The Ideal Choice

by Caroline Anderson

  With a sinking, panicky feeling she realised that this broken man, this sad and bitter traveller along life’s tortuous highway was her Mr Right—and she was certain that the most she would ever be to him was a mild and slightly irritating diversion.

  The phone rang again and she answered it, then handed it over to him and watched as he jotted down a few notes. ‘OK... If you can bring her in in the next few minutes...? Thanks. Just come to the front door and press the intercom button and I’ll let you in.’

  He put the receiver back on its cradle and turned to Tricia. ‘Duty calls again, I’m afraid; then I’d better switch the phone through and get on home. Thanks for the sandwiches—I was starving.’

  She was sure her smile was sickly. ‘My pleasure,’ she murmured. Was it really midnight? If so, there was no way she could persuade him to stay any later—at least, no way her mother would approve of!

  She cleared the table, picking up plates in one hand and mugs in the other, and he took the plates from her and went into the kitchen. She followed him, then realised as she did so that it was a tactical error.

  The kitchen was compact—in other words, Rhys filled it. She put the mugs down on the little table just as he turned, and he jogged her arm, sending one of the mugs crashing to the floor.

  They bent together to gather up the fragments, and his knee nudged hers, sending shock waves up her leg. She tightened her grip on the shard in her hand and felt the thin edge of the glaze slice her finger.

  ‘Damn,’ she muttered, standing up and inching past him to the sink.

  ‘Cut yourself?’ he murmured. ‘Let me look.’

  Then her hand was in his, swallowed up by the long, strong fingers that gently explored the little cut, washed it and dried it with kitchen roll and examined it again. His head was bent over so the soft, silky strands were right beside her face, and as she breathed in she could smell the faint woody tang of his shampoo.

  The urge to lean against his shoulder was overwhelming, but she had hardly lost enough blood to justify even a mini-swoon—more’s the pity, she thought.

  ‘I think you’ll live—it’s stopped bleeding now,’ he said. Then he lifted his head and his eyes met hers, and before she could breathe or duck or say, Yes, please, his head bent again and he kissed her.

  Her hand was still trapped in his, and against the back of it she could feel the steady thud of his heart against his breastbone. His lips were firm and dry and tentative at first, then with a little growl he dropped her hand and slid his up to her neck, his fingers supporting the back of her head, his thumbs lightly tracing her cheeks as he drew her closer and deepened the kiss.

  Tricia thought she was going to catch fire. His body was arched over her, his head bent to reach her, and she turned her hand and laid it against his ribs, feeling the speeding beat of his heart pounding against her palm.

  His hands slid down to her waist, easing her against him, and a ragged groan escaped from his throat as their bodies made contact.

  Her legs felt weak, her heart was racing, and her mouth couldn’t get enough of him. She felt the slick, heated urge of his tongue and opened to him, then fire shot through her as their mouths became as one. A strangled cry erupted in her throat and she leant into him, driven by a primitive urge over which she had no control.

  Then suddenly and without warning he was gone, moving away from her, his breathing harsh and ragged, his eyes glittering, his body trembling.

  ‘Patient,’ he rasped, and she heard the buzz of the intercom in the distance.

  ‘Oh, Lord.’ She stepped back, pressing her knuckles to her softly swollen mouth. ‘Oh, my Lord, what ever were we doing?’

  His laugh was wry, strained. ‘In the good old days it would have been called necking.’ He took a steadying breath and cupped her cheek. His fingers trembled against her flushed skin. ‘Are you OK?’

  She laughed, a trifle hysterically. ‘I think so.’

  ‘I’m glad one of us is,’ he muttered under his breath, and, turning on his heel, he strode across the landing and ran three at a time down the stairs.

  She watched him go, and the small part of her mind that still functioned wondered what the patient would make of the little bloodstain from her finger that decorated the front of his shirt...

  She avoided him. At least, she tried to, but it was pretty difficult because he wasn’t about.

