Читать книгу The Best Of The Year - Medical Romance - Carol Marinelli, Amalie Berlin - Страница 34

AFTER ANOTHER WEEK I was completely over doing night shifts. My circadian rhythms were so out of whack I was practically brain dead. My eyes were so darkly shadowed I looked like I’d walked off the set of a zombie movie. I had a couple of days off, which I spent painting my sitting room, something I’d had to put on hold while I’d had Freddy staying. Margery was back from her sister’s now so I could stop worrying about muddy paws and mad yapping, not to mention obsessive chewing.

I’d given Freddy a big marrowbone to chew instead of my shoes and electronic appliance cords, but he’d buried it in the back garden and then brought it in covered in mud and slush and left it on my pillow. Nice.

The time off had also given me some space to work on the hospital ball. I’d gone back to the hotel and talked to the catering manager and I’d ordered the decorations and got posters printed and had them hung around the hospital. The ticket sales had been slow until I had taken over, which was rather gratifying. It seemed everyone was delighted with the idea of a fancy-dress ball and were madly ordering costumes online or in stores.

When I got back to work after my days off I was pleased to hear Jason Ryder had been gradually weaned off the sedation, but while his brain pressures hadn’t soared and he was breathing on his own, he was still not responding to verbal commands. I encouraged his family to continue with the therapies I’d suggested and hoped they would see some improvement over the next week or so.

The EEG had encouragingly shown brain activity. There was something going on in Jason’s head, but it wasn’t getting out, a possible case of ‘locked-in syndrome’. But what was locked in was still an unknown. Just how much loss of brain function had resulted from the surgery was anyone’s guess at this stage.

Matt Bishop was alone in the central ICU office when I came in from checking on Jason. All the nurses, including Gracie, were occupied with patients. Jill was on an errand to another ward and the registrars were with one of the other consultants with a patient in Bay Five.

‘Good news so far on Jason,’ I said, by way of greeting. I was going to stick to my plan of keeping things professional and distant.

Matt was less optimistic. ‘He’s not responding to any stimuli.’

‘Not yet,’ I said. ‘But his CT shows reasonable blood flow in most of the brain, and his EEG shows activity.’

He put the file he was holding down on the counter desk and momentarily leaned forward and rested his hands on top of it. There was a deep frown line between his eyes, his olive-toned skin looked even paler than usual and he had a pinched looked about his features.

If a zombie movie director had been looking for walk-on extras, I thought Matt and I would make a great pair.

‘Are you okay?’ I asked.

He drew in a breath and straightened, rubbing a hand over the back of his neck. ‘Fine.’

‘You don’t look fine.’

‘Thanks.’

I peered at him up close. ‘Your eyes are bloodshot. Have you been on the turps?’

He gave me a look. ‘No. I was up all night. And, no, I wasn’t on night shift.’

‘At least on night shift you get paid to feel like crap.’

He managed a quarter-smile and then it faded as he dragged his hand down his face this time, wincing as if the movement caused him pain. ‘You have no idea of the mess this place is in. Jeff Hooper might win a popularity contest over me any day but he had no idea how to balance a budget. We’re four months from the end of the financial year and the budget is blown. The CEO says there is no more money. How the hell can we pay staff and provide a service with an empty bank account? I’ve been told to come up with a solution.’

I stepped back and folded my arms across my chest before I was tempted to smooth that canyon-deep furrow off his brow. ‘Is there anything I can do?’

He looked at me then. Really looked at me. His eyes went to mine, holding them in a lock that contained the sensual heat of everything we had experienced together in private—the kisses, the touches, the mutual arousal of primal desire. It went back and forth between our gazes like a fizzing current of electricity. I swear it was almost audible.

Lust unfolded deep inside my body like a lithe cat stretching its limbs. I could feel my body heating and beating with want, the little tingle of nerves, the flutter of my belly, the rush of my blood and the pounding of my heartbeat.

His gaze went to my mouth, stayed there for a pulsing moment, as if he was wondering if he could steal a kiss and get away with it. The thought thrilled me. The illicitness of it spoke to the wild woman in me I tried so desperately to keep contained.

I found myself stepping up on tippy-toes, leaning towards him, my mouth slightly parted in anticipation of the press of my lips to his.

‘Oh, um, er, sorry,’ Gracie said from the door.

I sprang back from Matt as if someone had fired a cannonball between us. Gracie was looking at me as if she had never seen me before. But then her eyes took on a wounded look, her pretty freckled face drooping in disappointment.

‘It’s not what you think—’

‘I don’t want to hear about it,’ Gracie said crisply.

Matt straightened his tie, cleared his throat and moved past us both. ‘I have patients to see,’ he said, and left.

I closed my eyes for a second. My life was such a farce.

‘Bertie, how could you?’ Gracie said in a shocked voice.

