Emergency: Wife Lost and Found (7 page)

‘I
NEED
to listen to your chest.’

James loved his job, but at times the system frustrated him. Lorna had dozed after lunch and slept most of the evening, eating some of the chicken soup he’d brought for her and drinking a glass of water as per his instructions. She promptly went back to sleep, only to wake after midnight, coughing and crying and coughing some more. This patient should not have been sent home, aside from the fact that her home was a six-hour drive away, it was too soon for a layperson to be expected to look after her. Worse, James thought as he leant her forward and listened to her chest, was the idea of her lying in a hotel room, coughing and in pain, with no one to look after her. No, this patient should be in a hospital bed, James said to himself as, embarrassed for her, he helped Lorna with her buttons and listened to the front of her chest.

The bruising
was
appalling. He had been slightly taken aback by the strength of her analgesics, but, hey, seeing the bruising, he accepted it now.

No wonder she’d sobbed when he’d put on the seat
belt. Lorna was the toughest woman he knew, and for just a flash, a little flash, he remembered that first night home after her operation. Lorna had been in pain, but had lain quietly beside him and not once acknowledged it. How he’d wished that she had.

‘A few creps…’ He pulled off his stethoscope. He’d checked her temp and it was on the high side of normal, but James was sure it had recently been otherwise. Despite her urgent coughing, regular deep breathing was proving difficult, which meant, given the noise he had heard on her chest, that a chest infection was brewing.

‘You ought to be re-admitted.’ He saw her anguished look. ‘Okay, we’ll start you on some antibiotics, but if things don’t turn around quickly, you’ll have to go back for a chest X-ray. You need to do more deep breathing and coughing.’

‘I can’t
stop
coughing!’

James headed over to work. It was a trip he was used to making in the middle of the night and he smiled when he saw May.

‘Did we call you in?’ May asked.

‘Nope. I’m here for myself, well, Lorna actually. She’s recuperating at my place for a few days before she goes back to Scotland.’ He chatted as he wrote out a script and gave it to May. The emergency department carried a supply of drugs that could be dispensed at night, and May found a bottle of antibiotics while James took a vial and a needle and syringe.

‘I’ll give her an IM shot and then hopefully she’ll be okay on oral. How long are you on nights for?’

‘A couple of weeks. All the senior staff are having
to pitch in,’ May tutted. ‘I know it’s not the time or place, but we are so short of medical staff, there’s too much falling on the nurses.’

‘We’re interviewing,’ James said. ‘There are more ads in the papers this week. That’s all we can do at the moment.’

‘Well, tell Lorna to hurry up and get well.’

‘I’m hardly going to work with my ex-wife, May.’ He grinned as she walked with him through the department.

‘Well, she’s staying with you, so you clearly get on and Ellie can’t mind. She’s a nice girl, Ellie.’

‘She is.’

‘It was nice to meet her.’

Driving home, there was a certain disquiet in James as he realised for the second time that day he had chosen to let people think Ellie and he were still an item. It was easier, James consoled himself, far, far easier than letting May get ideas. And as for Lorna…walking back into the house, he still hadn’t come up with an answer to that one.

‘That
does
hurt!’ Funny that Lorna was less embarrassed getting a penicillin shot in the bottom from James than from some strange nurse. He was so matter-of-fact and so…James. The only real discomfort was the needle.

‘Yes, but it works,’ he said as she settled back on the pillows. ‘I stopped at the petrol station and bought you some blackcurrant cordial. You’re not drinking enough.’ He returned a couple of minutes later with a big glass of her favourite drink when she was ill and made her drink the lot.

‘Right.’ He sat on the side of the bed. ‘I
have
to go to work tomorrow. I don’t want to. In fact, I don’t think you should be on your own.’

‘I’ll be fine.’

‘Listen,’ James interrupted, not up to small talk at two a.m. ‘We’re short on doctors, the place is struggling, so I
have
to be there,
but
I’m five minutes away. If we get a lull I’ll come home. Also I’ll ask my cleaning lady to stay a couple of hours extra.’ He grinned at her wide-eyed look. ‘Do you think the house looks like this by itself? Actually, even with Pauline, it doesn’t normally look this good. She’s really gone to town for you coming. Usually it’s a bit chaotic, she’s not exactly obsessively tidy, but she is kind and sort of…’ He tried to think of the word. ‘Sort of a mum.’

