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With huge difficulty. Damn.
He turned his attention back to his coffee, and then she said quietly, ‘Thanks for covering for me so smoothly, by the way. Evan’s a stickler for punctuality, and he was getting all ready to flay me later.’
‘It was the least I could do. I was hardly going to throw you to the wolves for bailing me out—literally! And Evan doesn’t strike me as the friendliest of characters. He was pretty dismissive when you asked about that patient.’
A flicker of what could have been worry showed in her eyes. ‘Oh, he’s OK really. He can come over as a patronising jerk, but he’s a good doctor. He’s just a bit miffed that you got the job, I think. He was advised to apply for it, and I reckon he thought it was a shoo-in.’
‘And then they had to advertise it by law, and I applied. And with all due respect to Evan, I would imagine my CV knocks spots off his.’
‘Exactly. So he won’t welcome you with open arms, but you should be able to rely on him.’
He gave a choked laugh. ‘Well, that’s good to know.’
Her mouth twitched, and those mischievous green eyes were twinkling at him again. ‘So, I hope you’ve got some good ideas about what I was supposedly doing for you?’
He leant back in his chair and met her eyes with a twinkle of his own. ‘Oh, let’s say finding me some statistics on twins on the antenatal list. That should cover it. Anyway, I thought it was pretty good for a spur-of-the-moment thing. Sorry if it sounded a bit patronising, but I thought it was better than explaining I’d already had a shower in your bathroom,’ he said softly, and then felt his legs disintegrate when a soft wash of colour touched her cheeks.
He cleared his throat.
‘Tell me about Yoxburgh Park Hospital,’ he suggested hastily, and she collected herself and gave a tiny shrug.
‘It’s old and new, it’s on the site of the old lunatic asylum—’
‘How delightfully politically incorrect,’ he said drily, and she chuckled.
‘Isn’t it? Nearly as politically incorrect as locking up fifteen-year-old girls because their fathers or brothers had got them knocked up and if they were put away here for life then the family could pretend they’d gone mad and carry on as normal.’
‘Lovely.’
‘It was. It was a workhouse, really, and the pauper lunatic label was just a way of covering up what they were doing, apparently. I mean, who’s going to go near a lunatic asylum? You might end up inside, and so they got away with murder, literally. But life was cheap then, wasn’t it?’
‘So was building, which I guess is why the old Victorian part is so magnificent.’
‘Oh, absolutely, and the other plus side is that because they wanted it isolated, we’ve got glorious parkland all around us, tons of parking and plenty of room to expand. The locals have access to it for recreation, we have a lovely outlook—it couldn’t be better, and the hospital’s great. Quite a few areas of it are brand new and state of the art, like the maternity wing, and it’s earning an excellent reputation. We’ve got a bit of everything, but it’s still small enough to be friendly and it’s a good place to work. Everybody knows everybody.’
‘Is that necessarily a good thing?’
She gave a wry smile. ‘Not always. You wait till they find out we’re neighbours, for instance.’
‘You think they will?’
She laughed. ‘I give it three days—maybe less.’
Oh, that laugh! Musical, infectious—it was going to kill him. And then she flicked the tip of her tongue out and licked the icing off her lips, and his eyes zeroed in on them and locked.
‘So—guided tour?’ he suggested hastily, because if he had to sit there opposite her for very many more minutes, he was going to have to strap his hands down by his sides to stop himself reaching out and lifting that tiny smear of icing off the corner of her mouth with his fingertip.
‘Sure. Where do you want to start?’
‘Maternity Outpatients?’ he suggested wryly. ‘Then you can ask about the twins, so it’s not a lie, and there’s an antenatal clinic with my name on it later today, so
I’m told, and it would look better if I could find it.’ His eyes twinkled. ‘Can’t have me turning up late, clearly. Evan would have a field day with it.’
CHAPTER TWO
IT WAS a hectic day, with very little time to think about her new boss and neighbour.
She took Ben for a quick walk through the hospital—the antenatal clinic, as they’d discussed, and other key areas that he might need to visit as well as the location of the dry cleaners, and then armed with the twin statistics she took him back to the maternity unit and gave him a lightning tour of the department—the gynae, antenatal and postnatal wards, the labour ward, the theatre suite, SCBU as well, just for information, and then handed him over to Evan Jones on the dot of nine thirty and went back to the gynae ward to check her patients from last week. She had three to discharge before the afternoon antenatal clinic, then it was back to the antenatal ward and the young first-time mum with pre-eclampsia that she’d been worrying about.
