His Very Own Wife and Child

by Caroline Anderson

  ‘Thanks for the warning. I don’t know if I’ll know what to say to him.’

  Sally hugged Annie reassuringly. ‘Hello would be a good start. Really, Annie, we’re both fine about it. It’s just a bit of a shock, but it’s absolutely the right thing for both of us.’ Well, for David, at least. The thing that was right for her was never going to happen…

  Jack was there, of course, right in her line of sight when she went into the department, propping up the wall and, judging by the howls of laughter from the group around him, telling yet another of his outrageous jokes.

  She didn’t want to smile, but just the sound of his laughter made her want to join in.

  No. Pathetic. She was made of sterner stuff than that. She walked briskly down the corridor to the staffroom and hung up her coat, bent down to stash her bag and keys at the bottom of her locker and caught sight of his feet right beside her.

  As if she’d needed to see them. The hair on the back of her neck had stood on end the moment he’d walked in.

  ‘Hi,’ he said softly, and she chucked her keys at the locker, straightened up and shut it and then turned round with a carefully neutral smile plastered to her face.

  ‘Hi, there. Good weekend?’

  He searched her face for a second, then nodded. ‘Yes, thanks. You?’

  She thought of yesterday, moving her things out of the bedroom she’d shared with David into the guest room, smaller but prettier, overlooking the garden instead of the cul-de-sac at the front, and smiled. ‘Fine. I did a bit of turning out. Banishing demons, that sort of thing. Very therapeutic.’

  He smiled understandingly. ‘Absolutely. Did you see Annie?’

  She nodded. ‘Yes. I had a coffee with her.’

  ‘Is she still drinking it?’

  She opened her mouth, shut it and looked away. ‘Of course—why ever not?’

  ‘Just wondered. Most pregnant women go off it.’

  So he did know—or he was guessing. She didn’t know, and wasn’t going to confirm his suspicions if that was all they were, but her hesitation was enough.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he murmured, ‘I won’t say anything till they tell me, but there was just something in her eyes. I guess when you’ve seen enough pregnant women, you start to recognise it. Like they’re hugging a secret.’

  ‘I thought men weren’t supposed to be able to read women?’ she quipped lightly, and he laughed, a soft ripple of sound that made her hair stand on end all over again.

  ‘Whatever gave you that idea?’he said, and then moved away from her, so she could breathe again. ‘I hope you’re feeling full of beans, we’ve got a crowded waiting room and I think Angie wants you on cubicles with me.’

  Angie did, or he’d engineered it? Whatever, she didn’t mind. She liked being on cubicles, and there’d be a lot she could do without involving him.

  Or so she’d thought. Of course, her first patient needed his attention immediately, and she wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not. Sure, working with him was deeply unsettling, but it made her feel so alive, in a way she hadn’t felt for years.

  Getting on for ten, in fact.

  And she needed him now because Mrs Roper, a delightful lady in her mid-seventies, had fallen onto her outstretched hand and given herself a classic Colles’ fracture.

  She was wheeled in by her neighbour, her arm propped on a pillow. ‘Oh, dear, that looks sore,’ Sally said, crouching down and rearranging the pillow to give her better support.

  ‘I’ve broken it, haven’t I?’ she said with a sigh, and Sally looked at the distorted limb and nodded.

  ‘I’m afraid so. But don’t worry, we can fix it. Let me just check your details, Mrs Roper.’ She ran through the form, then stood up and patted her shoulder gently. ‘Right. You just sit here for a minute and I’ll get a doctor to come and see you. I won’t be long.’

  She stuck her head round the curtain and caught Jack just as he was heading down the corridor. ‘Got a minute? I’ve got a Colles’ for you.’

  ‘Oh, great, I love a good Colles’.’ He changed direction and came in, rubbing his hands with gel, and smiled at their patient. ‘Hi. I’m Jack Logan, one of the doctors here. And you’ve had a nasty tumble. Ouch.’

  ‘Mrs Roper’s fallen down the last few stairs at home and landed on the hall floor,’ Sally supplied, and she nodded confirmation.

  ‘It was so silly—I’d put the washing there to go upstairs and then forgotten to take it, and of course when I came down, I found it! I’m so cross.’

