Dr Mathieson's Daughter

by Maggie Kingsley

  ‘So when’s the happy day?’ Michelle continued.

  ‘We haven’t set a date yet but you can rest assured it will be soon. You were right when you said Nicole needed a mother. She does, and Jane’s marvellous with children—the very best, in fact.’

  ‘Is she?’ Michelle said.

  ‘Oh, absolutely.’ Elliot nodded, then grinned across at Jane who was sitting silently in the corner of the room. ‘Nicole adores her. In fact, even if I wanted to marry someone else I think she’d have one or two things to say about it!’

  ‘I see. Well, it sounds like a very sensible arrangement all round,’ Michelle said grudgingly.

  ‘Doesn’t it?’ He beamed.

  Michelle didn’t stay long after that. She kissed Elliot and Jane on both cheeks, promised to visit them and Nicole when she was next in London and left.

  ‘Thank God, that’s over,’ Elliot declared with relief, the minute she had gone. ‘Let’s hope she doesn’t visit London very often.’

  ‘Oh, I thought she was very informative,’ Jane said evenly. ‘In fact, I thought the whole evening was very informative.’

  ‘Really?’ he said in surprise. ‘In what way?’

  ‘The surprising news that you and I are getting married for a start,’ she replied, her voice curiously cold.

  A deep wash of colour flashed across his cheeks. ‘Jane, I’m sorry about that. I really should have asked you first, but—’

  ‘You just assumed I’d say yes. You thought, Good old Janey, she always agrees to everything, so why not this, too?’

  There wasn’t a trace of amusement in her face, not a glimmer of a smile in her grey eyes, and the colour on his cheeks darkened to crimson.

  ‘Of course I didn’t think that. I intended to take you somewhere romantic to pop the question, but Michelle was hassling me—’

  ‘She wasn’t hassling you, Elliot, she was concerned about Nicole,’ she interrupted, her face white, taut. ‘Concerned that you might not be able to look after her properly.’

  ‘She had no business to be concerned,’ he said irritably. ‘I love my daughter—’

  ‘So much that you’re prepared to do just about anything for her, including marrying me,’ Jane finished for him, her voice breaking slightly.

  ‘No!’ he protested. ‘Dammit, Jane, I want to marry you because I love you. You heard what I said to Michelle—’

  ‘Oh, yes, I heard,’ she replied, anger giving her strength. ‘It would be so sensible to marry me. I’m marvellous with children, and Nicole likes me. You don’t want a wife, Elliot. You want a surrogate mother for your daughter and, much as I love her, I think I deserve more from a marriage than that.’

  ‘Jane, you’ve misunderstood, got hold of the wrong end of the stick—’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  He looked into her face and it was cold and forbidding. Hiding all the pain and heartbreak that she felt.

  ‘Jane—’

  ‘You’d better answer that,’ she declared as the phone began to ring. ‘It could be important.’

  ‘This is important,’ he exclaimed. ‘Jane, I love you, and I want to marry you.’

  ‘It might be the hospital. Something to do with Nicole.’

  He stared at her, indecision plain on his face, then walked quickly over to the phone and lifted it.

  ‘It was one of the night staff,’ he informed her when he’d taken the call. ‘They need my help.’

  ‘You’d better go, then, hadn’t you?’ she replied, turning on her heel, only to pause. ‘I won’t be here when you get back, Elliot. I’ll pack my bags while you’re away and leave tonight.’

  ‘But you can’t go!’ he protested. ‘What about me—what about Nicole?’

  She hardened her heart, though it cost her everything. ‘She’s not my responsibility, Elliot. She’s yours. She’s your daughter.’

  CHAPTER TEN

  ‘BURNS case, Sister!’ a paramedic called as he and his colleague slammed open the doors of the treatment room and wheeled their casualty into the first empty cubicle. ‘Injuries to face, upper torso and arms. BP 90 over 70, cardiac output down thirty per cent, and you’re never going to believe how the guy got himself in this state!’

  ‘Go on—surprise me,’ Jane sighed, beckoning to Floella for help.

  ‘He was filling his lawnmower with petrol and smoking at the same time.’

  ‘He was doing what?’ Jane gasped in disbelief as she and Floella swiftly began cutting off the young man’s charred and burnt clothing.

