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He locked his hands together under the table, squeezing his fingers hard until the physical pain took his mind off his mental torture. Half the conversation tonight had been about children—particular cases on the ward who’d touched everyone’s heart—or handing round the latest family snaps to be admired. It was why he always avoided social events at work, so he didn’t have to smile and smile and pretend the yawning gap in his own life didn’t exist. The yawning gap that even dedicating himself one hundred per cent to his job didn’t fill.
He caught himself watching Jodie again. The way she laughed, throwing her head back, her whole face lighting up. The way she looked earnestly at whoever she was talking to, making them feel as if they were the only person in the room. The way her eyes crinkled at the corners…
Oh, get a life, Taylor, he told himself wryly. Nothing’s going to come of it. Ever.
When everyone had finished their coffee and gradually drifted home in twos and threes, sharing lifts and taxis, Sam and Jodie were left in the doorway of the restaurant.
‘How are you getting home?’ he asked.
‘Pushbike.’
He frowned. ‘In this rain?’
She shrugged. ‘It’s only about three miles between here and my place. Fifteen minutes, tops, if I catch all the traffic lights on green.’
‘But you’ll get soaked.’
‘It won’t kill me. You can’t catch a cold from getting wet, Doctor,’ she reminded him, wrapping a scarf round her glorious hair.
‘Where’s your bike?’
‘I…er…Why?’
‘Because you’re going to stop being stubborn, put your bike in the back of my car and let me give you a lift home. It’s the least I can do,’ he said, making her close her mouth on the argument she’d been about to produce. ‘You were kind enough to ask me to join you tonight.’
You plural, not you singular, she reminded herself. ‘I…er…’ Oh, why was she suddenly so inarticulate?
‘Where’s your bike?’ he asked again.
‘Chained to that lamppost,’ she said, pointing to the elderly and slightly battered racer she’d inherited from Matt fifteen years before, on her thirteenth birthday, and had liked too much to replace with a newer—or more feminine—model.
‘Keys?’ he asked, holding out his hand.
She shook her head, unlocked the bike herself, and wheeled it alongside him to his car. ‘Are you sure about this?’ she asked, eyeing the four-wheel-drive doubtfully. It was big enough to cope with her bike, but it was also pristine. And, judging by the number plate, less than six months old.
‘Sure.’ He opened the back and hauled her bike inside. ‘Hop in.’
Being in an enclosed space with Sam Taylor was a definite mistake, she thought. It was a big car, but she was still very much aware of how close he was to her. If she shifted her hand less than six inches, her fingers would brush against his. Fingers that were gentle with his patients. How would they be with her?
Stop it, Jodie, she told herself fiercely. And yet she couldn’t help remembering the look in his eyes as she’d fed him pizza. She could imagine them lying in the park on a sunny day, with his head in her lap as she fed him seedless grapes and morsels of Brie—and then bending down to kiss the crumbs away from his lips…
That’s the last time you ever drink more than one glass of wine in his company, Jodie Price, she warned herself.
Then she flushed as she became aware that he’d been talking to her, and she hadn’t heard a single word he’d said. ‘Sorry. I was miles away,’ she apologised.
‘Where do I go from here?’ he asked.
He sounded completely cool and calm. Obviously he didn’t feel the same pull and she’d be wise to remember that. Dragging her thoughts together, she directed him through the back streets of the city to her small terraced house. He parked the car and hefted her bike down.
‘Thanks for the lift.’
‘No problem.’
Should she ask him in for coffee? It was only polite, seeing as he’d given her a lift home, but she didn’t want him misreading her motives.
In the end Sam made the decision for her. ‘Goodnight, Jodie.’
It was the first time he’d ever used her name, and she wasn’t prepared for the sudden lurch of her heart. ‘Goodnight,’ she muttered, not quite daring to use his first name but not wanting to rebuff him by using a more formal mode of address.
She watched him as he drove away. She still knew virtually nothing about him, despite having spent most of the evening talking to him. He was as mysterious and distant as ever. Though there had been a moment when she’d thought she’d come close to breaking through his wall.
Shaking her head, she walked into the house. Maybe he didn’t want to be rescued. But that sultry silver in his eyes told her that she couldn’t give up. Not yet.
