Her Consultant Boss

by Joanna Neil

  Megan shook her head. She was trying not to be fazed by his nearness. He was so close to her that his arm brushed hers and sent little tingles running through her nervous system.

  ‘No, I don’t,’ she managed. ‘It’s been out there for a few days, but I don’t think it belongs to anyone who lives here, or to any of their visitors.’

  ‘Hmm… I’d better check up on it, though I don’t suppose anything can be done about it for a day or two since the weekend’s coming up on us.’ He looked around, taking note of the freshly pointed-up brickwork, and said, ‘It looks as though the workmen have done a good job. I hope they weren’t too much of a disruption for you.’

  ‘No, they were fine…’ A noise erupted from the living room behind them just then, and they both turned to see what was causing it. Ben was shouting, Josh had started to howl and Jenny’s voice could be heard as she tried to calm things down.

  Sam was frowning, and Megan hurried to explain, ‘It’s all right. This sort of thing’s always happening with the boys. Jenny has her hands full with Ben.’ She made a little grimace. ‘It’s usually Ben at the bottom of it.’

  ‘Is it? Why’s that?’

  ‘Ben isn’t…’ She searched for the right words, and then went on hesitantly, ‘He isn’t quite like other children. It’s not that he’s naughty or anything, it’s just that he’s…well, different.’

  ‘In what way different?’

  Megan shrugged lightly. ‘In a way that sets him apart from other children, I suppose. It’s difficult to get to know him very well. He tends to shy away from people and withdraw into himself. And he gets obsessive about things, doing the same thing over and over again.’

  She could see that Sam’s curiosity had been aroused. ‘Has he always been like that, or has this happened since his father left?’

  Her shoulders moved awkwardly. ‘He’s been like it for as long as I’ve known him, but I haven’t been in constant contact with him, you know. Before I came to Wales, I would fit in visits whenever I could, at the weekends or whenever I had a holiday from work. From what I saw of him before I came here, and from what I’ve seen since I arrived, I’d say he has probably has been like this for the last couple of years anyway. I’m not sure what the answer is, whether this is just Ben being Ben or whether there’s a real problem that needs to be looked at.’

  Sam went back into the living room, and by this time Jenny had more or less managed to sort things out. Josh had retreated from Ben and was playing in a corner with some building bricks, and Ben had reverted to swivelling round and round on his bottom on the carpet, stamping his feet as he went.

  Jenny threw Megan a despairing look. ‘I think Josh got in the way of whatever game it is that he’s playing,’ she said. She turned to Ben. ‘If you carry on like that for much longer, you’ll wear holes in Auntie Megan’s carpet.’

  Ben seemed not to have heard her, and carried on with his circling. Sam murmured quietly to Jenny, ‘Would you mind if I tried to talk to him?’

  Jenny smiled wanly. ‘You can try, but I don’t think you’ll be able to make much headway.’

  Sam went over to Ben and Megan was puzzled when he made no attempt to start up a conversation. Instead, she was startled to see him sit down on the floor just a foot or so away from her little nephew.

  Ben sent him a flickering, cautious glance, and carried on swivelling round on the carpet. Sam watched him closely for a while, and then began to carefully copy his movements, twirling slowly round and round, trailing his feet so that they made a pattern on the carpet.

  Ben made what looked like the beginnings of a smile, and Sam said quietly, ‘We’re making circles, aren’t we?’

  ‘Big circles, little circles,’ Ben intoned.

  ‘And our feet are making patterns, aren’t they? Do you like patterns?’

  Ben danced his feet lightly in response, but didn’t answer.

  Megan watched the two of them in amazement. Sam seemed to work in an intuitive way, following Ben’s lead and improvising, and perhaps that shouldn’t have surprised her. She had watched him at work with children at the hospital, and he seemed to be able to establish a rapport with them very easily and quickly.

  After a while, he murmured softly to Ben, ‘Got to go now. See you again?’

  Ben carried on circling, but he said nothing at all.