‘Not my sort of mum, I hope!’ Lorna said. ‘That’s the last thing I need.’ Which made her smile, which made him laugh, which made her laugh too, which of course made her cough.

‘Get some sleep,’ James said once her coughing fit was over. ‘I’ll put my head in in the morning, but I won’t wake you.’

‘Thank you,’ Lorna said. Then she said it again, but with different emphasis, so grateful he was there, that he had stepped in and that it was James looking after her during this horrible time. ‘Thank you.’

‘You’re more than welcome.’

‘And I am sorry,’ Lorna added, ‘for all the trouble.’

‘These things are sent to try us!’ James said in a Scottish accent, mimicking her father as he had never been able to before, and when she laughed he was relieved that she did.

Oh, she was trouble all right. Despite her prim little ways and her assurances that she would be gone in just a few days, James knew that as he stretched out in his rather basic spare room a whole pile of trouble had just landed in his life and upended it.

I
T WAS
actually easy having Lorna when she was clearly ill. Pain, medicine, soup and coughs, all those James could deal with. She was safely holed up in his bedroom after all. Apart from a couple of daily visits and the odd chat on the sofa, it was like having a sick relative staying to recuperate, or at least that was how James coped with it.

If he wasn’t already at the hospital, he rose at six-thirty, fell out of bed, peeked into her room to check she was asleep and comfortable then went for a quick run before heading for work. Pauline was around for the most part, and generally by the time he came home Lorna was either in bed or just about to go up. So far it had worked and kept a nice firm wedge between them. In the last few days she was sometimes up by the time he returned from his run, his cup of tea already made for him, and they shared a quick chat about the weather before he went to work. Oh, she was more than a patient for sure—he usually didn’t scoop them off the trolleys and bring them home after all, but with the complication of a chest infection, the couple of days turned into
more and it wasn’t until the second week came around that Lorna turned
the
corner. She was off her antibiotics, her bruising fading, her colour and humour returning, and suddenly she didn’t need a doctor any more—which was all James knew how to be around her.

All James felt
safe
being around her.

‘Morning.’ Returning from his run, there was tea and toast this time and Lorna looking like Lorna always had in the morning. She was wearing mint-green pyjamas that were way too big, but, then, everything always was on her, and a pair of his socks. Her long auburn hair was tied in a loose knot and hung on one side of her chest. Her glasses were perched on her nose and the paper was spread out on the table. It was at that precise second that James realised that in every woman who had uttered the ‘Morning’ word to him, he had been hoping for this, that her smile or her chatter would eventually grow to feel like
this.

A mixture of peace and excitement, of home and familiarity and just plain old desire—because he wanted Lorna so badly. He wanted to take off her glasses and take her up to bed, or he wanted to untie her hair and make love to her, right there in the kitchen, or pull her onto his lap and kiss that familiar face.

But instead he sat down and ate his toast.

‘What are you doing today?’

‘I’ve got to ring up the car insurance and Pauline’s going to bring me some clothes.’

‘She’s twice the size of you.’ James laughed.

‘But we have the same size feet.’ Lorna grinned.

‘I can’t believe your parents haven’t sent your clothes.’

‘I can!’ Lorna rolled her eyes and then carried on reading the paper.

‘I take it they’re not too pleased at you staying here.’ James couldn’t help himself. ‘What did they say?’

‘Not much.’ Lorna shrugged. ‘They’re just not talking to me again.’

‘Again?’

‘Again.’ Lorna smiled and looked up at him and it was just a glance, or it should have been, except he was looking at her in a different way, a way of old, and Lorna found she couldn’t tear her eyes from his.

She could feel the skin on her face burning, yet still she couldn’t look away and nothing was said, not a single word was exchanged, but if you could kiss without touching, he was kissing her now. This look, where the other knew what the other was thinking and he wasn’t a doctor and she wasn’t the patient any more, was what did it.

Desire had entered the building. Loudly Pauline rapped on the door and then let herself in.

‘I’m going to ring and find out the train times.’ They were both pretending nothing had happened and in reality nothing had, only they both knew different.

‘There’s no rush.’ He attempted a nonchalant shrug, his head a mire of contrary thoughts. He wanted her to stay, but he was desperate for her to leave. Because Lorna McClelland and James Morrell didn’t work.

He had the divorce papers upstairs to prove it, James reminded himself as he said goodbye and headed for work.

