Practically Perfect

by Caroline Anderson

  ‘Did you just ring about Tim?’ she asked, appalled that she could have forgotten him.

  ‘Yes—he’s through surgery. It had burst, but they’ve cleaned him up and they’re blasting him with antibiotics. I was just coming up to tell you.’

  ‘Oh. Right. Thanks.’

  She hesitated, hovering on the landing just feet from him, her heart pounding and her mind a blank.

  He almost stepped towards her. She saw him hesitate, saw something flicker in his eyes and then he smiled, a little, tiny half-smile. ‘Goodnight, Connie,’ he murmured, and, turning on his heel, he ran lightly back downstairs. She heard the kitchen door shut with a soft click, and then it was quiet.

  She went to bed, curled up under the quilt and wondered why she felt so alone tonight, when she’d been alone at night for her entire life. Well, almost, she corrected, remembering that brief fling years before when she’d had the time.

  Perhaps she ought to get the dogs to come and sleep on her bed, but they were in the kitchen and so was Patrick, and there was no way she was going down there in the long T-shirt that she used as a nightie and admitting that she needed company!

  She thumped the pillow and tried to get comfortable, but her arm was aching and her fingers tingled and itched, and she wanted to scream.

  She heard Patrick come up to bed, and to her surprise he went into the spare room next to hers, and not through into the locum’s room over the surgery in the other wing of the house.

  How odd. The locums always slept over the surgery. She wondered why Patrick didn’t, and hard on the heels of the thought was another one, much more disturbing.

  He was just on the other side of the wall. She heard the jingle of keys on a hard surface, and the thud of a shoe falling. She held her breath, and then giggled. The saying ‘waiting for the other shoe to drop’ suddenly made sense. She heard a soft thud, and then the creak of the floorboards and the squeak of the wardrobe door. Hanging up his clothes?

  Oh, Lord. The image of him that morning in the bathroom returned to haunt her, and she wondered why it was now, when she had nothing to offer and more worries than she could shake a stick at, that she suddenly had to fall for a man she had to share a house with for the next few weeks!

  Well, too bad. She was an adult, with self-control and self-discipline. So he was attractive. So what? Lots of men were attractive. That didn’t mean she had to lose sleep over them, did it?

  Of course not!

  Patrick propped himself up against the headboard, folded his arms behind his head and tried not to think about Connie tucked up in bed on the other side of the wall. She was too thin, too tiny and fragile and delicate for his taste. He preferred a woman with a bit of meat on her, something to hold onto, something soft and warm and enveloping, not a scraggy child-woman with huge haunted eyes and jeans he was jealous of.

  Unbidden, he thought of the way he’d first seen her, in that short T-shirt and those ridiculous knickers, with that soft, vulnerable expanse of skin between the two, and he groaned.

  How could he want her? She was so tiny, so frail…

  He laughed softly. Frail? She’d nearly killed him with the cricket bat! She’d just been backpacking round Yorkshire with a broken arm. She might be small, she might have slight bones, but frail she was not.

  And despite all his protests about liking his women well covered, his body knew it was a lie.

  Connie Wright was a very attractive young woman, and whatever garbage he told himself, he wanted her.

  Well, tough. He had more going on in his life than Connie realised, and there was no way he was going to allow a little lust to distract him and complicate things further.

  He switched off the light, curled onto his side and shut his eyes.

  It wasn’t that easy. As he drifted off, Connie was there, dancing in front of his eyes in nothing but kitten-print knickers and the sexiest smile he’d ever seen…

  CHAPTER THREE

  CONNIE’S arm hurt.

  It didn’t matter which way she lay, how she propped it up, what she did with it. It ached, with a deep and heavy ache that made her want to cry with frustration.

  She slipped out of bed, tiptoed downstairs and went through to the surgery. Perhaps there were some strong painkillers out on the shelves in the dispensary. She flicked on the lights, deplored her father’s apparently unsystematic retrieval system and searched the shelves fruitlessly for something to send her off to sleep.

  ‘Connie?’

  Patrick spoke softly, but he may as well have let off a gun behind her for all the difference it made. She jumped about a foot, spun round with her hand over her heart and glared at him.

