A Doctor to Heal Her Heart

by Annie Claydon

  As she rose, he caught her hand, leaning forward to press his lips to her fingers. ‘It’ll mend, Sam.’

  She wasn’t so sure about that. But sharing her fears on that score wasn’t going to help. ‘Yeah. Everything mends.’ She gave him a hug and padded back upstairs.

  * * *

  Euan stared up at the stars, asking silent questions that they were not qualified to answer. One thing he knew. He’d asked too much of Sam, right from the beginning. He’d shared all the most difficult aspects of his work with her, practically forced her to confront her most painful memories, and now he was getting far too involved and greedy for her time.

  Euan had promised her nothing, and she’d given him everything. He’d asked her to stay, and she’d stayed. What had he been thinking? That somehow just loving her would chase the nightmares away?

  He needed to take a bit more responsibility. Give her a bit more space. He had a feeling that those were just the first two entries on a very long list, but they were a start. Picking up the rug that was draped over the back of his chair, he wandered into the sitting room, arranging the cushions on the sofa and lying down. Tomorrow he would do better.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  SAM HAD MEANT to stay awake for him, curl up in his arms and kiss him before they both slept, but she was too tired. She woke in the morning alone.

  She found him in the living room, sprawled on the sofa and fast asleep. When she laid her hand on his he didn’t wake, but his fingers curled around hers in an automatic, sleeping reaction.

  She made coffee and warmed the croissants they’d bought yesterday. Put it all onto a tray and carried it into the living room. Then put on a smile and woke him.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ A touch of gentle reproof.

  ‘Hmm? Fell asleep...’

  ‘Right.’ And the throw from the conservatory had just happened to find its way through here and arranged itself and the sofa cushions into a makeshift bed. ‘You didn’t think that you might do that upstairs? With me?’

  He didn’t seem to want to discuss it. Rubbing his eyes, he focussed on the tray. ‘Breakfast. That’s nice, thank you.’

  She plumped herself down into an armchair. Suddenly the sofa was off limits. ‘Are you working today?’

  ‘Yes. I’m on duty at the clinic until four. Why don’t you stay here?’

  Something was up. But if he wasn’t going to tell her what it was, she wasn’t going to stay here, staring at the walls and wondering. ‘No, I’ll come with you. I’ll bring my laptop and find a quiet corner, there’s plenty to be getting on with.’

  ‘I’ll be pretty busy.’

  ‘I won’t distract you.’

  ‘You distract me wherever you are.’ He relented suddenly, a warm, lazy smile crawling across his face. ‘I’ll clear out of my surgery and you can sit in there.’

  * * *

  Working seemed to steady him. A morning spent with other people’s hopes and fears instead of his own, and Sam’s bright smile whenever he entered his surgery to fetch something, almost made Euan believe that his doubts were just night shadows, burned off by the heat of the sun. He’d managed to keep two minor emergencies and an embryonic crisis away from her notice already, and was feeling reasonably pleased with himself.

  ‘I’m going to fetch some lunch.’ She caught him as he hurried through the reception area. ‘What would you like?’

  She was holding a list, obviously intent on making herself useful. Sam never quite seemed to get the message that people might want her for herself. Perhaps he should have been a little clearer when he’d told her all the things he loved about her. Not done it before, during or after their lovemaking, when there might be other things to think about. Made a list, so that she could study it later.

  ‘I’m fine, thanks. I’ll have something later.’

  ‘Okay.’ She grinned at him, planting a kiss on his cheek, and then she was gone.

  When his phone vibrated in his pocket fifteen minutes later, Euan was already deep in conversation with Ian about the next counselling session, and almost didn’t answer it. But when he saw that it was Sam, he signalled an apology and accepted the call.

  ‘Sam...?’

  ‘Come out here quickly. I need help.’

  Her tone said it all. Forget about everything else, this was important.

  When he flung open the entrance door, she almost toppled inside at his feet, along with the limp body of a man. ‘They dumped him. I saw them...’

