One Step At A Time

by Caroline Anderson

  He nodded in answer to her question. ‘Much. It’s just my leg now, really. Can you do something to it?’

  ‘More needles?’

  ‘Not with the oil on my skin. If you could just tap lightly where you put the needle before, at the side of my knee—just there. That’s fine—oh, yes.’

  He sighed with relief as she tapped the area, stimulating the acupuncture point with her fingertip. Then she smoothed more oil over his leg and tried not to think about what was going on just a few inches from her hands.

  As she lifted them away for the last time and stood up his eyes flickered open, and she could feel him watching her as she moved to the basin and washed the oil from her fingers.

  ‘Kate?’

  She turned, dropping the paper towel into the bin. She was relieved to see that he was covered now with the sheet. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Thank you. I’m sorry if I embarrassed you.’

  She swallowed a lump in her throat. ‘You didn’t embarrass me, Nick. You just play hell with my mind.’

  He held out a hand to her and she took it, allowing him to draw her closer. ‘If it really messes you up, you don’t have to visit me.’

  Her eyes widened. ‘Don’t you want me to?’ she blurted out before she could stop herself.

  He groaned and tugged her closer still, so that she sat on the edge of the bed. ‘Of course I want you to. What the hell do you think I’ve been saying, Kate?’

  She looked at their interlinked hands. ‘I don’t know. I don’t know what you want from me.’

  ‘Maybe another chance to get to know you? We hardly had any time together. Maybe we should have that time now.’

  ‘Why?’ she asked bluntly. ‘To what end? An affair? I can’t, Dominic. I lost you once. I can’t risk it again.’

  ‘Who said anything about an affair? Maybe we just ought to give ourselves a chance to see if we have anything worth saving, worth working on.’

  She shook her head. ‘I don’t know if we have.’

  ‘Nor do I. I just know that in twelve years I haven’t found anybody else I want to be with, and neither have you.’

  ‘Maybe we’re just impossibly picky.’

  ‘And maybe we’re just right for each other. Who knows? Strikes me there’s only one way to find out.’

  She stood up, pulling her hand away from him. ‘I don’t know. It frightens me, Nick. You frighten me. The whole situation just makes me want to run away.’

  ‘No, Kate, please.’ His voice was ripe with emotion, and she found her eyes drawn to his helplessly. ‘Let me get to know the woman you’ve become. Let yourself get to know the man I am now. Give us a chance.’

  She backed away. ‘I’ll think about it. I’ll talk to you another time. I have to go. Stephie—’

  ‘Kate? Don’t be afraid. I’m not going to push you into anything.’

  ‘I thought that bergamot was supposed to send you to sleep!’ she said frantically.

  His smile was wry and crooked, and infinitely endearing. ‘The way you put it on? Not a chance.’

  ‘Never again,’ she vowed. ‘You can get one of the nurses to do it.’

  ‘I’d shock them.’

  She blushed, and his soft laughter warmed the room. Then he sobered, and the sadness filled his eyes again. ‘Oh, Katie, my Katie. What happened to us?’

  Tears welled in her eyes. ‘I don’t know. I just know I can’t risk it happening again. I’m going, Dominic. I’ll see you in a day or two.’

  ‘Coward,’ he said softly.

  She turned at the door. ‘No,’ she corrected. ‘Walking away from you now is the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life. All I want to do is sit down with you and hold your hand and tell you it’ll all be fine, but I’d be lying. I don’t know you, Dominic. I don’t know if I ever did. And until I do, I won’t know if I can trust you.’

  ‘You can trust me, Kate.’

  ‘Can I? And can you trust me?’

  ‘I’ll risk it if you will.’

  She hesitated another second, then with a slight shake of her head she went out without a backward glance.

  What did that shake mean? No? Maybe? I don’t know? Dominic shifted uncomfortably on the bed and stared at the ceiling. Why had he walked out all those years ago? They could have been so happy together. Why had he thrown away their love?

  So stupid. So, so stupid to misunderstand, not to talk it through, to give up so easily and walk away in a fit of pique.

  He had lost so much. Watching his daughter grow up, for one. He loved her so dearly. She was so like him in so many ways, and yet in others she was a carbon copy of her mother. Truly their child.

