Her eyes narrowed.
‘And that of other hospital staff,’ she snapped. ‘OK, you get a lot of good ones—people like Josh Phillips who goes out of his way to include the whole family in his treatment of a child—but up in Eight B the patients are little more than bed numbers. Take Dr Wallace. He didn’t turn up at all yesterday, and this morning, when, according to his secretary, he’d definitely be doing an early round at seven-thirty he hasn’t been sighted.’
‘Dr Wallace?’
‘The renal specialist. I’ve a number of patients under him. They see a resident and occasionally his registrar might drop in, but it’s not the same, although I guess most of them don’t realise the registrar’s not the boss.’
She paused long enough to take a deep breath, then continued her complaint against the errant specialist.
‘But the people who do know—the ones who actually want to see him so they can ask questions—get upset, not with him because he’s not here but with my staff for saying he will be.’
Her indignation had brought colour to her cheeks, and the spark of battle in her smoky blue-grey eyes.
‘Is he the only culprit—the reason you’ve painted all specialists so black?’
The frown returned.
‘Dr Curtis, the thoracic specialist, is supposed to do visits once a week. I think the last time we saw him was a month ago.’ She paused and looked into Rory’s eyes. ‘I don’t mind specialists ignoring the ward—after all, most are over-extended as it is, and their registrars or residents do a fine job. What I do object to is them saying they’ll come and then not turning up. At least if I know they’re not coming, I can advise family members who wish to speak to a particular specialist to phone him in his rooms.’
‘And does that work?’ Rory asked, aware he should be doing his own ward rounds, not chatting to Alana in the tearoom. ‘My experience of phoning specialists has always prompted a high level of frustration and, no doubt, contacting me is just as bad.’
‘I don’t care if it works or not,’ Alana told him, the dark-lashed eyes daring him to argue. ‘At least that way it’s his receptionist or secretary copping the abuse, not my staff.’
‘Ah!’
The sound was so replete with understanding Alana peered suspiciously at him.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
His eyes widened innocently, then a real smile, albeit a tired one, appeared.
‘Your last sentence explained so much. I did wonder why a woman like yourself, who doesn’t hesitate to speak her mind to mere specialists—I’ve seen you in action, remember—should be so hung up over their behaviour. It’s your protective instincts coming to the fore—you want to tuck all the staff under your sheltering wing. I should tell Jason to rename you Mother Hen.’
He hesitated, then added, ‘Thank you for your kindness to Jason, by the way. He’s been through a difficult time and it’s made him prickly and defensive, but underneath the prickles there’s a good kid.’
‘And I’m a mother hen?’ Alana teased, turning away from him to rinse out her cup. ‘Are you finished with the coffee?’
She swung back to take his cup, adding, ‘I’m also a slave-driver. If you’re here to do a round, let’s go.’
He handed her the cup, his fingers touching hers, quite by accident, in the exchange, yet the charge he could generate with his smiles shot through her once again at this physical connection and she had to remind herself that love was something which grew slowly—out of friendship and mutual respect and affection.
Not physical reactions or psychic manifestations of body odour!
Which obviously wasn’t mutual as he had no idea she’d sat next to him at the theatre.
If it had been him…
‘This conversation started with Bessie Oliver. Am I to do something about contacting the new hostel, or will the O and G man speak to Prue?’
Rory, who’d been enjoying the relaxing qualities of coffee and a chat with Alana, wondered what had swung the mood in the room so unequivocally back to work.
Did she time her coffee-breaks?
He hadn’t seen her looking at her watch.
‘Bill will speak to the granddaughter. Had you found anywhere else?’
‘A possible placement in a nursing home a fair distance from Prue’s home. It wasn’t ideal but might have done.’
Alana sounded as if ‘might have done’ wasn’t really good enough, and he wondered if she expected perfection of herself all the time. She obviously expected it of her specialist colleagues.
Including him?