  Was he avoiding her? His consulting room was immediately over hers and she could hear the soft tread of footsteps every now and again as he moved around. However, he didn’t come down to the kitchen as far as she knew, and certainly not in the few moments she took to whip out and grab a cup of coffee and hide in her room again.

  Not that she had long before she had to go out on her visits, and the first priority was an elderly lady who had apparently fallen during the night and said she was fine, though her daughter who had called first thing was worried about her.

  Tricia put Rhys out of her mind as she struggled with the geography of the town and the slightly garbled directions.

  However, she found the patient in the end, in a little terraced house behind the cinema in the older part of the town.

  She was sitting downstairs fully dressed, and the door was opened by her daughter, who greeted Tricia by grabbing her arm and almost pulling her inside.

  ‘Oh, Doctor, I am glad you’ve come. She’s got the most dreadful bruises. Come on in.’

  Tricia introduced herself to the two women, then sat down on the footstool near the patient and took her hand. ‘Right, Mrs Jenkins, could you tell me what happened?’

  ‘Well, it was so silly, dear. One minute I was coming down the stairs, and the next I was at the bottom all of a heap.’

  ‘You fell downstairs? What time was it, do you know?’

  ‘About three, I think. I was coming down to use the toilet—’

  ‘She won’t move into a bungalow,’ the daughter interrupted. ‘We worry about her so much—this is the third time she’s fallen in the night.’

  ‘Always downstairs?’ Tricia checked.

  ‘Once I fell over a slipper,’ Mrs Jenkins said, her voice heavy with disgust. ‘But twice, yes, it has been down the stairs, and the bruises—well, look at them! Terrible, they are; my daughter’s right.’

  She pulled up her skirt and revealed a huge purple bruise that covered almost the whole of her right thigh, and another on the left knee that was smaller but no less dramatic.

  ‘And they’re on my arm and back.’

  Tricia checked them, then flicked through the notes for anything that might have given rise to such severe bleeding into the tissues. Yes, there it was; the patient was on an anticoagulant for a previous pulmonary embolus. But it was some time ago now and if she was going to fall like this she needed the protection of blood that would clot and prevent such massive bruising.

  ‘I think we could cut down on your warfarin a little, Mrs Jenkins—I’ll get the nurse to come and take some blood and see what your clotting’s like, and then I think we might reduce the level, if not take the drug away altogether and give you a little aspirin instead. All right? And, in the meantime, I see you’re on sleeping pills. Is your only toilet downstairs?’

  Mrs Jenkins nodded. ‘Yes—these old houses don’t have a bathroom upstairs, you know, and my neighbour still has to go outside, so I think I’m lucky really.’

  ‘Nevertheless, Mrs Jenkins, I think in the night you might be sensible to use a commode, just so you don’t have to come down the stairs. I think that’s the greatest danger, when you’re drowsy from the sleeping pills and it’s dark—it’s all too easy to miss your footing. Have you got one?’

  ‘I’ll get her one this morning,’ the daughter said instantly. ‘Don’t worry about it.’

  ‘Oh, I hate the idea of that—it’s like having a jerry under the bed!’

  ‘It’s better than falling again,’ Tricia told her seriously. ‘Next time you might not be so lucky, and you don’t want to have a broken hip, do you
?’

  Mrs Jenkins seemed to sag in front of Tricia’s eyes. ‘No, I suppose you’re right. It’s just all part of getting old, isn’t it? And I don’t want to get old.’

  Tricia covered her hand and gave it a little squeeze. ‘None of us do—but you might as well do it as safely as possible, because you can’t change anything else.’

  They exchanged a rueful smile, and Tricia left her with a promise that the nurse would call on Monday. It was Friday now and too late to do anything before the weekend, but she could get the drug change set up and monitored during the course of the next week.

  She left the house and was just going back to her car when a young woman approached her, a baby on her hip. She had evidently been hovering by the car, waiting. ‘Excuse me,’ she said, ‘but are you a doctor? I saw the notice in your windscreen.’

  ‘Yes, I am. Why?’