  Jenny looked at Sam and her eyes were damp and glittering. ‘You’re the first person outside the family who has ever made any headway with him,’ she said. ‘I’ve tried so many ways to understand what goes on inside his head and I get nowhere.’ She looked shattered, as though she didn’t know what to do next. ‘You don’t even know him, and yet you managed to get through to him.’

  ‘It was only a tiny breakthrough, and it might have been that I was just lucky,’ Sam replied. ‘Do you want to sit down with me and have a bit of a chat? You could tell me a little more about how he is, the sort of things he does. Perhaps, between us, we can work something out.’

  Jenny nodded, and Sam drew her into the kitchen where they could be private. Megan stayed where she was, so that she could watch the children and give Jenny some space. Sam was doing all that he could to be kind and helpful, and she respected him for that. If anyone could help Ben and Jenny it would be Sam, she felt it instinctively.

  Josh came and cuddled up to her, and she said softly, ‘Would you like to look at a picture book with me?’

  He nodded and she went and rummaged through her shelves until she found one. ‘Here we are.’ She looked across at Ben. ‘Do you want come and look at this with us, Ben?’

  He didn’t answer, and she went and sat down on the floor close to him so that both children could look at the book with her. Gradually, she noticed, Ben stopped his circling and seemed to be listening and watching as she pointed to the pictures.

  When the others returned, some fifteen minutes later, Jenny looked much happier. She seemed to be calm, and perhaps she felt better able to cope now that she had talked through her problems with Sam.

  Sam looked at the three of them, sitting together on the carpet, and said quietly, ‘I’d better go. I’m supposed be visiting relatives this evening.’

  ‘I’ll see you to the door,’ Megan said, giving the book to Josh and Ben and getting to her feet to follow him out of the room.

  They walked to his car together and Megan said lightly, ‘Jenny looks calmer since you talked to her. Did you manage to find any solutions to Ben’s problems?’

  ‘Not yet. I would need to see him a little more to know exactly what’s wrong, but I think I may have helped her to look at things in a different light. I’ve offered a few suggestions as to how she might help him to talk more, and I think she should insist that he plays with toys properly instead of lining them up. If she offers him tiny rewards whenever he does what she asks, she might get a better response. It will be hard work at first, but I think she’ll feel happier for it in the end.’

  She smiled at him. ‘I’m really grateful to you for spending time with her. I’m sure she feels the same way.’

  ‘I wanted to help. I could see that she was stressed.’ Sam sent her a searching glance. ‘You came back to Wales to be near to your sister, didn’t you?’ he said, pausing by the driver’s door to take out his keys. ‘All that stuff about wanting to learn about psychiatry was just a side issue. You knew that Jenny couldn’t cope after her husband left, and that’s why you came here.’

  ‘That’s why I came here, yes,’ she agreed. ‘But the rest of it wasn’t just a side issue—I am interested in psychiatry. I really do want to know more about it.’

  ‘If you say so,’ he said with a wry twist to his mouth, ‘but I would have said that you were basically a paediatrician at heart. A lot of things are much clearer to me now. I think I understand much more about you than I did before.’

  Megan didn’t know whether that was a good thing or a bad thing and she wondered what Jenny had been saying to Sam. Did he think her family problems would get in
the way of her doing a good job at work? He had wanted someone to be a strong and useful member of his team, to help keep the unit running smoothly, and perhaps now he had even more doubts about her suitability.

  He pulled open his car door. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow, Megan,’ he said briskly, and the way he said it could have been a threat or a plain statement of fact.

  She made up her mind that he wouldn’t have any cause for complaint. She would show him that she was good at her job.

  Next day, Sam was his usual energetic self. Megan found her gaze drawn to him on more than one occasion as he moved about the unit, talking to patients and staff. Dressed in his immaculate grey suit, he was a powerful figure, long and lithe and always in control. He was keen to get on with the job in hand.

  Megan would have liked it if he had stopped to talk to her—there were so many things that she had discovered she wanted to say to him after his visit to her flat, to put the record straight, and perhaps firm up their relationship—but he was only interested in getting down to the business of seeing patients.

  Perhaps it was just as well that they kept to a purely professional relationship, she mused forlornly. It would complicate things to let personal feelings get in the way.

