shoved the X-ray film into the light box. The same picture would be on the screen at the ED’s front desk and she knew Mac was looking at it there.
‘Mac!’
He came immediately and she wondered if he’d seen what she’d seen and realised it wasn’t something to discuss in front of the Robsons.
‘What are you seeing?’ he asked, and she pointed to the fine line that showed a break in the humerus.
‘That’s the obvious one, but look at the elbow joint—isn’t it slightly distorted?’
Mac ran his finger over the picture then turned his attention to the shoulder joint.
‘That seems loose as well. Has the boy had other fractures, do you know?’
‘None that have been reported here, but he said Mum got angry when he hurt his foot.’
‘Okay, let’s get him back in here and look at the foot,’ Mac said, leaving with a touch on her shoulder that was so light she might have imagined it.
She heard him talking to Mrs Robson and Kurt, explaining they wanted to do some more checking.
‘Is there anyone in your family that’s had broken bones before?’ he was asking Mrs Robson.
‘Well, most kids do, don’t they?’ she said. ‘I know I had a broken leg when I was younger.’
‘And you went mad at me when I hurt my foot!’ Kurt put in, and his mother laughed.
‘Mothers worry,’ she said, patting down his unruly brown hair.
Mac lifted Kurt onto the X-ray table while Izzy focused the camera over the foot he’d hurt earlier. Mac escorted Mrs Robson from the room while Izzy checked she’d get what she wanted.
‘Hold still again,’ she said, slipping into the side room and pressing the button to activate the camera.
She took different angle shots, propping the little foot with foam pads, and when she was satisfied she returned him to his mother, who by this time was getting anxious, although someone had given her a cup of tea and plate of biscuits.
This time they studied the shots on the computer in the radiography office, enlarging details so they could easily see the two metatarsals that had thickened areas where breaks had healed.
‘Brittle bones?’ Izzy asked. ‘I’ve heard of it but wasn’t sure it existed as a condition.’
‘OI,’ Mac replied. ‘Osteogenesis imperfecta—there are eight levels of it, with the first four being the most common. OI One is the best to have, and probably what young Kurt has, and often people can go through all their lives without knowing they have it.’
‘Genetic?’ Izzy asked, so absorbed in learning something new that the fact that she was shoulder to shoulder with Mac wasn’t bothering her at all.
‘Usually, but not always. The problem is, we could set his arm but with OI I’m not sure that it shouldn’t be pinned. I think someone said the other day that there’s an orthopaedic specialist in Braxton.’
‘Paul Kent,’ Izzy told him. ‘Very good. Should we get the ambulance back to take them?’
Mac had straightened and now turned towards her, a slight smile greeting her question.
‘I think that’s best, don’t you? Although it leaves Mrs Robson stuck there without a vehicle.’
Colleagues, Izzy reminded herself, ignoring the effect of that slightest of smiles.
‘If Paul decides to operate, Mrs Robson will want to stay anyway, and her husband has a ute so he can take over anything they need when he finishes work.’
Mac nodded and left the room, leaving Izzy to turn off machines and tidy up.
He was on the phone to the specialist when she returned to the ED and the ambulance was pulling in.
‘Can I phone someone to pick up your car?’ she asked Mrs Robson, who shook her head.
‘I’ve called my sister—she only lives down the road, she’ll walk up and get it. She has the extra set of keys to it and the house so she can pack things for me and Kurt—better than my husband would.’
She smiled and Izzy realised that however Mac had explained the situation it had left the woman at ease, not anxious and distracted as many mothers would be.
‘Osteogenesis imperfecta—I like learning new things,’ she said to Mac as the ambulance departed. ‘I know we covered something about brittle bones in the course I did but I’m sure I didn’t hear that name.’
‘It’s not that common,’ Mac told her, ‘but learning new things—well, that happens all the time.’
She knew he was teasing—suggesting—but also knew she had to ignore it. That kiss last night—and where it might lead—was something she had to think seriously about.
‘Then I’d better go and learn new things about what’s been happening at the hospital all day. I haven’t even signed on for my shift, let alone had any kind of handover.’
