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Ruby gazed at him in wonder, slightly thrown by his tall, dark presence. She ought to be used by now to the way he had of appearing out of nowhere, but perhaps she wasn’t fully on the ball. Somehow or other he always managed to make her heart leap into an odd, hasty rhythm.
As to her mood, she was startled that he had even noticed her frame of mind. He was always so busy tending to seriously ill patients or organising the day-to-day management of the unit. Because of the cutbacks he had been forced to make, there were new difficulties arising all the time.
She shook her head. ‘Nothing’s wrong. Everything’s fine.’ She wasn’t going to lay out all her troubles for him to pick over. He was a man, first of all, energetic, efficient and direct, everything appearing clearly black or white, and he would probably have next to no understanding of the emotional side of things, the grey edges that tended to blur judgement.
‘Except that she just said how quiet it is in here today,’ Olivia pointed out. ‘You know what that means, don’t you? Lights will start flashing and sirens will be blaring within seconds, and the next thing you know, we’ll be swamped under a deluge of patients.’ She shook her head. ‘Even I know not to tempt fate that way.’ Her mouth made a flat line. ‘Still, we have to make allowances, I suppose. Ruby has to go and take over at her Gran’s smallholding this weekend, so she’s probably not thinking straight. Just contemplating the work involved would be enough to make me quake. Cleaning out the chicken run…mucking out after the ponies…and that’s before we even get to the goats.’
‘Goats? Good grief.’ Sam’s brows shot up. ‘You’re not seriously going to do all that, are you?’ he asked, looking at Ruby.
‘For a few weeks, yes,’ she told him. ‘My grandparents are going away for a while, and they’ve asked the family to help. There’s no one else who can sort it out for us. Not without it costing us a small fortune, anyway.’
She contemplated the prospect of living in the Chilterns for the next few weeks and gave a soft sigh. Perhaps it was just what she needed right now—a complete change. Time to be with Becky and attempt to smooth over the unhappy disappearance of her mother that had shaken the baby’s world. Life was incredibly hard for her just now. She was juggling too many things all at once: coming to terms with the fact that Sophie had gone away, learning how to cope with looking after Becky on her own…and trying to accept that she had lost the job she wanted to a man who had swept in on a wave of budget-cutting zeal. Add to that the fact that her grandparents needed her help, and the mix was well and truly bubbling, threatening to boil over.
She frowned. ‘Actually, I think it might be just the thing for me…I still haven’t taken all of my annual leave this year, and there’s a certain appeal to sampling fresh country air and taking a break from all the frantic activity that goes on around here.’
She remained perfectly still for a while, mulling things over. The more she thought about it, the more the option of leaving her job altogether appealed.
‘Now, there’s a thought…my contract comes to an end in a fortnight’s time, doesn’t it? And I don’t necessarily have to renew it since I haven’t signed on the dotted line yet.’ Somehow, she hadn’t been able to bring herself to put in the necessary paperwork. ‘I do earn some income from the medical articles I write for magazines and so on. And there’s the online medical forum, as well—they pay me a retainer for doing that.’
It would be a difficult choice to make—after all, she needed money if she was to look after Becky—but the prospect of turning her back on the whirlwind of her career and leaving it to Sam to take up where she left off was becoming more interesting by the minute. He wanted the job—he had been given it at her expense—maybe he should be left to deal with it in its entirety.
‘You’re joking, aren’t you?’ Sam was frowning, looking at her intently as though he would like to be able to read her mind.
‘About the online forum? No.’ She shook her head. ‘We answer questions from people who have worries about their various symptoms or illnesses, or who want a little more detail than their GP is able to give them.’
‘I meant about leaving here.’ His voice was terse.
Ruby mused on that for a while. ‘I’m not altogether sure. In fact, the more I think about it, the more tempting it becomes.’ After all, what prospects were there for her here? With the possibility of the unit being downgraded, things were beginning to look quite bleak, one way or another. Sam would be all right whatever happened because he worked from both hospital sites—the Ashvale and the Heritage. And the SHOs would find placements at other hospitals. It was the patients and the people who lived in the local area who would lose out most of all because of the effects of the closure.
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