Evan had said he’d already looked at her, but she wanted to see with her own eyes, and she was glad she did. Clare wasn’t looking so great. Her blood pressure was up, her feet and hands were more swollen and she was complaining of a slight headache.
Daisy had thought they should deliver her on Friday, Evan had wanted to give her longer for the sake of the baby. He’d won. And now it was looking as if it might have been the wrong thing to do.
‘Right, I want you much quieter,’ she told her softly, perching on the bed and taking Clare’s hand. ‘I guess you’ve had a bit of a busy weekend, and we’re going to have to slow things down for you and make you rest much more. So the telly’s going, the visits are down to hubby only, once a day, and I really want you to sleep, OK?’
‘I can’t. I’m too scared.’
‘You don’t need to be scared. We’re taking good care of you, and all you need to do is relax, Clare. I know it’s hard, but you just have to try and find that quiet place and let go, OK? Try for me?’
She nodded, rested her head back and closed her eyes.
‘Good girl. We’ll keep a close eye on you, and I’m tweaking your drugs a bit, and you should feel better soon. If anything changes or you feel unwell, press the bell, and I don’t want you out of bed for anything. OK?’
Clare nodded again, and Daisy left the room, closing the door silently behind her, and was repositioning the ‘Quiet, Please’ sign more prominently when she became aware of someone behind her.
‘Is this the woman you were concerned about?’ he said softly.
‘Yes—Clare Griffiths. She’s got pre-eclampsia.’ Daisy’s voice was a quiet murmur. ‘Actually, can I have a word with you about her?’
‘Sure.’
They walked away from the door, and Daisy filled him in. ‘I don’t know if she’s OK to leave. I was going to order another ultrasound. She’s only 32 weeks, and Evan wants the baby to have as long as possible, so I’ve told her not to move a muscle, to close her eyes and rest, but it’s easy to say and much harder to do, and today her hands and feet are more swollen and she’s complaining of a headache. She’s got a urinary catheter and we’re monitoring her fluid balance.’
‘Are those the notes?’
She handed him the file, and he scanned through it, and met her eyes. ‘Gut feeling?’
‘I think we’re going to end up delivering her today.’ She bit her lip. ‘I wanted to do it on Friday, but Evan—’
‘Evan wanted to wait. And you disagreed. He said something about that.’
She frowned. ‘What?’
‘Oh, just the implication that you were over-cautious.’
Daisy shrugged, disappointed that Evan had thought that rather than respecting her judgement, but maybe he’d been right. Maybe she was overreacting now. ‘Do you want to examine her?’
‘I thought you’d just done it?’
‘I have, but—’
‘But nothing. The notes tell me what I need to know. I don’t want to stress her by going in straight away. If she sees me, she’ll think she has to panic. And I trust you, Daisy.’
‘Is that wise? You know nothing about me.’
‘I know you’re thorough and meticulous with the notes. Evan thought you lacked confidence. That implies to me that you should have more confidence in your judgement, not less.’
She nodded and bit her lip. ‘OK. Well, we can watch her if you’re happy to. She’s had steroids, the baby’s as ready as it can be. I’m thinking that waiting much longer’s probably not an option but I could be wrong.’
‘Or you could be right. So alert Theatre, have SCBU on standby, order another ultrasound and hourly obs, and we’ll give the drugs time to work and wait and see. We aren’t fortune-tellers, we just have to watch and wait. Keep me up to speed.’
She nodded, and with an encouraging wink, he handed her back the notes and walked away.
There wasn’t time for lunch, and she arrived at the antenatal clinic at the same time as Ben and Evan.
They were seeing the tricky patients, the mums with known problems, and she was working her way steadily through the more routine cases and trying not to think about her new neighbour and boss when her pager bleeped.
Clare Griffiths. Damn. She must have deteriorated. Handing her patient over to the clinic midwife to refer to Evan, she went straight up to the ward and found Clare looking pale and sweaty. Her face was looking more bloated, and she was clearly wretched.
As soon as she saw her, Clare started to cry.
‘I’m so glad you’re here. My feet really hurt, and I can’t bend my fingers, my headache’s worse, and I can’t really see—there are flashing lights and it’s as if I’ve got worms wriggling about all over the inside of my eyes. I’m so scared.’
