The Doctor Meets Her Match

Wordlessly he stepped back from the doorway, turned, and made his way back along the hall, leaving the door open behind him. It wasn’t the most cordial of invitations she’d ever received but Abby followed him, closing the door behind her.

‘Can I get you some coffee?’ He had led her through to the kitchen, a large, bright room where the house had been extended at the back. Indicating that she should sit down at the sturdy wooden table, he swung across to the counter and reached up into a cupboard for a tin of coffee beans.

‘Thanks.’ Abby sat down. Making coffee and drinking it would take at least ten minutes. She could use that time.

‘Toast?’ The room smelled of fresh bread and there was a loaf, just out of the breadmaker, on the countertop.

‘Thanks. I didn’t have breakfast this morning.’ Fifteen minutes. Even better. Time enough to sort this out and then get out of there.

Nick didn’t turn to face her and Abby sat down. Without a word, he ground the coffee beans and switched the coffee machine on, then shifted awkwardly across to cut the bread, leaning one of his crutches against the sink.

‘Here, let me help you.’

‘I can manage.’

She dropped back down into her chair. He seemed to be managing not to look at her as well. It occurred to Abby that the offer of coffee hadn’t been intended as hospitality as much as an excuse not to sit down and talk to her.

Finally he was done. He’d made tea for himself, and Abby jumped up to ferry the cups and plates to the table, while Nick lowered himself into a chair.

‘We don’t need to argue about this.’ He gave her a persuasive grin. ‘We could just agree to differ and enjoy our breakfast.’

Nick’s charm didn’t work on her any more. Much. ‘Or we could talk about why I think it’s important that you take the medication you’ve been offered. I’m here to help you. As a friend, Nick.’ ‘Friends’ was dangerous territory. But being his doctor was becoming more inappropriate by the minute, and that was the only other excuse she had to be there.

His lips twitched. ‘And you think that I’m not helping myself?’

‘From where I’m sitting, that’s how it looks.’ Abby took a sip of her coffee.

‘I guess it might.’ The words were almost a challenge.

‘It does, Nick. Pain control isn’t just about making things easier for you. With an injury like this, it’s important that you give your body a chance to heal. That means being able to sleep and move around gently. You need to get some of that swelling around your knee down as well.’

‘I’ve been putting ice packs on it. The swelling’s down from yesterday.’

‘That’s better than nothing. How much sleep did you get last night?’

Nick didn’t answer. He didn’t need to. The dark hollows beneath his eyes and the stiffness of his movements attested to how little he’d slept and how much he was hurting right now. Abby could strike the suspicion of him having decided to self-medicate from the list of possibilities.

‘Did you take analgesics the last time you hurt your knee?’ Abby could have looked that up on the hospital’s computer system after he’d left, but she’d baulked at that.

He nodded. Another couple of options to strike off the list. Whatever his reason was, it must be something that had happened in the four years, since his last injury. ‘Are you saying you had an adverse reaction to one of the drugs?’

‘No. I’m saying that I don’t want the drugs now.’

‘Nick, if you don’t want to tell me what the problem is, that’s fine. But you wouldn’t let me do my best for you last night, and I can tell you now that’s not the way that I work and it’s not the way the doctor I’ve referred you to works either.’ Abby could feel the colour rising in her cheeks, and checked herself.

Something bloomed in his eyes, which looked suspiciously like respect, and Abby ignored the answering quiver in the pit of her stomach. She didn’t need Nick’s respect, she just needed him to see the logic of what she was trying to tell him.

‘Since you put it that way…’ He seemed lost in thought for a moment and then jerked his head up to face her, his stare daring her to look away. ‘I’m a drug addict.’

His message was clear. Get back. Stay back. Nick knew that Abby was not stupid. She had to understand it and the only other explanation was that she was planning on ignoring it.

‘Okay. What kind of drugs?’ She was doing a fairly good job of staring him down. There was barely a flicker at the corner of her eye.

‘Painkillers. The kind that were prescribed for me. And others that weren’t.’

‘But you’re clean now.’

‘What makes you think that?’ He’d never be truly clean.

‘If you were still taking opiate drugs, for whatever purpose, maybe you would have slept a little better last night.’

‘Yeah. Fair enough.’ It would take more than just staying off the drugs to make him whole, but Nick was done with admitting things. That was all she needed to know. He reached for his keys, which were sitting at the far end of the table where he’d dumped them last night, and showed her the small engraved disc that served as a key fob.

She leaned forward to focus on the letters, alongside a logo with a set of initials. ‘IK. What’s that?’

‘Stands for one thousand days. In that time I haven’t had as much as an aspirin or a cup of coffee.’ Her gaze flicked involuntarily towards the cup of herbal tea in front of him, and Nick wondered how much of this she had already worked out for herself. ‘I earned this six months ago, and I’m not giving it up for anything.’

‘Your support group asks that you give up everything? Aspirin, coffee…?’

‘No. That’s what I require of myself.’

She sucked in a deep breath, seeming to relax slightly as she exhaled. ‘I’d like to help, Nick. If you’ll let me.’

She’d disarmed him completely. Maybe it was the way that sunlight from the window became entangled in her hair and couldn’t break free. Maybe her steady, blue gaze, which held the promise of both cornflowers and steel. ‘What do you suggest?’

Nick was expecting one, maybe two platitudes about not overstepping the mark again and a lecture on how effective ice-packs could be. Then she could do the sensible thing and wash her hands of him.

Instead, she drew a pad from her handbag, turned to a page of scribbled notes, asked questions and made some more notes. Then she produced a bundle of printed pages from the internet, selecting some for him to look at, which left Nick in little doubt that she had come prepared for almost every eventuality, including the one which he had just admitted to. He hadn’t thought that Abby was such a force to be reckoned with.

‘What do you think, then?’

Nick had no idea what he thought. He’d heard everything she’d said, but the bulk of his attention had been concentrated on the soft curl of her eyelashes. On trying to resist the impulse to reach out and touch the few golden strands of hair that strayed across her cheek, aware that he could so easily become trapped. ‘Sounds logical.’

She rolled her eyes, twisting her head to one side in a shimmer of liquid light, and he almost choked on his tea. ‘It’s obviously logical. But how do you feel about it?’

‘Okay, then.’ There wasn’t much option other than the truth, not with Abby. ‘I’d rather stick pins in my eyes.’

‘Fair enough, but can you do it?’

‘Stick pins in my eyes? I’d rather not.’

She gifted him with a glare that made his stomach tighten. ‘Stop messing around, Nick. Will you do this?’ She tapped the list she’d made with her pen.

A visit to a pain clinic, specialising in drug-free therapies, which Abby had assured him was among the best in its field. Taking the clinic’s advice on nonopiate painkillers and anti-inflammatory drugs. Coming clean with the orthopaedic surgeon that Abby had already arranged for Nick to see at the hospital, and having him work with the clinic to provide what she termed as ‘joined-up’ care.

‘I can do it.’ This would be harder than dealing with the constant, throbbing pain in his knee but Nick saw the sense in it. It was his best chance of being able to get back on his feet again any time soon.

‘So I’ll call the pain clinic and try to get you an emergency appointment for this afternoon.’