A Wife and Child to Cherish (Audley Memorial Hospital)

by Caroline Anderson

  He nodded. ‘Yes—years ago. My father’s family are from Dublin, so I sort of qualified. But it was only once, in a friendly.’

  ‘A friendly rugby match? Don’t be ridiculous,’ Fliss said with a chuckle. ‘We’ve all seen them in A and E, blood running from every pore and their joints all mangled—witness Josh’s shoulder.’

  ‘I did. I have to say it gave me second thoughts, but I couldn’t wuss out, really, could I? Anyway, it was great fun. I’m playing again on Sunday.’

  ‘Excellent. Can we all come and watch you get pounded to a pulp?’ Tom said with a laugh, and in between wishing he’d kept his mouth shut and doing justice to the second helping of roulade, it dawned on Patrick that these warm and friendly people were taking him into their hearts and lives, filling a void that he’d hardly even been aware of. They could, he realised, become friends. Real friends. Proper friends.

  And there was another void that Annie was filling, a part of his life that had been empty and barren far too long, and when she started to wilt shortly after midnight, he raised a brow a fraction and she smiled. Without further ado he stood up and held his hand out to her.

  ‘If you’ll excuse us, Annie’s wilting and I need my beauty sleep if I’m going to meet everybody’s exalted expectations on Sunday.’

  ‘I need to kiss Katie goodnight,’ she said, but Sally shooed her towards the door.

  ‘She’s asleep in a pile of sleeping bags on the floor in the den. You’ll never find her. Go on, go. She’s fine. You can pick her up any time tomorrow—the later, the better.’

  A harmless remark, but her wink was wicked, even though only they saw it. Patrick had to struggle to keep his grin under control.

  ‘Thank you so much,’ he said with real sincerity. ‘I’ve really enjoyed this evening.’

  ‘Me, too,’ Annie said, reaching out to hug Sally. ‘And I’m sorry I growled at you.’

  ‘Forget it. You go and have fun.’ The last was so low that even Patrick, standing beside her, could only lip-read.

  He shook David’s hand, wondering again about the dynamics between these two, and then with a wave and the usual round of parting remarks, he took Annie home, led her up to his bedroom and turned her into his arms, resting his head against her forehead.

  ‘Are you OK?’

  She nodded, her smile gentle. ‘Fine. It was lovely.’

  ‘It was. I’d forgotten what it’s like, going out for dinner with friends. Taking a woman out. Taking a woman home. I’ve been on ice for ten years—circling in a holding pattern, going nowhere. I feel as if I’ve come alive again—and it’s all thanks to you.’

  He touched her face with fingers that weren’t quite steady. ‘I’m falling in love with you, Annie,’ he said softly. ‘If that’s not something that’s going to fit in with what you want from life, tell me now. Don’t leave me hanging.’

  She stared at him, her eyes filling with tears. ‘Oh, Patrick. I don’t know. My life’s such a mess. I can’t bear to drag you into it, but I don’t know what it would be like without you now. Can we just play it by ear? Take our time?’

  It wasn’t what he wanted to hear, but at least she was being honest. That was a good start. And he could give her time. There wasn’t anywhere else he’d rather be, and if that gave him a chance with her, well, he’d take it.

  ‘Take all the time you need,’ he murmured, and then he kissed her.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  They thrashed the opposition.

  On a foul November afternoon in a sea of mud and rain, the Audley rugby team hammered the other team into a resounding defeat and emerged from the mud splattered and victorious.

  They had one casualty, though, one of the young A and E house officers who’d done something hideous to his right ankle, and he was stretchered off. He refused to go to hospital—as he pointed out, most of the decent staff were watching the match anyway, so he may as well stay till the end!

  He was in the bar, his foot propped up on a chair and a bag of ice on his ankle, watching out of the window. Tom Whittaker was already there, having come to watch the match, true to his word. In fact, the area was full of medical opinion and unhelpful remarks about the lousy prognosis and probable seriousness of the injury, and Annie had had her work cut out stopping them all from prodding and poking the poor man.

  Unfortunately, she thought the dismal diagnoses were probably correct, but she wasn’t going to venture an opinion. She’d let Patrick tell him the bad news.

