Читать книгу His Unexpected Child - Josie Metcalfe - Страница 8

‘HELLO…Ah, g-good morning, sir,’ Leah ended up stammering, suddenly unaccountably uncertain as to what she should call her new boss.

Working together in Theatre in such fraught conditions had definitely given her a feeling of connection with him, but perhaps he preferred a little more formality from the more junior members of his…

‘Sir?’ he queried with a blink, then ostentatiously looked over his shoulder as if looking for someone else she might be addressing.

Leah couldn’t help the brief giggle that escaped her. It was probably the result of the nerves that had built up while she was trying not to look as if she was hovering around in the corridor, waiting for him to arrive. She’d even unlocked the door in preparation for his arrival, in case he hadn’t been given his own set of keys yet.

Then he’d swept open the door at the other end of the corridor and begun striding towards her, all long lean legs and broad shoulders, and all her rational thought processes had ceased.

‘That’s better,’ he said with an answering smile as he reached for the door handle. ‘Obviously, there has to be a degree of formality when there are patients present, but at all other times you’re free to call me…God! What on earth happened here?’

He took a step back to look at the name-plate on the door, as though doubting that he’d come to the right room, but even that had been changed after she’d chased Maintenance to install his name in place of Donald’s—just one of the last-minute things she’d done while he’d been occupied writing up the post-op notes.

His reaction was everything she could have hoped for, but it was his slip of the tongue that actually made her laugh aloud. It was a struggle to speak for several seconds.

‘So, let me get this right,’ she said, smiling in the face of his frown of puzzlement. ‘You don’t want formality but I’m free to call you…God?’ she teased.

He was walking warily towards the miraculously clear desk.

‘You know I didn’t mean that,’ he objected distractedly as he turned in a circle. ‘When did all this happen and who did it?’ he demanded, then she saw panic take over from approval. ‘What happened to all the files, Leah? Where are they? They haven’t been taken away, have they?’

‘They’re all here,’ she soothed, taking the bunch of keys out of her pocket and selecting the correct one to open the first filing cabinet. ‘And all in their proper alphabetical order, too.’

‘But…I only saw this room on Friday…’

‘And you’ve been having nightmares about it ever since,’ Leah finished for him. ‘The walls were dingy, the curtains were limp, drab and sun-bleached and there was paperwork on every horizontal surface.’

‘Exactly!’ he agreed. ‘So…who, what, when, why and how? Obviously when I saw it before you must have known that the room was due for a visit from Maintenance for some overdue redecoration.’

‘Not exactly.’ She knew it was time to come clean. His surprise had been everything she’d hoped for, but she wanted him to know the real reason for the chaos he’d stumbled into on his first visit. The last thing she wanted was for her new boss to think that had been the way she’d been happy to run the department. That impression might linger and could affect what he wrote about her when she needed a reference when another AR department headship came up.

She refused to let herself ponder the fact that the idea of leaving St Luke’s had suddenly become much less attractive than it had been when she’d been told about David’s appointment. She needed to concentrate on making her explanation.

‘Maintenance were here this morning to install your name-plate and they also supplied the paint and brushes over the weekend.’

‘And?’ he prompted. ‘Am I to take it that you provided the labour? When on earth did you find the time with all the hours you’ve been putting in on keeping the department running?’

‘Well, it only took a couple of hours one evening to give everything a once-over.’ And another couple for a second coat when the dinginess refused to disappear the first time, she added silently, but he didn’t need to know that. Anyway, she wasn’t into blowing her own trumpet. ‘And the curtains were a spare set I had at home. They’ve hardly been used but they don’t fit any of the windows in my new flat.’

‘OK, so that’s how the décor changed, but what about all the piles of paperwork? You certainly couldn’t have sorted through all that and filed it away in a couple of hours one evening.’

‘Actually, that’s almost exactly how long it took,’ she said giving him a smug smile, forgiving herself again for exaggerating a bit. After all, a doctor was well used to late nights, whether it was to deliver triplets or to sort out patient case notes. ‘I’d already completed an audit of all the files, so some of the piles you saw on Friday were ready for collection to be archived. As for the rest, the only reason why I hadn’t returned them to the filing cabinets was because that would have made them too heavy to move when I decorated.’

‘And you achieved the whole thing in a weekend!’ he marveled, and she didn’t correct him with details of the many weeks it had taken to do the audit in the first place. She’d been horrified to find that Donald had probably avoided auditing his files ever since he’d come to the department, and the overfilled cabinets were the reason why the current patients’ files had permanently littered the room, albeit in relatively tidy piles.

She’d actually believed that she’d been doing the tedious job for her own benefit, hoping that she’d get the appointment, but as it turned out…

‘Well, I can’t tell you how grateful I am that you went to all this trouble.’ He spread his arms to indicate the whole pristine room. ‘Not only will it be nicer—and more efficient—to work in, but it will look far more welcoming to the patients. And…’ He drew the word out, suddenly pacing across the room and back again with a determined expression on his face.

‘Yes! I thought so,’ he announced. ‘Now that you’ve removed all those boxes and piles, you’ve made enough room—if my desk is moved just a little further across—to juggle another desk in here, so you won’t have to be served with an eviction order after all.’

That was the last thing she’d expected him to say, and while her heart had suddenly taken up a faster beat at the thought of sharing this room with him on a daily basis, her reason was telling her that he would probably be such a distraction that she’d never get any work done. She’d have to do some careful juggling of her own to make sure that she only came in here when he was otherwise occupied.