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‘Maybe he’s got lost between the airport and the Belfield. Maybe he’s taken one look at what passes for spring weather in Britain, and headed straight back to sunny Australia. All I know is—’ Annie bit off the rest of what she’d been about to say, and groaned. ‘Oh, Lord. Why do I know this means trouble?’
Helen turned in the direction of the junior doctor’s gaze, and her heart sank, too. Gideon was striding towards them, looking tight-lipped and harassed, and Tom didn’t look any happier beside him.
‘I’m afraid we’ve got a problem,’ the consultant declared without preamble. ‘Dr Lorimer’s still in London. Apparently Heathrow Airport’s fogbound, and though he’s hoping to make it to the Belfield by mid-afternoon, we’re not to hold our breaths.’
‘And?’ Helen asked with foreboding, sensing there was a very definite ‘and’ hanging in the air, and equally certain she wasn’t going to like it.
‘We’ve got a postpartum haemorrhage on our hands. I’m on my way to it now. Tom’s going to take my morning clinic, but that means—’
‘You want me to take Tom’s,’ Helen finished for him unhappily.
‘Sorry, Helen.’
So was she. She hated taking somebody else’s clinic at short notice. It meant seeing people ‘blind’, with scarcely enough time to read through their notes, but it couldn’t be helped. Emergencies were just that. Unexpected events that nobody could predict.
‘Look, would it help if I stayed on for a couple of hours?’ Annie said, beginning to unbutton her coat. ‘Jamie will be at the day-care centre by now—’
‘What I want is for you to go home and get some sleep,’ Gideon said firmly. ‘You’ve just finished a full night shift.’
‘Yes, but if we’re short-staffed—’
‘Home, Annie. Now.’
‘Three weeks married, and already he’s bossing me about,’ the junior doctor protested, and Helen laughed, only for her laughter to die when Gideon suddenly put his arm around his wife and kissed her.
It wasn’t a passionate kiss—the ward corridor was hardly the place for it—but as the couple drew apart a hard lump formed in her throat.
When was the last time Tom had looked at her the way Gideon was looking at Annie? When was the last time she’d looked at Tom with such obvious love in her eyes?
Good grief, woman, you’ve been married for ten years, not three weeks, a little voice protested at the back of her mind. You can’t expect either you and Tom to be still wandering round in that heady, crazy state of euphoria that couples feel when they first fall in love.
No, her heart whispered, but surely I should be able to remember when he last told me he loved me. Surely I should at least be able to remember when we last made love.
Her heart contracted and, unable to bear looking at the couple any longer, she began walking down the corridor, only to discover Tom had come after her.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, coming to an awkward halt. ‘Did you want to talk to me about your clinic?’
‘What I’m more interested in—more worried about—is you,’ her husband replied. ‘Helen, what is it—what’s wrong?’
He looked anxious and perplexed, but as she stared up at him she also saw that he looked completely exhausted, and a wave of guilt surged through her. He’d been working so hard at the hospital recently—much harder than she had been—and yet here she was, feeling sorry for herself just because they hadn’t made love in ages. And it was as much her fault as his. ‘I’m too tired, Tom’ had become her stock reply to any overture he might have made recently.
‘Nothing’s wrong,’ she said swiftly. ‘I’m just thinking about your poor friend, stuck in London—’
‘But you looked so pale just a minute ago,’ he pressed. ‘Quite white, in fact.’
‘That’ll teach me to forget to put on any make-up.’ She smiled, trying to lighten his mood, but it didn’t work.
‘You don’t hear me when I’m talking to you,’ he continued. ‘You’re tired all the time, and now your colour’s coming and going. Look, perhaps you should let me examine you, give you a thorough check-up.’
‘You just want an excuse to get my clothes off,’ she said, her brown eyes dancing, ‘and you don’t need one. We’re married, remember?’
‘Helen, be serious.’
‘Life’s too short,’ she insisted. ‘Tom, I’ve been thinking—why don’t we hire a babysitter the next time we both have a weekend off? We could head off somewhere romantic like the Isle of Skye. We haven’t been anywhere alone for ages, and—’
‘Do you think you could be hitting an early menopause?’
Her jaw dropped. ‘Do I what?’
‘I know you’re only thirty-two,’ he continued thoughtfully, ‘but it would certainly explain your mood swings, your abstraction and fatigue—’
‘Tom, I am not starting the menopause,’ she snapped. ‘If I look tired, maybe it’s because I am tired. Tired of cooking and cleaning. Tired of constantly tidying up after you and the kids, and tired of being expected to be a super-efficient SHO into the bargain.’
The words were out of her mouth before she could stop them, and she bit her lip. She hadn’t realised she’d been feeling so put upon and taken for granted lately, but now she’d said it she knew it was true. It might have been better, though, if she’d couched her complaint in less confrontational language. Her husband clearly thought so, judging by the dull flush of colour sweeping across his face.
‘Tom—’
‘Sorry to interrupt you, Doctors,’ the department secretary declared, ‘but it’s twenty past nine, and your clinics were supposed to start at nine.’
