- -
- 100%
- +
Caroline Anderson
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Epilogue
Copyright
CHAPTER ONE
HE WAS all man.
From the soft, gleaming strands of his almost black hair, down past the frankly assessing, clear blue eyes, over the stubborn chin, the very male throat, the cluster of dark curls that crowded the V of his theatre pyjamas, down again, past the broad shoulders and deep chest, the lean hips propped negligently against the table, over long, strong legs to the big white antistatic boots that clad his feet, he was completely, entirely, unequivocally a man.
He threw back his head and laughed at something the ward sister said, and Charlotte swallowed. That laugh, rich, deep, full of enjoyment—this was clearly a man who reached out and seized what life had to offer.
She just hoped to God he didn’t think she was on the menu, because he was also a work colleague, and as the senior registrar, probably more her boss than the consultant would be. They would work closely together—sometimes very closely, she thought, and a moan rose in her throat, threatening to suffocate her.
No! her mind screamed. Why not a woman? Or a wimp? Or one of those safely married, charming but very non-threatening men that the department was lousy with?
Why him? And why her, for God’s sake? What had she done to deserve it?
He tipped back his head and drained the cup in his hand, and she watched, riveted, as that masculine throat worked.
He dropped the paper cup in the bin and turned to the ward sister, saying something to her.
Charlotte missed the words, hearing only the voice—deep, mellow, like bitter chocolate, it seemed to melt inside her, swirling into the deepest recesses of her subconscious, calling to something long-buried and detrimental to her peace of mind.
The ward sister turned towards her and said something, but she couldn’t focus on it. All her senses were in confusion, her whole psyche thrown into chaos by his voice.
She heard the voice again, but this time, she realised, addressing her.
‘Earth calling Charlotte—come in, please.’
She looked up—straight into that mesmerising blue gaze. She swallowed again. ‘Mr Parry—I’m sorry, I was miles away.’
A smile—slow, teasing, too damned understanding—touched his lips, lending them a sensuous curve. ‘I noticed. I hope this isn’t an omen, Dr Jennings?’
‘Omen?’ she croaked.
‘Yes—a portent of things to come.’ He shrugged lazily away from the table, growing even taller. ‘I hope,’ he said slowly as he approached her, ‘that your concentration is usually a little sharper?’
‘Um—much.’ She came to an abrupt halt, backed up against the door-frame.
‘Good. I’m going round the ward in ten minutes, when I’ve got out of this fancy dress. You’ve just got time to acquaint yourself with the notes. Oh, and by the way …’
‘Yes?’ The word sounded strangled.
‘Call me William.’
She drew in a breath as he squeezed past her in the doorway.
The breath lodged, then eased out slowly in a deep, anguished sigh as he strode out of sight. He hadn’t touched her—not quite—and yet every nerve-ending had been alerted to his nearness. Though why she should feel anything—and how she could, after all that had happened—escaped her fuddled senses.
‘I should stir your stumps,’ the ward sister told her, cutting through her reverie at a stroke, and pushed the notes trolley towards her. ‘He’s got the patience of a saint with the mums, but with the medical staff he can be a bit of a tartar. You’re looking for the notes with the blue tabs.’
And she left her to it. Rapidly, feeling the imminent press of time and not wishing to be on the wrong side of such an overwhelmingly powerful personality, Charlotte dived into the notes. She was still reading when there was a firm, light tread in the corridor and a shadow darkened the door.
‘OK?’
‘Um—yes. Who are you seeing?’
‘No one at the moment. How about you?’
She stared at him blankly. ‘What?’
He grinned and propped his hip on the table, disturbingly close to her.
‘I thought you were getting straight to the point,’ he teased, and it dawned on her that he had deliberately misread her question.
Hot colour chased up her cheeks, and she ducked her head so that her dark hair slid round her face and concealed her embarrassment.
‘Don’t be silly,’ she mumbled, and she heard a low chuckle.
‘Ah, Charlotte, don’t spoil my fun. It’s been a lousy weekend—aren’t I even allowed to tease you a little? How about a smile—just a tiny one, for me?’
