A Wife for Dr. Cunningham

by Maggie Kingsley

  ‘Are you going to try to make her vomit?’ Hannah asked, knowing that they couldn’t wait for the results of any of the tests Robert had ordered but had to immediately attempt to prevent the digestion and absorption of any pills the woman had taken.

  Robert shook his head. ‘God only knows when she took her overdose, and if she took it more than two hours ago any pills will already be in her intestines and making her vomit won’t help at all.’

  Which meant they would have to use the tube. It was an unpleasant and uncomfortable enough procedure on a patient who wanted to be helped, but on someone who decided to fight them it proved to be a nightmare.

  ‘Leave me alone!’ she shrieked, lashing out with her hands and feet as Jane tried to insert the tube into her mouth. ‘I don’t want you to help me. I want to die. Do you hear me? I want to die!’

  ‘I know you do, but I’m afraid we’re not going to let you,’ Robert said grimly, clasping hold of her arms. ‘Keep going, Jane, Hannah.’

  It was easier said than done, Hannah thought wryly as she and Jane tried to ease the tube into the woman’s mouth, down through her oesophagus and into her stomach. It was like dealing with a writhing eel, a writhing eel with lethal flailing feet as she soon discovered when one caught her in the stomach and sent her flying back against the cubicle wall to land in an undignified heap on the floor.

  ‘Are you OK, Hannah?’ Robert demanded with concern.

  Gingerly she got to her feet and rubbed her bottom. ‘A case of hurt dignity, that’s all.’

  ‘You’re sure?’ he insisted, but when she nodded he turned to the woman on the trolley, his face grim. ‘Now listen to me, and listen good. We’re going to get those pills out of you whether you like it or not. If you choose to do something stupid like this again after you’re discharged, that’s your prerogative, but at the moment you are in our care and we are damned well going to help you, whether you want it or not!’

  Whether his outburst had stunned her or whether the woman had just grown tired of fighting them was unclear, but she didn’t say another word as Jane and Hannah slipped the tube down into her stomach and began the unpleasant task of sucking up any pill fragments.

  And it was unpleasant. Not only did they have to suction the remnants of the pills away, they then had to clean out the woman’s stomach by pouring water down the tube followed by a slush of charcoal to absorb any remaining medication.

  ‘What will happen to her now?’ Hannah asked when the results from the lab confirmed that, though their patient had taken Valium mixed with alcohol, her CBC was fine.

  ‘We’ll send her up to IC to ensure she doesn’t slip into respiratory or cardiac failure,’ Robert replied, stripping off his latex gloves and binning them. ‘Once they’re happy with her she’ll be referred to a psychiatric ward for evaluation.’

  Hannah sighed as she watched the woman being wheeled out of the treatment room. ‘It must be truly awful to feel your life isn’t worth living.’

  ‘Yes.’

  She glanced round at him quickly. His answer had been low, scarcely audible, and his face was dark, shadowed. Did he feel that way, too? Had he loved his wife so much that he felt his own life wasn’t worth living?

  ‘Robert—’

  He was already walking away from her, and as she stared after him she couldn’t help a wistful sigh escaping from her—a sigh she speedily smothered when she heard Elliot’s deep chuckle behind her.

  ‘Really smitten, aren’t you, love?’

  Hot colour flooded her cheeks. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Yeah, and my other leg’s got bells on it!’ he exclaimed. ‘Does he know how you feel?’

  For a second she considered lying, but Elliot was a friend, a good friend, and whatever else he was he most certainly wasn’t a gossip. ‘I don’t think he even knows I exist.’ She sighed.

  ‘You really think that?’ he said in surprise.

  She nodded sadly. ‘I’m the kid. Little Miss Muffet.’

  ‘Little Miss Muffet?’ Elliot repeated, bewildered.

  ‘It’s a long story, Elliot. Let’s just say I know what I’m talking about.’

  ‘Hannah, I don’t think you do. In fact—’

  ‘RTA on the way, folks!’ Mary on Reception called urgently from the office door. ‘Mother and three kids. The kids look to be in the worse shape!’

  They were, and once Mr Mackay and Robert had stabilised them sufficiently to be moved, they were immediately sent off by ambulance to the Royal Sick Children’s where they would receive more specialist care.

