‘Do what exactly?’ His voice was supremely even, as if she were some sort of lunatic he had to pacify until Security arrived.
‘Be nice.’ She gave an exasperated shrug. ‘Your mum rings and you light up…’
‘I do the same for your parents,’ Sav pointed out. ‘And as for my mother, she’s in Spain, Isla. She’s on the other side of the world, worried sick about us all. What do you want me to do, cry into the telephone and make her load just that bit heavier? Or maybe I should answer the door to your parents and tell them just how I’m feeling!’
‘Tell me, then,’ Isla begged. ‘Tell me how you’re feeling, Sav.’
‘OK, then.’ He stared back at her, black eyes flashing, his mouth in a grim line, that gorgeous olive complexion tinged with grey, and for a tiny second she thought he was going to do it, was going to finally open up and let her in, but instead he gave a tight shrug.
‘Hungry.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘At this moment I’m feeling hungry, so I’m going to the canteen.’
‘Sav, please.’ She was crying now, but not in weakness. Instead, angry tears of utter exasperation were coursing down her cheeks as she faced this impossible, difficult man. ‘I can’t do this any more!’
‘Can’t do what?’ he snapped. ‘What exactly is your problem here, Isla?’
‘You are!’ Isla rasped, her fists clenched in rage. ‘For twelve months you’ve shut me out, for twelve months you’ve barely spoken to me, and I’ve tried to understand, tried to accept that it’s your way of coping, and then I come in here and you’re outgoing, laughing, being nice…’
‘I’m paid to be nice, Isla.’ Stapling a few papers together, he finally deigned to look at her. ‘Did you expect to find me hiding in my office with my head in my hands?’
‘Of course not.’
‘This department sees more than one hundred thousand new arrivals a year.’
‘I don’t need some impromptu audit, Sav—’
‘Perhaps you do,’ he said promptly. ‘Perhaps, Isla, you need to understand that I am a consultant, that I have to, have to,’ he reiterated, ‘hold my staff together, be accountable, foster a team spirit, and as much as I’d like to shut the door on the lot of them I can’t.’ His voice was low but there was an urgency behind it and Isla’s eyes widened as he continued. ‘You’re very good at blaming me for all of this, you’re very good at pointing out my inadequacies over the last twelve months, very good at telling me that I don’t show enough emotion—but our son died fourteen months ago, Isla.’ He watched her paling face, watched as her head started to slowly shake, her lips quivering as he mercilessly continued. ‘Fourteen months ago,’ Sav repeated slowly. ‘So why don’t we fill in the gaps? Let’s talk about the first two months after he died, shall we?’
‘No!’ Suddenly the ball she had started to roll seemed to be gaining in momentum, but it was hurtling in the wrong direction and Isla floundered to control it. ‘Not here.’
‘Why not?’ Sav stared directly at her. ‘I thought talking was what you wanted. I can assure you no one can hear or will come in.’
‘No!’ she said again, putting her hands up to her ears, but Sav was relentless in his pursuit.
‘For those two months I held it together, Isla. I alone held the family together,’ he repeated. ‘For those two months, despite my surgery, despite the fact that three weeks after the funeral I had to go back and work full-time in a new role as a consultant, I was the one making the meals, bathing and feeding the twins and arranging transport to take them to and from school, practically spoon-feeding you while you lay in bed. Didn’t it dawn on you that I might have wanted the world to stop for a while? Didn’t you ever think I might have needed to shut the door on everyone and disappear? But I couldn’t. I had a wife practically incoherent with grief, two little boys whose world had been torn apart and, like it or not, as irrelevant as it might have seemed at the time, a mortgage to pay. One of us had to be strong, and I expected it to be me, I wanted it to be me. But for those two months I held it in, for those two months I was the one comforting you, the twins and our families, and now suddenly, because you’re ready to talk, ready to move on, I have to be, too.’
‘It isn’t suddenly,’ Isla refuted, but the certainty had left her voice now. Sav’s argument was unexpectedly persuasive and she struggled to retrieve the clarity of earlier, the angry wind that had swept her into his office, her tear-filled eyes beseeching him to understand. ‘I know I wasn’t there for you, I know those months must have been hell…’
‘It’s all been hell,’ Sav corrected.
