The Doctor's Longed-For Family

She didn’t give the stranger another thought, except to reflect that he had been unusually persistent. He had waited, and she guessed that he was satisfying himself that all the resuscitation processes were in place so that the child would stand the best chance of recovery.

No one could fault him for that, but wasn’t it a little out of place for him to attempt to ingratiate himself with the doctor in charge before any interviews had begun?

Then again, she could have been misjudging him. Her views on men in general had been skewed by the unfortunate events of her past, and it could be that her opinions had been soured.

He seemed to have the child’s interests at heart, and she would bear that in mind when next they met.

She glanced at the watch on her wrist. She was already running late. Why was it that in this job the pressure never let up? There was a never-ending stream of poor little souls who needed patching up, and she did her best, but sometimes her best just didn’t seem enough.

No wonder Matt Calder was able to breeze through life, charming people with his easy words and blithe spirit. What he knew about stress could probably be written on a postage stamp.

CHAPTER TWO

ABBY studied the results of Adam’s CT scan on the computer monitor. ‘There’s a small head injury,’ she told Sam, ‘but no sign of any swelling or haemorrhage, so that’s good news, at least.’

Her senior house officer nodded, an action that caused a lock of brown hair to waft down over his brow. He was a long, lean young man, always keen to learn, and she was glad to have him on her team.

She switched to views of the child’s abdomen, and indicated an area that was giving her cause for concern. ‘I’m a bit worried about these patches. There’s a laceration to the spleen and a slight contusion to the kidney. We’ll need to give him supportive treatment for those, as well as for the contusion we saw on the X-ray of his lungs.’ She frowned. ‘Our biggest problem, though, is the leg fracture. He’ll have to go up to Theatre to have the bones realigned and fixed in place.’

‘I had a word with the surgeon about that. He’s standing by right now.’

‘Good. Let’s transfer him over there straight away.’

‘I will. I’d like to stay with him, if I may, in case there are any complications. I could take him to observation as soon as Mr Bradley releases him from the recovery ward.’

‘That’s fine—as long as there’s nothing pressing to keep you down here?’ She sent him a questioning glance.

Sam gave that some thought. ‘There’s only one child that I’m worried about—a two-year-old who was brought in earlier on. She’s feverish and very unwell, showing symptoms of infection, but I’ve ordered lab tests and I’m waiting on the results. I’ve given her broad-spectrum antibiotics until we have something more specific to go on.’

‘It sounds as though you have everything in hand, and of course the nurse will page you if there’s a problem. In the meantime, I’ll arrange for Adam to be admitted. Let’s just hope that we have a bed free. I don’t think he’s in any condition to be moved to another hospital.’

Sam gave a wry smile. ‘I dare say you’ll be able to sweet-talk the ward sisters into finding something. You always seem to manage to get around the system when it’s really important.’

‘Maybe. We’ll see.’ Sweet-talking didn’t always work, and above all it was time-consuming. Time was yet another major resource she was short on these days, although staffing had to be her biggest headache.

She sucked in a breath at the reminder of what she had to do next. The interviews—she was going to have to get a move on, or her goose was well and truly cooked. Would the man who had come in earlier with three-year-old Adam still be waiting around?

She handed over to her second in command, and then paged Helen to let her know that she would be ready to see the candidates in twenty minutes or so. Taking a few moments to grab a coffee in the doctors’ lounge, she ran a brush through her hair and tried to tame the mass of wild corkscrew curls. It was a waste of time. No sooner had she put the brush down than her hair spiralled out of control once more, and she had to resort to placing a few clips in strategic places.

She gazed at her reflection in the mirror. Her green eyes stared back at her, shimmering like emeralds, and her lips were a delicate shade of pink, full and pleasantly shaped. She made a faint grimace. At least she didn’t look as bad as she felt. There was an element of battle-readiness in the warm flush of her cheeks, and perhaps that was the key to whatever it was that kept her going through thick and thin. She would not give up. She would not cave in when all around her chaos reigned.

The man was not in the waiting room when she went in search of him a short time later. Abby frowned, two small lines indenting her brow. She didn’t want to admit to herself that she was disappointed not to find him there, but instinct had somehow nudged her into thinking that he had more staying power than that.

