‘So, what’s he like?’ Madison asked. ‘How did you meet him?’
At the school playground, of all places.’ Helen giggled. ‘He’s a single dad. He just moved to the area. His wife died. Ages ago,’ Helen added hastily. ‘So he’s got no baggage.’
‘My husband died ages ago,’ Madison reminded her, ‘and I’m still paying excess.’
‘But you’re so-o complicated,’ Helen teased.
‘If you’re over thirty, you’ve got baggage,’ Madison said dryly. ‘So, does this single dad with zero baggage have a name?’
‘Matthew.’
‘A job?’
‘He’s a carpenter.’
‘How many kids?’
‘One.’ Helen gave a tiny shudder. ‘Thank God. Imagine if he had triplets?’
‘Perish the thought,’ Madison said, pulling a face. ‘So where’s your man taking you?’
‘I don’t know.’ Helen beamed. ‘He just said to wear smart-casual.’
‘Which could mean anything,’ Madison warned. ‘You should have seen what Guy turned up in today. Jeans, sneakers and a T-shirt. And when I told him to get changed, all he did was put on a name badge.’ To her utter indignation Helen started to laugh. ‘It’s not funny,’ Madison snapped.
‘Oh, but it is.’ Helen giggled. ‘Given what a stickler you are for uniforms!’
‘I am not,’ Madison replied hotly. ‘I just like to look smart.’ Helen raised a very knowing eyebrow, which Madison badly wanted to ignore but found she couldn’t. ‘It makes the patients feel more secure to see a well-presented staff member. A doctor rocking up to the bedside in jeans hardly inspires confidence.’
‘Well, if I were a patient, I wouldn’t give a damn what the doctor was wearing,’ Helen mused. ‘So long as he knew what he was doing and could actually manage to look me in the eye and talk to me on occasions. There are plenty of doctors in thousand-dollar suits with the most appalling bedside manner.’
‘Perhaps,’ Madison reluctantly conceded.
‘Is he good-looking?’ Helen asked, and Madison wished she hadn’t. In fact, she dearly wanted this conversation to be over.
‘I guess,’ Madison answered tartly. ‘If you like the “just got out of bed and bypassed the shower” look.’
‘Oh, but I do.’ Helen giggled. ‘Is he single?’
‘I didn’t ask.’ Madison bristled. ‘But from what Gerard told me, I’d assume so. He’s completely irresponsible—apparently he’d only commit to six months with the department.’
‘Hardly a hanging offence,’ Helen said laughingly, but Madison didn’t join in.
‘Gerard told me that when he appointed him, Guy had spent most of his medical career travelling the world, gaining experience. Which is fine and everything, but it hardly paints him as the most reliable of men!’
‘He must be rich, though, if he can afford to turn down a decent job.’
‘Money isn’t everything,’ Madison said tartly.
‘He sounds perfectly lovely,’ Helen sighed. ‘Maybe we can double date.’
‘I’m fully booked this century,’ Madison snapped. And given Helen wasn’t going to move, she made herself busy, slicing cucumber for the salad and putting on a pan of water for the rice. Even though the conversation had ended a good couple of minutes ago, Madison found herself reviving it. ‘Believe me, Guy Boyd would be the last person I’d date.’
‘Perhaps.’ Helen smiled, not rising to Madison’s rather brittle tone. ‘But have you ever thought of getting back out there?’
‘Out where?’ Madison asked, knowing perfectly well what Helen meant but deliberately stalling her.
‘Dating, Madison,’ Helen said. ‘It’s been five years since Mark died…’
‘And it’s taken me nearly all of them to get back on my feet,’ Madison pointed out. ‘I used the words “free spirit” affectionately when I first met Mark,’ Madison said. ‘I thought it was fun to follow your heart, live for today. I really believed Mark when he said that tomorrow would take care of itself. But unlike Mark, having a baby made me grow up, having a baby meant that I did start thinking about tomorrow…’
‘Madison, I know you’ve been hurt…’ Standing up, Helen checked the door was closed. ‘Heaven knows, you’ve got every reason to be wary, but there are some good guys out there.’
