The pale green-grey eyes looked as limpid as usual, and the cloud of wild black hair wasn’t obviously more dishevelled, yet the woman was definitely off balance.
Alana considered her own, momentarily, melting bones.
And the effect of the profile.
Did the man have some magnetic attraction for all women?
Did his body give off a scent like catnip, but, rather than it being specific for one woman, it attracted all woman as the plant attracted all cats?
Pleased by the idea it might not just be her who was thrown into a tizz by the man, she studied Daisy.
‘Is he making your heart flutter?’ she asked. ‘Causing problems in your intestines? Is Daisy-who-doesn’t-date about to become interested in a man?’
Daisy’s laugh came so naturally, pealing out in sheer delight, that Alana was forced to believe her when she said, ‘No way. He’s a handsome enough man, but he’s not pulling my strings. No, it’s Jason who bothers me. He’s been through such a lot, poor kid, and I can’t do much to help until I know more background information.’
They’d reached the checkout and, after handing over a note to cover the cost of her lunch, Daisy turned apologetically to Alana.
‘Normally I’d ask you to join us—particularly as we’re all neighbours. But I really do need to discuss Jason and it wouldn’t be right…’
‘Of course not,’ Alana assured her, waving her on her way, but as Daisy crossed the room to Rory Forrester’s table, Alana’s eyes followed her while her mind went on a rampage, fitting bits and pieces of information together and not liking the whole picture one little bit.
Daisy was seeing a Jason. Alana’s Jason?
Well, she’d kind of established Jason lived in Near West so, if he was seeing a psychologist, Daisy would be handy for him to visit.
But if Jason was the same Jason, and he belonged to Rory Forrester, then not only was Rory Forrester going to be a presence in her life at work but he was living in her building. Actually, Daisy had said that as well.
Rory Forrester in her building…
Profile, male scent and all!
She hauled her mind off the physical to concentrate on the clues.
The leasing of the flat then lack of habitation made sense—he’d disappeared from the hospital as well!
So where did that leave her?
Knowing he was married with a son—that’s where that left her!
‘Pay the lady and move on, please. You’re holding up the queue.’
The demand from behind recalled her to where she was and, rustling hastily through her purse, she found change, paid her bill, then carried her tray across to a thankfully vacant table.
She sat down, conscious of a heaviness inside her chest, as if something she’d been looking forward to had proved a disappointment, or a longed-for event had been cancelled.
Ridiculous! she told herself. She barely knew the man, and didn’t like what she did know of him, so finding out he was married didn’t matter one jot.
Did it?
She remembered the cat—or, rather, something Jason had said about the cat. ‘It was my mother’s’. Was!
And Jason’s introduction—such as it had been. Hadn’t he said his name was McAllister—or at least Mc-something?
Perhaps he used his mother’s name.
Perhaps it’s none of your business, she told herself in an effort to stem this tidal wave of supposition, none of which was getting her anywhere. It wasn’t even particularly rational. Rory Forrester’s private life was none of her concern.
In actual fact, his professional life, apart from when it impacted on Eight B, was also none of her concern.
She nodded to confirm she’d sorted that out, and tackled her lunch. If she hurried, she’d have time to duck down to the gym. While exercising after a meal wasn’t ideal, she could lift weights for ten minutes and start getting back into nick, ready for the tennis season.
The note was on her desk when she returned. She stared at the unfamiliar writing, although the strong black slashes of the letters made her think immediately of Rory Forrester.
Using the tip of the nail on her forefinger, she pushed at the piece of paper, as if expecting it to explode. When it didn’t, she left it on the desk but peered at it, in the end resorting to the glasses she hated to admit she needed in order to decipher the message.
Or try to decipher it!
The word ‘mating’ leapt out at her, but that was obviously because she was going a bit crazy and had male-female relationships on the brain. Maybe the word was ‘meeting’, for there seemed to be a time, ‘6 p.m.’ after it. But the rest was as difficult to work out as a badly written prescription. At least with a script, if you knew the patient you could sometimes guess what might be prescribed—though she always phoned the writer to check before sending the order on to Pharmacy.
She gave in and picked up the note, holding it warily, as if something of the person who’d written on it might be transmitted through the paper.
As far as she could make out, Rory Forrester had called a meeting to discuss facelifts and some kind of presents in—she assumed the next word was ‘hospital’ because ‘heaven’ certainly didn’t seem right—beds. The fact that the note was addressed to her—if she squinted her eyes the name could almost be taken for Wright rather than Witch—and that there was a time and a room number suggested she was being invited to join this discussion.
Finding his email address in the hospital directory, she sent an acceptance—only, she told herself, because she was curious to find out exactly what he wanted to discuss—and added that he might find emails easier for conveying messages than written notes.
Didn’t say easier for whom, but she hoped he had enough intelligence, or had been told often enough by other recipients of his writing, to figure it out.
By the time her shift ended, she’d decided her best plan would be to go home, feed the animals, then come back to the hospital for the meeting. That way, if it ran late, she wouldn’t be worrying. And, no, changing into civvies had nothing to do with her decision.
