How long had it been like this? What had been the change in circumstances that had resulted in it being left like this?
He stared at the dining-room door and wondered if her kitchen cupboards were in there. All planned and bought, she’d said. All ready and waiting for a man to fit them.
Well, he was a man, and he could fit a kitchen standing on his head. After all, he’d done it before. That was the one thing about being an orthopaedic surgeon. Lining things up and putting screws in was second nature. And he could do it, sort it out for her so she could wash vegetables under a running tap, leave her dishes on a draining board, prepare food without bending over to the height of the table top—it must be hell to work in here.
And while it was under way, she’d need somewhere else to stay, because even her primitive and makeshift little arrangement would have to go for a while. And his virtually identical rented stopgap house, just round the corner and fully furnished and with two spare bedrooms, would be ideal.
All he had to do was talk her into it!
‘Hi, Alfie.’
He lifted his head and grunted, and the dog sat up and pressed his cold wet nose into Annie’s hand. She rubbed his head absently. ‘Alfie, have you had anything to eat today?’
‘Had a bun for breakfast.’
Probably an old burger bun raided from a bin. ‘Fancy a sandwich?’ she offered.
‘Half a bottle of whisky would go down better.’
‘I’m sure.’
She straightened up, gave the dog a last pat and followed Patrick. He was waiting for her in the doorway of the little eight-till-late shop, one eyebrow cocked in enquiry. She raised her own eyebrow as she went in past him, scooping up a basket on the way.
‘What was that about?’
‘He’s called Alfie. He lives here.’
‘It’s going to get cold soon.’
‘I know. I worry about him, but he seems to survive.’
‘I wonder why,’ he said drily, watching as she pitched a tin of dog food, a marked-down egg salad sandwich and a packet of crisps into her basket, then followed it with milk, basic mousetrap cheese, a couple of tins of tuna, a packet of frozen peas and a loaf of economy bread. A few cheap chocolate wafers for Katie’s packed lunches, three apples, a small packet of mince, a few carrots, a little tin of kidney beans and she was heading for the checkout. Katie liked chilli if she didn’t make it too hot, and rice was a good, cheap filler. Thank goodness her money was in her account now.
Patrick frowned at the basket, threw in a bag of lettuce, a box of cherry tomatoes and some broccoli, a packet of chicken breasts and a frozen chocolate Danish dessert. Her favourite. She was almost drooling, but then she reminded herself she’d turned his offer down.
‘Supper,’ he said, and she studiously avoided looking at it again in case she dribbled.
‘Looks nice.’
‘It will be. You’ll enjoy it.’
‘Patrick, no—’
‘Patrick, yes,’ he said, propelling her gently to the checkout and pulling out his wallet.
‘Don’t you dare,’ she said, eyes flashing, and he pulled his things out of the basket, piled them separately and sighed.
‘Go on, then, pay for your things but hurry up, there’s a queue.’
She paid, got some cashback because Katie needed money for school things, and while he was paying she went outside, opened the tin of dog food and tipped it out onto the old tin plate beside the lurcher. ‘Here you go, Scruff,’ she said gently, scratching his ears while he inhaled it in seconds. Then she handed Alfie his sandwich, crisps and one of the apples.
‘You’re a good girl,’ he said gruffly. ‘God bless you—even if it isn’t whisky.’
She laughed and stood up, giving Scruff one last pat and getting a waving tail for her gesture. Patrick was waiting for her again, and she waggled her fingers at Alfie and left him and the dog to their meal.
‘You’re as soft as lights,’ Patrick growled gently.
‘He’s a nice man.’
‘He’s a drinker.’
‘Of course. He’s an old regular of Sally’s—he’s in and out of A and E all the time. She usually rings me if he’s been in and I keep an eye on him for a few days. Last winter he had pneumonia and we couldn’t get him to stay in because of the dog. I thought we’d lose him.’
‘Tell me you didn’t have him to stay,’ Patrick begged, and she felt her skin warm under his searching gaze.
‘He wouldn’t come,’ she confessed. ‘I looked after him here—fed him and made sure he had his antibiotics. He’s a tough old coot.’