As he drove away, Sam could have kicked himself. Why had he insisted on taking her home? He’d been so close to breaking a personal rule. When he’d taken her bike out of the car, the way she’d looked up at him, her eyes all shiny and her mouth so soft and warm and inviting…His body had been screaming out for him to take her in his arms and kiss her, and to hell with the consequences.
But the sensible side of him had overruled it. Just. Apart from the fact that affairs with colleagues were bad news, he’d sworn he’d never get involved again. Not after his extremely messy divorce.
Come off it. What have you got to lose? Angela’s the complete opposite of Jodie, the voice in his head taunted. Just look at her.
Angela was petite, slender and well groomed, and she only ever wore little suits teamed with designer shoes, handbag and briefcase, whereas Jodie was tall, curvy and had a much more casual attitude towards clothes. Angela’s make-up was always immaculate, whereas Jodie’s barely existed—he suspected that the nearest Jodie came to cosmetics was a lip-salve. Angela would never have dreamed of letting her expensive haircut get wet—and if she’d had a bike it would have been an expensive and trendy mountain bike, not a battered, elderly racer.
Maybe that was the attraction: Jodie was the opposite of Angela. No, that was unfair. Jodie was a little like the Angela he’d fallen in love with at university, the young lawyer with a sparkle in her eye and a sense of fun that had stopped him being too serious.
The sparkle that had soon dimmed when Angela had discovered what a failure Sam had been as a husband—that he couldn’t give her what she most wanted in the world. And it would be exactly the same with Jodie. It might start out fine, full of love and laughter, but over the months it would change and one day he’d come home to an empty house and an apologetic note. Just like he had with Angela.
Though what was he doing, even thinking about Jodie in those terms? She wasn’t interested in him and he didn’t have the right to get involved with anyone. Not with his past.
She said being an honorary auntie was enough for her, the little voice reminded him.
Only because her biological clock hasn’t started ticking yet.
She was serious. She’s dedicated to her career.
Now, maybe. Things change. She’s a natural mother. You can see it in her eyes, in the way she acts with the children on the ward.
But supposing—
Supposing nothing. It’s not going to happen.
CHAPTER THREE
‘I’M JODIE PRICE,’ she said, extending a hand to the pale-faced woman who was sitting holding a small baby. ‘And this is Dr Taylor, who’s sharing the assessment clinic with me.’ Mr, actually, but she’d learned that it was easier to say ‘Doctor’ than go through all the explanations about when you got high enough up the career ladder, you swapped Dr for plain Mr or Ms. Worried parents weren’t interested in the social niceties: they just wanted reassurance about their sick children. Right now.
She glanced down at her notes. ‘This is Harry, yes?’
The woman nodded.
‘And he’s seven weeks old.’
Tears welled in the woman’s eyes. ‘He’s so small…I thought it was just a cold. And then he couldn’t breathe…’
‘You’re here now and we can help him, Mrs Bartlett,’ Jodie soothed, crouching down beside her and focusing on the baby. ‘Let’s have a look at the little fellow and see what’s going on. Can you tell me a bit about his symptoms? When did you first notice he was ill?’
‘Two days ago. He picked up his sister’s cold—but he wouldn’t feed properly yesterday, only took half what he normally has, and he started coughing. Then, today, he was so quiet…I thought I was probably fussing too much but I took him to the doctor anyway—and she sent me straight here.’
‘To the paediatric assessment unit. I know, it sounds scary, but you’re in the best place,’ Jodie reassured her. ‘All it means is that we’re specialists in babies and children, so we’ll be able to work out what’s wrong with him and how to treat him quicker than your GP can. Now, let’s get this vest and nappy off.’ She quickly undressed the baby, weighed him and measured his length, and noted the details on his chart. ‘He’s a lovely big boy, isn’t he?’
‘Yes. My husband’s tall.’ Mrs Bartlett gulped. ‘He’s parking the car. Laura’s with him.’
‘Laura’s Harry’s sister?’ Jodie guessed.
‘Yes. She’s three and a half.’
‘The perfect age gap. My brother’s nearly four years older than me,’ Jodie said. ‘Young Harry here’s going to hero-worship her from the minute he can toddle. I was just the same with Matt.’ She put a thermometer under the baby’s armpit, and waited until it bleeped, then looked carefully at the reading. ‘That’s good, he doesn’t have a high temperature. Apyrexic,’ she said to Sam, who was writing down what she said.
The baby coughed, and gave a hoarse cry.
‘Lost his voice, has he?’ she asked sympathetically.
