by Kate Hardy
‘Ash will kill me. Said be careful, it’s icy.’
‘These things happen,’ Florence said gently. ‘He’ll be here soon. And we’re here to look after you.’
The scan showed pockets of air in Tim’s skull.
‘I don’t like this,’ Florence said. ‘I’m going to call the neurologist to review the scan.’
‘Good call. Looks like a possible fracture,’ Rob said. ‘And large pockets of air can compress the brain. I’ve seen that in people who fell when cl—’ He stopped, realising what he’d just been about to say. Given what his favourite occupation was, that wasn’t tactful. And it wasn’t the way to convince Florence that he was a safe bet; it’d make her think he was someone who’d fill her future with worry.
‘Climbing,’ Florence finished. ‘And you wonder why your mother worries about you.’
Yeah. She knew he’d cause her worry. ‘I wear a helmet.’ Wore. Who knew when he’d get the chance to climb again? ‘And I don’t climb in poor conditions,’ he added, to make sure she’d understand that he was restless, not reckless. There was a difference.
‘Good.’
But she didn’t meet his eye.
How was he ever going to get things back to normal between them? How was he going to persuade her to give him a chance?
‘I’ll do a couple of checks on Tim while you call the neuro team.’
‘And I’ll go and find his partner on the way back to join you,’ she said.
Thankfully Tim seemed even more lucid than he had earlier, and Rob was able to reassure him a bit and run through a few checks before Florence and Tim’s partner joined them.
‘Ashir, this is Dr Langley, who’s helping me look after Tim. Rob, this is Ashir, Tim’s partner,’ Florence introduced them swiftly.
Ashir shook his hand. ‘Thanks for what you’ve done.’ Then he turned to Tim. ‘So falling ten feet off a ladder is your idea of being careful?’
‘Could’ve been worse. Could’ve been twenty feet,’ Tim said.
‘I’m glad you’re talking. When I got that call, I thought...’ Ashir shuddered and held his partner’s hand.
‘You always said I was bone-headed,’ Tim said, clearly much more relaxed now his partner was here.
‘I swear I’m going to glue that safety helmet to your head in future,’ Ashir said.
It was the same kind of banter he’d started to have with Florence, when he’d stayed with her. And it made his heart ache that it wouldn’t happen again.
Later that morning, the neuro team admitted Tim for observation, but a second scan had been more promising.
‘Watch and wait,’ Florence said.
Was she going to tease him about ‘wait’ being his second-favourite four-letter word? Rob wondered. But she didn’t. And that threw him. They’d become friends over the last few weeks. If she didn’t even see him as that, how could she ever see him as anything more? He wanted her to see him as more. He’d been thinking about it for days.
And he didn’t know how to reach out to her.
* * *
‘Come over for dinner,’ Oliver said on Wednesday evening. ‘You sound as if you could do with Gemma’s lasagne and some cake.’
‘Hang on—you’re starting to appreciate cake now?’ Rob teased.
‘Gemma’s a cake fiend. I have no choice,’ Oliver said. ‘Seriously, though. You sound a bit low. And it’ll be more fun than sticking something in your microwave.’
‘Yeah.’ And maybe his twin would have some insight into how to fix this impasse with Florence. Something other than ‘talk to her’, because Rob knew he’d already made a mess of that.
He called in at the supermarket on the way to his brother’s, buying flowers and wine. Gemma was at a dance aerobics class—though Rob could smell the lasagne bubbling in the oven.
He was halfway through explaining the situation with Florence to Oliver. ‘I want to prove to her that I can stick at something,’ he said.
At that moment, Gemma came into the kitchen, kissed Oliver hello and hugged Rob. ‘Hey, Rob the Risk-Taker—planning your next climb?’ She tried to ruffle his hair; when that didn’t work, because his hair was so much shorter than Oliver’s, she laughed. ‘Sorry.’
‘No, you’re fine.’
‘Tell Gem what you were telling me,’ Oliver said. ‘She has the advantage of two X chromosomes, so she understands how women’s minds work.’
