‘You’re perfectly capable of doing so, I agree,’ Orlando said, ‘but you’re still not doing it. I said I’d support you, and I will.’
The first injection went without a hitch, though when the specialist started talking to her and asking her questions, Eleanor had to admit she was glad Orlando had insisted on coming with her, because for some reason her brain had turned to mush and she could barely string two words together in Italian. Orlando also managed to arrange her appointments to fit in with surgery hours.
By the middle of the week she was bone-achingly tired. Literally. She’d known in advance that she might feel some degree of bone pain because of the way the G-CSF worked on her body, but she’d bought some paracetamol from the local pharmacy to deal with it. Except it wasn’t quite strong enough to deal with the pain.
‘You look terrible,’ Orlando said when he walked into Serafina’s room after the Wednesday morning list, where Eleanor had elected to work in the baby clinic. ‘Serafina, why didn’t you tell me that Eleanor was feeling so ill?’
Serafina waved a dismissive hand at him. ‘Because you would have made her go home and she would’ve sat brooding all day and getting miserable on her own. Which isn’t a good thing.’
‘And sitting here in pain is?’ he asked scathingly. ‘Everything’s fine—isn’t it, Ellie?’ Serafina asked. ‘Yup.’
But Eleanor’s tone was too short to fool Orlando. ‘You feel as bad as you look, don’t you?’ he asked gently. ‘As if you need to sleep for a month. And you ache like hell.’
Yes. But if she admitted that, she knew he’d make her go back to his apartment. Right now she didn’t want to be on her own. And she wasn’t going to tell Orlando about the tingling either. She’d been given an anticoagulant to stop her blood clotting during the treatment, and she knew the tingling would stop shortly after she’d stopped having the G-CSF.
She lifted her chin. ‘I’m not putting any of the patients at risk, if that’s what you’re worrying about. If I think my diagnosis or treatment skills aren’t up to the job, I’ll ask for help. I’m not that stupid.’
‘Nobody’s saying you are. But there’s a limit to bravery. You’re stopping for lunch right now,’ Orlando said. ‘And we’ll see how you are tomorrow morning. If you’re feeling any rougher than this, you’re staying put. In bed.’
In bed. She wished he hadn’t used that phrase. Because the idea of drifting off to sleep with him wrapped round her was more than appealing right now. And it made her want to cry. ‘I won’t be feeling rough,’ she lied.
‘If she’s feeling under the weather, she can just sit in with me,’ Serafina chipped in. ‘Or with Chiara. I don’t want Ellie to be on her own. She can’t spend the mornings with Bartolomeo or he’ll start worrying about her, and he needs to be as stress-free as possible for next week. She’s better off here with us.’
‘Hmm,’ Orlando said, sounding completely unconvinced, and shepherded Eleanor out of the room.
* * *
The following morning, she was still feeling lousy, but not admitting to it. Orlando said nothing over breakfast, but he clearly guessed exactly how she was feeling. When they reached the surgery, he said, ‘You’re in with me today. Where I can keep an eye on you. And if I tell you to go into the staffroom and lie down for half an hour, you do it. Understood?’
She scowled. ‘Stop bossing me about.’
‘Those are the terms. Take them or go home. Your choice.’
She didn’t have the energy to argue any more. ‘OK. I’ll stay here.’
She allowed Orlando to take the lead in all the cases that morning, until Paolo Barese walked in, complaining of chest pain. This was something she was used to dealing with.
‘My call,’ she said to Orlando. ‘Signor Barese—’
‘Paolo,’ the middle-aged man insisted.
She smiled at him. ‘Paolo. Tell me about the pain.’
‘It’s like someone pushing on my chest. It goes on for a few minutes, but it goes away if I sit down. I thought it was indigestion, but.’ he grimaced ‘.the tablets don’t make it go away.’
She had a fair idea what this was, but she needed to be sure. ‘Do you get the pain often?’ she asked.
‘I’ve been getting it a couple of times a day. In the afternoons, mostly.’
‘What are you doing when it happens?’ she asked.
‘Lifting furniture. I’m a carpenter,’ he explained.