‘How do you know that?’ Madison’s words were as confused as they were angry. ‘I’m doing OK. Emily and I are doing just fine by ourselves!’ She shook her head, not at all ready to go there after such an emotionally charged day. ‘Can we drop it?’
‘Sure,’ Helen said kindly, but her tiny sigh told Madison that she’d have loved to have carried on with the conversation, would have loved to have pushed a little more. After a moment’s hesitation, a moment to wait and see if Madison was going to add anything further, Helen gave in and headed over to the fridge. She pulled out some chicken, chatting about something Richard had said to Emily. But as grateful as Madison was for the change of subject, inside she felt jolted and uneasy, and it wasn’t just to do with Gerard’s death but with the pace of her own life. The fact that Helen, after the appalling marriage she’d been through, after swearing off men for the next century at least, could even contemplate taking up the baton and resuming the race was beyond Madison’s comprehension.
Helen was moving on with her life, suggesting even that Madison do the same.
Only she truly wasn’t ready.
CHAPTER THREE
‘IT’S sports uniform today!’ Emily said accusingly as she eyed her uniform, crisply laid out on the sofa.
‘Which is what I’ve put out for you,’ Madison answered, depositing a glass of fruit juice on the coffee-table for her daughter. She started applying her foundation as she made a speedy exit towards the bathroom.
‘You gave me stripy socks!’ Emily’s words stopped Madison in her tracks, her un-mascara’d eyelashes blinking at the simple but unusual mistake. ‘They have to be plain white socks, but these have got a red stripe around the top!’
‘Then I’ll get you some plain white ones,’ Madison answered, annoyed at herself for that simple slip-up. The morning routine was usually written in stone, but the morning wasn’t normally preceded by a fitful night spent tossing and turning. To Madison’s shame, it hadn’t just been Gerard’s sudden death that had kept her staring at the ceiling into the small hours, but Helen’s rather pointed comments. Despite the irrefutable evidence, Madison resisted the thought—was it the very new, very inappropriate consultant who had caused her sudden brush with insomnia?
He unsettled her.
Heading into Emily’s bedroom on autopilot, she opened the top drawer in the chest and pulled out a pair of neatly folded white socks without even having to look. But she did. She stood and looked, with her fingers still massaging the foundation into her cheek, at the rows of neatly folded white socks, the perfectly ironed knickers. Her eyes then darted around the room, taking in the neatly ordered bookshelves, the already made bed, and, instead of drawing comfort from it, it unnerved her.
‘Here!’ Madison said, handing Emily the socks, wondering, not for the first time either, what other five-year-old would even have noticed a single red stripe.
Wondering, not for the first time, if maybe, just maybe, Helen was right and it was time to loosen up a touch.
Back in the bathroom Madison stared at her reflection in the mirror, taking in the neutral foundation, no doubt to be accentuated by the neutral blusher and lipstick that was about to follow—years’ worth of order and restraint summed up in her make-up bag.
And for what?
‘Morning, Madison!’ A cheerful wave from Max, a paramedic, coupled with a roll of his eyes told Madison that he wasn’t overly concerned with the condition of the patient on the stretcher. Glancing at the large grimacing face of the woman, clutching her stomach and writhing in pain, Madison immediately understood why. ‘Is there anyone I can hand this patient over to?’
‘Won’t I do?’
He was joking, sort of. As an NUM, the department was her responsibility and it didn’t allow much time for patient contact—unless there was a complaint to deal with! And patient contact was something Madison sorely missed.
‘Sorry.’ Alanna, one of the RNs, dashed over. ‘I’ve got this, Madison. I was just taking a patient up to the ward. You can go back to whatever you were doing.’
And even though she undoubtedly meant it with the best intentions, inwardly Madison bristled. Alanna had actually gone for the NUM position as well, and even though she had insisted there were no hard feelings when Madison had been given the job, Madison wasn’t entirely convinced that was the case. Alanna wanted to be filling Madison’s shoes, but perversely sometimes Madison wanted to be wearing Alanna’s. Holding on firmly to the casualty card, Madison forced a smile. ‘I’ll take this patient. Why don’t you go and have your coffee-break, Alanna?’