‘What can I do to help?’ Gemma asked.
‘I feel a bit bad, talking about someone else’s private life,’ Rob said.
‘It’s not going any further than us,’ Gemma said. ‘Talk.’
Rob explained about how Florence had been hurt before and didn’t want to take any risks. ‘And with me being what I am...’ He grimaced. ‘She’s the first woman I’ve ever felt like this about. I need to find a way to prove to her that I’m serious about her.’
‘Try telling her exactly what you just told us,’ Gemma said.
‘Words aren’t enough. I need something physical.’ He thought about it. ‘She likes needlework. She taught me to do cross-stitch. Maybe I can make her a picture.’
‘That’s not something you can do like snapping your fingers, Rob,’ Gemma said. ‘Even a bookmark, if you did a proper one with a few different colours and backstitch, would take you about ten hours—plus unpicking the bits where you’ve gone wrong, because everyone has to unpick things.’
‘I know I’ve got a reputation for being impatient—’ Rob began.
‘You are impatient,’ Oliver interrupted.
‘But I can be patient for this. I can focus. Because it’s important.’ He spread his hands. ‘I guess there’s a benefit to only working three days a week, after all: it means I have time to do it.’
‘Putting your feelings in stitching instead of words. Well, that’d definitely show you mean it and it isn’t just a whim,’ Gemma mused. ‘Though don’t stitch all day without a break, or your hand will hurt for a week.’
‘She said something like that when she taught me how to stitch,’ Rob said wryly. ‘And you sound as if you know about stitching.’
‘I know a bit because my best friend Claire’s mum Yvonne has a craft shop. She runs workshops and I sometimes help out. What do you want to make?’
‘I don’t know,’ he admitted.
‘She’d be an excellent person to ask for ideas, plus she can sort out what you need to make whatever it is when you decide,’ Gemma said. ‘When are you free next?’
‘Tomorrow,’ Rob said.
‘Right. I’ll call her tonight and tell her about you. Meet me at the practice at lunchtime and I’ll introduce you to her,’ Gemma said.
‘Thank you, Gemma.’
She smiled. ‘You’re welcome. That’s what family’s for. Well, I’m not quite family.’
‘You’re engaged to my brother. You make him happy. You’re definitely family,’ Rob said, and hugged her.
‘So that’s the thing she did to challenge you? Taught you to sew?’ Oliver asked.
Rob knew his twin wasn’t mocking him. ‘Yes. It’s weird. I would never have believed it would work.’
‘Counting stitches. I guess it’d have the same effect as counting reps at the gym,’ Gemma said. ‘Mentally, that is. Not physically.’
‘It’s weird,’ Rob said again.
‘What I can’t get my head round is that it means you actually sit still. That’s almost unheard-of,’ Oliver said with a smile. ‘I know how much you miss climbing, and I’m glad you’ve found something that grounds you. Better still, something that doesn’t involve dangling off a mountain.’
‘I’m trying to be more Ollie,’ Rob teased.
‘Yeah? There’s one thing that pact of yours doesn’t take into account,’ Oliver said.
‘What’s that?’
Oliver patted
his arm. ‘I love you for who you are. You’re worth the risk. If she understands you, she’ll get that.’
‘I hope,’ Rob said, ‘you’re right. Because at this precise moment it feels impossible.’
‘Think of your climbing,’ Oliver said. ‘You’d do a risk assessment and work out how to scale a crag. This is the same thing.’
‘He’s right,’ Gemma said.
Except, if he miscalculated this, the hurt would go much deeper than just a broken bone...
* * *
The next day, Gemma introduced him to Yvonne, and he explained what he wanted. ‘This is what she taught me to do,’ he said, and brought out the bookmark. ‘I want to sew something for her that tells her I love her.’
Yvonne drew up a file of photographs on her laptop. ‘There are a few patterns here. There’s this one.’
