She put her head in her hands and groaned softly. ‘Oh, Patrick. I thought you were divorced or a serial love-rat or something. When you said you didn’t have friends, that you’d moved up here and only the job mattered, I thought you’d blotted your copybook so badly you’d had to get away to live it down. I never dreamt...’
He laughed softly and moved, lifting her bodily into his arms and settling down in the chair with her on his lap before she had time to protest, enclosing her with his warm, solid arms so that she was snuggled against his chest. And then she didn’t want to protest, because it felt wonderful. Safe, as she’d never felt safe.
‘Sorry,’ he said quietly. ‘I’m not a serial love-rat. Just a widower who was hardly even married.’
‘What was her name?’
His smile was wry. ‘Eleanor—Ellie. Does it matter?’
She shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Does it?’
He shook his head. ‘Not really.’ His hand reached out and stroked her hair away from her face, and he smiled down at her tenderly and brushed away the tears she hadn’t known she’d shed. ‘She didn’t know her name—didn’t know me, or understand what was happening to her, so far as I could tell, but I visited her every day, sat with her and talked to her, telling her what I’d done and what was going on in the world, just in case there was something left inside her that understood. I spent hours reading to her, books, magazines, the paper—anything. And then in March she got pneumonia and slipped away, and everybody said it was a blessing and a kindness, but it didn’t feel like that.’
‘Were you lost?’
He laughed. ‘Utterly. I’d always known she wouldn’t get better, I’d seen the brain scans, the huge hole in her head where her brain ought to be, but as long as she was alive, she was still my wife. And then suddenly she was gone and I didn’t know quite what to do.’
‘So you moved away.’
He nodded. ‘Fresh start. I needed it. I’d lost nearly all my friends—they’d moved on in the time I’d been sitting beside Ellie or working double shifts to pay the nursing-home fees.’ Annie knew all about double shifts, and losing friends, and having to focus on something to the exclusion of everything else.
But he had a new start, and she almost envied him that. The only thing that would get her out of the hole she was in was saving enough to pay for the kitchen to be fitted out with the new units, and then she could sell the house and they could move into something smaller and cheaper. Maybe then she and Katie could have a life...
‘So there you are. That’s my story. Now it’s your turn,’ he said softly, and she felt a flutter of panic. Could she let him in? Let him get that close, know so much, see her so clearly? She’d been a fool, just a gullible fool, and she hated letting him see that side of her.
‘Who was he?’
‘Who?’
‘The man who did this to you. Katie’s father, I imagine, or am I wrong?’
She shook her head. ‘No. You’re not wrong. Colin.’
There. She’d said his name aloud for the first time in years, and the room hadn’t caught fire or turned to dust. A miracle.
‘So what happened? Is he still around?’
‘No. He died. Two and a half years ago.’
She felt him go still. ‘What of?’
‘Deceleration injuries. He jumped off the Orwell Bridge.’
His arms tightened, and she heard him suck in his breath. ‘Hell, Annie, I’m sorry.’
‘I’m not. Not for him. Well, I am, but I was so angry at the time. All I could think about was what it had done to Katie, and the effect on the kids on the school bus that was just approaching when he did it.’
‘Ow. Lousy timing.’
She laughed humourlessly. ‘Oh, his timing was impeccable. We’d just stripped out the kitchen and I was expecting the workmen to come in, and they didn’t turn up. I phoned them and asked where they were, and they said he’d cancelled the job. So I tackled him about it when he got home, and he broke down and told me that the money was gone. He’d gambled it, lost it all. I thought he meant on the stock exchange or something normal but, no, he’d done it on-line, on the internet gaming sites. But that wasn’t all. Apparently he’d built up a massive mortgage, credit cards, loans—all sorts. That was why we’d moved here, he told me. Nothing to do with being near the hospital for me or improving a rundown old house and making money to move us up the ladder, just that he’d borrowed so much against our old house that he had to sell it to clear some debts.’
‘Surely you must have known—seen the figures?’
