A Very Special Need

He still managed a smile for her, though, as she wheeled him in. Lord, he was a gutsy kid. Judith looked away from him, her eyes bright with tears, and found herself face to face with the man whose image she had been unable to get out of her mind since this morning.

‘Hi,’ he said cheerfully, then hunkered down beside Woody. ‘You must be Edward. Pleased to meet you. I gather you’ve hurt your back?’

Woody mumbled a response, and Judith watched as they shook hands, then Mr Barber looked up at her. ‘I wonder if you’d mind filling in a card with all Edward’s details while we go and have a chat and I have a quick look to see what he’s done to himself?’

He gave her a card, a pen and a wink, and disappeared into his consulting room, pushing her son ahead of him in the wheelchair. She chewed her lip. Should she be in there with him?

She’d been clearly dismissed. Oh, well, perhaps he’d have some joy getting the truth out of him without her hovering about being a fussy mother.

She sat down with the card and obediently filled in all the information.

‘So, Edward, I gather you fell down some stairs, is that right, and now your back hurts?’

The boy nodded slowly. He certainly had quite a bit of spasticity in his muscles, Hugh noted. His handshake had been slow and deliberate but strong, and Hugh knew the hardest part of the treatment would be getting the muscles to relax enough to allow him to work on the spine.

Inevitably after thirteen years there would be some deformity and contracture problems. Just how bad and how insurmountable, he would have to establish. ‘I wonder if you could stand up and let me take a look at you?’ he murmured.

Woody struggled out of the chair, wincing as his back twinged, and Hugh forced himself to stand back and observe. One shoulder was a little higher than the other, indicating a slight scoliosis—a sideways curve to his spine which would be more obvious, of course, without clothes—but basically his posture was better than Hugh had expected.

‘OK. If you could just slip off your clothes down to your pants I’ll go and see how your mother’s getting on. Do you want her to join us?’

The boy shrugged, a slow, deliberate shrug, his face expressionless.

‘I think we can probably manage without her, don’t you? I’ll give her a cup of tea and we can get started.’

He left the lad undressing and went to find Judith. She was sitting in the waiting room with her head bent forwards, resting on a book on her knee while she filled in the record card. Her bottom lip was caught between small, even white teeth in an endearing little gesture that tugged at something inside him. The sun caught her hair, gleaming off the red-gold lights in it, and he had to fight against the urge to pull the band off the back and tunnel his fingers through it, fanning it out over her shoulders and spreading it across the crisp white pillow—

He yanked himself up short, shocked by the unruly direction of his thoughts, and cleared his throat. She looked up, straight into his eyes, and he had the sudden ghastly feeling that she could read his sordid mind. ‘Ah—how are you doing?’ he asked, conscious of the slow crawl of heat up the back of his neck.

‘All done,’ she replied, her voice soft and husky and unbelievably sexy. ‘I was just checking it.’

‘Good.’ He cleared his throat again and took the card from her outstretched hand, carefully avoiding touching her. ‘Look, I think your son might appreciate it if I treat him without you there?’ He phrased it almost as a question, to give her the chance to discuss it, but to his relief she nodded.

‘I rather thought you wanted to. Perhaps you’ll be able to find out what really happened.’

‘That’s what I was thinking,’ he told her honestly. Obviously he doesn’t want you to know the truth because he doesn’t want you hurt by it, and he knows you would be.’

Her smile nearly blew a fuse in his mind. ‘I’m so glad you understand,’ she said fervently. ‘They’re so convoluted, kids.’

He grinned at her. ‘I make an art form of understanding teenage boys—I’ve got one of my own. Look, I tell you what, you sit here and have a cup of tea while I get to grips with Edward. OK?’

She looked astonished, her eyes wide and soft and grateful. ‘Um—fine. Thank you.’

‘How do you take your tea?’

‘White, no sugar.’

‘Right.’ He escaped, almost running down the hall to the kitchen. Christine was sitting on the sofa with her feet up, resting her hands on the smooth swell of her pregnancy.

‘Hi. Any tea in the pot for Miss Wright?’

‘Should be. Hugh, my back’s giving me hell—I don’t suppose you could have a go at it, could you? It’s been dodgy all day again.’