A heart, filled with rows of different sorts of hearts. It was pretty, but... He shook his head.
‘It’s pretty, but it’s generic. I want something personal.’
‘OK. Give me a bit more detail. What do you want to tell her?’
‘That with her I’m not restless any more. I can be still.’
Yvonne thought for a bit. ‘So she makes you feel grounded, as if you have roots?’
‘That’s it exactly.’
She scrolled rapidly through the file of patterns, and brought up another one: a tree, whose trunk was made out of the word ‘love’ in a very fancy script; the branches made a heart shape, and the leaves were hearts. ‘How about this?’
‘It’s almost perfect,’ he said. ‘How do you add something to a pattern?’
‘It depends what you want.’
‘I want the tree to have roots that spell out her name.’
Yvonne put a hand to her face. ‘Oh, that’s so romantic! Well, I can tweak the pattern for you. Do you have a laptop and a printer?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then I’ll sort it out for you over lunch and email you a PDF,’ she said. ‘Now, I assume you need the fabric, threads and everything else?’
‘Yes, please.’
‘Come and see me when it’s done, and I’ll frame it before you give it to her. On the house, as you’re Ollie’s brother and Gemma’s like family to me.’
‘Thank you,’ Rob said. And he called in to the chocolate shop on the quayside on his way home, choosing a special assortment to be delivered that afternoon to thank Yvonne for her help.
He started work on the project as soon as he got back to his flat. He knew it would take time and he couldn’t rush it, but hopefully this would show Florence what was in his heart. Tell her what she meant to him. Prove to her that he could manage his itchy feet, with her by his side.
And then maybe she’d agree to try to make a go of things with him...
* * *
On Friday, they were both rostered in Resus.
And again, Rob was aware of the awkwardness between them.
He’d never wish ill health on anyone, but he was glad of their first case, that morning: Michael Winters, who’d been brought in by his grandson.
‘Grandad wouldn’t let me call an ambulance,’ the young man said. ‘He just didn’t look right this morning. I checked his pulse and it was sky-high, and his breathing’s not good, so I bundled him in the car and brought him in.’
The triage team had sent them straight to Resus.
‘Good call,’ Florence said. ‘How long has your grandad been like this?’
‘Since I saw him this morning. Maybe overnight—I was late in, last night,’ he said.
‘Has he ever had anything like this before?’ Florence asked.
‘Not as far as I know, though I could check with my dad.’
‘Are there any medical conditions we need to know about?’ Rob asked.
‘If stubbornness is a medical condition,’ the grandson said wryly, ‘he’s definitely got it.’
Rob was very aware of Florence looking straight at him.
Was she calling him stubborn, too? She was one to talk.
‘Nothing,’ the young man said. ‘He doesn’t smoke. He likes his glass of whisky before he goes to bed, but it’s not a huge one. He takes the dog out every day, and he eats properly because I live with him and I do the cooking.’
‘OK. We’ll assess him now,’ Florence said, ‘so if you don’t mind waiting in the waiting room, we’ll come and get you as soon as we’ve finished.’
The young man nodded. ‘Do what they tell you, Grandad,’ he said, squeezing Michael’s hand. ‘I want you back home with me. And I want you well.’
‘You fuss too much, Dylan,’ Michael wheezed.
Rob wasn’t happy with Michael’s heart rate—more than double the norm—or his oxygen saturation levels.
‘Oxygen,’ he said to Florence, ‘to help with his breathing.’
‘And beta-blockers,’ she said, ‘to get his heart rate down.’
The longer the over-rapid heartbeat went on, the more stress it put on the ventricle, the lower pumping chamber of the heart, and it could lead to heart failure.
But the beta-blockers and oxygen seemed to have no effect, and Michael complained of feeling sweaty.
‘I think we should do cardioversion,’ Rob said.
‘Agreed,’ Florence said, looking grim.
‘I’ll go and have a word with Dylan.’
He found the younger man in the waiting room.
‘Is everything all right?’ Dylan asked.
