A Date with the Ice Princess

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Right at that moment, she didn’t have a clue what she was doing. Lewis Gallagher rattled her composure, big time. And, if she was honest with herself, she’d been lonely since she’d started her new job. Lewis was the first of her colleagues who’d really made an effort with her, and part of her wanted to make the effort back.

‘As friends,’ he said. ‘That works for me. See you tomorrow, Abby.’ He touched her cheek briefly with the backs of his fingers. ‘Sleep well.’

Despite the fresh air and the exercise, Abigail didn’t think she would—because her skin was tingling where Lewis had touched her. And the knowledge that he could affect her like that totally threw her. ‘You, too. Goodnight,’ she mumbled, and fled into the safety of her flat.

CHAPTER THREE

‘JUST THE PERSON I wanted to see.’ Marina Fenton smiled at Abigail. ‘Are you free for lunch today?’

It was the last thing Abigail had expected. She normally had lunch on her own and hid behind a journal so nobody joined her or started a conversation with her. ‘I, um…’ Oh, help. Why was she so socially awkward? She was fine with her dad’s crowd; then again, they’d known her for her entire life. It was just new people she wasn’t so good with. And, growing up in an all-male environment, she’d never quite learned the knack of making friends with women. She didn’t have a clue about girl talk. ‘Well, patients permitting, I guess so,’ she said cautiously.

‘Good. I’ll see you in the kitchen at twelve, and we can walk to the canteen together.’

‘OK.’ Feeling a bit like a rabbit in the headlights, Abigail took refuge in the triage notes for her next patient.

At twelve, she headed for the staff kitchen. Marina was waiting for her there, as promised, but so was Sydney Ranieri, which Abigail hadn’t expected.

‘I know I’m officially off duty today, but Marina said she was having lunch with you and I thought it’d be nice to join you both—if you don’t mind, that is?’ Sydney asked.

‘I, um—no, of course not.’ But it threw her. Why would the two other doctors want to have lunch with her?

‘By the way, lunch is on us,’ Marina said, ushering her out of the department and towards the hospital canteen. ‘Because we’ve been feeling immensely guilty about the weekend.’

Oh. So that was what this was all about. Guilt. Well, she’d never been much good at making friends. Stupid to think that might change with a different hospital. Abigail shook her head. ‘There’s no need, on either count. I was happy to help with the fundraising. There’s nothing to feel guilty about.’

‘So it went well, then, your date with Lewis?’ Sydney asked.

Yes and no. Except it hadn’t really been a date. And it wouldn’t be fair to Lewis to discuss it. ‘It was OK.’

‘OK?’ Sydney and Marina shared a glance. ‘Women never say that about a date with Lewis.’

Abigail spread her hands. ‘He took me zip-lining.’

‘Ah.’ There was a wealth of understanding in Sydney’s voice. ‘That’s the thing about the male doctors in this department. They all seem to like doing mad things. Marina’s husband organised a sponsored abseil down the hospital tower. All two hundred and fifty feet of it.’ She shuddered. ‘And somehow he persuaded the whole department into doing it.’

‘Mmm, I can imagine that,’ Abigail said dryly. Max had persuaded her to do something well outside her comfort zone, too.

‘But it had its good points. I met Marco because I got stuck,’ Sydney said. ‘Faced with the reality of walking backwards into nothing, I just froze.’ She grimaced. ‘Marco sang me down.’

‘He sang you down?’ Abigail couldn’t help being intrigued. ‘How?’

‘He got me to sing with him, to distract me from the fact that I was on the edge of this huge tower, and then he talked me through every step. I was still shaking at the bottom of the tower when he abseiled down next to me.’ Sydney rolled her eyes. ‘And when he landed, it was as if he’d done nothing scarier than walking along the pavement towards me.’

‘That sounds exactly like the sort of thing Lewis would do,’ Abigail said.

‘He wasn’t with the department then, or he probably would have done.’ Marina smiled, but her eyes held a trace of anxiety. ‘Was it really that awful?’

‘The first time I had to step off that platform, with nothing but a bit of webbing and a rope between me and a huge drop, I wanted to kill him,’ Abigail admitted, and they all laughed. ‘But then—once I’d actually done it, it was fun. The second time round was a lot better.’

‘Good.’ Marina rested her hand briefly on Abigail’s arm. ‘I’ve been feeling terrible all weekend, thinking that we pushed you into offering that date. I had no idea that Lewis was going to bid for you.’

‘Neither did I,’ Abigail said dryly.

