Accidental Rendezvous

by Caroline Anderson

  'I had no motive,' she told him honestly. 'I just wanted to be with you.'

  Nick's eyes darkened and he looked away. 'I wanted you, too, Sally, but it would have been a lousy reason to restart our affair,' he said in a low voice. 'We had it all once, and we made a mess of it. Maybe this is another chance for us, but not as lovers, just as friends. I care a lot about you. I don't want to see you get hurt again.'

  And you'll hurt me, she thought with fatalistic acceptance. You don't do commitment. You don't do long term. Sticking power isn't in your vocabulary.

  'Well?'

  She blinked hard. He kept saying this friends thing. Maybe she really ought to believe him. She dredged up a smile. 'OK. Friends it is. That's better, actually. It means I can criticise you without repercussions.'

  He looked surprised for a moment, then gave a little laugh. 'Criticise?' he asked cautiously.

  'Yeah. That shirt, for instance, could have done with a press.'

  He glanced down and smiled wryly. 'You're lucky I've got a clean one, never mind pressed. And I don't have a clue where the iron is.'

  'Scandalous. You've been moved in—what, three, four days now? I would have expected you to redecorate it from top to bottom in that time.'

  He smiled and took the wineglass from her hand and put it down, then opened his arms. 'Come here,' he said softly. 'I could really use a hug.'

  So could I, she thought sadly, and let him take her in his arms. His chest was hard and solid under her cheek, and she could smell the combination of soap and man that made him uniquely Nick. Maybe friendship did have its advantages, she thought, and nestled closer to him.

  No demands, no risks, no guilt trips about not ironing his shirts or putting too much garlic in the spaghetti sauce.

  No one to snuggle up to in the wee small hours of the night. No one to tell if things went wrong and you needed a shoulder to cry on—

  No, that wasn't true. She could still cry on his shoulder—except he was the thing most likely to go wrong, and he'd just made sure he couldn't, so maybe she wouldn't even need that option.

  She lifted her head and cradled his jaw in her hand. 'Supper?' she murmured, and he smiled, just the merest ghost of a smile, and nodded.

  'That would be lovely. I was beginning to think you'd got me over here under false pretences.'

  'Actually, it's poisoned.'

  'So nothing new, then?'

  She thumped his chest—just gently—and straightened up. 'I need to cook the pasta. Stay there for a moment, I won't be long. Have another glass of wine.'

  'That's my last, if I'm driving,' he told her.

  'You don't have to. You can stay. I've got a spare room.'

  'I'll go. I seem to have acquired a cat—it's a stray, apparently, and it comes and sits on the stool in the kitchen and miaows at me until I feed it.'

  'And, of course, you don't.'

  Nick looked guilty.

  'It's probably somebody's perfectly well-fed and much loved pet. Is it thin?'

  He grinned and shook his head. 'Oh, no. Everyone feeds him, apparently, but my cat flap doesn't lock, so I can't keep him out.'

  'Stand something in front of it.'

  'It's in the back door.'

  'So nail it up!' Sally said, exasperated, and he looked even more guilty and sheepish.

  'Actually, he's good company. He sits on the window-sill in the sitting room and watches the birds, and he likes having his ears scratched.'

  'Fleas,' Sally said pragmatically, and headed for the kitchen. He was clearly a lost cause, and there was no point reasoning with him. Anyway, it might be better if he didn't stay here overnight. Temptation and all that, and she might do something stupid—like sleepwalk.

  She boiled the kettle for the third time, put the water in the pan, threw in the fresh spaghetti from the supermarket and gave it a stir, then checked the sauce.

  Was it a bit heavy on garlic? Probably, but God forbid she should admit to it!

  Feeling much happier, she drained the pasta, swirled it with olive oil and basil, put it into a plain white serving bowl and carried it through on a tray with the sauce.

  'Supper,' she said to him, and he unfolded himself from the sofa and headed towards the table, the wineglasses and bottle dangling from his fingertips. He set them down in amongst the salad and dressings and Parmesan slivers on the table, and met her eyes.

  'OK?' he asked.

