It was good advice. It was terrific advice, but how could you talk to a man who was avoiding you? And Gideon was avoiding her. She knew he was.
At first she’d thought she was just imagining it, that he was simply run off his feet, with Woody being away on compassionate leave and Nick never off his back, but as the days had passed she’d been forced to concede that even a very busy man could have found time to exchange a few words with her. Even a man who was completely snowed under could have found a minute to answer the messages she’d left on his answering machine.
It’s the brush-off, Annie, her mind whispered as she reluctantly followed Liz out onto the ward. All he wanted was to make love to you, and now that he has he’s not interested any more.
But he wasn’t like that, her heart protested. When they’d made love…Oh, when they’d made love it had been the most wonderful night of her life, and he couldn’t have been faking his own reaction—simply couldn’t.
Nick did, the insidious little voice pointed out. Nick was prepared to swear undying love to get you into his bed. Gideon didn’t even do that. All he said was that this was the beginning for you and him, which could have meant anything and nothing.
But she couldn’t have got it wrong again, she thought, trying hard to ignore the sympathetic glances that were coming from the patients. OK, so she made a mistake in the past, but surely she couldn’t have made a mistake again.
‘One new admission last night,’ Helen told her, her face drawn, harassed. ‘Joy Turner, thirty-seven weeks pregnant. Her GP sent her in as a precaution because her BP’s up and her ankles are very swollen. Her diastolic is still slightly less than 100, so if it is pre-eclampsia, it’s pretty mild.’
‘Better safe than sorry,’ Annie commented, and the SHO nodded, only to bite her lip and groan.
‘Cripes. He-who-must-now-be-instantly-obeyed has just arrived, and I’m out of here.’
Annie wished she could bolt, too, when she turned to see Gideon striding through the swing doors at the end of the ward for the start of his morning round. He looked tired and harassed, but most of all he looked angry.
‘Sister Baker, this ward is a disgrace.’
‘A disgrace?’ Liz echoed faintly.
‘Discarded magazines lying about, wilting flowers, dirty teacups—it’s not good enough.’
Hot colour swept across Liz’s cheeks. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Caldwell. It won’t happen again.’
‘See that it doesn’t,’ he ordered. ‘Dr Hart, if you’re ready?’
He didn’t even wait for her reply. He simply strode across to Mrs Simpson’s bed and waited, impatience and irritation plain on his face.
‘Remember that holiday I was mentioning?’ Liz murmured as she and Annie hurried towards him. ‘Forget it. I want the transfer. Now.’
Annie wanted some answers. Annie wished she possessed the courage simply to walk up to him and say, ‘Gideon, we made love less than a week ago, and I thought we shared something special, but you haven’t returned my calls, and you’re ignoring me at work, so are you giving me the brush-off, or what?’
But she couldn’t say it. Lord, just thinking about actually saying it was enough to make her cringe inwardly, which left her…Precisely nowhere.
‘I want Mrs Simpson’s antibiotics doubled, and a two-hourly examination made of the incision,’ Gideon declared once he’d finished his examination. ‘There’s definite signs of a localised infection, and if it shows any sign of spreading I want to know about it immediately.’
‘Is something wrong?’ Mrs Simpson asked, glancing from him to Liz as the girl nodded. ‘This localised infection…’
‘I think you could have an allergy to the suturing materials I used during your operation,’ Gideon explained. ‘If you do, the inflammation will disappear once your stitches are removed, but there’s also the slight chance you might have an infection.’
‘But—’
‘I haven’t lost a hysterectomy patient yet, Mrs Simpson,’ he smiled, ‘and you’re not going to be the first.’
Annie smiled, too, as Mrs Simpson let out a sigh of relief. That was one thing Nick’s arrival hadn’t changed—Gideon’s ability to say just the right thing to a patient. He might be running Helen and Tom ragged and avoiding her like the plague, but he always had time for his patients. Which was why she was totally unprepared for him to suddenly spin round.
‘I…I’m sorry,’ she gasped as they collided.
‘It’s my fault,’ he said brusquely. ‘I wasn’t looking where I was going.’
‘Isn’t that usually my line?’ she murmured without thinking, only to flush scarlet when she realised he’d heard.
