A Consultant Beyond Compare

by Joanna Neil

  ‘We’ll leave you to get those tests done,’ Alex said, giving Luke a brief smile. ‘We’ll come back and look in on you later, if we may?’

  Luke nodded, and Alex turned to Katie. ‘I’ll give you a tour around the unit,’ he murmured.

  He showed her the resuscitation bays first of all. ‘The building is old and poky, but I arranged for it to be brightened up with a lick of paint so that it looks light and airy, and the equipment is all up to the minute.’ He pointed out the triage area and the waiting room that was filled with patients waiting to be seen.

  ‘Don’t let that put you off,’ he said. ‘We have a good record for waiting times here. We try to be as efficient as we possibly can.’

  When the tour was complete, he led her into the doctors’ lounge, and offered her a cup of coffee. ‘It’s good stuff,’ he said. ‘Sarah is keen on her coffee so she makes a brew from time to time and gets someone to make sure it’s freshened up at frequent intervals. That way you can always rely on a perfect cup.’

  ‘It’s delicious,’ Katie said, sipping the hot liquid and savouring the aroma. ‘I could almost be tempted to work here just for the coffee alone.’

  He laughed. ‘So I’m making some headway at last. Wonderful. Do you want a refill?’

  ‘Let’s not get too excited.’ She lifted her gaze. ‘I don’t often give in that easily to temptation.’

  ‘You don’t?’ He started towards her as she put the cup down onto the worktop, and came to a halt just beside her. His gaze ran over her, pausing to linger momentarily on her soft, feminine curves. His smoky grey glance spoke volumes, his eyes glimmering with darting lights that tantalised and teased at the same time. ‘That’s a real shame. I would so like to have been able to tempt you.’

  Katie was suddenly flustered by his nearness. His long body was so close to hers that they were almost touching…almost, but not quite. ‘I didn’t…I meant…’

  ‘I know what you meant.’ He said it with a dry smile, taking a step backwards, and Katie realised that she had been holding her breath all the time he had been near. She braced herself and tried to shake off the confusion that fogged her mind.

  By the time they arrived back at the resuscitation bay, where Luke Hathaway was, Colin was getting ready to discharge his patient.

  ‘The ECG and X-ray results are normal,’ he said, ‘so it’s most likely that the pain you’re experiencing is due to a localised inflammation. It’s a problem that affects the junction where the upper ribs join with the cartilage that holds them to the breastbone.’

  Luke frowned, but seemed to accept what the doctor was saying to him well enough. ‘So it’s nothing serious, then? I thought I was having a heart attack or something.’

  ‘That would be most unlikely,’ Colin said with a smile. ‘Are you experiencing much pain right now?’

  Luke shook his head.

  ‘That’s good. Anyway, the cardiac enzyme test was negative. You appear to be fit in every other way, and you’re young. A heart attack is not at all what we would expect in a man of your age.’ He began to write out a prescription. ‘I’ll get the nurse to fill this out for you. I’m giving you some anti-inflammatories, along with painkillers and a course of antibiotics to clear up any infection. You should come back to us if you have any more symptoms of chest pain.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Luke was still frowning, but as Colin left the room he began to fasten the remainder of his shirt buttons that were still undone.

  ‘I’ll be back in a moment,’ Alex said. ‘I just want to go and have a word with Dr Davies about another patient.’

  Katie nodded, but stayed where she was. Something about the patient’s manner was bothering her, but right now she was uncertain exactly what the problem was.

  ‘Do you have anyone here who can take you home?’ she asked softly.

  ‘No, not just at the moment,’ Luke replied. ‘My wife called for the ambulance, but she had to leave me here so that she could go and fetch our children from playschool. Then she needed to find someone who would look after them before she could come back to me. She said she’d get here as soon as she could.’ He gave an awkward smile. ‘Actually, I feel a bit silly, causing everyone all this bother. I’ll probably ring her and tell her that I’ll get a bus back.’