There was a rush, Lorna reminded herself as she punched two tablets out of the blister pack when he had
gone and curled up on the bed, holding her stomach. She willed the pain to pass. It was always worse mid-cycle, even though she was on the Pill, even though she was on the strongest painkillers she could take and still function, all they did was take off the edge and her tablets were fast running out. The supply the hospital had dispensed her was almost finished and the bottle that had been in her bag must be lying on the floor of her wrecked car because despite frantic searching she couldn’t find it.

Maybe she should just tell James, Lorna thought, lying there willing the cramping to pass, except she couldn’t stand to see the pity in his eyes. He’d known how much she wanted children and he had wanted them too.

Five of them, he had joked on their wedding night, stroking her tummy and telling her that this was just the start.

‘I know it was rushed…’ She could barely get her head around it, she was married to James, his ring was on her finger, the man she had loved from afar for ages was now the man she would spend the rest of her life with. She’d never been so happy, she just needed to know he felt the same. ‘I know my dad was awful, that he forced you—
’

‘Lorna.’ James interrupted her with a deep kiss. ‘It’s our wedding night—can we please not talk about your father?’

Coming home that evening, he found her, glasses on and frowning in concentration as she bent over in the living room and painted her toenails. It was such a familiar
sight, stirred up so many familiar feelings that James was seriously worried.

‘Pauline lent it to me!’ She beamed at her ten glossy toes all separated with balls of cotton wool and on display on the coffee-table. ‘I feel human again!’ Lorna added as James took one look and headed for the kitchen.

‘Good.’

Her father had never let her wear make-up, and from the age of eleven Lorna had painted her toenails—a little act of rebellion that stayed safely in her slippers or shoes.

‘I rang up about trains for Glasgow and I’ve booked for Sunday morning.’

‘Good.’ James said again, because he couldn’t live like this much longer, couldn’t stand remembering. He pulled out a casserole that Pauline must have made, but on second thoughts it may have been Lorna. Only Lorna stood and peeled the vegetables over newspaper then wrapped the peels in a tight little ball and threw it in the bin. ‘Did you make the casserole?’

‘Pauline did!’ Lorna called from the living room, her voice getting closer as she walked into join him. ‘I just helped with the vegetables—it was my occupational therapy for the day,’ she joked. James wasn’t smiling. He served up two dinners and tried not to remember what they’d once had. It was like being back there, back in their tiny little flat with their tiny little kitchen, which she’d kept so neat it had driven him crazy. He’d wanted to haul her into bed, to lie in the little island they’d created and watch TV and read and make love and talk and read and make love, not take down curtains and arrange cupboards.

‘Are you not hungry?’ She frowned as, instead of herself, it was James who was pushing his dinner around the plate.

‘I had a sandwich at work.’

‘That didn’t used to stop you.’ Lorna’s voice trailed off, realizing that he was uncomfortable. They struggled through the rest of the meal in a rather strained silence, save a couple of comments about how different the hard London water tasted compared to Scotland’s, and that he had to remember to put the rubbish out tonight because Pauline had forgotten.

Not exactly riveting stuff, but it got them through dinner.

‘I’ve got a surprise!’ She saved it till after dinner. Lorna had half decided that, given the sudden tension, maybe she should just go to bed, but she was bored with bed and tired of having only Pauline to talk to, and anyway she had missed him all day! When James had loaded the dishwasher he came back to the lounge to find her setting up her favourite board game. ‘Look what Pauline brought over for me!’

He laughed and groaned at the same time. ‘Look, maybe another time—I really have had a shocking day.’

‘Then you need to relax!’ Lorna smiled up at him. The board was neatly set up. He’d have looked a right old misery if he refused to play—she’d been so ill after all.

She beat him, of course, guarding the dictionary and challenging him on every word, and it was fun and it was nice, but it was just too much of a glimpse of all that they’d lost. By the time it was ten, James was only too glad to pounce on her first yawn and tell her it was time for bed.

‘I’ll put the game away,’ he added, because they’d always argued over that. Lorna used to want to leave everything just so, while James had always wanted to head for bed. Another sign of their incompatibility—only it wasn’t there tonight.

‘Leave it.’ Lorna shrugged. ‘It will still be there in the morning.’

‘You’ve changed your tune,’ James said, and suddenly it felt as if they were back at the dinner table, trying not to compare the past with the present, trying not to remember how it had been once—only, unlike James, Lorna wasn’t uncomfortable with it.