  ‘Don’t be cross. We all do stupid things. The most important thing to do is check out the circulation in your hand before we do anything else.’ He pressed her nails and watched them pink up again instantly, and nodded in satisfaction. ‘So far, so good. When did you last eat?’

  ‘Breakfast. I was just coming down to make lunch—and the last time I was asked that, I was about to have an operation,’ she said, eyeing him dubiously.

  He smiled. ‘It’s possible you may need one,’ he agreed. ‘You won’t if I have my way, but we do need to do a procedure called a Bier’s block to numb it so I can line the bones up without hurting you, and then we can plaster it, but first of all we need X-rays so we know just what we’re dealing with. If Sally gets that organised, I’ll come back and see you with the results. Don’t worry, we’ll get you sorted and home again as soon as we can.’

  And with a cheerful wink and a grin, he disappeared, leaving Mrs Roper with the sort of besotted smile that Sally felt creeping onto her own face all too often when she was in his company.

  Except that today she didn’t feel like smiling, because before he’d left the cubicle he’d caught her eyes and it was there again, that latent heat, just waiting for an opportunity to flare into life.

  No way. He was far too dangerous to her fragile status quo.

  On autopilot, she took Mrs Roper for her X-rays, called Jack once the films were ready and then helped him prepare her for the procedure.

  The tourniquet cuff was slipped onto her arm high up, over some soft padding, and he checked the pulse in her wrist, then slid a small cannula into the back of her hand, making her wince a little. ‘Sorry, I know it’s sore,’ he murmured. ‘Soon be more comfy. Right, that’s looking good. Sal, if you could hold Mrs Roper’s arm up there for me—that’s lovely,’ he said, and while Sally held the arm up and kept pressure on the brachial artery to prevent the blood from refilling the arm, Jack told Mrs Roper what they were doing and why, and put a cannula in the other arm.

  ‘Just in case we need to give you any other drugs at any time,’ he explained, ‘because there’s a very slight chance your body might not like the local anaesthetic, and then we can give you something to counteract your reaction to it without messing about.’

  She arched one fine, autocratic brow. ‘Is that really a possibility, or are you just covering all your bases so I don’t sue?’ she asked, and he chuckled.

  ‘A bit of both. You have to give informed consent, and you can’t if you aren’t informed, but sometimes you can frighten the living daylights out of your patients and then they won’t let you give them the treatment they need. It’s a bit of a tightrope.’

  ‘Just so long as you don’t fall off it halfway through doing my arm,’ she said, her smile returning, and he taped down the cannula and grinned.

  ‘Oh, I’m very good at walking tightropes,’he said, flicking a glance at Sally. ‘How are you doing there? Thumb OK?’

  She nodded. Actually her thumb was beginning to burn from pressing down on the artery, but the limb was pale and the tourniquet cuff was ready to be inflated.

  ‘Ready to go?’

  She nodded again, and he patted Mrs Roper’s other hand. ‘Right. Let’s get the local in and give it a few minutes to take effect, and then we can get your arm looking the right shape again.’

  ‘Oh, that’ll be good. It is a bit weird.’

  ‘Rather fetching. It’d stop your handbag from sliding off your arm,’he said, tea
sing a laugh from her, and he kept the lightweight banter up as he injected the local into the cannula, but even though he was laughing and joking with her, Sally knew he was watching Mrs Roper very carefully for any sign of an adverse reaction.

  She was lying on a tipping trolley now in case, but she was fine, and while Sally kept an eye on the pressure in the tourniquet cuff to make sure it didn’t fall, he checked her wrist to see if it was numb. Once he was happy that she wouldn’t feel any pain, he took her hand and, with Sally holding her arm steady, stretched it out to pull the fracture into line, bent her hand down a little and swivelled it out to the side, relieving the pressure on the impaction and restoring her arm to a much more normal appearance.

  ‘There, that’s better. You’ve lost your handbag rest now.’

  Mrs Roper chuckled weakly and peered at it, then lay back against the pillows. ‘Oh, I feel all funny. I never realised I was so squeamish.’

  Jack’s eyes sharpened, and his eyes flicked to the cuff monitor.

