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Well, hello, and welcome to Obs and Gynae, Annie thought as Dr Dunwoody strode away. It wasn’t her fault the lift buttons weren’t working properly. If she’d been told about them she would have got here earlier. Not that she suspected it would have made any difference. Something told her that even if she’d arrived at seven o’clock, clutching three medical degrees and a glowing reference from the BMA, Dr Dunwoody would still have hated her on sight.
There was only one thing she could do. Keep her head down, get on with her work, and maybe then Dr Dunwoody would revise her opinion of her.
It was easier said than done. By lunchtime she had a pounding headache. By mid-afternoon she felt like she’d been hit by a truck, and it wasn’t the actual medicine that was the problem.
‘I just feel so stupid all the time,’ she told Liz Baker when they hastily grabbed a coffee in the small staffroom. ‘Not knowing any of the patients—what they’re in for. Dammit, I didn’t even know where the blood-pressure gauges were kept until you told me.’
‘Why should you?’ Liz exclaimed, munching on a chocolate biscuit with relish. ‘You’ve only just arrived, so you can hardly be expected to immediately know everything.’
‘Dr Dunwoody thinks I should.’ Annie sighed. ‘Dr Dunwoody thinks I’m a dork.’
‘No, she doesn’t. I saw the way her eyebrows shot up when you got that catheter into Mrs Ferguson in fifteen seconds flat.’
‘Then why does she keep watching me?’ Annie protested. ‘Like she’s expecting me to suddenly run amok with a kidney dish or something.’
‘It’s because you’re a junior doctor. Look, no offence meant,’ Liz continued as Annie gazed at her in surprise, ‘but we’ve had some real corkers in the past. Junior doctors who thought it beneath their dignity to fetch a patient a glass of water. Junior female doctors who were more interested in chatting up the hospital talent than examining any patients.’
I’ve no intention of doing either, Annie thought grimly, only to stiffen as a familiar figure walked past the open staffroom door. It was him. Mr Mountain Man from the stairs. The big louse himself. Presumably he’d finally found time to make his duty call on his wife.
‘Something wrong?’ Liz asked curiously, seeing her sink further down into her seat.
Apart from never wanting to see that jerk again? Not a thing, Annie decided, but she didn’t say that.
‘Are there any more of those chocolate biscuits left?’ she asked instead.
‘Dozens. One of our ex-patients brought them in as a thank-you for Gideon, and he gave them to us.’
Gideon Caldwell, the ward consultant. She hadn’t met him yet. She’d met Tom who’d turned out to be Dr Brooke, Obs and Gynae’s other specialist registrar, and his wife Helen Fraser, who was the ward SHO, but she hadn’t met Mr Caldwell.
‘What’s he like—Mr Caldwell?’ she asked.
‘Lovely. Great to work for, and a terrific surgeon. Normally you’d have met him when he was doing his morning rounds, but an ectopic was brought into A and E so he’s been in Theatre all morning.’
Lovely? Well, she wasn’t interested in ‘lovely’, but ‘great to work for’ sounded encouraging. And she desperately needed some encouraging information after spending the better part of the day running around like a headless chicken.
Helen Fraser looked as though she could do with some upbeat news, too, judging by her harassed expression as she appeared at the staffroom door.
‘No, don’t get up,’ she insisted when Annie scrambled hastily to her feet. ‘I just wondered if either of you knew where Sylvia Renton’s blood results were. I was positive I’d put them back in her file but they’re not there any more.’
‘Dr Brooke’s got them, Dr Fraser,’ Liz replied. ‘He said he wasn’t happy about her haemoglobin level.’
‘I’m not happy about it either, which is why I wanted to check it again,’ Helen said with exasperation, then smiled ruefully across at Annie. ‘Men, eh? Can’t live with them, can’t live without them.’
I sure plan to, Annie thought, but managed an answering smile.
‘Helen and Tom love each other to bits, really.’ Liz chuckled when the SHO had gone. ‘It’s just sometimes Tom thinks he’s the only doctor on the ward.’
‘How long have they been married?’ Annie asked, carrying her coffee cup across to the small sink.
‘Ten years. They met at the Belfield when they were both junior doctors, and have the cutest eight-year-old twins you could ever hope to meet, John and Emma.’
Jamie was cute, too, Annie thought as she followed Liz out of the staffroom. At least usually he was, but today was the first day they’d been apart since he’d been born. Please, oh, please, let him be enjoying himself, she prayed. Please, let him not be missing me. If he’s unhappy and miserable, I don’t know what I’m going to do. I have to work. We need the money.
‘I’m sorry, what did you say?’ she asked, suddenly realising that Liz was gazing at her expectantly.