It came as no surprise when her smile wasn’t returned.
‘We got the call as a Julie Bartram, collapsed at the petrol station,’ Max said. ‘However, when we arrived we found it to actually be Judith Baker, forty-eight years old, with a past history of multiple abdominal operations and—’
‘I know Judith’s history.’ Madison gave a slightly wry smile. Practically every emergency department in the state of Victoria knew Judith’s history, along with a few interstate hospitals she had frequented. Judith had a rare and complicated disease that went by the rather grand name of Munchausen’s syndrome, a baffling and extremely frustrating condition whereby the patient invented dramatic symptoms in an effort to get themselves admitted to hospital, often enduring unnecessary and painful procedures. And Judith had endured plenty. Listed in most emergency rooms, she often went under different names, but invariably she would be recognised or her story would alert the staff that this wasn’t a genuine patient and after a few enquiries the truth would come out…
‘I’m really sick, Sister,’ Judith gasped. ‘My stomach’s killing me. I really mean it this time.’
‘Let’s get her into cubicle two, guys, please,’ Madison directed, but Max gave her a startled look, clearly expecting Judith to be sent, as was more usual, to the waiting room.
‘Cubicle two?’ Max checked, shrugging when Madison gave a swift nod. She waited till they’d settled Judith on the gurney and then followed them outside when Max beckoned.
‘She called for an ambulance three times over the weekend. She’s got three bottles of painkillers in her bag, each one under a different name!’
‘I don’t doubt that she has,’ Madison said. ‘She’s probably been “doctor shopping”, Max, but you know that I’m far from a soft touch. I’ve sent Judith to the waiting room on many occasions, even walked her out of the department myself when I felt she was playing games, but today I don’t like the look of her.’
‘Fair enough,’ Max agreed, then his tone shifted. ‘Do you know when the funeral…?’
‘Not yet.’ Madison responded crisply to the question that everyone was asking today. ‘As soon as I hear I’ll post a notice in the staffroom and I’ll ring the ambulance depot.’
‘It’s gonna be big,’ Max said. ‘A lot of people will want to pay their respects. Will you be doing a reading or talking about him?’
‘Me?’ Madison gave a slightly startled look.
‘Well, you’ve worked with him for ages, you both set up this place…’
‘I’m sure there are far more relevant people in Gerard’s life to talk about him,’ Madison responded, then swiftly changed the subject. ‘I’d better get back to Judith.’
‘No one believes me,’ Judith said as Madison started to undress her. ‘They all think I’m putting it on.’
‘You understand why they think that, don’t you?’ Madison replied. ‘Judith, you’ve abused the system so many times, we’ve had this conversation on numerous occasions—you begging to be believed, insisting that this time there really is something wrong, only to find out a few days or weeks and heaven knows how many tests or operations later that there was, in fact, nothing wrong.’
‘You don’t believe me.’ Judith shivered. ‘Look at me. Surely you can tell that this time I’m not pretending?’
But could she? Madison stared down at her patient, at the pale brown hair with grey roots that needed retouching, at the beads of sweat on her forehead. She felt the racing pulse beneath her fingertips and truly didn’t know—Judith had come in in the same condition before, on one occasion she had even injected herself with insulin to induce similar symptoms, with near fatal consequences.
Judith knew as much as Madison did about hospitals. More perhaps. She knew how to fake her symptoms, had taken drugs to produce symptoms, had lied over and over again to get to the top of the list, had called more ambulances than Madison had ever called taxis, and though her games had seemed to have stopped for a while, it would seem she was up to her old tricks, giving false identities to unwitting doctors to obtain prescriptions, and calling ambulances at will.
But even though the evidence was stacked against Judith, Madison actually had a lingering fear that, after all this time, Judith’s pain could be genuine.
‘You’ve lied today, Judith, and yesterday, too…’ Holding up the bottles of medicine Max had handed her, Madison showed them to her patient. ‘These drugs have been prescribed from doctors hundreds of kilometres away, so how can you expect me to believe that you’re telling the truth?’
‘I tried over and over to get seen locally using my own name. I was in agony and no one believed me, so I knew I had to go where they didn’t know me.’