‘My son had died…’ Isla rasped, but Sav sat unmoved.
‘So had mine.’ He stared back at her and suddenly everything swirled into focus, her whole perspective on that awful, vile time shifting that immovable inch. She finally witnessed Sav’s take on things, comprehending, perhaps for the first time, that she wasn’t entirely blameless in all this. That the demise of their marriage wasn’t squarely Sav’s fault.
It was a sobering thought indeed.
‘So had mine,’ Sav said again, picking up the telephone that had rung unnoticed for a couple of moments. ‘I’ll be there in a moment. Thanks for letting me know,’ he said into the phone.
‘Sav.’ Pale, trembling, she caught the sleeve of his jacket as he brushed past, but when he turned to face her, Isla truly didn’t know what to say. In that single moment everything, everything had changed.
‘We’re needed out there.’
CHAPTER SIX
‘COME on, Isla.’ Jayne was sipping on a coffee, as she juggled the off-duty roster. ‘It will be a great evening, a real chance for you to get to know everyone.’
‘I really can’t.’ Shaking her head, Isla finished up the notes she was writing, painfully aware that Sav was sitting next to her. Yesterday’s explosive revelation was still hanging in the air, unexplored thanks to Sav being called into the hospital last night. And despite her earlier needed for laying it all out in the open, Isla was grateful for the small reprieve. She felt as if she’d got out of bed for the first time after a horrendous dose of flu, her legs impossibly shaky, the world strangely unfamiliar, her mind slowly, painfully coming to terms with her own behaviour. The two months after Casey’s death had been a swirling fog of pain she had never revisited, something she had pushed aside in the name of self-preservation, but clearly it had to be faced.
‘Come on,’ Jayne pushed. ‘Sav’s not on call, the two of you will have a ball. Every month the emergency staff get together, all of us, not just the doctors and nurses, but the domestic and admin staff as well. Some of the paramedics come, too, if they can make it. It’s great to meet up away from work. I swear it keeps us all sane.’
‘Or suitably insane.’ Sav grinned. ‘You’d have to be to work here.’
‘Exactly.’ Jayne laughed. ‘Come on, Isla, we’re going Middle Eastern tomorrow night. There’s a great restaurant at the Docklands everyone wants to try.’
‘Let’s go!’ Sav looked up from his notes and Isla blinked in surprise at his response.
‘But what if you get called in?’ Isla answered, her mind flailing, suddenly appalled at the prospect of a night out, their first night out since, since…
Forcibly she pushed that thought away, thinking up an excuse with a slightly triumphant glint in her eye. ‘Martin’s still away for another fortnight. We can go next month.’
‘I won’t drink.’ Sav gave an easy shrug. ‘Jordan’s the registrar on this Saturday night and he’s more than capable of running the show, but if he needs me to come in for anything he can call me at the restaurant. Why don’t you ask your parents if they can babysit?’ He flashed that dazzling smile at Jayne as he fished in his wallet for a fifty-dollar note. ‘Here’s our deposit. Put us both down.’ Ignoring Isla’s wide-eyed look of annoyance, aimed solely at him, that dazzling smile widened a good inch, halting her argument as the doors slid open and the bright green overalls of the paramedics came into view. ‘Looks like yo
u’ve got a new patient, Sister.’
Isla wasn’t sure who was blushing more, the cheery paramedic who was handing over the latest arrival or herself.
‘Jamie Chappell, eight years old, had an asthma attack at school. This is his teacher, Miss Symons. The parents know and are on their way in.’
‘Thank you.’ Isla smiled, unable to look the paramedic or his partner in the eye, then forcing herself to do so, to tackle yet another difficult situation head-on and acknowledge that she recognized them, that she knew they were the ones who had looked after Sav while he had been trapped in his car.
She’d first seen Ted on that fateful day in Emergency. He’d come in and held her hand when everyone else had been too busy to and then later, months later, she’d listened to his evidence in the coroner’s court. Listened as Ted and his partner Doug had retold, from their professional perspective, their version of the tragic events. And afterwards, when the coroner had delivered his findings, when the legal side of it had finally ended, when supposedly life should have started to move on, they’d come up and offered Isla their deepest condolences.
