‘You haven’t eaten since breakfast? You’re mad.’
‘I just sort of forgot.’
‘You emptied the fridge. There was food in your hands. How could you forget?’
Because she’d been utterly distracted by the thought of what she was doing? Because all she could think about was that she was coming back here to James, taking the first step towards the rest of her life?
‘Just call me dozy,’ she said, and slinging a cardi round her shoulders in case it got cold, she headed for the door.
They took Saffy with them and sat outside in the pub garden, with the lead firmly anchored to the leg of the picnic bench in case a cat strolled past, and he went in to order and came back with drinks.
‘So, what time are we starting tomorrow?’ she asked, to distract herself from the sight of those muscular, hairy legs sticking out of the bottom of his shorts. Definitely a runner—
‘Eight, technically, but I’d like to be in by seven. You can bring your car and come later if you like. I’ll sort you out a parking permit.’
‘I can do seven,’ she said. ‘I’ll have to walk Saffy first, and I’ll need to come back at lunchtime to let her out and give her a bit of a run so I’ll need my car anyway, if you can sort a permit for me that soon. Will that be all right?’
‘That’s fine. I don’t expect you to work full time, Connie. I know you’ve got the dog, I know you haven’t worked since you got her and I know you can’t leave her indefinitely. I expect HR will want to check all sorts of stuff with you before they let you loose on a patient anyway, so there’s no point in being too early. I take it you’ve brought the necessary paperwork?’
‘Oh, sure. I’ve got everything I need to show them. So, did you hear from Andy? Is there any news?’
‘Ah. Yes. He sent me a text.’
‘And?’
‘It’s a boy,’ he said, the words somehow sticking in his throat and choking him. ‘Daniel. Eight pounds three ounces. Mother and baby both doing well.’
‘Did he send a picture?’
‘Of course.’ And she would want to see it, wouldn’t she? He pulled his phone out of his pocket and found the text, then slid it across to her. ‘There.’
‘Oh—oh, James, he’s gorgeous. What are the others?’
‘Girls. Three girls. Emily, Megan and Lottie.’
‘And now they’ve got their boy. Oh, that’s amazing. They must be so thrilled.’
‘Yeah.’ He couldn’t bring himself to speculate on their delight, or debate the merits of boys or girls. It was all too close to home, too close to the reason she was here—and the very reason he didn’t want her here at all.
No, that was a lie. He did want her here. Just—not like this. Not for why she’d come, and not feeling the way he did, so that he had to be so damn guarded all the time in case he gave away how he felt about her. And if he could work that one out for himself he’d be doing well, because frankly at the moment it was as clear as mud.
‘So, tell me about this friend you’ve been staying with,’ he said, changing the subject without any pretence at subtlety, and after a second of startled silence, she cleared her throat.
‘Um. Yeah. Angie. Long-time friend. We worked together a couple of times. She’s been in Spain for a few months visiting family but she’s back in a week or so—I really ought to write to her and thank her for lending me the house. It’s been a lifesaver. Getting a rented place with a dog is really hard, especially a dog like Saffy.’
She pricked up her ears at her name, and James reached down and rubbed her head. She shifted it, putting her chin on his foot and sighing, and he gave a wry chuckle.
‘I can imagine. I thought you and Joe had bought somewhere?’
‘We had. It’s rented out, on a long lease. The tenant’s great and it pays the mortgage.’
‘So why not live there?’
She shrugged. ‘It was where we were going when he came out of the army. It was going to be our family home, where we brought up our children.’
And just like that, the subject reared its head again. James opened his mouth, shut it again and exhaled softly.
‘Don’t say it, James. I know we aren’t talking about it, I was just stating a fact.’
‘I wasn’t going to.’
‘Weren’t you?’
He shrugged. The truth was he hadn’t known what to say, so he’d said nothing.
‘Two sea bass?’
He sat back, smiled at the waitress and sighed with relief.
‘Saved by the bass,’ Connie said drily, and picking up her knife and fork, she attacked her supper and let the subject drop.
* * *
HR wanted all manner of forms filled in, and it was driving her mad.
She was itching to get to work now, if only to settle her nerves. She’d been away from it too long, she told herself, that was all. She’d be fine once she started. And then finally the forms were done.
‘Right, that’s it. Thank you, Connie. Welcome to Yoxburgh Park Hospital. I hope you enjoy your time with us.’
‘Thanks.’
She picked up her bag and legged it, almost but not quite running, and made her way to the ED. She found James up to his eyes in Resus, and he glanced up.
‘Cleared for takeoff?’ he asked, and she nodded.
‘Good. We’ve got an RTC coming in, nineteen year old male pedestrian versus van, query head, chest and pelvic injuries and I haven’t got anyone I can spare. Do you feel ready to take it?’
She nodded, used to being flung in at the deep end as a locum. ‘Sure. Where will you be, just in case I need to check protocol?’
‘Right here. Don’t worry, Connie, I won’t abandon you. I won’t be much longer here.’
She nodded again, and he pointed her in the direction of the ambulance bay. She met the ambulance, took the history and handover from the paramedics, and by the time they were in Resus she was right back in the swing of it.