  ‘Are you trying to terrify the life out of me?’ she demanded, sagging back against the wall.

  He grinned. ‘Sorry. Arm hurting?’

  She sighed and stabbed her left hand through her already disordered hair. ‘You might say that. I just can’t get comfortable.’

  ‘Let me look at it.’

  She resisted the urge to hide it behind her back. ‘Why? I know what I need.’

  ‘Yes—a prescription-only medicine, nicked from the shelves of my dispensary. Sorry, Connie, if you want painkillers other than aspirin or paracetamol, you’ll have to let me look at you.’

  She knew he was right, but she felt very naked—again—and hideously disadvantaged. She shoved her arm out in front of her ungraciously and tapped her foot. ‘Here it is—look, if you must. I was going to tell you what I’d taken. I just didn’t want to disturb you.’

  ‘I don’t mind,’ he said softly, and, amazingly, she believed him. She instantly felt guilty for being so ungracious, but it was too late to take it back. Instead, she submitted to his careful and thorough examination.

  His hand was warm and gentle, covering her fingers, turning her arm over, flexing the finger joints, feeling for swelling or poor circulation.

  ‘The cast isn’t too tight or anything,’ she told him.

  ‘I’m just looking to see if there’s a problem brewing—maybe with the pins or plates. Has it hurt in the past, or is this new?’

  Connie shifted against the wall, closing her eyes and resigning herself to a full-blooded interrogation as well. ‘It’s hurt ever since it was done. I think it’s just all the damage. I had a new cast two weeks ago to see if that helped, but it didn’t really.’

  ‘How did the arm look, then?’

  Disfigured, she thought, but that was a subjective assessment, not a medical one. ‘OK.’

  ‘Incisions healed all right?’

  She nodded. ‘The stitches have been out for a month or more.’

  ‘And did they X-ray you when they changed the cast?’

  ‘Yes—look, Patrick, this is pointless. The damn thing just hurts, OK? I need some DF118s or something like that.’

  His fingers curled around hers, squeezing gently, warm and firm and comforting. ‘Can you feel that?’

  All the way through me, she could have said, but she managed to restrain herself. ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘And this?’

  She looked down, to see him pressing on her index finger with his nail. Just lightly, but she couldn’t feel it at all. She swallowed and shook her head. ‘No,’ she said, and her voice sounded scratchy. Damn.

  He nodded and let go, and she felt a huge sense of loss as he broke the contact. ‘I’ll give you something to take the pain away and help you sleep, then in the morning I think you should ring the consultant and maybe go back and see him.’

  ‘Her—and I know what she’d say.’

  ‘You’re doing too much and should have it in a sling and rest it for a week or so?’

  Her smile was wry and reluctant, but his eyes crinkled in response and he slipped his arm round her shoulders and hugged her gently.

  ‘Go on through to the kitchen and have a hot drink, and I’ll write you out a script and bring it in.’

  She nodded and went back into the house, but instead of going into the kitchen she wen
t upstairs and dug out an old towelling robe. If she was going to have to sit in the kitchen with Patrick and sip cocoa, she was wearing more than a T-shirt to do it!

  Patrick was in the kitchen when Connie got back down there, pan in one hand, a bottle of milk in the other, and a packet of pills was sitting in the middle of the kitchen table for her. He gestured to the milk. ‘Hot chocolate or malt?’

  ‘Black coffee.’

  He snorted and poured the milk into the pan. ‘Sorry. Hot milk contains calcium which boosts the production of the chemicals that promote sleep. So it’s hot milk or hot milk, basically. And no, you aren’t having coffee in it.’

  She grinned in defeat and dropped into a chair, her hand falling onto Toby’s shaggy head and fondling it automatically. ‘Hot chocolate, then, if you’re going to bully me.’

  ‘I am.’

  Rolo came up on the other side, his lovely golden head shoving against the cast and pleading for attention. She tried to stroke him, but her arm was tired and uncooperative and she just thumped him over the head with the cast instead.

  He sighed and lay down, his head heavy on her foot, and shut his eyes. Toby leaned against her, his chin on her knee, and she pulled his ears gently and wondered what she’d done to earn their devotion.