  And as soon as he came off the pitch, he came and found him, nodding approval at the ice and elevation. ‘Give me five minutes,’ he said, and then, emerging from the changing room after the briefest shower to sluice off the mud, he hunkered down in front of the house officer and lifted the ice away carefully. ‘Right, Jamie, let’s have a look at this and see what you’ve done.’

  Annie watched him as he gently prodded the ankle and moved the joint as carefully as possible. It was too much for Jamie, though, so he stopped and put the ice back on.

  ‘Did you hear anything when it happened?’

  ‘A ping—a squelch? I don’t know. It all happened so fast, but I went over on it and I just knew—I felt so sick.’

  ‘Hmm. I reckon you’ve ruptured at least one of the lateral ligaments, possibly two. It’s very unstable. It needs a support bandage on it for now. I expect someone here’s got one you can borrow, and then you’ll need an X-ray and a scan in the morning. Can you get home? Have you got someone who can run you around?’

  Jamie nodded. ‘Yes. I’ll get a lift, it’s not a problem.’

  ‘And you need to come in early tomorrow—about eight? Then we can get things under way. This needs fixing fast, but it’s still going to be a long old job, Jamie, whatever it turns out to be. I’m sorry.’

  ‘It’s not your fault,’ he said with a wry grin. ‘It wasn’t you that hacked me. But can you tell my boss not to kill me?’

  Tom was chuckling. ‘Why would I kill you? You won’t be underfoot for a few weeks—I should pay you for that.’

  ‘Well, cheers! I’m glad I’m such a help in the department.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Tom, I’ll get him back to you in full working order as soon as humanly possible,’ Patrick said, and Annie found herself smiling.

  It was so good to see him bantering with the others. In the few weeks he’d been at the hospital he’d really come out of himself, and Friday evening had seen him really find his feet. And Friday night—well, that had been wonderful. Off the scale.

  Incredible. And Saturday morning...

  He glanced up and met her eyes and his smile changed, softening. ‘OK?’

  She nodded. ‘I’m fine. How about you? Any injuries?’

  He straightened up beside her, his mouth quirking. ‘I’ve got the odd bruise. If you’re really good, I’ll let you kiss them better.’

  He’d said it quietly, but still she felt her cheeks heat a little. ‘Behave,’ she muttered, and he chuckled.

  ‘Don’t be dull. Where’s Katie?’

  ‘Over there with Michael and Abby Whittaker. She’s getting a bit excited, we ought to go home.’

  ‘Let me grab my things and I’ll be with you. Jamie, get them to bleep me when you arrive tomorrow—go to A and E, and don’t eat and drink after midnight, just to be on the safe side. Take paracetamol and codeine for the pain in the meantime. Tom, can you start the paperwork?’

  ‘Sure. See you in the morning. And well done, by the way. You’re a bit scary on the pitch. I’m glad I was just spectating.’

  ‘It’s fine if you’re on the same side,’ Jamie said, ‘but I wouldn’t want to try and tackle you.’

  ‘Good. Bit of respect. I like that,’ Patrick said with a grin, and Annie chuckled and towed him away, rounding Katie up on the way out.

  And as they got into his car to leave, it occurred to her that they were behaving just like a real family—and it seemed nobody but herself was in the slightest bit surprised.

  Life was good.


  Busy, but fundamentally better in every way than it had been for years. Patrick found himself humming on his way down to A and E on Monday morning, to see Jamie and assess his ankle. He’d been bleeped and he’d asked for a preliminary series of X-rays, but by the time he got there they’d been done and Tom had looked at them with Jamie and found nothing.

  ‘Looks clear.’

  ‘Mmm.’ He turned to his thoroughly disenchanted patient. ‘How’s it feeling today?’

  ‘Sore. Very swollen.’

  ‘I’m sure.’ He didn’t need to touch him. Just looking at the colour of the bruising and the way his foot was turned it was immediately obvious that the ligaments were at least partially ruptured. And that was looking on the bright side. He ordered an MRI, and when the results were phoned through to him in Theatre later, he wasn’t a bit surprised to hear the damage.

  He slipped out between cases and went down to A and E to give Jamie the news.

