A Wife for Dr. Cunningham

by Maggie Kingsley

  ‘None at all,’ she replied. ‘How’s my boyfriend? Nobody will tell me anything—’

  ‘You just lie there and relax, and let us do the worrying,’ Robert interrupted smoothly. ‘Aren’t those X-rays ready yet, Jerry?’ he continued, frowning across at the technician.

  ‘They are, and they’re negative. No sign of any damage to the neck and back at all.’

  Hannah breathed a sigh of relief. A broken neck and subsequent paralysis was always a possibility after a bad road accident like this, but luckily the girl was fine.

  ‘I suggest you give her a complete check-over in case she’s sustained fractures anywhere else,’ Robert commented. ‘The cervical collar can come off now—’

  ‘Sorry, Robert, but could you come right away?’ Floella said anxiously, popping her head through the cubicle curtains. ‘We’ve got a guy in 7 who looks to be haemorrhaging pretty badly.’

  He was already walking towards the staff nurse and Hannah smiled encouragingly at the girl. ‘You heard what the man said. Have you any other aches and pains I should know about?’

  ‘My knee and arm hurt a bit,’ the girl admitted.

  ‘Jerry, can I have X-rays of the right knee and arm?’

  ‘Your wish is my command, sweetheart,’ he replied with what Hannah presumed he considered his most ingratiating smile, and she turned her back on him irritably.

  How Jerry had ever got it into his head that he was irresistible to women was beyond her. Elliot was irresistible to women, and Robert…

  No, she wasn’t going to think about Robert, she told herself firmly. She’d been doing her level best for the past few days not to think about Robert, and she was actually succeeding. Well, some of the time she was. Occasionally she was. Now and then she was.

  ‘Definite fractured right knee and arm,’ Jerry declared. ‘I’d better get going. Unless, of course, there’s something else you’d like me to do for you?’

  How about going and playing on the motorway in the rush hour? Hannah thought sourly as he leered across at her on his way out, but when the girl lying on the trolley uttered a small moan, she forgot all about the technician.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked, going quickly over to her.

  ‘It’s my neck. It’s really, really sore. Do you think I could have a pillow?’

  There had been no sign of any back or neck injuries on the X-rays. The girl wasn’t complaining of any numbness or tingling in her arms and legs, so there was no earthly reason why she shouldn’t have a pillow, and yet suddenly Hannah felt uneasy.

  ‘Try this and see if this helps,’ she suggested, folding the smallest towel she could find and slipping it under the girl’s head.

  You’re wasting time, her mind whispered as she hovered beside the trolley. The waiting room’s packed and as the girl’s been thoroughly X-rayed there’s no need for her to still be in the treatment room. You should be sending her along to the plastering department to have her knee and arm set. But something, a small nagging little doubt at the back of her mind, just wouldn’t go away.

  ‘Does it feel any better with the towel under your head?’ she asked.

  ‘Sort of.’ The girl frowned. ‘My neck doesn’t hurt nearly so much but my fingers have gone all tingly.’

  ‘Have they?’ Hannah said with a calmness she was very far from feeling. Gently she slid the towel out from under the young girl’s head, though all her instincts were urging her to yank it away fast. ‘I won’t be a minute,’ she continued, walking towards the cubicle curtains. ‘There’s just…just something I want to check on.’

  ‘Fine.’ The girl smiled, but Hannah knew she was anything but ‘fine’, and the second she was out of the cubicle she began to run.

  ‘Right, page the neurosurgeon and get Jerry Clark back immediately,’ Robert ordered when Hannah explained what had happened. ‘You’re sure the only time you moved her was to slide the towel under her head, and then to take it away again?’

  Hannah nodded.

  ‘OK, put the cervical collar back on, and when Jerry shows up I want to be there.’

  And he was, with a vengeance.

  ‘I want more X-rays, Jerry, and this time I want them done properly,’ he said curtly.

  ‘Properly?’ the technician repeated, his face going from white to red in quick succession. ‘Are you calling my professional competence into question?’

  Robert would have dearly liked to have accused him of a lot more, but right now he didn’t have the time, not with the neurological surgeon on his way down to give a second opinion.

