Читать книгу The Best Of The Year - Medical Romance - Carol Marinelli, Amalie Berlin - Страница 38

BY THE TIME I got home I’d cooled down, although that might have had something to do with the weather. The snow was falling in earnest and I’d heard on the news they were expecting more overnight. I didn’t fancy a long, lonely night alone and I didn’t have the enthusiasm for a session of painting and decorating. I looked around the half-painted walls and the threadbare carpets, the tired kitchen with its out-of-date appliances.

My house suddenly looked a bit like my life. A mess.

I was considering what to do about food, not that I had much appetite, when the doorbell rang. I peered through the peephole, toying with the idea of pretending not to be home if it was Margery. It wasn’t.

I opened the door and Matt stood there, with snow falling all around him. There was even some clinging to the ends of his eyelashes. He was carrying a bag with takeaway food containers in it and a bottle of wine in a brown paper bag. ‘Have we just had our first fight?’ he said.

I felt every last residue of anger melt away. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘No apology necessary.’ He held up his peace offering. ‘I took a gamble on food. Curry all right?’

‘Perfect for a cold winter’s night.’ I ushered him through to the kitchen. ‘I’m sorry the place is a bit of a mess.’

‘Was your ex a home handyman?’

I gave him a cynical look. ‘Are you joking?’

He frowned. ‘You’re doing it yourself?’

‘I’m trying to … but as you can see it’s not going according to plan.’ Was it my imagination or did the paint job I’d done the other night look patchy? There was a drip of paint on the skirting board I hadn’t noticed before.

‘It’s a big job for one person.’

‘Yes, well, it was supposed to be two people doing it but you know how that turned out.’

He took the wine out of the paper bag. ‘You want some help with it?’

I wasn’t sure what he was suggesting. But as olive branches went it was a good one—even better than the curry and the wine. ‘Don’t tell me you’re handy with a paintbrush, otherwise I mightn’t let you leave.’

He gave a sudden grin. ‘I did up my place in Notting Hill before I went to the US. I enjoyed it. It was a change from work, where stuff can’t always be fixed.’

I knew exactly what he meant. Sometimes the hopelessness of some patients’ situations ate away at me. ‘I spent some time with Jason’s wife today,’ I said, as I handed Matt a couple of wine glasses.

‘How’s she doing?’

‘I think she’s struggling a bit, as anyone would in her situation.’ I took the glass of wine he had poured for me.

He looked at me across the Formica kitchen table that separated us. ‘You’re doing a good job. I can see how the things you’ve set up help. The little touches that make people feel less alienated by the environment.’ He waited a beat and then continued, ‘I had a brother two years older than me. He died when I was fifteen.’

‘I know,’ I said. ‘Jill told me. She said her sister-in-law is your mother’s school friend or something.’

He gave me a quirk of a smile. ‘What used to be six degrees of separation is now two with social media.’

I rolled my eyes. ‘Tell me about it.’

There was a little silence. I didn’t feel so uncomfortable with them now. But after a moment I asked, ‘What was it like for you and your parents when Tim was in ICU?’

He looked at the contents of his glass, swirling it as if searching for the memories in the dark cherry-coloured pool. ‘Awful. No one told us anything. It was different back then. Doctors didn’t always communicate that well with relatives. They only told us what they thought we needed to know. It wasn’t enough. My parents thought Tim was going to make it right up until the day he died of pneumonia. It made the grief so much harder for them to cope with. I felt that if only we’d been told from the outset that things were pretty hopeless the grief would have been dealt with earlier. Instead, it’s dragged on for years.’

‘Grief doesn’t have a use-by date.’

‘No, I know. But it might’ve helped my parents prepare themselves a little better.’ He put his glass down.

‘Did you think Tim was going to make it?’

His eyes met mine. ‘I hoped he would. I couldn’t imagine my life without him. We were close. I looked up to him. He was my role model, the one I turned to for advice or help with homework or whatever. My father was hopeless at that sort of thing. The bottom dropped out of my world when I walked out of the hospital that day. I swore I would do everything I could to make sure other people didn’t have to go through that the way we did.’

‘So you became an intensive care specialist with a reputation for telling it as it is.’