  ‘Here you go—one hot chocolate. Don’t burn your mouth.’

  ‘I’m not six,’ she said ungraciously, and then smiled to soften it. ‘Thanks, Patrick,’ she added.

  ‘You’re welcome.’ He sat down opposite her and pushed the pills across the table to her. ‘Take two of these with it.’

  She nodded, but was defeated first by the cardboard box and then by the blister pack. Frustrated, irritated beyond reason and almost in tears, she threw the packet down with a growl of anger and looked away.

  ‘Here.’

  She looked back, to see Patrick holding out his hand with two pills in the palm of it. He had his patient, get-it-out-of-your-system look on, and immediately she felt ashamed. ‘I’m sorry.’ She sighed. ‘It’s just—getting to me.’

  ‘I can imagine. Don’t apologise. Just take the pills, drink the drink and go back to bed with a book. You’ll be asleep in no time.’

  She snorted. ‘I wouldn’t bet on it. I haven’t been able to sleep for weeks, so I don’t imagine you’ll be able to work a miracle with your hot milk and happy pills.’

  He chuckled. ‘It’s worth a try. What do you want me to do, read you a bedtime story?’

  Make love to me, she nearly said, and then felt herself colour. She looked down hastily and prodded the froth on her drink. ‘I think I can manage to read my own bedtime story,’ she said drily, to cover her confusion. She didn’t know him, for heaven’s sake! She had absolutely never felt like this! She was so circumspect it was ridiculous. Even her parents worried that she didn’t get out enough. And yet here she was, all ready to throw herself headlong at Patrick just because he had passable looks and was a captive audience!

  ‘I think I’ll take this upstairs, actually,’ she said, and, grabbing the drink, she fled for the relative sanctuary of her bedroom. At least there he wouldn’t be able to read her thoughts quite so easily!

  She heard him come up a few minutes later and hesitate at her door. She held her breath, hoping—what? That he would come in? Or not?

  He didn’t, and she suppressed a pang of disappointment. She turned her attention back to her book, and after a few more minutes she found her eyelids drooping. His wretched hot milk gimmick was working, she thought with wry disgust, and putting out the light, she snuggled down and drifted off to sleep.

  For the next couple of days Connie felt as if she were in limbo. She visited her father again, walked the dogs, spent some time with young Tim Roberts, her godson, who was recovering slowly from his burst appendix and subsequent peritonitis, and found herself going quietly nuts.

  On Friday, she went into the surgery during the morning rush-hour, as her father called it, and perched on a stool in Reception and got in the way.

  ‘Connie, as you’re sitting there, you couldn’t get me out Mrs Grieves’s notes, could you?’ Jan asked. ‘Holly Cottage.’

  ‘Sure.’ She swivelled round, pulled out the wide drawer with the Gs, found the right packet and replaced it with a brightly coloured marker, to make it easier putting them back. Simple system, she thought, but effective. Her father was full of clever ideas. ‘Here.’

  ‘Thanks—oh, and these could go away. They’re last night’s, and I haven’t had time to deal with them. We’ve been so busy with Sally off this week. It’s a good job Tanya could get in this morning or we would have been really stuck without a dispenser. It’s always hell before a weekend.’

  Connie sat back and gave an exaggerated sigh. ‘You should have said something, Jan! I’ve been sitting in there keeping out of the way twiddling my thumbs! I’m so bored I can’t tell you! You want help, you’ve got help. Tell me what to do.’

  Jan smiled. ‘I just did. And when you’ve done that, you could always put the kettle on. Dr Durrant usually has a cup of coffee before he goes out on his calls, and we could all do with one.’

  Filing and coffee. Still, it beats cleaning the bathroom with my left hand, she thought, and slotted the notes away. In fact, there was another emergency tacked on to the end of surgery, so she drank her coffee, filed the earlier notes from that morning, which Patrick had brought through, and by the time he was going out on his calls, they were up to date.

  ‘I don’t suppose you want company on your travels, do you?’ she asked wistfully.

  He grinned. ‘Time hanging on your hands? Actually, I wouldn’t mind. I still get a bit lost sometimes. You can map-read for me.’

  ‘Only if you promise not to yell,’ she warned, and he grinned again.

