Читать книгу The Doctor She'd Never Forget - Annie Claydon, Annie Claydon - Страница 11

DREW HAD SPENT the whole of the previous evening with Sophie. He’d sat down to watch one episode of MacAdam and ended up watching four, back to back. He’d told himself it was an interesting show, with a great plot, but, in fact, it was Sophie he’d been unable to take his eyes off, and Sophie who’d inhabited his dreams, until it had been time to peel himself out of bed for another early start. This morning, it was in the large conference room at the hotel, which had been temporarily set aside as a rehearsal area.

Sophie looked different again. Different from the tough cop, with personal problems and a heart of gold that he’d watched last night. Different from the neatly dressed doctor he’d met yesterday.

Today she was the actress, dressed in an oversized sweatshirt, which fell by design from one shoulder, exposing the curve of her neck and the narrow strap of her top underneath. Her blonde hair was tied up in a messy bundle at the back of her head, a few wisps framing her face.

And she was alone. Sitting in one of the chairs that had been cleared against the wall to make some space in the centre of the room, yawning as she leafed through the pages of a small, leather-bound notebook.

The swing doors slapped closed behind Drew and she looked up. Even Sophie’s frown was like a ray of sunshine, waking him instantly from the drowsy hangover of too little sleep.

‘Hi.’ She didn’t say his name, and Drew wondered briefly whether she’d forgotten it again. After last night, when he’d thought he’d got to know her so well, it was a humbling experience.

‘Morning. Are you ready to start?’

She shrugged, as if being in attendance was about all he could reasonably expect of her. ‘I already know CPR.’ She slipped the notebook into a large designer handbag, which lay on the seat next to her. He’d give a lot to know what that notebook contained.

He called her bluff, walking towards the dummy, which someone had arranged in a seated position, legs crossed, on one of the nearby chairs. ‘The script says that you’re resuscitating someone who’s been knocked down in the street by a truck.’

Drew arranged the dummy on the floor, in a pose that vaguely resembled the kind of position a road-accident victim might end up in. Sophie looked at it with the bored air of a film star who had better things to do at seven o’clock in the morning.

‘You’re standing on the pavement, right?’

She nodded and he pointed to a spot a couple of feet away from the dummy. ‘So that would be about here.’

‘Yes, that’s right.’ When she stood, she seemed even smaller than she had yesterday, more fragile. Drew thought he saw a flash of uncertain fear in her eyes.

He needed to show her that he presented no threat. ‘Okay. I’ll give the signal and you just do what comes naturally. We’ll work from there.’ He gave her his most reassuring smile.

‘All right.’ She nodded quietly, and Drew took a couple of steps back, giving her some room. Then he clapped his hands to indicate the sickening thud of metal meeting flesh.

She jumped, whirling round in the direction of the dummy, for all the world as if she’d just heard the screeching of brakes and the rending of tyres. Then she moved. Confident, assured, with the professional focus that he’d seen so many times on the faces of the people he’d worked with.

Kneeling by the dummy, she was examining it, counterfeiting perfectly the checks and precautions that a real doctor would take in this situation. Bending over the dummy’s head, she tapped its face with two fingers.

‘Unresponsive… Not breathing…’ She muttered the words to herself, almost as if he’d walked out of the room and she was alone.

‘Great. That’s good.’ As Drew knelt down beside her, her scent brushed against his senses. Sophie smelled like every desire he’d ever experienced.

She tipped her face up towards him and suddenly he was falling, unable to catch his breath. One of her eyes was the same gorgeous green he’d seen yesterday. The other was light brown, shot through with gold. The effect was stunning, the one irregularity in an otherwise perfect face. He was bewitched.

The doctor was staring at her, and this wasn’t his suspicious, searching stare. If she had to put a name on it, she would call it…

No. She was mistaken, it was far too early in the morning for him to make a pass at her. And, in any case, he clearly disapproved of her, and she didn’t like him all that much. Whatever had put that possibility into her head?

‘Have I got breakfast all over my face?’ She brushed one of her cheeks, wondering whether she’d had time for breakfast today.

‘No. I…’ He seemed to force his gaze downwards, towards the dummy that lay between them. The sudden, almost apologetic gesture sent tingles to the tips of her fingers.

‘What is it?’ She brushed the other cheek and then realised what he’d seen. ‘This?’ Sophie made the well-worn joke that she used whenever anyone noticed her eyes. Opening and closing each one in turn, she described a circle in the air with her finger, intoning a spooky melody.

He had such a nice smile. One that could get her into trouble if she wasn’t very careful. ‘You have heterochromia.’

‘Yes. I wear a contact lens in my brown eye for filming, so it doesn’t look weird.’

‘It doesn’t look weird. It’s…’ He shrugged, seemingly at a loss for words.