  ‘Are you sure that you feel up to doing that?’ Katie queried. ‘You look a bit pale to me and you’re still quite breathless.’

  Luke shrugged. ‘The doctor said it was just a bit of inflammation.’

  ‘Yes. You said that your father had a history of coronary artery disease. Would you like to tell me about that?’

  ‘Well, he was very young when he had his first heart attack, in his twenties, and then he had another one when he was in his thirties. I don’t know what caused it, but perhaps diet and cholesterol played a part, or it may have been that there was a weakness there from the start.’

  ‘Hmm…that’s possible, I suppose,’ Katie said. ‘I noticed that you were a little guarded when the doctor asked you about drug use. It’s not that we would be passing judgement on you in any way, but use of certain drugs can cause problems with the heart. That’s why it’s important to tell us the truth so that we have all the details to hand.’

  He looked uncomfortable. ‘Well, perhaps I was wrong to say I didn’t ever use them. I did do some cocaine last week, but that’s just between you and me. I wouldn’t admit to it if the police were to get involved.’

  Katie nodded. ‘I understand. Just remember that some drugs can be very harmful to you…and as the doctor said, if you have any more chest pain you should come back to the hospital right away.’

  She looked up as she heard a movement on the other side of the room. Alex was standing in the doorway, and she wondered just how long he had been there. Had he heard any part of their conversation?

  She stood up. ‘I’ll leave you to finish dressing,’ she murmured, glancing at Luke, ‘but I think you would be wise to wait here until your wife arrives. I don’t believe you should attempt to go home on your own.’

  Luke gave her a brief, strained smile and started to look around for his jacket.

  Katie stood up and went to leave the room, meeting Alex in the doorway. He walked into the main thoroughfare of A and E with her.

  ‘You seem to be preoccupied,’ he said. ‘Is something wrong? I didn’t hear everything that was said, but judging by some of your questions I’m wondering if you have some doubts about whether or not the patient should be discharged.’

  Katie made an awkward gesture with her shoulders. ‘It isn’t really for me to say, is it? I don’t have any right to interfere. I don’t even work here.’

  ‘But…?’ Alex was studying her thoughtfully.

  She grimaced. He wasn’t going to leave it alone, was he? ‘I wouldn’t be so sure that he isn’t suffering from some sort of impending heart problem. He confided to me that he used cocaine, and together with the fact that his father suffered from cardiac problems at a young age, I would be inclined to keep him here under observation for a while longer. I would also order up further cardiac enzyme tests.’

  ‘Yes, I’d been considering that, too, and I think you’re probably right. I’ll suggest that course of action to Dr Davies.’

  Katie was faintly alarmed. ‘I don’t want him to feel that I’m intruding. After all, it isn’t really any of my business, but he’s bound to know that the impetus came from me, surely?’

  ‘That won’t matter. The patient wasn’t fully truthful with him from the outset, and we didn’t know the extent of the family history. I don’t think Dr Davies will take it amiss.’

  Katie wasn’t too sure about that, but Alex was already moving in Colin’s direction. ‘Do you have a moment, Colin?’ she heard him ask.

  She almost wished that she could have disappeared through a hole in the floor. No doctor wanted someone else telling him that he was making a mistake in letting a patient go. It undermined his authority and brought his competence into question. Her only h
ope was that she would somehow be able to smooth things over.

  Colin was frowning, but a few moments later he passed by her on his way to the resuscitation bay. ‘I hear that our patient wasn’t fully open with me about his background,’ he said briskly. ‘Of course, that puts a different slant on things. I’m going to suggest that he stays here overnight, so that we can keep an eye on him.’

  ‘That’s probably a good idea,’ Kate murmured. She hesitated before adding, ‘I hope you don’t think that I was intruding. It was only that I stayed to talk to the patient for a while, otherwise we would have had no idea that there was a problem.’

  Colin’s face was impassive. ‘As you say, we didn’t get the full picture.’ He was polite and clearly ready to do the right thing, but she couldn’t read him at all. A chill went through her. Had she made an enemy?