  ‘I know, I know,’ the paramedic said. ‘You wouldn’t believe how many idiots there are out there in the world, Sister.’

  Oh, but she would, she thought sadly as she noticed Elliot striding towards them, and she had just joined their ranks.

  No, not joined. She was so stupid she could probably have qualified as a founder member.

  Floella had tried to warn her, but had she listened? Oh, no, not her. She’d known better. She’d known different. Just as she’d thought when he’d held her in the darkness of the night and told her she was beautiful, special, that he’d meant he loved her. Just as she’d believed when he’d said he’d never met anybody like her that he’d meant they would have a future together. But all the time he’d simply been thinking about Nicole.

  And the wretched thing was that she had actually wanted him to grow to love his daughter. Had longed for him to see what a great gift he’d been given. But she couldn’t marry him for Nicole. No matter how much she loved the little girl, to know that Elliot only wanted to marry her because of Nicole…No, she couldn’t do it. She simply couldn’t.

  ‘Haemaccel drip, and lactated Ringer’s solution to counteract shock,’ Elliot ordered, taking in the situation at a glance.

  Swiftly Jane set up the IV lines while Floella inserted a Foley catheter into the young man’s bladder to check for signs of the presence of haemoglobin.

  ‘Singed nasal hair indicative of inhalation burns, Elliot,’ Floella announced.

  ‘OK, get me a sputum sample, and I want a full colour check on the urine in that catheter. BP and pulse, Jane?’ he continued, turning to her.

  ‘Eighty-five over sixty, pulse fast. Respiration becoming very laboured.’

  She was already holding out an endotracheal tube to him, but she wasn’t looking at him. She hadn’t looked him in the eye since the night she’d walked out of his flat almost two weeks ago, and it was driving him crazy.

  Anger he could have dealt with, recriminations he thought he could have handled, but being ignored, being shut out of her life, gave him no weapons to fight back with. None at all.

  ‘I want a chest X-ray, Jane,’ he declared the minute he’d eased the tube past the young man’s vocal cords and down into his trachea.

  ‘Already organised.’

  ‘And the burns unit—’

  ‘I’ve paged them already.’

  Of course she had. Jane was the consummate professional. Jane was the woman he loved, and he’d messed it up completely.

  How could he have been so stupid? Taking it for granted that she must love him as much as he loved her, that she’d want to marry him. Yet he’d told Michelle they were getting married, so arrogant, so sure of himself and so desperate to ensure his ex sister-in-law could stake no claim on Nicole.

  No wonder Jane had been angry. No wonder she’d turned him down flat. What woman would accept a proposal of marriage under those circumstances? A woman needed to know she was loved for herself. And he did love her, he thought, feeling his heart contract as he stared across at her white, drawn face. Loved her more than he could ever have believed possible, and yet now she would scarcely give him the time of day.

  ‘Urine in the Foley catheter very dark, Elliot,’ Floella reported.

  ‘OK, give him a diuretic with mannitol to counteract it,’ he ordered. ‘We don’t want his kidneys packing in. Not with fifteen per cent burns.’

  ‘BP 90 over 60,’ Jane murmured. ‘IV’s running sm
oothly, no signs yet of hypovolaemic shock.’

  ‘Keep a check on the ECG reading,’ he said. ‘And let me know if it changes at all.’

  He hadn’t needed to give the order. Nothing escaped Jane’s attention. Nothing to do with work, that was.

  Somehow he had to get her to talk to him. Even more importantly, somehow he had to get her to listen. But how?

  The only thing she would discuss with him was work, and even that was in clipped monosyllables. If she wouldn’t talk to him, how could he convince her that he wanted to marry her because he loved her and not because he’d wanted a surrogate mother for his daughter?

  ‘BP 95 over 60,’ Jane observed. ‘I think we could hand over to Burns now.’

  She was right, they could.

  ‘Good work, both of you,’ Elliot said when the burns unit had ferried their casualty away.

  Floella smiled, but for all the reaction Jane gave he might just as well have saved his breath. He gazed at her impotently.

  What he wanted to do was stride across the cubicle, grab her by the shoulders and shake her senseless. What he actually did was clear his throat tentatively. ‘It must be about time for a coffee-break. Care to join me, Jane?’

