Her Boss and Protector

Her mother smiled. ‘You’re an angel. You always were able to cope, no matter what life threw at you. You always seemed so strong. Look at how you looked after your brother when he was little—I feel so guilty sometimes because of the way I failed you back then, and here you are, going through a similar situation all over again.’ She sent Jade a pensive look. ‘I know this can’t be easy for you, and you must have a lot to contend with just now. You should try to take some time out for yourself.’

‘I will.’ Jade didn’t think there was much chance of that, but it would make her mother happy to think all was going well.

‘You were going to start your new job today, weren’t you? Is everything working out all right?’

‘Yes, it’s turning out just fine,’ Jade lied. She wasn’t going to burden her mother with her problems. ‘At least it means I’m on hand to come up and visit you whenever I get the opportunity.’

She left the room a minute or so later and went in search of Gemma, her half-brother’s wife. Gemma’s condition was much worse than her mother’s, and Jade was shocked when she saw her. The accident and the haemorrhage that followed had taken their toll on her.

Her sister-in-law was almost as white as the bandages that held the dressing in place on her head, and the brown of her hair made a stark contrast to her pale skin. She seemed very weak and tired, and Jade guessed that she was in quite a lot of pain and discomfort.

Even so, Gemma wanted to know about the children. ‘Are they all right? Have they settled in with you?’

‘Yes. They’re doing just fine, and they send their love. I told them that you’ll be staying here for a little while, but that they could come and see you as soon as you were feeling stronger. The doctors don’t think it would be a good idea for them to come in just yet.’

‘I know.’ Gemma was near to tears. ‘Thanks for taking care of them for me. I was hoping that Ben would bring them to me, but I expect he’s still out on the rig. He spends more time there than he does with us, but perhaps that’s how he wants it. Sometimes I wonder if we made a mistake, getting married.’

Jade reached out and touched her hand. ‘You mustn’t think like that. Ben loves you.’

‘I don’t think so—not enough, anyway. Why else would he spend so much time away from us? And I don’t think he cares about the children—why should he after all? They’re not his, so I suppose he can’t be expected to love them the way I do.’ Her voice faded.

‘I’m sure you have it all wrong,’ Jade said. ‘He loves all of you, and he’ll be here just as soon as he can manage it. The last I heard, he was still in the decompression chamber.’

‘Maybe.’ She could see that Gemma wasn’t convinced. ‘It takes something like this to make you take stock of things and realise what’s important in life. At least I have the children.’

‘You have Ben, and me and Mum as well,’ Jade told her. ‘You’re not alone. You mustn’t think like that.’

Jade stayed with Gemma until her sister-in-law’s mood had lifted a little. She knew something of what Gemma was going through…she was feeling lost and alone. Her own childhood experiences had left her feeling much the same way, making her reluctant to believe that she could rely on anyone.

Her lunch-break came to an end and she hurried back to A and E. The little boy who had taken the propranolol was showing signs of recovery, and she was pleased about that. She checked him over, and left the treatment room feeling glad that at least something was going right.

‘He was fortunate,’ Callum said, coming over to sign her chart and allow her to pass the boy over to admissions. ‘If his family had left it much longer before they realised what he had done, things could have been far worse.’

She nodded. ‘It’s easy to be wise after the event, I suppose. Children will always get up to mischief of some sort, but I expect his family will keep medicines securely locked away from now on.’

He gave her a long look, those blue eyes lancing into her. ‘I imagine that’s something you know a lot about—the mischief, I mean.’

She managed a hollow smile. ‘That reminds me—about this morning,’ she began. ‘I didn’t know that the children had come to you, asking for milk. I was in the shower, and I didn’t realise that they had left the house.’

‘I guessed as much, and it sort of went along with what I’ve come to expect. You don’t have to explain.’

‘No…but I want to. You see, under normal circumstances I would have had enough milk to keep us going, but then we took in a stray kitten, and he seems to have guzzled all I had.’

‘I noticed him yesterday. As for your breakfast problems, I take it that your husband is no good at helping out in that kind of situation? I’d have thought that with two of you in the house, one or other of you could manage to keep an eye on things.’

‘I’m not married,’ she told him.

‘Ah…I see.’

‘I don’t think you do.’

She was about to explain the situation to him, but before she could get her act together he said, ‘Well, let’s just say that it all makes some kind of sense now. No wonder you’re struggling, if you’re on your own.’

He gave her an assessing glance, and then added, ‘I’m afraid I didn’t really have time to say very much to the children this morning—I planned on getting into work early, and they caught me on the hop, so to speak.’

She frowned. ‘I’m sorry that they came and disturbed you. They shouldn’t have done that.’