And now she had to look them in the eye.
‘Thank you, Ted.’ She gave a small, nervous smile. ‘Doug, too. It’s good to see you both again.’
‘No worries, Isla.’ Ted gave a small nod, glad she’d made the first uncomfortable move. Then he pulled her aside slightly, awkward formalities over and ready to concentrate on the patient. ‘This is the little guy’s third trip to hospital in a fortnight. Apparently his parents have just separated and the school’s concerned that the stress at home might be causing the attacks.’
‘Thanks for that.’ Isla glanced over at the little boy, smiling cheerfully as his anxious teacher clucked around him. ‘He doesn’t look very stressed,’ Isla said thoughtfully. ‘How was he when you arrived at the school?’
‘He had a slight wheeze, but apart from that he seemed OK.’ Ted gave a shrug. ‘It’s hard to say, of course. The school had been giving him continuous Ventolin, so no doubt he’d improved a lot, but…’ His voice trailed off and Isla gave a wry smile, neither wanting to be the one to cast the first stone. ‘I’ll get Reception to pull out his old admission notes for you while I register him,’ Ted offered instead, and Isla gave a grateful nod. ‘How are you doing?’ Ted asked then, reverting to a rather more personal subject, his voice thickening in embarrassment, and Isla gave a rather noncommittal smile.
‘Getting there,’ she said, then gave a tiny, more honest sigh. ‘Or, rather, I’m trying to get there.’
‘You will,’ Ted said gently. ‘I know it’s hard.’
Did he?
Did anyone who hadn’t been through it really know just how hard it was? But, of course, Isla didn’t say that. Instead, she forced a smile, said her goodbyes then headed back to her remarkably cheerful patient.
‘How are you, Jamie?’ Isla asked, checking his obs and listening to his chest as he chatted away with amazing fluency for someone who was supposed to be having an asthma attack.
‘My chest still feels tight,’ Jamie responded as Isla pulled off her stethoscope. ‘Are my mum and dad here yet?’
‘They’re on their way,’ Miss Symons soothed. ‘I rang your mum myself.’
‘And Dad,’ Jamie checked. ‘Did you ring my dad as well?’
‘Your mum was going to do that,’ Miss Symons answered, turning anxious eyes to Isla and nodding to the door, clearly wanting a quiet word out of Jamie’s earshot. But Isla took a couple of moments to finish what she was doing and write down her observations before heading out of the cubicle.
‘His asthma’s got a lot worse since his parents broke up,’ Miss Symons started as soon as Isla stepped outside. ‘I know he looks fairly well now, but he was extremely breathless in the classroom. It was awful to watch, the other children were terrified.
‘Now something really needs to be done. Clearly his asthma isn’t being properly controlled, the doctor who saw him last week only kept him here for a couple of hours. I don’t think he understood me when I said that his parents had separated and that Jamie was under a lot of stress. He barely spoke English.’
‘Do you remember the doctor’s name?’ Isla asked.
‘Something foreign—Salv, or something like that. I really don’t think he understood just how bad Jamie had been in class. Surely he needs to be admitted—’
‘Problem?’
Isla bristled as Heath walked over. Even though he’d apologized for his behaviour yesterday, even though he’d been nothing but nice since, Isla quite simply couldn’t take to him, and it had nothing to do with what Sav or Jayne had said. There was something behind those cool glassy eyes and perfect smile that had the hairs on the back of Isla’s neck standing on end.
‘I was just explaining to the sister that the doctor who saw Jamie the last two times seems rather dismissive. He doesn’t seem to understand that—’
‘Do we know who the doctor is?’ Heath asked.
‘I think it was Sav,’ Isla responded, refusing to blush just because he was her husband. ‘However, this isn’t Jamie’s mother, this is his teacher—’
‘Who’s naturally very concerned,’ Heath broke in with a wide reassuring smile aimed at the teacher. Miss Symons melted on the spot. ‘Let’s take a look at the young man, shall we?’
Heath was very thorough in his examination, gently reassuring Jamie at every opportunity, talking in depth to his very anxious parents when they arrived and arranging a chest X-ray before asking the paediatricians to come and assess the young boy to arrange admission.