He looked across at her. She seemed pinched, a bit tired. Hell. He really must find another receptionist so she could start her maternity leave—

‘I’ll just get this kid out of the way and I’ll have a look at you then, I promise. You stay here and take it easy for a few minutes—get some shut-eye. Oh, and while I think about it, Edward Wright’s bill is going to be staggered and I’m going to tell her I charge half-price for children under sixteen.’

Christine managed a wan smile. ‘Softy,’ she murmured.

He grinned. ‘That’s me. Just a sucker for a sob-story. Rest now. I won’t be long.’

She nodded, and he took the tea back to the waiting room and handed it to Edward’s mother. ‘Here—one cup of tea, white, no sugar.’

‘Thanks.’ She flashed that dazzling smile at him again, and he had to swallow hard and dredge in a great lungful of air before he could make his legs work again. How his system could have gone from years of near-coma to absolute screaming wakefulness in such a short time, he didn’t know, but it certainly had.

He shook his head to clear it, went back into his consulting room and shut the door. There, propped against the edge of the couch in some pain, was the reason this beautiful woman had come into his life—the only reason, he reminded himself—and he would do well to remember it.

‘Right, Edward, let’s see what we can do for you,’ he said briskly, and banished his intrusive libido from his thoughts.

CHAPTER TWO

‘RIGHT, Edward, if you could stand up and turn round so I can see your back, perhaps we’ll be able to sort this pain out a bit for you. Can you tell me where it hurts?’

The boy put a finger on his back, just below his waist and slightly to one side, over the lumbosacral joint which linked his flexible spine to the less flexible ring of his pelvis. It was a common spot for difficulties, being the junction between the two areas and so subject to more stresses than the other joints.

Hugh watched as Edward bent slowly forwards, tipped sideways, rotated, straightened up and tipped back, generally showing a grossly restricted range of movement in that whole area. It wasn’t all due to the current injury—that much Hugh could see at a glance—but certainly the injury was compromising the movement Edward did have, and making the situation much worse.

‘Right, if you could lie on the couch for me on your right side facing me,’ he said, making it perfectly obvious which way he wanted the boy to lie by taking up his position beside the couch, and waited to see if he was able to follow instructions.

He could tell by the brightness of his eyes and the few things he had said that he was certainly intelligent. How much his brain had been damaged in the trauma which had caused his cerebral palsy Hugh didn’t know, but he wanted to find out for himself and not from the boy’s mother. He wanted no preconceptions.

Edward lay down exactly as asked, and when Hugh bent his knees up, propped them against his hip and rocked the boy gently, curling and uncurling his spine with slow, careful movements, he could feel the pull of the taut, spastic muscles fighting him all the way. ‘I just want to get this area moving a little,’ he explained. ‘See if I can get some freedom back into this joint.’ He supported the spine with the flat of his hand, rocked away gently for a while and gradually the muscles began to give a little and he was able to get more movement through the joint.

‘It’s very tight, isn’t it?’ he said to Edward. ‘Is it often?’

‘It always is,’ the boy replied. ‘I have a lot of spasticity in my psoas muscles as well.’

No flies on this kid, Hugh thought with interest as he worked on the tight muscles. What a damn shame he’d been damaged at birth. He made a mental note to ask Judith—no, Miss Wright—the circumstances. ‘Who does your physio?’ he asked.

‘Mum—and the physio comes to school once a week to see how things are going. I have a special session with her when the others have got games.’

‘Do you do any games?

‘I work out in the gym a little with some special exercises when the others are there, but I can’t play football, of course. I go riding on Thursday with the RDA.’

Hugh had heard of the RDA—the Riding for the Disabled Association—a charity which with the help of volunteers and fundraisers offered an opportunity for disabled children and adults to ride carefully chosen ponies and horses. The Princess Royal was a great supporter of the organisation, he knew.

‘Do you enjoy it?’ he asked.

‘Yeah.’ There was an enthusiasm in his tone Hugh hadn’t heard before, and he guessed this was one part of being disabled that Edward didn’t find too irksome! ‘Although,’ he continued in his slow, careful speech, ‘sometimes I’m not sure who’s disabled, the ponies or the riders.’

Hugh laughed. ‘Are the ponies all old crocks, then?’