He heaved his tired, aching body upright—he was too damn old to be sleeping on a couch, but Drusilla’s offer that he share his own bedroom with her had been fraught with too many dangers to even consider—and followed Alana out of the room. His mood brightened perceptibly as he admired the way her lithe body moved beneath the Royal Westside nurse’s uniform of slim-fitting navy trousers or skirt—she was in trousers today—and bluey-green coloured top, the style varying, he thought, according to seniority.
He rolled his eyes in horror that he could even be considering the attraction of a woman’s body movement. He had enough woman problems with Drusilla around!
But as he accompanied Alana around the ward, meeting all the new patients—not just those he might see more of later in the internal medicine ward—he found himself admiring more than the way Alana Wright moved. Without being sugar sweet—he couldn’t imagine her ever managing that—she gave the impression of being deeply interested in every person under her care, and made it obvious that, even if they were only temporarily on her ward, they were still deserving of every attention she and her staff could provide.
And the patients responded, he realised when he stopped to explain to Mrs Armstrong that he’d scheduled her for an endoscopy later in the day. She’d immediately turned to Alana for support.
‘That’s the test I had last time, isn’t it?’ she enquired. ‘Where I had to swallow the tube? Will I come back here after it?’
‘That’s up to Dr Forrester,’ Alana told her. ‘If he finds bleeding polyps and can stop them bleeding while he’s fiddling around inside your stomach, then you can probably come back here for an hour or so to get over it and then go home. But if he finds anything else…’
She nodded to Rory, finally deferring to him.
‘I may need to keep you in for further treatment, either more extensive cauterisation or, as a last resort, surgery—though that isn’t too fearsome these days with all the new techniques.’
Mrs Armstrong beamed at him.
‘I’m sure you’ll do whatever’s right,’ she said, causing Alana, as they moved away, to mutter, ‘You do have a way with women, don’t you?’
But it wasn’t this barbed comment he remembered after the round finished but her attitude to her patients. He found himself comparing it, later in the day, with the staff in other wards. Not that the other staff were any less effective, or even less compassionate.
Just not as involved somehow.
Actually, she was the kind of charge nurse he’d like to see down on the gastroenterology ward, where most of his patients would be admitted.
The thought had no sooner surfaced than he smiled to himself. He could just imagine Alana’s reaction to that suggestion. Even before he’d met her, he’d heard about the woman who considered Eight B her own personal fiefdom, defying anyone to consider it less important than any other ward in the hospital.
Alana was pleased when Rory finally departed, but her nerves stayed twitchy, as if poised to spring into reactive mode should he make an unexpected reappearance. She told them this was unlikely—he’d already spent more time in Eight B in two days than past senior physicians spent in two weeks—but she was beginning to realise her nerves had developed a way of ignoring her advice.
Keeping busy was one answer. With four patients either going home or being transferred, she had to prepare for four new admissions already waiting downstairs then,
later in the day, find room for another three, doubling up the beds in a couple of single-bed rooms on a temporary basis.
Mrs Armstrong, polyps successfully cauterised, returned as Alana was going off duty and, announcing that the lovely Dr Forrester had said she could go home, promptly packed her bag and, once through the discharge procedure, was heading home to Alf.
‘Will someone come for you?’ Alana asked. ‘Shall I phone your neighbour—Jenny, isn’t it?’
Mrs Armstrong shook her head.
‘The nurse in Recovery phoned the volunteer driver service and Jack’s available to take me home.’
Was it still the blood transfusion making Mrs Armstrong’s cheeks look so rosily pink, or was the colour connected to a slight tremor in her voice when she’d mentioned the volunteer driver’s name?
‘He heard from Jenny I was here and came to see me last night,’ the older woman confessed. ‘Said he’d probably be around later today if I needed someone to drive me home.’
Alana felt her heart lift at the woman’s shy but obvious delight. People talked about first love being memorable, but to find love late in life must surely be even more magical.