  The girl looked up the street. ‘It’s my neighbour. I’m a bit worried about her. I was just on my way to the phone when I saw your car. I don’t know if she’s in your practice, but I didn’t know what to do.’

  ‘Why, what do you think might be the problem?’ Tricia asked her.

  ‘I can hear the baby crying. He’s been at it for hours now, and normally I can hear her voice soothing him, you know? But there’s nothing—just the baby.’

  ‘Is she alone?’

  ‘Yeah—her fella skipped when she fell pregnant.’ The grin was wry. ‘Happens a lot.’

  Tricia looked at the pretty, fair-haired baby on the woman’s arm and smiled. ‘Yes. Unfortunately it does. Is she yours?’

  ‘Yeah—her name’s Gemma. I’m Stacey. Look, I don’t want to hassle you or nothing, but Lisa’s not like this. She doesn’t neglect that babe.’

  ‘Can you show me the house?’

  They walked together up the street a little way, then the girl indicated a shabby, run-down little terraced house with ragged curtains pulled shut over the windows, peeling paint on the window-frames and a front door that someone had tried to force at some time in the past.

  ‘What’s her name—Lisa?’

  ‘Yes—Lisa Stevens. I tried knocking and calling but I couldn’t get a reply.’

  Even from outside Tricia could hear the baby screaming. She turned to Stacey. ‘I’m going to see if I can see anything.’ She peered through the letter box but could see nothing apart from the ragged carpet and a pale blur at the top of the stairs—a hand? ‘I think she might be on the landing—you look.’

  Stacey bent and squinted through the slot, then nodded. ‘Looks like her hand. I didn’t see it before.’

  ‘Perhaps she’s moved. Call to her; see if she moves it.’

  Stacey yelled through the letter box, but there was no response.

  ‘I think we need to call the police,’ Tricia told the girl. ‘Whatever’s happened, I think she might need help. I’ll do it from here.’

  She opened her bag and took out the mobile phone, then called the surgery. ‘Do we have a Lisa Stevens on our books?’ She gave them the address, filled in the history and discovered that she was Rhys’s patient. ‘Could you get the police to come round, April?’ she asked. ‘And we’ll need an ambulance, I think. I’ll wait here—and if any of my other patients can’t wait, could you ask Rhys or Matthew to cover?’

  She hung up and waited, crouching from time to time to see if the hand had moved, but there was no change in the few minutes before the police arrived.

  When the police car came it contained two officers—a man and a woman—and Tricia quickly explained the situation.

  ‘Can we go through your house to get access to the back?’ the policeman asked Stacey.

  ‘Sure,’ the girl agreed, and led them all through the house and out into the little yard at the back. ‘There. There’s a window open, and you can get through the fence. This panel’s loose.’

  She pulled a panel free and the policeman went through the gap and tried to open the window further.

  ‘I can’t do it. Someone small might be able to wriggle through, though.’

  Surprise, surprise, Tricia thought as they all looked at her. ‘I’ll have a go,’ she agreed, glad that she had put on cotton trousers this morning instead of a skirt.

  The policeman helped her up, apologising for putting his hand on her bottom, and Tricia grinned at him, told him that she hadn’t had a better offer in weeks and wriggled through the little gap.

  The catch dug into her back as she squirmed over it, and she landed on the worktop in the kitchen in the midst of a queue of washing-up and had to pick her way carefully through it. Then she opened the back door with the key that was in it and ran for the stairs.

  The girl looked young, only about eighteen, and she was pale and waxy, her skin almost colourless. As Tricia bent over her she caught a strong smell of ketones.

  Diabetes? Very likely, but unusual in that it had apparently had no gradual onset. She was still alive, her pulse weak but very much there, and Tricia turned her into a better position.

  ‘Any ideas?’ the policeman asked.

  ‘I think it’s a diabetic coma. She needs to get to hospital fast.’

  ‘No suspicious circumstances?’

  Tricia shook her head. ‘Almost certainly not. I’d say she was an undiagnosed diabetic.’

  Just then they heard a siren outside, and the doorbell rang.

  ‘Anybody here?’