He gave me a rueful smile. ‘That pretty much sums it up.’

I came over to him and touched his shadowed jaw. He hadn’t shaved and the stubble caught on the skin of my palm, making something inside my belly shift like a foot slipping on a sheet of black ice. ‘Thanks for telling me about Tim. It helps to understand you better.’

He brushed a tendril of hair away from my face. ‘I haven’t spoken of him in years. It’s a no-go area at home. My father goes off his head if Tim’s name is mentioned. In his mind the wrong son died.’

‘Oh, no, that’s terrible,’ I said. ‘Did he actually say that?’

‘Only when he’s had one too many drinks.’

‘Is he an alcoholic?’

‘He wouldn’t say so, but I have my suspicion he sneaks a few empty bottles into the recycling bin without my mother knowing. Or maybe she does know but keeps quiet because it’s not worth the effort of standing up to him or the risk of losing her social standing or both.’ His mouth was set back in a grim line. ‘God, I hate talking about my family. We’re not a family any more. Not since Tim died. We’re just three people who happen to be related.’

I reached up and smoothed the taut muscles surrounding his tight mouth. ‘I’m sorry things have been so tough for you. But look at what you do for others. The way you work so hard, so tirelessly to save lives. So what if you don’t have a perfect family? Just wait till you meet mine.’

He smiled and I practically melted on the spot. I watched as his eyes darkened as they went to my mouth, the ink-dark pools of his pupils flaring as he brought his mouth down to mine. His hands buried themselves in my hair, his fingertips sliding along my scalp as he plundered my mouth with feverish intensity. His tongue played with mine, darting and diving and seducing it in a dance that made every cell in my body shudder in delight.

My arms went around his neck, my body pressed so tightly against him I could feel the buttons on his jacket digging into me. I began to undo them, roughly, urgently, impatient to get my hands on him. He shrugged off his jacket and tugged up his jumper and shirt, and I slid my hands along the flat plane of his chest and abdomen. He hauled the garments over his head and they fell to the floor. He set to work on my clothes: my jumper went first, followed by my top and bra. His hands were cold at first on my breasts but they soon warmed as I pressed into his caress.

I tugged at the belt on his trousers, sliding it out of the lugs and letting it slither to the floor. I unzipped him and freed him from his underwear, holding and stroking him as his mouth continued to subject mine to a sensual onslaught that made every hair on my head shiver at the roots.

This was the sort of passion I had been missing in my relationship with Andy. The firestorm of lust and longing that was totally consuming. Before I knew it, Matt had lifted me onto the kitchen counter, parting my thighs so he could come between them. Somehow he’d sourced a condom and got it on before he entered me with a fast, thick thrust that made me whoosh out a breathless gasp.

‘You okay?’

Okay? I was in heaven. ‘You feel so good,’ I said against his mouth, as he came back to kiss me.

He began to move inside me, taking me with him on a roller-coaster ride of passion. Every thrust brought me closer and closer to that final moment of oblivion. It was just frustratingly out of my reach, but then he slid his hands underneath my bottom, lifting my hips just enough to intensify the friction. I came in a cataclysmic storm of sensations that showered and shook and shuddered through me in turn. I felt his own orgasm as it powered through him, the deep quaking of his body and the sharply cut-off groan as he spilled, making my own body respond with another shudder of delight.

He let out a deep, satisfied sigh and leaned his forehead on mine. ‘Our dinner is probably cold by now.’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘It’s pretty hot in this kitchen.’

He smiled against my lips. ‘Damn right it is.’

I was walking down my street on my way to work the next morning when I ran into Margery, who was taking Freddy out for a walk. She gave me a look that was colder than the snow that had settled overnight. ‘A fine way to behave, I must say,’ she said. ‘And here I was thinking you were a nice old-fashioned girl. Seems I was wrong.’

‘Pardon?’

Her eyes narrowed. ‘I saw him.’

My heart gave a little lurch. ‘Him?’

‘The man who left your house in the early hours of the morning,’ she said. ‘It wasn’t your husband. He wasn’t blond and he was much taller.’