  ‘Jerry, I want more X-rays,’ he said again, his voice ice-cold. ‘Either you take them for us or I can ask your boss to come down and do the honours. The choice is yours.’

  Jerry took them.

  ‘Well, would you look at that?’ the neurosurgeon muttered when he joined them and studied the new set of X-ray plates. ‘I’m not surprised it wasn’t noticed before. It’s so faint even I can hardly see it, and if Hannah hadn’t mentioned the tingling in her fingers I would never have thought to look for it.’

  The young girl had broken her second cervical vertebrae. Nerves to her entire body passed through this bone, nerves that controlled her breathing, movement, and feeling.

  ‘How do your fingers feel now?’ Robert asked, turning to the girl on the trolley.

  ‘They’re not tingling any more,’ she replied, ‘but my neck’s sore again.’

  Hannah met Robert’s eyes with relief. The girl might have broken her neck and would have to wear a brace screwed into her head for the next few months, but if they hadn’t got that second set of X-rays, if she’d been moved without the support of a cervical collar, she would have been paralysed for life.

  ‘Well done,’ Robert said to Hannah after the neurosurgeon had transferred the girl up to his ward. ‘What made you suspect something was wrong?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she admitted. ‘Call it a gut feeling—intuition, perhaps.’

  ‘Then I suggest you immediately start cultivating both,’ he said warmly. ‘That sort of talent could be worth its weight in gold in A and E.’

  She smiled, but when he did, too, a slight sigh escaped her.

  He had such a nice smile when he cared to use it. Such a very nice smile. The trouble was that it would keep inducing that unsettling fluttering sensation deep in the pit of her stomach. It would persist in resurrecting the silly thoughts and feelings she kept having about him—thoughts and feelings which she knew perfectly well were silly until he smiled at her.

  ‘I must go,’ she mumbled. ‘We’re mobbed as usual—’

  ‘You’re looking a little better,’ he interrupted. ‘Have you been taking my advice—getting out more?’

  ‘Sort of,’ she replied. ‘I’ve started going for long walks when I finish work. I used to walk a lot at home in Edinburgh—I found it cleared my head, helped me to sleep better—and it seems to be helping.’

  ‘You walk on your own at night?’ Robert said, aghast.

  Just the thought of what could happen to her, doing that, was enough to make his blood run cold. Then offer to walk with her, the little voice in his mind said, and he all but laughed out loud at the suggestion. Dammit, he knew he’d like nothing better than to walk with her, to make sure she was safe, but if he couldn’t control his intrusive libido in a crowded place like St Stephen’s, God knew what would happen if he walked alone with her at night.

  But he knew one thing for sure. He had to put an end to her nightly strolls.

  ‘Hannah, walking alone in London at night—it’s not a good idea.’

  ‘You’re not going to give me the “London isn’t Edinburgh” speech again, are you?’ she groaned. ‘Look, I’m not an idiot. I don’t walk in the parks, or down lonely streets. I stick to places where there are lots of people.’

  ‘I don’t give a damn if you walk in Piccadilly Circus!’ he burst out. ‘Promise me you’ll stop doing it!’

  ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake…’


  ‘Promise me, Hannah,’ he insisted. ‘And no crossing your fingers behind your back when you’re doing it,’ he added, correctly reading her mind.

  A splutter of laughter came from her. ‘I didn’t know you were a mind-reader.’

  ‘There’s a lot of things you don’t know about me,’ he said, grinning.

  He grinned? Robert Cunningham could grin like a regular, normal person?

  He was right, there was a lot she didn’t know about him. But you’d like to find out, wouldn’t you? her mind said, and she determinedly trampled on the little voice.

  ‘OK, I promise,’ she said. ‘But I still think you’re being silly.’

  He thought he was, too, as she walked away, but not in the way Hannah meant.

  Why did he like her so much? And it was liking now, as well as lust. He liked her freshness, her total lack of guile. He admired her honesty, even if he often thought she was far too hard on herself.

  In fact, if he was going to be really honest, he liked everything about her. The way she looked, the way she smiled. Her courage and dedication. Hell, he even liked the way she caught her lower lip between her teeth when she was puzzling something out. The way she blew the curls away from her face with an impatient huff when she was angry.