Retinal haemorrhages, Daisy thought, scanning the monitor and her test results and fluid balance. The ultrasound result showed that the baby hadn’t grown since the previous Thursday, and that meant it wasn’t getting enough nutrition. She perched on the bed and held her hand, feeling the difference in her fingers even in two short hours. Have more confidence, Ben had said, and he trusted her. Well, let’s hope I’m not overreacting now, she thought.
She rubbed her fingers soothingly. ‘Don’t be scared, Clare, we’re looking after you,’ she said, trying to inject some of that confidence into her voice, ‘but I’m afraid your blood pressure’s gone up again, and your blood results show your kidneys are struggling and the baby’s not growing. Let me call Mr Walker and ask him to come and look at you.’
‘Is this it?’ she asked, sniffing and looking even more worried. ‘Are you going to have to deliver me?’
‘I think so,’ Daisy told her honestly, and Clare swallowed.
‘But it’s so early—what about the baby?’ she asked, welling up again.
‘The baby should be all right, but if we leave it where it is it certainly won’t be, and nor will you. I’m sorry, Clare, we haven’t got any choice in this. I’ll get Mr Walker, and I’ll ring your husband and get him to come in. You might want him with you.’
She asked the midwife with them to prep her for Theatre, rang the antenatal clinic and then Clare’s husband, and two minutes later Ben was in with Clare examining her. To her relief he backed her without hesitation.
‘Dr Fuller’s absolutely right, Clare, we need to deliver your baby now. We’ll get the anaesthetist to do your epidural, and then we’ll take you into Theatre. You should start to feel better almost immediately, and we have lots of babies born at this stage without any problems. We’ll go and scrub, and we’ll see you in Theatre in a minute. And don’t worry. I know it feels scary, but it’s pretty routine for us, and we’ll look after you.’
His smile was kind, his manner firm and confident, and Daisy felt herself relaxing. He was right, it was routine, but Clare had every right to be scared, and he’d been good with her. Very good. It was the first time she’d seen Ben with a patient, and any reservations she might have had about their new man disappeared instantly.
‘Do you feel ready to lead?’ he asked Daisy as they scrubbed. ‘I want that baby out fast—I think she’s heading for a crisis so I don’t think we should hang about. Are you up to it, or would you rather I did it this time?’
‘Will you? Not because I don’t think I can, but because I know you can, and it’s not about pride, it’s about Clare and her baby.’
He gave a gentle, understanding laugh and turned the tap off with his elbow.
‘Wise words. Right, let’s go.’
He was slick, and Daisy was glad she’d opted to assist rather than lead. His hands were deft and confident, and within moments, it seemed, he had their baby cradled securely in his fingers, his tiny mewling cry music to their ears.
‘Hello, little one, welcome to the world,’ he said softly, and then met Clare’s eyes over the drapes. ‘You’ve got a son,’ he said, smiling, ‘and he’s looking good.’
He was—small but strong, and after a brief introduction to Clare and her flustered and emotional husband, he was whisked away to SCBU and they were able concentrate on Clare.
As much as Daisy was able to concentrate on anything except those strong, capable hands that worked so deftly, and the magnetic blue eyes that from time to time met and held her gaze over their masks for just a fraction of a second longer than necessary …
Ben made it back just in time for the plumber. He’d left Daisy settling Clare back onto the ward after he’d kept an eye on her in Recovery and then gone back to his antenatal clinic, and then she’d paged him with a message that she’d collected his suit and Clare was fine.
Brilliant.
He walked through the door, stripping off his tie and hanging his jacket on the end of the banister, and before he had time to do anything else there was a knock on the door behind him.
The man on the doorstep had a toolbox in his hand, and reassuringly grubby fingers. ‘Steve, the plumber? Daisy said you’d got problems.’
The temptation to laugh hysterically nearly overwhelmed him. ‘You might say that,’ he offered drily, and took Steve through to the kitchen.
Daisy let herself into the house, hung up his suit, kicked off her shoes and fed the cat. She could hear Ben moving around next door, and she sat down at the table and signed the card she’d got for him in the supermarket, propped it up against the bottle of bubbly she’d also bought and ran upstairs to shower. The bath was calling her, but she was too hungry to dawdle and she wanted to know how Ben had got on with Steve.