  He glanced at her briefly when she stationed herself in his surgery for the morning clinic, then turned his attention to the list of patients.

  ‘Matthew Hadleigh is first on the list,’ he said calmly. ‘Let’s get started, shall we? We have to let his mother know the result of the tests, and tell her that we’ll refer him to a paediatric neurologist.’

  It was business as usual, and Megan dragged her mind to the work in hand. She went to fetch Mrs Hadleigh from the waiting room. Matthew was in the children’s playroom, where a play leader was in charge, and they decided that he could stay there for a while to give his mother a chance to hear what Sam had to say.

  Matthew’s mother was predictably alarmed to hear about the epilepsy. ‘But how can that be? Why has he got epilepsy? I don’t understand.’

  ‘We can’t always be sure what has caused this kind of illness,’ Sam explained gently. ‘Sometimes it can happen because there was some kind of birth injury, possibly an area of damage which is localised on one side of the brain, but often we never know what has caused it to happen.’

  Mrs Hadleigh was stunned. ‘I’ve heard about epilepsy before—but I don’t know what to expect. What is it? What can be done about it?’ She looked at Megan questioningly, as though seeking support from another woman.

  Megan glanced at Sam and he nodded imperceptibly. She said cautiously, ‘In epilepsy, the electrical signals that the brain gives out become disordered. In Matthew’s case his epilepsy means that he suddenly appears to switch off, to appear to be in a trance-like state for a while, or to act strangely by picking at his clothes or lip-smacking, or saying odd things that don’t make sense.’

  ‘But everybody thought that he was being naughty—at school they thought he wasn’t paying attention, and that he was being cheeky or silly.’

  Megan shook her head. ‘Matthew can’t help what happens to him during these seizures. None of this is his fault, and it doesn’t mean that he wasn’t paying attention.’

  ‘So, what’s going to happen to him? Is this going to get worse?’

  ‘At this stage, we can’t say for sure what will happen. It may be that the condition will disappear as he gets older, or that he’ll have episodes when he has a fever or high temperature.’

  Mrs Hadleigh seemed to be trying to take all this in. She leaned forward attentively, and asked, ‘What’s going to happen now? What can be done for him?’

  Sam said, ‘We’re going to refer him for treatment to a specialist doctor, a paediatric neurologist. There are various treatments that we can try. It’s a question of finding which particular medication will suit Matthew best. Whatever the choice, he’ll probably be started off on a small dosage to see how he copes with it.’

  Sam added, ‘What’s really important is that we monitor his progress. You can help in that by letting the doctor know how you think the treatment is affecting him—whether you can see a marked improvement, or otherwise.’

  Mrs Hadleigh seemed to relax a little. ‘At least I know what’s happening now and I can tell the school that it isn’t his fault, can’t I?’

  ‘That’s right,’ Sam agreed. ‘Once they know what the problem is, they should be able to deal with it and give him some support. It might be useful to ask the specialist to pass on information about his condition to the school so that they know what to expect and how to deal with it should an episode occur while he’s there.’

  Matthew’s mother nodded. ‘I’ll make sure that I do that. How long will the referral take?’

  ‘I’ve already been in touch with the neurologist, and he’ll see Matthew right away. Ask the nurse to show you where to go.’

  ‘I will. Thank you, doctor.’ She left the room looking calmer than she had when she’d first come in.

  Megan worked with Sam throughout the morning. She was trying her utmost to be as efficient as possible, and show him that he hadn’t made a mistake in having her on his team.

  At lunchtime, when all the patients had left, she said quietly, ‘Jenny asked me to thank you again for what you did last night, for the way you were with her and the boys, and for taking the time to listen. She’s had a difficult time lately, and I know that whatever you said to her made her feel so much better.’

  ‘She looked quite close to breakdown to me,’ he said.

  Megan nodded. ‘I think so, too. I do what I can to help, but I know it isn’t enough. I’m going to take the boys off her hands tomorrow so that she can get some rest. It’s been hard for her, especially the last few months. I said that I would take the boys to the zoo for a treat.’