  ‘Right, I’ve got the results,’ he said, pulling the film out of the envelope and snapping it onto the light box. ‘It’s not good, I’m afraid, but it’s exactly what I thought. You’ve got a total rupture of the anterior talofibular ligament, here... ’

  Jamie leant forwards, looked at it and winced. ‘That would be why it feels as if my foot’s sliding forwards every time I rest my heel down.’

  ‘That’s right—and the calcaneofibular ligament here has gone, which prevents it turning inwards, which is why, of course, it’s lying as it is, because there’s nothing at all to stop it. If they were partial tears or if it was just one, we’d put you in a cast and let them heal, but these won’t and if they aren’t repaired you won’t have any stability in your ankle joint at all, so we have no choice.’

  ‘So what now?’ Jamie asked, looking disheartened but’ not surprised.

  ‘Now I fit you in on the end of my theatre list in about an hour. You’ll be in two to three nights, and then you’ll go home in a cast and rest.’

  ‘For?’

  Patrick shrugged. ‘You’ll be in a cast for five to six weeks, and then you’ll need to start mobilising the joint carefully. And you’ll need physio. I think it’ll be two to three months before you’re properly back to normal.’

  Jamie snorted softly, 'Well, at least I get Christmas off. My girlfriend’ll be pleased.’

  ‘Get her to come and visit you and peel you grapes. You’ll need them with all the codeine.’

  Patrick left him chuckling and went and found Sally to arrange for his admission.

  ‘Patrick, hi,’ she said with a smile. ‘How are things?’

  ‘Grim for Jamie. I’m admitting him and sticking him on the end of my list, so if you can get him sent straight up, Annie can do all the paperwork and give him his premed.’

  ‘Sure. I’ll get right onto it.’

  ‘Great. And thank you for Friday,’ he added. ‘We really enjoyed it.’

  ‘I’m glad. Thanks for coming, and for bringing Annie. It’s so hard to talk her into going out these days, and she doesn’t do nearly enough for herself. It was lovely to see her looking so happy—well, both of you, really. She’s been miserable for a long time, and I don’t think she’s alone.’

  He smiled ruefully. ‘No.’ He hesitated a moment, then said, ‘Talking of doing things for her, I want to ask you something. About her kitchen.’

  Sally rolled her eyes. ‘What about her kitchen? It’s a nightmare. You know they’d only just ripped it out when Colin killed himself?’

  ‘Yes, she told me. But did you know the new units are all sitting there in boxes in her dining room? Rigid carcase units?’

  ‘Really? I knew they were there, but I’d just assumed they were flat-packed.’

  ‘No. They’ll be dead easy to install. And she’s away the weekend after next for four days.’

  Sally narrowed her eyes and studied him thoughtfully. ‘Are you going to do it for her?’

  ‘I’d love to, but I may need longer than four days because she wants the structural work done. The plans show the dining-room wall taken down and the back door bricked up, and I can’t do all that in a weekend on my own.’

  ‘But you could with help,’ Sally said slowly. ‘David’s around, so he can have the kids and I can fetch and carry and hold things, and Fliss has got every tool known to man stashed away in their little barn. I know she’d be up for it, and she’s been training Tom. Would that be enough bodies?’

  ‘Can Fliss do blockwork and plastering? And would she?’

  ‘Of course. And if she can’t, you can bet your life she’ll know a man who does. And he’ll owe her a favour. She’s great like that. If it can be done, Fliss will make it happen.’

  He thought hard. ‘What are you all doing on Thursday evening? Annie’s working until nine.’

  ‘How will you get in?’

  ‘I won’t need to. My house is exactly the same type, and it’s been done in mine. And I can get hold of the plans.’

  Sally smiled at him. ‘Excellent,’ she said slowly. ‘Leave it with me. I’ll do what I can.’

  ‘I’ll even chuck in a take-away if it helps—and free food and drink all weekend when we come to do it.’

  ‘Even better. I’ll be in touch.’

  She was true to her word. He was down in A and E after Jamie’s operation to fill them in on their colleague’s progress, and Sally had news for him.

