Discovering Dr Riley

It was just a bundle of wire and gauze, which had somehow landed here by accident. The significance of its pose was a trick of the light. Tom reached for the fairy and then hesitated, as the bundle of wire and glitter seemed to scowl at him reproachfully. Its outstretched hand held a wand.

His gaze followed the direction in which the gently glowing tip of the wand was pointing. The passage of car tyres over the concrete floor had scattered it a little, but the trail of glitter was still easy to see.

There was only one person who could have done this, and he’d been avoiding her all week. Slinging his briefcase into the back of his car, and giving the fairy one last baleful stare before he locked it in the glove compartment, he followed the trail of glitter that Cori had laid.

As soon as he stepped onto the frosty path outside the car park, Tom could see where he was headed. It was pretty much impossible not to notice the tiny lights, glimmering amongst the spreading branches of the tree that stood by the main entrance to the hospital. A nurse passed him walking in the other direction, holding a fairy in her hand, the little LED light at the tip of its wand glowing in the darkness.

When he got closer, he saw Cori leaning against the dark shadow of the tree trunk, her face lit up by the twinkle of lights in the branches around her. She did him the courtesy of not pretending to be surprised to see him.

‘People usually find that leaving a note on my desk works.’ Tom was trying hard not to be enchanted by this method of catching his attention.

‘Do they?’ She grinned up at him, her eyes dark in the shadows. ‘You seemed so very busy.’

He supposed he deserved that. Each day that he’d transferred his meeting with Cori onto his ‘to do’ list for tomorrow, it had been easier to put it off. When Friday had come, the difficult problem of what exactly he should say to her had seemed quite naturally to fit into next week’s timetable instead of this week’s.

‘Okay.’ He was in the wrong and if it had been anyone else Tom would have apologised. But an apology was meaningless unless one intended to change in some way, and right now changing his mind was out of the question. ‘So what’s the point of all this?’

She folded her arms across her chest, looking up at him. ‘You’re my point.’

A sudden breathless feeling seemed to spread heat across his chest. ‘How, exactly?’

Cori shrugged. ‘I know you have your reservations about my effectiveness in the unit …’ A little quiver in her voice told Tom that this mattered to her.

‘I have no doubts whatever about your effectiveness.’ Tom glanced at the fairies, cavorting around them in the tree. Some touch of magic had turned them from confections of wire and glitter into personalities, each one thrilling with life. There was a small group obviously arguing about something. Some preened themselves, and others beckoned watchers closer, looking no doubt to cast some kind of spell on them.

‘Then … what?’ She stared at him, nonplussed.

It seemed that she needed to hear him say this. He couldn’t for the life of him think why, but if it would get her off his back, then he was more than happy to oblige. ‘Look, Cori, your CV is very impressive, your work is great and the kids are enjoying it …’

‘You haven’t seen any of my work yet.’ She looked ready for a staring match. From somewhere, the craving to respond hit him, the urge to look deep into those violet eyes, and break down all her defences.

‘I do take a look around the unit once in a while. And I quite often talk to my patients, as well.’ Tom resisted the temptation to add that talking to children was a damn sight easier than navigating the uneasy waters of adult office politics. ‘I can see that you’ve been making a difference …’

‘And making a difference is a good thing, isn’t it?’

Tom wondered if she was deliberately playing dumb, or she really didn’t know. Surely she knew that the funding had been cut. It was impossible that no one had told her.

‘You have the potential to be a real asset for the unit, Cori. But now that we have no funding for a long-term appointment, and it’s just this eight weeks …’

She was staring at him as if he’d just grown a pair of wings and was about to flutter off into the branches with the fairies. Her mouth formed an ‘O’, and she covered it with her gloved hand. ‘So … There’s no permanent post … after these eight weeks are over?’

‘No. I’m sorry. Once your work placement is finished, there are no plans for any permanent post until next year at the earliest. Didn’t the scheme supervisor tell you that?’