‘I was born with it. It’s just a pigmentation thing, nothing else.’ Sophie was aware that heterochromia could sometimes be the result of an injury, and she didn’t want him getting the wrong idea.

‘It’s beautiful.’ Clearly his mind was on the aesthetics, rather than any medical implications.

Suddenly, even though neither of them was moving, the space between them seemed to close. As if all the air were being sucked out of the room, and they were being forced together by some trick of physics.

Then the vortex seemed to throw itself into reverse, and he drew back. ‘The patient’s probably dead by now.’ He gave a regretful twist of his mouth, and Sophie’s heart lurched.

‘No one ever dies in a film unless the script says so. We’ll perform a medical miracle.’

‘Be my guest.’ He sat back onto his heels, waiting for her to make the next move.

Suddenly she felt strong. She knew exactly what to do next. ‘Thirty compressions and two breaths?’

‘That’s right.’

‘But I have a second qualified person available.’ She took the risk of testing her recall a little further.

‘In which case?’

‘One delivers compressions and the other rescue breaths. We switch every two minutes or so to avoid getting tired.’

He grinned. ‘So we’ll take it from the top, then?’

Sophie took a breath. Yes. It all came to her, like a well-understood routine. She checked for a response again, coming to the same conclusion as she had before. He helped her position the dummy, and she tilted its head back, ready to deliver rescue breaths.

‘You start with the compressions.’

He nodded, doing as she’d told him, counting aloud when he got to twenty-five. She gave the rescue breaths right on cue, and he nodded his approval, starting the compressions again straight away.

‘Do you want to try a switch?’ He was concentrating on what he was doing and didn’t look up at her.

‘Sure. On your signal.’

The switch was perfect. Almost without thinking, Sophie fell into the lifesaving rhythm, picking up the compressions where he’d left off, using her body weight to help give her the amount of pressure that the doctor had applied. They carried on for five repeats and then switched back again.

‘Perfect.’ He finally sat back on his heels.

‘Not so bad for an airhead, you mean?’ She gave a half-smile to indicate that he could take that as a joke, if he chose.

‘You said it…’

And Sophie knew beyond a doubt that he’d thought it. He hadn’t been able to disguise the surprise in his eyes when she’d shown she really did know how to perform CPR.

‘My father’s a doctor. He taught us all what to do in emergency situations. I’ve never had to do it for real…’ She couldn’t keep the trace of bitterness from her tone. Her father had always assumed she’d become a doctor, and instead she’d taken up a profession that had no value in his eyes. His only response to the news that she was making this film had been a back-handed compliment, saying he was glad she was at least pretending to do something useful.

‘Well remembered, then.’

He smiled, and pleasure trickled across the dull pain of rejection. Sophie wondered whether he’d adjust his opinion if he knew that she was still searching her mind for his first name. Dr Taylor seemed a little formal, since they’d just saved the life of a props dummy together.

‘As you already have a good idea of how to resuscitate someone, you understand the theory behind it all.’

‘Yes.’ Sophie nodded. When he put it that way, she supposed that she did.

‘Which will stand you in really good stead for this.’ He got to his feet, producing a copy of the medical techniques document. She’d studied her copy for hours, hoping that she might retain at least some of it. ‘I guess you haven’t had much of a chance to look at it.’

‘No. Not really.’ He was giving her a way out, and Sophie took it gratefully.

He grinned. ‘I guess that’s my job. It gives a detailed description of how resuscitation was carried out in the nineteen-forties—which is a little different from the way we do it now.’

‘They did chest compressions but no rescue breaths.’ A fragment of fact suddenly popped into her mind.

He nodded. ‘Yes, I’ve managed to find a couple of old training films on the internet. But it may be easier to just try it ourselves.’ He knelt down next to her. ‘Do you want to start with the compressions?’

‘Okay.’ Sophie could do that. She already knew how to do compressions. This morning was going a lot better than she’d expected it to. No tantrums needed to cover her lapses in memory, and the doctor seemed to be going out of his way not to spring anything unexpected on her.

‘Right, then.’ He flashed her a grin. ‘Here we go…’

The morning’s work had been a success. Starting with what Sophie knew and then using gesture and movement to reinforce the new information seemed to have worked. The atmosphere on set lightened considerably as she sailed through her scene that afternoon, even managing to bestow a few smiles on her co-star and the crew.

Joel, the director, spared a nod of satisfaction for Drew, clearly pleased with his tutelage. Carly gave him a beaming smile when she thought no one else was looking, and Sophie ignored him completely.

Even though she clearly didn’t want to think about him unless she absolutely had to, Sophie dominated Drew’s thoughts. He watched her carefully, and as dispassionately as he could. And the more he watched her, the more he realised that he knew what was wrong, and that she was trying desperately to cover it up.