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‘My name is Leander,’ he told her reluctantly in that deep, deep voice which sounded exactly like rich, runny honey spilling slowly over gravel.
‘That’s rather . . . unusual,’ said Nicolette lamely, the curiosity remaining in her blue eyes.
He frowned, then sighed, as if recognising that some kind of explanation was in order. ‘It’s Greek for “lion man”—as Simon has so accurately pointed out.’
Leander! Nicolette blinked. Of all the remarkable names for a man. . .‘But weren’t you teased about it at school?’ she blurted out before she could stop herself.
He looked taken aback, as though the question had surprised him, and Nicolette suspected that he would not have chosen to answer it, had not Simon butted in eagerly.
‘Did they, Doctor?’
The tall man’s eyes rested thoughtfully on the young boy, and he nodded slowly, as though he had guessed Simon’s true reasons for asking. ‘Yes,’ he said slowly. ‘They did try to tease me. But they didn’t succeed.’
‘Because you’re big, and tough,’ hazarded Simon gloomily. ‘And could knock them down with a punch.’
But Dr Le Saux shook his head. ‘No, Simon,’ he responded quietly. ‘If you resort to physical violence then you’re putting yourself on the same level as the cowards who are bullying you—and believe me, that’s all that they are, nothing but pathetic cowards.’
‘Then. . .how did you get them to leave you alone?’ asked Simon diffidently, and Nicolette’s heart turned over in sympathy for the young lad, for it was transparently obvious that he must have been the butt of bullying himself.
‘By ignoring them,’ Dr Le Saux answered sternly. ‘Simple, but effective. They soon get bored repeating something if they can see that it isn’t upsetting you.’
‘And if it is upsetting you?’ said Simon falteringly.
‘Then you pretend. Pretend it isn’t, and soon they’ll stop. And if you can practise giving them a pitying little smile like this,’ and he curved his mouth into the haughtiest look of pride that Nicolette had ever seen, ‘at the same time,’ he carried on, ‘then they’ll steer well clear. Try it,’ he advised softly. ‘It works; I promise you.’
Simon nodded slowly, as if a promise from this particular doctor was something to be cherished. ‘I will.’
Nicolette found herself watching the tall paediatrician covertly, thinking about the man, and about the name. And whoever had chosen it had been spot on because yes, the name suited him. Really suited him.
He had impressively broad shoulders, which suggested strength, and the lean musculature of his long limbs marked him out as hunter, protector and provider. And here, standing beside the window, where the sunlight streamed in on them, she could see that his hair was not merely very thick and dark, as she had thought when she had first seen him, but that it also had the most astonishing dark red lights dancing in its depths, and, although it was neatly trimmed, its very thickness and intriguing hint of unruliness were not dissimilar to the texture of a lion’s mane. . .
She came out of her fanciful daydream to find him staring at her, a look of faint question in his eyes, and Nicolette realised that she must have been standing there ogling him! Oh, dear! She hastily cleared her throat. ‘Er—any more questions you wanted to ask me?’
‘I was going to ask you about the outlook,’ he told her softly.
For a moment her brain was complete mush. ‘The outlook?’ she echoed stupidly.
‘Of cystic fibrosis,’ he explained crisply.
Of course. Thank heavens to have something concrete to focus her attention on, other than the magnificent lion-like qualities of the man who stood in front of her! Nicolette didn’t falter. ‘The long-term survival has improved considerably in recent years, and there are now a great many adult CF patients who are leading fulfilled lives. In the meantime the adults of tomorrow can take great comfort from knowing that a vast amount of research is being done into the disease.’ And she gave Simon’s hand another tiny squeeze.
‘That’s what I keep telling Simon,’ said Dr Le Saux quietly. ‘But you take a lot of convincing, don’t you, my lad?’
Nicolette’s eyes were shining as she looked down at the patient. ‘Well, I’ve said it, too—and I wasn’t primed to, was I? How many more people would you like to repeat it to you, Simon, before you believe it?’
Simon’s eyes were serious beyond their years, but his voice didn’t have a trace of self-pity in it. ‘I know that what you say is true,’ he said. ‘An’ I’ve always believed Dr Le Saux. He’s looked after me since I was a baby. In fact, Mum and Dad moved down to this part of the world so that he could look after me, didn’t we, Doc?’