  ‘Thank you, but I have requisition forms to fill in,’ she replied, her voice even, neutral.

  ‘Couldn’t you leave them until later?’ he asked, all too aware of the pleading note in his voice and that Floella was glancing thoughtfully from him to Jane and back again but no longer giving a damn. ‘I’m sure you could do with a big dose of caffeine first.’

  ‘Like I said, thank you, but I really must get on with the forms,’ she replied, and walked away without a backward glance.

  He didn’t stand a chance, he thought as he stared after her, his eyes tracing the outline of her back, noticing that she had lost weight, that her uniform no longer fitted quite so snugly. Unless he could show her, prove to her, that she could trust him, that he loved her for herself and not simply for what he needed her to be, he didn’t stand a chance.

  ‘Why don’t you just leave her alone?’

  He turned to see Floella glaring up at him, and sighed. ‘Flo, you don’t understand—’

  ‘Oh, I understand only too well,’ she snapped. ‘You just couldn’t resist it, could you? Jane living in your flat, right under your nose. You just had to come on to her to see how far you could get.’

  ‘Flo—’

  ‘Well, you’ve had your fun, broken her heart, and now I want you to leave her alone,’ she continued icily. ‘If you don’t…Well, all I can say is you’re going to be sorry. Jane has a lot of friends at St Stephen’s who won’t take kindly to you messing her around.’

  ‘Dammit, I am not messing her around!’ Elliot raked his hands through his hair. ‘Flo…Flo, I want to marry her. I’ve asked her to marry me, but she’s turned me down flat.’

  ‘You’ve asked her to…She’s turned you down?’ Floella gasped. ‘But Jane—she loves you. Why in the world would she turn you down?’

  His face tightened. ‘I made a bit of a mess of my proposal.’ That was the biggest understatement of the year, he thought, cringing inwardly as he remembered what he’d said. ‘She misunderstood…got completely the wrong idea—’

  ‘But how can you possibly mess up a proposal?’ Flo interrupted, bewildered. ‘Even an idiot could get that right.’

  ‘Not this idiot, Flo,’ he said grimly. ‘This idiot really screwed it up, and now she won’t even talk to me.’

  Or answer any of my phone calls, he thought ruefully, and all the letters he’d sent had been returned unopened. In desperation he’d even gone round to her flat, but she’d shut the door on him, and when he’d point blank refused to go away she’d got one of her neighbours, a big burly guy with tattoos up his arms, who’d told him in no uncertain terms that if he didn’t remove himself pretty sharpish his features would shortly be rearranged.

  ‘What am I going to do, Flo?’

  ‘You’re asking me for advice?’ She shook her head. ‘You’re the big charmer, Elliot, you figure it out. But figure it out soon. I hate to see Jane unhappy, so beg, plead—do whatever it takes—but sort it out.’

  He sighed as he walked into cubicle 3. He would quite happily have begged and pleaded for all he was worth if he’d thought it would have got him anywhere, but he knew that it wouldn’t.

  He’d blown it. He’d met and fallen in love with the one girl in the world who could have made him happy, and he’d blown it good and proper. There was no way back now, and he was just going to have to live with it.

  ‘I hear on the hospital grapevine that Nicole’s being discharged next week,’ Charlie commented as Jane binned the soiled swabs they’d used on their last patient, a nervous eighteen-year-old with a bad gash on his foot. ‘That’s great news.’

  ‘It’s wonderful, isn’t it?’ Jane smiled. ‘We—that is, Elliot was hoping she’d be discharged last week, but she had a slight infection at the last minute and they decided to keep her in for just a few more days to be on the safe side.’

  Charlie nodded, pulled off his surgical gloves, stared at them awkwardly for a moment, then clearly made up his mind. ‘You’ll be moving back in with Elliot again, then? I mean, I understand his mother’s not due back from Canada for another two weeks.’

  Jane closed the disposal unit with a bang. ‘No, I won’t be moving back in.’

  Charlie eyed her sideways. ‘But Nicole…Won’t she need you there to look after her?’

  ‘Whether she does or doesn’t isn’t really my concern,’ she said, striving to sound dismissive and knowing she was failing quite miserably. ‘I have my own life to lead, Charlie, and I can’t be Nicole’s nanny for ever.’