Mrs Bartlett nodded. ‘He’s a happy baby anyway, doesn’t normally cry a lot, but now he can’t even tell me when he’s hungry or wet.’
Jodie replaced the baby’s nappy, noting the way the skin underneath the baby’s ribs and the base of his throat sucked in sharply every time he breathed. Pretty much a textbook case. ‘Tracheal tug,’ she said to Sam. She turned to Mrs Bartlett. ‘I’m going to listen to his chest now.’ She placed her stethoscope on Harry’s chest. ‘Hmm, he sounds pretty wheezy. Creps,’ she said to Sam. ‘There are a few bubbles there, Mrs Bartlett—that means there’s lots of mucus clogging up the tubes.’ Gently, she palpated the baby’s abdomen. ‘His abdomen’s fine.’ She took her otoscope, the instrument used for checking the ear canal, and looked in the baby’s ears. ‘Bilateral wax,’ she said to Sam, then turned back to Mrs Bartlett. ‘He’s got a fair bit of wax in both ears—he’s really bunged up with that lurgy, poor love.’
‘It’s just a cold, then?’ Mrs Bartlett looked hopeful.
‘It’s a little more than that, I’m afraid. There’s a rather nasty virus going round called RSV or respiratory syncytial virus. I’ll need to take a sample of his nasal secretions to check if that’s what he has—all I’ll do is put a tube up his nose so we can suck out some of the mucus and send it off to the lab for them to run a few tests. It looks a bit scary but it won’t hurt him,’ she reassured Mrs Bartlett. ‘And then I’ll put a probe on his foot so I can make some more checks. The light goes through his foot and hits the probe—again, it won’t hurt him, because it’s just like having a very soft strap wrapped round his foot—and that helps me measure the oxygen levels in his blood, his pulse rate and his breathing.’ She indicated the machine next to the bed. ‘It’ll probably bleep a lot, but don’t worry—these things don’t take into account the fact that babies tend to wriggle! The minute they move, the alarm goes off—it’ll probably say something like “insufficient light” on the screen, and all that means is that he’s moved so the probe needs to be reset.’
Quickly, Jodie took the sample of the nasal secretions, then wrapped the cuff of the probe round Harry’s foot. As she’d suspected, his oxygen saturation was a little on the low side and his pulse was rapid. ‘Sats eighty-seven in air, pulse a hundred and sixty.’ She watched the child’s chest rise and fall, keeping one eye on the second hand of the clock as she counted his breaths in her head. ‘Resp sixty-five.’ She brushed her fingers momentarily against the baby’s face. ‘You’re having a tough time, little one, but hang on in there. We’ll sort you out. We’re going to admit him for a few days, Mrs Bartlett,’ she said. ‘All the signs are that he’s got bronchiolitis, which is usually caused by RSV. In adults and older children, it just gives you a bad cold and a cough, but in young babies it tends to make them quite poorly.’
‘He’ll be all right, though?’ Mrs Bartlett’s eyes were wide with anxiety.
Jodie nodded. ‘It’s very common—there’s often an epidemic between November and March. We’ve got six babies on the ward with it already, so he’ll be in good company.’ She gently rubbed Harry’s cheek again. ‘You did the right thing in bringing him in to us. He hasn’t got it that badly, though I should warn you that they often get worse before they get better. He’ll be in for somewhere between three and seven days, depending on how he responds to treatment, and he’ll be coughing for a good six to ten weeks after he gets home, maybe even until the clocks go forward.’
‘So you can do something for him?’
Jodie nodded. ‘The problem is that some of his airways are so small—less than a tenth of a millimetre across—so the mucus is gumming him up and making him wheezy. We’ll try giving him a nebuliser—that’s just a mask with a drug in it—to help widen his airways a bit, and he’ll breathe the drug in through a mist of oxygen. That might help him to feed a bit better. We may need to give him some oxygen, too. We’ll do it through a tube under his nose, which looks frightening but won’t hurt him. And if he’s finding it too tiring to feed—bearing in mind he’s having a hard time getting his breath, he’s only got the energy to take a bit of his usual feeds at the moment—we’ll feed him through an nasogastric tube. What that means is a tube goes up his nose and into his stomach, so he’ll get all the goodness he needs without having to work so hard for it.’
Mrs Bartlett looked shocked. ‘Can we—can I stay with him?’
