Emergency: Wife Lost and Found (10 page)

‘H
EY
.’ They met for coffee the day before she started work.

Nice neutral territory, they sat on the sofa and there were no pressing knees. There was no real awkwardness this time, it was just good to see each other.

‘You look really well.’ She did. She’d put on some weight. Oh, she was still way too thin and too pale, but there was a lightness to her, a breeze of good health that surrounded her as she accepted her coffee and took a long sip.

‘I feel it.’ Lorna smiled. ‘Mind you, I could do with another week off. Not for my health,’ she added quickly, ‘it’s just been so busy, finding somewhere to live, getting everything out of storage and moving it down.’

‘Making lots of lists,’ James teased.

‘Oh, there were plenty of lists,’ Lorna assured him, and then she admitted a little of the truth. ‘I am nervous.’

‘I know.’

‘I know I can deal with the patients, I know I’m qualified, it’s just the volume of patients.’

‘There are way more staff too, though,’ James pointed
out. ‘You won’t be on your own for a minute. There’s always a registrar on, twenty-four hours a day. Even at night the consultants are often there. You saw yourself how many times I got called in. It will take a few days, but by the end of the week you’ll be an old hand.’

‘I doubt it,’ Lorna said, not caring that effectively it was her boss she was admitting her insecurities to. He also happened to be James!

‘How do you think your colleagues will be? I mean, I guess they all know that I’m your ex-wife.’

‘They’ll be curious,’ James admitted. ‘And Abby, she’s a registrar and she might be a bit standoffish. She’s got a thing for me.’

‘A lot of women do.’ Lorna smiled, because now she could smile about it. When they had first started going out and in the hellish months of their marriage it had made her feel insecure. It had taken for ever to work out that James rarely noticed the effect he had on women, so for him to have noticed that Abby liked him meant a nose would be seriously out of joint. ‘Have you gone out with her?’ she asked, not to be nosy, but forewarned was forearmed and a registrar with ex-husband envy wasn’t something Lorna was looking forward to dealing with.

‘No.’ James shook his head. ‘I never go out with people from work.’

‘Never?’ Lorna checked, because before
she
had gone out with him, James had always had someone on the go. ‘Since when?’

‘Since I learnt my lesson with you.’

‘This is going to be so awkward for you.’ Lorna winced, but James just shrugged.

‘I don’t see why—as long as we’re not awkward around each other. Also…’ He cleared his throat for a moment before continuing and Lorna could tell he was a touch uncomfortable. ‘I don’t really discuss my private life with them,’ James explained. ‘Which is ironic, given that my private life is what everyone is talking about right now. I haven’t advertised the fact that I’ve broken up with Ellie.’

Lorna frowned.

‘So…’ he was just a touch pink around his ears ‘…I’m assuming people will be thinking that if Ellie’s okay with you working there, then there really can’t be anything going on between us. Which there isn’t, of course!’ he quickly added.

‘Of course,’ Lorna agreed, because there wasn’t.

He paid for the coffee, and this time it was without thought or innuendo that they kissed each other on the cheek. They were friends now, good friends even.

They were exes James reminded himself, as she clipped down the street in high black boots and a massive blonde coat, gorgeous now she was wearing her own clothes. Exes who had said their goodbyes in the nicest possible way and had cleared the air, if not his head.

There was, of course, a huge wave of curiosity that swept through the department.

James Morrell’s ex-wife was coming to work there, and there was a morbid curiosity that awaited her at every shift change during her first couple of weeks. The staff were sure Lorna and James must be an item, and if Lorna was James’s ex, she must be pretty spectacular.

She soon put paid to rumour.

Dressed in grey or sombre brown suits, her glasses perched on her nose, her skinny legs wrapped in forty-denier stockings, her hair scraped back, she was neurotic to a fault about obs charts and drove the junior staff to the edge of irritation and beyond.

‘She’s awful,’ said Shona as they waited for Lorna to write up her orders, her neat handwriting, her detailed note-taking slowing everything down. ‘She just doesn’t get it.’

‘Doesn’t get what?’ May frowned.

‘She’s so slow,’ Shona sighed. ‘Double checking everything, even what we do!’

‘She’s just so
awkward,’
Lavinia agreed, ‘so obsessive.’