‘It’s not a problem,’ he said. ‘I realise that you’re having trouble keeping it all together, but I guess you’re not alone. A lot of single parents seem to find it difficult to manage.’

He signed her chart while she was still staring at him open-mouthed, and he didn’t give her the opportunity to set things straight. He didn’t stay around to talk any longer, but strode away to treat a patient who was being rushed into the emergency room.

Jade was kept busy for the rest of the afternoon. She was a bit out of her depth, but she tried to get by without asking for help as far as she was able, because she didn’t want to give Callum any more reasons for regretting that she was on his team.

Despite her anxieties, for the most part things went well. She even managed to have a laugh with the paramedic, Sam, who came in to see how little Dean was doing.

‘Hi,’ he said, coming across the room to her just as she finished a coffee-break. ‘How is the little fellow? Did he pull through all right?’

She nodded. ‘Yes, he’s doing much better now. We’re going to keep him in hospital for a day or so, but it’s more of a precaution than anything else. I think he’ll be fine from now on.’

‘That’s good.’ Sam smiled, his eyes crinkling at the corners as he studied her. ‘I expect we’ll run into each other quite a lot if you’re going to be working here from now on. It seems as though my visits to the hospital are suddenly going to be much brighter than I could have hoped for.’ He looked her over. ‘Things are definitely looking up. You’re by far the best-looking doctor I’ve seen around here in a long while.’

Jade gave him an answering smile. ‘And you’re a smooth-tongued Casanova if ever I heard one,’ she said. ‘I bet you’ve had plenty of practice charming the girls.’ He was a good-looking young man, with dark hair that fell softly over his forehead and grey eyes that were full of dancing lights.

‘Not nearly as much as you’d think.’ He moved a little closer to her. ‘I’d really like to get to know you better. How about we take off from here when you finish work and go and get ourselves something to eat? I know a good place not too far from here.’

‘Sorry, but I can’t,’ she said. Even if she had wanted to, there were two small reasons why assignations of any kind were out of the question right now. Rebeccah and Connor would be taking up most of her free time for the foreseeable future.

Sam frowned, but just as she thought of trying to soften the blow, a shadow came between them.

‘Perhaps you two should continue your cosy little chat later,’ Callum said. ‘There are patients waiting to be seen.’ He looked at Jade, his jaw set in a firm line. ‘I think it would be a good idea if you were to go and attend to them.’ Then he turned a fraction, his gaze shooting warning sparks in Sam’s direction.

Sam took the warning on board and began to make a strategic exit, but he managed to mouth, ‘Be seeing you,’ to Jade as he went.

Jade sent Callum a guarded look. ‘I was on my way back from a break,’ she said. ‘I don’t think I was being remiss in any way. I was just about to head for the treatment room.’

‘I hope you were,’ he said. ‘Break’s over.’ He moved off in the direction of the reception desk, and Jade stared after him.

She sighed inwardly. It wasn’t going to be easy working with Callum Beresford, that was for sure, and the fact that he was her neighbour and landlord only served to make things doubly difficult.

Was she going to be able to find a way to get along with him? At the moment, that seemed highly unlikely.

CHAPTER THREE

‘HOW long have you been having these headaches, Stephen?’ Jade needed some clues as to what was causing her patient’s problems, but so far she had little to go on. There was scant previous medical history where this man was concerned.

‘They started a couple of weeks ago, but they’re getting much worse. This one today is really bad. I didn’t think I would make it to my GP’s surgery, so I came here instead. I’ve been vomiting, and I still feel very nauseous.’

Jade debated with herself about what to do. She was already feeling under pressure because Callum had made it clear that he wanted a swift throughput of patients and she knew that he was still monitoring her progress from a distance, as he had the previous day. Even now, she could feel his gaze fixed on her from across the room.

She wasn’t quite sure what to make of this patient, though. On the face of it, his problems could possibly be put down to migraine, but she was wary of making such a quick diagnosis and sending him on his way. Looking at him, she could see that although he looked unwell right now, he was a generally fit man in his late thirties.

‘Is there anything you’ve noticed that starts them off?’

‘No. Nothing that I can think of.’

She examined him, checking his neurological responses and his sensitivity to light. Perhaps the fact that he was in such good shape was making her extra-cautious—after all, he wasn’t in the habit of seeking medical help, and that in itself gave her reason to think that there might be something more to his case than met the eye.

‘I think, Stephen, to be on the safe side, I’m going to send you for a CT scan. That might give me a more of an idea about what’s going on. In the meantime, I’ll give you an analgesic for the pain and something to stop you from vomiting.’

‘Am I going to have the scan today? I don’t want to have to keep coming back here. I really want to get this sorted out now. I have a business to run, and I can’t think straight with this terrible headache. I can’t afford to take time off, but I’m useless like this—I feel as though I just want to go and lie down somewhere until the pain goes away.’