‘He’s a nice guy,’ Sydney said. ‘As a colleague, he’s totally reliable at work and he’s good company on team nights out. But, um, maybe I should warn you that when it comes to his personal life, he doesn’t do commitment.’

‘Three dates and you’re out. So I heard,’ Abigail said. Though she knew that Lewis did do commitment, at least where his family was concerned. He was really close to his sisters and his niece. Though, now she thought of it, he hadn’t had any pictures of his parents on display in his flat. Which was odd.

And why would someone who was close to his family be so wary of risking his heart? Had someone broken it, years ago?

Though it was none of her business.

They were just colleagues. Possibly starting to become friends. Though she wasn’t going to tell Marina and Sydney that they were going to the concert together later in the week. She didn’t want them to get the wrong idea.

Once they’d queued up at the counter and bought their lunch, they found a quiet table in the canteen.

‘So are you going to see Lewis again?’ Marina asked.

‘Considering that we work in the same department, I’d say there’s a good chance of seeing him in Resus or what have you, depending on the roster,’ Abigail said lightly.

‘That isn’t what I meant.’

Abigail smiled. ‘I know. But we’re colleagues, Marina. He only bid for that date because—well, he said he was trying to persuade me to do more things with the team.’

‘Helping you settle in. Fixing things.’ Sydney looked thoughtful. ‘Actually, Lewis is like that. He sees something that maybe could work better if it was done differently, and he fixes it.’ She smiled. ‘Well, I guess that’s why we all chose this career. We’re fixers.’

‘Definitely,’ Abigail said, and was relieved when the discussion turned away from Lewis. By the end of the lunch break she found herself really enjoying the company of the other two doctors. They weren’t like the mean girls who’d made her life a misery at school. They were nice.

‘I’d better get back,’ she said when she’d finished her coffee.

‘Me, too,’ Marina said. She winked at Sydney. ‘It’s all right for you part-timers.’

Sydney just laughed. ‘It’s fun being a lady who lunches. Well, at least part time. I’d never give up work totally because I’d miss it too much. I’ve enjoyed today. Let’s make it a regular thing,’ she suggested. ‘I work Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. Which of those days is best for you, Abby?’

The same diminutive Lewis had used. Something that had never happened in previous hospitals—she’d always been Dr Smith or Abigail. But here at the London Victoria it was different. There was much more of a sense of the department members being a team. Being friends outside work. And Marina and Sydney were offering her precisely that: friendship. For her own sake, rather than because she was Keith Brydon’s daughter—as people had in the past whenever her identity had leaked out.

For once in her life Abigail was actually fitting in. It felt weird; but it felt good. And she didn’t want that feeling to stop.

‘How about Wednesdays?’ Abigail asked.

‘Excellent. Wednesday at twelve it is, patients permitting—and if one of us is held up, the others will save a space at the table,’ Marina said with a smile. ‘It’s a date.’

Abigail didn’t see Lewis all day, even in passing. She’d been rostered in Minors for her shift and according to the departmental whiteboard he was in Resus. She wasn’t sure if she was more relieved that she didn’t have to face him or disappointed that she hadn’t seen him. And it annoyed her that she felt so mixed up about the situation. She’d worked hard and she’d been happy to make the sacrifices in her personal life to get where she wanted to be in her professional life. So why, why, why was she even thinking about dating a man who had commitment issues and wasn’t her type?

She was still brooding about it the next day. Though then it started to get busy in the department.

She picked up her next set of triage notes. Headache and temperature. Normally patients with a simple virus would be treated by the triage nurse and sent home with painkillers and advice. But this wasn’t just a simple case, from the look of the notes: the nurse had written ‘Query opiates’ at the bottom of the page. So the headache and temperature could be part of a reaction to whatever drug the patient had taken.

‘Eddie McRae?’ she called.

An ashen-faced man walked up the corridor, supported by another man.

She introduced herself swiftly. ‘So you have a headache and temperature, Mr McRae?’

‘Eddie,’ he muttered. ‘I feel terrible.’

‘Have you been in contact with anyone who has a virus?’ she asked.

‘I don’t think so.’

So it could be withdrawal or a bad reaction to the drugs he’d taken. His breathing was fast, she noticed. ‘Can I take your pulse?’

‘Sure.’

His pulse was also fast, so Eddie could well be suffering from sepsis.

‘Have you taken anything?’ she asked gently.