Nicolette blinked in surprise as she stared at the consultant. She could never have imagined the tall, imposing doctor looking vaguely disquieted, but he did now. He was, she realised with a surprised glee, embarrassed at Simon’s obvious hero-worship and glowing testimony! Strange, that. She would never have had him down as being modest!
‘Is that so?’ Nicolette asked softly.
The dark head with the red lights in it was shaken impatiently as he appeared to contradict Simon’s words. ‘The sea air acts as a tonic,’ he shrugged self-deprecatingly, adding as he saw the quirk of amusement which curved the corners of Nicolette’s mouth, ‘And yes, that may be a very old-fashioned idea, Staff Nurse, but I happen to believe it’s true.’
‘But so do I!’ agreed Nicolette, feeling almost shocked. She could never have imagined agreeing with anything said by the stern-faced man she’d grappled with in the bathroom!
‘Don’t take any notice of him,’ said Simon again. ‘It’s not just the sea air—he does research into CF here, too.’
Nicolette looked into eyes whose green flecks had intensified, giving him the enigmatic appearance of a cat. ‘Do you?’
‘Yes,’ he said, giving her a resigned look. ‘On a very small scale, of course.’
‘Rubbish! He’s a world authority,’ put in Simon cheerfully, ignoring the blatantly warning expression on Dr Le Saux’s face.
Curiouser and curiouser! Nicolette made a mental note to take herself off to the reference library when she finished duty to read something he had written. ‘Researching into any particular aspect of cystic fibrosis, Dr Le Saux?’ she asked politely, but it was difficult to keep the admiration out of her voice. Research, she knew, was not done for any of the kudos that surrounded the status of doctor. It didn’t earn you money, and it ate away at all your time. People who researched tended to do it because of their thirst for knowledge; and for results that would hopefully bring about improvements to a patient’s life. Nicolette had always held researchers in the highest esteem.
He shrugged his broad shoulders restlessly. ‘I’m searching for the cure,’ he said starkly, finishing on an altogether different note. ‘But there again, isn’t everyone?’
For Simon’s sake, Leander managed to disguise the note of cynicism that was threatening to creep into his voice but it took a huge effort as usual, especially with that young, rather beautiful nurse staring up at him like that with those amazing shining blue eyes, and all because he’d mentioned his foolish little bit of research. What did she think he could do by sitting up night after long damned night, studying tissue samples? Rid the world of this illness? And, even if he could, nothing would change, not really. Because then he would go on to try to find a cure for the next disease, and the next, until his own time had run out. God help us to rid the world of all illnesses, Leander thought bitterly, but especially those which affected young children. . .
But Nicolette heard the faint underlying note of cynicism, heard and understood it, and her tender heart couldn’t help warming to him, arrogance or no arrogance. ‘That’s absolutely wonderful,’ she breathed sincerely, not really caring if she sounded a bit over the top in her praise. ‘I think that research must be the most worthwhile thing in the world any person can do.’
But he knitted his dark brows together, as though she had just called him names. ‘Thanks for the recommendation,’ he said, with crisp sarcasm. ‘But we can’t really afford the time to stand around chatting—we both have work to do, do we not?’
He didn’t see the eyes-to-heaven expression which Simon gave, but Nicolette did, and it took every effort of will for her not to giggle. Let him be grumpy if he wanted—if the man was a researcher then she’d forgive him an awful lot! ‘Yes, Doctor,’ she answered demurely.
He frowned suspiciously, as if sensing the shared joke between Nicolette and Simon. ‘Then would you mind lifting up Simon’s pyjama jacket,’ he ordered shortly, ‘so that I can examine his chest?’
Nicolette did as he asked, while he warmed the stethoscope up on the palms of his strong, capable hands. Then she watched him dispassionately while he started to examine Simon, wondering what his practical skills as a doctor were like.
She should have guessed, of course. He was good, she had to admit. Very, very good indeed.
Paediatricians, who looked exclusively after children—from tiny babies to young adults—needed skills above and beyond the normal skills of other doctors. They had to be infinitely patient, and precise. They needed to be flexible and able to cope with the unexpected without blinking—which was why Nicolette had been surprised when told that Dr Le Saux demanded order. They also needed the utmost manual dexterity and a steady, steady hand. But the skill they needed above all else was that of communication—not something she would have automatically put at the top of his list of qualities! Children were famous for clamming up when questioned about their illness, and it took a special kind of adult to coax information out of them.
