Nurse in a Million

by Jennifer Taylor

  ‘I’m a grown woman and I can take care of myself. And it’s not as though I haven’t had experience of working in dangerous places, is it?’ she pointed out reasonably enough.

  ‘No. But whenever we’ve been away on a mission there’ve been other people around who could have helped you if the need had arisen.’

  ‘The same as at the clinic. The staff there are great and we all work together as a team and help one another.’

  Rafferty struggled to contain his frustration. It was obvious that she wasn’t going to listen to his concerns and he didn’t want to start another argument with her. ‘How did you start working there in the first place?’ he asked, switching to a less volatile subject.

  ‘I read an article about the clinic in one of the Sunday papers so I went along the following week and volunteered.’

  ‘I see. Why didn’t you tell me what you were doing? You could have told me on Monday night when you had to leave that dinner so suddenly, but you refused to say where you were going. Why did you decide to keep it a secret?’

  ‘Because I didn’t want you to know.’

  ‘Why on earth not?’ He couldn’t hide his surprise and he saw her flush.

  ‘Because I didn’t want you to think that I was trying to curry favour with you.’

  ‘Curry favour,’ he repeated blankly.

  ‘Yes! You’ve made no bones about the fact that you think I’ve been wasting my time in London so why should I try to improve your opinion of me?’

  She shot to her feet again, almost dropping her glass in the process. Rafferty stood up and took it from her but his heart was hammering all of a sudden. He had a horrible feeling that they were getting to the reason why she’d sought him out that night and he was terrified that he might say or do the wrong thing.

  ‘You don’t need to improve anything for my sake,’ he said softly, but with so much emotion that it actually hurt to force the words out of his mouth.

  ‘Don’t I? So you love me as I am and it doesn’t matter if I’m a nurse or the acting head of Palmer’s?’ She tipped back her head and stared him straight in the eyes, and the pain inside him seemed to double in intensity. He hadn’t realised that he’d hurt her so deeply and he couldn’t bear to think of the damage he must have caused.

  ‘I only want what is best for you, Natalie,’ he said, each word demanding such an effort that he felt quite weak. He had to make her believe him, but did she? ‘That’s all I’ve ever wanted.’

  ‘And what if I don’t think it is the best thing for me? What if my ideas differ from yours? What happens then, Rafferty?’

  ‘I don’t know!’ he exploded as his frustration spilled over. He’d told her the truth, yet even that wasn’t enough, it seemed. ‘I’ve explained my reasons and I don’t understand what else you expect me to say!’

  ‘No. Obviously not.’

  All of a sudden the fight seemed to drain out of her and his heart contracted with fear when he saw how bereft she looked. Reaching out, he pulled her into his arms and kissed her, wanting—needing—to bring back the feisty Natalie he loved more than life itself. Her mouth was passive under his at first, neither responding nor fighting, and his fear intensified. Somehow, some way, he had to break through this barrier she was erecting between them!

  His lips plundered hers again, teasing, tasting, caressing in the most erotic way he knew, and gradually he felt a glimmer of a response. Buoyed up by his success, he trailed more kisses across her cheek and along her jaw, nibbling the warm skin on her throat and glorying in the little murmur she gave in response. When her hands moved up to rest on his shoulders he could have shouted for joy—only his mouth was far too busy with more important matters.

  His lips skimmed down her throat and along her collar-bone this time and he felt her shudder. She was wearing a white silk blouse with a deep V-neckline and it was easy peasy to skate his lips down one slope of the V and back up the other.

  ‘Rafferty.’

  His name was no louder than the faintest whisper in the depths of the night but he heard it and it was enough to encourage him to keep going. He could get through to her, if he tried hard enough!

  His hands glided up from her waist to brush the undersides of her breasts and he felt her suck in her breath, heard the sudden intake of breath he took as well. Sensations were rippling through him but he made himself focus on her needs rather than his own. It was Natalie who mattered most and he had to convince her not to shut him out but to keep all lines of communication between them wide open.

