'Don't,' she said with him, meeting his eyes in a direct challenge. 'I see. So how about apples, pears, that sort of thing? Breakfast cereal?'
'You're talking about roughage, aren't you, Doctor? Never had no shortage of that in the war. I remember—'
'And you were all probably a lot healthier for it,' she said, cutting him off neatly before he had time to ramble. 'Still, we need to worry about what would help you now, and see what we can do to make things more regular.'
'Oh, yes, regular, that's what I'd like to be,' he said fervently, stifling the smile. Her eyes twinkled. He should have been warned, but he wasn't, and her next remark shocked him.
'I think I need to examine you,' she said blandly. 'If you could slip your trousers down and lie on the couch.' She pointed at the settee, and he raised an eyebrow. 'Please?' she added.
'Is this really necessary?' he asked in his usual voice.
She propped her hands her hips and looked at him with that sassy little smile, all innocent and wicked at once. 'Of course. How will you know if I've been sufficiently thorough if I don't do everything I would normally do?'
'Hmm,' he muttered under his breath. 'We'll imagine the trousers,' he said firmly, and lay down, his legs dangling over the end.
'I'll just undo them,' she said, and before he could protest the button fly was popping open and her little hands were in there, prodding and poking about at his innards and getting perilously close to finding out just how much he was getting out of this whole bit of nonsense.
She tugged up his shirt and peered at the skin of his abdomen. 'Nice neat scar—is that appendix or a hernia repair?' she asked innocently.
'Appendix,' he said in a strangled voice.
'And have you had trouble ever since it was removed?'
Damn, how did she keep it going? 'Well, off and on. Like I said, sometimes I go, and—'
'Sometimes you don't. Yes. I remember.' She pressed down in the centre of his abdomen and released sharply, and he obligingly grunted, feigning rebound tenderness.
'Oh, dear, was that a bit sore?' she asked sympathetically.
'It was.'
Mischief danced in her eyes. 'What about if I do it here, further down?'
He caught her wrists, just in the nick of time. 'I think we get the picture,' he said, swinging his legs off the settee and struggling to fasten his jeans.
'Here, let me,' she said, and then those little fingers were in there again, brushing against his abdomen and driving him crazy. He sucked in his breath to get out of her way, but she was done, and he tugged the rest of the shirt out of the waistband and let it provide a little modesty.
Had she noticed? Goodness knows, but he wasn't taking any chances. He sat back down in his chair and crossed his leg over his other knee. He seemed to spend a lot of time in this position, he thought, and sighed.
Perhaps role play wasn't such a good idea after all.
* * *
Lucie was enjoying herself. They swapped roles, they touched on difficult and serious issues, and other more trivial and silly ones, and she did learn a lot from him.
She also learned a lot about him. She learned that he had a sense of humour—a wonderful sense of humour, every bit as wicked as her own—and that he cared deeply about his patients, and that he was a stickler for exactitude and wouldn't tolerate inconsistencies.
If she was vague he chivvied her up, making her be more specific, and although she threw in the odd bit of nonsense to liven the proceedings, in fact it was astonishingly easy to get into the roles with him and she found herself doing it seriously.
She also learned that she could turn him on just by stroking her fingers over the tender skin of his abdomen, so that his body betrayed his true reactions despite the fact that he stayed in role.
And she learned that as far as he was concerned, that was a no-go area and she wasn't to be allowed to tease him into breaking out of role.
Finally, at about lunchtime, he sat back and blew out his breath in a long stream. 'Well?'
'Thank you,' she said, genuinely meaning it. 'That was very useful. How did I do?'
'When you were being serious? Fine. Very good, mostly. The rest is just experience, but I think you've got what it takes. I think you'll do, Lucie Compton. If you were my GP, I'd be confident I was being looked after properly.'
Her cheeks coloured softly, and she let out a soft laugh. 'Well—thanks, Dr Ryan.'
'My pleasure. I think we deserve lunch. How about going to the pub?'