She was over-reacting, of course. She knew that, but some sorts of conditioning went so deep they were difficult to set aside. Still, try as she might the smile refused to come.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said quietly. ‘My social skills are a little rusty.’
His face was still smiling, but his eyes were searching, piercing, analysing.
She felt naked inside, and she looked away awkwardly. ‘Which patients are you seeing this morning?’ she tried again.
‘Ah. Well, let’s see all of them, shall we? Have you had time to skim through the notes?’
‘Only briefly. I wouldn’t like to have to make any decisions or judgements based on what I’ve had time to read,’ she said hastily.
‘Don’t worry,’ he assured her. ‘I wouldn’t expect you to in your first few days. This morning is all obstetrics—a couple of postnatal checks after the weekend, three mums going home who need an OK for discharge, and an antenatal—a woman we’re inducing. I want to see how she’s getting on. Then at ten we’ve got a short theatre list—two elective Caesarian sections and a cervical suture to remove. Then lunch, a quick flit round the gynae ward and a clinic this afternoon, then back to the ward to check the section mums and have a cuddle with the babies.’
She glanced up at him in surprise. ‘A cuddle?’
His grin was slow and lazy. ‘Oh, I always try and find time for a cuddle.’
Her pulse unaccountably thumped, and her eyes were drawn to the strong, long-fingered hands that lay linked in his lap. What would it feel like to be cradled by those hands?
Safe.
Her eyes pricked with tears, and she turned away, dropping the notes back into the trolley.
‘Sounds like a busy day. Perhaps we’d better get started.’
It was busy—hectic, even. Her knowledge of obstetrics was scant and almost all theoretical. When William told her to reach into the opened uterus at the second Caesarian section and lift out the tiny, slippery infant, she thought for sure she would drop it.
The midwife standing by quickly took over, lifting the baby over the drapes and showing him to his delighted mother and father before cleaning him up and clamping the cord after William had removed the placenta. His father then held the baby while William checked the uterus for any fragments and closed up, swiftly and efficiently.
Through it all Charlotte stood rooted to the spot, her eyes fixed on the wall opposite, and when they wheeled the woman out and went to change she walked into the staff lounge in the theatre suite and dropped into a chair, still stunned.
That baby had felt so—oh, dear God, so tiny, so fragile, so precious in her hands——
‘You’ll learn more, faster, if you watch me instead of the clock,’ a dry voice said from just above her.
She glanced up. He looked serious, angry even, for some reason. She looked away.
The clock?’ she said blankly.
‘Yes—the clock. You were watching it as if you expected it to explode or drop off the wall or something.’
‘I didn’t even see a clock,’ she told him. ‘It was just …’
She felt his anger recede, and he dropped to his haunches in front of her. ‘Was it the operation itself? Did you feel queasy?’
She shook her head. ‘No, it was …’ She struggled to explain her confused feelings. ‘I’ve never taken part in a delivery before. It’s the first time in my life that my hands have been the first to touch another human being. It just—hit me.’
She looked up, meeting those shatteringly blue eyes, and was relieved to see his expression gentle as understanding dawned. His hand covered hers, hard and strong and warm—safe, as she had expected. His voice softened.
‘It’s wonderful, isn’t it? Your first baby—rather like your first kiss, or the first time you fall in love. No other delivery will be quite so special—the first time you do a straightforward vaginal delivery on your own without me around to take over and interfere will be pretty special, too.’
‘But that very first touch will never happen again,’ she said softly, and his fingers tightened, squeezing her hand in recognition of her tumbled emotions.
‘No. No delivery will ever be quite so significant again.’ He stood up. ‘OK, we’ve got a suture to remove now—a woman with an incompetent cervix who habitually aborts at four months. We’ve managed to keep her going this time, and she’s really excited.’
‘When will she go into labour?’
He laughed. ‘Probably before she leaves the theatre. She’s had the odd twinge in the last few days, so although she’s still not due for a fortnight we thought we’d take it out. It’s not her first full-term delivery—they’ve got a boy of seven—so her pelvic floor won’t hold her up for long, I don’t suppose!’