  His hands glided over her breasts, his palms making the lightest contact imaginable with her nipples, but even so he felt them harden. She’d always been so sweetly responsive to his love-making in the past and his heart soared because it appeared that nothing had changed in that respect.

  The thought filled him with joy as he kissed her with a hunger that left them both fighting for breath when he drew back. Her lips were red and swollen from his kisses, her eyes hazy with passion, and Rafferty knew that if they carried on they were going to reach the most natural of all conclusions. Whilst it was what he wanted with every fibre of his being, she had to want it, too—want it with her mind as well as her body.

  He took a deep breath and stepped back, and every inch he put between them felt like a mile. He longed to be right back where he’d been just moments before—with Natalie in his arms and her heart beating in time with his—but he would never forgive himself if he used the passion they’d always felt for each other to persuade her to do something she could ultimately regret.

  ‘Rafferty?’

  She sounded bewildered by the speed with which he’d ended their love-making and his heart ached because if circumstances had been different, he wouldn’t have had to stop. He would have swept her into his arms, carried her to his bed and then…

  He blanked out the rest of the scene that was unfolding inside his head, because he wasn’t strong enough to resist if he thought about what he was giving up.

  ‘It might be better if we call a halt before things get too fraught,’ he said quietly. Fraught was the perfect word, too, he thought grimly, because their love-making had been very fraught in the past. They had put their hearts and their souls into it but the result had been worth it. And it didn’t make it any easier to behave sensibly when his head was awash with such delectable memories.

  ‘I see.’

  Natalie made an obvious effort to collect herself and his hands clenched, because it was hard to stand there and watch her struggling for control when he was the one who had caused her to lose it in the first place. Flicking back her hair, she stood up straighter and he bit back a sigh when he saw that her composure was rapidly returning. Although he loved her in every way it was possible to love another person, he couldn’t deny that his love was at its most intense when she was soft and pliant in his arms.

  He knew exactly what to do then but it was far more difficult to know how to respond when she slipped back into this other persona—the beautiful, sophisticated woman-about-town. It just seemed to highlight his fears that he could never live up to her expectations and it was galling to have such doubts when he wasn’t a person who normally had reservations about his own ability. He was proud of what he’d achieved in his life, confident of his skills as a surgeon, yet he was afraid that he could never measure up to the kind of man whom Natalie needed to make her happy. And it was that fear, lingering at the back of his mind, which was causing the damage.

  ‘I think I’d better go, don’t you?’ She picked up her bag and went to the door.

  Rafferty followed her with his heart bouncing somewhere around his feet. He knew that many men would have swept aside their misgivings and concentrated on the moment instead of worrying about the future, but he wasn’t like them. His feelings for Natalie weren’t like that either, because he didn’t want an affair with her. He wanted the whole works: marriage and a family; the happily-ever-after that followed the ride off into the sunset. He wanted her by his si
de and in his heart until the day he died.

  But did she want him like that, for ever and always, until death did them part?

  Maybe she enjoyed having sex with him, even loved him in her own way, but she might grow tired of being with a man who wasn’t her social equal, or of the constant problems that it would cause between them. And it was that idea that scared him most of all—the thought of having her today and losing her tomorrow. He didn’t think he could bear it if that happened.

  He took a deep breath but there was no way he could close his mind to the truth any longer. It might be better to let her go now than inevitably suffer the heartache of losing her at some point in the future.

  Natalie wasn’t sure what was going through Rafferty’s mind but she could tell how abstracted he was as he saw her to the door. Maybe it had been a mistake to let him kiss her like that but in all honesty she couldn’t claim that she hadn’t wanted it to happen. It had been months since he’d held her in his arms and she hadn’t realised just how much she’d missed the contact with him until tonight. If Rafferty hadn’t called a halt then she certainly wouldn’t have done and the thought seemed to awake all her earlier fears. If Rafferty loved her as much as she loved him, how could he have stopped just now?