‘Nothing happened,’ I said. ‘We were just … talking.’

‘I saw you lean towards him,’ she said. ‘What’s wrong with you? You’ve just come back from your honeymoon, for God’s sake. I never would’ve taken you for a player.’

‘Who’s being a player?’ Jill asked, as she came breezing in with a stack of paperwork. She looked between Gracie and me and raised her artfully pencilled brows. ‘You’re not talking about Matt Bishop, are you? The man’s entitled to have a private life, you know. Mind you, I’d give my back teeth to know whom he’s seeing. No one seems to know but I’m sure it’s someone from the hospital.’

I mentally rolled my eyes. Could this get any more ridiculously entangled?

‘I believe he has a thing for married women,’ Gracie said, shooting me a hard look.

Jill gave a disbelieving cough of laughter as she rolled back her chair to sit down. ‘Can’t see him following in his old man’s footsteps.’

‘What do you know about his father?’ I asked.

Jill swivelled her chair to face me. ‘Richard Bishop’s a well-known womaniser, the younger the better, apparently. His wife Alexis turns a blind eye, has been doing so ever since their other son died.’

My insides lurched. ‘What other son?’

‘Matt’s brother.’

I could feel my eyes popping. ‘He has … had a brother?’

Jill gave me an odd look. ‘Lots of people have siblings, Bertie.’

I brushed her comment aside with an impatient wave of my hand. ‘I know that, it’s just he told me he was an only child.’

‘Well, he is now,’ Jill said flatly. ‘Tim died when Matt was fifteen. Tim was two years older. He had a rock-climbing accident. He was in a coma for over a year before they finally turned off the ventilator.’

‘How did you find out all this?’ I asked.

‘My sister-in-law went to school with Alexis,’ Jill said. ‘They’d lost touch over the years but recently reconnected on Facebook. I mentioned we had a new boss and when my sister-in-law heard Matt’s name she gave me the background.’

Gracie was still eyeing me as if I were Jezebel incarnate but I was beyond caring about that right now. I was still trying to get my head around Matt’s tragic background. The loss of his older brother, the long stint in ICU before Tim was finally allowed to die. Was that why Matt was so adamant patients’ relatives should be told the truth straight up? Had his parents clung to hope for months and months on end because they hadn’t been told—or hadn’t taken in—the reality of their eldest son’s irretrievable condition?

Gracie muttered something about changing a patient’s IV fluids and left.

‘So, who do you think Matt’s seeing?’ Jill asked.

‘I hardly see how it’s anyone’s business.’

She let out a little sigh. ‘You’re right. Hospital gossip is like a virulent virus. Once it starts you can’t stop it.’

Tell me about it , I thought.

Jill looked up at me again. ‘Speaking of which, I heard in the tearoom there’s a twenty-four-hour bug doing the rounds. They’re isolating the cardiac ward. I reckon we might be next. Don’t come into work if you get it.’

Right then I wished I never had to come to work ever again.

Gracie was in the change room when I went in to get my things before leaving for the day. She was getting her bag out of the locker and turned as I came in. ‘Well, I’ll say one thing. As new brides go, you have far more reason than most to blush.’ She slammed the locker door. ‘And here I was thinking you were different. More fool me.’

‘Gracie—’

‘I suppose that’s why you didn’t want to show me the wedding photos,’ she went on. ‘You didn’t want to be reminded you were married while you’re sleeping with another man.’

‘I’m not sleeping with—’

‘Do you know what it feels like to be cheated on? Do you?’ Her eyes watered and her voice shook. ‘It’s the worst feeling in the world.’

I knew all right. I took a deep breath. ‘I didn’t show you the photos because there aren’t any.’

Her forehead puckered. ‘What do you mean? Did they get deleted or something? That happened to a friend of mine. The photographer accidentally deleted them. If it hadn’t been for other people’s phone cameras, there would’ve been no photos at all.’

‘They weren’t deleted,’ I said. ‘They weren’t taken in the first place.’

Her eyes were as round as the top of the linen bin next to the washbasin. ‘Why not?’

My shoulders went down on a sigh. ‘The wedding was called off. Andy was having an affair. I found out the night before the ceremony. It’d been going on for months.’

‘Oh, my God!’ Gracie clasped her hands over her mouth.

‘I walked in on him with one of my bridesmaids’ sister,’ I said. ‘It was … Anyway, there wasn’t a wedding.’

She dropped her hands and asked, ‘But why didn’t you say something? You sent a postcard saying what a wonderful time you were having. Why have you let everyone assume—’

‘Because I’m stupid, that’s why.’ I sat down on one of the bench seats and looked at my feet. I was wearing my piglet socks. There was a hole in one of the toes from Freddy chewing them. I should have darned them but I hadn’t found the time.