She wrinkled her nose. 'Typical. I'm driving, of course.'
He grinned. 'That's right, but fair's fair. As you so rightly pointed out, I just gave up my Saturday morning for you, so I deserve a drink more than you.'
There was no answer to that.
CHAPTER EIGHT
With her confidence bolstered by Will's praise, Lucie found working with him easier after that, although he continued to make notes and criticise and nit-pick.
Still, his comments were all fair and helpful and, although it annoyed her, she could see the point.
A fortnight after their role-play session, Harriet Webb came to see her for a check-up. She'd been discharged from hospital a week earlier, and before they arranged to go on holiday at the end of May, her mother wanted to be sure she would be well enough. Lucie had to admit Harriet looked considerably better than she had when they'd first seen her.
Her hair was cut short, as well—spiky and fun and a very pretty style that was too short to pull out in her sleep.
'Are you finding it easier to eat now?' Lucie asked her, and Harriet laughed.
'I'm starving. I've never been so hungry in my life. I think it's having room to really eat—I've probably never had that before. They said the hairball has probably been forming all my life. It was amazing— they showed it to me, and it was just the shape of my stomach and so huge! All my clothes are loose now, and my waist is so much smaller. They're putting it in their museum at the hospital, for the nurse training department, so I'll be famous. How cool is that?'
Lucie chuckled. 'Ultra-cool. You look good. I like the hair.'
She patted it experimentally. 'I'm still getting used to it. I used to fiddle with it all the time. It's like having my hands cut off! Still, I don't want another of those things, no way!' She shuddered.
'Are you seeing anyone about why you might have done it?' Lucie asked cautiously, and Harriet pulled a face.
'You mean the therapist? She's useless.'
'Give her a chance,' Lucie urged. 'She might be able to help you find out why you did it, and I know it might not be what you want to do, rummaging around inside all your personal thoughts and feelings, but if it stops it happening again and helps you move forward, that has to be good, doesn't it?'
Harriet nodded. 'I s'pose. It's just all a bit—I don't know. She keeps going back to when I was little and my sister died, and it—you know. It's difficult to talk about. I don't like to remember.'
'I'm sure,' Lucie said with sympathy.
Mrs Webb was sitting quietly in the background, and she met Lucie's eyes and shrugged helplessly. 'She seemed all right at the time, although it was awful, but that's when the hair thing started. Maybe this girl can get to the bottom of her problems. We're hopeful.'
'Well, as far as I'm concerned she's in excellent physical shape now and I can't see any reason why you shouldn't go on holiday. I expect it will do you all good. Are you going anywhere nice?'
'Only France,' Mrs Webb said. 'We go most years, but we thought we'd go earlier this year, to give Harriet a treat.'
'Well, I hope you have a lovely time,' Lucie said with a smile as they left.
'Make a note of that,' Will said from behind her.
'Of the sister?'
'Yes. Sounds as if Harriet was involved in some way in her death—maybe she found her, or feels it was her fault. Whatever, it could be relevant. Just jot it down.'
'I have.' She turned to face him. 'She's looking better, isn't she? Funny hangover
, that.'
Will smiled slightly, letting her score the point. 'Who's next?' he asked.
'Mr Gregory. He's had the course of treatment for his H. pylori—this is a follow-up. Hopefully he's better.'
He was. He felt better than he had for months, he said, and although the treatment had been awful, it had done the trick and he felt much more like his old self.
'So, how's the diet going now?' Lucie asked. 'Dr Ryan tells me you're trying to cut down and lose a few kilos.'
'Oh, well, I gave all that up when this got out of hand, but I suppose I could start again. Maybe I need a bit less dressing on the salad. That seemed to set me off.'
'You don't have to eat salad just because you're on a diet,' Lucie reminded him. 'You can have normal meals, but cooked with much less fat, and with low-fat gravy and sauces and loads of veg. It doesn't have to be cold and raw to be less fattening!'
He chuckled. 'I know. Somehow it feels more like a diet, though, if it's cold. Still, I'll persevere.'