  Rhys’s voice. Tricia ran down and let him in, her mouth open to greet him, but he cut her off.

  ‘What’s going on?’ he asked briskly, with no trace of the husky passion that had coloured his voice the night before. Not that she’d expected it, but clearly he was all business this morning, the kiss forgotten.

  ‘Your patient has hyperglycaemia, I think. Is she diabetic?’

  ‘Not that I know. Damn. She had an appointment to see me tonight—that’s why I’m here. I’d better get a line in—is that ambulance for us?’

  ‘Yes.’ She stuck her head outside and called the ambulancemen over, and noticed absently the crowd that had gathered on the fringes of the scene.

  Curtain twitchers, she thought, and then remembered that without neighbours taking an interest this young woman and her baby might well have died.

  The baby was still screaming, but the policewoman was holding him now, jogging him gently and crooning to him.

  ‘He’s soggy and starving,’ was her verdict, and Tricia grinned. Rhys was busy with the mother and she was at a loose end for now.

  ‘I think we can do something about that, don’t you? Let’s have a look.’

  They found disposable nappies in his little bedroom, and quickly washed and changed him, then took him down, stepping carefully past Rhys and the ambulancemen on the landing, and found him a bottle in the fridge. It smelt fresh but it was very cold, so Tricia warmed it with a splash of hot water from the kettle and after testing it she tipped it up, dribbling the tepid milk into his screaming mouth.

  Immediately his tongue came into contact with the teat his lips clamped round it, his throat worked convulsively and the anguished yelling ceased.

  ‘Peaceful when it stops,’ the policewoman said with a smile. She jerked her head towards the hall and the sounds of activity. ‘Will she be all right, then?’

  ‘I hope so. We’d better close this window and lock the back door again before we go. The baby will have to go into hospital with her, of course. It can only be a few months old.’

  ‘Three,’ Stacey said. ‘She was feeding him herself to save money but she got so tired.’

  ‘I’m not surprised if she had diabetes coming on. Poor girl. Still, she’ll be fine now. Thank you for alerting us, Stacey.’

  The girl blushed. ‘You’re welcome. Where will you take her? I’ll come and visit.’

  ‘Lymington, I think. You’ll have to ask Dr Williams. I’m new to this part of the world, I’m afraid.’

  ‘She is going to Lymington. How’s the babe?’

  Tricia looked up at Rhys as he came
in. ‘Seems fine. Starving hungry. I wonder if she collapsed when she got up to feed him in the night?’

  ‘I reckon,’ Stacey said. ‘Either then or earlier, after she put him down. I heard a thump about eleven, but I didn’t think nothing of it. Thought she’d dropped something. I wish I’d done something then, but it was all quiet after that and I didn’t worry.’

  ‘You’ve done all you could have been expected to,’ Rhys assured her. ‘I have absolutely no doubt that without your intervention both of them would have died. There is no way that Lisa could ever have called for help; she was beyond it. She quite literally owes both their lives to you.’

  He bent over the baby then, brushing one big knuckle against the little lad’s soft, downy cheek, and as he straightened Tricia met his eyes and surprised a look of such tenderness that her heart squeezed in her chest.

  ‘He looks happy enough now,’ Rhys said softly. ‘And I hate to break up the party but I think the ambulance is ready to go, if you could bear to prise yourself away from him?’

  He reached out, and as Tricia held the little baby away from her chest he slid his hands round it, accidently brushing her breast with the back of one hand.

  He froze for an instant, the tenderness banished from his eyes by the sudden blaze of heat that leapt to life in them, then he secured his grip and lifted the baby away from her, laying him against his huge shoulder and rubbing his back automatically—a gesture long rehearsed and frequently repeated, she could tell.

  He handed the baby to the ambulance crew, said goodbye to Stacey and went, leaving Tricia to get back to her hectic schedule. She carried with her the memory of Rhys’s tenderness with the baby, and that sudden blaze of heat in his eyes. Such a sudden switch, so easily provoked. And she had thought that the kiss could be forgotten!