Caroline Anderson, Josie Metcalfe, Maggie Kingsley, Margaret McDonagh

by Brides of Penhally Bay Vol. 03 (li

  ‘You need to eat lots of dairy, too,’ Kate was saying, ‘but be careful with the soft cheese and unpasteurised milk products if there’s the slightest possibility you might be pregnant.’

  A humourless little huff of laughter escaped from Fran’s mouth. ‘Chance’d be a fine thing.’

  Kate clicked her tongue sympathetically. ‘Did you broach the subject of going away?’ she asked gently.

  Fran laughed again, but it was just as bad as the last one and utterly unconvincing. She swallowed hard. ‘He’s—He hasn’t got time.’

  ‘Is that true?’

  ‘Probably, but if he wanted to, he’d make time—wouldn’t he?’

  Kate smiled. ‘Don’t ask me. Men are a mystery.’

  ‘Tell me about it,’ Fran murmured.

  ‘So do something romantic at home. Cook a nice meal, put something pretty on…’

  ‘He’ll think I’ve run up a credit card,’ she said dryly, and then felt saddened that they’d come so far down the line that they’d come to this, her talking about her marriage to a woman she hardly knew, trying to gain insight into her husband’s behaviour. Not to mention her own…

  ‘Kate, sorry—Ah. Fran. I’m glad you’re here,’ Nick said, his face troubled. ‘Um, I’ve had a call from Ben. Mike’s got a bit of a problem. He was apparently cutting down a tree—’

  ‘What?’ The word came out soundlessly from lips suddenly numb. She felt the colour drain from her face, her limbs curiously heavy and her heart lumping with dread. She lifted a hand to her mouth. ‘Not the chainsaw…’

  ‘No—no, a branch rolled onto him and it’s pinning his leg down. Ben’s with him—thinks he’s got a fracture but the ambulances are all out on a big RTA and it’ll take them ages to get to him, so I’m going to pop over there with a bit of pain relief while the fire crew get the branch off him. I’m taking morphine, but I just wondered if we’d got Entonox, Kate.’

  ‘Yes—I’ll get it. And we’ll come. Come on, Fran, I’ll drive you.’

  The props weren’t working. The weight of the upper trunk was too great, and they couldn’t shift enough wood to secure it. The fire crew was gathered round Mike, having a muttered conference that didn’t inspire confidence. He just wanted to get the hell out, and he needed those drugs.

  ‘I’m going to dig it out,’ Joe said. ‘If I undermine it, under that leg and foot, we can ease him out. The other one’s free.’

  ‘Sounds like a plan,’ he mumbled, but the fire officer in charge had other ideas.

  ‘Sorry, I can’t let you get that close,’ he said.

  Joe’s reply was pithy and not in the least bit polite, and it made Mike smile. Seconds later he felt him digging, felt Joe’s hands under his leg while Ben supported it, stripping away the shale that was digging into his shin, and then his foot moved a fraction and he let out a whimper as he felt his leg sliding down gradually, away from the weight of the trunk.

  He bit down on his lip, knowing it was necessary to dig around his foot so he could wriggle free but not sure he could take it.

  Not without pain relief, but Nick was there, bringing him Entonox. He knew about that—Kirsten had had it when she’d been in labour with Sophie, and he sucked greedily on the mouthpiece while Joe tunnelled away like a mole, shifting the stony soil away from his leg and foot while he tried not to yell. Nick was putting something in his hand—some kind of IV set—and then injecting something that made him feel woozy and lightheaded.

  ‘Whazat?’ he mumbled.

  ‘Morphine, and metaclopromide, to stop you feeling sick from the morphine.’

  ‘’S lovely,’ he replied. It was. The pain was going, fading a bit, less global.

  ‘Right, that’s as good as it gets,’ Joe said.

  ‘OK.’ That was Ben. ‘Mike, can you get your legs out yourself? Just slowly and carefully.’

  He took a deep breath of the Entonox, wriggled his left leg free, took another suck of the gas and tried to move.

  Pain lanced through him despite the drugs, and he swore viciously, suddenly wide awake. ‘I need a hand, guys,’ he said, sweat beading on his brow. ‘Just pull me out, nice and carefully. I can’t do this myself.’