  ‘Katie,’ Alex said, coming back to her and drawing her to one side, ‘I have to go on duty in a while, but I wanted to make one last effort to persuade you to think again about the job. Do you think you could give some more thought to joining our team? I would have to make some checks, of course, references from your last hospital post and so on, but I can’t see that there would be any problems, and we could take you on almost immediately. It’s all down to whether you could handle being in Emergency again, but I would be here to back you up at every stage.’

  He led her into a side room. Looking around, she saw that it was an office, and she guessed that it belonged to him. It was neat, the desktop highly polished, with papers stacked neatly in a wire tray and notes pinned up on a corkboard on the wall. Sunlight streamed in through a large window.

  ‘You would be perfect for this job,’ he said. ‘You’ve proved that to me more than once in the last few days. You can’t spend your life running away from difficult situations and hiding yourself in quiet corners, you know. I won’t let you, especially now that I’ve found you again after all this time. It feels as though fate has brought us back together. That has to mean something, doesn’t it?’

  Katie’s blue eyes were troubled. Was she really running away? It made her seem like such a coward, but she had never thought of herself that way. Life had dealt her a blow and her way of coming to terms with the destruction of her career had been to retreat to lick her wounds.

  She looked at him. He was right, wasn’t he? He was offering her the chance to put her toe back in the water, and perhaps that was what she must do if she was ever to get her confidence back.

  ‘All right. I’ll do it.’ She pulled in a deep breath. ‘I don’t know how it’s going to work out, but I’ll do my best.’

  ‘That’s brilliant.’ He came over to her and put his arms around her, hugging her close, so that the heat of his body permeated the soft fabric of her suit and brought warmth to every part of her. ‘I knew you couldn’t let this chance pass you by. This position is tailor-made for you, and I’ll be here with you to see you through, every step of the way. It’s great, Katie. It’s going to work out, you’ll see.’

  Katie couldn’t think straight. The way he was holding her was causing a meltdown in her head, and all she could think of was that her breasts were crushed against the solid wall of his chest and her legs were pressed up against the taut length of his thighs. It took her breath away, this closeness, and made her head spin as though she was caught up in a whirlwind that caused her senses to spiral out of control.

  She was already regretting her decision. How was she going to be able to work with him? Wasn’t this the way it had always been? Years ago, he would find her wherever she was hiding and he would coax her back into facing the world once more, and for a while everything would go well. It was the turning point that came afterwards that she dreaded. The moment when she knew that his hugs were not for her alone, and the world was still a cruel place in which to live.

  ‘Let’s go and get those papers signed,’ he murmured, reluctantly drawing away from her, and it must have been that she was still caught up in the heat of the moment because while her head was still full of cotton-wool clouds she found herself signing on the dotted line, and after that her future was sealed. There was no going back.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  ‘SO, HOW are you settling into the new job?’ Nathan, Katie’s neighbour, was sitting at the breakfast table in the kitchen, munching a slice of crispy toast. ‘You were worried about taking on any kind of work that had to do with practising medicine, weren’t you?’

  ‘I was,’ Katie said with a frown. ‘I still am, not just because of the type of work but because I’m anxious in case there are any repercussions from what happened at my old hospital. I wasn’t even sure whether my former boss would give me a reference, but things seem to have turned out all right in the end. He wrote a brief account of my work in A and E and didn’t make any mention of the problem I had when I was carrying out that surgery.’

  She was pouring tea from an earthenware pot, and now she handed a cup to Jessica, who was sitting at the other side of the table. The teenager was scanning the picture puzzle on the back of a cereal box, away in a world of her own.

  ‘So far I think I’m handling everything all right,’ Katie added. ‘There was a patient who was being discharged when I was looking around the unit, and I felt that he needed to be admitted for observation. It was just as well that they kept him in because apparently he had a heart attack a few hours later, and luckily a medical team was on hand to tend to him, so he’s going to be all right. That made me feel a bit better about trusting my own judgement. It’s just a question of getting used to the fast pace again.’