'Why don't we weigh you now, since you're here, and we can check you again in a few weeks? Slip off your jacket and shoes, that's right.'
She weighed him, jotted it down on his notes and smiled. 'Well, I'm glad the treatment worked.'
'So am I. I'll go and have some hot tomatoes.'
He went out chuckling, and Will rolled his eyes. 'The nurse can weigh him.'
'He was in here.'
'And your next patient should have been. You're running behind now.'
She turned to face him again. 'Are you sure you aren't well enough to go and do something useful, like run a surgery?'
'With only one hand? Hardly. I've told you, I'm hopeless with my left hand. How could I do internals?'
'You couldn't. You'd have to ask for help.'
'And if there was nobody about? Don't worry, Lucie, I've thought about it. This is working.'
Not for me, she wanted to say, but that wasn't fair. They only crossed swords a few times a day now, instead of a few times an hour.
Progress?
The phone rang, and she picked it up. 'Dr Compton.'
'Doctor, I've got Mrs Brown on the line. She's expecting triplets? She says she's got cramp in her stomach and she's a bit worried. Could you go?'
She covered the receiver and repeated the message to Will. 'I'll talk to her,' he said, and took the phone.
After a brief exchange, he said, 'All right, hang on, we'll come now. You stay where you are.'
'I have a surgery.'
'The patients can either wait or switch to Richard,'
he said firmly. 'Angela Brown is about to lose her triplets, unless I'm very much mistaken, and I want to see her now. She can't wait. They can.' He nodded towards the waiting room.
'OK. I'll get my bag.'
'Come on, Lucie, move. She's in distress.'
They moved. They got there within ten minutes, to find that Angela had started to bleed.
It was only a little trickle, but her blood pressure was low and it was likely that she was haemorrhaging.
'I think you need the obstetric flying squad,' he told her gently. 'I'm sorry, but you need to be in hospital now, and you need a qualified obstetric team with you.'
'What about the babies?' she asked worriedly.
'I don't know about the babies. At the moment I'm worried about you. Lucie, can you call?' He told her the number, and she rang, relayed his instructions and asked for immediate assistance while he checked Angela's blood pressure again and listened to the babies through the foetal stethoscope.
'She needs a line in,' he instructed, and Lucie put an intravenous connector into her hand, ready for the drip, and took some blood for cross-matching, just in case.
'Shouldn't you examine me?' Angela asked them, and Will shook his head.
'No. You don't want to be poked about—it can cause the uterus to contract, and it might settle down. I want you in hospital fast, and I want that specialist team with you, just to be on the safe side. And in the meantime, I want you to lie as still as you can and not worry.'
It seemed to take ages for the obstetric team to arrive, but when it did, they moved smoothly into action and Will and Lucie shut up the house and followed them out.
'I wonder if she'll lose them?' Lucie said thoughtfully. 'She was so worried about having them, and now she's worried about not having them.'
'I don't know. Maybe they'll live, maybe not. Whatever, it'll be hard for her. I have to say my instinct is she'd be better without them, but I doubt if she'd see that in the same way as me.'
Lucie doubted it, too, and was glad she didn't have to make those sorts of choices. Nature would take its course, aided and abetted—or thwarted, depending on how you looked at it—by medical intervention, and Mrs Brown would come but at the end somehow, unless there was a drastic hiccup.
They went back to the surgery to find that Richard had finished her patients for her and everyone was in the office, sipping champagne.
'What are we celebrating?' Will asked, and Gina, one of the receptionists, waved her hand at them.
'Look! He finally did it!'
Will grabbed her flailing hand and peered at the ring, then gave her a hug. 'Congratulations. He took some pinning down.'
'Absolutely. Still, it's all going ahead now, and because I don't trust him not to change his mind, it's on Friday afternoon. Now, I know you can't skive off, all of you, but you can come to a party in the evening, can't you?'
'I'm sure we can all manage that, can't we?' Richard agreed, and fixed Will with a look. 'And since Will's broken his arm and won't be up a ladder, I imagine you'll even get him.'