‘As you know, your grandad’s heartbeat is too fast—something called superventricular tachycardia or SVT for short. There are lots of different causes for it,’ Rob said. ‘The most common one is an electrical problem with the heart. We’ll be able to sort that out, but for now we need to get his heart back into a normal rhythm and he isn’t responding the way we’d like to medication. So we want to give his heart a small electric shock.’
‘But—isn’t that what you do when someone has a heart attack?’
‘Sort of,’ Rob said. ‘What it’ll do is bring his heart back to a normal rhythm. It’ll only take about ten minutes. Your grandad will be under sedation so it won’t hurt; he might feel a bit dizzy afterwards and might have a little bit of chest pain, but we’ll keep him in for a few hours on the cardiac ward to keep an eye on him. The cardiac ward can also run tests to find out exactly what kind of electrical problem caused the SVT and how to treat that so he doesn’t get this again.’
‘Just make him better,’ Dylan said. ‘Whatever it takes.’
‘I’ll come and get you when we’ve done it,’ Rob promised, and headed back to Florence.
Between them, they sedated Michael, put the sticky pads on his chest and attached the electrodes to the defibrillator.
Things might be a bit strained between them personally right now, Rob thought, but they were in tune at work.
‘And clear,’ Florence said, and administered the shock.
The results were dramatic: from the scary one hundred and eighty-five beats per minute, Michael’s heart rate dropped straight down to a more normal seventy-five beats per minute.
‘Result,’ she said. ‘Go and fetch Dylan, and I’ll ring the cardiac team to get Michael admitted.’ She smiled. ‘It’s good to have a good outcome.’
‘Definitely,’ Rob said.
And if only he could make sure that things between himself and Florence had a good outcome, too...
CHAPTER NINE
IN THE MIDDLE of the following week, Florence had to drag herself out of bed when her alarm went off.
Maybe she was going down with some kind of bug; as a morning person, she never usually struggled getting up for work. Washing her hair didn’t make her feel any better. She made herself a mug of coffee, but couldn’t quite face drinking it because the smell made her feel slightly queasy; and her toast tasted
odd. Metallic.
Some viruses affected your sense of taste and smell, she knew. If she was going down with something, the last thing she wanted to do was to spread it among her colleagues.
She checked her temperature; it was normal.
But she still didn’t feel right.
She was about to call work, saying that she felt rough and didn’t want to spread whatever it was, when it hit her: she hadn’t bought any tampons for more than a month.
And her periods were normally so regular that she could practically set her watch by them.
She counted back swiftly. Her last period had been just before Rob had started at the hospital, and her current period had been due on the week that he’d stayed with her. She’d been so busy concentrating on fighting her attraction to him that she hadn’t noticed her period was late.
She wasn’t sure whether she was more excited or apprehensive. Three years ago, she would’ve been trying to contain her excitement—and at the same time wary of getting her hopes up, only for them to be dashed again. Now... Now, she wasn’t even in a relationship. And the idea of being pregnant was terrifying. Her whole life would be tipped upside down.
Could she be pregnant?
Or maybe she was overthinking this. Maybe because her routine had been slightly disrupted, her body had followed suit and she’d just skipped a period.
Although the night she’d spent with Rob had been smack in the middle of her cycle, her most fertile time, they’d used contraception. OK, so a condom could fail; but even if that was the case, she knew that he was also taking immunosuppressant drugs to stop his body rejecting his brother’s kidney. It wasn’t her area of medicine, but she was pretty sure she’d read studies showing that immunosuppressants affected fertility.
Which meant the chances of her conceiving were infinitesimally small.
Sipping a glass of water made her feel a bit better.
And that in itself was worrying. The symptoms were all starting to point away from a bug and towards...
Oh, help.
She didn’t have time to worry about it now. She’d be late for her shift, if she didn’t get a move on. She pulled herself together and headed for work. And she was seriously glad that Rob was off duty that day, because she couldn’t have handled working with him—not with this weighing on her mind.