I pressed my lips together. How was I going to get out of this? If I told Margery, it would be all over the neighbourhood within minutes. I would have people coming to gawk at me as I walked past their houses. I would be a pariah. I know it’s the twenty-first century and all that but people can still be really judgemental about other people’s lives.

‘Marriage isn’t easy, Bertie, take it from me,’ she said. ‘I was married to my Ralph for thirty-eight years. The first couple of years are always the worst. But what you’re doing is plain wrong. What would your patients think if they were to know you were taking men in while your husband is away working in New York?’

I let out a breath that came out in a misty fog. ‘The man in question is a friend. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to get to work.’

Gracie was in the change room when I came in. ‘I can’t do this any more,’ she said. ‘It’s killing me. I’m so stilted with everyone. I have to keep watching what I say. Everyone thinks I’m cross with them or something.’

‘I can’t,’ I said. ‘Can’t you see that? It would be social suicide.’

‘Don’t you mean you won’t?’ Gracie’s look was accusing. ‘This isn’t just about you, you know. It’s about other people now. Me. Matt Bishop. Your friends and colleagues. The longer you keep this up the more hurt you’re going to cause.’

I shoved my things in the locker and closed the door. ‘I’m working on it, okay?’

‘Then work on it a little faster, will you?’ Gracie said, and stormed out.

Jill swivelled around from the computer when I came into the central office. ‘Can I have a quick word?’

‘Sure.’ I tried not to look at my postcard on the noticeboard. I was waiting for the opportunity to come in when no one was around and take it down.

‘What’s going on between you and Gracie?’

I felt my cheeks flare with heat. ‘Nothing. Why?’

She leaned forward and gave me a beady look. ‘Sure?’

I controlled every micro-expression on my face. ‘Why are you asking?’

‘I thought you must have had a squabble or something,’ Jill said. ‘She’s asked for her shifts to be changed so she’s not on when you’re on. Have you got an issue?’

‘No, of course not.’ I hated myself at that point. Truly hated myself. Gracie might be a relatively new friend but she was loyal and caring. I had dragged her into a nightmare of my own making and now she was doing everything she could to avoid me. It was an uncomfortable reminder of my childhood, where I would be standing alone on one side of the playground while the more popular girls were on the other. I wanted Gracie back on my side but I couldn’t do what she asked. I just couldn’t.

Jill was still watching me with a contemplative look. ‘It wouldn’t have anything to do with Matt Bishop, would it?’

I assembled my features into an expression of shocked affront. ‘What on earth do you mean?’

‘You two have a certain chemistry. Everyone’s commenting on it.’

‘So?’ I said. ‘I get on with most people. You do too. It doesn’t mean anything illicit is happening.’

‘You don’t seem happy for someone who’s just got married,’ Jill said. ‘You seem … preoccupied. Is everything all right between you and your husband?’

I clenched my hands instead of my teeth because that would be less audible. ‘What is this? Why is everyone so fascinated with my private life?’

Jill tapped her fingertips on her knees. ‘Bertie, this gossip that’s going around is not doing Matt any favours with the management team. The CEO is talking about terminating his contract.’

I frowned. ‘On what grounds? His private life is no one’s business!’

She gave me a worldly look. ‘You know how conservative the hospital management team is. They’re concerned about the image of the hospital.’

‘They should be concerned about the welfare of the patients and less with the private lives of their staff,’ I threw back.

‘I’m just saying—’

‘Haven’t people got better things to do than gossip?’ I said.

Jill let out a sigh and turned back to the computer.

I stared at her back for a moment. I trusted Gracie but I didn’t know Jill well enough to share my secret with her. I hated it that she thought I was a cheating wife but what else could I do? If I told her, I’d have to tell everyone. I wasn’t prepared to do that. I had a plan. I was going to activate it. There was a way around this. I would resign and find another placement. Problem solved.

‘I’m sorry, Jill, it’s just things are a little difficult for me right now. I’m finding it hard to settle back in after being on my … on leave.’

She tapped a few keys before turning around again. ‘Marriage is hard work. Just be careful, okay?’