  ‘Okay. Let me see.’ The man had flopped over onto the floor inside the doorway, and Sam scrambled out of the way to allow Euan to get to him.

  ‘Look at his lips, they’re blue. I don’t think he’s breathing.’ Her voice was steady, calm. Saving the emotions for later.

  ‘Right...’ Close up the man was little more than a boy, and Euan recognised him as Damien. Dumped by his so-called friends when it had looked as if he was in trouble. Euan had seen it before, but this never failed to shock him.

  Ian was dealing with the hubbub inside, clearing everyone back from the reception area. Damien was making gurgling noises as his body tried to breathe despite the drugs in his system and Euan rolled him onto his side, clearing his airways.

  ‘You know him?’

  ‘Yep. Heroin user.’

  ‘What do you need?’

  Euan pulled his keys from his pocket. ‘My medical bag. It’s locked in the surgery.’

  ‘I know.’ She grabbed the keys from his hand and was gone.

  He’d barely started resuscitation procedures before Sam was back, pushing his medical bag towards him, pulling the zip open. When he reached for his stethoscope she was already holding it out towards him.

  ‘Thanks.’ It was little enough recognition of her presence of mind, but that would have to wait until Damien was more responsive. Quickly, Euan examined him, found the supply of nalaxone he always carried with him and prepared the syringe. When he repeated the dose aloud, more out of habit than anything, he was vaguely aware that Sam had pulled a pen from her pocket and written it on her hand.

  He heard her gasp when he plunged the needle through Damien’s clothes into his deltoid muscle. Seconds ticked by. Nothing.

  He was going to have to try again. Euan repeated the procedure, and waited. Thirty seconds to find out whether some mother was going to lose her son. To stop a young man dying in front of Sam’s eyes.

  The effect was almost immediate, and he felt Sam jump back in surprise behind him. A great gasp of air, and Damien jolted into a sitting position, staring wildly around him.

  ‘You’re okay. You’re at the Driftwood Clinic. You overdosed.’ Orientate him as quickly as possible. Euan left out the bit about having been dumped on the doorstep.

  ‘What...?’ Damien lashed out, and Euan instinctively threw out a hand to shield Sam, forgetting to duck himself and getting a blow to the jaw for his pains.

  ‘You’re at the Driftwood Clinic. You overdosed.’ Sam had caught hold of his flailing arm and was struggling to stop Damien from doing any more damage. ‘You’re okay. Let’s get you inside.’

  Ian was there to help now and together they got Damien to his feet. Behind him, he could hear Sam asking the passers-by who had gathered outside the open doorway to stay back. Moving them away from the little scene of life and death that had just been played out. She was too late. Damien caught sight of them and shouted a couple of curses in their direction.

  ‘Damien. Enough!’ Ian’s firm voice cut through the rumble of outrage.

  ‘Should just let him die...’ A low voice came from somewhere and Euan ignored it. Damien started to struggle, and Ian propelled him inside, while Euan picked up his medical bag.

  He heard Sam’s voice behind him, cold with anger. ‘Next time you’re hurt, be thankful that there are
people who don’t care who you are and what you’ve done and who’ll help you anyway.’

  Euan couldn’t help a grin. She was fire, and commitment, and compassion. Sam had his back, and he couldn’t deny that it was a good feeling.

  She followed them inside, closing the door quietly behind them. Damien was on his feet, restless and aggressive, and Ian was shepherding him through to one of the counselling rooms. At last Euan had a moment for Sam.

  ‘Is he going to be all right now?’

  ‘We’ll need to keep a close eye on him. The nalaxone I gave him has counteracted the effects of the opiate drugs he’s taken, and put him straight into withdrawal. He’s hurting pretty bad...’

  ‘And you?’ She brushed his jaw with her fingers.

  He’d almost forgotten about that. ‘I’m fine. One of the hazards of the job.’

  She nodded. ‘What will you do now?’