  She smiled. 'OK,' she confirmed, and pulled out her chair. 'Sit, eat, before it gets cold. And save room for the pudding. It's your favourite.'

  'Not your raspberry almond torte?' he said, his eyes lighting up, and she laughed softly.

  'Only if you're good. Eat up, and don't complain about the garlic.'

  Nick didn't say a word, and by the time he went, she was beginning to think they might be able to do it. It had been a pleasant evening, and they'd talked about old friends and reminisced without getting maudlin.

  Well, not too maudlin, anyway.

  Sally went to bed alone, and thought of him in his new house with the lost iron and the visiting cat, and fell asleep with a smile on her face before her tears had even dried.

  The next few days were fine. Nick was friendly, but kept his distance, and although she missed his little winks and all the sneaking up on her he'd done, it did make working in the department much easier again.

  A lot of the tension of the previous week had dissipated, and Sally found she could concentrate on the job, particularly when they were working together on a patient in Resus and teamwork was everything.

  She just seemed to know exactly what he wanted and when, and their procedures were seamless.

  Even Ryan noticed it, and mentioned it to her at the start of the following week.

  'Did you two work together before?' he asked, and she laughed.

  'Well—sort of. I was a staff nurse, he was a medical student in his last clinical year.'

  Ryan pursed his lips and nodded thoughtfully. 'I would have said you'd worked in a team—you seem to know each other's moves so well.'

  Only in bed, she could have said, but she didn't. 'Just a lucky fit,' she said. 'Sometimes you gel, sometimes you don't. I can't work with you or Matt like that, but Matt and Meg seem to gel, and you and Angela have a rapport.'

  He shrugged. 'I suppose. It just seems—I don't know. A bit special.'

  Tell me about it, Sally thought. Maybe it was something to do with Nick, though, because he seemed to be able to get the best out of Toby as well.

  The next day they had an admission, a man in his forties who had woken with a bit of a headache and then been brought in by ambulance complaining of shaking and buzzing in the head and giddiness.

  'Get a history,' Nick said to Toby. 'Anything you think might be relevant. Talk to his wife, she will have seen it from the other side. Then come and have a chat about what we do next. Sally, could you go with him and do an ECG while we establish the rest of the facts?'

  'Sure.'

  She found a portable ECG machine and wheeled it into the cubicle, just as Toby was settling down to take the history. The man seemed quite calm and didn't look too bad, but from his wife's description he had made a huge improvement over the past hour.

  He complained of a headache starting over the left side, and a great buzzing and roaring in the head, and violent shaking.

  'I thought I was going to fall on the floor,' he explained. 'I had to hang onto the table.'

  'He looked awful,' his wife chipped in. 'Grey and waxy. I just knew something bad was wrong. It was much more than just a headache. That's why I dialed 999.'

  Toby nodded, making notes, as Sally put monitor leads on the patient's chest. 'Your blood pressure's quite high—is that normal?'

  'Yes—I'm on beta-blockers.'

  'And what about your pulse rate? That's a bit on the slow side.'

  'It always is. I can't get it high, even when I exercise. That's the beta-blockers, I think.'

  'Could be.' Toby jotted again, and the
n did a quick physical survey, flashing a light in the man's eyes one at a time, testing for basic dexterity and strength in the hands and fingers, and then he put the penlight into his pocket and stood up.

  'OK. We're just going to run the ECG, and we could do with a urine sample to test, if you could manage to produce one for us in a minute?'

  Sally left them with a bottle and the ECG running, and came out of the cubicle in time to hear Toby running through the man's symptoms with Nick.

  'So what's your diagnosis?' Nick asked.

  Toby looked puzzled. 'I don't know. It could be all sorts of things. It could be migraine, but he doesn't seem to have had any flashing lights, or it could be because his heart beats so slowly—it's under forty beats a minute, and if it dipped, might that have caused it? It could be epilepsy, but there's no history. It could be a CVA of some sort—a clot, a haemorrhage—but it's confusing.'

  'How is he now?'

  'Tired, a bit shocky.'

  Nick nodded, studying the notes again and pursing his lips. 'Any history of migraine?'