‘But surely you could’ve told me?’ Gracie sounded so hurt I could barely bring myself to look at her. ‘I know we’ve only known each other a few months but I thought we were mates. I told you all my stuff. And yet you didn’t say a word. What sort of friendship is that?’

‘I know. You’re right. But I was too embarrassed,’ I said. ‘I didn’t want everyone to feel sorry for me. To pity me. Poor old Bertie, dumped the night before her big day. The day she’s been planning ever since she was five years old.’

Gracie’s eyes were almost popping now. ‘He dumped you?’

‘Yeah.’ I let out another despondent sigh. ‘That’s the most embarrassing thing. If he hadn’t pulled the plug I probably would’ve gone through with it to keep up appearances. Sick, huh?’

Gracie took one of my cold hands in hers and clasped it warmly. ‘It’s not sick. It’s completely understandable. All that money, all those guests, all that food and—’

‘God, don’t remind me,’ I groaned. ‘Lucky it wasn’t a huge wedding. We travelled around so much as kids I don’t have a lot of friends.’

‘You have more than you realise, Bertie,’ she said, giving my hand another squeeze.

I looked into her china-blue eyes and somehow managed a vestige of a smile. ‘Thanks.’

Gracie chewed her lip for a moment. ‘Sorry about what I said back in the office. But don’t you think you should let people know? I mean, what about that thing I saw between you and—’

‘You didn’t see anything.’ I stood and wrapped my arms around my body as if the temperature had dropped twenty degrees. ‘I was the one at fault. He was just standing there. I don’t know what came over me.’

‘So you’re not involved with him?’

‘How can I be even if I wanted to?’ I asked. ‘He thinks I’m married.’

‘Then you should tell him and everyone else you’re not.’

I swung back to face her again. ‘No. I can’t. What will everyone think? You have to keep it a secret. Please, Gracie, don’t tell anyone. Promise me?’

She gave me a worried look. ‘I’m hopeless at keeping secrets. I always leak stuff. I can’t help it. It comes spilling out.’

‘You have to promise me, Gracie.’ I was almost to the point of begging. It was pathetic. I was even thinking of offering her money. ‘You can’t tell anyone. No one must know. No one. Do you hear me? No one.’

‘But—’

‘No one will be interested in my private life in a month or two,’ I said. ‘You know how it is with everyone here. We’re all so busy we hardly have time to chat about what’s going on in our home lives. After a couple of months I’ll tell everyone I’m separated or had the marriage annulled or something.’

Gracie chomped on her lower lip again, her expression doubtful. ‘But what if you want to date someone else? Dr Bishop, for instance.’

I tried to laugh it off but I didn’t sound convincing even to my ears. ‘He’s not interested in me. Not in the long term anyway. I’m too out there for him.’

‘I’ve seen the way he looks at you,’ Gracie said. ‘And he was the one who organised for Jason Ryder to be transferred to your room that first day. It was a heck of a job moving the ventilator but he insisted it be done. Not only that, if anyone dares to make fun of your project he cuts them off quick smart.’

Something in my chest spilled like a cup of warm treacle. It was the thing I found most attractive about Matt. Although he had reservations about my project, he still managed to keep an open mind. That, and the fact he stood up for me. How could I not find that the most appealing trait? For as long as I can remember I had dreamed of a knight in shining armour. The sort of man who would protect me, shelter me and support me in everything I attempted to do. Someone who believed in me, in my potential, who helped me reach it without hindering it with their own self-serving interests.

But wasn’t I dreaming an impossible dream? I was twenty-seven years old. I’d already wasted a chunk of my life on a man who wasn’t right for me. Could I risk squandering another period of my life with a man who had offered me nothing but a behind-closed-doors … what? A fling? He hadn’t exactly been specific about the terms. ‘We’d make an interesting pair,’ sounded more like an experiment than a relationship. Was that how he saw me? As a test sample?

What if I failed?

I’d had a full day in Theatre the following day so didn’t get to ICU until we had to transfer the last patient. None of the other cases needed high dependency care so they went straight to Recovery. Once I was finished with the transfer I went to Matt’s office. The door was closed and I gave it a tentative knock. There was no response so I knocked louder.

‘He’s gone home.’

I jumped about a foot when Jill Carter spoke from behind me. ‘Oh.’

‘He left a couple of hours ago,’ she said. ‘He was in most of the night with Rosanne Finch, the leukaemia patient. I told him to go home. I told him he looked worse than some of our patients.’

I frowned. ‘Is he unwell?’

‘He wouldn’t admit it but I reckon he’s got the bug. Gives you a blinding headache and a fever for twenty-four hours, give or take nausea and vomiting.’

‘Sounds like a heap of fun.’

Jill smiled wryly. ‘At least our husbands have us to wait on them hand on foot. What’s yours like as a patient? If he’s anything like mine, you’d rather be at work.’

‘That just about sums it up,’ I said.