She shook her head. ‘No. It was his house. He was older than me, he had the house already when I married him. It was in his name, and he’d been able to do everything without me knowing the details. That’s why I didn’t take up this hideous carpet when I painted the room just after we moved here—we were going to replace it. And why I planned the kitchen, and bought the units and had it all stripped out. It was his idea, and I think he really meant to give up gambling and concentrate on the house and his family, but it’s an addiction and he couldn’t do it without help, and he wouldn’t ask for help. He didn’t even tell me what was going on until that last day when I tackled him about it, and then the next morning the police came to the hospital to tell me he’d killed himself on his way to work.’
Patrick winced. ‘I suppose you blamed yourself?’
‘Oh, of course—I should have realised, I should have helped him. His parents blamed me too, of course, which didn’t help. In his suicide note he said he’d done it to solve our financial problems, because he couldn’t see any other way out. And then I found the suicide exclusion clause in the life insurance policy, and since then I haven’t had time to think, I’ve just had to struggle to keep up the mortgage payments and keep a roof over our heads, so it didn’t really solve anything.’
‘You didn’t think of selling?’
She shook her head. ‘I couldn’t. Katie’d lost enough, had enough upheaval—and, anyway, the place is unsaleable like it is and I can’t afford to sort it. Thank goodness we’d had the windows done by then, because they were dreadful. At least it’s only the inside that’s so disgusting.’
He sighed and drew her head closer, resting his forehead against hers and just holding her. Did he have any idea how comforting that was? How safe it made her feel?
‘Who else knows?’
‘Sally. Nobody else—well, not the details. Everybody knows he killed himself, and there was a lot of talk, but I refused to discuss it and after a while the gossip mill got bored and found someone else to talk about. There’s always someone worse off than yourself. I learned to be grateful for that for all the wrong reasons.’
‘Does Katie know?’
‘That he killed himself? Yes. That he was a gambler? No, not really. She’s too young to understand, but if and when she asks, I’ll tell her, and I’ve tried really hard not to paint him in a negative light, because in many ways he was a good husband and father. It was just the lies I couldn’t forgive, and I’m really hot on that. I won’t tolerate her lying to me, and the flipside is I have to tell her the truth. That’s not always easy.’
He chuckled softly. ‘No, I can imagine.’ He went quiet again, thoughtful, then said, ‘Have you had an estate agent to look at the house?’
She laughed. ‘With that kitchen? What’s the point? I can’t sell, unless I want to lose shedloads of money on the house. The frustrating thing is that the units are all sitting there in the dining room, waiting, but until I can afford to pay a fitter, I can’t put the house on the market.’
‘Can I see?’
She stared up at him in astonishment. ‘The units?’
‘And the plan.’
‘Why?’
He shrugged, his great shoulders shifting fractionally. ‘Curiosity?’
‘Sure.’ She climbed off his lap, instantly missing the contact, and led the way through to the other room. ‘Here,’ she said, gesturing at the huge pile of boxes stacked aro
und the walls that all but cut off the path to the French doors. ‘Voila.’
‘They’re ready built! Not flat-packs.’
‘No. They’re good units. But I can’t do it, and I can’t afford to pay—’
‘Can I see the plan?’
‘If I can find it.’
She rummaged in the bureau and pulled out a slim file, handing it to him. ‘It’s all in there. I can’t imagine why you’re interested.’
‘You were going to take the wall down?’
‘Yes. Thank goodness we didn’t get round to that.’
‘It would be lovely, with the French doors out to the garden. Open it all up. It would be the same as my house, and it works really well.’
She rubbed her thumb and fingers together under his nose, and he smiled ruefully.
‘I know—you can’t afford it. Pity.’ He turned his attention back to the plan, and she looked at it for the first time in years. She could remember planning it, going to the shop and getting them to draw it all up on the computer, designing in all the clever little features that would make it all that much better.
If only she’d known...