‘Have you only just noticed?’ Lorna smiled and for the first time when she said goodnight she kissed him on the cheek, but as she slipped into bed the smile she’d worn all evening faded.

What the hell was she doing?

She knew what it was called, knew that she
had
been flirting. Not deliberately, of course. James was off limits,
they
were off limits. She knew that, and so did James—she’d heard the relief in his voice when she’d told him that on Sunday she’d be gone.

Yes, Lorna told herself, two more nights and apart from a thank-you card, they’d never have to be in contact again—and they’d both surely be better off for it.

James left early for work the next morning, even by his standards. Usually she was up around seven and they’d have a little chat before he headed off, but she heard the front door close and his car start up and somehow she knew James was avoiding her.

He was.

The two nights they had left seemed to stretch into infinity, her scent was everywhere, so were magazines and nail varnish. Her laughter had crept into his home as she’d crept back into his life and he resisted the intrusion at every turn, but there was no escape. Her name cropped up at work, his colleagues enquiring as to how she was doing. Even knowing she was at home made it harder to focus on his day. Still, it was not for much longer. He’d work late tonight, James told himself, he might even crash in the on-call room and, though he’d promised to take her clothes shopping on Saturday, once that was out of the way, he’d head back into work and see as little of her as possible.

It had been easier when she’d been ill.

Every day there were changes, every day there was progress, and this Friday was no exception. Instead of Lorna’s usual quick shower, Pauline ran her a bath and sat on the top of the stairs, calling out ever five minutes or so as Lorna lay in the lovely warm, bubbly water, conditioner soaking in her hair, and pinched James’s razor to tackle a few neglected areas.

She must have been feeling seriously better because afterwards, instead of collapsing from exhaustion into bed for her usual afternoon doze, for the first time she had a teeny rummage in his cupboards and realised that James did live alone. Apart from a can of ladies’ deodorant and a box of tampons there wasn’t much
Elliedence
at all. Not even one lousy hair tie! But there was a hair-dryer lurking beneath the sink and it was lovely to sit on a bar stool in the kitchen as Pauline blow-dried her
long auburn curls. She insisted Lorna would catch her death otherwise.

‘How long have you worked for James?’ Lorna asked as Pauline moaned about the stairs and how hard it was cleaning for a bear of man who didn’t know where the bin was!

‘Since a couple of months after he moved in,’ Pauline said. ‘It would be more than five years now. He’s nice to work for, though we have our moments. Not with James, just his…’ Her voice sort of stopped then, halted in mid-sentence, and Lorna could only smile.

‘I’m his
ex
-wife, Pauline!’

‘Well, like I said, I don’t mind James and his mess, though it does drive me to distraction at times, but when some madam who’s only been here five minutes starts demanding I do her ironing, or moans that there’s some hair in the shower…’ Lorna smothered another smile as Pauline continued drying her hair. Pauline was adorable, absolutely, but Lorna could picture Pauline’s face if Lorna had suddenly demanded that she iron for her. ‘The latest one’s not so bad.’

‘Ellie,’ Lorna said brightly, just so that Pauline knew that she knew James had a girlfriend.

‘Mmm.’ Pauline said, which wasn’t much of an insight.

‘I haven’t seen much of Ellie.’ Lorna was glad she had her back to Pauline. Her face turned purple as she asked the question that had been irking for a couple of days. ‘I hope she isn’t put out that I’m here.’

‘She’s away a lot,’ Pauline said, blasting Lorna’s head with hot air and tugging it tight with the brush. ‘She has some fancy job that means a lot of travel. She
wouldn’t mind anyway—she knows he’d never cheat. James just isn’t like that.’

‘No.’ Lorna swallowed, because she was right. It wouldn’t enter James’s head to cheat.

‘He’s a nice man all round really,’ Pauline said, ‘well, from what I’ve seen. I’m sure you’ve got your tale to tell, but apart from his mess, he’s a real sweetheart—good looking, funny—
sexy.
’ Pauline added in a loud whisper, which made Lorna laugh. She wasn’t laughing a second later. In fact, if she didn’t know better she’d have sworn Pauline had just tapped her on the head not too lightly with the hairbrush, but of course she hadn’t. Pauline apologised quickly that the brush had slipped. So Lorna just sat there, enjoying the hot air on her scalp and Pauline’s idle chatter, even answering when it was merited, but her mind was in another place. James
was
a nice man—the fact she was here today proved it. He was also good looking, funny and sexy too, and one who deserved so much more than she was able to give him.