  But it was a liking that could go nowhere. Even if she liked him—and he thought she did—there could be no future for them.

  He couldn’t give her what she needed. He didn’t think he could give any girl that any more. Laura had managed not only to destroy his love during their marriage but also his ability to trust, and without trust there was nothing.

  It was better to keep his distance from Hannah Blake, he decided as he saw her deep in conversation with a member of the local fire brigade, a slight frown on her face. Better for her, for him, for everybody.

  ‘What’s the problem?’ he asked, his professional instincts instantly clicking into place as Hannah walked quickly towards him.

  ‘What do you know about taps?’ she asked, her lips twitching slightly.

  ‘Taps?’ He frowned.

  ‘Bath taps. The fire brigade have just brought in a Mr and Mrs Fuller. The couple got married this afternoon and are booked into a hotel honeymoon suite for the weekend. Apparently Mrs Fuller decided to have a bath as they’d had such a long drive down from Shrewsbury, but the water felt a little hot after she got in, and when she was trying to turn on the cold water tap with her toes—’

  ‘She’s a contortionist, is she?’

  ‘Of course not.’ Hannah laughed. ‘You don’t have to be a contortionist to turn off taps with your toes. I do it all the time.’

  ‘You do?’ he said faintly.

  ‘It’s quite easy really, and Mrs Fuller would probably have been fine if she hadn’t added so much bubble bath to the water and made the bath slippery.’ Hannah frowned. ‘Actually, it’s something I’d better remember myself. I tend to be a bit heavy-handed, too, when it comes to bubble bath.’

  Robert wished she hadn’t said that. He really wished she hadn’t said that. He was already having a hard enough time trying to crush down the image which had sprung into his mind of Hannah naked in a bath. Hannah pink and glowing. Hannah with little droplets of water running down between—

  And now she’d gone and added bubbles to his mental picture. White, frothy bubbles that probably clung, and slid, and—

  ‘I presume the fire brigade have cut off the tap at its base?’ he said quickly.

  She nodded. ‘They’re suggesting we try using something called a whizzer saw. Apparently it has a diamond tip and they use it for cutting through steel rings, but its main drawback is we’d have to turn off any oxygen in the vicinity.’

  ‘I know,’ Robert replied. ‘I’ve used one before.’

  ‘You have?’ Hannah said in amazement. ‘I didn’t realise so many people got their big toes stuck up taps.’

  ‘They don’t. The particular case I worked on wasn’t a tap, and it wasn’t attached to the patient’s toe, but it did require a whizzer saw to remove it.’

  Something about the pinkness of his cheeks made Hannah decide she’d rather not know what he’d removed, and from where, and instead she said, ‘Would you come and take a look at Mrs Fuller, and see what we can do?’

  Judging by Mrs Fuller’s mortified expression as he strode through the cubicle curtains, Robert thought the new bride would have been quite happy if he’d suggested amputating her toe.

  ‘I have never been so embarrassed in all my life,’ she wailed while her husband patted her hand soothingly. ‘The indignity of it. Carried out of the honeymoon suite and down through the hotel lobby on a stretcher by the fire brigade—’

  ‘It would have been all right if you hadn’t sat up and told everyone you weren’t ill,’ her husband pointed out. ‘People would have been sympathetic.’

  ‘And they would have thought I’d had a stroke or a heart attack,’ she protested. ‘I couldn’t let them think that. It would have been a wicked thing to do.’

  ‘So we got all the comments instead,’ he said with sigh. “‘Cor!” and “That must have been some wedding night!” being the only ones I’d care to repeat in mixed company.’

  Hannah bit down hard on her lip, and said a little unsteadily, ‘Would it be worth applying some ice, do you think?’

  Robert shook his head. ‘It’s the toe inside the tap that’s swollen, and applying ice to the rest of the foot isn’t going to help. I’m afraid it’s going to have to be the whizzer saw.’

  It sounded terrifying. It looked even worse when Robert switched it on. And when he brought it down on the tap and a great plume of sparks shot up into the air, Hannah could see why the fire brigade had insisted that all oxygen in the vicinity had to be switched off.