Oh, cripes. In the changed atmosphere of Obs and Gynae a flip comment like that was most certainly going to earn her an earful, but to her surprise he didn’t look angry. In fact—wonder of wonders—the corners of his mouth actually lifted.
‘On this occasion the blame was definitely mine,’ he said, then his forehead creased when he saw her absently rubbing her elbow. ‘Have you hurt yourself?’
She shook her head. ‘I just caught my arm on the end of the bed.’
‘Let me see.’
‘No, really, it’s OK,’ she declared, realising that Mrs Simpson was listening to their conversation with keen interest. So was Kay. In fact, if Kay had been any more interested, she’d have fallen out of bed. ‘It was just a knock, that’s all.’
‘You’re sure?’ he pressed.
Oh, even greater wonders, he was actually looking at her. Not at some vague point a little bit above her head, like he’d been doing for the past five days, but actually at her. Like he cared, like he was truly worried.
‘I’m just a bit slow on my feet this morning, that’s all,’ she said.
‘Actually, you’re never particularly light on them, are you?’ he said, his brown eyes twinkling, and the colour on her cheeks darkened as she suddenly realised what he was remembering. The dances they’d shared at the St Valentine’s Ball.
‘Someone…Somebody once told me that everyone was entitled to at least one flaw,’ she declared, emboldened by the smile. ‘In fact—’
‘Morning, everyone—sorry I’m late,’ exclaimed a familiar bright voice behind her, and Annie could have wept with frustration when she saw the light and laughter instantly disappear from Gideon’s face.
Nick’s timing couldn’t have been worse. In fact, why did he have to keep on joining them on every ward round at all? Ye gods, surely one tour would have been enough to tell him what everyone who worked at the Belfield already knew: that the department was underfunded, and understaffed. And yet Nick still insisted on joining them every day, poking his nose in, criticising, carping.
‘You’re not late at all, Mr Henderson,’ Gideon said, his voice clipped. ‘In fact, we’ve only just started.’
‘Good—good.’ Nick beamed. ‘Lead on, then, Mr Caldwell, and I’ll tag along behind with Annie.’
Which was another thing that was really getting under her skin, Annie thought, seeing Gideon’s face tighten further before he walked on to Kay’s bed. The way Nick never called her Dr Hart. It was always, ‘Annie this’ and ‘Annie that’, as though he was deliberately trying to remind her of how much he’d once meant to her.
Well, she didn’t want—or need—reminding. She already knew what a fool she’d been to fall in love with a man who was nothing but a handsome face.
‘You can go home as soon as you’ve arranged for your husband to collect you,’ Gideon told a clearly delighted Kay after he’d scanned her chart, ‘but I want your promise to take things easy for the next couple of weeks. Get your husband to do any cleaning or cooking, and no dashing out to the shops or going for long walks with the baby.’
‘I won’t, Mr Caldwell, I promise,’ Kay replied, ‘and in exchange I want your promise to come to Gideon’s christening. It won’t be anything fancy,’ she continued as he began to protest that he hadn’t done anything to deserve an invitation, ‘but my husband is
hoping to get our local pub to give us their upstairs room for the afternoon, and I can definitely promise you a good spread.’
He smiled. ‘Sounds like an invitation I can’t refuse. OK, send me a card when you’ve decided on a day, and I’ll be there if I can.’
‘You must come, too, Dr Hart,’ Kay continued, her eyes darting across to Annie. ‘My granny always makes far too many sausage rolls when it’s a family celebration, so the more mouths to eat them, the better.’
‘In that case, it’s a pity I’m only going to be here until the middle of next week.’ Nick beamed, putting his arm around Annie’s shoulder and giving it a squeeze. ‘Or I could have come, too. As Annie’s partner.’
Never in a million years, Annie thought, shrugging off his arm. I wouldn’t walk across the street with you, far less go to a party.
Gideon clearly didn’t believe her. Not from his stony-faced expression.
‘If you’re quite finished, Dr Hart,’ he said coldly, ‘perhaps we might get on?’
