Healing The Single Dad's Heart / Just Friends To Just Married?: Healing the Single Dad's Heart (The Good Luck Hospital) / Just Friends to Just Married? (The Good Luck Hospital)

‘Any problems with her vision?’

‘Not so far, but, like I said, I’m going to keep an eye on her. Right now I’ll keep her hydrated and consider some bicarbonate, or maybe even some fomepizole if it’s appropriate.’

She slid him a curious sideways glance. He smiled. ‘Okay, you got me. I might have consulted with Khiem. It’s my first potential methanol poisoning.’

She held out both hands. ‘Hey, and you’ve been here, what, more than two months? That’s almost unheard of.’ She dropped her hands and gave a small shrug. ‘I like it that you ask if you’re not sure. She could easily have been misdiagnosed. Missing methanol poisoning can be the biggest error a physician makes around here.’

He leaned back in the chair. ‘I just hope she’s going to be okay. That this will just turn out to be rice wine that was too strong for her and it feels like the worst hangover in the world. Hopefully she’ll recover and everything will be okay.’

Khiem hurried into the room. His wife, Hoa, came in behind him, along with a few of the other staff members. They settled down and Khiem picked up a chart from his desk. ‘Sorry to keep you all. I promise this won’t take long. I just wanted to let you all know that we have another staff member joining us for a month. A volunteer.’

One of the nurses frowned. ‘Who is it?’

Lien shot Joe a look. She’d told him that they occasionally had volunteer doctors—usually private, very well-paid consultants who wanted to say they had at least spent some time working in the underprivileged areas in the city.

Khiem smiled brightly. ‘His name is Reuben Le Gran. His father is French, his mother Vietnamese, and even though he doesn’t sound it, he’s a local boy. Did his training in Hanoi, and has also worked in Paris and London. He specialises in plastic surgery, and works out of a private clinic in the Tay Ho district.’

The nurse next to Joe quipped, ‘Just what we need—a plastic surgeon. Bet he lives in one of the gated communities in Tay Ho.’

Joe had learned a little more about the city. He knew Tay Ho was one of the richest areas, and he’d passed by the gated communities on more than one occasion. Saying that they were opulent didn’t even come close to the truth. They had twenty-four-hour security guards, private schools, golf courses and the biggest houses he’d seen in a long time.

Khiem waved his hand. ‘A plastic surgeon will be good. We have lots of patients on whom he might be able to do minor procedures. We’ve used the mini-theatre at the back on a number of occasions. This time will be no different.’ He smiled. ‘He’ll only be here one day a week.’

Joe turned to his other side and jolted. Lien’s face was frozen and her body stiff. He could see the tense muscles at the base of her throat. Her fingers were clenching her legs. He reached over to touch her to ask what was wrong, but she jumped up.

Khiem looked surprised but just continued speaking in his jovial manner. ‘And you two, Lien and Joe, there’s a special request for you to go to Uông Bí to cover holiday leave at the clinic there next week.’

For a few seconds Joe wondered if Lien had heard the words, but then her face changed and she gave the briefest of nods. ‘Perfect,’ she said as she walked out the door.

She couldn’t hide her anger. Her skin had prickled, almost like a premonition before Khiem had said the name out loud. No one here knew about her previous relationship with Reuben. Once he’d found out where she lived he hadn’t exactly wanted the world to know about their connection. Reuben was the type of guy who wanted to move in the right circles and be seen with the ‘in’ crowd. Lien would never be one of those people.

Even if the others had known about her past relationship, she wouldn’t expect them to turn down the services of a free plastic surgeon. She could think of a few patients straight off the top of her head who could really benefit from seeing him. As angry as she was at him for turning up at her hospital, she could be rational enough to put the needs of the patients first.

She stalked down the corridor and into the nearest bathroom, closing the door behind her and splashing some water on her face, then she rested her hands at the side of the sink and just breathed.

This wasn’t an accident. Reuben was far too calculating for that. She’d tried to ignore him over the last few years, but his reputation had grown and grown, and his publicity machine had been working overtime.

His beaming face had adorned countless magazine covers as he’d become known as the ‘plastic surgeon to the stars’. There was much speculation about who he’d worked on. Hollywood film stars, a top British model, three Bollywood stars and numerous other celebrities had been seen on his arm, or in his company, over the last few years. It seemed deliberate. Every time things quietened down he would whirl along some pavement with some new star and the press would go mad again. The latest rumour involved politicians, a few of whom seemed to have reversed the aging process.