The Taming of Dr. Alex Draycott (9 page)

She stiffened. ‘But that’s what I’m here for. It’s the reason I was set on.’

‘But you’re not alone in any of this. I’ll be there for you. I’m working with you, not against you. I appreciate how difficult the job is for you, and I’ll do whatever I can to help you. Together we can sort this out. Believe me.’

She closed her eyes briefly. She wanted to believe him. But in the past those men she had thought she could rely on had always let her down. They didn’t want to know about the hassles of the job. All that mattered to them was to take life as it came and if things went wrong, so be it.

She couldn’t live like that. She wanted to relax and enjoy life, but she couldn’t let it toss her about on a whim, like flotsam and jetsam on a beach. Somehow, if it was in her power, she wanted to make a difference.

Could she trust him? Those few moments of inner peace, when he had held her in his arms and shown her that another side to life was possible had been so fleeting. Deep down, she recognised that they were two different people, opposites in every way, and yet she was drawn to him, as though by some invisible, magnetic thread.

Now she was more confused than ever.

‘D
O YOU
think Mummy will like this?’ Sarah asked, adding petals made out of red tissue paper to the flowers that decorated the front of the card she was making. ‘It’s a vase, see, with lots of flowers in it.’

‘I’m sure she’ll love it,’ Alex said, admiring her efforts. ‘It’s very pretty, and I know your mother loves flowers.’

‘I made a sailboat picture for Daddy,’ James put in, waving his card in the air. ‘He likes boats. He takes me to sail mine in the brook sometimes.’ He frowned, his grey eyes troubled, and Alex wondered if he was thinking about those special times spent with his father, which had come to an abrupt end after the accident.

‘You’re right, it’s perfect for him…and we’ll put it on his bedside table at the hospital, so that he can see it as soon as he’s feeling a bit better.’

‘He’s really poorly, isn’t he?’ Sarah’s eyes clouded, and Alex wished there was some way she could comfort her. The children missed their parents and as time went on it was becoming more and more difficult for her to soothe their worries. ‘The nurse said he wasn’t well enough to see us. She said he had to rest.’

‘When are we going to see him again?’ James asked. ‘I want him to come back home. I want Mummy to come home.’

‘I know… It’s very difficult for both of you, isn’t it?’ Alex laid her arms around the children’s shoulders as they stood close to one another by the kitchen table. ‘But your mother is getting stronger every day, and perhaps it won’t be too long before she’s able to come home.’

‘And Daddy?’ Sarah’s gaze was almost pleading and it wrenched at Alex’s heart not to be able to give her the answer she wanted.

‘I don’t know. The doctors and nurses are doing what they can to make him more comfortable. We just have to wait, and hope that soon he’ll be stronger.’

James’s bottom lip trembled, but he didn’t say anything more, and Alex gave him a hug. ‘Why don’t you finish making your cards for Auntie Jane?’ she suggested. ‘If you can finish them off in the next few minutes, before I drop you both off at Martha’s house, I’ll be able to give them to Jane when I go in to work today.’

‘She’s going to be home soon, isn’t she?’ Sarah brightened a little. ‘You said she had her operation and she was all right.’

Alex nodded. ‘She just has to stay in hospital for a couple of days, so the doctors can make sure she’s healing up nicely.’ Jane’s operation had been done with minimally invasive surgery, which meant that the surgeon had made several small incisions and used a laparascope to help with the procedure.

‘I don’t want to go to Martha’s,’ James grumbled, his bottom lip jutting. ‘I want to stay here with you.’

She knelt down and put her arms around him. ‘But I have to go to work, James. You know that, don’t you?’

‘Yes, but I want you to stay at home. I want you to stay here, with us.’

Alex shook her head. ‘I’d like to do that. I wish I could, sweetheart, but it just isn’t possible right now. I have to go to work to earn money so that I can pay all the bills. I’d love to stay here with you, but I can’t.’ Alex frowned. ‘Anyway, I thought you liked being with Martha? You have a good time at her house, don’t you?’

James didn’t answer, but Sarah said quietly, ‘She’s okay. She takes us to the park—but it’s not the same. We like it here with you. The only thing better would be for Mummy and Daddy to come home.’

Alex kissed both of them, wanting to comfort them and reassure them at the same time. ‘If I could wave a magic wand and make it happen for you, I would, but for now, we all have to make the best of things.’

She got to her feet and glanced at the table, littered with glue sticks, cards and coloured tissue paper. ‘Like I said, if you want me to give the cards to Auntie Jane, you’d better get a move on, because we have to leave here in twenty minutes.’