Good grief, surely he didn’t think she actually welcomed Nick’s cheesy overtures, the way he always seemed to stand just that little bit too close? The only reason she hadn’t said anything was because she didn’t want to make waves, didn’t want Gideon getting any more hassle than he was already receiving, but had her silence suggested she wanted the familiarity? Was that why he’d been behaving so oddly lately? It couldn’t be that—surely it couldn’t be—but if it was…
If only she could talk to him. If only he would talk to her, but as he moved on down the ward, his back ramrod stiff, she knew there was as much chance of that happening as Nick suddenly turning into a half-decent human being.
‘Poor Mr Caldwell,’ Jennifer said, when Gideon’s morning round was finally over and he and Nick had left the ward. ‘I feel for him—I really do. He looks so down, doesn’t he?’
‘We’re all a bit tired at the moment,’ Annie replied noncommittally. ‘What with Dr Dunwoody being on compassionate leave, and—’
‘I can’t say I think much of this visiting consultant,’ Jennifer sniffed. ‘All mouth and trousers, if you want my honest opinion.’
Annie smothered a laugh. ‘How are you feeling today?’
‘Better. Still terrified witless, of course, at the thought of going home. Every twinge I get, I think, is this it, am I going to lose the other babies? But I know I can’t stay here for the rest of my pregnancy.’
‘I bet you anything that when you’re back here again in six months to have your twins, you’ll wonder why on earth you got yourself in such a tizzy,’ Annie declared.
‘That’s what Mr Caldwell says,’ Jennifer admitted. ‘And speaking of Mr Caldwell, I never did thank you for persuading him to let me stay in for another few days instead of going home on Monday.’
‘I didn’t do anything,’ Annie protested. ‘You were just lucky we had a spare bed.’
Jennifer shook her head and smiled. ‘You can say what you like, Doctor, but I know what I know.’ And then to Annie’s surprise she suddenly stretched out and took her hands in hers. ‘I don’t know what’s gone wrong, Dr Hart, and I don’t want to know, but I hope it works out for the two of you. I really do.’
Tears filled Annie’s eyes and she blinked them away rapidly. Everybody meant well—she knew they did—but they weren’t helping. Nothing was going to help until Nick left the Belfield, and then…maybe then Gideon might tell her what she’d said, or done, that had so angered him.
The rest of Annie’s shift dragged by in an exhausting round of note-taking, form-filling, chasing up blood results and checking on their new admission.
‘I don’t know what all the fuss is about, Doctor,’ Mrs Turner said with irritation when Annie had taken her blood pressure. ‘This will be my fifth, and I never had any trouble with my other babies, but it was a locum GP instead of my regular doctor and he would insist on me coming in.’
‘Your blood pressure certainly seems to be stabilising—’
‘What did I tell you?’ the woman declared triumphantly. ‘It’s a lot of fuss about nothing.’
I doubt if you’d have thought it was a lot of fuss about nothing if you had developed severe pre-eclampsia, Annie thought waspishly, but she didn’t say that. Instead, she simply filled in Mrs Turner’s chart, clipped it back to the bottom of the bed and left.
An hour to go before she could go home, she thought with a deep sigh as she left the ward and began making her way along to the staffroom. Another hour of sympathetic looks and kindly meant suggestions on how to rekindle her romance with Gideon. Another hour spent hoping she wouldn’t walk into Nick, who was fast becoming a complete pain about the dinner date he’d suggested. Maybe instead of politely refusing, she should just be downright rude, and to hell with the consequences.
One thing was certain. She had to look an awful lot more upbeat and happy by the time she got home. She hadn’t told David about Nick or Gideon, but he knew something was wrong. He’d been sniffing about for days, trying to get her to talk, but this wasn’t something she intended sharing with him. Not even if he put lighted matchsticks under her fingernails.
The door at the end of the corridor clattered open, and her heart sank. Please, let it not be Nick. Not Nick, all cheerful and hail-fellow-well-met. She wasn’t in the mood this afternoon, but it wasn’t Nick who began walking towards her. It was Louise Harper’s boyfriend, the boyfriend Gideon had thrown out of the hospital over a fortnight ago. As he advanced towards her, all her instincts told her she was in trouble.