‘Of course you can. He’ll be in a room on his own because the virus is highly infectious and we don’t want it spreading to the other children. There’ll be a notice on his door saying that he’s in isolation nursing, but all that means is that the nurses and doctors will wear a gown and gloves when they come into his room to stop the virus lingering on their clothes or their hands and then spreading to other patients on the ward. This particular virus can live for around twenty minutes outside the body, on clothes, which is why it spreads so quickly.’
‘I see.’
‘There’s a chair-bed in the room, and you’ll be able to use the staff restaurant when the public restaurant’s closed,’ Jodie added. ‘And we have a policy of shared care in the ward, so you’ll know at all times exactly what’s going on, what you can do to help and what we need to do.’
Mrs Bartlett still looked stunned at the idea of her child being hospitalised.
‘There’s a visitor phone on the ward. Parents and visitors answer it, rather than the ward staff, and that means you can take any incoming calls without worrying that you’re stopping important calls coming into the ward. There’s a payphone just outside the assessment unit, too, though I’m afraid we have to bar mobile phones because they could interfere with the equipment,’ Jodie warned.
Mrs Bartlett nodded.
‘Give Harry a cuddle while I finish writing his admission notes,’ Jodie said, ‘and I’ll ask Alice, the dark-haired nurse over there, to take you through to the ward. If your husband and Laura haven’t arrived by the time you go, I’ll make sure someone brings them through to you.’
‘Thank you, Dr Price.’
‘That’s what I’m here for. Alice will give you an information sheet about bronchiolitis and RSV, which should answer most of your questions.’ She smiled. ‘I’m on duty later tonight, so I’ll see you when I do my round and we can have a chat then if you have any other questions or you’re worried about anything.’
When Mrs Bartlett had left, cradling the baby in her arms, Sam turned to Jodie. ‘You’re good with parents. You explained everything to her without being patronising. Well done.’
‘Thank you.’ She was surprised at the compliment. He’d barely spoken to her since he’d dropped her home from Mario’s the previous week, so she’d been dreading it when she’d realised that he was going to be with her on the paediatric assessment unit shift this morning. She’d expected him to pick up every single fault, however minor. Instead, he’d let her get on with it and had only occasionally offered an opinion, phrasing it more as a question so she could show off her own knowledge of the subject.
‘You’re a good doctor, Jodie,’ he said, surprising her even further. ‘Though are you sure about the nebuliser?’
‘I know it’s controversial and some doctors don’t approve of using bronchodilators,’ Jodie said, ‘but if it helps the baby breathe, that’s the most important thing. We’ll trial Atrovent and salbutamol, see which one works best for him. Sometimes they respond to one better than the other.’
Sam grinned. ‘Yes, Dr Price.’
She flushed. ‘Sorry. You already knew that.’ Of course he did. He was a consultant, with a good six years’ more experience than her. Trust her to open her mouth and say something so stupid, just when she was trying to prove to him that she could be a cool, calm and rational colleague.
Not to mention proving to herself that Sam Taylor didn’t make her hormones run amok.
‘I’d always rather you explain yourself than make assumptions,’ Sam said gently, as if sensing her embarrassment. ‘It leaves less room for errors.’
‘Right.’
‘What else have we got in?’ he asked.
‘An asthma attack—when I know the history, I might suggest some skin tests to see if the girl’s allergic to cats or dust mites or any particular sorts of food, and I want to check whether the parents smoke round her—plus two rashes and a possible fracture.’
‘Lead on, Macduff,’ he misquoted with a grin.
Jodie stared at him for a moment, slightly dazed. That grin could only be described as dazzling. What was it about the man? Since Mario’s, he’d as good as avoided her. And just when she’d decided that he was remote, glacial and not worth thinking about, he did or said something that made her look again, see him as a man—a very attractive man, at that. Without that wall of reserve, he’d be devastating.
It couldn’t work out between them. There were too many barriers, social and professional, so why couldn’t she stop that voice in her head telling her to go for it?
Not now. They had work to do. ‘Let’s go,’ she said, forcing herself to smile at Sam in her best professional manner.
The voice grew louder over the next week until it was positively deafening. The departmental Christmas party was traditionally held in the middle of December; those who were married came with their partners, but those who were single—which meant most of their ward, as the staff were all fairly young—picked the name of their partner out of a hat, the day before the party.
