‘I don’t have a black and blue body. I’ll send Maggie in with something.’
‘You’re worried about your grandpa?’
‘Doesn’t everyone worry about their grandpa? He should be...’ She paused and managed a smile and shrugged. ‘No. I was going to say he should be retired, but sitting in a rocker watching the world go by isn’t his scene. He’ll die in the traces. Except I don’t want it to be...well, not for a very long time yet.’
This was personal. What was she doing, talking personal with a patient? Marc was watching her face—reading her astutely? The thought was unsettling.
If he was unsettling her then all the more reason for her to leave, but she didn’t, and it was Marc who spoke up next.
‘How sick is he?’
She sighed and spread her hands. Why not? She’d come this far. ‘His renal problems aren’t bad enough for dialysis or transplant yet, but they’re worrying,’ she told him. ‘Plus there’s his heart. He had a minor attack last year. We had to fly him to Sydney, where they put in a stent and gave him orders to slow down. Which he refuses to do. He should have gone back last month for a check-up but of course he won’t. And don’t you dare tell him I told you.’
‘I won’t. But you know I’m a cardiologist. Maybe I...’
‘Could examine him before you leave? I’d like to see you try—I can only imagine what he’d say if he thought I was worrying a patient on his behalf.’
‘I’m a colleague.’
‘Says the man with his leg in plaster, an arm in a sling and bruises all over him.’ She forced a smile back onto her face and decided she really did need to go now. The fact that this man was looking at her with empathy, with understanding, with concern...
She didn’t need any of it. She didn’t!
‘Let me help you wrap your parcels,’ he said, and she blinked.
‘What, you?’
‘That’s hardly a gracious response.’ He was sitting up in bed, smiling at her, and she thought he was bruised and battered, he was wearing a generic hospital gown and the man had no business to look as sexy as he did. Or have a smile that twisted something inside her that had no business being twisted.
‘My arm’s sore,’ he told her, watching her with eyes that seemed to see far too much. ‘But it’s not terrible. My leg will stop me hiking for a while but neither of them preclude me from being useful. My friends have gone to St Moritz without me, and I’m at a loose end. So how about loading me up with lists, gifts, wrapping paper and sticky tape? My wrapping might be a bit off, but I can cover things.’
‘I can’t...’
‘Ask me? You weren’t forward in asking for lift chairs.’
‘That’s different. That’s for the hospital.’
‘And this is personal? I don’t think so.’
‘But it is,’ she said seriously. ‘If you knew the pleasure those gifts give me...’
‘Because they’re for other people,’ he said gently. ‘Who gives you a gift, Dr McCrae?’
‘If you saw the selection of chocolates out at Reception...’
‘I’m not talking of chocolates.’
‘They’re more appropriate than an offer to fly me to St Moritz,’ she flung at him and then flushed. ‘No. Sorry, I’m very grateful.’
‘You shouldn’t feel grateful.’
‘I don’t, because I have all the gifts I need.’ He’d been watching her, their gazes almost locked, but now she deliberately lowered her eyes, staring blindly towards the chart at the end of the bed. ‘I...if you really do mean it...about the wrapping...’
‘I really do mean it.’
‘Then I may well take you up on it,’ she told him, still not looking at him. ‘You might still be running on adrenalin now, but I suspect you’ll find you need to sleep tomorrow. Even if you don’t think it, your injuries will take their toll. But if you’re still here on Saturday... Maybe I could put a quarantine sign on your door and tell the nurses you’re desperate for rest. A couple of them will be suspicious, but it’ll give you privacy.’
‘I’d barricade the door with my bed tray,’ he told her solemnly. ‘Secrets R Us. Speaking of which...’
‘Marc, I really do need to go.’ She did, too. This guy was making her feel more and more unsettled.
‘Yeah, but I have a favour to ask,’ he told her. ‘My clothes are torn, filthy and bloodstained. And this gown...’