‘Our clinics will start when we’re ready to start,’ Tom replied, his voice uncharacteristically brusque. ‘Until then I’d be obliged if you’d allow us some privacy.’
Doris looked crushed. She also looked curious. Very curious.
‘That wasn’t the smartest thing in the world to do,’ Helen protested the minute the woman had gone. ‘Doris is the biggest gossip in the hospital, and just because you’re angry with me—’
‘I don’t think this is the time or the place for a discussion about our private life, do you?’ he said stiffly.
Oh, really? she thought. Well, she wasn’t the one who’d started it with all this stupid talk about the menopause. She wasn’t the one who hadn’t been pulling her weight at home.
‘Fine,’ she said, her voice every bit as taut and cold as his. ‘Then perhaps you could consult your diary and pencil me in for a day when it would be convenient.’
And before he could reply she walked into his consulting room and slammed the door shut.
The menopause. He had the nerve to suggest that her tiredness and irritability might be due to the menopause. That would teach her to marry a gynaecologist. One mention of being tired and fed up, and her husband’s mind had immediately gone into diagnostic mode.
Well, his mind could just come right out of diagnostic mode, she decided, sitting angrily down at his desk. She might not have known how aggrieved she’d been feeling, but now that she did know she could see it was time he pulled his weight at home—way past time.
And way past time for her clinic to start, she realised with a muttered oath as she caught sight of the clock on the wall.
‘Forget it, Helen,’ she told herself, pulling the stack of files on the desk towards her and hitting the intercom button. ‘Think about it later, but right now forget it.’
And she managed to until her last patient turned out to be Jennifer Norton.
‘I’m feeling fine, thank you, Doctor,’ Jennifer said as she eased herself up onto the examination table. ‘In fact, now I’ve got over the morning sickness, the only thing I want is for my husband to stop fussing over me.’
Lucky you, Helen thought, but she didn’t say that.
‘You can’t really blame him for fussing,’ she said instead, wrapping the blood-pressure cuff round Jennifer’s arm. ‘You gave us all a big fright back in February.’
Jennifer had. At just eight weeks pregnant she’d been rushed into the department with vaginal bleeding, and as her pregnancy was the result of her fourth IVF treatment the signs weren’t good. Luckily the bleeding had stopped, but Jennifer still had a long way to go.
‘You’re fourteen weeks pregnant now, aren’t you?’ she murmured, watching the blood-pressure gauge.
‘Fourteen weeks gone, only another twenty-six to go.’ Jennifer laughed a little nervously. ‘Is it OK—my blood pressure?’
‘It’s up a little, but that might just be because you knew you were going to be examined today. Unless you’ve been doing something really silly, of course, like redecorating the whole house.’
‘Chance would be a fine thing. If I so much as look at a duster my husband’s down on me like a ton of bricks, saying I’m doing too much, putting the twins at risk.’
‘I’d enjoy the pampering while you can,’ Helen said with more of an edge than she’d intended. ‘Speaking as the mother of twins myself, you’re going to need all the energy you’ve got once they arrive. Twelve bottles a day to sterilise and prepare. Two dirty bottoms to change. Two little bodies that suddenly sprout six arms and legs when you’re trying to get them dressed to go out.’
Jennifer smiled. ‘But I bet you never regretted having them.’
‘On good days, no. On bad days…’ Helen rolled her eyes heavenwards, and Jennifer laughed. ‘OK, I see from your notes that you’ve already had your spina bifida scan, so I just need to take a blood sample and then we’ll do a quick scan to check on how your babies are doing.’
To Jennifer’s clear relief the scan revealed that the twins were the correct size and development for their gestation.
‘I hate having these scans,’ she admitted as she wiped the conductive gel off her tummy and pulled up her trousers. ‘I know they’re necessary, but I’m always terrified you’re going to tell me something’s wrong.’
‘It’s understandable to worry after all you’ve been through,’ Helen said gently. ‘Now, we’d like to see you again in a month’s time—’
‘Another scan?’
‘’Fraid so. Hey, look on the bright side,’ Helen continued as Jennifer groaned. ‘It will give you the chance to see how much your babies have grown, and we’ll be able to check on your blood pressure at the same time.’ She flicked through Tom’s diary. ‘How does the second of May sound?’
‘Fine by me. Brian and I aren’t exactly living a wild social life at the moment. Not that we were ever great party-goers even before I got pregnant,’ Jennifer said ruefully. ‘My husband’s the original stick-in-the-mud, stay-at-home bloke.’
Helen smiled, but when the woman got to her feet she suddenly said on impulse, ‘How long have you been married, Jennifer?’
‘Fifteen years. Cripes, that’s longer than the average sentence for murder, isn’t it? Not that I’ve ever felt like murdering him—at least, not often.’
‘Husbands do drive you mad sometimes, don’t they?’ Helen said with feeling.