‘I’ll send you to get it done right away, and I think it might be as well for me to get someone to go with you, just in case you feel sick again. I’ll see if I can get hold of a nurse and a wheelchair.’ She didn’t want him to suffer from an attack of dizziness and perhaps fall, especially while he was under her care.

Jade set things in motion, and when he was on his way she went to see to her other patients, aware that Callum was still following her progress from afar, even though he was attending to a patient of his own.

Katie passed her a chart. ‘A little boy, five years old, with breathing difficulties.’

‘Thanks.’ Jade went to find him, and introduced herself to his mother, who was holding him on her lap.

‘Let’s see if we can find out what the problem is, shall we?’ Jade murmured, smiling at the little boy. ‘Can I listen to your chest with my stethoscope? Do you want to try it first?’

The child nodded, and listened through the earpieces, his eyes widening and a hint of a smile touching his lips. He was suffering from a chest infection, Jade discovered, and she was concerned that he might be having a problem with his ears as well. In order to check that out, she needed to take a close look at his eardrums, but when she searched in the pockets of her white jacket for her auriscope, she couldn’t find it.

She grimaced, remembering that she had mislaid it earlier. Rebeccah and Connor had been helping her to tidy up her medical case last night at the cottage, and perhaps they had moved it.

She glanced at the child’s mother and said, ‘Will you excuse me for just a moment? Perhaps, while I’m gone, you could tell the nurse about the nature of the chest infections Taylor has suffered from before this. I think we may need to do some further investigations. I’ll be back very shortly.’

She left them with Katie, instructing her to give the boy oxygen to help his breathing, and hurried over to the doctors’ lounge, where she took her handbag out of her locker. There was just the faintest possibility that the children might have put the instrument in there. Just as she was rummaging through the contents of her bag, though, Callum walked into the room.

Jade turned, giving him a look of startled apprehension and he said, frowning, ‘What’s the matter? Have you lost something? I thought I saw you going through your medical case earlier. Didn’t you find what you were looking for?’

She stared up at him distractedly. ‘No, I didn’t…I thought perhaps I could manage without it for a while, but things didn’t turn out that way, and now I need to check in my handbag.’

He sent her a quizzical look, and she realised that she wasn’t explaining herself very well. ‘I thought I’d put my auriscope alongside all my other equipment,’ she added, ‘but it wasn’t so. I seem to have mislaid it. It’s very strange, because I know that I had it with me last night at home.’

He sent her a pitying look. ‘Organisation isn’t your strong point, is it?’

She made a face. What had she expected from him? His opinion of her hadn’t been good from the outset, had it? ‘Believe it or not,’ she said, ‘I’m usually quite good at sorting things out and knowing where to find things. I can usually put my hands on whatever I need within a moment or two.’

‘Really? You amaze me,’ he said, going over to the coffee-machine and filling up a mug with the hot liquid. ‘Does this ability not quite stretch to things like medical equipment and breakfast times?’

She disregarded his comments while she continued to search in her bag, and after a minute or two she exclaimed in triumph, ‘Found it.’ She brought out the auriscope from the depths of her handbag. ‘How on earth did it get in there?’

It seemed fairly clear cut that the children had had something to do with it. They had been curious about everything while she’d been trying to sort out her medical kit. Perhaps one of them had slipped the instrument into her bag instead of putting it back in the case, where it belonged.

Then, belatedly, it dawned on her what Callum had said. She stared at him. ‘What do you mean, breakfast times? What do they have to do with anything?’ Was he still having a go at her about the milk episode?

He took a long swallow of his coffee. ‘I guess they’re just another item on the list of things that you have problems with. At least, Connor seems to think so.’ She stared at him blankly and he went on, ‘He was quite put out because you had forgotten to buy any more wheaty flakes, and that meant he was going to go to school hungry.’

‘When did he tell you that?’

‘This morning, when he came round to my house with his empty cereal bowl.’ He made a faint smile. ‘He wanted me to fill it up for him. He said Rebeccah wasn’t too fussed about what she had to eat, but he didn’t want to go without his wheaty flakes if he could help it. I gathered that he wasn’t too impressed with the contents of your kitchen cupboards.’ He sent her a thoughtful glance. ‘I suppose your organisational skills don’t extend quite as far as the weekly shop.’

She blinked, ignoring the sarcasm. ‘You’re surely not telling me that he came round to you again?’

He nodded. ‘He certainly did. Luckily, I had done my weekly shop, and the cereals just happened to be on my list. He was pleased about that. It seems that I’m flavour of the month with him at the moment in that respect, but I get the impression that you’re about halfway down the league table. You have some catching up to do.’ There was a glint in his blue eyes as he said it.

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