‘Do you smoke at all?’
He looked rueful. ‘Used to. My wife made me gave it up.’
Orlando already had the notes up on the computer and tilted the screen so she could see it. As she’d half suspected, she saw that Paolo’s last blood-pressure measurement had been on the high side.
‘Has anyone in your family ever had heart disease?’ she asked gently.
‘My father died of a heart attack in his fifties.’ Paolo went white. ‘Oh, dio. Am I going to die?’
‘You’re not having a heart attack,’ she reassured him. ‘I think you’re suffering from something called angina. It happens when little lumps of fat called plaques build up on the lining inside the arteries leading to your heart. That makes the arteries narrow and not enough blood gets through to your heart—in turn, that means your heart doesn’t get enough oxygen. That’s what causes the pain—a bit like if you get a cramp in your leg, yes?’
He nodded.
‘You might find you get the pain when you do something active, like moving furniture around or going up stairs,’ she said.
‘It can also happen if you’re feeling stressed or angry, or if you’ve eaten a big meal,’ Orlando added.
‘Or even if you go out on a very cold day,’ Eleanor finished. ‘It’s good that you’ve stopped smoking because that will help. I need to listen to your heart, if I may?’
Orlando was already holding out the stethoscope. She listened to Paolo’s heart, the arteries in his neck and his lungs. ‘No murmurs, no cardiac bruit and chest clear,’ she told Orlando, who typed rapidly into the computer. ‘It’s all looking good so far, Paolo.’
His blood pressure wasn’t so good—even if she made allowances for the fact that he was clearly worried, plus the ‘white coat hypertension’ patients tended to experience when an unfamiliar doctor took their blood pressure. ‘We’re going to need to start you on medication to keep this under control,’ she said. His pulse was a little fast for her liking, too. ‘Would you stand on the scales for me, please?’
Paolo patted his rotund stomach. ‘You don’t need to weigh me. I already know I need to lose a few pounds.’
‘For your heart’s sake, yes.’
‘Am I going to have a heart attack?’
She wasn’t going to lie to him. ‘Hopefully not, but this is a warning that you need to look after yourself. You can carry on life as normal for the time being, but I’m going to send you to hospital for some tests.’ She looked at Orlando. ‘Which I’m sure Dottore de Luca can arrange for you.’
‘I’ll write the letters today,’ Orlando said.
‘I’m going to send you for an ECG—that’s an electrocardiogram and it shows the activity of your heart on a graph,’ she told Paolo. ‘You’ll also need a stress test—that’s where you walk on a treadmill for ten minutes or as long as you can and you’ll have some wires attached so the doctors can measure what your heart is doing, And you’ll need an angiograph—that’s where they give you a special kind of X-ray using dye to see your arteries, so they can see where there are any blockages.’ She looked at Orlando. ‘Start with diuretics for the blood pressure, yes?’
He nodded. ‘And GTN.’
She turned to Paolo again. ‘We’re going to give you some tablets that you’ll need to take every morning—water tablets, which will help reduce the pressure of your blood in your veins. And we’re going to give you a spray called glyceryl trinitrate—GTN for short—that you can put under your tongue when you have any pain. It’ll taste disgusting, but it will ease the pain.’
&n
bsp; ‘But if it doesn’t work or you need to use it more and more, you need to come back and see us,’ Orlando warned. He printed off the prescriptions and signed them. ‘The pharmacist should fill this for you while you wait. You’ll get a letter from the hospital about the tests, and I’d like to see you again in a month to see how you’re getting on. Chiara will make the appointment. If you need to come back before then, that’s fine.’
‘Thank you, dottore, dottoressa.’ Paolo took the prescriptions, smiled at them both and left the room.
‘I imagine you have a lot of chest pain cases in the emergency department,’ Orlando said.
‘And quite a few of them turn out to be angina rather than a full-blown MI. So yes, I’m used to spotting the signs,’ she admitted.
‘You handled that well—you did a fair bit of that in Italian, on your own,’ he said.
‘Because you’ve been coaching me.’ ‘We make a good team,’ he said.