  There should have been others. A boy, perhaps, to play football with and climb trees in the park, or another girt, with straggly pigtails and permanently skinned knees.

  He smiled, and the ceiling blurred and went out of focus. Damn. So much thrown away, so many regrets.

  Maybe it was just romantic fantasy to imagine that it could work now, but he wanted so, so badly to give it a try. If only she would take the risk. If only she dared—

  ‘Nick?’

  He blinked and turned his head a fraction. She was there, hovering on the edge of his vision, wearing that lovely pink dress that made her look at once elegant and wanton.

  ‘I thought you’d gone,’ he said, and his voice sounded scratchy to his ears.

  She shook her head again. ‘I couldn’t go. I couldn’t walk away from us again—not without giving it another shot.’

  Dominic felt a huge lump form in his throat and swallowed convulsively. ‘Kate?’ he murmured. ‘Come here—’

  ‘Not an affair,’ she said hastily, keeping her distance. ‘Not yet, anyway. And I don’t want Stephie to know what’s happening, but I just—we ought to find out. Maybe there’s—we ought to try.’

  He reached out for her, his fingers locking with hers, and drew her closer. He could feel her trembling, and knew the effort it had cost her to come back. ‘I won’t let you down,’ he vowed. ‘If we think it can work then we’ll make it work, for ever. Just be sure, Kate, because I won’t let you go again.’

  ‘Don’t jump the gun,’ she said hurriedly. ‘I haven’t said I’ll come back to you.’

  ‘I know. Just time together, alone, talking about this and that. That’s all I ask. Time to get to know each other.’

  She nodded. ‘I must go now—it’s getting late. Isn’t that bergamot working?’

  He laughed softly. ‘With you standing there in that lovely dress? No chance.’

  Her hand flew to her chest, covering the peep of cleavage.

  ‘Spoilsport,’ he whispered. ‘Kiss me goodnight.’

  She hesitated, then, bending forwards with her hand still over the scoop of her dress, she brushed his lips with hers, sending heat flashing through him like sheet lightning.

  ‘Goodnight,’ she murmured. ‘Sleep well.’

  Then she was gone, leaving him alone with just the memory of her lips and hands to torment him through another endless night...

  ‘Brian Pooley’s asked for reflexology,’ Michael announced. He was the physiotherapist working with the injured roofer, and had been assessing him yesterday for upper body conditioning.

  ‘We don’t offer it, do we?’ Kate said in puzzlement.

  ‘Not officially,’ Jeremy agreed. ‘Dominic’s feeling is that sometimes it seems to work and sometimes it doesn’t—much like anything else. But until and unless there’s more concrete proof he’s unwilling to incorporate it into the mainstream of our work. However, it’s available as an option to anyone who requests it.’

  ‘Who does it?’

  ‘Lindsay Reeves.’

  “The aromatherapist?’

  ‘Yes. I’ll get her to see him this morning for the first treatment. How was he otherwise, Michael?’

  The physiotherapist shrugged. ‘Depressed about having to wait for the implant. I think he’s hoping for a miracle, and he doesn’t realise that the bulk of our work i
s about helping people come to terms with their pain and work round it, rather than curing it.’

  ‘But you can’t cure chronic pain of his sort—just make the body better equipped to deal with it. Isn’t that right?’ Kate queried.

  ‘Hopefully,’ Michael agreed. ‘Drugs, massage, acupuncture and electric nerve stimulation like TENS and interferential and things of that sort can diminish the impact, but it’s gate theory again. It’s finding a way of shutting those gates, and it can be damn difficult.’

  ‘Did you know that the North American Indians when they broke anything would thrash the limb with nettles?’ Jeremy told her. ‘The nerves got so confused they shorted out the synapses in the nerve pathways and shut the gates. Too much sensory overload, leading to numbness.’

  ‘Perhaps that’s what we should do—thrash Brian Pooley with nettles,’ Kate joked.

  The others laughed. ‘I can just see it now in the Sunday Times,’ Michael said. ‘LEADING PAIN CLINIC THRASHES Patient WITH NETTLES! Fantastic publicity—but I think Dominic might be a touch appalled.’