* * *
It was utterly straightforward. The units were ready made, the kitchen was stripped out—it would be a complete cinch to fit. Plans in hand, he went through into the kitchen and looked at the wall. It wasn’t structural, he didn’t think. He’d need to check the joists in the bedroom, but if it wasn’t load-bearing, the wall could simply come out and the floor and ceiling be tidied up. Then Annie could have her plan just as it had been intended.
Or he could juggle it to fit the original kitchen, but it wouldn’t have anything like the wow factor that the open-plan version would, and she’d get much more for the house with it done really well.
Talking her into it, though, would be a nightmare, he realised. If he could only get rid of her for a few days—send her away to a health spa for a holiday or something, because the woman was exhausted and her holiday didn’t seem to have done her a blind bit of good.
It would need careful thought, and planning, and the surreptitious enlisting of Sally’s help.
But for now she was exhausted, and all she needed was a hug and an early night.
He took the plans back into the dining room, returned them to their folder and handed them to her with a wry smile. ‘Nice,’ he said. ‘Hang on in there. You’ll get there in the end.’
And he watched as she straightened her shoulders, drew in a deep breath and nodded.
‘Yes,’ she said, lifting her chin. ‘Yes, I will.’
And he was more determined than ever to make it happen for her.
It was a hideous night.
He was called in at twelve, just after he dozed off thinking about how to achieve Annie’s kitchen, to a motorcyclist who’d skidded on wet mud and slid under the wheels of a car.
His name was Daniel Taylor, and together Patrick and Tom Whittaker battled to save him.
‘God knows what we’re doing,’ Tom said as they struggled yet again to get him back. ‘He’s got a severe head injury, and his chances of coming out of this anything less than a cabbage are slight, but he’s twenty-three. What the hell else can we do?’
What indeed? Ellie had been twenty-three. Twenty-three and beautiful and vibrant and so full of fun, and overnight their world, their dreams, had been taken away. Damn. Talking about it to Annie had brought it all back, made it even fresher.
They’d worked on Ellie. He’d worked on Ellie, until help had come, and then they’d all worked on her, during the transfer to hospital, and afterwards, for hours, resuscitating her three times in all. And for what?
But he’d do it all again, because there might have been a chance that her brain damage could have been more minor than it had seemed, and there might be a chance for this young man. So they worked on, and eventually his heart was in sinus rhythm and they could turn their attention to the rest of him.
They cut his clothes off, and Patrick took one look at his pelvis and winced. He had an open-book fracture, the cartilage in his pubic sythesis totally ruptured so that the pelvis hinged on the sacroiliac joints at the back, and every time he was moved the hinge opened and the soft-tissue damage to his genital area was increased. His urethra was torn, his bladder was filling with blood, and the first thing he needed was an external fixator to hold everything rigid until it could be sorted out.
So he attached the fixator while Tom kept him going and catalogued his appalling injuries in a hasty assessment before he was transferred to Theatre for urgent neurosurgery to remove the blood clot on his brain.
And it was an impressive catalogue. Eighteen fractures in all, several of them skull, many of them pelvic—the blood loss from that alone had been enough to kill him, surely? But he’d made it through to the morning, thanks to the efforts of the surgical team.
Patrick worked alongside the urologist as he repaired the torn urethra, pulling out and plastering the open fracture of his ankle, using a backslab to hold the foot in position without constricting the swelling until he was more stable and could survive further and more lengthy surgery. He’d plastered his left wrist to hold it steady, but the rest would have to wait.
He went to ICU to see Daniel at seven-thirty, after a hasty shower and a fresh set of scrubs, on his way to the ward to check his other pre-ops, and met his family, his mother and father and girlfriend, all of them struggling to come to terms with the sight of him wired up to a mass of beeping, blipping equipment.
It was all too horribly familiar to Patrick, and he well remembered the first few days and weeks, and knew exactly what they’d be going through. Time enough, though, for the neurologist to finish his assessment and break the news. He was simply there as a mechanic, so when Daniel’s mother asked if he’d walk again, all he could tell her was that his pelvis would heal, given time and further surgery, and his ankle, wrist and ribs likewise.