  'No. Nothing. His mother had it, so he knows what it is.'

  'Might be late onset,' Nick mused, but Toby didn't look convinced.

  'His wife kept talking about the shaking. I may be crazy, but it sounded almost like Parkinson's. She was emphatic that he wasn't fitting, and there was no loss of consciousness.'

  Nick's brow creased in a frown of concentration. 'Any sensory or motor loss? Strength, co-ordination, dexterity?'

  'Not that I could detect, but he's very alert. It might be a very minor CVA.'

  'Or the start of a major bleed,' Nick said thoughtfully. 'I want to see him. I don't like the sound of it. You'd better come with me.'

  It was more than an hour before their patient was transferred to the medical admissions unit, and by that time a physician had been informed of the slight loss of co-ordination and strength on the left-hand side and he'd ordered an MRI scan.

  'It may not show anything, of course,' Nick warned as the man was wheeled away.

  'I know. It's odd, though—he said the headache was on the left,' Toby muttered, 'and yet the weakness is on the left, too. Strokes cross over, don't they?'

  'Usually. Not always,' Nick told him. 'If it's in the cerebellar cortex, it's already crossed, and if it's a coordination problem, that could be where it is. We won't know till the scan result comes through. I'll try and find out what happens, but you did a good job on the history—very thorough and thoughtful. Well done.'

  Toby seemed to grow in front of their eyes. Grinning, he went off to tackle his next patient, and Sally smiled at Nick. 'That was nice.'

  'What?'

  'Telling him he'd done well.'

  'Don't you do that with your nurses?' he asked, and she smiled again.

  'Of course.'

  'Well, then. How about coffee?'

  She returned his smile. 'Sounds good.'

  It was obviously a week for staff morale boosting, Sally thought later the next day when she found Sophie in tears in the loo.

  'What's wrong?' she asked, putting an arm round the girl's shoulders and hugging her gently. 'Sophie, talk to me. What's happened?'

  'My grandmother,' she sobbed. 'She's got pneumonia, and now they've found she's got a bad heart, and they think she's dying.'

  'Oh, Sophie,' Sally murmured, and held her while she cried, then gave her tissues to blot herself up and took her into her office for a chat. 'Do you need time off?' she asked, but Sophie shook her head.

  'No, she lives in Audley. She's in a house just round the corner. I see her every evening. I think she ought to go into a home, but the family don't agree. They think I should give up work and look after her, but I can't do that. I expect you think I'm heartless, don't you? Anyway, if I spend a bit of time with her at night, I can look after her and work, so it's all right.'

  And you probably don't have much other social life, Sally thought. No doubt the family all leant heavily on her, as she was a nurse. It had happened when her grandmother had had a stroke, and all the family had seemed to think that Sally would give up her job and look after her.

  She would have done, of course, if it had been practical, but she had to live, and pay her mortgage, and her grandmother hadn't had enough to keep herself afloat, never mind Sally; She'd gone into a home near her two sons in Devon, and her daughter, Sally's mother, had moved down to be near her.

  Sally missed them all, but it was the way it had worked out, and apart from any financial consideration, she didn't have the mental reserves to sit with an elderly relative who didn't recognise her, twenty-four hours a day.

  It wasn't why she'd trained, and it wasn't where she could do the most good, and she was glad it was the way it was. She explained her own situation to Sophie, and pointed out that the girl had a great deal to offer a great many people, and she should think very carefully before doing anything rash or wearing herself out burning the candle at both ends and in the middle.

  'No one person can look after a sick, dependent relative twenty-four hours a day,' she reminded her. 'You can only be effective for some of the time, and then you start to get resentful and unhappy, and it all goes pear-shaped. Anyway, perhaps she'll be admitted and assessed, and your family will understand the need for proper care,' she said reassuringly.

  Sophie gave a short laugh. 'I doubt it. My family all think I should be with her, and if anything happens, I know they'll all think it's my fault.'