  ‘It is free,’ Ben said, feeling round his leg gently. ‘We should be able to do it. It’s a very unstable fracture, though, and I don’t want to drag you. And you need a spinal board.’

  ‘To hell with that. What I need is to get out of here now,’ he muttered as the tree groaned again. He felt it shift against his calf, and yelled, ‘Just get me—Joe and Nick maybe?—and he could feel Ben’s hands on his leg, steadying it. On the count of three they pulled, he gasped and swore and bit hard on his lip, and then he was free, and they were dragging and lifting him away from the tree while everything went black for a second and he fought the urge to scream with the pain.

  As they put him down and shifted him to his back, Fran’s white, terrified face swam into view. He thought she was going to yell at him, but she just smiled a little shakily and said, ‘I didn’t know you knew half of those words.’ And then with a last tortured groan the tree slipped and fell the last few feet with a thundering crash, and she burst into tears.

  ‘What the hell were you doing down there on your own with the chainsaw?’

  He gave a rueful smile, and Fran felt a terrible urge to smack him. She’d hung on as long as she could, but the ‘what the hell’ question just wouldn’t stay locked up any longer, and she sat by his bed in the hospital and clamped her hands together. So she didn’t strangle him, or so they didn’t shake?

  She didn’t know. She didn’t care. All she cared about was that Mike was alive—damaged, but alive—and only because Ben, Joe and Nick had got him out when they had.

  She and Kate had got there just as he had been yelling at them to pull him out, and she’d watched in horror as his face had blanched and he’d let fly a string of words she’d never heard him use before.

  And then the trunk had dropped, right where he’d been lying, and one of the firemen had been lucky to duck out of the way of the flying branches.

  It could have been so, so much worse.

  Infinitely worse. Unimaginably worse—

  ‘I’ve done the milking for you, you idle skiver—and can you stick to Monopoly and not pick-up-sticks in future?’ Joe said, walking up behind her and saving him from the strangling he so surely deserved.

  ‘Hi, Joe,’ she said with a smile of welcome. ‘Give your brother a hard time for me, could you? I’m just going to ring your mother again and let her know they’ve moved him.’

  ‘She’s here. She and Dad have just pulled into the car park. I told them where to come.’

  Ensconced in his hospital bed, Mike groaned. ‘Did you have to? They’ll make such a fuss.’

  ‘A fuss? A fuss!’ Fran all but shrieked. ‘I’ll give you fuss, Michael Trevellyan! If that tree had fallen a minute earlier—ten seconds, for heaven’s sake—’

  ‘Michael! Oh, my goodness, are you all right? We came as soon as we heard but we were on our way back from Plymouth and there was a huge tailback because of this accident—’

  ‘I’m fine, Mum,’ he said, grimacing as he caught sight of his father’s stern face.

  ‘How many times have I told you—?’ Fran’s father-in-law started, and Fran just smiled, stepped back and left them to it. She didn’t need to strangle him. His parents would do it for her. In the meantime, she might go and get herself a cup of coffee.

  ‘So how’s the invalid?’ Ben asked as she bumped into him at the ward entrance.

  ‘Getting an earful from everyone,’ Fran told Ben with a wry smile.

  Ben smiled back, but his eyes were gentle with concern, and she felt hers fill again. ‘You OK?’ he asked, and she nodded, then shook her head, then shrugged a little helplessly and laughed, her traitorous eyes welling.

  ‘I don’t know. Yes. Maybe. At least he’s alive.’

  ‘He’ll be fine. He’ll be going to Theatre shortly to have it plated
, and he’ll be in for a couple of days, then they’ll send him home in a cast to rest.’

  ‘He’ll be horrible. He’ll be so bored,’ Fran said with a sigh, and Ben raised an eyebrow.

  ‘So entertain him,’ he said with a smile. ‘He’ll be laid up and fizzing over with all that pent-up energy. I’m sure you’ll be able to find something to do together to alleviate the boredom!’

  She felt herself colour slightly, and found a smile. If only, she thought. ‘I’ll buy him a Sudoku book,’ she said, and Ben chuckled.

  ‘Yeah, right. Like that’ll do it!’ He tipped his head on one side. ‘You going anywhere important?’