She arrived at the hospital some time later, feeling harassed and dejected. James had begun to play up as she’d dropped him off at her neighbour’s house, and it had taken all her ingenuity and powers of reasoning to soothe him and help him to settle down. It also meant that she was a few minutes late for work, and that added to her stress levels, leaving her flustered.

‘We’re short-handed,’ Katie told her as she made her way to the main desk. ‘The waiting room’s full and we don’t have enough nurses to cope with the workload. Charlotte’s off sick, and Simon Henderson is away on a course.’ She shook her head. ‘I don’t know how we’re going to manage things.’

‘I know it’s difficult, but we’ll just have to keep going as best we can,’ Alex told her, giving it some thought. ‘Unfortunately, I can’t bring in any locum doctors, and we won’t be using the agency nurses any more. It means that your job, triage, is more important than ever, because we’ll probably need to allocate nurses to the most serious cases. Waiting times will be stretched, of course, but there’s nothing we can do about that in the circumstances.’

Katie sighed. ‘We’ll do what we can.’

‘Thanks, Katie. You’re all very good at what you do, and I’m just hoping that you’ll be able to keep things together for as long as possible.’

She took a moment to glance at the status board. An infant was coming in by ambulance…something else to turn up her stress levels a notch. Very young, sick children were always a source of concern.

‘Did I hear something about waiting times?’ Callum came over to the desk. He placed a chart in the tray and picked out another one, just as Alex reached for a file. Their hands brushed against one another, sending small explosions of sensation to rocket through Alex’s arm. She sucked in a breath. Why was it that her senses went on overdrive every time he came near? She stole a glance at him, but looked away when his gaze met hers. It didn’t help that he always looked so good, either. Her heartbeat had quickened and there was a strange ache starting up inside her. He was way too distracting. He wore dark trousers and a shirt that moulded his body and showed off the flat plane of his stomach, hinting at the vital, energetic man within, a man who was always on the go and kept himself totally fit.

‘Waiting times are getting longer,’ Katie said. ‘It’s the budget cuts coming home to roost.’ She moved away, heading towards the treatment room.

Callum’s brows drew together. ‘There’s no easy answer, is there?’ He glanced at Alex, who was trying to clear her head of errant thoughts by attempting to concentrate on her work schedule and make some sense of it. She was not going to let herself get worked up about him. It was her hormones that were bothering her, nothing else. ‘No,’ she said. ‘The problem is, we need more money, not less.’

She frowned at her work schedule. How was she going to pull in her clinic time as well as take in another meeting with the executive board? Dr Langton seemed to forget that she had other priorities when he called these impromptu gatherings. And in the meantime, would it help to cheer up the nurses if she bought in pizzas and cookies to keep them going through the busy times when they weren’t able to get away for a proper break? It was surely worth a try. She made a mental note to phone the local take-away food shop to arrange delivery.

‘You look a little flushed,’ Callum said, sending her a thoughtful glance. ‘Is it the staffing problem, or something else? I saw you come flying in here a couple of minutes ago as though the hounds of hell were at your feet.’

Alex made a helpless gesture with her hands. He was looking at her so intently and she wanted so desperately to be close to him. She was trying not to think about the way he had kissed her not too long ago, or about the way it had felt to be wrapped in his arms.

‘It’s the children, mostly,’ she murmured, ‘James and Sarah. It’s very worrying. They’re both finding it difficult to cope with their parents in hospital, and I don’t know what to tell them now that Ross has taken a turn for the worse. I’m becoming really anxious about him. And now that school has broken up for the holidays they’re saying that they want me to be there for them.’ She gave a sigh. ‘I feel as though I’m being torn all ways.’

‘There’s no perfect solution to any of those, is there? Given a choice, I suspect children are always going to want their parent or guardian close at hand…but in this day and age even in the best of circumstances I guess it isn’t always possible.’

She shook her head. ‘No, it isn’t. I’ve been thinking about it, and maybe I’ll try to get them enrolled in some play activities over the next few weeks. That might help to distract them a bit.’

‘Good idea. That could work out well.’

A siren sounded in the distance, and they both turned towards the ambulance bay. ‘This must be the two-year-old we’ve been expecting—the one with the high temperature and vomiting,’ Callum said. ‘Would you be able to work with me? I’ve a feeling we’ll need your skills as a paediatrician with this one.’

She nodded, walking briskly alongside him. ‘Do we know anything about her condition? The GP sent her to us, didn’t he?’