‘Only that I was offering you the choice of the century,’ the girl replied, her lips twitching. ‘Do you want me to assist when you examine Mrs Douglas, or would you prefer me to assist while you examine Mrs Gill?’
Annie stared at her suspiciously. ‘I know Mrs Douglas is suffering from acute constipation after her hysterectomy. What’s wrong with Mrs Gill?’
‘Would you believe acute constipation, too?’ Liz chuckled, and Annie laughed.
‘Great choice. Actually, that reminds me of something that happened at my last hospital…’
She came to a halt. Mr Mountain Man was talking to Tom Brooke at the top of the ward. Nothing unusual about that, of course. Patients’ relatives often wanted a quiet word with the specialist registrar, but it was the way Mr Mountain Man was talking to Dr Brooke. Or rather the way Tom was listening to him. Intently, deeply, almost…almost reverentially.
An awful thought crept into Annie’s mind. A thought which was crazy—insane—but…
‘Liz. That man talking to Dr Brooke. Who is he?’
The sister turned in the direction of her gaze and smiled. ‘That’s Gideon Caldwell. Our consultant.’
The man she’d met on the stairs was Obs and Gynae’s consultant? Oh, heavens.
‘Liz, Mr Caldwell’s wife—she…’ Annie swallowed convulsively. ‘She wouldn’t happen to be a patient on the ward, would she?’
‘Good heavens, no. Gideon’s a widower—has been for five years. Actually, it was terribly tragic. She died of ovarian cancer two years after they were married.’
Not married, but a widower. And not just a widower, but a widower whose wife had tragically died of ovarian cancer. Oh, hell.
‘Hey, are you OK?’ Liz continued, her plump face suddenly concerned. ‘You’ve gone a really funny colour.’
Was it any wonder? Annie thought wretchedly. What must he think of her? At best that she was neurotic. At worst…She didn’t even want to think about the worst.
Maybe he wouldn’t recognise her. Maybe she’d look so different in her white coat that he wouldn’t recognise her.
But he did. As he began walking down the ward, she saw him pause in mid-stride and then keep on coming. And, to her horror, Dr Dunwoody joined him.
‘Annie, what’s wrong?’ Liz asked, looking even more worried. ‘You’re not going to faint, are you? Look, maybe you should sit down in the staffroom…’
The staffroom sounded good. The store cupboard sounded even better. Preferably for the next three months.
Oh, get a grip, Annie. You can hardly spend the next three months hiding in the store cupboard whenever Gideon Caldwell does his rounds. No, but she could hide in there today, and by tomorrow—OK, so it was a very long shot—by tomorrow he might have calmed down.
‘I think you’re right, Liz,’ she said, beginning to back her way up the ward. ‘I think I might just sit down for a couple of minutes.’
‘OK, but—Annie, be careful.’
‘It’s probably just something I ate…’
‘No, I mean—Annie, watch out!’
Too late Annie saw what the sister had been trying to tell her—that the afternoon tea trolley was right behind her. Too late she felt her hip catch it and whirled round quickly, but the damage was done. The trolley toppled over, sending its cups and saucers tumbling to the floor with a resounding crash.
For a second she stared in horror at the devastation she’d created, then turned to find Dr Dunwoody glaring at her furiously, Liz looking dumbfounded and Gideon Caldwell…Was he trying very hard not to laugh? It looked as though he was trying very hard not to laugh.
And suddenly it was all too much. The whole awful, rotten day was too much, and to her utter mortification she burst into tears.
‘I’m sorry—so sorry,’ she sobbed, scrabbling wildly in her pocket for a handkerchief. ‘I’ll get a brush and pan—clean it up…’
She didn’t get a chance to. Before she could move a firm hand had grasped her by the elbow and Gideon Caldwell was propelling her out of the ward and down the corridor.
‘Sir, I have to clean it up,’ she protested as he steered her into his consulting room and towards a chair. ‘I can’t just leave—’
‘One of the cleaners will do it.’
‘But it was my fault,’ she said, dashing a hand across her wet cheeks. ‘I should—’
‘Tea or coffee?’ he asked, opening a cupboard and pulling out two mugs.
‘Neither—I can’t. Dr Dunwoody—’
‘Tea or coffee—black or white—with sugar or without?’
He clearly wasn’t going to take no for an answer. He equally clearly wasn’t used to being refused. ‘Coffee, please,’ she said miserably. ‘Black, no sugar.’
‘Good,’ he said with a nod, switching on the kettle. ‘Now we’re getting somewhere.’
Or merely postponing the inevitable, she thought, miserably blowing her nose. The moment when he told her his ward couldn’t afford a clumsy idiot like her. The moment when he fired her. And she couldn’t afford to be fired. Simply couldn’t.
