скачать книгу бесплатно
‘Nice deduction, Mr Holmes,’ she teased. ‘Though actually, I’m not on holiday as such.’ Her smile faded. ‘And, if anything, I owe you.’
‘How come?’
She shook her head. ‘It’s not important. Anyway, you should be resting.’
‘I am resting,’ he pointed out wryly. He couldn’t move from his bed. Not without crutches, anyway, if his leg was pinned. And a quick glance around his cubicle showed no sign of crutches. So he was definitely stuck here. Great. He had a million and one things to do, clinics to run and lists to work through and paperwork to finish off and…
He must have spoken aloud again because she nodded. ‘And you feel as if you’ve been run over by a steamroller.’
‘Yeah,’ he admitted.
Mallory checked his chart. ‘You’re due some analgesics. I’ll go and tell the nurse you’re ready for them.’
She’d said ‘analgesics’, not ‘painkillers’, Will noted. And then he remembered the way she’d checked his pupils moments after the accident. Probably after he’d blacked out—that was why she’d checked his pupils in the first place. ‘You’re a doctor,’ he said.
‘Was,’ she said grimly, and left the cubicle.
Was? What did she mean, was? Had she been struck off? Or…? His mind refused to make any connections, and he sank back against his pillows. All he could think about right now was the dull ache that beat through his body.
She returned a couple of minutes later with a nurse who carried two white tablets in a small cup.
‘Paracetamol?’ Will asked hopefully.
Mallory smiled. ‘Don’t you think you might need just a little bit more than that?’
‘Yeah,’ he admitted, as another wave of pain shot through him.
‘I’ll do your obs first,’ the nurse said. She checked his temperature, pulse and respiration. Though her hands weren’t like Mallory’s. They were just as cool and professional, but the touch of her skin hadn’t heated his blood the way Mallory’s had.
No. Absolutely not. He wasn’t going to start thinking of Mallory in those terms.
He sneaked a glance at her. And wished he hadn’t when his gaze met hers. It felt as if lightning had just coursed through him. His pulse was racing, too. Not good. How could he explain to the nurse that it wasn’t anything to do with the accident? It was…the look of a stranger. A perfect stranger. All he knew about her was her name, her previous occupation and the fact she was here on holiday.
So how on earth could she make him feel like an overgrown, gawky teenager, just with one look? And how on earth could the nurse write so calmly on her chart as if an earthquake hadn’t just happened before her eyes—wasn’t still happening?
‘Shall I get him some water to go with the analgesics?’ Mallory asked.
‘Thanks.’ The nurse smiled at her. ‘I’ll leave him in your capable hands, Dr Ryman.’
‘Have you had co-proxamol before?’ Mallory asked as the nurse left the cubicle.
‘Yes.’
‘Any reaction to it at all? Any dizziness, blurred vision, slurring your words?’
‘No.’ She knew he hurt. Why didn’t she just give him the painkillers? ‘Are you the ward doctor?’ he asked.
‘No.’ She flushed spectacularly, her face clashing wildly with her hair. And then she went white. Absolutely white.
Will could have kicked himself. Considering that she’d come to his rescue after the accident and now she was looking after him—something she really didn’t have to do—he’d been ungracious. Worse, he must have touched some sort of sore nerve. She’d only just told him that she used to be a doctor and, whatever the reason for her not being one now, the pain was clearly still raw. ‘Sorry. Didn’t mean to be nasty.’
‘You’re in pain and I’m holding up your pain relief. And I’m sure the ward doctor checked your records before he wrote you up for co-proxamol,’ Mallory said. She handed him the cup and waited until he’d tipped the tablets into his mouth before giving him the beaker of water.
‘Thanks,’ he said when he’d swallowed the tablets.
‘Is there anything else you need?’ she asked.
A new head, he thought. One that didn’t hurt. ‘No. I’m fine, thanks,’ he said.
‘I’ll be off, then.’
‘Stay a bit longer. Please?’ The words were out before he’d even finished thinking them.
‘I…Look, you ought to rest.’
At least she was saying no in a nice way. She was probably with someone on her walking trip. He’d already taken up too much of her time. This not-wanting-to-let-her-go type of feeling…Well, the accident must have addled his brains as well as smashed his bones. ‘Sorry. Selfish,’ he mumbled. ‘Your friends…’ Must be waiting for her, though he couldn’t get the words out.
She shook her head. ‘I’m on my own.’