‘It’s a very nice gown,’ she said and managed to smile. His gaze had met hers again and the twinkle in those dark eyes...
She had to get out of here!
‘It’s a great gown as far as gowns go,’ he told her, the twinkle intensifying. ‘But as far as secrets go... Every time I get out of bed I need to clutch my modesty around me and hope.’
‘There’s nothing under there the nurses haven’t seen a hundred times before.’
‘Dr McCrae...’
‘Yes... Dr Pierce?’
‘Could you please, please, please, see if you can find me some clothes. Some decent pyjamas.’
‘I’m already on it,’ she told him. ‘Kylie—she’s the lass who delivers your meals—has a sister who works in the charity store. I’ve sent her home with a list.’
‘The welfare store!’
‘There’s not a great range on the island,’ she told him. ‘Mostly we buy online. It takes about a month to get here, but if you’re prepared to wait...’
‘So it’s the welfare store or nothing.’ He sounded revolted and she chuckled.
‘You never know. I saw Brenda Larsen drop off her husband’s purple pyjamas only last week. Linus has gone up a size, from enormous to eye-popping. They’re a bit stretched across the tummy but otherwise in perfect condition. If you’re lucky they might still be there.’
‘Elsa...’
She chuckled and threw up her hands. ‘I know, every sense is offended. I’ll send Maggie in with laptop, phone and drugs but you do need to sleep. I’m going.’
‘Before I toss a pillow at you.’
‘I’m gone,’ she said, and was out of there, tugging the door firmly closed behind her.
* * *
He lay and stared at the closed door for a long time.
Maggie didn’t bring the laptop or the phone or the drugs. She would soon, he thought. He’d shown her he’d been irritated, and she’d be making her point. Nurses were a bad breed to get offside. He knew that. As a cardiovascular surgeon he couldn’t get by without the help of his extraordinary team, and he made a point of ensuring they weren’t stressed.
Maggie had been busy, and he’d pushed her too hard to try and get the tablet password reset.
Was the password so important? Elsa had said there were two little boys in the kids’ ward. Did he know what was wrong with them? Did he know how busy the nursing staff were?
He was getting the feeling he knew how busy Elsa was. Too damned busy. Plus she was tired.
Because she’d climbed down into unchartered territory to save him. She’d spent what must have been an almost sleepless night. She’d accompanied him back down the mountain this morning and then operated on his leg.
She had a grandpa with a bad heart, and a community dependent on her as its only full-time doctor.
And he’d been making a fuss about a password.
Because his work was so much more important?
He thought suddenly back to medical school, to the first of the numerous sessions where specialists outlined their roles, where students were expected to think seriously about which path they’d take.
The cardiovascular surgeon had been impressive. He remembered the talk clearly. ‘We’re at the cutting edge of technology, saving lives which even ten years ago would have been lost. We demand the highest level of intellectual and physical skill. I believe it’s the peak of medical expertise—exciting, challenging and, yes,
immensely lucrative. Only the best of you need think of applying and only the best of the best will make the grade.’
That was for him, he’d thought. Studying was a breeze. Cutting edge surgery excited him. As for lucrative...who didn’t want lucrative? With the wealth he’d inherited from his parents he hardly needed it, but still...
But Elsa...
He thought back to that same lecture, the small, greying man who’d represented family doctors.
‘We’re not cutting edge,’ he’d said quietly. ‘In most cases I confess we’re not all that lucrative, although most of us make a respectable living. But we do save lives. Not as dramatically as my compatriots on this panel, no life-saving heart or brain surgery for us. But we find and refer, and along the way we pick up the pieces of people’s lives and we do our best to patch them together. We try to stop the dramas before they start. Most of us have a community we care for deeply, and we’ll do anything for them. A mum with postnatal depression...a coal miner with a cough he thinks is nothing...that’s who we’re here for and it gives us just as much satisfaction as our more esteemed peers.’
Marc had hardly listened.
His father had been a neurologist. His mother had been a brilliant medical researcher. He was expected to be bright, and bright young doctors followed bright young professions.