‘Please, I know I should have been watching where I was going—but, please, won’t you give me another chance? I’m not normally so clumsy, and I don’t make a habit of bursting into tears—’
‘I know you don’t,’ he interrupted, spooning some coffee into the mugs. ‘The woman I met on the stairs didn’t strike me as a wimp. A little strange, perhaps, but certainly not a wimp.’
Oh, cripes, he was bypassing that nightmare on the ward and going straight to her even bigger disaster on the stairs. ‘Mr Caldwell—’
‘The name’s Gideon. I’m only Mr Caldwell in front of patients.’
She would have preferred to call him Mr Caldwell. After what she’d said to him earlier, she’d infinitely have preferred to call him Mr Caldwell.
‘What I said to you on the stairs…’ she said, opting out of calling him anything at all. ‘I can only apologise. I made a mistake—’
‘You thought I was hitting on you, didn’t you?’ he observed. ‘You saw my wedding ring, decided my offer to help was actually a thinly disguised invitation to a future affair, and that’s why you chewed my head off.’
Lord, but it sounded dreadful when he put it like that, but she couldn’t deny it, much as she longed to.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘What interests me more is why you should jump to that conclusion,’ he said, holding out a mug of coffee to her, then sitting down. ‘I’ve been racking my brains off and on all day but I can’t for the life of me remember saying anything which might have suggested I was some sort of sexual predator.’
Scarlet colour darkened her cheeks. ‘You didn’t—truly, you didn’t. It was me. I was stupid—overreacted.’
Yes, but why? he wanted to ask. OK, so she was a very pretty girl, but surely married men weren’t constantly harassing her?
Or maybe it wasn’t married men, he suddenly thought. Maybe it was one particular married man who had put those dark shadows under her eyes, made her so thin and pale. To his surprise, the thought angered him. A lot.
Well, of course it did, he told himself. He was the head of a very busy department and if a member of his staff was having problems it was up to him to investigate before the problem affected their work. And it didn’t make a blind bit of difference if the member of staff in question possessed a pair of the largest, bluest eyes he’d ever seen, and short curly hair the colour of sunripened corn. It didn’t.
‘And I know I shouldn’t have said what I did, but if you could just give me another chance.’
The blue eyes were fixed on him, unhappy, pleading, and he gazed at her blankly. What on earth was she talking about? What second chance? And then the penny dropped.
‘Good grief, Annie, I’m not going to fire you.’
‘You’re not?’ she said faintly, and he shook his head.
‘For one thing, Woody says you’re an excellent doctor.’
‘She does?’
‘Mind you, that was before the tea trolley went west so she’s probably revised her opinion by now.’ He’d hoped for a chuckle. He’d hoped at the very least for a small smile, but she simply gazed at him miserably, and he frowned. ‘Annie, I clearly said something to you earlier that deeply upset you, and I do wish you’d tell me what it was.’
What could she say? That it wasn’t what he’d said, but the fact that she’d thought he was married that had made her so angry? He wanted her to explain, and she didn’t want to explain. Her private life was just that. Private.
‘I’m sorry I was so rude to you, and I’m sorry about the tea trolley,’ she muttered. ‘I promise it won’t happen again.’
‘Annie—’
‘Can I go now, please?’
He stared at her in frustration. He couldn’t force her to stay and drink her coffee. Couldn’t hold her hostage until she told him what—or who—had caused those deep shadows under her deep blue eyes. With a sigh, he nodded.
‘Just remember I’m here if you ever need someone to talk to,’ he called after her as she hurried out of his consulting room. ‘No strings—no hidden agenda.’
She didn’t answer him—couldn’t. He’d been a lot kinder to her than she deserved, but she didn’t want him to be kind. She didn’t want him to see her at all. She wanted anonymity. Anonymity was safe. Being noticed wasn’t. She had her son, and now this job. She didn’t want anything or anyone else in her life.
‘Did he fire you?’ Liz asked as soon as she saw her. ‘I didn’t think he would,’ she continued with relief when Annie shook her head. ‘It was an accident, and accidents can happen to anyone, can’t they?’
To me more than most, Annie thought ruefully, then remembered. ‘What did Dr Dunwoody say?’
Liz’s eyes rolled heavenwards. ‘You don’t want to know.’
‘As bad as that?’
‘Just be grateful your shift’s over.’
Annie glanced at the ward clock. Liz was right. It was almost a quarter past four. She had to go. David had offered to collect Jamie from the day-care centre and to look after him until she got home, but the last thing her brother needed was a small boy under his feet. Especially if that small boy was being difficult because he’d had a rotten day.
He hadn’t. In fact, she could scarcely get a word in edgewise while Jamie excitedly told her about the toys he’d played with, the Viking longship he’d made from egg boxes and the lunch he’d enjoyed.