‘Mike—it is Mike, isn’t it?’ she said hesitantly. ‘I’m afraid Louise isn’t here. She’s been discharged, and if you’re wanting her address—’
‘I’m not looking for Louise,’ he interrupted harshly. ‘You’re the one I’m looking for. You’re the meddling bitch who told everyone I had gonorrhoea. Louise would never have told anyone what was wrong with her if you hadn’t said I needed treatment. There’s nothing wrong with me. I’m clean. If I’ve got gonorrhoea, it’s that slag who’s given it to me.’
Lord, but where was the panic button? At the Manchester Infirmary there’d been panic buttons everywhere, and there had to be one here, but where in heaven’s name was it?
‘Look, why don’t we go to the staffroom?’ she suggested as evenly as her thudding heart would allow. Please, God, Tom might be in there, or Gideon, or even Nick. She’d settle even for Nick at the moment, though how much use he’d be in a crisis was anybody’s guess. ‘It would be much more comfortable there, and I could make you a cup of tea—coffee—’
‘I don’t want any of your bloody coffee,’ Mike retorted. ‘It’s time somebody taught you a lesson, lady. It’s time somebody taught you to keep your nose out of things that don’t concern you.’
Was he drunk? His speech certainly sounded slightly slurred, and his eyes were definitely far too bright. Drunk or on drugs, for sure, she decided, only to cease to care when a knife suddenly appeared in his hands.
With a sharp cry Annie turned on her heel, but she wasn’t quick enough. Before she could even move a step he’d grabbed her by the arm, slammed her against the wall and held the knife just inches from her throat.
‘You’re not going anywhere, lady.’ He grinned, his breath hot against her face. ‘Except for in a wooden box.’
He was going to kill her. He was going to kill her, and there was nothing she could do about it. He was going to kill her, and Jamie was going to be left motherless as well as fatherless.
Please, oh, please, she prayed, let somebody come. A porter. A lab technician. Normally, the department was overrun with both, but this afternoon…
The door at the end of the corridor banged open again, and she held her breath. Not one of the patients. Please, don’t let it be one of the patients. It wasn’t. It was Gideon. Gideon, who had taken in the situation in a glance, judging by his sharp intake of breath, but what could he do—what could anybody do?
‘There you are, Dr Hart,’ he said with apparent irrita
tion. ‘I need to see you in my room immediately.’
‘I…I’m afraid I’m a bit tied up at the moment, Mr Caldwell,’ she replied, then had to bite down hard on her lip because her reply suddenly struck her as hysterically funny, and she knew if she started to laugh she would have hysterics.
‘And I’m afraid it doesn’t matter how busy you are, Dr Hart,’ Gideon continued, walking slowly down the corridor towards them. ‘I need to speak to you and I need to speak to you now.’
He was talking for talking’s sake—buying himself time to get closer—and tentatively she tried to pull her arm out of Mike’s grasp, but he only tightened it further.
‘I…I have to go, Mike,’ she said. ‘My boss—you heard what he said…’
He wavered for just a second, and that second was all Gideon needed. With a speed that was startling for such a big man he lunged at Mike, knocking the knife to the floor with one hand and using the other to pinion him with a tight arm lock.
‘The panic button, Annie,’ he gasped. ‘Press the panic button beside the toilet door.’
She did, and within seconds the security guards arrived and bore Mike away, still yelling abuse at her as he went.
‘Annie—Oh, lass, are you all right?’ Gideon asked urgently, seeing her slump against the wall.
‘Yes—No—I—Oh, Gideon, I’ve never been so frightened in all my life,’ she whispered.
She was trembling all over, and swiftly he half carried, half supported her along to his room.
‘Don’t move,’ he ordered, lowering her into a seat before switching on his kettle and yanking a mug out of the cupboard. ‘What the hell was security thinking of? I told them he was banned, that he was never to be allowed up to the wards again.’
‘He…he must have got past them somehow,’ she murmured through chattering teeth. ‘Oh, God, I’m so cold. Why am I so cold, Gideon?’
He abandoned the kettle, knelt in front of her and began chafing her hands between his, but it didn’t help. Quickly he pulled his chair round from behind his desk, sat down on it and drew her onto his lap.
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