‘Of course,’ he said, and something in his voice told her he understood she was backing off, trying to ignore what had happened between them.
Mac headed for his office, only too aware that there was paperwork multiplying on his desk, pleased to have a really boring distraction.
Seeing Izzy—a far from boring distraction—had reminded him that a relationship with a colleague was not a good idea. In fact, it was a dreadful idea! Especially when he was new to the job of being a civilian doctor, and really needed to concentrate on doing that job well.
Belle came in with a message for him. Paul Kent had received the X-rays and would phone him after he’d seen Kurt.
He thought of Izzy repeating the diagnosis, her face alight with learning something new, and his gut knotted.
The thought of not having a relationship with that particular colleague was far too depressing to even contemplate. Somehow they had to make this work—not only the being colleagues part of it but the hesitation they both felt about involvement.
Very reasonable hesitation!
‘Are you sighing over the paperwork?’ Belle asked, bringing in a sheaf of more bumf. ‘One thing I can tell you, if you don’t get onto it, it just multiplies. Worse than rabbits, paperwork.’
He laughed but knew what she said was true, so he set aside all thoughts of the redhead beetling around somewhere in the building and concentrated on sorting the urgent from the non-urgent, the notices of new procedural policy from the important things that needed a response.
Izzy started her catching up with a visit to Rhia. As Mac had said, she was holding her own, although she was still pale and from the chart slightly feverish. Ben was in the room with her.
‘I’ve sent Sally home to get some sleep.’
He twisted his hands together as he spoke then looked up at Izzy.
‘She will get better, won’t she?’ he asked, and the desperation in his voice touched Izzy’s heart.
‘We’ll do everything we can to make sure she does,’ she promised. ‘She’s getting the best of care, the drugs we’re giving her will be fighting the infection, and...’
She hesitated, mainly because she hated making promises she couldn’t keep.
‘They usually win,’ she finished, hoping he had missed the pause. ‘It just takes time,’ she told him, ‘so you and Sally have to look after yourselves because even after she’s out of here, she could need a long convalescence.’
‘We’ll make sure we’re there for her,’ Ben promised. Then his head lifted again and his dark eyes met Izzy’s. ‘I know all parents think their kids are special, but she’s especially precious to us. Sally had a couple of miscarriages before Rhia and hasn’t been able to get pregnant since. We’ve thought about IVF because we’d love another child, but we’d have to go to the city, and it’s so expensive.’
‘It’s becoming more affordable, so who knows,’ Izzy told him, not mentioning that her brother Steve was already talking about setting up a private IVF clinic right here in Wetherby.
She smiled as she thought about his grandiose plan of building a relaxing seaside resort where couples could stay while they underwent fertility treatment or IVF programmes. He believed that the failures in IVF conception were often brought on by stress and his clinic resort could alleviate a lot of that.
So Steve was in her mind when she ran into Mac in the tea room.
‘Shouldn’t you be at home, cooking up a Moroccan delicacy? Your shift’s long finished.’
‘Paperwork,’ he said succinctly, turning from the urn where he was making a coffee to offer to make one for her.
‘No, tea for me at this time of the evening,’ she said. ‘I don’t need any stimulants to keep me from sleep tonight.’
He found a teabag and made her a tea, raising a milk bottle in silent query.
She shook her head and he passed her the rather battered mug.
Inevitably their fingers touched, and he raised his eyebrows as he asked, ‘Something keep you from sleep last night? Stimulation?’
Izzy gave a huff of laughter.
‘Not that so much as where it could lead,’ she told him as one of the enrolled nurses came looking for Izzy.
‘It’s Mrs Warren in bed nine,’ she said. ‘Says she’s feeling right poorly, whatever that might mean.’
‘I’ll see to her,’ Izzy said quietly, setting her tea down on the table and leaving the room. Mrs Warren should really be in a hospice, but the nearest one was in Braxton and she didn’t want to leave her friends and family.