Patrick shook his head in disbelief, took the bag out of her hand and strode off in the wrong direction.
‘Where are you going? I thought we were taking my shopping home?’
He stopped and shrugged. ‘We might as well drive it there after we pick up Katie.’
‘We?’ she said, aware that this supper business still wasn’t resolved.
‘It’s getting on for twenty past six,’ he pointed out, and she looked at her watch in amazement.
He was right. By the time she’d gone home, taken her shopping in and walked to Lynn’s, it would be after half past. Rats. Where had the time gone? Talking to Alfie, of course, and feeding poor old Scruff.
So they went to his house, collected Katie in his car and headed for home. His home.
‘I thought you were giving us a lift home?’ she said.
‘I am.’
‘Are we having supper at yours again?’ Katie asked, sounding delighted, and he grinned.
‘If you like Morrocan chicken with couscous and chocolate pudding.’
‘Oh, yeah! Chocolate pudding’s my favourite!’
Annie could have crowned him.
‘You’re out of line again,’ she said stiffly, and his grin just widened.
‘Story of my life,’ he said unrepentantly, and she folded her arms across her chest and turned her head away before she said something unspeakable in front of her daughter. He really was the most aggravating man!
He’d got away with it.
He’d wondered, for a moment, if she was going to make him stop the car so they could get out and walk home, but she hadn’t, and they’d come back for supper to his house and Katie had hoovered up the food as if she’d been starved.
Not that there was any sign of it, because her height and weight looked about right for a child of her age, and her hair was shiny and her eyes were bright with mischief and intelligence. She was a delightful child, and Annie clearly adored her.
He could understand that. If she’d been his daughter he would have adored her.
But she wasn’t, and with Annie angry with him for engineering their supper and sending out keep-off signals ten feet high, he’d do well to keep his feelings for both of them under control if nobody was going to get hurt.
And so after supper he had run them home, dropped them off and watched them go in while he’d sat in the car, engine running, and resisted the urge to beg a cup of tea or coffee and a chance to spend a little more time with her.
That had been two nights ago, and for the last two days, apart from necessity, she hadn’t spoken a word to him.
He sighed and walked into the A and E department and found Sally scribbling on the whiteboard.
‘You paged me?’
‘Oh, Patrick—yes, we’ve got a gymnast with a disrupted knee. Looks like ligaments. She’s being very brave but she’s in a lot of pain. She’s had ten of diamorphine but it doesn’t seem to have made much difference, and it’s made her feel sick so she’s had an anti-emetic as well. She’s had X-rays— several views—but I don’t know if we’ve got all you want. Could you take a look? She’s in cubicle two with her mother. Her name’s Sarah Williams.’
‘Sure.’
He went in and winced inwardly. The young woman’s knee was swollen, turning purple on the inside, and she was supporting it with both hands and shaking like a leaf. It wasn’t the knee so much as the g
irl’s face that gave the story away.
‘Hi—Sarah? I’m Patrick Corrigan, one of the orthopaedic surgeons. I gather you’ve had some kind of fall in gymnastics?’ She gave him a slightly wobbly smile. ‘Hi. Yeah, I did a somersault dismount from a beam—I landed and lost my balance and twisted, and I felt it go. There was a pop and then a feeling like Velcro ripping, and the most horrendous pain.’
‘I’m sure. Did the pain subside?’
‘Eventually—till they moved me to get me in the ambulance. Then it was awful.’
‘And is it still worse if you move it?’
‘Oh, loads. It sort of dies away if I don’t move, but when I do...’
Definitely ligaments, he thought, and wondered how good she was at her sport and if it was important to her. She looked as if she was wearing team colours, and if she was still doing it at her age, it was probably because she was good.
Or had been. Time for that later. ‘OK. Well, judging from what you’ve told me I think it’s almost certain you’ve torn one of the cruciates and possibly one of the collateral ligaments as well. Now, you’ve had some pain relief, I gather, and I don’t need to move it much to find out what I need to know, but I’m going to give you a bit more pain relief to make you more comfortable and a muscle relaxant so it’s less tense. In the meantime, I’ll do an ultrasound and see if I can get a look at these ligaments.’