‘That’s right. Apparently, she had chickenpox a few weeks ago, and since then she’s been going rapidly downhill. She’s been generally unwell, lethargic and showing signs of irritability. Her mother complains that she’s gone off her food over the last few days, and now she’s very poorly.’

They hurried to greet the ambulance technicians, who were wheeling the child into the department. ‘This is Rachel Vernon,’ the paramedic said. ‘She’s two years old. She had a couple of seizures in the ambulance, so we’ve given her medication to control them, but her condition’s still unstable. There are signs of neck rigidity and photophobia.’

Callum nodded grimly. ‘Thanks,’ he said, taking over and accompanying the infant into the treatment room. He gently began to examine the child while Alex talked to the girl’s parents.

‘It’s bad, isn’t it?’ the father said, his face taut with anxiety. ‘She looks so ill. The GP said it might be meningitis.’

‘It’s a possibility,’ Alex agreed. ‘Meningitis means that the meninges, the brain’s protective covering, are inflamed, but I’m concerned that the seizures are a sign that there’s inflammation within her brain, too. We’ll do tests to find out exactly what’s causing her problems, though, and in the meantime we’ll give her supportive treatment.’

She tried to reassure the parents that they would do everything possible to help their child. Then she turned to Callum, wanting to know the results of his examination.

‘It’s possible we’re dealing with a viral infection,’ he said, ‘but if that’s the case, it’s more serious than usual. This little girl is very sick.’ His expression was sad as he looked at the infant, but there was something else in his eyes that Alex had learned to recognise, a growing determination, perhaps, that he would do his utmost to pull the child through this distressing illness and get her back on her feet once more. He straightened. ‘I’ll get a CT scan done as soon as possible.’

Alex nodded. ‘I agree. I’d recommend antibiotics as a cover, until we know what we’re dealing with, along with medication to bring her temperature down and control her pain, and something to stop the vomiting. And we need to do a lumbar puncture as soon as she’s stable.’ A lumbar puncture would show them whether they were dealing with a bacterial or a viral infection, and once they knew the nature of it, they would be able to choose the most appropriate treatment.

He nodded and briefly addressed the nurse who was assisting. ‘I’ll give the child a corticosteroid to control the inflammation, along with an anticonvulsant, and at the same time we’ll set up an EEG so that we can monitor any more seizures. Later on we may need to start an infusion of mannitol to control any rise in intracranial pressure. In the meantime, we’ll take blood for testing, and I’m going to ask the lab to get back to us urgently with the results.’

‘Okay, I’ll organise a trolley.’ The nurse hurried away to prepare the equipment.

Some time later, when they had done all they could to safeguard the child and make her more comfortable, Alex and Callum spoke once again to the parents, before finally turning their attention to their other patients.

‘We’ll look at the possibility of doing a lumbar puncture in a few hours,’ Callum said. ‘It all depends how well she responds to the initial treatment.’

‘Waiting’s always difficult,’ Alex said, frowning. She could see that he was worried about his small patient, but their options were limited right now. They were doing everything possible to control the infection, but until they knew exactly what they were dealing with, they were working in the dark. ‘Given that she’s just suffered a bout of chickenpox, it’s quite likely that we’re dealing with a viral source…the abnormalities on the EEG certainly seem to point that way, but without the lab tests we can’t know for sure.’

They both went their separate ways after that, treating a variety of patients who had come in with all manner of problems from fractures to worrying chest infections.

Around lunchtime, Alex met up with Callum again as she was suturing a gash in a child’s hand. He put his head around the door of the treatment room, and said quietly, ‘Rachel hasn’t had any more seizures since we last saw her, so I’m thinking we might do the spinal tap after lunch. Right now, though, I’m going up to see my aunt… I thought you might want to come with me as soon as you’re free. I’ll be in the staff lounge, grabbing a bite to eat.’ He gave her a knowing wink. ‘I heard some good fairy had pizza sent in, along with baguettes and cakes and other goodies.’

Her mouth curved. ‘Just give me a minute to finish up in here.’ She glanced at her young patient a short time later. ‘That’s it…we’re all done, Lewis. The nurse will put a dressing on the hand for you, and then you’re free to go home with your mum.’ She smiled. ‘You’ve been very brave,’ she added, presenting him with a teddy-bear badge and a page to colour, and he left the room with a beaming smile on his face.

She found Callum in the lounge, tucking into a bacon-filled baguette. ‘These are good,’ he said, munching appreciatively. ‘You want to try one?’

She nodded. ‘Perhaps I will.’ She could see from what was left in the boxes that her gesture had gone down well with the staff. Katie and a couple of the other nurses on their lunch break were tucking in.