Obviously, she couldn’t rely on her instincts any more. They had certainly let her down where Craig had been concerned, hadn’t they? He had deceived her into thinking he cared for her, but now her ex-boyfriend was history and a couple of years had passed since she had learned the error of her ways. Her judgement of men was definitely awry.

‘Were you looking for me?’

Even coming out of nowhere like that, the voice was instantly recognisable. In fact, there was something oddly familiar about it, considering that she had only met the man that morning.

She turned away from the waiting-room door and looked up at the impeccably dressed doctor. ‘Oh, there you are. I wondered if you had given up on me and gone home.’

He shook his head. ‘I wouldn’t do that. I was hoping that I would be able to talk to you again.’

His glance flickered over her, taking in the soft fabric of her top where it gently caressed the swell of her breasts, and then paused to linger on the smooth line of the skirt where it faithfully followed the curve of her hips. His gaze slid down over the shapeliness of her legs.

His glance lifted, capturing hers before taking a brief detour over the golden cascade of her hair. She felt a rush of heat fill her cheeks under that lazy scrutiny, but she could hardly object as she had been giving him much the same treatment earlier.

‘I could see that you were busy,’ he murmured, ‘and I took the opportunity to follow up on a couple of contacts while I was waiting for you.’

She had no idea what he meant by that, but she said evenly, ‘Perhaps we should go into my office? It’s just along the corridor.’ She was a touch early perhaps, but Helen would be along shortly.

‘That sounds like a good idea.’ He gave a half-smile and fell into step beside her as she began to walk in the direction she had indicated. ‘How is the boy—Adam?’

‘He’s undergoing surgery at the moment to fix the fractured femur. None of his other injuries appears to be life-threatening, so I’m hoping that he’ll be on the mend and ready to leave hospital in two or three weeks.’ She pushed open the door to her office and ushered him inside.

‘That’s good news. I’m glad to hear it.’ He stood to one side and closed the door behind her, giving her a smile, and it was as though sunlight had suddenly filled the room. She stood very still for a moment or two. The breath caught in her throat and she had to quell a sudden leap of her senses that threatened to overwhelm her.

It was very odd. This man was a total stranger to her, and her reaction to him was way overboard. She couldn’t imagine why she responded to his presence this way, but it must have something vaguely to do with her hormones, she guessed. They must be acting up, that was the answer.

‘So you think you might like to work here on a part-time basis?’ she murmured, indicating a chair where he could make himself comfortable. ‘Would you like to run through your CV for me while I hunt out your file?’

She began to search through the paperwork on her desk. There were four candidates for interview, and it occurred to her that she didn’t know which of them he was.

‘I don’t think I asked your name,’ she said, glancing across the table at him.

He hadn’t taken up the offer of a seat, but instead was looking around the room with interest, fingering the window-blind so that he could take a look at the view out onto the landscaped hospital grounds.

‘No, you didn’t,’ he murmured, letting the slats of the blind drop back into place. ‘Actually, I’m not here about the job at all. I was on my way to keep an appointment with the hospital chief when the accident happened. I was in the car behind the one that hit Adam and, as I said before, I stopped to see if there was anything I could do for him. I called for the ambulance and waited with him until the paramedics came along, and then I used their equipment to intubate him as he had slipped into unconsciousness. As soon as I could see that he was safely inside the ambulance, I followed him here.’

Abby stared at him. ‘Oh, I see.’ He had stopped to help the child and do what he could for him, and that was good to hear. Somehow it didn’t surprise her that he would act in that way. ‘Your intervention right from the start probably did more than anything to give him a better chance of recovery.’

Even so, she was a bit nonplussed about her mistake. She felt more than a little foolish now that he had explained what he was doing there, and she said flatly, ‘Did you manage to keep your appointment?’

He nodded. ‘One of them, at least. I still have to meet up with someone from Administration in half an hour or so.’

She blinked. ‘Oh.’ It occurred to her that she was beginning to sound repetitive, and she pulled herself together and sent him a puzzled glance. She said cautiously, ‘I can’t help feeling that I know you from somewhere. Your voice is familiar somehow, but I’m almost certain that we haven’t met.’