  ‘Mrs Ogilvie seems to have got off amazingly lightly—just cuts and bruises,’ Hannah observed when Robert joined her outside cubicle 8. ‘I’ve got her on an IV line to counteract the possible effects of shock, and Jane’s linked her to the ECG machine as a precaution.’

  ‘Good work.’ He nodded approvingly. ‘Any sign of chest damage from the steering-wheel?’

  ‘None at all. Like I said, when you consider her car skidded straight into a wall, she’s had a miraculous escape. How are her children? She keeps asking about them, and I’ve been fobbing her off.’

  ‘Keep on fobbing her off. The last I heard they were all stable, but things can change very fast, and the less stress she has to bear at the moment the better.’

  Hannah nodded. ‘Apparently she was driving her children over to her mother’s for the afternoon. Has anyone telephoned Mrs Ludlow yet? According to Gwen Ogilvie, Grandma gets panicky if they’re even ten minutes late—’

  ‘Hannah—Robert!’ Jane suddenly yelled from inside the cubicle. ‘I’ve got no pulse!’

  No pulse? Hannah’s eyes flew to Robert’s. But that meant…that meant…

  Without a word they dashed through the cubicle curtains. Jane had already started CPR and swiftly Hannah and Robert inserted an endotracheal tube. They had to get Gwen’s heart beating again, but first they had to make sure that sufficient oxygen was reaching her brain.

  ‘Ventilator linked—still no BP or pulse!’ Jane announced, her face grim.

  ‘Epi. push intravenously,’ Robert demanded, and the moment the epinephrine was added to the IV line he picked up the defibrillator paddles. ‘OK, everyone stand clear!’

  Obediently Jane and Hannah stepped back from the trolley and quickly Robert placed the paddles on Gwen Ogilvie’s chest. Her body arched and convulsed as the electricity surged through her body, but the ECG monitor remained resolutely flat.

  ‘Lidocaine!’ he called.

  The drug was swiftly added to the IV line, then they all stepped away from the trolley again as Robert upped the voltage on the defibrillator to 360.

  It didn’t do any good. Nothing did any good. They gave Gwen Ogilvie every drug at their disposal to try to kick-start her heart, but still nothing happened, and eventually Robert switched off the defibrillator and threw down the paddles.

  ‘OK, that’s it, folks,’ he muttered. ‘We gave it our best shot, but…’ He glanced across at Hannah who was staring down at Gwen Ogilvie’s inert body. ‘Are you OK, Hannah?’

  ‘Yes…yes, of course I am,’ she replied.

  She wasn’t. Robert could see very well she wasn’t. There was a dazed, disbelieving look about her eyes, the look all junior doctors wore when they encountered their first failure, and his heart went out to her.

  ‘Hannah, listen…’ He paused and frowned. All too clearly he could hear the sound of their receptionist outside in the treatment room, pleading, cajoling, and the sound of a man’s raised voice angrily, arguing back. ‘What the hell’s going on out there?’

  Hannah neither knew nor cared, but she obediently followed him out of the cubicle, to find their receptionist desperately attempting to restrain a young man in his mid-thirties.

  ‘Robert, I’m sorry, but I couldn’t stop him,’ the receptionist said, her cheeks red, her eyes apologetic. ‘It’s Eric Ogilvie—Gwen Ogilvie’s husband.’

  Robert nodded. ‘Perhaps you’d like to come wi
th me to one of our waiting rooms, Mr Ogilvie—’

  ‘But the police said you have my wife here,’ Eric Ogilvie interrupted, throwing off Robert’s hand as he tried to steer him towards the door. ‘Where is she? I want to see her!’

  ‘Of course you do,’ Robert said quietly, gently but firmly clasping Mr Ogilvie’s arm again and motioning to Hannah that she should accompany them. ‘I just need to talk to you first.’

  And he did. With an understanding and sympathy that brought a hard lump to Hannah’s throat, he explained what had happened.

  ‘But you said she wasn’t hurt in the crash. He did say that, didn’t he?’ Eric said, his eyes swivelling round to Hannah in mute appeal.