  There was also the matter of adjusting to the fact that she was in close proximity with Alex every day, but she wasn’t going to confide in Nathan about that.

  Working with Alex was proving to be far more of a challenge than she had envisaged. The truth was, he was still the same charismatic character that she had known when they had been young. He was a born leader, a man to admire and respect, but there was also a warmth about him that drew her in, making her want to get to know him better.

  Underneath it all, she still remembered the boy who had sat next to her on a grassy hillside all those years ago, and put his arm around her to comfort her when she had been feeling low. He had been the one who had managed to coax a smile from her and bring the sun into her life when all had been rain. She had loved him then with an adolescent fervour, but they had parted and gone their separate ways, and now that she had found him again she was wary of letting her heart rule her head. He was popular with everyone and she was in too vulnerable a state to risk being hurt.

  Nathan leaned back in his chair. ‘You’re bound to be cautious about working in A and E after what happened. Lives are at stake and it puts a tremendous burden of responsibility on your shoulders. You shouldn’t flog yourself. From what you’ve told me, and as hard as you were on yourself, you didn’t do anything wrong.’

  Sunlight poured in through the kitchen window and highlighted his brown hair, burnishing it with patches of gold. He was around the same age as Alex, but his was a more serious personality, and he was generally more given to deep thinking and measured responses. It went along with his job as a lawyer, Katie supposed, but he had a sense of humour and she liked him. He had been helpful and friendly towards her from the first, and she was glad to have him living nearby.

  ‘I can’t see that there will be any problem arising out of the misadventure in surgery,’ he went on. ‘After all, your former consultant isn’t making an issue out of it. Some surgical situations are trickier than others and things will go wrong from time to time. The only worry would be if the patient himself decided to make a case for compensation, because of prolonged illness due to surgical error or something like that. He would have to prove his case, of course, and he would need to bring the action within a certain time limit. You would be notified of what was happening.’

  Katie bit her lip. ‘I suppose there’s a possibility he might do that. The man’s relatives were unhappy about
his prolonged stay in hospital.’

  Nathan made a face. ‘If I were in your position, I wouldn’t worry about it until I heard otherwise.’ He sipped at his tea and helped himself to another slice of toast, spreading it with a thin film of orange marmalade. ‘Anyway, if you do have any problems from that quarter, I could ask around among my colleagues and find someone who specialises in those types of cases—unless, of course, the hospital’s lawyers take it over.’

  ‘Thank you.’ It was good to know that he was on her side, but Katie was still uneasy. What if Alex was to discover that there was a potential lawsuit hanging over her? Ought she to warn him about the possibility? Then again, the question hadn’t come up, and might never be a problem. Why should she muddy the waters unnecessarily?

  ‘What about you, Jessica?’ Nathan asked, between mouthfuls of toast. ‘How are you getting on? Are you staying on here for a while, or will you be going back home?’

  Jessica finished off her cereal and looked up at him. ‘I’m staying,’ she murmured. ‘Katie says that I can, and Mum’s having problems back at the house, so she’s happy enough for me to be here.’

  ‘Jess’s beginning to make friends in the area,’ Katie put in. ‘She’s put her name down for a lot of the organised activities that are going on through the summer holidays and I think that’s helping her to adjust.’

  ‘That’s good.’ Nathan glanced at Katie. ‘It must be a bit of a worry for you, with Jessica being at home and you going out to work. I know that Sue from down the lane said she would help out if need be, but if you have any problems I’ll be working from home on some case notes in the afternoons over the next few weeks, so I’ll be around in case of an emergency.’

  Katie gave him a smile. ‘That’s good to know. Thanks.’ She glanced at Jessica. ‘It helps to have someone close at hand, doesn’t it?’

  Jessica nodded. ‘I like going round to Nathan’s house. He has a beautiful fishpond, and it’s so peaceful out in his garden.’