‘That’s not the first time you’ve said that.’ She smiled wryly. ‘It’s just a pity that you’re so obstinate.’
He frowned. ‘How do you mean?’
‘Think about it. If we can work as a team here, we can work as a team outside here.’
Orlando folded his arms, looking grim. ‘We’re in the middle of surgery. We have patients waiting. Now is not the time to discuss this, Eleanor.’
Yet again he was backing off. And she was sick of waiting. ‘So when will you be ready to discuss it?’
‘We’ve already agreed that. After the transplant.’
Give me strength, she thought. ‘In the meantime, there’s something you might like to think about.’
He frowned. ‘What’s that?’
‘You,’ she said quietly, ‘are your own person. Your mother’s given you half her genes, but even if you happen to look like her—and I have no idea, since you have nothing personal whatsoever in your flat—you’re not her carbon copy. The way she reacts to things isn’t necessarily the same way you react to things.’
Orlando rubbed his jaw. ‘There’s nothing wrong with my apartment. It’s perfectly comfortable. It’s well furnished.’
‘But it could belong to anyone. It looks like something an interior designer dreamed up.’
He spread his hands. ‘And that’s wrong how, precisely?’
Did he really not know?
And then she realised how neatly he’d sidestepped the issue she’d brought up. Distracted her into talking about his flat instead of the real problem—his conviction that he was like his mother. ‘You’re impossible.’
‘Yeah, yeah. Let’s see our next patient.’ And before she could protest, he pressed the button to call in the next patient on the list.
Finally, on the following Tuesday, the stem cells were harvested. Four hours of being hooked up to a machine with a cannula in each arm, watching the blood flow out of one arm and into the separator before flowing back into her other arm. Orlando insisted on staying with Eleanor throughout the procedure. Holding her hand, the pressure firm enough to let her know she had his support but light enough not to hurt her.
This was more than just friendship. It had to be. He wouldn’t be here for her like this if he didn’t care. If he didn’t feel the same way she did. If he didn’t love her.
Would he?
That evening, Eleanor had to admit to an appalling headache.
‘I guessed this would happen.’ Orlando led her through to the dining room. ‘It’s one of the most likely side effects. Sit down and close your eyes.’
She frowned. ‘Why?’
‘Because it’s easier to do this if you’re sitting on a straight-backed chair.’ He stood behind her, and she felt his fingers slide into her hair.
‘Scalp massage?’ she asked as his fingertips began to make tiny circles against her skin.
‘Works well for headaches, because it increases the blood flow to your scalp. As does brushing your hair. Standard self-help advice for migraines, actually,’ he said sagely. ‘I should have thought to get some lavender scented oil. Massaged into your temples, it can help with headaches.’
‘Hang on. You’re a family doctor. And you’re advocating alternative remedies?’
‘Some of them are excellent. Aromatherapy’s been used as a supportive treatment for cancer patients—the trial reports I’ve seen are positive—and I often refer patients to acupuncture for relief of chronic pain.’ He laughed. ‘Of course, some alternative treatments are quackery—pure superstition with no clinical evidence to back up the claims. But a patient’s belief can do a lot of things. Look at all the studies on placebos.’
‘True.’ And this was making her feel good—the warmth of his hands, the firm yet gentle pressure against her skin.
She wanted more. Much more. She wanted to feel his hands stroking her bare skin. Teasing her, raising her desire to such a pitch that she forgot everything except his touch.
The only way it would happen would be if she begged him.
Even then he might say no. Might still want to keep his distance.
And her pride wouldn’t let her risk that. Because how could she carry on staying here if he turned her down? ‘Better?’ he asked a couple of minutes later. ‘Better,’ she admitted.
‘I’d prescribe paracetamol and an early night.’ He fetched her the paracetamol and a glass of water and made sure she took them. Then, for a brief second, he touched the backs of his fingers to her cheek. ‘Sleep well, tesoro,’ he said softly.
She’d sleep a lot better if it was in his arms.
But she didn’t want to risk him turning her down. ‘Good night,’ she said.