‘Not really. Some of them are quite young, but most of them have arthritis. There’s one, Pipkin, who’s new. He’s only nine but he can’t do much any more because of his leg. He’s a lot like me. He’d like to do more—I can feel it in him. He was sort of boiling inside with enthusiasm, but his body just won’t do it any more.’

‘I guess you would identify with that,’ Hugh said gently.

Edward gave a little snort. ‘Just a bit. I get so sick of everyone thinking I’m thick, just because I talk slowly and can’t move fast. People talk down to you—patronise you. It makes me mad. I get so frustrated.’

Hugh moved round to the other side of the treatment couch and spread some cream on Edward’s back, then turned on the ultrasound machine and ran the head lightly over the area of his sacrum and lumbar spine.

‘Do you get bullied much at school?’ he asked casually.

Edward stiffened a little, and Hugh rested a warm hand on his hip and squeezed gently. ‘Don’t tense up. Just let the ultrasound do its work. Just breathe deeply and let go.’

Gradually the boy relaxed again.

Hugh tried a different tack. ‘So, tell me again how you fell,’ he said softly.

The silence was broken only by the ticking of the timer on the ultrasound machine. For a long time Hugh didn’t think Edward was going to answer, then he drew in a shuddering breath and let it out.

‘This kid tripped me up on the stairs. He’s a new kid in my year. He’s been gunning for me all week, trying to prove something to the others—make his place or something.’ There was a wry chuckle. ‘Big mistake. They’re all used to me now, and they get a bit defensive. That’s why I don’t want to say anything. They’ll trash him if they know.’

‘They?’

‘Al and his mates. He’s my best friend. He’s Jamaican—his kid sister Flora’s got CP too. He gets really mad if anybody messes with me—makes the Mafia look like kindergarten. He’ll get in trouble if he’s caught sorting this kid. He’s done it before for me.’

‘And you think he would again?’

Edward snorted again. ‘I know he would.’

‘Perhaps you need to have a quiet word with the one who tripped you up—warn him off.’

‘Yeah, right—like he’ll really listen to me!’

‘He might—it’d be worth a try if it’ll keep your friend Al out of trouble.’ Hugh put the ultrasound head down and, using his knuckles, kneaded gently into the taut muscles.

‘That feels a little better. How does it feel from your side?’

‘Easier. Thanks.’

‘I won’t manipulate it today—it’s too fresh and fragile at the moment. What I want you to do is go home, ice-pack it three times a day for ten minutes and rest as much as possible. I’ll see you again on Monday evening at the end of surgery so I can spend as long as I need without time restrictions. I think the diary’s looking a bit hectic for early next week and I don’t want to just cram you into a little slot. Can you manage to get dressed again?’

Edward gave him a withering look. ‘I expect I’ll cope.’

Hugh laughed softly. ‘Often my patients need help. A bad back’s a bad back, Edward. It would be silly to mess yours up even more and make it worse just for the sake of your fool pride, wouldn’t it?’ He winked. ‘I’ll send in your mother in a minute.’

He found Miss Wright—not Judith, he reminded himself—where he’d left her, staring out of the window at the front garden. She swung round as he came in, and he felt the now-familiar thunderbolt slam him in the midsection.

At last! She was beginning to wonder if she’d ever see her son again. She found a smile. ‘Hi. How is he?’

‘Stiff, tender—he’s got a partial subluxation of the lumbosacral joint, caused by his fall, and the spasm of his psoas muscles isn’t helping him stand properly.’

‘They give him trouble,’ she said with a sigh. ‘It’s postural, and because of his spasticity.’

‘Yes. Anyway, he should be a bit more comfortable now. I’ve told him to rest over the weekend and he needs some frozen peas on it three times a day for a few minutes. Put them in a plastic bag and tie them up, and wrap them in a teatowel so he doesn’t get freezer burns. Just refreeze them after each session.’

She smiled again. ‘We have a bag of peas on the go most of the time,’ she told him softly. ‘Injuries are no stranger to him. He often turns his ankles.’

‘He would. It’s unfortunate—’

A noise in the distance caught their attention and he lifted his head. ‘Was that Edward? Did you hear him call?’

Judith shook her head. ‘No—is it someone at the back? I thought I heard someone a moment ago.’

‘Christine. Let me just check she’s all right. Would you like to go and make sure your son’s managing to dress himself, and then we’ll make you an appointement for next week?’

