Hot-Shot Doc, Christmas Bride

Alison’s mouth made a wry slant. ‘Yes, well…Unfortunately for them Katie’s already been down that route, and she decided that tearing along the road at high speed on the back of a bike doesn’t do it for her—not to mention the mess it makes of her hair, being flattened under a crash helmet.’

Katie had recovered her composure by now, and chose that moment to dig her in the ribs. Alison clamped her lips shut in the vestige of a smile.

‘Alison has had first-hand experience of that, too,’ her friend interjected. ‘She seemed to find it quite exciting for a time. For myself, I’ve decided that I’d far sooner feel the wind in my hair from the passenger seat of a convertible.’ She sent him a look that would charm the birds out of the trees.

Josh grinned. ‘Spoken like a true connoisseur. You look like a girl who was born to the high life.’

A flush of colour ran along Katie’s cheekbones, adding to the shimmering intensity of her green gaze. Alison observed the interplay between her and Josh with a cautious eye. Were they taken with one another? Or was he simply the kind of man who charmed every woman in sight?

‘I thought your speech was perfect,’ Katie murmured. ‘You said everything that needed to be said, and you kept it short, too. I’d almost go as far as to say that you must have done this sort of thing before. I certainly wouldn’t have been able to come up with anything anywhere near as good as that on the spur of the moment.’

‘Well, thanks.’ He sent her a mock suspicious look. ‘You aren’t trying to haggle for a rise, are you? Because maybe I should tell you I’m not the one who gives them out.’

‘Oh, shame. What a waste.’ Katie frowned. ‘And there I was, hoping that you’d be thoroughly mellow after all the food that Alison brought in…As if that wouldn’t be guaranteed to melt the hardest heart.’

‘Yes, I noticed the wonderful spread.’ He cast a glance towards the far side of the room, where the impromptu buffet had been laid out on a couple of trolleys. ‘It all looks very impressive—and most of it home-made, too, from the looks of things.’

Katie nodded. ‘You should have seen our kitchen last night. There was flour everywhere, and lovely smells coming from the oven.’ She paused, thinking about it. ‘I can’t imagine what came over her. In fact, with all that home baking going on I began to wonder if she was getting broody.’

‘No way,’ Alison put in, pretending to be affronted. ‘Anyway, you know perfectly well that I’m off men—ever since Rob led me a merry dance.’ She stopped, suddenly becoming aware that Josh was listening with interest. He didn’t need to know about her unhappy foray into so-called love, did he? ‘Well, anyway, never mind that…Let’s just say it was an experience to take to heart, and one that’s all in the past.’

She was on her guard now where men were concerned. Rob was history—a sad lesson that she shouldn’t lose her heart to any man with a wandering eye. And maybe that should include steering clear of those like the one not too far away, who managed to ooze charisma as though it was a new aftershave.

She pulled in a quick breath and started again. ‘As to the baking session—it was all because of the Christmas cake, you see,’ she said, as though that explained everything. ‘I felt I had to make a start on it.’

‘In fact, she started the day before,’ Katie put in. ‘I saw her hugging the brandy bottle and wondered what on earth was going on. Of course she said she wasn’t actually thinking of drinking it, but I didn’t really believe her until I found her mixing currants, raisins and sultanas together with candied peel, and adding a generous slosh of brandy every now and again. Apparently you have to let the fruit soak overnight.’

There was a puzzled look on Josh’s face, and Alison hurried to explain. ‘My gran has this wonderful recipe that she gave to me. Since she’s coming over to my parents’ house for Christmas I thought I would bake her cake and surprise her with it.’

‘And you have to start all that several weeks beforehand?’ He was frowning.

She nodded. ‘So I’m told. I popped the mix in the oven last night, and while I was about it I thought I’d bake a few treats for today. Then Katie started to help, and between us we seem to have been a little bit carried away.’

‘I don’t know about that—it’s just as well we made stacks of stuff,’ Katie said. ‘It’s a wonder there was anything left to bring after Taylor and Sam from the flat upstairs caught wind of what was going on. And then Tom’s children from next door came in, wanting to sample everything, and pleading to be allowed to lick the bowl after she’d emptied the cake mix into the baking tin. They ate so much I was surprised they weren’t sick.’

Alison grinned. ‘It was lovely to see them happy, though, wasn’t it? Things haven’t been so cheerful in their house of late.’

‘No, that’s true enough.’ Katie frowned. ‘Imagine having the threat of being turned out of your own house hanging over you. Tom and Martha must be beside themselves with worry.’ She glanced around. ‘Anyway, I’d better get back to work. My lunch break is nearly over, and I still have a list of patients as long as my arm. I’ll go and grab a bite to eat first, though.’

Alison nodded agreement. ‘Me, too. And then I must go back to my own patients.’ She sighed. ‘There’s no rest for the wicked, is there? Though it has been good to take time out.’

Josh went with them, glancing around the reception area. People had been busy putting up tinsel garlands over the last couple of days, and there were one or two sparkling bells adorned with red and silver ribbon. He didn’t look impressed, thought Alison. In fact she couldn’t be certain of his reaction…More resigned than anything else, probably.

