Playing the Joker

‘I wanted to know—if there had been any repercussions.’

Her heart jerked with the force of the pain. ‘No,’ she said numbly. ‘No repercussions.’ None that was visible to the naked eye, at least.

Her hand slid to her lap and clenched against the taut wall of her abdomen. Trying to act calmly, she got to her feet and picked up her white coat.

‘I have to get back to my clinic. Why don’t you go up to the ward and make yourself at home? I’ll come up there when I’ve finished my clinic and take you to lunch, and then you can come into Theatre this afternoon with me if you like.’

‘Fine.’ He stood up, and for a second their eyes met, almost on a level, before she turned away.

‘Come on, then, I’ll tell you where to go.’

‘I thought you already had,’ he said softly behind her, and she stifled the chuckle. It wasn’t hard. She really had very little to laugh about.

Her clinic took all her concentration. Not that any of the cases were complicated, but she found herself missing the answers to her questions, and collecting a lot of strange looks from her nursing staff as well as the patients.

In the end she excused her behaviour on the grounds of a headache and somehow finished off without any major hiccups.

She was later than she had intended, though, and by the time she reached the ward Alex had been taken to lunch by Owen Davie.

She found them in the staff canteen and he looked up and waved to her immediately, as if he had been looking out for her. She waved back, collected a salad and fruit juice and made her way over to the table, trying to ignore the pounding of her heart.

He stood as she approached and held her chair for her in an entirely natural display of good manners that sat easily with his quiet reticence.

Nevertheless it irritated her, and she flashed him a challenging look that he met with steady confidence.

‘Such gallantry!’ she quipped lightly, with just the merest touch of acid.

‘Such feminist rebellion!’ he murmured as he returned to his seat. ‘Successful morning?’

‘Not bad. Did you see Mary Jenkins, Owen?’

The consultant nodded. ‘I did. She’s settled into the ward and we’ll watch her over the weekend. If her blood-pressure doesn’t come down by Monday then I think we’ll have to induce her. She’s almost at term.’ He turned to Alex. ‘Of course she’ll be your patient then, and it’ll be up to you how you deal with it, but I’ll leave her notes fully written up for you. I expect to be in and out over the weekend.’

‘Can you fill me in?’ Alex asked.

Owen shrugged and waved to Jo. ‘Your patient.’

She nodded. ‘OK. She’s twenty-nine, and it’s her first visit to us. She’s thirty-seven weeks pregnant. Her community midwife saw her in the street, took one look at her face and told her she needed to see the doctor for antenatal treatment. He referred her to us as a matter of urgency yesterday afternoon.

‘She’s very severely oedematous, and her blood-pressure this morning was 210 over 130. She’s also showing signs of severe proteinuria, and generally she’s thoroughly pre-eclamptic. However, the ultrasound scan showed the baby to be a good size and moving well, so I didn’t think there was any urgency to induce her until her blood-pressure had a chance to come down. I imagine she’s been put on a diuretic and a hypotensive——’ Owen nodded ‘—and we’ll watch her closely for any deterioration.’

‘First baby?’ Alex asked.

‘Yes. She’s unmarried and not the most intelligent person I’ve ever met. I imagine she thought the bloating was all part of pregnancy.’

She prodded her fork into her salad and moved it round the plate. Alex’s hand lay distractingly on the table just on the periphery of her vision, and she could see the fine dark hairs over the prominent bones of his wrist. His fingers were long and supple, the skin soft and smooth in deference to his patients, but the hands themselves were strong, sensitive and very, very clever.

She felt her skin heat and turned her head slightly so that her hair fell forward and screened her face.

‘So what’s the list this afternoon?’ he asked her.

‘Gynae,’ she replied shortly. ‘Three D and Cs, a hysterectomy and a prolapse repair.’

‘On a Friday afternoon?’ He sounded surprised.

‘The D and C patients can go home tomorrow morning and have someone to look after them over the weekend. Otherwise they tend just to get up and carry on, and then they feel lousy. The hysterectomy is an emergency following a very heavy bleed due to fibroids—we’ve finally got her blood count up enough to tackle it—and the prolapse lady cancelled three months ago and finally had to come back to us because she’d deteriorated so badly she’s desperate.’

‘Why not leave her till Monday?’

‘Because she’ll have all weekend to fret and she’ll probably run away again. Anyway, we can’t do all our operations on a Monday; we have to share Theatre time with the other gynae teams.’

‘Do you have a theatre problem?’

‘Doesn’t everybody these days?’ Owen asked drily. ‘And anyway, one of the reasons for getting these cases out of the way is to give you the easiest possible lead-in until you’re used to the set-up, so don’t tell her off for being helpful, there’s a good chap.’

Alex shot her an apologetic glance. ‘Was I? I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to. Are you going to eat that or just shove it round the plate?’

Jo looked down at her mangled salad and sighed. She really didn’t fancy it, but she needed something before she went up to Theatre——

‘Can I get you a piece of cake or something? You ought to eat.’

She tried to smile. If it weren’t for him she wouldn’t have had any trouble eating!

‘Thanks—fruit cake would be nice.’

‘Coffee?’

‘Tea—please. Thanks, Alex.’

She watched him walk away, and then turned back to find Owen regarding her seriously.

‘Did you know him—er—very well?’

She grinned ruefully. ‘Better than I should have done, and really not at all.’

‘I don’t understand——’

‘Neither did I.’

He shook his head slowly, then raised it again and looked searchingly at her, realisation dawning. ‘Was it him?’

‘Yes.’ She gave a sad little smile. ‘Don’t worry, Owen, I’ll be OK. Just—don’t say anything, please?’

‘Joanna!’

‘Don’t be offended. I just can’t afford to take the risk that he’ll find out.’

The older man covered her hand and squeezed it reassuringly. ‘He’ll find out nothing from me, my dear. About the job——’