They never saw mums with postnatal depression. They never saw a guy with a cold and pushed him to have a chest X-ray.
They never sat up late on the nights before Christmas and wrapped twenty or thirty parcels for needy locals.
He thought of his mother, who’d said she’d loved this island. Maybe she had, but she’d only come here to climb. She’d never have wrapped thirty gifts for people she hardly knew.
She’d been as selfish as he was.
Selfish? The thought made him wince. Was he? Dammit, he worked hard. He made a difference. Not everyone could be a hero.
Like Elsa.
There was a knock on the door and Maggie bustled in, her arms full of gear for him, her face set in prim disapproval.
‘Dr McCrae’s sent you the telephone and the laptop. You can use our phone tonight but she’s organising Jason to see you tomorrow. There’s also medication, but she says you don’t want it. I dare say you’ll try and sleep and then be asking me for it in a couple of hours when I’m busy with something else.’
‘Are you busy?’ he asked, but a sharp look was all he got for his pains.
‘It’s looking to be a big night.’ She sniffed.
‘Problems?’
‘Nothing that need concern you.’
‘I’m a doctor,’ he said gently, probing to get past antagonism. ‘If absolutely necessary I could get up and help.’
That produced a snort.
‘I mean it.’
‘You might well,’ she snapped as she set her gear down on his tray. ‘But a lot of help you’d be. One of our pregnant mums has just come in threatening to deliver, and she’s only thirty-two weeks. The smoke on the mainland means she can’t be evacuated, so Elsa has her hands full trying to keep that baby aboard. What use is a cardiologist with a broken leg?’
‘No help at all,’ he said humbly. ‘Maggie...’
‘Yes.’ She tugged up the blood pressure machine and started taking his obs.
‘Could you please give me the painkillers Elsa’s written up?’
‘She says you don’t want them until later.’
‘I didn’t think I did,’ he admitted. ‘But it’s true I’m hurting now, and if I take them then I’ll go to sleep and won’t need to disturb you later.’
She fixed him with a look of distrust. ‘Why the change of heart?’
‘Because I’m starting to realise that I need to lie here and be no trouble to you at all.’
‘If you need us, we’ll come,’ she said shortly. ‘Ignoring pain, ignoring any other worrying symptom might lead to more drama.’
‘Then I won’t ignore pain or any other worrying symptom,’ he promised. ‘But if it’s humanly possible, for all our sakes I will cause no more drama.’
CHAPTER SEVEN
ON FRIDAY HE SLEPT. Which infuriated him. Every time he woke he found another two or three hours had drifted by. He’d stir when the nurses came to do his obs, or when his meals turned up. He was extraordinarily hungry, but meals simply seemed to make him sleepier. Jason arrived and set up his new phone and he managed to stay awake for that. Once he was back online he checked his hospital messages, but none of them seemed worth the effort of replying. He thought about opening his files on the borrowed laptop and doing some work, but that was as far as he got. Someone dropped in pyjamas. Getting rid of his hospital gown seemed important. He donned the boxer shorts but the T-shirt was too much trouble.
He slept.
Mid-afternoon he woke and found Elsa at the end of his bed, checking his chart. She smiled as she saw him stir.
‘Excellent,’ she told him. ‘Your body’s had a tough time. It needs sleep to recover and it’s taking it. Told you so.’
‘You don’t need to sound so smug about it.’
‘I’m enjoying the sensation of telling a specialist what’s what,’ she said, grinning. ‘Allow me my small satisfaction, Dr Pierce. But all’s good here. You can go back to sleep.’ And she was gone.
Confused, disconcerted, still half asleep, there seemed little choice but to obey, but adding to his confusion was the way Elsa’s smile stayed with him while he slept.
Some time in the long distant past, when he was little more than a toddler, he’d had a nanny he’d loved. He had fuzzy memories of being ill and his nanny bustling in and out of the room, sitting on his bed, reading to him, cuddling him.