He moved on, and soon started making his own inroads on the buffet, sampling a mince pie and adding a fruit turnover to his plate. ‘I need sustenance,’ he said. ‘I have to operate in a while. It looks as though our motor crash victim is going to need a repair to his heart’s main blood vessel.’

‘Oh, I’m sorry.’ Alison sent him a fleeting glance. ‘That’s bad news, isn’t it? For the patient, I mean. Obviously you must have done the aortogram?’

He nodded. ‘It showed a pseudoaneurysm. I believe there’s a small tear in the vessel, so the nurses are preparing him for surgery now.’

‘I hope it goes well.’ It meant that the patient’s heart would be linked to a bypass machine for a short time, while Josh inserted a repair graft in the leaking artery.

She lingered for a minute or two to chat, before heading back to Rees in the treatment room. Katie and Josh were deep in conversation when she left, and she doubted they would have noticed her departure.

The boy set aside his tray while she put up the X-ray film in the light box and carefully studied it. ‘There’s definitely an infection there,’ she told him after a while, ‘and you have a raised temperature. I think we’ll start you off on antibiotics and keep you here for a few hours in our observation ward. Are you okay with that?’

He nodded. She guessed he was in no hurry to go back out into the cold, and perhaps he had nowhere to go. That was a worrying thought. Strictly speaking she had no real reason to keep him here under observation, or admit him to hospital overnight—which was what she would have preferred to do. That would give her more of a chance to talk to him, and hopefully encourage him to tell her more about the circumstances that brought him here. She wanted to help him in any way possible.

‘All right, then,’ she murmured. ‘I’ll arrange for a nurse to take you to the observation ward next door and get you settled.’

‘Will it be all right if I take the food with me?’

She chuckled. ‘Yes, of course. We’ll make sure that goes along with you. I think, since your blood sugar was low, it’s important to feed you. We also need to bring down your temperature and generally look after you.’ She sent him a quick glance. ‘I don’t want to send you away from here while you’re clearly unwell, and you haven’t given us an address. I’m worried that there’s no family around to take care of you.’ She hesitated. ‘Are you living at home?’

He didn’t answer, but after a moment or two he shook his head.

‘Have you been living out on the streets?’

He hunched his shoulders, and Alison wondered if she should take that as a yes.

‘If you feel that you need to talk to someone about anything that’s bothering you I’m here to listen, you know. Nothing you say will go any further unless you want it to.’

He returned her gaze, not quite meeting her eyes. He appeared to be deep in thought, and for a second or two she was hopeful that he might be about to confide in her. But then he slumped back against his pillows without saying anything, and the moment was lost.

She left him in the care of a nurse, and went to tend to her other patients. With any luck Rees would pluck up the courage to open up to her later on. She just needed to win his trust.

For the next few hours she concentrated all her efforts on looking after the sick and injured. She hoped Josh’s patient was doing well in the operating theatre. Still, she had seen Josh at work in the resuscitation room, and it was plain to see how effective he was in a crisis situation. No wonder he had been chosen to replace Dr Meadows. He was immensely skilled. There was no hesitation, no doubt, not a single moment when he wasn’t in complete control.

That didn’t change when he came back down to A&E some time later. He simply turned his attention to overseeing the work of his subordinates, and that was when Alison felt the first stirrings of unease. He began to leaf through all the patients’ charts.

She went to check through the test results at the desk.

‘Would you care to explain this to me?’ he said, coming over to her a few minutes later. He was frowning as he held out a folder. ‘I don’t see any major problem with this patient, and yet young Rees is still here. By all accounts he could have been discharged some time ago. You’ve examined him and given him the appropriate treatment. Why haven’t you sent him on his way?’

Alison’s spirits plummeted. Was Josh Bentley one of the new breed of ‘time is money; patch them up and move them out’ doctors? How she hated that emphasis on efficiency at all costs. Somehow she had believed he would have better judgement than that.

Alison remained silent for a moment, glancing through the glass door of the observation ward. Rees was dozing peacefully, his face bleached of colour against the stark white of his pillows, and she couldn’t help feeling that he was exhausted, worn out by a combination of factors. The boy’s hair was an unruly tangle of black silky strands, crying out for the tender hand of a mother figure to smooth it into place. Surely Josh wasn’t expecting her to wake him up and turf him out into the cold, soulless streets to fend for himself? What kind of man was he?

His dark brows rose in expectation.

‘The boy’s running a temperature,’ she said, ‘and he has a chest infection. Also, he’s looking gaunt, and I don’t think he’s been eating properly. I prefer to wait for the results of tests, query pneumonia, before I decide what to do. It occurred to me that it might be wise to keep him in overnight.’

Josh gave her a long, thoughtful look. ‘We both know he isn’t that ill. I’ve seen the X-ray film. Besides, I heard he went walkabout for a while and a nurse had to go looking for him. What’s going on here, Alison?’

‘Walkabout?’ She frowned. ‘Where did he go?’

‘The nurse wasn’t sure. She found him in the corridor heading back to the ward. He must have slipped out through the security door when a visitor left.’

‘Did he say where he’d been?’