  'Well, just so long as you know you're doing the right thing for all of you. Right, I want you to come with me and do some triage. We've got a build-up in the waiting room, so we need to prioritise. I'd rather have a triage nurse on all the time, but we're too short-staffed to permit it. If I could train you and leave you there, I would, but the danger is until you've seen all the cases a few thousand times, you're likely to miss some vital little snippet that could make all the difference.'

  She showed Sophie the triage assessment form, which asked for basic details of the condition the patient was presenting with, and gave a set of boxes for the nurse to tick according to urgency.

  'Head injuries, chest pain and things that could be potentially life-threatening come out at the top of the list, ingrowing toenails come bottom. Anyone bleeding copiously is high up because they tend to pass out and, anyway, they make a lot of mess; children tend to be accelerated because things can deteriorate very fast in little children and nobody likes to see them suffer. And that's it, really.'

  'Is that all?' Sophie said with a strangled laugh. 'I wouldn't know where to begin!'

  'Take a history,' Sally advised. 'Quite brief. Bear in mind these are the walking wounded. Anyone really bad will have been brought in horizontal. Look at the patients, assess their condition and how they're coping. Are they in great pain, or are they managing to deal with it? Are they going to get much worse if they have to wait? Some conditions, like burns, need treating as quickly as possible for the best outcome.'

  'I can quite see why you can't leave me here,' Sophie said, wide-eyed. 'I had no idea it was so involved.'

  'You'll get the hang of it,' Sally assured her. 'Right, shall we start?'

  They spent an hour doing it, Sally explaining after each patient left for the waiting room just why they'd been given the category they had, and by the end Sophie's judgement had improved hugely.

  'You're beginning to get the hang of it,' Sally told her with a big smile, and Sophie pulled a comic face.

  'I'm not sure. It's very difficult.'

  'You're doing fine,' Sally assured her. 'Right, let's let Meg take over, and we'll go and treat some of them.'

  It had been a highly productive day, Sally thought at the end of it. She'd made some real progress with Sophie, and she could see that with experience she'd make an outstanding nurse—always assuming her family didn't insist she give up her promising career to look after her ailing grandmother.

  'You're looking pleased with yourself,' Nick said as she was leaving.

&nbs
p; 'Good day. How about you?'

  'OK. I found out about our headache patient, by the way. The SHO up on the MAU tried to tell me it was migraine, so I rubbed his nose in the notes and sent him back to his boss. He's had an MRI scan now, and he's actually had two strokes, one in the right parietal lobe, the other in the left cerebellar cortex— which explains the pain and buzzing on the left, of course, and also some of the conflicting neurological messages.'

  'So what will they do now?' she asked.

  'Anticoagulation therapy, and finding out why a comparatively young man in reasonable health should suddenly start getting blood clots. Still, at least he's getting proper treatment now because of Toby's thoroughness.'

  'You would have picked it up,' she said confidently, but he shrugged.

  'Maybe, maybe not. That's what I mean about him being a good diagnostician. He's not blinkered. He'll look at something and say if it doesn't fit, and then look again.'

  'And how's his lady with heart failure?'

  'She had a massive pulmonary embolus,' he told her. 'They found it at post-mortem.'

  'Ah.'

  'Yes, ah. It wouldn't have made any difference if she'd had the injection. In fact, it might have saved her a great deal of pain. Never mind, these things happen. You going home?'

  She nodded. 'Yes—only half an hour late. What about you?'

  'I am, too. I've got study leave this afternoon, supposedly. I'll walk you to your car.'

  'How gentlemanly.'

  'Not really, I'm going that way anyway,' he said with a grin.

  She laughed. Nick was always such fun to have around, so silly and light-hearted and cheering. 'How's the house?' she asked.

  'Oh, fine. I seem to have a permanent resident, though.'

  'The cat?'

  He nodded. 'Winston. He's black and he sits on the window-sill and eyeballs the neighbourhood. He's a good Mend—well, mostly. Yesterday morning he puked on the carpet.'

  'Oh, gorgeous,' she said with a chuckle. 'Never mind, you didn't like the carpet all that much anyway.'

  'I didn't mind. I just thought it was a bit patchy. That might, of course, be why!' He looked at his watch, then back at Sally.