She was still thinking about it as she walked home, and was smiling to herself as she unlocked her door so, of course, Daisy, coming out as she was going in, caught her foolishness.
‘Good day?’ Daisy teased.
‘Not bad, but I was thinking about love,’ Alana explained.
‘Not you, too!’ Daisy said. ‘It’s been like an epidemic in the place the last few months. Even Philip, one of the dentists downstairs, has fallen—apparently for a patient with perfect molars.’
‘Yuck! How revolting!’ Alana grimaced at the thought. ‘But if you must know, I remain immune.’ Almost immune? ‘I was thinking of a patient, and finding love late in life. Mrs Armstrong was definitely blushing, as if just saying the man’s name raised her body temperature. Do you think love or attraction, or whatever it is, feels the same at any age?’
‘I can’t see why not,’ Daisy replied. ‘There are theories about the stages of love and its effect on people. I know some people believe love between the age of thirty and forty is different—and usually life-altering. How old’s your Mrs Armstrong? If she’s older than that, I could look up a few books and see what I can find about later romances.’
Alana chuckled.
‘They might not go up to the decade of the nineties,’ she said, ‘which is where Mrs Armstrong fits.’
‘Oh, how lovely!’ Daisy couldn’t contain her delight and clapped. ‘What a treat to feel the thrill of love again at that age.’
They chatted a little longer, but it was that remark—or more the word ‘thrill’—which remained with Alana after they’d parted.
She knew what Daisy meant by the word—the tingly physical response that was a strange blend of extreme excitement and a wary apprehension. But wasn’t that kind of thrill a purely physical response? More to do with lust than love?
Which raised another question. Would ninety-something-year-olds go pink with lust?
The parrot’s greeting reminded her she had more to do than consider the implications of lust in nonagenarians. Jason would arrive shortly, and she had to make sure she had enough paper for new nests for her pets. Most of her neighbours kept clean paper for her and she collected masses of it at work. All of this was shredded to provide the animals with fresh paper three times a week.
She was still shredding when Jason arrived and, pronouncing himself delighted with the working of her very basic shredder, took over the job. Then Alana showed him her routine, and told him about the baby marsupials she sometimes looked after, tiny kangaroos or wallabies mostly, their mothers having been killed by cars.
‘Because they’re allergic to cow’s milk, we use the special formula. I’m part of a large group who voluntarily care for injured native animals, but I’m not often called on to take babies because there are others who specialise in them.’
‘I’ve seen the signs by the roadside with phone numbers for people to call if they find an injured animal.’
Jason’s face, when he was interested and animated, showed signs of the very good-looking man who’d eventually emerge from the chrysalis of adolescence. A good-looking man not unlike his uncle.
Alana switched her thoughts back to the explanations.
‘That’s the group I belong to,’ she said. ‘When I do have one of these very young and very dependent creatures, Madeleine Frost up on the top floor takes it during the day, because at a young age the animals need at least hourly feeds, and I do nights.’
‘I could help,’ Jason offered, and Alana laughed as she lifted the parrot out of his cage, setting him on the back of a chair while she cleaned.
‘Perhaps when you’re on holidays you can help Madeleine with the day feeds, but I can’t imagine your uncle being too pleased if I got you into a job that required waking up on the hour every hour all night long. You’d fall asleep at school.’
‘School’s not so important!’ Jason muttered, the anger she always sensed in him returning at this slight provocation.
‘Not if you’re going to be a layabout all your life,’ Alana agreed, and saw his eyes spark with more emotion.
‘I’m not. I’m going to be a tennis professional,’ he told her, familiar eyes defying her to argue.
‘That’s good, but it makes school even more important. You’ve no idea the number of sports stars who are ripped off by their management because they don’t understand the basics of business and investment.’
‘Really?’ Jason asked, lifting the now clean parrot cage from her hands and hanging it back up. He spread the paper he’d cut to size in the bottom, then he lifted the bag of sand and waited for her nod before sprinkling a heavy layer over the paper. ‘Why would people do that?’