For some strange reason, Elsa was providing the same comfort. For over twenty-four hours he’d been truly terrified, and the echoes of that terror were still with him. So he slept, but the vision of Elsa stayed with him—Elsa somewhere in the hospital, Elsa checking his obs, Elsa just...here.
It made him feel needy, and he was not needy.
But maybe he was.
He remembered the day that same nanny had left, how useless his tears had been. He’d long got over the idea of needing anyone, but at the moment he seemed to have no choice. He seemed to need to take comfort from her presence. He’d go back to being solitary—of course he would; nothing else made sense—but Elsa’s smile stayed with him as he slept.
It helped.
* * *
Friday might have passed in a sleepy haze for Marc, but for Elsa it was far different. Her pregnant patient seemed to have settled for now, but she was still uneasy about her. She checked and checked, and worried and worried. She wanted her evacuated, but smoke haze was still a problem. Meanwhile she had so much work it seemed to be coming out of her ears.
Late at night she did a final round and found Marc awake, but she was too rushed to stay for more than a few moments.
‘You’re looking good,’ she told him. ‘Great. Sorry, Marc, but I need to go.’
‘It’s nine at night. Aren’t you done yet?’
‘I have a mum bringing in a kid with an ear infection. Why she waited until nine at night to call me... Okay, I know, she was hoping it’d clear by itself because she’s so busy. I get it.’
‘I wish I could help.’
‘Just don’t throw out a fever. Go back to sleep.’
‘What about your Christmas gifts,’ he demanded as she backed out of the door. ‘Wrapping? Have you done them yet?’
No. She hadn’t. She had to find time. Somehow.
‘Bring them to me,’ he ordered.
‘Really?’ She was astonished he’d even remembered.
‘Please,’ he told her. ‘I’ve slept all day. By tomorrow I’ll be bored to snores.’
‘You’re recuperating.’
‘So I need therapy. Bri
ng me what I need.’
She stared at him for a long moment. He was propped up in bed, rumpled with sleep. His arm was in a sling but he’d abandoned the hospital nightwear—he was now wearing decent boxers, but his chest was bare. He was wearing a five o’clock shadow. His dark eyes were smiling and he looked...
Like she had to back out of here now.
‘Gifts,’ he said, his voice becoming gentle, and she wondered if he knew what highly inappropriate thoughts had just slammed into her head.
‘G...gifts,’ she managed to echo. ‘I’ll bring them in the morning.’
She fled.
* * *
Saturday morning—Christmas Eve—she was up at five. By nine she felt as if she’d done a whole day’s work, but there was more than a day’s work still ahead of her.
Mid-morning she checked on Marc, to find him propped up in bed waiting for her and demanding his ‘therapy’.
‘Okay, you asked for it,’ she managed and half an hour later his room was crowded with gifts, scissors, paper, cards, list and tape. She put the Do Not Disturb sign outside his door and left him staring in some bemusement at what he’d let himself in for.
At midday she snagged his lunch from the kitchen, plus sandwiches for herself, and went to see how he was getting on.
She found him surrounded by a sea of wrapping paper, with a pile of oddly wrapped gifts beside the bed.
He had a geranium on the bed beside him and he was glowering at it.
‘Wow,’ she said, surveying the chaos from the door. ‘This is fantastic. How many have you done?’
‘Twenty-six,’ he said darkly. ‘And done is a very loose word. Wrapping doesn’t seem to be my forte.’
She grinned. ‘So I’m guessing you always get your nurses to do your dressings?’
‘Always.’
‘No matter.’ She perched on the foot of his bed and picked up his chart. ‘I’m an appalling wrapper too, so the islanders won’t notice any difference.’ She took a moment while she read the chart, and then she beamed. ‘Good boy, no surprises here.’
‘Tell me about your pregnant patient?’ he asked, and she screwed up her nose.
Mistletoe Kiss with the Heart Doctor Page 8