‘So you got up to your old tricks?’ Madison asked, but it was entirely without bitterness. Her brow furrowed as she tried to assess her patient, tried to imagine the desperate measures a woman like Judith would go to to get seen by a doctor.
‘I had no choice,’ Judith begged. ‘I was in agony, my stomach was killing me.’ Her voice was rising in hysteria, her hands clutching Madison’s, begging her to believe her—again.
‘Judith, I’m going to do your observations.’ Madison’s voice in contrast was calm. She attached Judith to the blood-pressure machine, checked her pulse and temperature, and noted that it was low. But Judith’s temperature had been low before, courtesy of a plug of wax in her ear to give an abnormal reading. In the past blood tests had revealed abnormally high levels of caffeine in her system to produce a racing pulse. She’d once even strategically taped stones to her body to give on X-ray the appearance of renal colic. Over and over Judith had abused the system, over and over she’d begged the staff to believe that this time she really meant it, that this time she wasn’t crying wolf. And she’d been believed.
‘I’m going to get a doctor to see you, Judith, but you need to be honest. You need to say exactly what has happened. Don’t try to make things up or exaggerate your symptoms—just tell the truth.’
Stepping out of the cubicle, Madison scanned the department, instantly disregarding two of the more junior doctors. Whether or not Judith was playing games, an experienced doctor was needed, and the only one in view right now was Guy Boyd, who was carefully examining an X-ray of a child’s elbow, his long fingers tracing the outline, then turning it around to get a different angle. Even though he was the obvious choice, because of what had happened yesterday Madison didn’t want to go to him. She wanted to avoid contact with him as much as possible, embarrassed that she had let down her guard a touch. For some reason he made her feel exposed and vulnerable, and for a woman as in control as Madison, that wasn’t something she wanted to feel.
But the patient had to come first and right now Guy was the man for the job.
‘Where,’ Guy asked dryly as Madison joined him at the viewing box, ‘did patients go before this place opened? I can’t believe we’re full.’
‘I was thinking the same,’ Madison admitted. ‘It’s the same with shopping centres.’
‘Shopping centres?’
‘A new one opens and within a couple of days the lines at the checkout are full, there are people spilling out of cafés. I always wonder where they did their shopping previously.’ She was chatting idly while jotting down her own observations about Judith, being very careful to be objective with her findings, to push aside the appalling history of the patient. ‘Can you see a patient for me?’
‘Actually, I’m seeing five at the moment.’ Guy grimaced. ‘Is it anything very urgent?’
‘I’m not sure,’ Madison admitted. Guy turned away from the X-ray he was looking at, hearing the concern in her voice. ‘Judith’s particularly difficult. She was one of the regulars at my old hospital, and a few more besides.’ She held out the card for him to see if he recognised the name but Guy shook his head.
‘Unless she’s been to a hospital in India recently, I won’t recognise her…’
‘I wouldn’t put it past Judith,’ Madison joked weakly.
‘Is she a hospital-hopper?’
‘One of the best,’ Madison said, glad that he had got the drift. ‘No doubt the receptionist at my old hospital is having to pull out a wheelbarrow to send over her old notes. She’s had multiple operations, numerous admissions, she’s made a complete fool of me on more than one occasion and she may be about to again, but…’
‘You don’t think that she’s faking it this time?’
‘I don’t know,’ Madison admitted. ‘I just can’t judge it with Judith, but I do believe that she’s scared, and she’s actually admitted that she’s lied to get seen over the last few days. I’ve probably just had the most honest conversation ever with her, but whether this is just an even more elaborate scheme of hers to drag us in, I can’t say. I think she needs a senior doctor to look at her.’ Madison glanced over at Brad, an exceptionally eager intern. ‘She’d wipe the floor with him.’ Madison sighed. Looking back, she was slightly startled to see Guy smiling at her observation—not the rather mocking smile he had worn when he’d put his ID badge on yesterday, but a kinder, gentler smile that lit up his eyes, made him, for a moment, look as young as Brad. Madison was startled at the effect it had on her. Guy Boyd embodied everything she avoided in a man.
Needed: Full-Time Father (Medical Romance) Page 4