  Being blown to bits clearly wasn’t of the utmost concern to Mrs Fuller. She let out a scream that all but shattered Hannah’s eardrums, sat bolt upright on the trolley and shrieked, ‘Switch it off! I’ve changed my mind! I’ll live with the tap—buy bigger shoes, go barefoot!’

  ‘It’s going to be all right, Mrs Fuller,’ Hannah declared, holding her firmly. ‘Dr Cunningham knows what he’s doing.’ At least she hoped he did. ‘It will only take a few minutes…’

  It did, but it seemed like an eternity before Robert straightened up with a pleased smile.

  ‘One tap—slightly the worse for wear, I’m afraid—removed as promised,’ he announced, holding it out to Mrs Fuller.

  Mrs Fuller looked as though she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, and opted for blowing her nose instead. ‘I’m so sorry, Doctor. Screaming, and bawling, and carrying on like that—’

  ‘There’s absolutely no need to apologise,’ Robert interrupted. ‘I doubt if anyone would have sat quietly while somebody took a saw to their foot. How does the toe feel?’

  ‘Sore,’ she admitted.

  ‘Can you move it at all?’ he asked.

  She could, and luckily it didn’t appear as though she had suffered any lasting damage. Her foot would be pretty painful for a few days if she tried to put any weight on it, but apart from that she’d survived unscathed from her ordeal with the tap.

  ‘I bet she never tries to turn off a tap with her toes again,’ Jane said when Mr and Mrs Fuller had gone, taking the remnants of the bath tap with them as a souvenir. ‘Can’t you just imagine the kind of ribbing they’re going to get for the rest of their honeymoon?’

  ‘The fire chief told me the hotel is actually going to charge them for damage to the honeymoon suite,’ Hannah said in disbelief. ‘OK, so maybe she’s wrecked the bath, but most honeymooners don’t spend their wedding night in the bath, do they?’

  Robert didn’t suppose they did, but it certainly opened up a whole array of interesting thoughts. Thoughts he’d far rather not have, he decided as he felt a tide of dark colour creeping up the back of his neck.

  ‘Something I can do for you, Kelly?’ he asked, noticing the student nurse hovering nearby, clearly trying to attract his attentio
n.

  ‘It’s the patient in cubicle 7, Dr Cunningham,’ she began as Jane walked away, still laughing about Mrs Fuller’s predicament. ‘Dr Mathieson says he’s just suffering from minor cuts and bruises—the man was mugged, you see—but…’

  ‘But?’ Robert pressed, confused as Kelly’s voice trailed away into silence.

  ‘The thing is…’ The student nurse gazed unhappily up at him. ‘The thing is, he’s got Aids, Dr Cunningham, and Dr Mathieson has asked me to clean his cuts, and—’

  ‘And if you put on a pair of latex gloves while you’re treating him, the chances of you catching it are nil unless you feel there’s a danger you might suddenly be seized by an overwhelming desire to make love to him!’ Robert said tartly.

  Scarlet colour swept over Kelly’s face and bright tears shimmered in her eyes. ‘I know that, Doctor, but, you see, my brother—he died last year of Aids. It’s one of the reasons I decided to become a nurse, and the patient—Mr Seller—seeing him, it reminds me—’

  ‘Why didn’t you say so in the first place?’ Robert asked quickly, compassion and sympathy plain on his face. ‘I’ll look after him for you—’

  ‘I’ll do it, Robert,’ Hannah broke in. ‘You’re just going off duty.’

  ‘So are you,’ he pointed out, glancing up at the treatment-room clock.

  ‘Yes, but it will only take me half an hour—’

  ‘Fifteen minutes if we share,’ he interrupted. ‘And I bet I’ve got more experience of Aids patients than you do,’ he added as a clincher.

  No amount of experience was going to help Colin Seller, Hannah thought as she gazed sadly down at the young man’s ravaged body. In fact, she doubted if anything could. He had all the classic outward symptoms of advanced Aids, and it wasn’t a pretty sight. Small, fluid-filled blisters—herpes simplex—covered his face, and Kaposi’s sarcoma—tumours consisting of blue-red nodules—had already begun to appear on his feet, legs and arms.

  ‘I understand you’ve been mugged, Mr Seller?’ she said, gently beginning to clean the cuts on his face and arms.