'And Lucie—if you'd like to,' Gina said with a beaming smile. Lucie guessed that just then she'd have invited all the patients as well if there had been any about, but Lucie agreed, as much as anything because she thought it might be interesting to see Will at a party.
And who knows? she thought. It might even be fun.
'I really, really don't want to go,' Will said with a sigh.
Lucie looked at him across the car. 'You have to, Will. You said you would, and it's her wedding day.'
He sighed again. 'I know. I'm going. I just don't want to.'
'It might be fun,' she said encouragingly, and he shot her a black look.
'That's exactly what I'm afraid of,' he said darkly.
'Oh, pooh. You need to lighten up,' she said with grin. 'You never know, we might get you doing Karaoke by the end of the evening.'
'Hmm. See that pig up there in the sky?'
She chuckled, and opened the door. 'Come on. We have to get ready. We've got to leave in an hour. Do you want me to put your glove on?'
'Please,' he agreed, so she went in with him, waited while he stripped off his shirt and helped him into the long loose glove he'd got off a veterinary friend. A rubber band around the top held it in place, and it covered the entire cast without messing around with tape.
And that, they were both agreed, was a huge improvement.
The only problem was that she had to put it on after he'd taken off his shirt, and so she was treated on an almost daily basis to the delicious sight of Will's muscular and enviable torso, just inches away.
Close enough to touch.
She snapped the elastic band in place, flashed him a grin and all but ran back to her cottage. He could get the glove off, so her time was now her own, and she had to bath, wash her hair and get it into some semblance of order, and put her glad rags on.
The party was in a village hall, and she didn't think it would be dreadfully smart, but it might be quite dressy in a different sort of way, and she sifted through her clothes until she found black trousers and a flirty, floaty top with a camisole under it that dressed the whole thing up.
She put on her make-up, added a bit more jewellery and stood back and looked at herself. Fine. A little brash, but what the hell? She wasn't going out to one of Fergus's posh restaurants, she was going to a wedding party in a village hall, and she intended to
have fun.
Lucie didn't know what she was doing to him. She was like a bright little butterfly, flitting about in that gauzy bit of nonsense. Granted, she wore a little top under it, but even so!
And she was in her element, of course. She could talk to anyone, and she did. She talked to everyone, without exception, from the bride's father to the kids in the corner who were throwing peanuts at the guests and giggling.
She threw one at him and it landed in his drink, splashing him. He met her eyes, and she was laughing, her hand over her mouth, looking as guilty as the kids and as full of mischief.
He shook his head in despair and turned back to his conversation with Richard's wife. She, however, seemed quite happy to be distracted by Lucie.
'What a charming girl,' she said, and Will nearly groaned.
'Yes, she is. Well, she can be.'
'And you can be charming, too, of course, if you put your mind to it,' Sylvia said in gentle reprimand.
'Sorry.' He gave her a rueful smile. 'I'm just feeling a bit old.'
'Old?' She laughed. 'You wait until you hit forty-five, if you want to feel old! Did Richard tell you we're going to be grandparents?'
'No, he didn't. Congratulations.'
She pulled a face. 'I'm pleased really, I suppose, but I had hoped they'd wait until they were a bit more secure.'
'What, like you did?'
She laughed and slapped his arm, her hand bouncing harmlessly off the cast. 'You know what I mean.'
'Yes, I do. But there's a danger to that, you know, Sylvia. You can be too measured, too organised, too planned. And then you find that life's gone on without you.'
'Well, this party's certainly going on without you,' she admonished, standing up. 'Come on, you can dance with me.'
'What?'
'Come on, you can't refuse, it's rude.' She pulled him to his feet and dragged him to the dance floor, and he could feel Lucie's eyes on his back all the way across the room.
Sylvia was kind to him and let him shuffle without expecting anything too outrageous.
And then the music changed, and Lucie appeared at their sides.
Rescuing Dr Ryan Page 11