His mouth made a crooked shape. ‘Only through correspondence perhaps. I’m Matt Calder.’ He gave her a look from under half closed eyes. ‘From the TV programme Emergency Call. You are the same, “Abby Byford from the Chilterns”, who sent in the email about the show, aren’t you? Do you remember me now?’

She gave a sharp intake of breath. Her mouth dropped open and she quickly clamped it shut again. She stared at him in horror. ‘You,’ she said at last. ‘It’s you, of all people?’

She shook her head. This was the man who had splattered her email all over his website and read out her comments over the airwaves, and she had actually been civil to him. ‘I can’t believe this is happening,’ she muttered. It felt for all the world as though she had invited the devil himself into her office.

He must have picked up on something of her train of thought because he said in a dry tone, ‘I realise that it must have come as a shock to you to find me here, but I can assure you that I’m a perfectly reasonable man. We may have conflicting views, but there’s nothing wrong with airing both sides of the argument, is there?’

She didn’t answer him right away. Instead, she stood up and started to pace the room, more to work off her rising sense of irritation than anything else. ‘You ridiculed me,’ she said at last. ‘You talked about using the off switch as though I was a moron. I have to tell you, I just don’t believe that’s the answer. The problem goes much deeper than that. Your programme is an intrusion. You invade people’s privacy.’ She used the words as though they were weapons, stabbing at him.

He tipped his head slightly to one side, studying her as though she was an interesting specimen. ‘I don’t believe that’s so, and I wasn’t implying for an instant that you were lacking intelligence in any sense. I just feel that you can’t go on living in a time warp. This type of show is a regular on the media these days.’

Her eyes narrowed. ‘Then I have to say I think that’s a great pity.’

He frowned, but he wasn’t about to let up. ‘As far as I’m concerned, it would seem logical to switch off the TV set if you’re not happy with what is being shown. I happen to think that what we do is important. We keep people informed about what might happen in certain situations. We show them how the system works and help them to know what to do in an emergency. Knowledge is power after all, and you have to remember that the individuals we film have all given their consent for the footage to be shown on TV.’

Had they really? Abby sniffed in disagreement, a wave of exasperation rising up in her at his bland reply.

‘Have they?’ She scowled at him. ‘And how informed was that poor woman’s consent while she was struggling to cope with her labour? From what I could see, she was more concerned that someone would give her painkillers than what was going on all around her.’

‘You know, these programmes don’t go out live on air, and if it makes you feel better, I can assure you that I made certain that we had Megan’s full consent. We asked her again after she’d had the benefit of analgesics and time to think it through. I feel that we were very discreet in the way we filmed the birth, and I don’t think the finished product would upset many people. Nothing was shown that couldn’t be watched on daytime television.’

‘That’s a matter of opinion, though I’ll grant that some attempt was made to preserve her dignity. That’s something at least, I suppose.’ It was a concession of sorts, but she had to drag it up from deep within her. By now she’d definitely had her fill of Dr Matt Calder. ‘It still seems like an intrusion to me.’

She straightened her shoulders and went on, ‘I want to thank you again for what you did for the little boy…for Adam. I’m sure his parents will be very grateful to you for that.’ She hesitated for a moment, and then added, ‘As you’re not here for an interview, I hope you’ll understand if I say goodbye to you now and show you out. I have four other people to see, and when I’m finished here I have patients to attend to.’

Her green eyes flickered. He, on the other hand, probably had nothing more pressing to do than to keep a late lunch appointment with a TV executive.

He didn’t appear to be at all fazed by her dismissal of him. Instead, he reached for her hand, taking it between his palms, and said, ‘It’s been interesting to meet you, Dr Byford. Perhaps we’ll have the chance to chat again later today after my appointment with your admin department. I’d very much like to look in on Adam to see how he is doing after his surgery.’

‘I dare say that’s a possibility.’ Abby couldn’t think straight with him holding her hand that way, and she wasn’t about to commit herself to anything. With any luck, she would be engrossed in her work by then and well out of reach of this man.