Extraordinary, then, that this man, who on first impressions Nicolette would have ventured had a real problem with communication, should have this little boy eating out of his hand.
There was silence while he listened to the chest sounds, punctuated only by his brief instructions to Simon to breathe deeply. And when he raised his dark head there was something approaching a smile on his hard face.
‘Good,’ he pronounced. ‘The chest sounds clear. Looks like all trace of that nasty Pseudomonas aeruginosa infection has gone.’ His eyes narrowed in Nicolette’s direction as he mentioned the rather virulent strain of bacteria to which cystic fibrosis sufferers were particularly susceptible. ‘Have we had any sputum results back, Staff?’
Nicolette nodded, heartily glad that since her early days as a staff nurse she had got into the habit of reading and memorising all the patients’ results that came back. And earlier she had tackled the pile on the desk that had included Simon’s. ‘The result of the third specimen came back this morning. With the all-clear.’
‘Excellent.’ Dr Le Saux smiled. ‘Like to go home, Simon?’
The boy’s face lit up. ‘Oh, can I?’
The paediatrican threw his hands up in mock-astonishment. ‘But I thought you liked being here,’ he teased gently.
‘I do—it’s just that home is—’
‘I know, Simon,’ interrupted Dr Le Saux in the gentlest of voices. ‘Home is better. How’s that stick insect of yours?’
‘It’s had a baby,’ said Simon proudly.
‘But I thought it was a male?’
‘So did Mum!’ grimaced Simon.
Nicolette giggled, and both of them looked at her, and both joined in with her laughter, and there was something so. . .so. . .startling about the transformation which came over the stern doctor’s face when he actually allowed himself to laugh that Nicolette felt suddenly breathless and it took a huge effort to keep her mind on the job and not on that disarming smile of his. ‘So w-when would you like Simon discharged, Dr Le Saux?’ she stumbled.
‘How about tomorrow morning?’
Simon raised an irresistibly appealing face up to the doctor. ‘How about today?’
Dr Le Saux turned a cool, questioning gaze towards Nicolette. ‘Is that possible, Staff?’
‘That depends on whether Simon’s mother can be contacted, but I’m sure it can be arranged. But we’ll need to get in touch with Pharmacy soon if we’re to get Simon’s drugs to take home with him.’
He nodded. ‘I’ll go and write them up now,’ he said briefly, and swung the curtain back.
Nicolette rang Simon’s delighted mother from the phone on the central nursing station.
‘Discharged, you say?’
‘That’s right,’ said Nicolette happily.
‘But that’s marvellous—we thought he’d be in at least over the weekend!’
‘He’s responded to the drug regime far better than we anticipated,’ Nicolette told her.
‘Dr Le Saux tried something new,’ confided Mrs Lomas. ‘He said he thought it might pay dividends.’ She gave a sigh. ‘That man is an absolute saint!’
‘So I believe,’ agreed Nicolette drily, with a shameless disregard for her own feelings on the subject!
‘I’ll be right up to collect Simon,’ Mrs Lomas promised eagerly. ‘I can be there in about fifteen minutes, Staff.’
‘Now hold on a minute!’ laughed Nicolette. ‘It’ll probably take us a couple of hours to get everything arranged. Why don’t you ring the ward before you come up? He can have his tea first—say, about three-thirty?’
‘OK, Staff Nurse, three-thirty it is,’ said Mrs Lomas happily, then lowered her voice. ‘And tell me, have you any idea what I could buy Dr Le Saux as a thank-you present? He must be fed up with chocolates and whisky, but we always like to get him a little something. We’re so grateful to him.’
What about a one-way ticket to Australia? thought Nicolette with grim humour. ‘I’m sure he doesn’t expect anything, Mrs Lomas. I think he’d like you to spend the money on Simon!’ She said goodbye, and put the phone down.
Nicolette assumed that the saint-like Dr Le Saux had gone into the doctors’ office to write up Simon’s prescription, but she was wrong, for she found him in Sister’s office, sitting at one end of the large desk, his dark head glinting deep red lights, bent over the pharmacy form he was completing.
Leander looked up as she entered, and frowned. Lord, but she was a distracting vision, was the unbidden thought which flew into his mind. She really shouldn’t be allowed to walk around like that, he decided a touch ruefully. All that clean, healthy skin and shiny eyes and hair—she looked as if she should be starring in an orange-juice commercial! He ruthlessly killed the thought stone-dead and levelled his gaze at her critically.