  ‘Cuff pressure’s fine,’ Sally said softly, checking Mrs Roper’s blood pressure in the other arm simultaneously and nodding. ‘BP’s a little lower.’

  ‘OK. Keep talking to me, sweetheart. How are you feeling now?’

  ‘Woozy,’ she said.

  ‘Any ringing in your ears, or numbness in your lips and tongue?’

  She shook her head. ‘No. I just felt a bit faint. I think I’m not as brave as I thought I was. It’s better now.’

  Jack nodded and rested a hand on her knee. It could have been a comforting gesture, but Sally knew he was feeling for any muscle twitching or tremor as well as offering reassurance.

  ‘Better now?’ he asked after a moment or two, and she nodded and smiled.

  ‘I’m sorry. How silly of me.’

  ‘I don’t think so. You’ve been through a lot. Still, we’ll just keep an eye on you for a little while, and then once we’re sure you’re OK we’ll take the cuff off in about half an hour to give the anaesthetic time to disperse into your tissues, then once we’re really happy we’ll get a little cast on there to hold it in place until tomorrow.’

  ‘What happens then?’

  ‘You need to come back and have a check-up in the fracture clinic, and if it’s all fine you can have a proper cast on.’

  ‘And if not?’

  ‘Then we’ll think again, but it’s in a pretty good position now. We’ll just check it with another set of X-rays while it’s still numb, and then we can put the back-slab on.’

  He checked the new set of plates, nodded his satisfaction with the alignment, monitored her carefully during the deflation of the cuff and handed her over to Sally for a back-slab.

  Because of the risk of delayed toxicity, Sally kept a very close eye on her during the procedure and for another hour afterwards, leaving the curtain open and popping in and out every few minutes. Her daughter arrived, having driven up from London, and Sally felt happier that she had someone with her to take her home and look after her for the first few hours at least. Once she was sure the danger of reaction was passed, she got Jack to sign Mrs Roper off and sent her on her way with her daughter.

  ‘We’ll see you tomorrow, and you take care,’ she said with a smile. ‘Don’t forget to take your painkillers—there’s no need to be brave.’

  ‘Oh, I’ll take them, don’t worry. It’s beginning to feel a little sore now.’

  ‘It will. Keep the sling on as much as possible, and rest it on your lap on a pillow when you’re sitting down, and just take it easy—and don’t put the washing on the stairs!’ she teased.

  ‘Oh, no chance of that! It’s going straight into the drawers the moment I get her home,’ her daughter said firmly.

  Sally waved them off, and turned to find Jack by the central desk, watching her.

  ‘Teabreak?’ he suggested, and she glanced at her watch and realised with amazement that it was almost four.

  ‘I’ll just grab a cold drink,’ she said. ‘The waiting room’s heaving and it’ll only get worse once everyone knocks off from work.’

  He nodded, and she thought he’d leave it at that, but he followed her to the staffroom and poured two glasses of squash, handing her one. ‘Nice lady, Mrs Roper. Everything OK? Were you happy with her?’

  ‘I think so. I think it was just a little faint.’

  ‘So do I, but I wanted to be sure. Sorry it took so long.’

  ‘It’s hardly your fault I had to monitor her.’ And anyway, it hadn’t been a hardship. Mrs Roper at least was polite and grateful, unlike some of their customers. Spending a few hours with her knocked spots off Friday nights in the easiness stakes.

  She glanced back at Jack, just as he tipped his head back to drain his glass, and as she watched his throat work she had to trap the tiny moan of need that rose in her chest. No. Stop it. Too dangerous…

  ‘Right, back to work, I suppose,’ he said, putting the glass down, and she poured the rest of hers away and rinsed them both out. Anything rather than look at him and risk him seeing the expression in her eyes.

  The rest of the shift was manic.

  Her few peaceful hours with Mrs Roper seemed a million miles away, and she ended up working with Jack in Resus on an RTA victim with severe multiple trauma.

  He was finally stable enough for Theatre, and as they sent him off Jack turned to her with a rueful grin. ‘What was that you said about it getting worse?’ he murmured, and she laughed briefly.