She rubbed herself briskly dry and went back into her bedroom. Jeans? Or sweats?
Jeans, she decided, running the hairdryer over her hair and brushing it through. Jeans and a pretty top, because a girl had her pride and he’d seen her in a dressing gown covered in tea, in her gardening clothes, in her professional ‘trust me, I’m a doctor’ clothes, and when she popped round with his housewarming present it would be the first time she could show him who she really was.
Which was ridiculous, because she was all of those things, and in any case, why the hell did it matter what he thought of what she was wearing? He was divorced, with no doubt all sorts of emotional baggage. And he was her neighbour, and her boss. Three very good reasons why she should keep him at arm’s length and have as little to do with him as possible, she reminded herself fiercely.
And washing her hair and leaving it down was all part of shedding the working day, she told herself. Shoes off, hair down, sweats on.
Except in this case it was jeans, and a pretty top, and the makeup she hadn’t had time to put on first thing, because a girl had her pride.
‘Oh!’
The knock on the door made her jump, and she swiped the blob of mascara off the side of her nose and ran downstairs, pulling the door open.
He was propped against the inside of her porch, one ankle crossed over the other, hands in his pockets and wearing a pair of jeans and a cotton shirt that looked incredibly soft. She really wanted to touch it.
He smiled at her and shrugged away from the wall, and she folded her arms and propped herself up on the door frame and tried not to grin like an idiot. ‘So how did you get on?’ she asked.
‘Fine. He was amazing. He fixed it in two minutes, he’s coming on Monday to fit a new suite and he’s getting me a plasterer. And an electrician’s already been and fitted a temporary light, so at least I can see in the kitchen, even if I can’t really use it.’
‘Told you he was good. Any idea why it happened?’
‘The bath trap had pulled apart. He thought the seal might have perished, but you’d think the previous owner would have found that out.’
She shook her head. ‘Mrs Leggatt couldn’t get upstairs.
She washed in a bowl the whole time I knew her, and she never had visitors. She used the shower downstairs before that, she said.’
‘Did she? Well, that doesn’t work, either, which might explain the bowl.’
‘Not having much luck, are you?’ She shifted and smiled at him, ridiculously aware of his strong, muscled body just a foot or so away. ‘I was going to come and see you later to find out how you got on. I’ve got your suit and a little something to try and compensate for the horrendous start. Come on in.’
He followed her, and she handed him the bottle and the card. ‘It’s nothing special, but I thought it might help to balance things out.’ He gave a quizzical smile, and shook his head slowly. ‘Ah, Daisy, I think you’ve done far more than a bottle of bubbly ever could. I just can’t thank you enough for today,’ he said softly. ‘You’ve been amazing. Bless you.’
She felt her cheeks heat, and flashed him a quick smile before turning away and heading for the kitchen. ‘It was nothing,’ she said, grabbing the kettle like a lifeline and shoving it under the tap. ‘You’re welcome. To be honest, I’m hugely relieved you aren’t a property developer or crazy DIY-er who’s going to do something awful to devalue my house! Well, at least I hope you’re not.’
He chuckled. ‘Well, I’ll try not to, but I’m not having much luck so far! This is a lovely house, though. It gives me hope for mine.’
‘They’ve both got most of their original features. That’s really rare. I hope you’re going to keep them?’
‘Oh, definitely. That was one of the reasons I bought it. Luckily I’d budgeted for the kitchen and bathroom.’ His mouth quirked, and she felt her heart hitch. It was ridiculous! They’d been working together all day without a problem, but here, in the intimate setting of her kitchen …
‘So—how’s Clare now?’
‘Fine,’ she said, clutching the change of topic like a lifeline. Work she could deal with. ‘She’s settling, her blood pressure’s already coming down, her urine output’s up and she’s feeling a lot better. And the baby’s doing well.’
‘Good. For what it’s worth and off the record, I would have delivered her on Friday, too, looking at the notes in more detail. Just in case she’d flared up at the weekend. She was lucky.’
She spun round, eyes wide, and stared at him. He agreed with her? ‘Really?’
‘Really. You were justifiably cautious.’
She felt something warm unfurling inside her, and she smiled. ‘Thank you,’ she said softly.
‘My pleasure. Have you eaten?’