  ‘We’ll keep him here as long as we can. The nalaxone has a half life of an hour or so, and he may start getting symptoms of an overdose again when it wears off. And we need to stop him from taking anything more...’

  The sound of Damien’s voice, raised in outrage, came from upstairs. ‘I’d better see if Ian needs some help.’

  ‘Sure. Go. Will you need anything else from your bag, or shall I lock it up again?’

  Euan grinned at her. ‘No. I think a dose of sense is what Damien needs most at the moment.’

  She laughed, maybe a little too loudly and a little too long. The stress was beginning to show, and Euan wanted to get her out of here, take her somewhere where she could wind down. He couldn’t. They were already stretched, and Damien was going to need watching for a while.

  ‘Okay. I’ll let you get on.’

  ‘Make some tea. Go for a walk...’ The suggestions were painfully inadequate but he was going to have to leave Sam to deal with this herself. ‘Where’s Liz?’

  ‘She went home at lunchtime.’ She shot him one of her no-nonsense looks, waving him away. ‘I’m going out to find the sandwiches. I dropped them in the street when I saw what was happening. And I might pop in to see Juno this afternoon.’

  ‘Juno?’ If he had to pick someone to keep Sam company this afternoon, Juno’s sometimes abrasive approach to the world wouldn’t have been his first choice. ‘Are you sure—?’

  She silenced him with a flip of her fingers. Euan had got it wrong again. She didn’t want sympathy, or to cry on someone’s shoulder. She wanted... Sometimes he didn’t know what she wanted.

  ‘Juno’s making a piece for me, remember? She wants to get a feel for what I want, and I could do with waving my arms about a bit at the moment. I’ll be back here by four.’

  Fair enough. Euan capitulated to the inevitable and dropped a kiss on her lips. That, at least, he could do.

  * * *

  Thinking about this didn’t get him anywhere. But not thinking about it, while he engaged in the difficult task of calming Damien down and making arrangements for him to be supervised overnight, had made everything much clearer. Euan was silent as he strolled next to Sam back to his house, because he knew what he had to do.

  She put her laptop down on the kitchen table, and picked up the kettle to fill it. ‘Something to drink?’

  ‘No. Sam, come here, will you?’ He sat down, pulling a chair out for her. Not too close. He couldn’t do this if she got too close.

  She sat down. ‘What’s up?’

  Maybe she knew. Maybe it would be a relief to her. ‘I want you to go back to London. Tonight.’

  Shock registered on her face. Then she reddened and looked away from him, fixing her gaze on the floor. ‘Why?’

  Her voice was so small, so defeated that he almost wavered. Almost. Euan tried to keep his voice steady.

  ‘Because you have things to do there. You’ll be busy with the installation for The Centre...’ That wasn’t what he meant at all. ‘I just think that it would be better if we gave each other a bit of space.’

  ‘You mean...you’re sending me away.’ There was a thread of anger there, but her voice was mostly just dull resignation.

  How could he explain to her that this was different? That it wasn’t like the rejection she’d suffered at the hands of her mother, or even the one that Sally’s death had wrought. It was for her benefit. She couldn’t carry on like this, so fragile behind her surface confidence, without confronting her demons.

  ‘Sam, the last two weeks have been...’ They’d been the best of his life. ‘They’ve been great. But you have a chance to make a real difference. You need to give it all that you’ve got.’

  She rubbed her hand across her eyes and met his gaze. She was composed now, her face a vacant mask. He wondered what the real Sam was thinking, and decided he probably didn’t have a right to know any more.

  ‘You’re telling me that I should be getting on with my work. A bit of an about-face, don’t you think?’

  He deserved that barb. Deserved a lot more. ‘I’m saying that coming here has raised a lot of issues for you and without sorting them out they will eventually tear us apart.’

  Anger flashed in her eyes. ‘Oh, so that’s what this is, is it? I’m just another one of your projects, am I? The girl with the hang-ups...’

  Never. She was so wrong it was almost laughable. But he knew Sam’s pride wouldn’t let her stay if he let her think it, and if she blamed him then all the better. At least she wouldn’t be blaming herself.