He found Sally and got the drugs organised, asked her to track down the ultrasound and then went back and started a more comprehensive visual inspection. By the time the painkiller and muscle relaxant had taken effect, he’d pretty much identified the extent of the injury. He just had to confirm it. ‘OK, let’s have a little look at this now,’ he said. ‘I’m really not going to move it far at all, so don’t panic, just try and relax and let me see what’s going on.’
He wrapped one hand firmly under her calf just below the knee and the other hand around her thigh, bent the knee slightly then pulled gently, and she whimpered as the tibia moved forward in relation to the femur. A positive anterior drawer test, the classic Lachman’s sign. So that was her anterior cruciate down the pan, he though. Then cupping his hand under the back of her thigh, he took hold of her ankle and moved her foot slightly out to the side.
She gasped and grabbed it, but not before he’d seen and felt what he needed to know. The medial collateral ligament had torn—probably the Velcro sensation she’d reported—and so there was nothing to stop her knee bending sideways. It didn’t feel unstable enough for a total rupture, just a tear that would heal itself given time, but the anterior cruciate was another matter.
‘OK, Sarah, I’m sorry it hurt. It’s all over now.’
‘Not your fault,’ she said through gritted teeth, and her mother bit her lip and laid a supportive hand on her shoulder as Sarah looked up at him for the verdict. ‘Well?’
‘Well, as I thought, you’ve ruptured your anterior cruciate—that would have been the pop—and torn the medial collateral ligament.’
‘The Velcro.’
‘Exactly. You may have got some cartilage damage as well, but you haven’t got any fractures or bony displacement, according to these X-rays.’
‘So what’s next?’ Sarah asked, her voice a little unsteady for all her outward calm and courage.
‘Now what we do and how aggressively we attack this depends on how important gymnastics is to you.’
‘Very. I’m in the county team. It was a competition—and I won it.’
He smiled. ‘Good for you,’ he said, and wondered if she realised it would be the last time.
‘So can you fix me so I can carry on?’
He sighed and perched on the end of the couch. ‘Maybe. But if you do carry on you’ll get arthritis in it later—and maybe not that much later. Ten years? Fifteen? I wouldn’t encourage your return to the sport whatever.’
‘And if I don’t go back? How long then before I get arthritis, or won’t I?’
He shrugged. ‘You almost certainly will anyway, after an injury like this. I don’t know—thirty years? How old are you?’
‘Twenty-three.’
‘So you’re talking mid-fifties if you’re careful, mid-thirties or less if you’re not.’
‘I want to carry on. I have to carry on. It’s my life—it’s what I am. I mean, I love my job, but at the end of the day I need to unwind, do something else, and that something else is gymnastics. Without it... ’
‘What are you?’
‘A dentist,’ she said. ‘I’ve just qualified this year.’
At least dentistry was a job she could do sitting down, he thought, even if the knee gave her hell later on. And she’d be able to rest it now during recovery. Which meant the repair had a good chance of working.
‘OK. In that case I’ll admit you, do an ultrasound to get a better look and I’ll fit you into my list tomorrow for repair.’ Her eyes filled with tears. ‘Thank you.’
‘Don’t thank me. By this time tomorrow you’ll probably hate me, because I’ll have the physio on you the moment you wake up, and it won’t stop until you’re fixed. And you still can’t go back to training for a year, so it’s not a quick fix. In the meantime, let’s get you up to the ward and we’ll talk some more in the morning.’
He went and found Sally, told her what he was doing and asked her to arrange the transfer. When he was about to leave, she said, ‘So how are you getting on with Annie?’
He laughed softly. ‘Oh, I’d love to know. Not well, I don’t think. She doesn’t give a lot away.’
‘No.’ Sally looked thoughtful. ‘I wish she would open up a bit more—share it.’
‘If I only knew what, it would be progress.’
Sally shook her head. ‘Oh, no. It’s not for me to tell you, Patrick. You’ll have to ask her.’
‘I will. Can I leave you to sort Sarah’s transfer out?’