‘No. I picked up a ready meal on the way home and I’m just about to cook it, but it’s only enough for one or I’d offer to share. Sorry.’
‘Don’t worry. I was going to take you out. I owe you dinner, remember?’
She flushed again. ‘Ben, I was joking.’
‘Well, I wasn’t, and you’d be doing me a favour. I’ve got no food in the house, my kitchen’s destroyed and I’m starving. I haven’t eaten anything today except that sticky bun, and low blood sugar makes me grumpy.’
‘Oh, well, we wouldn’t want you grumpy,’ she said, going belly-up with a grin, and tried to tell herself she was only doing it as a favour to her boss and her pathetically easy submission was nothing to do with those gorgeous blue eyes, or the rippling muscles she’d seen as he’d pulled off his scrub top on the way through to the changing rooms after he’d delivered Clare.
Nothing to do with that at all …
They went to the bistro on the waterfront.
It had uninterrupted views of the sea, good food and it was close enough to walk to.
Not that they could see the sea, really, this late in the evening, but they could hear it as they walked along the prom, the soft rush of the waves surging up the shore, the suck on the shingle as the water receded, and they could smell it, the tang of salt sharp in the moist air.
‘I love the sea,’ she told him. ‘I don’t think I could live anywhere landlocked.’
‘You want to try the Yorkshire Dales. It takes a good hour or more to get to the coast.’
‘But it’s worth it when you get there, surely? Doesn’t Yorkshire have lovely beaches?’
‘Oh, yes. Gorgeous. And Lancashire, on the west coast. It’s just a bit of an expedition. London wasn’t any better.’
‘Is that where you’ve just come from?’ she asked, trying not to be nosy but failing.
He grinned, his teeth flashing white in the streetlights. ‘For my sins. How about you? Are you Yoxburgh born and bred?’
‘No. I’ve only been here two years. I’ve got a friend working here, and she persuaded me to come.’
‘Good move?’
‘Oh, yes, for all sorts of reasons. Nice town, and the hospital’s great, much nicer to work in than my previous one, and—well, further from someone I needed space from.’
Now why had she brought that up? Idiot! She could see the question forming in his eyes, but she was saved from having to explain by their arrival at the restaurant, and by the time they were seated and the waiter had given them menus and water and a basket of warm, squashy bread, they’d moved on.
Thankfully.
‘So why obstetrics?’ he asked her, reaching for the bread.
‘I love it. Less keen on the gynae, except some of the surgery’s quite interesting and technically challenging, but mostly it’s the babies. Making a difference, saving such vulnerable little lives—I’m a sucker for it. The friend I told you about’s a midwife, and I guess she influenced me a bit. You?’
He shrugged. ‘All sorts of reasons, really. My father’s a vet and my brother and I used to go out with him on calls sometimes when we were kids. We helped with the lambing and the calving, and sometimes there’d be a foal, and I just loved it. And of course all the cats and dogs had litters, and we always watched them giving birth, and my mother’s a midwife, so when I went into medicine it just seemed the obvious choice. My brother’s an obstetrician, too, but he’s a bit more focussed on his career than me.’ He gave a wry smile. ‘It’s been a bit difficult recently. Life sort of threw a spanner in the works.’
‘That’s divorce for you,’ she said without thinking, and could have bitten her tongue off, but he just shrugged again and smiled sadly.
‘Yes, it is. Are you divorced?’
‘Me? No! Single and proud of it,’ she lied. Well, not about the single part, because she was, profoundly, since Mike had walked away, but she wasn’t proud of it. She was more—well, lonely, really, she admitted, but she’d rather be single than in the situation she’d been in. And for all the difference it would have made, in many ways she felt divorced. Would have been, if Mike had ever got round to asking her to marry him instead of just stringing her along for years. She scraped up a chirpy grin. ‘Mad spinster lady, that’s what I am. Didn’t you notice the cat?’
‘I thought you had to have more than one to be a mad spinster?’ he said softly, his eyes searching even though there was a smile teasing his lips, and she felt her heart turn over.
No! No no no no no!
‘Oh, well, I’ve only got the one, so that’s all right, then, I’m not a spinster, just mad,’ she said lightly, and turned her attention to the menu. Fast.
Ben watched her. She was distracted, not concentrating. The menu was the right way up, but it could have been in Russian or Japanese for all the difference it would have made, he was sure. She was flustered—by him?