  ‘Yes—to get a coffee,’ she said, wondering if it mattered if she started Kate’s diet a day later and deciding that today justified it. She could have lost Mike—so easily. And today had proved to her beyond any doubt that she wasn’t ready to lose him. Not in any way. There was nothing like staring that dreadful possibility in the face to bring it home to her, so, yes, today justified a delay in the start of the diet, because at the moment whether or not they had a child was way down the list of her priorities.

  And Mike—her beloved, darling, infuriating, broken Mike—was right at the top.

  ‘Mind if I join you?’ Ben was saying. ‘I was just about to make a drink when I called him, and I still haven’t had one yet. I’ll even treat you to a chocolate muffin.’

  She laughed. ‘You truly know the way to a woman’s heart,’ she replied, and wondered when she and Mike had last laughed like that, about nothing in particular, just for the sake of laughing. Ages. A lifetime.

  But they would again. She’d make sure of it…

  CHAPTER FOUR

  THEY were sending him home on Friday, and he couldn’t get out of hospital quickly enough.

  Not that he’d really known that much about it for the first twenty-four hours, because he’d been in so much pain he’d been drugged up to the eyeballs.

  It was the bottom of his fibula where it joined the tibia on the outside of his ankle—the lateral maleolus, or some such bone—that had sheared off, and his fibula was fractured again just above the ankle joint. Such a skinny little bone to cause so much pain, although the ligaments between the two bones hadn’t ripped. This, apparently, was a good thing, or it would have been ages before he could bear weight.

  Even so, he’d have to be in a cast for weeks.

  Fabulous. In the summer, when he relied on the longer hours of daylight to do all those endless jobs about the farm that he couldn’t simply do in the dark. Hedging, fencing, repairing the fabric of the buildings—cutting up fallen trees?

  But on the bright side, luckily the skin hadn’t broken. It seemed a very slight thing to worry about, considering they’d had to cut it open anyway, but apparently it made a great difference to the sort of repair they could do, and it meant it could be plated and screwed, and he didn’t have to have an external fixator.

  Thank God, because there was no way he could work on the farm with a metal frame on the outside of his leg and pins going through into the bone, carrying filth and infection right into the heart of the injury. And, anyway, even the sight of them made him feel sick. There were several people in the orthopaedic ward with them on, and others in traction, even one screwed into a special revolving frame, bolts into his head and shoulders and hips and legs…

  Hideous. God only knows what it must feel like to be in there, he thought, but the man didn’t seem to be aware of too much. That had to be a good thing—probably the only good thing, if the drawn faces of his relatives were anything to go by.

  He glanced across at the man. On second thoughts, maybe it wasn’t a good thing. He discovered he was extremely grateful he wasn’t in so bad a way that he wasn’t aware of his surroundings, never mind his ankle.

  Although he felt all too aware of it most of the time, and he was desperate for a good night’s sleep in his own bed, with soft cotton sheets, their lovely down duvet and his own pillow.

  And Fran.

  God, he missed her. She’d been in to visit him each evening, but it wasn’t enough, and he couldn’t believe he’d been so reluctant to go away with her this coming weekend for the night. He’d give his eye teeth for the chance to do it now, he thought, lying there waiting for someone to come and discharge him.

  And then Ben strolled in, hitched his hip onto the edge of the bed and grinned. ‘Want to cut loose?’

  ‘Oh, do I ever!’ he said fervently. ‘Got the power to spring me?’

  ‘Absolutely. Well, not really, but I’ve just seen your consultant and he’s happy to lose you. They’re just filling in the paperwork, and I thought, as I’ve got the afternoon off, I’d give you a lift—unless you’re organised?’

  He shook his head. ‘No, not at all. I was going to ring my father or my brother, but I haven’t done that yet. I’m supposed to be getting a lesson on my crutches.’

  ‘Yeah, the physio’s on her way. I’ll get them to give me a call when you’re done, and I’ll get you out of here.’

  ‘You’re a star. Cheers.’

  ‘My pleasure.’

  It took another hour, but finally he was ready to go, and Ben came up, put him into a wheelchair and trundled him out into the fresh air. He dragged in a great lungful of it, closed his eyes and sighed hugely. ‘Oh, that feels so good. You can’t imagine what it’s like when you’re used to being outside all the time, to be cooped up in there without feeling the wind in your hair and the sun on your face. I just kept telling myself I was lucky not to be six feet under.’