She was poorly, her skin sagging around her bones, her old eyes clouded with pain and confusion. Three months earlier she’d been an extremely fit and spritely ninety-three-year-old living by herself, capable of managing her house and garden, getting a little help with shopping and occasional visits from a social worker.
An accident in the bathroom, a fall that had left her with a broken hip, bruised ribs and a bang on the head had changed all that. Lying in bed, she was a prime victim for pneumonia, and although she seemed to have fought that off, she was still far from well, her organs slowly closing down.
Izzy slipped into the chair beside her and took her hand, talking quietly to her.
‘I see someone’s brought you flowers from your garden,’ she said, nodding towards the big bunch of colour on a shelf on the wall.
‘Jimmy,’ Mrs Warren whispered. ‘He’s a good lad. He comes every day and often brings a mate so we can have a laugh, but I don’t want to laugh any more, Izzy. I’ve had enough.’
‘I know, love,’ Izzy soothed. ‘I know.’
Mrs Warren’s health directory had been explicit that she didn’t want measures taken to keep her alive, but her heart refused to give in, still beating strongly in the old woman’s skeletal body.
Izzy sat with her until she drifted off to sleep, then she checked the other patients under her care. With everything quiet she returned to Mrs Warren, sitting with her through the night until, at four, her heart finally gave in, and the old woman passed away.
Technically, one of the GPs was on call for the night shift, but why wake him just to certify death when Mac would be here at six? Possibly earlier, knowing Mac. Declaring Mrs Warren dead could wait, as could breaking the news to her family.
Izzy had wanted to call them earlier, but Mrs Warren had insisted she didn’t want wailing relatives sitting around her bed.
‘I’m happy to go,’ she’d told Izzy, ‘so there’s no reason for tears.’
She was phoning Mrs Warren’s eldest daughter when Mac arrived.
‘What are you doing here?’ he demanded. ‘Have you done a double shift?’
Izzy held up a hand to silence him as someone answered the phone and she began her explanation.
Mac shook his head and left the nurses’ station, but when he returned it wasn’t to chide her. Instead, he touched her lightly on the arm.
‘You sat with her all night?’
Izzy nodded.
‘She didn’t want the family, just someone to be there.’
‘You should have had the coffee,’ Mac said, but the glint in his eyes and the smile tugging at his lips told her he approved.
Probably would have done the same, Izzy realised, and the warmth his light touch had generated blossomed into appreciation.
He was a good man.
It was a refrain that stayed with her as her feet pounded on the coastal path. She’d had to run to clear her head and have any hope of sleep but the ‘good man’ thought stuck and she knew it tipped the scales in his favour in the matter of any relationship between them.
* * *
Mac got on with his working day with a certain sense of relief. Relief because he’d see much less of Izzy while she was on the swing shift from two till ten, but qualifying the relief was a touch of let-down.
Damn it all, he liked seeing her at work! Enjoyed a glimpse of her red curls as she flashed past a door, enjoyed the feel of her by his side as they studied notes or discussed a patient.
The worst of it was he’d see even less of her out of working hours. It was unlikely she’d want to try his Moroccan tagine at ten-thirty at night.
He fought an urge to check the nursing rosters again—he’d checked twice already today and she was definitely on the swing shift. And today he wouldn’t see her come on duty. He had a district hospital meeting—some kind of meet and greet the new guy, he guessed—at Braxton Hospital at two this afternoon.
Belle had booked him into a motel in Braxton for the night as apparently there was always an informal dinner held after these meetings.
The paperwork following Mrs Warren’s death diverted him for a few minutes and a visit to the nursing home took up a little more time, but the day still loomed as a very long one without Izzy.
Until a very attractive blonde bounced into his office.
‘I’m Frances, I’m your physiotherapist—well, not yours particularly but the hospital one. I do two days a week in Wetherby, one here at the hospital and tomorrow in a private practice. I’m based in Braxton, so some of the patients here I’ve already seen at the hospital there.’
‘Like the young man whose ankle was pinned and plated in Braxton last weekend? I heard he was coming back to us today.’