  ‘Two weeks doesn’t sound very much like for ever to me,’ he pointed out.

  ‘I have other commitments,’ she declared, the redness of her cheeks betraying the lie. ‘And I’m sure Elliot can hire a private nurse or a nanny for two weeks.’

  ‘Yes, but—’

  ‘Dammit, Charlie, why does everyone expect good old Janey to ride to the rescue every time?’ she flared. ‘I’m sick to death of being good old Janey! I want to be selfish, think-about-yourself-for-once Janey!’

  The SHO gazed at her uncomfortably. ‘And so you should. If anyone deserves some pampering, it’s you. But I just thought…Nicole…’

  ‘Charlie, she isn’t my responsibility! I helped out for two months. Isn’t that enough? Haven’t…haven’t I given enough?’

  Her voice broke on not quite a sob, and Charlie put his hand out to her, his big, hearty face almost as red as hers. ‘I’m sorry. I…Look, Jane, I didn’t mean to…I wouldn’t…I’m really sorry.’

  She drew in a shuddering breath. ‘I’m sorry, too. Sorry for yelling at you, but…’

  ‘I understand.’

  And he did, she thought as she stared up at him. He understood much more than she wanted him to.

  ‘Does Nicole know you won’t be there when she gets home?’ he asked gently.

  Jane shook her head, blinking away the tears that were forming in her eyes. She hadn’t stopped visiting Elliot’s daughter in Ward 12. She could no more have stopped than fly, but when Nicole had talked excitedly about the things the three of them would do when she got home she’d said nothing. It was cowardly, and she knew it, but she couldn’t tell her. It was bad enough knowing she might never see her again, without having to answer questions she didn’t want to answer.

  ‘Jane…You and Elliot. There’s no hope that you and he…?’

  He didn’t have to explain what he meant and she smiled a little tremulously. ‘Not a hope in the world, Charlie.’

  He sighed. ‘That toast I made when Barbara and I took you out to dinner—when I wished you every happiness. It doesn’t look much as though it’s going to come true, does it?’

  ‘Hey, worse things happen at sea,’ she declared with a brightness that moved him more than he could say. ‘And now we’d better get on. The waiting ro
om’s not getting any emptier while we stand around here chatting.’

  It wasn’t, Charlie thought as he watched her go, but he wished there was something he could do. It didn’t seem fair for him and Barbara to be so happy, while Jane…

  He sighed deeply as he saw her disappearing into cubicle 1. It wasn’t fair but, then, life, as you very quickly discovered if you worked in A and E, was frequently very unfair.

  Elliot didn’t think life was particularly fair either when Charlie collared him outside cubicle 8 some time later.

  ‘Charlie, I hardly think a fractured ankle is something requiring my expertise. If you can’t see to it yourself—’

  ‘Of course I can deal with it,’ the SHO interrupted, ‘but the guy says he thinks he knows you.’

  Elliot frowned. ‘What did you say his name was again?’

  ‘Shaw. Adam Shaw.’

  It rang no bells, but obediently Elliot followed Charlie into the cubicle, to be greeted by a wide smile of recognition from the red-haired man in his early thirties sitting awkwardly on the edge of the trolley.

  ‘It is the same Elliot Mathieson,’ he beamed, ‘and looking twice as ugly as you did eight years ago!’

  ‘I’m sorry, but—’

  ‘Rawley Amateur Rugby Club,’ Adam Shaw continued helpfully. ‘I played prop forward and you were one of the flash boys on the wing. We did a lot of charity matches to raise money for one of the local hospices.’

  Elliot grinned. ‘I remember now. You borrowed my kit bag at the end of the last season and never gave it back, you thief.’

  ‘Didn’t I?’ Adam Shaw frowned, then winked up at Charlie. ‘Never try to put one over on this bloke. Memory like an elephant—never forgets anything.’

  ‘I’ll remember.’ The SHO chuckled.

  ‘How’s that beautiful wife of yours?’ Adam Shaw continued, turning to Elliot again. ‘Bonnie, was it?’

  The laughter disappeared from Elliot’s face. ‘Donna. Her name was Donna. We were divorced five years ago, and she was killed in a car crash three months ago.’

  ‘Oh, hell, I’m sorry. I didn’t know, never heard on the grapevine. Any family?’