‘Hi, there, Steve,’ she said to the patient, holding her face above his so he could see her without moving. ‘I’m Connie Murray, and I’m the doctor who’s going to be looking after you. Can you tell me where you are?’
‘Hospital,’ he said, but his voice was slurred—from the head injury, or the morphine the paramedics had given him? She wasn’t sure, but at this stage it was irrelevant because until she was sure he wasn’t going to bleed out in the next few minutes the head injury was secondary.
‘OK. Can you tell me where it hurts?’
‘Everywhere,’ he mumbled. ‘Legs, back—everything.’
‘OK. We’ll soon have you more comfortable. Can we have an orthopaedic consultant down here, please? This pelvic fracture needs stabilising, and can we do a FAST scan, please? We need a full trauma series—do we have a radiographer available? And a total body CT scan. I need to know what’s going on here.’
She delegated rapidly, and the team working with her slipped smoothly into action, but throughout she was conscious of James at the other end of the room keeping an ear open in case she needed backup.
The X-rays showed multiple fractures in his pelvis, and the FAST scan had shown free fluid in his abdomen.
She glanced up and he raised an eyebrow.
‘Do we have access to a catheter lab? I think he’s got significant vascular damage to the pelvic vessels and I don’t want to wait for CT.’
‘Yes, if you think it’s necessary. What are his stats like?’
‘Awful. He’s hypotensive and shocky and the ultrasound is showing free fluids in the abdomen. He’s had two units of packed cells and his systolic’s eighty-five and falling. We need to stop this bleed.’
‘OK. Order whatever you need. I won’t be a tick.’
He wasn’t. Moments later, he was standing opp
osite her across the bed, quietly taking his cues from her and nodding to confirm her decisions.
And when they’d got him stable and shipped him off to the catheter lab for urgent vascular surgery prior to a CT scan to check for other injuries, he just smiled at her and nodded. ‘You’ve learned a lot since I last saw you in action.’
‘I’d hope so. It’s been more than eight years.’ Years in which she met, married and lost his best friend.
‘I always said you had promise. It’s nice to see you fulfilling your potential.’
Crazy that his praise should make her feel ten feet tall. She knew she was good. She’d worked with some of the best trauma surgeons in the world, she didn’t need James to tell her.
And yet somehow, those few words meant everything to her.
‘Want me to talk to the relatives?’ he asked, but she shook her head.
‘No, I’m fine with it. Come with me, though. I might need to direct them to where they can wait.’
‘OK.’
They spoke to the relatives together; she explained the situation, and James filled in the details she’d missed—the name of the orthopaedic surgeon, where the ward was, how long it might take, what would happen next—and then as they left the room he looked up at the clock and grinned.
‘Coffee?’
‘I’ve only just started work!’
‘You can still have coffee. I’m the boss, remember? Anyway, it’s quiet now and it won’t last. Come on. I reckon we’ve got ten seconds before the red phone rings.’
‘How far can we get?’
‘Out of earshot,’ he said with a chuckle, and all but dragged her out of the department.
They ended up outside in the park, sitting on a bench under a tree, and she leant back and peeled the lid off her cappuccino and sighed. ‘Bliss. I’m going to like working here.’
He snorted rudely. ‘Don’t run away with the idea that it’s always like this. Usually we don’t have time to stop.’
‘The gods must be smiling on us.’
James laughed and stretched out his legs in front of him, ankles crossed. ‘Don’t push your luck. How did you get on with HR?’
‘I’ve got writer’s cramp.’
He laughed again and took a long pull on his coffee. ‘That good, eh?’
‘At least. I hate paperwork.’
‘So don’t ever, ever find yourself winding up as clinical lead,’ he said drily, just as his pager bleeped. He glanced at it, sighed and drained his cup. ‘Duty calls.’
‘Really?’ She sighed, took a swallow of her coffee and burnt her tongue.
‘That’s why I never have a cappuccino at work,’ he said, getting to his feet. ‘It takes too long to cool down. Bring it with you. I can hear a siren.’
And just to punctuate that, his bleep went off again.
She followed him, coffee in hand, and she almost—almost—got to finish it by the time it all kicked off again.
* * *
He sent her home at one to let Saffy out, and she walked back in to the news that the pedestrian had died of his head injury.
‘You’re kidding me,’ she said, the colour draining from her face. ‘Oh, damn it. Damn it.’
And she walked off, back rigid, her face like stone. He couldn’t follow her. He was up to his eyes, about to see a relative, but as soon as he was free he went to look for her.
He found her under the tree where they’d had their coffee, staring blindly out across the grass with the drying tracks of tears down her cheeks.
‘Why did he have to die?’ she asked angrily. ‘My first patient. Why? What did I do wrong, James?’
He sat down next to her and took her hand in his. It was rigid, her body vibrating with tension.
‘You didn’t do anything wrong. You know that.’
‘Do I?’ she said bitterly. ‘I’m not so sure.’
‘Yes, you are. We can’t save everyone.’
‘But he died of a head injury. All I was worried about was stopping him bleeding out, and all the time it was his head I should have been thinking about.’