And Jodie had picked Sam. Completely by accident, but it felt as if fate or some higher power had done it by design. She’d agonised over it for nearly the whole of her shift. Should she give him the option of backing out, or use the chance to break down his reserve? He’d hate it. Hadn’t he gone back into his shell since Mario’s? On the other hand, it was the Christmas party—and Christmas was a season of magic, when everything could change.
When Sam had finished his ward round, she caught his attention. ‘Mr Taylor—could I have a word, please?’
‘Of course, Dr Price.’
The formality made her nervous, but she pressed on. ‘Um…your office?’ she suggested.
‘My office,’ he agreed.
Sam’s office was the same size as that of Lyn Trevor, the other paediatric consultant, but whereas Lynn’s desk sported pictures of her husband and children and the walls were decorated with pictures drawn by patients and her own children, Sam’s office was completely devoid of personal touches. Not even so much as a pot-plant graced the window-sill and even the Christmas cards were stacked in a neat pile on his desk rather than being on display.
Jodie felt even more daunted. Everything around her screamed, Keep off! Don’t touch!
He sat down on the swivel chair behind his desk. ‘So, what can I do for you, Dr Price?’
She took a deep breath, gathered up her courage and swallowed hard. ‘It’s about the departmental Christmas party, tomorrow night,’ she muttered.
‘Yes?’
‘I…er…I picked your name out of the hat. It means I’m supposed to go with you.’
Not a flicker of emotion. He was completely unreadable—and unreachable. ‘And?’
‘I…’ she floundered. ‘Look, if you’d rather I made some excuse and didn’t go…’
‘Why would I do that?’
‘Honestly, men could be so dense sometimes!’
To her shock, he laughed.
‘What?’
‘I take it you didn’t mean to say that out loud?’
Jodie clapped a hand over her mouth, horrified. ‘Oh, no. Please, tell me I didn’t…’ When he said nothing, she closed her eyes. ‘I’m sorry. What I meant was—’
‘Given that the first half of the party is a revue, and Mr Frosty’s bound to have a part in it, you think I’d find it too embarrassing to attend,’ he finished.
Her eyes widened. He knew about his nickname on the ward?
He folded his arms. ‘Yes, Jodie, I know.’
‘I’d see a specialist but there isn’t a cure for foot-in-mouth disease,’ she said wryly.
‘You didn’t say a thing this time. You have one of those faces that shows every single thought.’ Still, his own expression was unreadable. ‘Do I take it you’d rather not go to the party with me, then?’
‘I…’ She sighed. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Explain.’
‘Do you always have to be so, so…’ Unable to find the word she was searching for, she growled in frustration.
That at least raised a smile. ‘Difficult?’
‘Something like that.’ Well, he’d asked. If he didn’t like the answer, that was his problem; she couldn’t keep quiet any more. ‘When you came to Mario’s with us, I thought you’d, well, thawed out a bit. And then…’
‘Back to Mr Frosty.’
‘Yes.’ This time, Jodie had the grace to blush. ‘I guess Fiona didn’t ask you before she put your name in the hat.’
‘No.’
‘If you’d rather not go, I won’t make a big deal out of it.’
‘And if I do go?’
‘Um, there’s the revue.’ Jodie winced. She didn’t know a huge amount of detail, but what she knew wasn’t good.
‘Consultants are fair game for sketches. And I suppose it’s time the boot was on the other foot.’
Jodie digested his words and then blinked hard. ‘You mean—you’ve acted in a revue?’
He shrugged. ‘I think all doctors get involved in some kind of revue at some point. When I was a house officer, I played our senior consultant as God.’
‘No.’ Without thinking, Jodie perched on the edge of his desk and crossed one long leg over the other. ‘Show me.’
‘Show you?’
‘Oh, come on. You can’t feed me a line like that and back off again.’
He shook his head. ‘I can’t really remember the lines now. It was something about the ten commandments of working on his ward. Thou shalt not drink coffee until thou hast knelt at my feet and worshipped me for five minutes—that sort of thing.’
‘Hmm.’ Jodie’s smile was pure mischief.
‘Don’t even think about it,’ Sam warned, guessing at what was going through her mind. ‘Are you in this revue?’
She shook her head. ‘I’m a hopeless actor. I just made some of the props—with a bit of help from some of the older children on the ward.’
‘Such as Mr Frosty’s costume?’ he asked.
‘I think it’s time I left.’ She gave him a nervous smile, slid down from his desk and headed for the door.