Which she was. Maybe the other hospitals had been right to reject her, Lorna thought over and over throughout that first horrible couple of weeks. There were just so many things to think of, so many names to get to know and so few familiar faces. There was May, of course, the lovely Irish nurse, and there was James. She was horribly awkward around him. Aware the emergency world was watching them, she avoided him like the plague but of course, she couldn’t avoid him completely. She watched her own hand shake as she tried to put in an IV on a rowdy drunk who refused to stay still. Of course she missed the vein.

James didn’t offer to do it for her, left her to deal with the expletives from the patient, which was par for the course in this place. But James felt like a worried parent, waving his child off to school each morning. And Lorna was like a child that didn’t want to go, a child that didn’t
quite fit in, while James had to pretend he was okay with it, that everything was going to be just fine. He couldn’t help her, couldn’t do it for her, and he couldn’t show her he was worried. All he
could
do was wiggle the roster a little without anyone knowing to make sure she was, as far as possible, always on with May, and just hold his breath.

‘Happy birthday!’ James kissed her on the cheek as she walked into the tapas bar and took her seat beside him at the little bench table.

‘Thanks a lot!’ Lorna groaned. ‘I can’t believe you’d put me on a night shift on my birthday.’

‘We agreed no favours.’ James grinned. ‘And you didn’t put in a request for the night off.’

They couldn’t talk at work because everyone was watching them, and it didn’t feel right to go to each other’s homes, so they met for supper one evening before her night shift started, which just happened to be her birthday.

He could have lied and said that he’d forgotten it was her birthday but, well, they’d have both known he was lying. In fact, James’s hand had hovered over the keyboard as he’d typed in the shifts because, given she was alone in London and it was her birthday, he was quite sure he’d have ended up taking her out.

He had ended up taking her out, James thought ruefully as he ordered himself a soft drink because he was on call and Lorna a lemonade because she was working. But it was only supper and, given she started work at nine, there was no danger there!

‘Here.’ He handed her a small package and Lorna
frowned as she took it, wondering what on earth an ex-husband bought an ex-wife on her birthday.

‘A chain for my glasses?’

‘You can never find them.’

‘But
old
people have them—the guys at work already think I’m dowdy enough.’

‘I think they’ll suit you!’ James shrugged.

‘When did you develop a librarian fetish?’ She stopped then. They both took a quick swig of their drinks as way too easily they slipped into talk of old. They ordered their tapas and told each other they were definitely
not
going to talk about work, but with flirting off the agenda, and their past not open to inspection, it really didn’t make for sparkling conversation—what
was
there to talk about?

‘How’s Pauline?’

‘Good. She’s doing a Thai cooking course.’ James sighed. ‘I
used
to like Thai.’

Which dealt with that.

‘What happened with the car insurance?’

‘All sorted,’ Lorna said brightly. ‘Not that I really need a car here.’

‘Well, it will be good for driving home.’

‘I’ll stick with the tube,’ Lorna said, which killed that conversation stone dead.

‘It’s not working, Lorna,’ James said, three long, silent minutes later, and watched the colour whoosh up her pale cheeks and knew she understood what he was saying. ‘Goodbye sex might be good in theory and it might work for some, but all it’s done for me is remind me how good we were. And,’ he added, ‘I’m not talking just about the sex.’

‘I know.’ He could see the tip of her nose redden, as it always did when she was about to cry.

‘We’ve never really dated.’ James said. ‘We’ve never done this…’

‘I know.’ She was rubbing the bridge of her nose with her thumb and finger and James wished she’d look at him. ‘It wouldn’t work…’ she shook her head. ‘Not with us working together.’

‘Fair enough.’ James nodded. ‘But when you finish up, maybe if you get a job in London…’

‘We can’t.’

‘Lorna!’ James was annoyed now. ‘We’re crazy about each other and, yes, it might annoy your parents—’

‘It has nothing to do with my parents,’ Lorna interrupted him. ‘Will you stop assuming I’m the same as I was back then?’

‘What, then?’ James demanded. ‘What’s stopping us from trying?’

‘Because it didn’t work.’

‘Because you refused to talk to me—you chose to shut me out.’