They scrubbed again, gowned up and went back into the operating-room. The lady was just being wheeled through the doors, her face slightly apprehensive. She smiled when she saw William, and he walked over to her and stood beside her head.
‘OK, Penny?’
‘Bit nervous.’
‘Don’t be. It may be a little uncomfortable—just do your breathing exercises and think of the baby.’
‘Oh, don’t,’ she said with a shaky laugh. ‘I hardly dare.’
‘What? Silly girl, you’ll be fine, and so will the babe.’
‘I wonder what it is?’ she said thoughtfully. ‘I’ve tried so hard not to think about it, just in case …’
‘Well, let’s get the suture out and you’ll soon know the answer, won’t you?’
The nursing staff positioned the woman in the lithotomy stirrups, and then William sat himself down between her legs and held out his hand.
The scrub nurse passed him a speculum liberally smeared with gynacological jelly.
‘This might be a bit chilly,’ he warned the patient, and then deftly inserted it and opened the jaws.
‘Here, Charlotte, can you see the end of the suture?’
She could, just about, by bending down and putting her head right beside his. She felt the slight scrape of his stubble against her cheek, and forced herself to concentrate. At the top of the vagina, right up where the cervix passed through the vaginal wall, she could just make out a little tail of thick silk.
‘It looks fairly inaccessible.’
‘Long instruments,’ he told her, then added with a chuckle, ‘Getting it out’s the easy bit. Getting them in there is much more of a challenge!’
The scrub nurse handed him a pair of forceps. He located them on the free end of the suture and tugged, then, using a pair of special scissors, he wriggled one blade under the knot.
‘Ooo, that hurts,’ the patient said tentatively.
‘Sorry. Just try and relax, Penny, we’re nearly there.’ He closed the handles of the scissors, and Charlotte saw the cervix slowly blossom as he drew out the thick piece of silk. ‘That’s it, all done.’ He checked the cervix again, then withrew the speculum and stood up. ‘OK?’
She smiled shakily. ‘Is that it?’
‘Yup. You can go and have your baby now, but give us time for a quick cup of coffee, eh?’
She didn’t. From the moment the suture was released her cervix was dilating rapidly, and when Charlotte and William went back down to the ward twenty minutes later they heard the squalling cry of a new baby coming from the delivery-room.
‘She can’t have done it that quickly,’ Charlotte said in amazement.
‘Unless we’ve had another admission during the time we were in theatre, she has,’ William said, and stuck his head round the delivery-room door.
‘Penny?’
‘Oh, Mr Parry—she’s a girl. Come and see!’
Charlotte followed him in, to see a tiny, delicate little baby cradled against the woman’s bare breast. Tears were streaming down her cheeks, and her husband beside her was fighting with his emotions.
Charlotte didn’t bother.
‘She’s gorgeous,’ she said, her voice choked. ‘Well done.’
William looked startled for a second, then grinned.
‘Well, well, well,’ he said softly, and Charlotte felt like kicking him. Why shouldn’t she share their happiness?
She watched as he stared down at the baby and smiled, and then ruffled the woman’s hair gently. ‘Clever girl,’ he murmured. ‘How are you feeling?’
‘Wonderful.’
Her husband looked stunned. ‘We never thought we’d make it,’ he said, still choked. ‘But she’s here, alive and well—thanks to you.’
William grinned self-consciously. ‘We aim to please,’ he told them.
After a few more moments of admiration and praise, he opened the door for Charlotte and followed her out into the corridor.
‘Don’t say a thing,’ she warned, scrubbing the tears from her cheeks, and he laughed, his breath soft and warm against her neck.
‘Would I?’
‘I don’t know. Very probably.’
He chuckled. ‘Rumbled. Oh, well. How about some lunch and then we’ve got this clinic to do?’
They had just settled down to their lunch when his bleep squawked.