  ‘I promise. Just don’t do anything stupid.’

  She snorted and slid off the stool. ‘Are you OK if I go out with him, Jan?’

  The receptionist nodded. ‘Fine. Tanya’s nearly done, and I’ve just got the routine stuff to do. I could do with a hand this afternoon, though, if you’ve got time. There’s an antenatal clinic and it’s a bit hectic. If you did nothing else you could entertain the children while the mums are seen.’

  Connie screwed up her nose and laughed. ‘Babysitting now! OK, I’ll see you later.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  She grinned. ‘It’s fine. I love babies. That’s why I’m a paediatrician.’

  ‘Connie, are you coming?’ Patrick asked, holding the door and glancing at his watch. She pulled a face at Jan, waggled her fingers and trotted obediently after him.

  ‘Where are we going first?’ she asked as they set off.

  ‘Shrubbery Farm. Old Mrs Pike’s had a fall. They’ve put her in bed but she’s complaining her hip hurts.’

  ‘Oh, dear.’

  ‘Quite. We’ll see if it’s broken when we get there.’

  ‘No, I meant, oh, dear, Mrs Pike. She’s really difficult. She’s deaf as a post, won’t take advice, complains about the slightest thing and nothing’s ever good enough.’

  He shot her a wry smile. ‘Thanks for the warning. We’ll see what happens.’

  Mrs Pike’s daughter-in-law opened the door to them, and ushered them through to the downstairs sitting room their patient used as a bedroom. She was lying on her pillows, arms folded primly across her middle, and she glowered at them. ‘Took your time.’ That was her first remark, and Patrick seemed to hold his breath.

  ‘Sorry, Mrs Pike, I was held up at the surgery,’ he said, good and loud so she could hear. ‘You remember Dr Wright’s daughter? She’s a doctor herself now—she’s helping me today, making sure I don’t get lost.’

  Mrs Pike looked across at Connie and sniffed. ‘Aren’t you married yet, girl? Time you settled down instead of running around pretending to be a doctor. No job for a woman. What’ve you done to your arm?’

  ‘I fell,’ she yelled. ‘It’s fine. That’s why I’m here. I gather you’ve done the same.’


  ‘Nothing wrong with my arm.’

  ‘I meant, you fell,’ Connie explained.

  ‘Oh, yes. Hurt my hip.’ She swivelled her gimlet eyes to Patrick. ‘Suppose you’re going to try and tell me it’s broken, but I know it isn’t because I can walk on it. Hurts like the devil, though. Need something nice and strong to take away the pain.’

  ‘Let me just have a look,’ Patrick said soothingly, and then had to repeat it because he was too soothing and she didn’t hear.

  Connie watched from a safe distance for the sake of her ears, while Patrick and Mrs Pike argued about the fact that her hip was indeed broken, that the broken ends of the neck of the femur had been driven together and thus impacted by the fall, and, yes, she would have to go to hospital although she might not need an operation, and, no, her daughter-in-law couldn’t possibly manage to look after her properly and the physio couldn’t come daily to see her and the district nurse had too much to do to come three times a day to someone who needed hospitalisation!

  Connie stifled a smile and exchanged speaking glances with the daughter-in-law, who was clearly looking forward to a few quiet days without her husband’s troublesome mother.

  ‘I don’t want to go,’ Mrs Pike said, as if that made it unnecessary, and Patrick covered her up again, put his stethoscope back in his bag and picked it up.

  ‘All right,’ he yelled, smiling tolerantly. ‘You stay here, then, but I have to warn you you’ll probably be crippled and never be able to get out of bed again. You might get awfully sick of these four walls, but if that’s the way you want it, Mrs Pike, I can’t admit you against your will. Nor can I give you the stronger painkillers without proper supervision, but there you go. I’ll pop in tomorrow. Have a good night.’

  And he headed for the door, leaving Connie and the younger Mrs Pike open-mouthed.

  ‘Just a minute,’ the old dragon called.

  He paused and looked over his shoulder. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Crippled?’

  ‘Oh, undoubtedly. And in permanent pain.’

  She sniffed. ‘Better go, then. Have you called the ambulance?’

  ‘No.’