‘I’d lost a baby.’

‘You’d lost my baby, Lorna.’ The sight of deep-fried olives was making her stomach curl, this conversation was too close to such a very raw wound. ‘I was devastated too. You know how much I wanted that baby, how much I wanted to have children.’

‘Just leave it, please!’

And he did, at that moment, ten years on, in a bar in London, James finally left the relationship. He didn’t stop loving and he’d never stop caring, but in that
moment he accepted the facts because, as she’d repeatedly said,
they
didn’t work. Her pinched face, the trauma he inflicted when he asked for a piece of her. Finally James accepted it was something she chose not to give.

‘Please just leave it, James. We can’t go back.’

‘I know,’ he said, because now he did, because all it did was hurt. Because here she was crying on her birthday and as always it was him feeling like a bastard for pushing her, and it shouldn’t be this way. ‘You’re right, Lorna, we can’t go back.’

And she gulped a bit when he said that, because something in his voice told her he meant it.

‘Hey!’ He wrapped an arm around her and gave her a serviette to mop up her tears. ‘You know it wasn’t goodbye sex we needed, it was a good row.’ He felt her laugh and cry in his arms. ‘To remind us just how bad it could be.’

And it did clear the air—well, sort of.

He walked her to the underground, watched her disappear down the steps and told himself that finally it was over.

He just had to get used to it, that was all.

‘Could I have a word please, Lorna?’

Abby called her into her office before Lorna had even taken off her coat. Lorna’s head was still spinning from supper with James and walking through the waiting room. The department was already pumping and though there was always a registrar on and a consultant covering, the workload was more intense at night. There were more decisions to be made without consultation and, frankly, Lorna felt sick.

‘Are you looking forward to your stint on nights, Lorna?’ Abby was smiling as Lorna took a seat.

‘Very much so.’ Lorna nodded, trying to inject some enthusiasm, trying keep her heart rate even as another siren blared and the blue lights flashed past Abby’s high window.

‘Well, I’m on tonight and tomorrow too. James is, of course, on call, but naturally I’d prefer that you run things by me before you call him for anything.’

‘Absolutely.’

‘Obviously…’ Abby grinned ‘…I’m not talking about personal calls.’

‘I’ll speak with you before I ring James,’ Lorna said, gritting her teeth but refusing to explain herself or James to Abby. ‘And judging by the waiting room, there won’t be much time to make personal calls.’

‘It does look busy,’ Abby agreed. ‘Which is why I wanted to have a word. I know it’s awkward with James being your ex. Maybe he doesn’t feel he can discuss certain matters with you, which is why I’m going to have a quiet word. Just between us.’ Lorna could feel the tears at the back of her eyes as very politely, very nicely, Abby ripped into her. She absolutely refused to cry as she was told how irritated all the staff were with her note-taking, how she had to assert herself more and how she had to stop referring everyone on, instead of making the decision herself to discharge them.

It was quite a list Abby had to get through, but she soldiered on, till by the end of it Lorna felt like a wrung-out dishrag and the night hadn’t even started yet.

‘You don’t have to always do a full examination,’
Abby continued as she had for the past twenty minutes. ‘And you don’t then have to go and spend another fifteen minutes writing up your notes. Not everything ends up in the coroner’s court, Lorna. You don’t have to constantly cover yourself.’

‘I’m not
covering
myself,’ Lorna said. ‘I admit I am rather slow, but I like to take a thorough history. It’s the way I work.’

‘In a rural GP setting,’ Abby responded. ‘Just see if you can pick up the pace a bit, Lorna, that’s all I’m asking.’

‘I will.’ Lorna stood up and politely she said the right thing. ‘Thanks for your guidance.’

‘Any time.’ Abby smiled.

Lorna was tempted to walk out the door, but instead she made a coffee and went and joined the
team
who considered her irritating, and sat quietly among them.

‘Are you on nights too?’ Lorna’s flagging ego soared just a little when May, basket in one hand, mug of tea in the other, walked into the staffroom where the night team were getting ready to start work.

‘I am!’ May was less than impressed. ‘I did a stint last month. Do they think I don’t have a bed to get into at night? Stuck in this hellhole on a Friday night, you’re about to have your eyes opened, young lady.’