‘Hey! Thought we might have a game.’
Jason was sitting on the front steps of the building, bouncing a ball up and down on his racket.
Have a game and feed the animals? If they had a game of tennis, there’d barely be time for a shower before she had to go back for the meeting. But the blue eyes watching her so closely had dark flecks in them and a darker ring around the iris. And the defiance, she was sure, was a cover-up for hurt of some kind.
A boy separated from his mother? Shifted against his will to a new home at a time when friends were all-important?
‘OK,’ she said, ‘but only if you come up while I change and start on my chores for me. You can wash Stubby’s water bowl and put out clean food and water for him—and do the same for the stray who eats off the veranda.’
For a moment she thought Jason was going to argue, but in the end he stood up and, though muttering slightly under his breath, followed her into the building.
Once inside the flat, she showed him where the various animal foodstuffs were kept and, when he was diverted by the special prescription marsupial powder, promised to explain it to him some other time.
‘Tonight?’ he said hopefully. ‘The DM’s got a meeting and I’m ordering pizza. I could get some for you. Have it delivered here.’
He sounded so eager, Alana hated to deny him.
‘Sorry—I’ve got a meeting as well,’ she said, wary about mentioning with whom in case that upset Jason even more. ‘But another night—or if you want to eat late, I should be home by eight at the latest.’
Jason shrugged.
‘He said he’d be home by then as well,’ he muttered, decorating the ‘he’ with a shovel-load of resentment.
Alana shook her head and excused herself to get changed. Rory Forrester’s relationship with his son was none of her business, but from the way Jason talked, it would take a lifetime of seeing Daisy to
sort the poor kid out. Though maybe the father should be seeing someone as well, someone who could teach him how to get on better with his son.
When she came back out, Jason was tempting the guinea-pig babies with a piece of apple.
‘I noticed it all cut up in your fridge,’ he said. ‘I thought it might be for them.’
‘For their mother and the rabbit mostly,’ Alana said, ‘but the babies have to learn to eat solids sometime so it’s good to offer it to them.’
She grabbed her racket out of the hall closet, checked he had balls, and was about to leave the flat when she remembered she didn’t have keys. Jason was stroking one of the baby guinea pigs through the wire of the cage.
‘I’ll show you how to pick them up, and also how to clean their cages. If you’re looking for an after-school job, I could really do with some help looking after them all.’
His face lit up as if she’d offered him a precious gift.
‘Do you mean it?’ he asked with such intensity she wondered who’d made offers in the past then not followed through.
‘Of course I mean it,’ she assured him. ‘I’ve got a spare front-door key that I had cut when I lost mine. I’ll give it to you so you can come and go when it suits you. Gabi up on Four also has a spare key of mine, so if you misplace yours any time, and she’s at home, you can borrow hers.’
Again she read something in his face—surprise, but a wary look as well, as if he was always prepared for life to not live up to his expectations. It reinforced her decision to put her trust in him. She’d found, with animals, if you showed you trusted them, they usually reciprocated.
Well, most of them did.
And if she wanted to prove trust, now was the time to do it. She fished the key out of the bottom of an empty vase and passed it to Jason, smiling to herself as he tucked it carefully into his pocket then smoothed the Velcro fastening to make sure it couldn’t fall out.
They walked down the stairs, and out to the court.
‘Best of three?’ Jason suggested, and Alana checked her watch.
‘If we’ve time,’ she told him. ‘I can play till five-thirty at the latest.’
Jason nodded, and offered her the serve.
It was a good game, but this time he was prepared for her ability and fought tenaciously for every point. When the third set went to a tie-break, and her watch said five-forty, she knew she had to stop.
‘We’ll call it a draw,’ she said to him, and saw shadows chase across his face. Easy-to-read shadows, like resentment and anger. ‘Don’t try the dirty looks on me,’ she warned him. ‘I said I’d play till five-thirty and I’ve already gone an extra ten minutes.’
He seemed taken aback, but in the end conceded her point with an abrupt nod.
‘I’ll have a hit against the wall,’ he said. ‘Could you show me where the lights are?’
Alana turned on the lights for him, reminding him to make sure the gate locked behind him when he left.
‘I should be home by four tomorrow,’ she said, ‘but to be on the safe side, why don’t you come down at five? I’ll show you the routine with the animals.’
Jason stared at her as if he had no idea what to make of her—as if, having upset her, he could expect no further friendship.
Boy, was Daisy going to have her work cut out with this kid.
She smiled as she said goodbye, but in her head she was arguing that it wasn’t up to Daisy to help the boy—well, not entirely up to Daisy. It was Rory Forrester who should be providing stability in his son’s life, so Jason had a solid and secure base behind him as he ventured through the wild-lands of adolescence.
She was late, of course, by the time she reached the hospital, and finding that the room number she sought was, in fact, a student locker room, she then had to make other guesses, eventually finding Rory Forrester in 47, a small meeting room on the fourth floor.
Fine, dark eyebrows rose at her late arrival, but she was damned if she’d apologise to him. Anyone who could make a figure four look like a nine didn’t deserve an apology.