‘Oh, hell,’ he muttered, and, cramming a mouthful in, he stood up and crossed the room in a few quick strides. There was a phone on the wall and he picked it up, dialled the switchboard and spoke.
Charlotte watched him, fascinated by the play of emotions across his face, the way the light from the window highlighted the breadth of his shoulders and the straight, square set of his legs, feet planted firmly on the floor.
He was a very attractive man, and by his own admission seeing no one at the moment. A few years ago, Charlotte would have picked up on his interest, the mild flirting, the odd teasing remark, and she might have seen where it would lead them.
Now she felt oddly threatened by his attraction to her, and even more so by her attraction to him. That was much more dangerous.
Still, it was only a matter of degree and there was nothing that could persuade her to get involved with him, no matter how attractive.
Once bitten, and all that.
He was coming back towards her now, waving at someone and greeting them with a laughing remark.
Her heart twisted. What would it be like, she wondered, to be so universally popular? Everyone she had seen that morning had seemed to like him, from the ward sister through the theatre staff to every patient they had come across.
Now she saw him with his colleagues, pausing to exchange a quick word with Alex Carter, head of another obs and gynae firm. Charlotte had seen Alex about the hospital and always thought he looked rather severe, but he didn’t look severe now, laughing at something William had said.
He rejoined her then, sliding into his seat and tossing her a grin. ‘Patient we started inducing last night with a prostaglandin pessary is getting close. When we’ve eaten we’ll go and have a quick gander at her, and then we can go and start the gynae clinic. OK?’
She hoped so. Surely he wouldn’t leave her either with the delivery or the gynae clinic—not on her first day in the department?
‘Do you expect any problems?’ she asked.
‘No. Straightforward delivery, hopefully, but she’s had a few problems in her pregnancy and we’ve been watching her closely.’
Charlotte’s heart sank. ‘Problems?’
He waved a fork. ‘Nothing drastic, just a bit of a blood-pressure hike. She’ll be fine.’
Charlotte hoped so. She didn’t fancy doing her first delivery on a patient with pre-eclamptic toxaemia!
She finished her modest meal and watched as William hastily swallowed the last of his huge portion of chicken tikka, gulped down a cup of coffee and picked up the sticky bun off the tray.
‘I’ll eat this as we walk,’ he told her, and tore a chunk off it with large, even teeth.
Good grief, he was so physical, she thought helplessly as she followed him back, struggling to keep up with his long, easy stride. His feet ate up the corridors as surely as those gleaming white teeth disposed of the bun, and almost as rapidly.
By the time they arrived at the lift that would take them to the ward, he had finished the bun and she was breathing hard.
‘Are you unfit?’ he asked her, watching her chest rise and fall with interest.
‘No—my legs are shorter than yours,’ she retorted, and he tipped his head on one side and pretended to study them.
‘So they are—but somewhat more elegant. Pretty ankles.’
She blushed, and he grinned and ushered her into the open lift. The doors slid shut, and she was suddenly aware of the close confines and the overwhelming presence of this big and very attractive man.
She turned away, making a pretence of looking in the mirror and tucking an escaping strand of glossy brown hair back behind her ear. She would have to take it down and put it all up again before the clinic.
She felt him watching her, and as she glanced up in the mirror her violet-blue eyes met his bright cornflower gaze and locked; for a long moment he said nothing, then the lift slowed and the doors opened to admit a gaggle of laughing nurses.
‘Hello, William,’ they chorused, and he grinned at them.
‘Hello, ladies. All well?’
He chatted easily to them as they went up to the ward, and Charlotte felt the tension in her ease. Then the doors swished open and with an impersonal hand that felt like a branding iron he ushered her out of the lift.
His hand fell away naturally as they cleared the door, but Charlotte could feel its imprint in the small of her back for what seemed like hours. Her heart sinking, she realised that he was a toucher, one of those people who didn’t shy away from physical contact but touched and patted and hugged as easily as most people breathed.
For Charlotte, who found all but the most necessary physical contact almost threatening, working with him would be difficult in the extreme. Once again she wondered how on earth she was going to cope.