I didn’t see Matt at work because I did everything in my power to avoid being seen by him or with him. Thankfully I had other duties that kept me out of ICU for most of the day. I finally left for home after some overtime in Theatre when Stuart’s list got blown out with a complication. I was walking out of the hospital when I saw Matt’s tall figure coming towards me. He must have been waiting for me to come through the front exit. I pretended not to notice him and kept my head down.

‘Bertie?’

‘Don’t draw attention to us,’ I said, out of the side of my mouth.

‘I thought I’d walk you home.’

‘Please, don’t,’ I said, huddling further into my coat.

‘We need to talk.’

‘Not here. There are CCTV cameras everywhere.’ I sounded completely paranoid. But, then, I was. Completely and utterly paranoid. Were the curtains twitching on every floor as staff and patients looked down at us or was I just imagining it?

Matt took me by the arm and turned me to face him. ‘Listen to me.’

I was overwrought with the stress of it all. Gracie, Jill, the thought of Matt losing his job over my stupidity. I looked into his eyes and saw what he was going to say before he said it. And there I’d been, thinking my mum was the only one who could read minds. ‘I know what you’re going to say.’

‘Bertie, you have to choose.’

‘Choose what?’ I pretended I didn’t know what he meant. But really I was just delaying the pain. I couldn’t have him and my secret. I had to make a choice.

His expression was gravely serious. ‘If we’re going to go somewhere with this relationship then you have to tell everyone the truth.’

‘I thought you said you weren’t interested in a relationship. You said you had other priorities.’

His eyes were implacable as they held mine. ‘I’m not going to lose my job because you’re too immature to face up to what you should’ve faced before Christmas.’ I glared at him. ‘That’s rich, coming from you! You took a whole year to get over what’s-her-name.’

His jaw tightened like a clamp. ‘We’re not talking about me. We’re talking about you.’

‘I’m going to put in my resignation,’ I said. ‘I’ll move to another hospital where no one knows about Andy. You and I can still see each other and no one will ever—’

‘Will you listen to yourself?’ he said, his eyes dark and glittering with disdain. ‘What are you, fourteen?’

I stiffened my spine. ‘Fine. I’ll accept your ultimatum.’

He shook his head at me. ‘Don’t do this, sweetheart.’

I put up my chin. ‘I’m not throwing my professional reputation away for a fling. I’m fine with it ending. I never wanted it in the first place.’

‘You’ve made lying into an art form,’ he said, with a cutting edge to his voice. ‘But when you get home and start lying to the person you’re looking at in the mirror, you’ll know you’re really in trouble.’

I was in trouble from the moment I laid eyes on him, but now was hardly the time to tell him. I was trying to salvage what was left of my pride. ‘It’s over, Matt. It was fun—or at least it was for you—while it lasted.’

‘I didn’t sleep with you to make fun of you,’ he said. ‘I slept with you because I …’ He stopped and shoved a hand through his hair.

I raised a cynically arched eyebrow. ‘Because you …?’

He dropped his hand. His mask was back in place. For a moment there I’d thought I’d seen a glimmer of pain in his gaze but it was well and truly gone now. I figured I’d probably imagined it. ‘Never mind.’

‘I have one question,’ I said. ‘Why did you ask me to take over the planning of the ball?’

He let out a long breath. ‘I thought it would help you get over your break-up. I thought it would give you something to distract you. But if you don’t want to follow through with it, I’ll find someone else.’

‘I’m sure it won’t take you too long to find a replacement,’ I shot back.

He gave me another I’m-over-this look and turned away and walked back through the front doors of the hospital.

I typed up my resignation that night and printed it out and signed it with a flourish. I looked at it for a long time before I folded it and slid it into an envelope. I left it lying on the desk—I don’t have any helpful housekeeping staff so there was no prospect of it being posted until I was ready to do so myself.

Jason’s parents asked to speak to me when I got to ICU the next day. They were waiting in my relatives’ room but I hadn’t had time to turn on the essential oil infuser as I’d been caught up on the ward. Ken Ryder was holding his wife, Maggie’s, hand. Megan was still by Jason’s bedside. I’d caught a glimpse of her on my way past, crying as she held one of his hands.