He excused himself and went down the corridor. She was just crossing the hall when he came back, looking distinctly harrassed.

‘Problems?’ she said instantly, searching his face for clues.

He rammed his hands through his hair. ‘You might say that. Miss Wright, have you ever delivered a baby before?’

Judith froze for a moment. A baby? Oh, Lord, no, don’t let her have to get involved with a delivery. Not after the disaster of Edward’s birth…

‘Well? Have you?’

‘Only Woody,’ she told him automatically.

His brow creased in puzzlement, but he moved on. ‘I’ll call an ambulance, but if you could go through there and talk to her? I think things are moving really very fast and she’s a bit scared.’

She wasn’t alone, Judith thought. She forced herself to walk down the corridor on legs like jelly. Please, God, don’t let this be happening to me, she thought. Let him be wrong.

He wasn’t. She found the woman lying on a comfy sofa, propped against one arm with her feet braced against the other—her face contorted with the effort of expulsion.

Judith didn’t even have time to wash her hands, never mind make any kind of preparation for a sterile environment. She squeezed Christine’s hand briefly, hitched up her dress and pulled down the tights and pants that the woman had tried—and failed—to remove. As Hugh came back into the room she was perched on the side of the sofa, the baby’s head cradled in her hands, with no time to worry about her part in all this.

‘Here,’ Hugh murmured and, hitching Christine up a fraction, he slid a thick, soft towel under her, put his arm round her shoulders and let her hang onto his hand as the next contraction seized her in its grip.

‘Aagh…’ she groaned, tucking her chin down and straining.

Judith smiled at her. ‘You’re doing fine, Christine. Nice and gently. Just take it steady. Well done.’ Heavens, was that her? She was talking on autopilot, functioning on two entirely different levels. God forbid that Christine should see the other level—she’d have hysterics!

Judith looked down at her hands. The baby’s head lay there, streaked and smeared, the mass of dark hair pressed damply against the tiny skull. As Christine pushed the baby seemed to squirm and turn and twist in Judith’s hands. Suddenly not only a head but a body lay there in her hands, tiny, dark red and utterly furious.

The blood-curdling yell was the most wonderful thing she had ever heard—second only to the siren of the ambulance which arrived at the same time, relieving her of the responsibility for the baby’s welfare and any further part in its delivery.

‘Thank God,’ Hugh muttered beside her and, releasing Christine, he went to let them in. Judith lifted the baby up and laid him across Christine’s now-soft abdomen. ‘It’s a boy,’ she said, her voice choked with tears, and as the ambulancemen came in she went over to the sink, washing her hands as if she could take away the memory of the last wet, squalling newborn she had held.

His cry had been the same. Her joy in a new life had been the same. It was only later that she’d discovered how different he was to be…

Hugh appeared behind her, his hands cupping her shoulders with a gentle squeeze of support and thanks and all the other tumbling emotions childbirth brought kicking and screaming to the surface. ‘All right?’

‘Yes.’ Surprisingly, her voice was steady. Now there’s a miracle if you like, she thought. ‘It’s a boy,’ she said unnecessarily.

‘I know. Thanks for your help.’

She looked up at him, her eyes still misting with tears. ‘It’s all right,’ she said, although it wasn’t. Not for her—and not for Woody.

Hugh looked searchingly at her for a moment, then his hand came up and brushed her cheek. She was surprised to feel a tremor in his fingers. ‘Do you want to go and make sure Woody’s all right?’ he suggested, as if he could read her mind. ‘He may be a bit concerned.’

She nodded, smiled absently at the busy ambulancemen and fled down the corridor. She arrived in the hall to find her son there with another woman behind him. She smiled at them both, a little stronger now she was away from the scene in the kitchen.

‘No Christine?’ the woman said.

‘No—she’s just had her baby—that’s why the ambulance is here.’

‘Here? She’s had it here? Oh, how wonderful!’ the woman exclaimed, obviously delighted. ‘Everything all right?’

Judith forced a smile. ‘Seems to be.’ Funny, she couldn’t share the woman’s enthusiasm.

‘Oh, do give her my best wishes. I’m Mrs Jennings, by the way. I’ll go through and wait, shall I? Oh, how exciting!’

‘Fine. Thank you.’ She turned to Woody. ‘OK, love?’