‘Sure. And, Patrick?’
‘Yes?’
‘Be gentle with Annie. It hasn’t been easy.’
He nodded and left, walking back up to the ward thoughtfully. It was eight o’clock, but she was on a late. She might still be there. And if she was, he’d talk to her.
She was there, sitting at the nurses’ station in the centre of the ward and entering data into the computer.
‘Hi.’
She looked up, her eyes widening, and gave him a cautious smile. ‘Hi. How was your emergency?’
‘Determined. Twenty-three-year-old county gymnast with torn ligaments. I’m fixing her tomorrow. She’ll be up in a minute. Did Sally ring?’
She nodded. ‘Sue’s sorting it out. She’s on nights and she’s just come on, so she’ll have a bit of continuity.’
‘What about you? Are you going home now?’
She nodded. ‘I’m just finishing off the paperwork for Mrs Dane and Mrs Evans now they’ve been discharged, and then I’m done. You?’
‘I’m on call. I may go home—I can drive to A and E quicker than I can walk down from the ward. Where’s Katie?’
‘At Lynn’s. She stays the night when I work lates.’
So she had no excuses for avoiding him.
He saw the thought hit her at the same time as him, only their reactions were very different.
‘Sally told me to be gentle with you,’ he murmured.
‘Good for Sally,’ she said tightly. ‘What else did she tell you?’
‘Nothing. Said it wasn’t hers to tell. Told me to ask you.’ He propped his hip on the edge of the desk and leant towards her, keeping his voice soft. ‘Come on, Annie. Talk to me. I don’t bite.’
‘Maybe I don’t want to,’ she said bluntly. ‘And maybe I’m not the only one keeping things back.’
No. She wasn’t. He sighed. ‘Fair’s fair,’ he said, his voice low. ‘At the risk of sounding like a little boy in a playground, I’ll show you mine if you’ll show me yours.’
He thought she’d do what she’d done again and again and again—tell him to butt out, to mind his own business,
to leave her alone.
But she didn’t. She looked up, swallowed hard and sighed. And then she said, ‘OK.’
CHAPTER FOUR
‘So who’s going first?’
They were sitting in her house, because, as she’d pointed out, Lynn needed to be able to reach her if there was a problem with Katie, and, anyway, she didn’t want to be left alone in his house for hours if he was called in for an emergency.
So there they were, in her awful little sitting room with the horrid and now gaudy carpet, she curled into the chair in the bay window, he sitting at right angles to her at the end of the sofa, just far enough away to give her a little much-needed emotional distance. They’d had a cup of tea and some toast, more as a displacement activity than because they needed it, but their snack was finished now, and there was nothing left to do but talk, and suddenly putting it off any longer seemed worse than the talking.
‘So—you or me?’ she prompted.
She waited a heartbeat for his reply. She fully expected him to say her, because that’s what Colin would have done and then failed to deliver on his half of the bargain. She was all psyched up for it, but he didn’t.
‘I will,’ he said unexpectedly. ‘Then you’ve got no excuse.’ But he didn’t start talking right away, just sat staring down into the dregs of his tea, swirling it a little and looking thoughtful.
Then he sighed softly, put the mug down on his plate and said, ‘My wife died in March. She’d been in a coma for nearly ten years. She had a massive stroke on the third day of our honeymoon.’
Annie closed her eyes. That wasn’t what she’d been expecting at all. She had no idea what she had been expecting, but that wasn’t it. Divorce, maybe. Betrayal. But that? That was too cruel.
‘Oh, Patrick, I’m so sorry.’
‘Yeah, me, too. She was a lovely girl. It was awful. Wrong. So, so wrong.’
That must have been when his hair had started to go grey. He’d said something about ten years ago. She’d heard of people going grey overnight, but had always thought it was apocryphal—some kind of urban legend. Maybe not after all, or perhaps it been gradual, just triggered by the shock and uncertainty of the next years. And to think she’d teased him about worrying about her—asked him what he’d worried about before he’d met her!
A Wife and Child to Cherish (Audley Memorial Hospital) Page 5