Orlando took the next day off so he could wait with Eleanor while Bartolomeo had the transplant. The plan was, he’d be there with her if she needed him and fade into the background if she didn’t. And although the transplant went well and the earliest signs were positive, Eleanor’s mood was bleak.
Over the next two weeks, while Bartolomeo was in hospital, her mood grew darker, though she kept up a bright, cheerful aspect when she visited her father in the afternoons. Visiting was restricted for the first couple of weeks, when Bartolomeo’s immune system was at its lowest, because of the risk of picking up an infection, so Orlando waited for her outside the room in the evenings. But he noticed on the way home that she stopped smiling and barely spoke.
And one day he came home from work to find her crying, huddled on the sofa.
‘Eleanor? What’s wrong?’ His heart felt as if it had stopped for a moment. No. Bartolomeo couldn’t have gone downhill that fast. And she would’ve called him from the hospital, surely, told him what was happening?
Ice trickled down his spine when she didn’t answer; she was clearly struggling to keep the tears back. ‘Do you want me to call anyone?’
He could’ve kicked himself for asking such a stupid question. Of course not. She didn’t have anyone any more—only Bartolomeo. Except … ‘What about your friend, Tamsin? Do you want me to call her?’
‘No. Ignore me.’ She dragged in a breath. ‘I’ll be OK.’
He couldn’t bear it, seeing her so upset. No way could he keep his distance from her—not when she needed him. He sat on the sofa next to her, then scooped her onto his lap and held her close. ‘Tell me,’ he said softly, cradling her. ‘I’m here.’
‘Seeing him in hospital … it reminds me of visiting my mum.’ Her voice was so quiet he could barely hear the words, though he could feel her shuddering breaths, the way she was clearly trying not to break down completely. ‘The chemo and the radiotherapy, and he’s so sick—just like she was. I’m so scared, Orlando. I’m so scared he’s going to die before I get the chance to know him properly. I’m so scared we’re not going to get our time together.’
‘Hey, he’s doing well.’
‘But what if he develops graft versus host disease?’ She buried her face in his shoulder. ‘As part of the transplant, he’s got cells from my immune system. They’ll see his cells as invaders and attack them.’
‘Not necessarily. He doesn’t have a rash, does he? Or jaundice? So your cells haven’t attacked the tissues of his skin or his liver.’
‘What about his gut? The nausea and the vomiting—’
‘Are probably down to the chemo,’ Orlando reminded her. ‘It’s not a sign that your cells are attacking his gut.’
‘You know as well as I do there’s a higher risk of GVHD because of his age and because it’s not a completely perfect match.’
‘It’s still a better match than an unrelated donor. And if he does develop GVHD, there are lots of things doctors can do nowadays. We can treat him with steroids, or an anti-thymocyte globulin, which will reduce the number of T-cells involved.’ He stroked her face. ‘And think of the other risks that increase the chances of developing GVHD—risks we can rule out immediately. One of the biggest is if the donor’s had a transfusion, which you haven’t. Or if the donor’s been pregnant.’
His voice trailed off. Eleanor hadn’t told him that much about Jeremy, and she certainly hadn’t mentioned pregnancy. Had she carried another man’s child?
The surge of jealousy was so powerful it shocked him.
‘I’ve never been pregnant.’
And why that should make him so pleased.? He pushed his emotions aside. Now wasn’t the time. ‘So there you go. They’re the two biggest risks and we can rule them out. It’s going to be fine, Eleanor.’
‘He had a sore mouth today.’
‘Which happens with anyone who’s had a transplant. And they find it painful to swallow at first.’ He stroked her hair. ‘And you know this perfectly well, but your brain’s temporarily forgotten it because Bartolomeo is your father.’
‘And I’m too close to the case.’ She swallowed hard. ‘He has mouthwashes. And tablets to stop the candida infection.’
‘Exactly.’
‘What about cytomegalovirus? Supposing he picked up CMV in hospital, and it turns to interstitial—’
‘Pneumonitis?’ Orlando finished wryly. ‘Mia bella, you’re going to drive yourself crazy if you start thinking of every single complication, and every possible complication that leads off from that.’
Latin Lovers: Italian Playboys Page 32