‘And you’ve got another man from the same accident—simple tib and fib break who’ll be seeing me here as an outpatient.’
Mac nodded. He’d discharged the patient with the simple break after fitting a full cast and had talked to him about needing physio once the cast came off, but apparently Frances would have exercises he could do now.
He walked with her as she visited the occupied rooms, introducing the Watsons and little Rhia, pleased that Frances spoke mostly to Rhia, telling her she’d be back to give her some toys that would help her stay strong in hospital.
‘You probably haven’t explored the physio cupboard,’ Frances said as they left the room.
‘I’ve seen a room that looked to be full of toys, and I did wonder just how many children might ever be here at any one time to warrant so many.’
Leaving Frances to go about her work, Mac returned to his office, aware of how much he didn’t know about the hospital he was supposedly running. What other visiting therapists might they have? How did he contact one if he needed someone for a specific patient? An OT for a stroke patient, for instance?
All the information he needed would be here in his office somewhere, but he’d avoided being in it, doing only the absolutely necessary paperwork—and then only when bullied into it by Belle.
True, there had been emergencies to be dealt with in his first few days, and Rhia’s diagnosis had led to a flood of outpatients, but now things had quietened down, it was time to learn his job—his real job—especially as the other district doctors would expect him to know something at this afternoon’s meeting.
‘Let’s start at the beginning,’ he said to Belle when he’d summoned her to his office. ‘Tell me everything I need to know about how the place runs. I know who’s in charge of Housekeeping, and I have met the cooks, but apart from Frances what other visiting professionals do we have? Where do I find their information?’
He smiled at her.
‘I fear I’ve been leaving everything to you.’
‘Not your fault,’ Belle assured him. ‘You’ve hardly had a moment to breathe since you arrived.’
But she ran him through the normal weekly and monthly routines, through the visiting professionals, and volunteers who worked mainly in the nursing home, playing board games and doing craft projects with the residents.
‘It’s all in there somewhere,’ she said, waving her hand at the filing cabinets banked against one wall, ‘but generally you only need to ask me and I’ll either find it for you or find out what you want to know.’
‘In fact, you really run the place,’ Mac said, smiling at her. ‘I had a sergeant like that in the army.’
They talked a little longer, Mac realising just how much was involved in running even a small hospital.
Frances appeared at the door, greeted Belle like an old friend, then handed Mac a knobby ball.
‘Stress ball,’ she said. ‘You just squeeze it in your hand—one hand at a time—you’ll be surprised how much it will relieve that tension in your neck and shoulders.’
What tension in my neck and shoulders? Mac wanted to ask, but with Belle there...
And Frances was right, although how she’d noticed it he didn’t know.
‘Thanks,’ he said, taking the ball and squeezing it in his right hand then throwing it across the table to Belle, wanting to make light of it—to not have people thinking he couldn’t cope.
‘Want a go?’ he said, but Belle only tossed it back.
‘I’ve got one of my own,’ she said, ‘only mine’s hot pink. Frances keeps an eye on all of us.’
Enough of an eye to see tension in his neck?
Tension that was part of his PTSD, or new tension caused by his attraction to a certain redhead?
He wondered if the visiting professionals included a psychologist...
Mac kept squeezing, one hand and then the other, while Belle and Frances were now discussing a barn dance to be held that weekend at a property out of town.
‘It’s to raise money for the animal shelter,’ Frances explained. ‘Do come, I’ll email you the directions. They have a kind of auction and you can bid on the different animals and if you win the bid your money goes towards its keep for the year.’
He agreed it sounded fun and was about to ask if he could take Izzy along when he realised that being linked with him was probably the last thing she wanted.
Or needed...
‘It’s very casual,’ Frances was explaining, while he squeezed hard on his stress ball.
Because he was thinking of Izzy?
‘It really is in a barn out on the animal refuge,’ Belle added.
‘As long as I don’t have to wear a hat with corks dangling off it,’ Mac told them, and the laughter broke up the meeting.
So, off to Braxton! And it will probably do you good not to see Izzy for a whole day, he thought. That situation was getting way out of control...