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake,’ he said irritably, as though they’d been in the middle of a conversation. ‘Can’t you do something with your hair?’
Nicolette thought that she must have misheard him. ‘I beg your pardon?’ she queried faintly.
‘Your hair,’ he scowled. ‘Do something with it, for pity’s sake. It looks awful!’ How easily the lie slipped off his tongue.
Awful? thought Nicolette indignantly. It was untidy, true. Extremely untidy. But awful? She conveniently chose to ignore the fact that if it had been anyone else but Leander le Saux suggesting that she ‘do something with it’ she probably would have laughed and agreed with them. As it was, since it had come from a man she scarcely knew, who had already been ruder to her in less than an hour than she could remember anyone being in her whole life before, mad indignation began to sizzle away inside her, like an egg frying On a hot pavement.
She narrowed her blue eyes. ‘How dare you make such personal remarks to someone you’ve only just met?’
His frown deepened. ‘And how dare you walk around the place looking like Medusa?’
‘Like who?'
‘You heard,’ he snapped unrepentantly.
‘Oh!’ She bit her lip in outrage as she pulled the clip out of her hair, causing it to tumble unfettered to her waist. She scarcely noticed that the movement seemed to have arrested him, because she whirled round to fling at him, ‘It’s a pity I’m not Medusa,’ she raged loudly, ‘because I would have taken great pleasure from turning you into stone, Dr Le Saux!’
He opened his mouth to reply, when a female voice of authority interrupted them from the open doorway.
‘Staff Nurse Kennedy?’ came a high, disbelieving voice, and Nicolette found herself looking up in horror, into the set features of the senior specialist nurse manager.
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_35baa314-ccba-580e-a09c-790ded9c28d5)
NICOLETTE recognised the stony-faced specialist nurse manager immediately, struck once again by the fact that she seemed much too young to hold such a senior position, being probably still under thirty. Her name was Miss Dixon and she had sat in on the interview panel when Nicolette had applied for the job, since she was the senior nurse overseeing both wards in Southbury’s state-of-the-art paediatric unit.
In looks, she was the absolute antithesis of Nicolette. Her hair was a smooth, ash-blonde cap that framed her head and her eyes were cool and grey and calculating. Her small, neatly boned body made Nicolette feel like a strapping great thing in comparison! She looked, thought Nicolette, like a woman who had never been late for an appointment in her life. And a woman who wouldn’t tolerate lateness in others. At Nicolette’s interview the had been noticeable for her probing style of questioning, and it had not escaped Nicolette’s notice at the time that her manner had not been exactly what you would describe as friendly.
And her manner now looked positively bristling as she surveyed Nicolette across the office. When she spoke her lips barely moved, but Nicolette could tell that was only because she was so angry.
‘Staff Nurse, you look a disgrace,’ she said tightly. ‘Go to the cloakroom and do something with your hair immediately. After that, come back here. I wish to speak to you!’
Nicolette was momentarily stunned into immobility. She could never remember having been spoken to so summarily, or so severely—not even as the most junior of student nurses.
‘Is that understood?’ quizzed the senior nurse abrasively.
Nicolette swallowed, feeling about six inches high. ‘Yes, Miss Dixon,’ she answered quietly.
‘Then see to it!’ she snapped. ‘Now!’
It was utterly humiliating. Unable to meet Leander Le Saux’s eyes, her cheeks stinging with mortification and hurt pride, Nicolette put her stiff shoulders back and said in an even voice, ‘Very well, Miss Dixon.’
‘Um—Staff Nurse?’ came Leander’s voice as she reached the door.
The effect of that deep, mocking voice on her already tightly stretched nerves was like that of leaping into an icy bath after a sauna. What now? She found that her answer was unsteady, and despised herself for it. ‘Y-yes, Doctor?’
‘You’ve left your hair-clip on the table. Here.’
Unwillingly, she turned round to find him holding it out, the clip, with its Mickey Mouse motif, looking incongruously feminine—as well as rather childish—against the tanned masculinity of his strong palm.
She took it as gingerly as if it had been an unexploded bomb. ‘Thank you,’ she said gravely, and surprised reluctant laughter lurking in the depths of his dark eyes.
But as she left the office she heard the specialist nurse manager say, in quite a different tone altogether from the one she’d used with Nicolette, a sort of soft, smoky whisper, ‘So what was the problem this time, Leander? Adulation or insubordination?’