  ‘I know it was wrong, Sam. I’m sorry.’

  She pressed her lips together, standing slowly. Reached for her laptop. For a moment Euan thought she was going to hit him with it, and rather wished that she would, but she clasped it to her chest, as if she needed to shield herself from him.

  ‘Yeah. I’m sorry too.’ She turned, and walked away, slamming the front door behind her.

  * * *

  Anger carried her back to the tiny flat over the office, where she threw all her things into her travelling bag, and impelled her up the hill to the railway station. An hour on the train, glaring through the window as a blood-red sunset began to form on the horizon, and then half an hour on the Tube and she was back home, kicking her front door open and throwing her bags onto the bed.

  How dared he? How dared he? One of his projects, was she? He was a fine one to talk. Euan had a few hang-ups of his own. What about the one with that ex-wife of his, the one that made him so damn protective all the time? And what had happened to ‘Whatever works for us is okay’?

  She stopped, stood stock still. Euan wasn’t the kind of man who manipulated his way into a woman’s bed. He was honest to a fault, in touch with his feelings. Euan...

  ‘Damn you, Euan.’ It was she who’d said it, not him. He hadn’t contradicted her, but when she thought about it he hadn’t really confirmed it either. He’d let her think the worst of him.

  Maybe he did love her? Sam tipped her handbag upside down, the contents falling onto the bed, and snatched her phone up. Found his number and then stopped. It didn’t make any difference why he’d wanted her to go. He’d wanted her to go and that was that.

  She flung the phone down onto the bed. She knew Euan well enough to know that once he’d made his mind up, decided that something was right, there was no going back on it. She sank down onto the bed, tears streaming down her face.

  If he’d been less honourable, less aware of her issues, he wouldn’t have done this. But, then, they were just two of the reasons that she’d fallen in love with him...

  * * *

  Euan couldn’t keep away. He walked to the office in the gathering dusk, looking up at the darkened windows of the flat. Letting himself in, he picked up the keys that Sam had posted back through the letterbox.

  Upstairs, her scent still lingered, like a cruel reminder. The flat was quite different from the home he
’d returned to when Marie had left, but the silence was the same.

  He stood for a moment, staring at the bed, resisting the temptation to bury his face in one of the pillows and pretend for a moment that she was still here. What next?

  Nothing. Euan turned, walked down the stairs and out into the night. Nothing came next.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  SAM’S CAR WAS parked in the small car park outside the church hall. She’d been gripping the steering-wheel, unable to coax herself into movement, for the last five minutes.

  Come on. Either go inside or go home.

  That was easier said than done. She’d thought that turning up for the first session of the group she’d joined had been difficult, but going back for a second time had been harder. And now the third seemed impossible.

  Juno did it. Jamie did it.

  They’d had Euan, though. She had a rather vague middle-aged man, who seemed to do nothing but listen to what everyone said, and nod.

  But his was the name that Euan had given her, the one she’d entered into her phone and then forgotten about until sadness had turned to resolve, and then hardened into determination. She’d made it through two sessions. If she lasted another two without smashing something, she’d be surprised, but she had to try.

  A knock on the car window made her jump. Will, the group leader, was there. ‘You’re early. Would you like to come in and help make the tea?’

  Not particularly. Sam didn’t want to drink tea, or make tea, and she definitely didn’t want to be here, or to talk to Will or anyone else. She wanted to go home.

  But she’d promised Euan once that she’d try this, and now she’d promised herself. She gave Will a smile, got out of the car and locked it, and walked with him across the car park and into the hall.

  * * *

  In the three months since Sam had first set foot in the Driftwood Drugs Initiative’s offices, things had been moving fast. Joe had taken over the installation at Driftwood, and David had reported back that it was already a success. The Centre was also using the program, along with six other drugs charities. There were seven more charities that had expressed an interest, and one of the sector newspapers had contacted Sam, asking for an interview.