  Kate pretended to be crestfallen. ‘I thought it was a good idea.’

  ‘I doubt if our patient would agree with you,’ Jeremy said drily. ‘Right, that’s Brian sorted out for today. You’ll carry on with the physio, I take it, and get Paddy or Jason working with him in the gym?’

  ‘I’d rather use Tara. She’s got the same base sense of humour as him. I thought they’d get on well.’

  Jeremy grinned and nodded. ‘Fine. Could I leave it with you? Now, I think Richard’s taking Susie out for the day today, so she won’t be around till tomorrow. Angela, you can carry on with her—OK?’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘Now, about John Whitelaw. Martin Gray saw his wife yesterday morning and found her very difficult to deal with. She was reluctant to talk, very bottled-up and said she couldn’t understand how John was feeling because he wouldn’t talk about it. When he pressed her about how she’d tried to broach the subject, she flew off the handle. He left it at that point. John was rather tired after yesterday morning, so Martin thought he’d wait till today to interview him. He’s seeing him straight after his physio session this morning, so if you could leave enough of him for Martin to work with, please, Angela?’

  She laughed softly. ‘Sure. I don’t think he likes me.’

  Kate smiled at her. ‘He described you yesterday as “the physio from hell”. I don’t think he’s too thrilled about the programme.’

  Angela shook her head. ‘It’s his own level of fitness he’s not too thrilled about. He’s disgusted at how difficult he’s finding it.’

  ‘Did he get a morale-boost from standing up?’ Jeremy asked.

  Angela smiled wryly. ‘I think so—till he fell over. He tried to step forwards and the legs wouldn’t co-operate with him.’

  ‘How did he cope with that?’

  ‘He cried with frustration—it’s quite common. I let him get on with it for a minute, then I bullied him back up on his feet and we tried again.’

  ‘He fell over again, didn’t he?’ Kate asked.

  Angela nodded. ‘He stumbled, but he saved himself on the bars that time. It was much less dramatic, but he was still pretty hacked off. He’ll get there. We’ll try again today, and tomorrow, and so on. It’ll be slow, of course, with two legs to deal with, but I think he likes a challenge. He’s another one with grit, like Susie. They’re a good pair.’

  ‘We ought to get them together. Perhaps he could gain some encouragement from her.’

  Angela snorted. ‘Those two? They’re more likely to end up in a race to be independent.’

  Kate looked thoughtful. ‘Would that hurt?’

  ‘Only the loser,’ Jeremy said. ‘That’s the trouble with being too competitive. We need an element of challenge, but only one person can win. The challenges need to be carefully structured to be just out of reach at the time, but accessible with determination and effort.’

  ‘And, of course, each individual has a different level of stamina, and so the challenges need to be handcrafted,’ Kate said thoughtfully.

  ‘We’ve got a challenge coming in later today,’ Jeremy told her. ‘Karen Lloyd. She’s thirty-six, injured four years ago in a car accident. She had whiplash, and she now has intractable headaches and neck and arm pain. She should have come yesterday but she wasn’t feeling up to travelling. She’s arriving at ten this morning, and she’s booked this afternoon for a scan.’

  ‘Do you do that here?’ Kate asked, surprised.

  He shook his head. ‘No. It’s next on the list, but we can’t get funding so we’ll have to wait. We send our patients ten miles to the nearest private scanner—we have an arrangement with them that works quite well. Samson takes them over in our ambulance.

  ‘Anyway, Karen Lloyd will have her neck scanned, and, depending on what that shows, we’ll devise a programme of treatment. I suspect it will be along the lines of manipulation, physio and hydrotherapy, and probably the ergonomist and occupational therapist to get her doing things in the optimum range for her neck. We’ll try her with the TENS machine, and maybe interferential and ultrasound—working on the “thrashing with nettles” principle,’ he added with a grin.

  There was a ripple of laughter, then he went on, ‘At the moment she’s on vast quantities of painkillers and showing signs of kidney and liver distress, so we want her off them fast.’

  ‘Will you try homeopathic remedies?’ Kate asked.

  ‘We may—there’s a homeopath who comes in on request. We’ll see how the treatment progresses. Right, any other business for now?’