  The thought sent her spirits plummeting so that it was an effort to disguise how low she felt. ‘Thank you for the wine,’ she said politely. ‘I hope I haven’t kept you up too late?’

  ‘Don’t worry about it. I needed to unwind otherwise I won’t be able to sleep tonight.’

  His tone matched hers and she bit back a sigh. They were both behaving like guests at a vicarage tea party. However, the alternative—putting her arms around him and begging him to take her to his bed—was out of the question. Until she knew how Rafferty really felt about her, it would be better to avoid any more physical contact with him.

  Her spirits, already low, sank the last few inches into the mire but it would be stupid to buoy them up with false promises. Sex had to be off the agenda until she knew if Rafferty loved her as much as she loved him, and that was all there was to it. She picked up the conversation again, falling back on work because it was always the safest topic, the one they never argued about.

  ‘Were there many casualties from that incident tonight, by the way? I didn’t have time to watch the news because we were so busy at the clinic so I don’t even know what happened.’

  ‘Turned out that it was a false alarm. Apparently, some people were waiting in one of the tube stations when they saw a man spraying something into the air and they assumed he was letting off toxic gas.’ He grimaced. ‘Everyone panicked and several dozen people were injured in the rush to get up the escalators.’

  ‘How awful! If it was a false alarm, I assume he wasn’t spraying anything harmful into the air.’

  ‘It was perfume.’ Rafferty shrugged when she gasped. ‘Evidently, he’d bought some perfume for his wife and he decided to test it to make sure he’d got the right one. It must have been a shock for him when the police arrived and arrested him.’

  ‘Oh, dear.’ Natalie smiled wryly. ‘His good intentions certainly went astray, didn’t they?’

  ‘They did, indeed.’ He smiled rather grimly. ‘The road to hell is paved with good intentions, though, don’t they say?’

  Natalie had no idea what to say to that so she let the comment pass. However, as she stepped into the lift a few minutes later, she couldn’t help wondering if the remark had been based on personal experience. Had Rafferty’s good intentions led him along a route he now wished he hadn’t chosen?

  A wave of sadness swept over her. She couldn’t help wondering if maybe he regretted getting involved with her. Their relationship had been peppered with problems, and she couldn’t blame him if he was tired of the constant arguments. She was tired of them, too, and desperately wanted to find a solution, but was it possible to resolve the issues that lay between them?

  She’d gained a new insight into Rafferty’s past today and even though it hadn’t changed how she felt about him, she did understand now why he’d always felt so uncomfortable about her family’s wealth. His childhood had left its mark on him just as hers had left its mark on her, and she had to accept that he might never come to terms with the difference in their backgrounds.

  She didn’t want to hurt him and certainly didn’t want to put him under any more pressure. Rafferty had been through enough while he’d been growing up and it was a measure of the man he was that he’d made a success of his life after such an inauspicious start. She hated to think that she was the cause of these doubts he had so maybe it would be better if they stopped seeing each other. Even though she couldn’t bear the thought of losing him, she had to face the fact that it might be the only solution.

  A burst of laughter came from the neighbouring cubicle and Natalie paused. It was Sunday afternoon and she was working another extra shift at the clinic. Saturday had been a complete nightmare, as she’d been unable to rid herself of the thought that it might be better if their on-off relationship ended for good. After a sleepless night she’d realised that she had to stop brooding about it so she’d come into the clinic.

  It had been a shock when she’d opened the door and seen Rafferty. He’d been talking to Helen and, from the look of it, they had been getting along famously, too. When Helen had called her over and told her that Rafferty had signed on as a volunteer, Natalie hadn’t known what to say. She could hardly have objected to him working there when they were in desperate need of extra staff so in the end she’d murmured something about it being useful to have another experienced doctor on the team and left it at that. However, she still hadn’t decided how she really felt about the idea. Would it be a good thing to spend more time with him when their relationship was at an all-time low?