‘We want the truth,’ Ken said. ‘Mr McTaggart is saying one thing. Dr Bishop is saying another. We want your opinion. What’s our son’s prognosis?’

I looked at their haggard faces, their drawn and tired features. The shadows, in and under their eyes, and the lines on their faces that had seemed to deepen like trenches by the end of each long, heartbreaking day. I took a deep breath, feeling as if I was stepping out of a part of my personality like someone taking off a warm, thick coat. I felt exposed and vulnerable without it but I could no longer hide beneath its comforting folds. ‘There’s a very real possibility Jason will never recover.’

Saying the words felt like speaking a different language, one without hope as part of its vocabulary. I watched as Jason’s parents took them in. It wasn’t the first time they’d heard them but hearing it from me—the one person who had offered them hope and positive thinking from the get-go—was clearly devastating.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said, blinking back tears. I never cried at work. I was always so self-contained but I could no longer keep that professional distance. In that small, private room I became Bertie instead of Dr Clark. I hugged Jason’s parents and offered what comfort I could but it wasn’t enough. It could never be enough because I could not—no matter how hard I tried—bring back their boy.

Jem had a student-free day that coincided with my next day off so she met me in Knightsbridge for lunch in one of our favourite haunts. ‘So, what gives?’ she said, when she noticed I wasn’t eating my steak with any of my usual gusto.

I stabbed a French fry but didn’t bring it up to my mouth. ‘Don’t want to talk about it.’

Jem reached over and pinched one of my fries. She had already finished all hers. She has this amazing ability to eat loads of food without putting on an ounce. I should hate her for it. ‘You’re in love with him.’

I pulled back my chin against my chest. ‘With Andy?’

‘No, you goose,’ she said. ‘With this Matt guy.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous. I’ve only known him, what, three and a half weeks? That’s not long enough to fall in love.’

‘Don’t bet on it.’

I raised my brows. ‘The Sicilian guy?’

Jem got that stony, closed-off look on her face. ‘We’re not talking about me. We’re talking about you.’

Why are all the people in my life saying the same thing? I wondered. ‘Everyone is talking about me. Or at least they will be when my resignation hits the HR department tomorrow.’

Jem frowned. ‘You’re resigning?’

‘What else can I do?’

She gave me one of her big-sister, older-and-wiser looks. ‘What about your project?’

‘I’ve got enough data to go on with and once I get a new placement I’ll set it up again.’ Even as I said it I realised how difficult it would be. I had developed a high level of trust at St Iggy’s, which was why Jeffrey Hooper had allowed me to be so innovative. I might not find the same enthusiasm in another hospital.

Jem filched another fry. ‘What about the St Valentine’s ball? Aren’t you the one organising that?’

I felt a twinge of guilt at how I’d walked away from my responsibilities. I’d heard Matt had found someone to take over—a nurse from the cardiac unit. I wondered with another pang if he was seeing her outside work. ‘I was but it’s been handed to someone else. I can do without the stress on top of everything else. Anyway, I haven’t got a costume.’

‘You could always go as yourself.’

I gave her a droll look. ‘Ha, ha.’

‘What about your neighbours?’ Jem wiped her fingers on her napkin. ‘You’re not thinking of moving too, are you?’

I was ashamed to admit I was. I was even thinking about emigrating. No one would be able to gossip about me then. Siberia should just about do it, I thought. ‘None of them are talking to me. Clearly Margery’s been busy.’

Jem leaned across the table and patted my hand. ‘Never mind. At least she won’t be asking you to mind her horrible little dog any more.’

‘Like she should throw the first stone,’ I said. ‘Her Freddy humps anything that’s—’ I stopped speaking when I saw the colour leave Jem’s face. She was looking at the entrance of the restaurant, her eyes widening with horror. ‘What’s wrong?’ I said.

She grabbed the bill the waitress had left moments earlier and thrust it at me. ‘Do you mind getting this? I’ll meet you in Harrods at the chocolate counter.’

‘But—’

I frowned as I watched her slip out the back way through the kitchen. Then I turned and looked at the tall, stunningly handsome Italian man walking in with a beautiful blonde woman by his side.

It seemed I wasn’t the only coward in the family after all.