‘No. His pelvic injury was horrific. If you’d sent him for CT before he was stable, he would have bled out and died anyway. You did what you had to do, in the order you had to do it, and he didn’t make it. It was a no-win situation. Not your fault. I wouldn’t have done anything different, and neither would Andy.’
‘But he was nineteen,’ she said, her voice cracking. ‘Only nineteen, James! All that wasted potential—all the effort and time put into bringing him up, turning him into a young man, wiped out like that by some idiot—’
‘He had headphones in his ears. He wasn’t listening to the traffic. It wasn’t the van driver’s fault, and he’s distraught that he hit him. He’s been hanging around waiting for news, apparently, and he’s devastated.’
Connie turned her head and searched his eyes. ‘It was Steve’s fault? Are you sure?’
‘Apparently so, according to the police. And it certainly wasn’t your fault he died.’
She looked away again, but not before he saw the bleakness in her eyes. ‘It feels like it. It feels like I let him down.’
‘You didn’t, Connie. You did your best with what you were given, that’s all any of us can do.’ He pressed her hand between his, stroked the back of it with his thumb. ‘Are you OK to go back in there, or do you need some time?’
‘No. I’m fine,’ she said, even though she wasn’t, and tugging her hand back she got to her feet and walked away.
He followed slowly, letting out his breath on a long sigh, and found her picking up a case in cubicles. He said nothing, just laid a hand on her shoulder briefly and left her to it, and at five he found her and told her to go home.
‘James, I’m fine.’
‘I don’t doubt it, but you’re supposed to be part-time and Saffy’s been in the cage long enough. Go home, Connie,’ he said gently. ‘I’ll be back at seven.’
She went, reluctantly, because she didn’t want to be alone, didn’t want to go back to the empty house and think about the boy she’d allowed to die.
Instead she worried about Saffy, because the cabin was in full sun and she should have thought of that. Another layer of guilt. What if the dog was too hot? What if she’d collapsed and died?
She hadn’t. She let her out of the crate the moment she got home, and Saffy went out to the garden, sniffed around for a few minutes, had a drink and flopped down under a tree in the shade.
Connie poured herself a drink and joined her, fondling her ears and thinking about her day.
She was still angry with herself for losing Steve, but she knew James was right. She’d done everything she could, and you couldn’t save everyone. She knew that, too. She’d had plenty of evidence.
She went into the cabin and changed into shorts and a sleeveless vest, slid her feet into her trainers and took Saffy for a run. Anything to get away from the inside of her head.
She went the other way this time, up the sea wall, along the lane and back along the river, and as she reached the beginning of the river wall she saw another runner up ahead of her.
It stopped her in her tracks for a moment, because he’d lost one leg below the knee and was running on a blade. Ex-military? Possibly. Probably. So many of them ended up injured in that way.
Or worse. She’d spoken to the surgeon who’d gone out to Joe in the helicopter, and he’d told her about his injuries. And she’d been glad, then, for Joe, that he’d died. He would have hated it.
The man veered off at the end of the path, and she carried on at a slower pace, cooling down, then dropped to a steady jog, then down to a walk as they reached the end of the path.
Molly was there with the children, the baby in a buggy, a little girl of three or four running gig
gling round the grass chasing a leggy boy of twelve or so. Happy families, Connie thought as Molly smiled at her.
‘Hi there. You’re Connie, aren’t you? It’s nice to meet you properly. So, are you coming on Friday to my private view?’
She stared blankly, and Molly rolled her eyes.
‘He hasn’t mentioned it, has he?’ Connie shook her head, and she tutted and smiled. ‘Men. He probably hasn’t even told you I’m an artist. Seven o’clock, Friday night, our house. We’d love to see you.’
‘Thanks. I’d love to come. I love art exhibitions, even though I can hardly hold a pencil. I haven’t seen the rota yet, but if I’m not on, it would be great. Thank you.’
‘I told James to change the rota. He’d better have done it. And I also told him to tell you to wear something pretty.’
She blinked. ‘Pretty? How pretty?’
‘As pretty as you like,’ Molly said, deadpan, but there was a subtext there Connie could read a mile away, and she wondered if Molly was matchmaking. She could have saved her the trouble. James wasn’t interested in her. He wasn’t interested in anything except work. He certainly wasn’t interested in babies.
‘I’ll see what I’ve got,’ she said, and towed Saffy away from the little girl who’d given up chasing her brother and was pulling Saffy’s ears gently and giggling when she licked her. ‘I’d better get back, I need to feed the dog, but I’ll see you on Friday and I’ll make sure James changes the rota.’
‘Brilliant. We’ll see you then.’
She walked away, glancing back in time to see the runner with the blade join them. David? Really? He swept the little girl up in his arms and plonked her on his shoulders, and her giggle followed Connie up the path, causing an ache in her heart.
They looked so happy together, all of them, but it obviously hadn’t been all plain sailing. Was it ever? And would she find that happiness, or a version of it, before it was too late?
Maybe not, unless James changed his mind, and frankly she couldn’t really see that happening. She trudged up the steps to the veranda and took Saffy in to feed her.
* * *
The Secret in His Heart Page 8