He let her go, and slowly her senses began to settle down once more. She felt hot all over and her head was filled with cotton-wool clouds that only dissipated once he had taken a step back from her. It was just as well they did, because she had work to do. How was she supposed to conduct interviews with her brain in absent mode?

She saw him out of the room, but as she walked out into the corridor with him, she saw that Helen was hurrying towards them. The registrar stopped in her tracks, looking at him in wonder.

‘You’re Matt Calder from the TV, aren’t you?’ she said in an oddly breathless tone. ‘I can’t tell you how much I enjoy your programme…and your website…and I always try to catch your radio slot whenever it’s being aired while I’m driving to work.’ She stared at him in open-eyed wonder. ‘Are you here for the A and E post? Please, say that you are…I’ll be the envy of all my friends if you decide to come and work here.’

Matt smiled at her. ‘Actually, no, I’m not. I wish it were otherwise, but I’m really only free for a few mornings a week.’

‘That’s all right. That’ll do fine,’ Helen said, a note of eagerness in her voice. ‘Whatever you can spare—anything—that would be great by me.’ Her eyes were wide with anticipation.

Matt gave a soft laugh. ‘I’m glad you think so. I’m sure we would work very well together, given the chance, but, alas, I have other commitments at the moment. I’m filming over the next couple of weeks because we still have to do four more shows to complete the series.’

‘Couldn’t you do the show from here?’ Helen was clearly getting desperate now, and Abby gave her a sharp nudge with the toe of her shoe.

‘What?’ Helen reluctantly turned her gaze to Abby.

‘I think Dr Calder is going to be too busy to do that,’ Abby said in an even tone. ‘Besides, we shouldn’t delay him any longer. He has an appointment to keep.’

‘Oh, dear,’ Helen murmured. She turned her gaze back to him. ‘Do you really? That’s such a shame.’

‘I do. Dr Byford is quite right. I have to be somewhere else in a few minutes, but you’ve certainly given me food for thought and I’ll bear your suggestion in mind. Perhaps when my recording of Emergency Call comes to an end, I’ll have more time to spare.’ Matt threw a brief sideways glance in Abby’s direction, and she wondered if he was deliberately trying to rile her. ‘It’s been a pleasure to meet both of you.’

‘Believe me, the pleasure was all mine,’ Helen said huskily.

Abby tugged on her arm and pulled her into the office as Matt turned away and began to stride down the corridor. ‘You’ve obviously taken leave of your senses,’ she hissed. ‘What are you on?’

‘Pheromones,’ Helen replied in a distracted voice. ‘Sheer, unadulterated male pheromones and animal magnetism. He has it in droves. He should bottle it. He’d make a fortune.’

Abby made a wry face. ‘I think you’d better take a minute to pull yourself together,’ she said. ‘We have work to do.’

Helen sighed. ‘I suppose we do, but I can tell you now, not one of the candidates is going to stand up to what I have in mind, not after that.’

‘Then I suggest you come back down to planet Earth, and make it quick,’ Abby said briskly. ‘We have to do some serious interviewing. I need to find someone who can fit in with the department and take some of the burden off our shoulders.’

‘Oh, well, if you put it that way…’

A couple of hours later, Abby had to admit that they were no nearer to solving their problem. ‘The trouble is, the hours we’re offering people are either too few or too many,’ she told Helen. ‘Nothing seems to fit in with what the interviewees had in mind, and from our point of view we need someone who has strong paediatric qualifications. I don’t think that any of those people would be able to work under pressure. They just don’t seem to have the experience.’

‘It looks as though another advert will have to go in, then?’ Helen queried.

‘I guess so. I just wonder if we’ll get any more response than we had the first time around.’

They made their way back to A and E, and she went to check on the progress of three-year-old Adam. He had come through everything all right, and it cheered her up that she could say as much to the distraught parents who were at his bedside.

‘Would you come and take a look at the girl in room one?’ Sam asked a little later. ‘She’s the two-year-old that I mentioned earlier. I’m beginning to be quite worried about her. She hasn’t had her full range of vaccinations because of illness in the past, so until the tests come back, I’ve no idea what I’m dealing with. She isn’t responding to antibiotics, and her fever is raging. Her heart rate is fast, as well as her breathing, and the pulse oximetry reading is very low. Do you think we need to do a lumbar puncture?’