  ‘Sorry. I’ll keep my mouth shut in future. Right, it’s knocking off time, I’m going home.’

  ‘Me, too. I’ll just go and talk to the relatives for a moment, and I’ll be off. I’ll see you tomorrow.’

  If only.

  She went into the staffroom, opened her locker and found her bag and coat, but there was no sign of her keys. She pulled out the few things that were in there, but they weren’t there, so she searched the area around her locker, even looking in the gap at the end in case they’d fallen down there, but they hadn’t.

  So where…?

  ‘Problem?’

  ‘I can’t find my keys,’ she said. ‘I had them this morning, I know I did. There’s no sign of them, but I put them in my locker like I always do.’ Or had she? No. She’d lobbed them at her locker, because he’d appeared silently out of nowhere the moment she’d arrived and totally flummoxed her, but if she’d missed…

  ‘If I give you a lift home, can you get in?’

  ‘Yes—we’ve got a spare key hidden behind a plant pot.’

  ‘Well, let’s go, then, before another emergency comes in and we get sucked in again. You can look for them tomorrow.’

  ‘And how do I get to work? I have to be here at seven.’

  ‘I’ll pick you up.’

  But then he’d know where she lived.

  Stupid. It was hardly a secret, and he’d only got to ask Patrick or Tom, and they’d tell him. And it wasn’t like he was a stalker or anything weird.

  So she gave in and thanked him, and they walked back to Patrick and Annie’s street, got into his car and she directed him to her house.

  He turned onto the drive, pulled up and sat there, engine idling, waiting for her to get out. She should have done it, should have thanked him and opened the door and gone inside, but she didn’t. Instead, she opened her mouth and said, ‘Do you want something to eat?’

  He turned his head and looked at her, his eyes unreadable in the dark. ‘Thanks. That would be good,’ he said, and cut the engine.

  Then it dawned on her just what she’d done.

  CHAPTER SIX

  HE MUST be crazy.

  If he’d had the slightest grain of sense he’d have driven off and left Sally here, but curiosity about her house and life and a ridiculous urge to flagellate himself further with her inaccessibility had him following her in through the door.

  It was a new, ‘executive-style’ house on a small, select development tucked in behind a row of older houses, the sort of thing that most people would b
e delighted to own, and Jack was amazed at how much he hated it. It was so neutral. Characterless, almost. Not at all the sort of chaotic, warm, loving house he’d pictured her in all these years.

  Not that there was anything wrong with the house itself. At first glance it seemed a good house, solidly built and well proportioned, but there seemed no personality about any of it—until he followed her into the kitchen and saw the kids’ drawings pinned on the walls, little messages to her held on the fridge with magnets.

  ‘Mum, please wash PE kit. Love you. Alexxxxxx’

  A tiny drawing on a sticky note, with ‘Best mum’ carefully written on the corner and a picture of someone that could have been Sally. Long, dark hair and skirt, big smile and lots of hearts all around it. Different writing, so Ben, then, and saying so much in so few words. He wondered if it was new, generated by recent events, and his heart ached for them all.

  ‘What do you fancy? I’ve got eggs and potatoes and salad stuff, so I could do an omelette and salad, or egg sandwiches, or I might have a jar of pasta sauce and some mince in the freezer…’

  ‘Omelette sounds lovely,’ he said. Quick, too, so he could get out of there before he did something stupid.

  ‘Sit yourself down—do you fancy a glass of wine? There’s some white open in the fridge, or there might be a can of lager, or I can make tea or coffee?’

  ‘I’d better make it tea,’ he said, erring belatedly on the side of caution. The last time he’d had anything to drink around her he’d nearly seduced her on the dance floor. ‘Don’t let me stop you if you want wine, though,’he added, and she laughed—a little nervously?

  ‘Oh, I won’t. You can pour me a glass of wine and make your tea while I get the meal. Here, the mugs and tea and everything are all above the kettle, and the wineglasses are in the next cupboard along.’

  Good idea. Give him something to do apart from watching her swift, economical movements as she walked around the kitchen retrieving ingredients from the fridge and cupboards.

  He sat at the table, wondering which of the chairs had been David’s and deliberately picking one he thought would have been one of the boys’.