He nodded. ‘Yeah—much better. I take it the receptionist had her baby just this minute?’ he murmured.

She nodded. ‘Yes, that’s right. A boy. He looked so much like you—’

She broke off, unable to continue along that line of thought, but as usual Woody didn’t miss a trick.

‘Mum, it wasn’t your fault,’ he began, and then Hugh arrived.

‘Sorry about that,’ he said with a rather bemused smile. ‘Babies have a way of arriving when it suits them. Um—let’s have a look and see if we can make you an appointment for Monday, Edward—oh, excuse me—’ He picked up the ringing phone. ‘Good afternoon. Hugh Barber speaking. Can I help you?’

It took three tries before he managed to look at the appointment book without interruptions, by which time he was looked fairly ragged and Judith was wondering if they would ever get away.

‘This is ridiculous,’ he muttered when the phone disturbed them yet again. ‘Let’s ignore it.’

Judith reached out and covered his hand, stilling him for a second. ‘Can’t you get her replacement in early?’

He snorted. ‘What replacement? I’m so busy I haven’t even got round to advertising her post again yet. Finding someone of the right calibre to handle confidential information is never easy, and the last crop of applicants was dismal.’ He snatched up the phone. ‘Barber.’

A job. My God, she thought, it’s a job, right here in my lap!

‘I could do it for you,’ she offered quietly as he hung up the phone. ‘I’ve done a similar job before.’

He met her eyes, hope written ten feet tall all over his face. ‘Do you have the necessary skills?’

‘I think so. I can type, answer the phone, organise filing systems, use a computer or fax machine, do accounts, keep records—’

‘Stop! You’re hired. When can you start?’

The phone, which had been briefly silent, rang again.

She smiled and reached for the receiver. ‘How about now?’

Hugh was so relieved that he didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Since just after two, when Christine and her baby had been handed over to the care of the hospital, Woody had been ensconced in the snug in front of the television, he had been seeing patients and Judith—well, Judith had the place running like clockwork.

It had taken her about fifteen seconds to ask the questions she realised she needed to have answered, and after following his patients out and explaining things to her a time or two it dawned on him that his contribution was entirely unnecessary.

She was a natural. She dealt easily with the patients, she was warm and friendly but brisk enough to keep things moving; she offered a choice of two appointment times at the most, where the majority of people would have asked when they would like to come and given the patients enough rope to hang themselves. Not Judith. ‘Monday?’ she would say. ‘Ten-thirty or twelve?’

And that was that.

She was wonderful. She was also very distracting. He found himself thinking about her in entirely un-employer-like terms and often, after seeing a patient out and exchanging a few words with Judith, he would have to drag himself away to the next patient, conscious of sporting a silly grin but unable to do anything about it!

Damn, she made him feel good. He found himself humming at one point as he went into the kitchen in a lull to tidy up after the pandemonium, only to find her in there, too, having already done it. ‘I was just going to bring you a cup of tea,’ she said with a smile, and left him in there with it while she went to check Woody.

And Hugh, sitting down on the now-cushionless sofa with his cup of tea, hummed cheerfully and thought that life was pretty damn good. He’d solved his maternity leave problem, Judith was employed and therefore able to support herself and Woody, Christine had had a lovely healthy baby and they had all survived the experience. And he had managed to end up working alongside the most attractive woman he had met in years.

Yup. Things were definitely looking up.

Judith couldn’t believe her luck. She’d got a job! And not just any old job, either. She was working with people in a caring profession, which suited her much better than being trapped alone in an office all day or stuck at a VDU screen, tapping in numbers in a noisy, open-plan office complex, and she was in such lovely surroundings, too. From her position at the gorgeous antique desk she had so much admired she could see out into the front garden, which was a blaze of colour after the dry summer. The recent rains had started everything off again and the flowers were picking up, ready for the autumn flush. The roses were lovely, the Michaelmas daisies were just opening with brilliant spots of rich purply-blue against the green and the plants in pots and tubs around the door were full and lush and tumbling down towards the ground. Just sitting there looking at it all made her feel so much better.

To be paid for the privilege seemed almost superfluous.

As for the job itself, she was really enjoying it so far, and once Hugh had time to show her the ropes and introduce her to the computer system he used for patient records she could be of some real use in the little office behind his consulting room.