‘And how.’ Jennifer nodded. ‘In fact, Brian and I went through a really sticky patch a couple of years ago. I thought he was taking me for granted, he thought our marriage was in a rut.’
Which has got absolutely nothing to do with Jennifer’s medical condition, Helen told herself firmly, so you can’t possibly ask how she solved the problem, but she did, and Jennifer laughed.
‘We talked.’
‘That’s it?’ Helen said in surprise.
‘The best answers are often the simplest.’
‘Yes, but—’
‘Talking clears the air, stops things festering. So does accepting neither of you is perfect. If you don’t accept that, then you end up like one of these weird film stars, constantly flitting from relationship to relationship, in love with the idea of being in love.’
Jennifer was right. It was silly to be envious of Gideon and Annie. Stupid to let little things annoy her. She loved Tom, and he loved her, and at least he’d noticed something was wrong, which was more than could be said for a lot of men. OK, so his explanation might have been totally off the wall as far as accuracy was concerned, but at least he’d noticed.
Which meant she was going to have to apologise, she realised as she showed Jennifer out. Not for what she’d said—she wasn’t going to take a word of that back—but perhaps she could have phrased it better, picked a better time to raise the subject.
She glanced down at her watch and sighed. Time. It was the one thing she never seemed to have enough of, and she didn’t have any spare now. Lunch would be yet another quick sandwich in the staffroom, and then it was on to the ward round.
A ward round that did little to improve her spirits or her temper. She didn’t mind spending forty minutes with Mrs Alexander—heaven knew, the woman had just cause to be worried about her unborn baby after having suffered a deep-vein thrombosis—but she was in no mood for Mrs Foster’s complaint that her hysterectomy stitches wouldn’t have burst if they had been inserted properly.
‘Some days it just doesn’t pay to get up, does it?’ Liz Baker, the sister in charge of the Obs and Gynae ward, observed sympathetically when Helen strode towards her, her cheeks red with barely concealed anger.
‘Tell me about it,’ Helen began. ‘That Mrs Foster—’
‘Is a pain in the butt.’ Liz nodded. ‘I know, and I hate to have to add to your problems but Haematology’s just been on the phone. Apparently one of the blood samples you took this morning isn’t quite right. Look, why don’t you use the phone in the staffroom to call them back?’ Liz continued as Helen groaned. ‘Get yourself a cup of coffee at the same time.’
A cup of coffee sounded good. Something considerably stronger sounded even better, she decided when she left the ward and began walking towards the staffroom, only to see Tom coming towards her.
She came to an uncertain halt. He did, too.
‘I’m sorry.’
They’d spoken in unison, and Tom shook his head. ‘You have nothing to apologise for, but I obviously do. I hadn’t realised I wasn’t pulling my weight at home.’
‘No, but you get called out a lot more at night than I do,’ she replied, more than willing to meet him halfway. ‘And I don’t have all your departmental meetings.’
‘Yes, but I should have noticed you were doing it all. The trouble is I’ve been so busy, and…’ He shook his head. ‘No, that’s no excuse. Being busy is no excuse for not pulling my weight, and I’m sorry.’
‘Hey, we’re not heading for the divorce courts over this or anything,’ she said gently as he stared at her, his grey eyes troubled. ‘All I’m asking for is a little more help around the house and with the children.’
‘You’ve got it,’ he said. ‘Whatever you want, you’ve got.’
She chuckled. ‘That’s dangerous talk, Tom. What if I ask you for the moon?’
His grey eyes softened. ‘If you want the moon I’ll get you the moon. If you want…’ He paused and his face creased into a broad smile of welcome. ‘Mark, you old reprobate, you’ve finally got here.’
Helen glanced over her shoulder, and blinked.
Wow.
Wow, wow and triple wow.
Tom hadn’t been exaggerating when he’d said his friend was handsome. In fact, Tom hadn’t been nearly fulsome enough, she thought, automatically tucking in her tummy and standing up straighter, only to feel slightly silly afterwards because this was Tom’s friend and she didn’t need or want to impress him.
But Mark Lorimer was impressive. Tall, and tanned, with thick black hair, and green eyes. Not a wishy-washy anaemic green, but green like sparkling emeralds, and fringed by quite indecently long black eyelashes.
‘Helen, this is Mark,’ Tom said unnecessarily after he and his friend had indulged in that mutual backslapping routine which heterosexual males always seemed to feel obliged to perform whenever they met a friend they hadn’t seen for years. ‘Mark, this is my wife, Helen.’
‘It’s nice to meet you, Mark,’ she said, holding out her hand. ‘Tom’s talked such a lot about you.’
Which wasn’t exactly true. In fact, her husband hadn’t mentioned him at all until Rachel Dunwoody had taken compassionate leave, but it hardly seemed polite to say so.
‘You’ve come as a bit of a surprise to me, too.’ He grinned, clearly reading her mind. ‘Tom never said he was married, but now that I’ve met you…’ his green eyes swept over her ‘…all I can say is I hope he knows what a very lucky man he is.’