  ‘Shouldn’t think you needed to,’ Ben said dryly, pushing him through the car park to his BMW. ‘I would have thought you’d got Fran doing that for you, on the minute every minute. She was beside herself, you know, when she realised how dangerous it might have been.’

  Mike gave a rusty chuckle. ‘She wasn’t alone. When I heard that tree go—well, let’s just say I won’t be taking chances like that again.’

  ‘Good. I’m glad to hear it, and I’m sure she will be. Right, shift across and I’ll get rid of the wheels while you settle yourself.’

  Easier said than done, he realised. God, how could anything so simple be so profoundly awkward? It took him ages, while Ben stood holding the wheelchair and telling him to take his time.

  But so much? Finally there, he slumped back in the seat, his skin breaking out in a cold sweat, and concentrated on getting his breath back. Not easy with his ribs screaming in protest.

  He was shocked at how hard he’d found it, how even such a comparatively minor injury could have taken such a toll on him. And once he was at home, he’d have to go up and down stairs. How the hell was he going to manage that? And bathing, for crying out loud. He’d have to shower with his leg in a bin bag.

  He gave the cast a jaundiced look and wondered for the umpteenth time how he could have been so stupid. It was going to be weeks before he was fixed—months, even. Certainly a couple of weeks before he could do anything even remotely useful on the farm. Even the dreaded paperwork would be too much for him at the moment.

  He swore under his breath, hauled his broken leg into the car, swung the comparatively uninjured one in beside it and eyed the bruises with disgust.

  Pity he couldn’t have worn trousers to hide them a bit, but he didn’t have any that would go over the cast, so he was wearing shorts and a T-shirt and his Technicolor injuries were all on display.

  Well, not quite all of them. His body under the clothes was also black and blue all over, a million points of pain and mutilation. He’d caught a glimpse of the bruises over his cracked ribs in the bathroom mirror this morning and had nearly had a fit. Fran would take one look at him in the nude and run, if she had any sense. Probably just as well, because he didn’t have the strength to argue with her about how stupid he’d been and just now she wasn’t wasting a single opportunity to lecture him.

  He closed his eyes and dropped his head back against the seat. He just wanted her to come home and hug him.
He’d missed her so much, and his family had all been in telling him off, so their visiting times had hardly been cosy, intimate occasions.

  ‘Come on, Ben,’ he muttered. ‘Take me home.’

  As if he’d heard him, Ben opened the driver’s door, slid behind the wheel and shot him a smile. ‘Sorry about that. Somebody wanted the chair and then couldn’t manage to get her husband into it. As he was having a heart attack, I didn’t feel I could leave them.’

  ‘Of course not,’ Mike said, trying for a smile and probably producing a grimace.

  ‘Right, let’s get you home.’

  He hadn’t heard anything so good in ages.

  ‘Mike?’

  Fran ran lightly up the stairs, crept down the landing and pushed open the bedroom door, tiptoeing round the bed so she could see his face.

  He was fast asleep, his lashes dark crescents against his cheeks. He looked pale under his tan, drained of warmth, and she bit her lip and blinked back tears. He looked awful. Washed out and exhausted, and it made her want to cry.

  She’d been fighting the urge since it had happened, moaning at him about being stupid when all she’d really wanted to do was curl up in his arms and howl her eyes out.

  She backed away, meaning to leave him alone, but her foot hit the creaky board and his lids fluttered open, those gorgeous brown eyes fixed on hers.

  ‘Hi.’

  ‘Hi,’ she replied softly, perching carefully on the edge of the bed and giving him a shaky smile. ‘Welcome home.’

  His answering smile was tired but contented. ‘Thanks. It’s good to be back.’

  ‘How long have you been home?’

  He glanced at his watch. ‘Two hours? Ben gave me a lift.’

  ‘Ben?’ she echoed, surprised. ‘That was kind of him. I thought Joe or your father would do it.’

  Mike shrugged. ‘He was there, he offered, and they were busy.’

  ‘Can I get you anything—a drink?’

  He shook his head, his eyes intense. ‘Not yet. The first thing I want is a hug from my wife without an audience.’