  ‘Would you mind if I came along with you?’

  Megan’s eyes widened in surprise, and he added cautiously, ‘It would be a good opportunity for me to see Ben and assess him for her. Jenny said that she would be happy for me to do that, and it’s easier for me to do that in a casual, informal setting. Ben should be relaxed, or at least not on his guard.’

  Sam wanted to come with her. She tried to absorb that, uncertain about how she felt. Part of her was keyed up by the thought of having him with her, but another part was undeniably nervous. He was her boss after all. As well as that, he was male and vibrant and he stirred her senses in a way that no man had ever done before, making her totally unsure of herself.

  Slowly she brought herself back down to earth. He wasn’t asking her because he was interested in being with her, was he? He was interested in Ben, not herself.

  ‘I’m sure the boys would like it if you are with us,’ she said quietly, playing for time. He had thrown her completely by his offer.

  ‘And how about you?’ he asked. ‘Would I be intruding on your space?’

  Megan shook her head. ‘N-no…no, of c-course you wouldn’t,’ she stammered. ‘I expect I’ll be glad of a helping hand. It will make things easier for me, having you come along. The children can be quite a handful.’

  He smiled at her, and it was as though the sun had come out. ‘You seemed to be managing very well yesterday. When I saw you sitting with them, reading a storybook, I thought what a peaceful scene you all made. It made me wonder whether you had ever thought about settling down to motherhood yourself.’

  Megan hadn’t realised that he had paid much attention to them. She said, ‘It’s probably too early for me to think about settling down to that just yet. I haven’t finished my three-year specialist hospital training yet. While I’m still doing my house officer posts, I think it would be too soon to start thinking that way.’

  Besides, up to now she hadn’t met the man that she would want to spend the rest of her life with. He would have to be very special to help her to overcome her nervousness about going down that path. So far, the examples she had seen of the way marriages turned out hadn’t been good, but perhaps at th
e back of her mind she hoped that one day she would feel differently.

  She sent him a quick look from beneath her lashes. ‘You haven’t settled for marriage and family yourself, have you?’

  His mouth twisted. ‘I suppose I deserved that—it’s not my business, is it, to enquire into your personal life? I was curious, but you’re right, I haven’t taken that plunge myself. Like you, I have things to do, challenges to overcome.’

  His brow quirked. ‘So, have we decided on going together tomorrow?’

  She nodded.

  Sam eased his shoulders beneath his jacket. ‘Good. That’s settled, then. I’ll come and pick you up from Jenny’s house, shall I—say around ten o’clock? You’ll have to give me directions to get there.’

  ‘That will be fine. Yes, I’ll do that.’

  * * *

  He arrived at Jenny’s house on Saturday morning bright and early. He was dressed casually in an open-necked blue shirt and dark chinos that moulded themselves to his legs with easy familiarity. Megan was more used to seeing him wearing expensively tailored suits at work, and today he looked very different. He looked good, she decided.

  She had been busy helping Jenny with last-minute preparations when Sam arrived. Going out for the day wasn’t a simple procedure, as far as Jenny was concerned. Ben had been told in advance what was happening so that he wouldn’t kick up too much of a fuss, and he was relatively calm for Ben. Jenny was anxious that Megan should take a bag filled with clean clothes in case the children fell in a puddle or had some other kind of accident, and there were special plastic drinking cups to take along as well. Sam busied himself organising the children’s car seats.

  ‘Are we ready?’ he enquired gently after half an hour or so.

  ‘I think so,’ Megan murmured with a smile. She carefully prised the bag from Ben, who was fiddling with the clasp. ‘I want to put it in the car, Ben. You can play with the buckle later.’

  He protested, but seemed to accept her argument in the end, and eventually they were all settled in the car and on their way.

  It was a warm, beautiful spring day. The sun shone from a brilliant blue sky, and there was hardly a cloud in sight. So much for puddles. Megan smiled inwardly. She eased her jeans-clad legs into a comfortable position and settled back and tried to relax against the luxurious upholstery of Sam’s car. He was a competent driver, and in just over half an hour they had arrived at their destination.