So she could stay, if she wanted to. But he’d already wrecked her holiday. ‘Too dark to walk now. Sorry.’
‘Climb,’ she corrected.
Climb. The word slammed into his mind and he flinched. Today had been tough. But it had just become a whole heap worse, raking up old wounds. Climbing had already cost him Roland and Julie—his brother and his fiancée. He really should have moved when it had all happened. Gone somewhere flat and quiet and as far from mountains as he could possibly find.
‘Are you all right?’ she asked. ‘Does something new hurt?’
Only my heart. And that was a long, long time ago, he thought. When my fiancée fell in love with my brother. And I wasn’t there when the mountain rescue team needed me. And Roly…
‘No. I’m fine.’ With an effort, Will pulled his concentration back from the memories of that terrible night. ‘I hope the duty doctors are as on the ball as you are.’
‘If they are, you’d be better off somewhere else,’ she muttered.
He could see the pain in her eyes. The kind of pain he knew only too well, the kind of pain that all the medicine in the world couldn’t heal. Because the only way to heal it was to face your demons head on. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Asks the man with a comminuted fracture of the upper tibia, a fractured radius and concussion,’ she quipped. The car crash had shattered the bone in Will’s leg, and when the impact had knocked him to the ground, he’d landed on his arm and the bone had snapped.
‘Comminuted fracture?’
‘Uh-huh. You got off lightly—just the tibia and not the fibula as well. And it was a closed fracture.’
She wasn’t teasing him. If your tibia broke, the force of the impact normally went through your interosseous membrane, the connective tissue lying between the two lower leg bones, and fractured your fibia as well. The layers of skin and tissues over the area were very thin, which usually meant that the broken bone pierced your skin, known as an ‘open fracture’. In Will’s case, the bone hadn’t gone through the skin.
But a comminuted fracture, meaning that the bone had shattered…There could be only one reason why he didn’t have a cast on. ‘Internal fixation?’ he asked.
Mallory nodded. ‘Absolutely. So no weight on that leg until the bone knits together again.’
He closed his eyes. ‘Three months.’ He’d be stuck, unable to do anything, for three whole months. At least.
‘Could be worse,’ she said, as if she’d read his mind—though his feelings had probably been written all over his face. ‘If it’d been your femur, you’d be in traction so you couldn’t even get around on crutches.’ If you’d broken your thigh bone, you needed traction to stop the large thigh muscles contracting and interfering with the blood supply, or even displacing the broken bone again. ‘And you’d have lost a lot more blood.’ Enough even to go into shock.
And she was changing the subject. ‘Lucky me,’ he said dryly, opening his eyes again. ‘But what about you?’
She shrugged. ‘I’m fine.’
She didn’t look it. Again, the words were out of his mouth before his brain had registered them. His brain definitely wasn’t involved because he sounded far more coherent than he felt. ‘Why don’t you grab a cup of coffee, sit down and tell me about it?’
‘Nothing to tell.’
‘Looks to me,’ he said quietly, ‘as if you need someone to listen. I’m not going anywhere. And I’m a doctor—what you tell me is just between us.’
‘You need to rest.’
He nodded. ‘And I also need something to take my mind off things till the co-proxamol kicks in properly. So talk to me. Tell me what’s wrong.’
Will’s eyes were what won the argument for him. Serious, yet with a certain warmth and honesty. Eyes that she could trust. Sexy, too…
No! She wasn’t going to start thinking that way about him. Even though he was cute. More than cute. Even lying in a hospital bed, in plaster and covered in bruises. Will Cooper was what Renee, her American sister-in-law, would call serious eye-candy. Dark hair that flopped over his forehead, eyes as blue as the sky at the top of a mountain, slight stubble that gave him a piratical look and the suggestion of a dimple in his cheek that would win any argument for him when he smiled.
It would be so easy to give in to the attraction. But Mallory couldn’t. She had nothing to give anyone right now. Not after Geoff. Her eye flicked automatically to Will’s left hand. No wedding ring visible, though that didn’t prove anything. He was probably married, or at least living with someone. So the chances were he wasn’t available anyway.
But she did need to talk. Will was right about that. ‘OK. Thanks.’
‘Coffee-bar on the ground floor. Better than the ward machine,’ he said. ‘They do take-away.’
‘Do you want me to bring you anything back?’
He shook his head. ‘Caffeine, right now, would blow my head off.’
‘I won’t be long,’ she promised.