  ‘Get lots of pizza,’ she advised. ‘Fliss and Tom are coming, and David’s agreed to have the children, and Ben Maguire’s happy to give you a hand so he may turn up on Thursday, too.’

  So many people. And secrets had a way of leaking out. ‘Don’t let her find out,’ he warned, but she grinned mischievously and pressed her index finger to her lips.

  ‘I’ll be at home from five on Thursday,’ he promised, and gave her the address and his phone number to pass to the others.

  Now all he had to do was get the plans.

  Jamie’s ankle was giving him a lot of pain, but Annie had a free PCA pump. She’d finally weaned Susanne Dickinson off hers, and she linked him up to it, gave him a lesson and checked his wound.

  ‘That looks fine—there’s hardly anything seeping through the dressing. It’s lovely and clean.’

  ‘So how long will it be in a backslab?’ he asked, peering down at his ankle warily.

  ‘About a week, depending on the swelling, but then they’ll change this for a non-weight-bearing cast, and a few weeks later you can have a walking cast.’

  ‘Oh, joy,’ he said wryly, flopping back on the pillows. ‘I can hardly wait.’

  She smiled and straightened his bedclothes. ‘You’ve got a whole queue of colleagues wanting to come up and see you. Do you feel up to visitors yet?’

  ‘Sure. Anything’s better than lying here and contemplating the next few weeks,’ he said with a strained smile, but he flagged quite fast and she had to shoo them away and close the curtains. She would have put him in a side room so he could rest, but they had more seriously injured patients in all of them, not least Dan Taylor, who was still lying utterly unresponsive after ten days.

  It wasn’t good news, and his relatives were beginning to realise that. She didn’t think it would be long before the visitors tailed away—this afternoon, for instance, there was only his mother.

  She went in and said hello to Mrs Taylor, chatting to her while she washed her hands and gelled them with alcohol rub, then turned her attention to Dan, running her eyes over the monitors, checking his urine output and the IV line, and making sure there was no sign of a pin-track infection at the entry sites of the pelvic fixator. As she worked on him she spoke to him, telling him what she was doing and why, and his mother’s eyes filled with tears.

  ‘I’m the only other person who talks to him as if he’s still there,’ she said. ‘Everyone else just talks across him—they might as well be somewhere else. I don’t know why they bother to come.’

  ‘Except if he can hear, he’ll be listening to the general conversation. I
t might help him to surface, if he can. Hearing is the last sense to go.’

  She looked worried. ‘Do you think he can hear? Because sometimes people aren’t very careful what they say—you know, about him.’

  ‘Maybe they don’t understand. Explain it to them.’

  The tears welled up again. ‘I’ve tried. They think I’m being silly.’

  Annie shook her head and looked towards the door, and Mrs Taylor went out, a crumpled tissue pressed to her mouth.' Poor woman. Poor Daniel. Poor all of them. She straightened his sheet and shifted his pillow so his head was better supported. ‘There you are, Dan—all done for now. You go back to sleep.’

  She brushed his hair back off his forehead and turned away, to find Patrick standing in the doorway watching her, his face expressionless.

  ‘Everything all right?’

  She nodded. ‘Do you want to check him?’

  He nodded, washing his hands. ‘I just want to make sure that fixator’s still secure and holding him in the right position. Hi, Daniel, it’s Patrick. Just going to have a look at your pelvis. Sorry to mess you about. I won’t be long.’

  His hands were gentle, testing the integrity of the fixator, making sure that there was no movement in the damaged ligament at the front of the pelvis. There was a lot of bruising, and his urine was a little cloudy, possibly from blood or pus.

  Patrick looked at the bag and frowned. ‘Can we test his urine?’

  ‘Sure. I’ll get Sue to do it now.’

  He nodded and turned back the bedclothes, examining Daniel’s ankle, checking the pulse in his foot and the colour of his toes, then he covered him again and checked his wrist, all the time his face intent and a steady, gentle murmur explaining what he was doing.

  Then he straightened. ‘OK, Daniel, that’s it. Thank you.’ He looked at Annie. ‘Do you have a minute?’

  ‘Sure. I was just going to have a word with his mum. Bye, Dan, see you later.’

  She went out, pulling the door to behind her, and turned to Patrick.

  ‘What did you want?’