Sinking into the closest seat, she found herself next to Ted Ryan, the registrar in Internal Medicine, so virtually the 2-I-C to Rory Forrester. Beyond Ted, Alana could see two residents and a couple of interns, and scattered in amongst them a number of senior nurses, no doubt the charge nurses of other wards under the senior physician.
‘Ah, Sister Wright!’ Rory Forrester smiled genially at her. ‘You know what the meeting’s about?’
‘Unless it’s about facelifts and presents and beds in heaven then, no!’ Annoyed at being singled out, Alana snapped out her reply, then enjoyed a moment of sheer delight as a bemused expression crossed his face. ‘Your writing is more illegible than most doctors’,’ she added for good measure.
‘But you’d have understood the emailed message, surely?’ he said, recovering far too quickly and turning the tables on her.
‘If I’d had time to read it,’ Alana muttered to herself.
Ted Ryan patted her knee, more a calming than a comforting gesture she was sure—Ted having had experience of her temper.
Rory Forrester saw his registrar’s hand move to Alana Wright’s knee, and told himself that, far from feeling a brief stab of jealousy, he should be thankful she was involved with someone and get on with the discussion.
But wasn’t Ted Ryan married?
He simply had to find time to go through the staff notes…
‘We’re actually discussing ways of facilitating student presence on the wards,’ he said, addressing the words towards Alana but looking at a point beyond her head so he wasn’t distracted by the way little bits of hair were escaping the plastic thingie in which she’d tried restraining it and curling beguilingly around her face.
‘Like them or hate them, the students are here to stay, so let’s see if we can come out of the Dark Ages as far as their involvement is concerned, and put them to some use, so they’re contributing something while they learn.’
He went on to explain his idea on having them draw up patient profiles, his eyes straying back towards the latecomer, probably because he’d already mentioned this to her.
Alana caught his look and wondered if he was expecting a response.
‘Will these profiles be used for anything?’ she asked, only too happy to oblige as extra and unnecessary paperwork was another of her bugbears. ‘Or are they just to keep the kids amused?’
The look he shot her way should have warned her but, once launched, she always found it hard to shut up.
‘Don’t we already have computer programs that extract patient profiles from the face sheets on patients’ admittance forms? And will a patient profile make the person feel any better, or better inform him or her about his or her condition?’
She had plenty more to add but Rory Forrester’s smile stopped her in her tracks.
‘Are we doomed to argue throughout my tenure at Royal Westside, Sister Wright?’
‘She can’t help it,’ Carole King, one of the other nurses, said. ‘She’d argue underwater if she thought it would help her precious Eight B, and in a gag underwater if anyone dared to denigrate the place.’
The residents and other nursing staff laughed, while Ted gave her knee another calming—or warning—pat.
But it was too late for warnings.
‘At least my passion is directed towards the patients rather than—’
Ted’s fingers dug sharply into her leg and she swallowed the words ‘senior O and G consultant’ that she’d been about to fling at Carole.
Ted was right. The entire hospital might know about Carole’s and Bill’s affair, but it was hardly appropriate to bring up in a staff meeting.
And it was so unlike her usual philosophy of live and let live, Alana decided, that until she’d worked out why Rory Forrester had such an unsettling effect on her, she’d better sit still and shut up.
‘Thanks,’ she whispered to Ted, patting the hand still resting on her leg.
Definite
ly married. He’d been talking about his wife only this morning, Rory recalled, glaring at the couple playing handsies in the back row.
Somehow he got the meeting back on track, finally asking all present to put any ideas they might have for the useful occupation of med students in writing and email them to him.
‘We’ve got to try to turn them from people most staff members see as nuisances into useful members of the hospital community.’
‘Do you think he’d accept drug experimentation as a useful occupation?’ Alana asked Ted, remaining seated beside him while the rest of the group shuffled hurriedly out of the room. ‘Lobotomy trials? Sex changes?’
‘For the person who prompted this meeting with her vocal complaints on the nuisance value of students, you’re not coming up with much in the way of viable alternatives.’
The cool voice brushed like an icy wind change across the back of her neck. She’d watched Rory Forrester go out the door at the front of the room, but he’d apparently sneaked back in through the one she’d used and was now standing right behind her.
Listening to her ‘bad taste’ remarks.
Compelled by reasons she didn’t want to consider right now, she turned towards him.
‘As far as I’m concerned, the most useful thing they could do would be typing up the charts. At the moment, doctors’ orders are still written on the paper charts on patients’ beds, then later, one of the nursing or clerical staff types these orders and all the obs into the computer. If students did the typing—it could be done whenever they had time or on a roster basis or something—they’d be learning all about the patient, particularly if they have to check details from time to time, without bothering him or her with repetition of questions already asked.’
‘Hell, Alana, I can think of a dozen issues that would prevent that,’ Ted said, shaking his head over what he considered was stupidity. ‘Confidentiality for a start.’
Alana laughed.
‘You’ve got to be joking! I saw a report recently that stated at least seventy people within a hospital would see a supposedly “confidential” file. And that’s only counting people who have a right to have it in their hands.’
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