‘Admission?’ Isla deliberately removed the frown that had formed in her forehead as they walked back to the nurses’ station. ‘But he’s well.’
‘It’s also his third presentation in less than a fortnight. Clearly something isn’t right,’ Heath pointed out. ‘And, as the teacher said, he’s improved markedly since the initial attack.’
‘Who are we talking about?’
Nothing in Heath’s stance changed, but Isla could have sworn she heard an annoyed intake of breath as Sav came over.
‘My patient,’ Heath responded tartly, clearly wishing to leave it there.
But Sav peered over his shoulder and, unlike Isla, did nothing to keep his frown hidden as he registered the name at the top of the chart.
‘Jamie Chappell? Isn’t that the little guy with the asthma who came in earlier in the week?’
‘The one you discharged…’ There was surliness behind Heath’s voice that had Isla’s senses on high alert. ‘Despite the fact he’d presented a few days before with a similar episode.’
‘Absolutely,’ Sav responded firmly. ‘There was no need for admission. He wasn’t even wheezing when he got here. What’s wrong with him today—another asthma attack?’
When Heath didn’t answer, Isla stepped in. ‘He became breathless at school, the teacher called for an ambulance, though according to the paramedics he wasn’t particularly distressed when they got there.’
‘Because he’d been on continuous Ventolin, as per the school’s asthma protocol.’ Heath bristled. ‘Obviously he isn’t being managed properly.’ There was a challenge in Heath’s voice. No matter how polite the conversation, Isla knew, just knew Heath was using a patient to prove a point. ‘He should never have been discharged the last time.’
‘In that case,’ Sav responded, his the voice of reason as Isla found she was holding her breath, ‘I’ll see him again and make sure that I didn’t miss anything last time.’
Taking the casualty card, Sav went to walk off but Heath called him back. ‘Maybe that’s not such a good idea, Sav. The teacher requested that another doctor see him…’ Isla’s mouth opened in protest. The teacher may not have been particularly complimentary about Sav but she certainly hadn’t insisted on a different doctor. But from the warning look Sav shot in her direction, Isla took her cue and snapped her mouth closed. Clearly Sav didn’t need her to fight his battles. ‘I am the consultant.’ For the
first time since the unpleasant conversation had started, Sav’s voice had an edge, a certain air of authority as he stared directly back at Heath. ‘If the patient has been mismanaged then it is my responsibility, especially if I am the doctor who has twice discharged him.’
‘Perhaps.’
Heath stared defiantly back and despite the warm hospital air suddenly Isla felt icy cold, the bristling hatred emanating from Heath clear now for all to see. She rued the times she had dismissed Sav’s concerns, could have kicked herself for the times she had reassured him that Heath would come around, that it was all OK, when obviously it wasn’t.
‘The teacher also pointed out that you didn’t seem to understand what was being said, that perhaps…’ a hint of a smirk played on the edges of Heath’s full mouth ‘…your English isn’t quite up to the job.’
‘And I’m sure you did nothing to reassure her.’ Sav’s eyes narrowed as he eyed his colleague. ‘But what do you think, Heath? That’s the real issue here after all. Do you think my English isn’t up to the job? Do you think I’m so incompetent that I’d discharge an unstable asthmatic?’
‘Of course not.’ The sneer rapidly disappeared, the beginnings of a blush spreading in an unflattering swoop over Heath’s cheeks as Sav faced the confrontation head-on.
‘Because, if that is the case,’ Sav continued, his voice icy calm, ‘then we’ve got a real problem. We’re supposed to be a team. For this place to survive we have to work as a team. We all have to respect each other, be there for each other. And as I’m the consultant and you’re the senior registrar, if we can’t depend on each other, it needs to be addressed.’ He waited for Heath’s response but none was forthcoming. ‘Heath,’ Sav snapped, ‘is there a problem?’
‘No.’ Heath gave a tight shrug. ‘Of course not.’
‘Good,’ Sav responded curtly. ‘Did you read the previous admission notes on Jamie Chappell?’ When Heath shook his head, Sav carried on. ‘Well, in my conclusion I suggested that perhaps it wasn’t Jamie’s asthma that was the issue, but rather the school’s and the family’s response to it.’
Emergency--A Marriage Worth Keeping Page 6