The coffee-bar did a selection of tempting-looking cakes, including slices of Grasmere gingerbread and Westmorland pepper cake, but Mallory resisted the temptation, sticking to just a double espresso. By the time she got back to the ward, Will had fallen asleep.
She smiled ruefully—maybe their conversation just wasn’t meant to be—and quietly gathered her belongings together. She was about to tiptoe out of the cubicle when a husky voice demanded, ‘Where’re you going?’
Mallory nearly dropped her coffee. ‘I thought you were asleep!’
‘Just resting my eyes,’ He mumbled. ‘Sit. So, what’re you doing in the Lakes in January? Not th’ right time year f’ holiday.’
‘Will, you’re so tired, you’re slurring your words. You need to rest.’ She froze. ‘Unless you’re reacting to the co-proxamol.’
‘Neither. Talk to me,’ he insisted.
Mallory sighed. ‘I just need space to think,’ she said simply, dropping her rucksack and waterproof next to the chair and sitting down. ‘Make some decisions.’
‘Such as?’ he prompted.
This was it. The big one. Could she tell him?
But he was a stranger. Someone who wasn’t involved. Someone who might help her see a way through this whole mess. ‘Whether I’m cut out for a career in medicine. I thought maybe I’d done the wrong thing.’ How could she possibly stay on as a GP after what had happened? But, on the other hand, how could she break her father’s heart by giving up medicine? Whatever she did would be wrong.
‘Did all the right things with me,’ Will said. ‘Checked my pupils, kept me talking—till I passed out on you—double-checked the painkillers.’
‘Yes.’ She bit her lip. ‘When I saw the accident happen, my instincts took over. So maybe it’s a sign that I shouldn’t give up just yet.’
‘What made you think that you should?’
She stared into her coffee. ‘Because I nearly killed someone.’
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_b1868114-6841-5f25-ba2f-2ad99e01b354)
THERE was a long, long pause. A pause in which Mallory couldn’t bring herself to look back at Will. A pause that seemed to last for hours, though it could only have been seconds.
‘What happened?’
His voice was gentle. Kind, not condemning. She glanced up at him and saw only concern in his eyes, not judgement. And then, at last, she was able to tell him.
‘One of my patients came in complaining of a sore shoulder.’ Mallory swallowed. ‘Lindy had been carrying her toddler about, so I just assumed it was a muscle sprain. I should have thought about shoulder-tip pain being caused by irritation of the diaphragm.’
Will clearly followed her train of thought, as he said, ‘Did she say she was pregnant?’
Mallory bit her lip. ‘No. She said she was on the Pill, and she’d had a light period a couple of weeks before. I should have known better. As a doctor, I know that you can still have vaginal bleeding in pregnancy, and if she’d missed a pill or had been ill, her contraceptive might have let her down. But I didn’t push it.’ She took a swig of coffee.
‘Ectopic pregnancy?’ Will guessed.
‘Yes. And I didn’t pick it up. I was her GP, and I let her down. Badly. I didn’t give her a pregnancy test, just in case, and I didn’t send her for a scan. If I had, they’d have picked it up early enough.’
‘Any abdominal pain?’
‘No.’
Will shrugged. ‘Hard one to call if she said she wasn’t pregnant, had no abdominal pain.’ He swallowed hard.
Clearly he needed a drink, Mallory thought. How could she be so selfish as to sit here and jabber on at him, burden him with her problems, when he really needed looking after? She put her coffee on his bedside cabinet and brought the cup of water down within his reach.
‘Thanks.’ He took a small sip through the straw, then another. Then stopped. ‘Don’t want you to tell me off again,’ he said.
That half-smile again. She’d bet her last penny that the full monty was the type of smile that would make you cross frozen wastes. Correction. The type of smile that would make frozen wastes feel like lush, temperate pastureland. ‘One in five.’
‘Hmm?’ She’d lost him completely.
‘One in five. Women with ectopic pregnancy who have normal periods.’
She knew the statistic too, but it didn’t make her feel any better.
‘But I should have checked, Will. I didn’t.’
Because she’d been too preoccupied with Geoff. Kind, sweet Geoff and his completely unexpected proposal. Well, it hadn’t been that unexpected—she’d known from the start that his feelings had been stronger than hers. She’d known what the right answer should have been, but had asked him for time to think about it. Think about whether she could settle down at the practice in the New Forest, bury her love for the mountains and become the domesticated doctor he’d wanted her to be; whether she could live someone else’s dreams for the rest of her life. Or whether she could bring herself to hurt him by saying no.