  ‘We don’t know why she suffered a heart attack,’ she said softly. There would be time enough later to tell him there’d have to be a post-mortem. ‘Perhaps there was a weakness, and the shock of the accident—’

  ‘But she was always so fit,’ Eric protested. ‘Never a day’s illness. Are you sure you’ve got the right Gwen Ogilvie? She’s small, blonde, with a tiny scar on her left cheek. She fell off a garden swing, you see, when she was six, and it’s very distinctive—’

  ‘It is your wife, Mr Ogilvie,’ Robert said gently. ‘Look, is there anyone we can call for you—a relative who could come—?’

  ‘I was supposed to drive the kids over to their grandma this afternoon, but I’ve got this really lousy cold, and Gwen…’ Eric shook his head as though to clear it ‘We had a bit of a row before she left—she was worried in case she’d be late for her appointment with the obstetrician.’

  ‘The obstetrician?’ Hannah repeated, her heart sinking.

  ‘She’s pregnant, three months pregnant. We’re hoping it’s going to be a girl this time. I suppose I ought to phone—cancel the appointment. Doctors don’t like to be kept hanging about, do they? And—’

  ‘Mr Ogilvie—’

  ‘You’re sure it’s her?’ Eric interrupted. ‘She’s small, you know, with blonde hair and a little scar down the left hand side of her cheek. There must be hundreds of Gwen Ogilvies in the world. It would be so easy to make a mistake…to…to get the wrong girl…’

  He was crying now, low strangled sobs that were convulsing his whole frame, and Hannah went to him quickly. She’d never heard a man cry before, never seen one cry, and the worst of it was that there was nothing she could do but hold his shaking body and wish, like Eric Ogilvie, that it had all been a terrible mistake.

  She got through the rest of the afternoon on autopilot. I’m fine, she kept telling herself as she sounded people’s chests, listened to their symptoms and patched them up as best she could. I’m a doctor, I can cope with this, she kept repeating like a mantra, and wished that somehow she could make herself believe it, and that the hard, cold lump around her heart would go away.

  Never had a shift seemed so endless. Never had her nerves felt quite so strained to breaking point, and when she noticed Jerry Clark walking down the corridor towards her as she came out of A and E’s small dispensary, she strode on past him without a word.

  ‘Hey, cat got your tongue, beautiful?’ he called after her, but when she didn’t even pause he hurried after her. ‘I hear you had a bit of an accident earlier this afternoon. Fell on your cute little butt, so I hear.’

  ‘I’m busy—’

  ‘We all are, sweetheart, but I just wanted you to know that if you need someone to kiss it better, I’ll be only too happy to oblige.’

  He was smiling at her with that smile which always made her want to scrub herself down with disinfectant, smirking like some sniggering schoolboy poring over a dirty magazine, and suddenly something snapped inside her.

  ‘Quite frankly, I wouldn’t let you kiss the floor I walked on!’ she exclaimed, her face white with anger. ‘In fact, I’d prefer not to even breathe the same air as you do in future!’

  His jaw dropped. ‘Hey, it was a joke, Hannah—’

  ‘My name is Dr Blake,’ she interrupted, unaware that her voice was rising in pitch. ‘And let me tell you this. If you don’t stop your crass attempts at flirtation, which are as unwelcome as they are revolting, I’m going straight to the head of Human Resources to file an official complaint against you!’

  Jerry’s eyes narrowed into small slits. ‘Now, hold on there a minute Miss High-and-Mighty Blake. There’s such a thing as slander—’

  ‘And there’s such a thing as sexual harassment, Jerry,’ Robert said icily, appearing without warning at the end of the corridor, his face tight. ‘I suggest you think about that—think long and hard. Hannah, I need to talk to you in the staffroom if you can spare the time.’

  ‘Talk to me?’ she murmured, gazing up at him, bemused and bewildered. ‘But I have patients to see. You have patients—’

  ‘And Elliot can manage for a few minutes without us,’ he declared, propelling her inexorably towards the staffroom, but by the time they’d reached it she’d already guessed what he wanted to say.

  ‘Robert, you don’t need to tell me that I shouldn’t have lost my temper—that I should have gone through official channels—’

  ‘Official channels be damned.’ He smiled. ‘I’d have happily held your coat for you if you’d wanted to sock him.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Hannah, he had it coming, and if it’s any help I’ll make damn sure that Radiology sends us a different technician in future.’

  ‘You can do that?’ she said faintly.