This time Eddie didn’t say a word, and she had a pretty good idea why. ‘I’m not going to lecture you or call the police,’ she reassured him. ‘My job’s to help you feel better than you do right now. And the more information you give me, the easier it’s going to be for me to get it right first time.’

‘He took something Saturday night,’ his friend said. ‘He’s been ill today, with a headache and temperature.’

‘So it could be a reaction to what you took. Did you swallow it?’

Eddie shook his head and grimaced in pain.

‘Injected?’ At his slight nod, she said, ‘Can I see where?’

He shrugged off his cardigan. There were track marks on his arm, as she’d expected, but the redness and swelling definitely weren’t what she’d expected.

‘Eddie, I really need to know what you took,’ she said gently.

‘Heroin,’ his friend said.

‘OK.’ She knew that the withdrawal symptoms from heroin usually peaked forty-eight to seventy-two hours after the last dose, but this didn’t seem like the withdrawal cases she’d seen in the past.

‘Are you sleeping OK, Eddie?’ she asked.

‘Yeah.’

‘Do you have any pain, other than your head?’

He nodded. ‘My stomach.’

‘Have you been sick or had diarrhoea?’

He grimaced. ‘No.’

Abigail had a funny feeling about this. Although she hadn’t actually seen a case at her last hospital, there had been a departmental circular about heroin users suffering from anthrax after using contaminated supplies, and an alarm bell was ringing at the back of her head. There was no sign of black eschar, the dead tissue cast off from the surface of the skin, which was one of the big giveaways with anthrax, but she had a really strong feeling about this. Right now she could do with some advice from a more senior colleague.

‘I’m going to leave you in here for a second, if that’s OK,’ she said. ‘I have a hunch I know what’s wrong, but there’s something I want to check with a colleague, and then I think we’ll be able to do something to help you.’

‘Just make the pain stop. Please,’ Eddie said.

She stepped out of the cubicle and pulled the curtain closed behind her. With any luck Max or Marco would be free—in this case, she needed a second opinion from a consultant.

But the first person she saw was Lewis.

‘OK, Abby?’ he asked. ‘You look a bit worried.’

‘I need a second opinion on a patient. Is Max or Marco around?’

‘Marco’s in Resus and Max is in a meeting,’ he said. ‘Will I do?’

Although they were officially the same grade, she knew that Lewis was older than her—which made him more experienced, her senior colleague. And really she should’ve asked him instead of trying to track down Max or Marco. She grimaced. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to imply that you weren’t good eno—’

‘Relax, Abby,’ he cut in. ‘I didn’t think you were saying that at all. What’s the problem?’

‘My patient took heroin on Saturday. He has a headache and a temperature, and what looks like soft tissue sepsis—not the normal sort of reaction at the injection site. At my last hospital, we had case notes about anthrax in heroin users. Do you know if there’s anything like that happening in this area?’

‘No—but you know as well as I do that if something affects one area of the city, it’s going to spread to the rest, so it’s only a matter of time. You think this is anthrax?’

‘There’s no sign of black eschar. I don’t have any proof. Just a gut feeling that this is more than just withdrawal symptoms or a bad reaction.’

‘I’d run with it. Do you want me to take a look to back you up? And if it is anthrax, we can split the notifications between us and save a bit of time.’

Anthrax was a notifiable disease, and the lab would also need to know of her suspicions when she sent any samples through for testing so they could take extra precautions. ‘Thanks, that would be good,’ she said gratefully.

Lewis walked back to the cubicle with her and she introduced him to Eddie McRae. Lewis examined him swiftly and looked at her. ‘I think you’re right,’ he said quietly.

Abigail took a deep breath. ‘I’ll need to do a couple more tests to check, Eddie, but I think you have anthrax.’

‘But—how? We’re not terrorists or anything!’ Eddie looked shocked. ‘We’ve never had anything to do with that sort of stuff. How can I have anthrax?’

‘Anthrax is a bacterium,’ she explained. ‘It can survive as spores in soil for years. It’s not that common now in the UK, but somehow anthrax has found its way into the heroin supply chain so the drugs have been contaminated. There have been a few cases of heroin users with anthrax in mainland Europe and Scotland—and parts of London, too, because we had some in my last hospital.’

‘My granddad was a farmer. His cattle got anthrax years ago and they all had to be killed. Is Eddie going to die?’ Eddie’s friend asked, looking anxious.

‘It’s treatable,’ Lewis reassured him. ‘We can give you broad-spectrum antibiotics to deal with the infection, but you’ll also need surgery, Eddie.’