They were already walking towards the treatment room. ‘That’s a very invasive process,’ Abby said. ‘Is there any sign of a rash?’

Sam shook his head. ‘Not as such, but she appears to be very ill. I’m afraid that she’s not responding to treatment, and that she might be going into septic shock. It seems as though there’s a systemic inflammatory response.’

Abby looked at the toddler and her heart immediately went out to the child. She was dreadfully ill, unresponsive, and a brief examination left Abby concerned that her circulation was shutting down, despite the resuscitation procedures they had put in place.

The parents were tearful, pleading with her to do something for their baby.

‘I know this is difficult for you,’ she told them. ‘Lucy is very ill, but we’re doing everything possible to help her. It looks as though she has a bacterial infection of some sort, possibly a form of pneumonia, and so far it isn’t responding to treatment. I’m going to change the antibiotics and add something to assist her circulation. We just have to hang in there and wait for the medicine to take effect.’

Turning to Sam, she said in an undertone, ‘We’ll add a vasopressor to assist the blood flow, and a steroid to see if that will do something to reduce the inflammation.’

Sam looked anxious, but she said softly, ‘You’re doing all right. You’ve done everything possible.’

‘I hope it’s enough.’

She nodded. It was frightening to see a child looking so ill, and Lucy’s desperate condition weighed heavily on her mind as she left the room.

Glancing across the expanse of the department, she caught sight of Matt Calder coming in through the main door, and her first instinct was to walk in the opposite direction. She resisted the impulse. Whatever her feelings towards him, she had a job to do, and she couldn’t simply take an escape route and avoid him.

Then she saw that he wasn’t alone. He had with him the head of administration, and the two of them were chatting amicably, almost as though they were old friends.

A nurse handed her a chart outlining another patient’s progress, and she quickly checked the details on it before adding her signature and handing it back. ‘You can reduce the observations to half-hourly,’ she told the girl. ‘His condition seems to be improving at last.’

‘I’ll do that.’ The nurse hurried away, and Abby headed for the trauma room so that she could examine a child who had just been brought in.

‘May we interrupt you for a moment?’ the head of administration queried gently.

‘Of course.’ She gave him a polite smile. She had nothing against the man personally, but his department was forever coming up with new edicts to be followed or targets that had to be met, and not one of them ever made her job any easier. The only way he and his kind would ever understand the constraints she was under would be if he was to try working at the rock face, but that wasn’t likely to happen in a month of Sundays.

‘I believe you’ve already met my friend, Matt, here?’ His smile was encouraging. Clearly he expected an enthusiastic response.

‘Yes, we ran into each other earlier today.’ So they were pals, were they? Abby mused.

‘Good, good. Then you two already have a head start. Matt’s writing an article about what goes on in A and E. You know the sort of thing…the challenges you come up against in your daily work, the kind of cases you see on a regular basis. Perhaps you could help him out? I can’t think of a better person to show him around.’

Abby glanced at Matt and forced a smile. ‘I don’t know about giving you the grand tour. It will be more a case of following me around as I work and getting questions in where you can, I should imagine. I don’t have the luxury of free time, but you’re welcome to tag along.’

The head of administration looked a trifle disconcerted at that, but Matt responded well enough.

‘That would be excellent, thank you. I really don’t want to put you out in any way.’

Didn’t he? So why did she get the feeling she was being coerced into doing this? Anyway, she wasn’t going to spend too much time worrying about it, whatever either of them thought about her manner to them.

The trouble with men in authority, from her experience, was that they expected to have everything work their way, and it didn’t matter who they trod on to get to where they wanted to be.

Wasn’t that what Craig had done? Her ex-boyfriend had begged her to help him study for his exams, had picked her brains, and then he had walked all over her to get the promotion she had been after. He had taken their shared research paper, the one she had worked on intensively and had been struggling to perfect for over a year, and he had taken all the credit for it himself, using what had mostly been her work to wow the interview board with his so-called expertise.