The bit of him that would make him get up and walk, however, was a different matter, and the outcome in that department might be very less certain. He was doing well, however, although it would be some time before they weaned him off the sedation to see how his head injury had responded, but so far, so good.
‘He’s stable,’ he was told by the nurse on duty. 'No problems since he came back from Theatre.’
‘Good. Once he’s settled we’ll get him scanned and make sure we haven’t missed anything, but in the meantime page me if you’re worried about any of his fractures or spot anything else.’
The nurse nodded. ‘I will.’
He went up to the ward, wondering how he was going to get through his emergency list that morning, having snatched only two hours’ sleep in the duty room from four-thirty. But Annie was there, and one smile from her took away the strain of the night and set the world straight on its axis.
‘You look shattered. Busy night?’
‘Mmm. Motorcyclist with an open-book fracture of the pelvis, a trashed ankle and an undisplaced wrist fracture. Oh, and urological complications and a nasty head injury.’
Her gaze sharpened. ‘Are you OK?’ she said softly, and he didn’t pretend not to understand.
‘I’m fine,’ he assured her. ‘Tired, my back aches and I’ve got several more hours in surgery this morning, but I’ll cope. Raj is a good registrar—I’ll let him take the routine stuff since I pretty much gave him the night off!’
She smiled. ‘Got time for a cup of tea?’
‘I’ve always got time for a cup of tea,’ he said fervently, and she led him into the tiny ward kitchen, put the kettle on and found a couple of mugs.
‘Sarah Williams is in a lot of pain,’ she told him. ‘That’s a nasty knee.’
‘I know. She’s determined not to give up gymnastics, but I don’t know how well it’ll stand up to it. I’ll have to see when I get inside it. Did anything else come in that I missed? Anything earlier?’
‘Raj admitted an elderly woman with a fractured hip, and I think there are a co
uple of greenstick fractures in Paeds from what he was saying. I think he’s going to take those.’
He nodded. ‘Nothing else? Nothing while I was in Theatre?’
‘Don’t think so. Nothing that’s made its way to us, at least.’
He smiled at her, wondering if it was just because he was tired or if she really was so incredibly lovely. ‘Good,’ he said, and then cleared his voice, because it was a little gruff, and buried his nose in the mug she handed him.
He wasn’t to be allowed to drink it, though, because his pager went and he was called down to A and E to see another patient, one of the senior hospital doctors who’d hurt his shoulder the night before playing rugby, and who’d woken up that morning in agony and realised it was more serious than he’d thought.
He went into the cubicle and found his victim sitting on the edge of the couch, his right arm supported by his left, swinging his legs and looking disgusted.
‘Hi—I’m Patrick Corrigan, and you must be Josh Lancaster.’
‘Hi. You’ll forgive me if we don’t shake hands,’ Josh said drily, and Patrick grinned.
‘I’ll get over it. So tell me what’s happened.’
‘Rugby practice last night for a hospital charity match. The scrum collapsed and my arm got tangled up. I felt something go in my shoulder, but I didn’t think I’d dislocated it. This morning it’s a darned sight more painful, and Tom Whittaker tells me I’ve definitely dislocated it and refuses to treat me. Said I’m too big to wrestle with and he knows just the man. I guess that would be you.’
Patrick laughed and snapped on the light box. ‘Ouch. Well, you’ve pinged your joint all right. It’s a classic anterior dislocation. Have you had any sedation or muscle relaxant?’
He shook his head. ‘Only codeine at home. They wanted to wait for you. Reckon you can do it?’
He pulled a face. ‘I think I might just cope. It’s not strength, it’s skill, and I’m sure Tom’s perfectly capable. He’d just rather pass the buck and as he pointed out, you are big and you have strong muscles, so you’re likely to fight back. I’m in Theatre shortly, we’ll just slot you in if it’s difficult. What’s your speciality?’
A Wife and Child to Cherish (Audley Memorial Hospital) Page 6