  ‘So what do you think’s wrong with me, then? Every time I need to pee it burns like mad!’

  Natalie hurriedly returned her attention to the girl sitting on the couch. Jade Baxter was sixteen and had been living in one of the local hostels. She had come to London six months ago after running away from the latest in a series of foster-homes. Of mixed Asian and Afro-Caribbean heritage, she was a strikingly pretty girl with curly black hair and huge dark brown eyes. Natalie had seen her several times since she’d been working at the clinic, each time over something fairly trivial. She suspected that Jade was lonely and that she came to the clinic to talk to them. However, there was no doubt that she was genuinely ill that day.

  ‘I think you have cystitis, Jade. Your symptoms certainly point towards it—a frequent desire to urinate, pain accompanied by a burning sensation when you do manage to pee. Have you noticed any traces of blood in your urine?’

  ‘No. Should I have done?’ Jade asked anxiously, and Natalie smiled.

  ‘No. It’s just another symptom that would point towards it being cystitis. If you can give me a urine sample, I’ll get it tested, although I’m ninety-nine per cent certain that’s what is wrong with you.’

  ‘But how did I get it? I mean, I’ve never had it before so why has it suddenly happened now?’

  ‘There are all sorts of reasons,’ Natalie explained, sitting down beside her on the couch. ‘Cystitis occurs when the inner lining of the bladder becomes inflamed, usually because of a bacterial infection. Anything that stops you passing water can cause the infection because bacteria soon grow in stagnant urine. That’s why it’s so important to go to the loo as soon as you feel that you need to do so and not hang on until later.’

  ‘Oh.’ Jade pulled a face. ‘I hate using the toilets at the hostel. The staff do their best but some people leave them in the most awful state. I tend to wait until I go to the shops then use the toilets in one of the big stores.’

  ‘That’s probably what’s caused it, then. Constantly retaining urine in the bladder or the urethra—that’s the tube leading out of your body—is providing the perfect breeding ground for all those nasty little bugs. You’re going to have to bite the bullet and use
the facilities at the hostel, I’m afraid. Maybe you could ask the staff if they would put up a notice, asking people to be more considerate.’

  ‘I can try,’ Jade said glumly, ‘but I don’t suppose it will do much good. Some people are absolutely disgusting!’

  Natalie laughed sympathetically. ‘Then you’ll have to see about getting a place of your own. Have you contacted that housing association I told you about the last time you were here?’

  ‘Yes. They were very nice but they explained that they have a huge waiting list so I don’t know how long it will be before they can offer me a flat of my own.’

  ‘That’s a pity. What about the private sector? Have you tried that?’ Natalie asked, getting up to unlock the cupboard and take out a prescription pad. She tore off a script and replaced the pad on the shelf then locked the cupboard again. Blank prescriptions were like gold dust and they had to be very careful that none of their patients could get hold of them, otherwise they might use them to obtain hard drugs. Being constantly on her guard about such matters was one aspect of the job which she’d had to adjust to, but now it was second nature to be careful.

  ‘It’s just too expensive to rent privately.’ Jade sighed. ‘The going rate for even a studio flat in London is way out of my league, even though I’ve just got myself a job.’

  ‘Really?’ Natalie exclaimed in delight. ‘Where are you working?’

  ‘Oh, just in a florist’s shop not far from here. The money is rubbish but they’ve offered to train me so it’s a start. And who knows? Maybe one day I can get my own shop.’

  ‘Well, good for you! Everyone has to start somewhere and you never know where you’ll end up in a few years’ time.’

  Natalie filled in the prescription and signed it, then handed it to the girl. As a qualified nurse-practitioner, there were a range of drugs she could prescribe without needing a doctor’s signature on the prescription and this was one of them. ‘Take this to the chemist along the road. The shop is open on Sundays and I’d like you to start taking the tablets as soon as possible.’