The woman didn’t require any assistance from them for her delivery, but William was called to repair the tear in her perineum after the gynae clinic, and he turned it into a lesson for Charlotte.
Somewhat shy herself, she wondered how the woman would cope with having two of them discussing such an intimate area of her body, but William laughed and chatted and smiled at her over the drapes, and talked constantly about the baby while he worked, so there was no possibility of any shyness or inhibition.
He was so natural, such an easy communicator, and Charlotte found herself relaxing as she watched over his shoulder.
‘Can you see the different muscle layers underneath?’ he asked her at one point, and she had to steady herself against his shoulders as she leaned forward. She could feel the bones of his shoulder beneath her hand, and the solid column of his spine against her body.
‘I think so. Which groups are they?’ she asked him, and was annoyed that her voice was a trifle breathless.
He pointed out the various muscles by name, and then showed her where the muscle fibres had separated. ‘See—there’s a little tear here. You have to be careful not to miss that sort of thing or you can leave the patient susceptible to a prolapse of the posterior wall of the vagina—and we don’t want that, do we, Karen?’
‘Certainly not,’ the patient replied with a laugh, and Charlotte watched as he drew the torn muscle layers together with soluble sutures.
‘There. The skin is the easy bit, but because the area is so well-supplied with nerves you don’t want too many knots, and you have to be careful not to put them in too tight or when the tissues swell they hurt like the dickens, don’t they?’
‘I couldn’t sit down for weeks with the first,’ Karen agreed.
‘Ah, well, you had a large episiotomy, if I remember rightly from our previous conversation.’
That’s right—he was a breech.’
‘How old is he now?’ William asked conversationally as he put in a subcutaneous running suture.
As they chatted, Charlotte watched with interest and not a little trepidation. Would she be able to repeat this procedure with his guidance? Because one thing was certain—he wasn’t going to be able to spoon-feed her forever.
Within a very short time the suturing was finished and William slid back the stool and rolled his head on his neck, standing up and stretching.
‘All done,’ he told the patient, and stripped off his gloves. ‘Now, I need a cuddle with this baby—if I may?’
The woman laughed. ‘Be my guest—actually, I wouldn’t mind a cuddle with him myself.’
‘I’ll bring him to you,’ William promised. He washed his hands, dried them and went over to where the nurse was just finishing the baby’s bath.
‘Hello, little chap,’ he said softly. ‘May I?’
The nurse nodded, and Charlotte watched, fascinated, as William’s big hands slid round under the baby and lifted him confidently into the crook of his arm.
As the baby’s cheek brushed against the fabric of William’s white coat, he turned towards the big man, his tiny mouth open, searching.
‘He’s rooting—here, I think he wants to be fed.’
The midwife propped the woman up into a sitting position, and then William perched on the bed and passed the baby to his mother.
‘Hello, my darling,’ she crooned softly, and, lifting her gown, she settled the baby expertly at her breast.
In seconds the room was filled with the rhythmic sucking sound, and they left the happy pair alone to their blissful feed. As they walked back up the ward together, William glanced at the clock on the wall.
‘Just after six. Not bad, for a day that was supposed to end at five.’
‘When did it start?’ she asked him.
He laughed. ‘Oh, two this morning—and yesterday finished just before midnight.’ He paused at the door.
‘Fancy a drink?’
She shook her head. ‘No, thanks—I’ve got a pounding headache.’
‘Maybe another time,’ he said, and, turning away, he thrust the door out of his way with the flat of his hand and strode quickly towards the lift. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow,’ he threw over his shoulder.
She watched him go thoughtfully. She hadn’t lied. She did have the most frightful headache, but there was more to her refusal than that.
She made her way home, weary, her mind full of the new things she had seen and done—her first delivery of sorts, the gynae clinic, the happy mothers with their babies—and William, of course, larger than life, full of warmth and compassion, his skilled hands steady, strong and yet gentle.
She regretted not going for a drink with him. It might have been fun, and one quick drink wasn’t going to affect their relationship.
Still, it was too late now, and probably just as well.