The question came so long after the remark she had to think back to what she’d said.
‘I guess they only do it if they think they can get away with it, but I guarantee that at least once a month there’s an article in the newspaper about a sportsperson splitting with his or her management, or even taking court action against their former management.’
‘So I’d have to keep an eye on what they did with my money?’
Alana hid a smile at the confidence of youth.
‘Yes, and read all the papers they give you to read and definitely, and most importantly, read any contract before you sign it. And if you don’t understand it, ask someone you trust. Your uncle, perhaps.’
‘Or Rosemary,’ Jason said. ‘She’s a lawyer.’
Assuming Rosemary was another aunt, Alana kept working, showing Jason how to check the water dispensers were functioning in all the cages, where the kitty litter was kept, and how to double-bag all the rubbish, then tie it securely before dumping it in the bins downstairs.
Once done, she smiled at him.
‘Well, I suppose after all that work, I could ask you to stay to dinner,’ she said. ‘I was going to barbeque some steak on the balcony. That sound all right to you?’
Jason nodded, then said, ‘But I’d better check with the DM first. With Drusilla around, he might need me to block the chances of a snogathon!’
He grinned as if remembering her distaste for the word, then with a ‘Back in a minute!’ he disappeared out the door.
Alana’s immediate reaction was regret for possibly giving Rory the opportunity for a snogathon, but she dismissed that as unworthy. Jason deserved a treat.
‘I’ll just try not to think of the snogathon!’ Alana muttered to herself as she headed to the bathroom for a quick shower before tackling the preparations for dinner.
CHAPTER FIVE
THE knock on the door came while Alana was still in the shower. Without bothering to dry herself, she dragged on her towelling bathrobe to go and let Jason in.
But the peephole revealed the uncle, not the boy.
Great! I open the door and he sees me dripping water, tangled hair, total
mess, which shouldn’t matter but does, or I don’t open the door and antagonise him totally as he must know I’m in here because Jason will have just spoken to him.
She opened the door.
‘Yes?’
Rory had the hide to smile!
‘I’m not selling anything,’ he said, obviously responding to her abrupt, putting-off-a-salesperson tone. ‘But I was walking home and it struck me that, as a tennis player, you might know a good coach. Jason went to the Rosedale Tennis Academy in Sydney but he stopped playing a couple of months ago so I didn’t get a chance to ask anyone there for a recommendation up here.’
‘You were walking home? Just now? You haven’t seen Jason?’
Alana forgot her general dampness as she tried to assimilate this new conversation, but Rory interrupted before she made the switch.
‘Seen Jason? Why? What’s wrong?’ He grasped her arm as if willing, if necessary, to shake answers out of her, and though she thought this reaction—as close to alarm as Rory was likely to show—was a bit over the top, she answered quickly.
‘Nothing’s wrong with Jason. It’s just that I was expecting him, not you.’
Blue eyes raked over her, from the top of her head to the tip of her bare and still wet toes, then back up again. The shapely dark eyebrows rose.
And with them Alana’s temper.
‘I’m not into corrupting minors, if that’s what you’re thinking, Dr Forrester. I was in the shower when you knocked.’ She snapped the words at him, wondering if irritation was a byproduct of attraction. ‘We’ve been cleaning out the animal cages. He went home to ask if he could stay for dinner.’
‘You’ve invited him this time?’ The eyebrows rose again.
‘Why not? Do you object?’
Rory studied the prickly, antagonistic—not to mention wet—woman in front of him. What was it about her that got under his skin? Apart from the fact she was very attractive, of course. And what was it about him that always seemed to anger her?
Maybe she was just naturally bloody-minded, which would explain why she was still single and apparently unattached at thirty. The not-so-subtle interrogation at the Grahams’ the previous evening hadn’t been all one-sided!
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