  ‘You bet your life I can,’ he replied. ‘In fact, I can personally rearrange Jerry’s not so charming features for you if you want, and take the greatest pleasure in doing it.’

  She chuckled a little shakily. ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea. In fact, I know it’s not, but I appreciate the offer.’

  He stared at her thoughtfully for a second, then sat down. ‘You could have had this out with Jerry weeks ago. Why now? Why lose your temper now?’

  She picked up one of the dog-eared magazines on the coffee-table, then put it down again. ‘I guess…I guess he just caught me on the raw. It’s been one of those days, you know? I was really worried about doing Mr Maitland’s spinal tap, then that lovely baby arrived, and…’

  ‘Gwen Ogilvie,’ he finished for her gently.

  She didn’t want to talk about Gwen Ogilvie. She’d spent the whole afternoon determinedly not thinking about Gwen Ogilvie, but suddenly the words started tumbling jerkily out of her.

  ‘I was talking to her before you arrived. She was telling me all about her children, the schools they went to, how Duncan—that’s her eldest boy—was becoming really cheeky and she was getting worried about him. We were talking just like two ordinary, normal people, and then…and then…’

  ‘Hannah—’

  ‘Why, Robert? Why?’ She hiccuped as the hard lump around her heart cracked, and tears began to spill down her cheeks despite her best efforts to prevent them. ‘She wasn’t much older than me. She had so much to live for—her husband, her children, the new baby coming. Why did she have to die when other people—horrible, dreadful people—survive?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  The admission sounded as though it had been dragged from somewhere deep inside him and her eyes flew to his face with horror. His wife. How could she have forgotten that his wife had died in St Stephen’s after a road accident? That he’d been on duty when they’d brought her in?

  ‘Oh, God, I’m sorry—so sorry!’ she gasped, dragging a hand roughly across her wet cheeks. ‘And I accused Jerry of crassness—of insensitivity. Your wife—Laura…’

  ‘It’s all right, Hannah.’

  ‘No, it’s not!’ she protested. ‘It isn’t all right. I should have thought. Every time an RTA comes in, you must remember, it must bring it all back.’

  It did, but not in the way Hannah meant. Oh, he remembered the impotence he’d felt as he’d watched Laura slipping away from him despite all his skill. The rage he’d felt at her dying. But most of all he remembered the guilt. The unbe
arable guilt of knowing she would still have been alive if it hadn’t been for him. She would still have been alive if he hadn’t married her and discovered it had been a huge mistake, then demanded a divorce.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Robert,’ Hannah said again, and he saw the sympathy in her large brown eyes and couldn’t bear it.

  He didn’t want her sympathy, he deserved none. It was his fault Laura was dead. His fault she was lying in that cold grave.

  But as he continued to stare at Hannah he realised something else. It wasn’t simply sympathy he saw in her eyes. There was love there, too. Love and need. A love and need he knew he felt as well, despite all his attempts to deny it, and his heart contracted with pain.

  He didn’t want to fall in love again. He didn’t want this lovely, vulnerable girl to be in love with him. He’d hurt her as he’d hurt Laura—he knew he would—and because he knew that, he determinedly forced a careless, dismissive smile to his face.

  ‘Far worse things have happened to other people. I’ll survive.’

  ‘But you must miss her dreadfully,’ she murmured, her eyes still shimmering with unshed tears.

  ‘Good heavens, no,’ he replied with a casual negligence that tore at his heart. ‘It happened over a year ago, and there’s no sense or point in wallowing in grief.’

  The sympathy that had been in her eyes was instantly replaced by shock and disapproval. Which was exactly what he’d wanted, he told himself as she blew her nose and hastily made her excuses.

  Only a fool wouldn’t have learned from bitter experience. Only a fool would let his heart rule his head. And if he felt something wither and die inside him as she disappeared out of the staffroom without a backward glance, it was for the best. Better for her to be hurt now than later. Far, far better.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  ‘I SHOULDN’T laugh—I really, really shouldn’t,’ Hannah said, ‘but—’

  ‘You can’t think of anyone who looks less like Superman?’ Floella suggested, her lips twitching, as they watched their portly patient being wheeled out of the treatment room, the remnants of his Superman costume lying in pieces at his feet.