  They adjourned a few minutes later and Kate collared Jeremy. ‘Anything in particular you want me to do today?’

  He grinned. ‘Where do you want to start? All the in-patients need a check every few days—you could do that for me. Ask them how they feel things are progressing, check their vitals, look at the treatment record cards and see if there are any anomalies—that sort of thing. I’ll get one of the nurses to help you.’

  She nodded. ‘Where should I do it?’

  ‘Dominic’s room? There’s an examination couch in there and all the necessary clinistix. Test urine for everything, and blood in anyone who’s diabetic. Changes in activity levels mess up diabetics, so their diets need adjusting. We’ve got one at the moment—an amputee, man of sixty-eight. Laurence Carter. He’s a nice old boy—bit slow. He’s finding it rather hard, and he may end up not walking again.’

  Kate was surprised. ‘I thought the idea was to get them all up on their feet.’

  Jeremy shook his head. ‘The idea is to achieve the optimum for each individual. We have to be realistic. If he won’t use a prosthesis then he has to learn how to manage in a wheelchair, and how to look after himself so he doesn’t get pressure sores from sitting, for instance. With a young man we’d fight tooth and nail to get him up, but Mr Carter isn’t well; he’s got advanced arterial disease and frankly he’s not long for this world. We’re just aiming to make him as comfortable as possible and as independent as we can. How he achieves that is really up to him.’

  He paused for a moment and chewed his lip. ‘By the way, my wife’s looking fairly imminent. I don’t know how you feel about coping on your own if I suddenly get whisked away?’

  Kate smiled. ‘It’s not like A and E, is it? If I have to go slowly, it won’t hurt anyone. It’ll just take longer to get everything done.’

  ‘What about the decision-making?’

  ‘On which treatments to use? I would have thought each therapist knows their own role in the treatment of all the patients—and anyway, she won’t be in labour for ever. I expect we’ll cope without you for a bit.’

  Jeremy nodded. ‘Charlie Keller, the osteopath, is very good. He’s worked with Dominic from the beginning. He’s here every afternoon—he’ll bail you out. Dominic’s got a lot of time for him.’

  Dominic. Just the name made her heart jump. What had she committed herself to?

  She
made her way to his office, spoke on the phone to Barbara Jay, the senior nursing sister, about the patient checks, and then sat back at his desk and looked around. She had hardly spent any time in here yet, except for a couple of hours on Sunday, going through notes. It was a very peaceful room, with a lovely view out over the grounds, and she tried to picture Dominic sitting here in the glasses that she hadn’t known he wore.

  Impossible. All she could see was his bruised and battered body sprawled on the hospital sheets, and that did nothing for her concentration. From her vantage point at the desk she could see cars coming and going up the drive, and as she watched an ambulance came into view.

  It bore the logo of the local health authority, and Kate’s brow creased. Who was coming this morning, at nine o’clock, from a local hospital? No one that she knew of.

  She rang Reception. ‘There’s an ambulance coming up the drive. Are we expecting anyone, Mrs Harvey, apart from Karen Lloyd?’

  ‘No, Dr Heywood,’ she replied. ‘No one. Shall I go and find out who it is?’

  ‘No, I will. I’ll be with you in a moment.’

  She stood up and left the room, walking swiftly down the corridor to the reception area. The doors were open, and as she arrived the ambulance pulled up in front of the doorway and the driver jumped out.

  ‘Got a wheelchair, dear?’ he called with a cheery grin as he flung open the back doors of the ambulance. ‘Got a patient for you.’

  ‘Who?’ Kate asked, going down the steps, but the man had disappeared into the ambulance. She could hear his voice, though.

  ‘All right, Doc?’ he was saying. ‘They’re getting a chair.’

  Jenny Harvey, her face puzzled, pushed a wheelchair down the ramp beside Kate, and went to the back of . the ambulance.

  Kate saw Mrs Harvey’s eyes widen, but she couldn’t move. She was transfixed. Doc? She couldn’t believe it. It couldn’t be—not this soon? It was ridiculous!

  She leant against a pillar and watched as the ‘patient’ was helped from the ambulance into the wheelchair.

  Jenny Harvey pushed him up to the bottom of the ramp and paused, looking helplessly at Kate.