She shook her head and abruptly turned away, as if there was something she wanted to hide from him. Disbelief, maybe. Tears? Anger? It was difficult to say, and, if he was honest, he would rather not have to deal with any of those emotions. He should go now, let her think about things over the weekend and they could talk again about what she wanted to do on Monday morning.

‘Hey, Tom! What’s going on? Can anyone join in?’ A voice came from behind him and Tom turned to see a couple of off-duty nurses, one of whom was trying to draw his attention to a little girl, transfixed by the lights in the tree and trying to escape her father’s grip on her hand. It seemed that they had just come from A and E, because the man also carried a younger child with a bulky dressing on her arm.

Cori had already seen them and was moving towards them. ‘Would they like to come and take a look?’ She spoke to the man first, and when he nodded she bent down to the little girl at his side. ‘If you want, you can take a fairy home.’

The answer to that was a clear and overwhelming yes. She led the little girl under the sparkling canopy, and her father followed, the child in his arms reaching up with her uninjured hand to touch the fairies. It was touching, heartwarming, and Tom wanted to be a part of the magic that Cori was able to create, more than he could say. Which was exactly why it would be much better if he went home. Now.

CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_236ccb91-7896-5e6f-82d8-5cfdd380b4ee)

NOT SO FAST. Cori could see Tom out of the corner of her eye, pulling his car keys out of his pocket. She’d spent all of yesterday evening making fairies, and her lunchtime today attaching the little LED lights to the tips of their wands. He’d found his way here, and if he thought he was going anywhere before they talked this out, he was mistaken.

‘Dr Riley. We need some help here.’

She called over to him, indicating the child beside her. Tom turned, his eyes narrowing in an indication that he knew full well that she wasn’t playing fair, and she grinned at him in reply.

He moved across the grass towards her with all the affability of a tiger caught in a trap. He lifted the child up in his arms so she could reach the fairy that she wanted, never taking his gaze from Cori’s face.

‘Thank you.’ The little girl responded to a prompt from her father and thanked him, and Tom’s face broke into the kind of smile that Cori would have decorated the whole hospital with fairies for.

‘You’re very welcome.’ He bent down, watching as the child inspected the fairy. ‘What’s her name?’

‘Only I know it.’

Tom nodded gravely. ‘Right. Well don’t forget to take good care of her. She needs to have breakfast every morning.’

‘Porridge?’

‘Yep. I’m told that fairies are very partial to porridge. Particularly during the winter.’

The child nodded. ‘Can Hannah have one?’

Tom allowed himself to be drawn into choosing and obtaining a fairy for the child with the injured arm. Before he was finished, Cori had given away another four, as hospital staff and visitors stopped to look at the tree.

‘Dr Riley?’ A man in a suit and overcoat was marching across the grass towards them. Tom turned away from the children, and the corner of the man’s mouth twitched downwards.

‘Now we’re in for it …’ He murmured the words as he passed behind Cori, moving forward to meet the man. ‘Alan. Have you come to make a wish?’

It didn’t look as if the man believed in fairies. Cori noticed that a couple of the nurses who’d been lingering under the tree had melted away, leaving the sparkling branches to those who were obviously not employed at the hospital and therefore not subject to the disapproval of its administrators.

‘Just came to see what’s going on.’ Alan was looking round with an assessing gaze.

‘Make-a-wish Friday.’ Tom’s smile would have cracked an iceberg, but he was obviously improvising, and Cori stepped forward. If anyone was going to get into trouble for this, then it should be her.

‘It’s all my …’ She felt fingers close around the sleeve of her coat and Tom pulled her back a couple of steps.

‘These are all Cori’s creations. She’s attached to the unit temporarily and she’s been doing some stupendous work. We had some leftover fairies and I thought it was a shame for them to go to waste.’

‘You’re supervising this?’

‘Absolutely. Can’t have people wandering around hospital grounds making unsupervised wishes.’

Cori opened her mouth to speak and Tom turned to face her. For a moment his gaze met hers and she forgot what she was about to say.

‘I suppose …’ Alan looked around and gave a small shrug. ‘There is a procedure to go through for anything like this in the hospital grounds, though.’