Consultant Care

Well! It was one thing to wear clothes that obviously cost a king’s ransom to buy, but quite another to then rub your wealth in someone else’s face! Nicolette stiffened and drew her shoulders back proudly. ‘I meant,’ she said deliberately, ‘that I could sew them for you.’

If she had suggested single-handedly flying a light aircraft across the Atlantic with him as the only passenger he could not have looked more horrified, or more appalled.

‘If you think,’ he said deliberately, speaking each word with distaste, as though he were being forced to swallow a particularly nasty dose of medicine, ‘that I would allow you anywhere near my trousers—’

It was just very unfortunate that Nurse Jones chose that particular moment to walk back into the bathroom, to find them face to face and glowering at each other. And it was unfortunate, too, that, from the look of profound and abject consternation on her face, she had completely misinterpreted the meaning of his words. ‘Oh, I’m s-so s-sorry!’ she stuttered, and, turning scarlet, she went straight back out again as if the hounds of hell were snapping at her heels.

The awkward silence which fell as they watched the student nurse go stretched and stretched until it was almost unbearable.

Nicolette looked helplessly up into his eyes.

‘I would now like to do my ward-round,’ he told her icily. ‘If you could find it in yourself to grant me the pleasure—’ this word was enunciated with devastating contempt ‘—of accompanying me?’ And he stalked out without another word.

Nicolette was always one to look on the bright side, and yes, OK, perhaps it wasn’t the most auspicious of beginnings, but that didn’t mean that they wouldn’t be able to get on in the future, did it?

She gulped, trying and failing to imagine a close, friendly working relationship developing with such an unbearable man.

She turned and went to follow him out, but as she did she caught a glimpse of herself in the bathroom mirror and flinched.

She looked so unprofessional!

Her uniform was very casual, which didn’t exactly help. She wore a simple short-sleeved dress, with a kind of tabard that covered most of it. This was a sleeveless white overall, brightly decorated with cartoon characters and which was unique to Southbury’s paediatric wards. Designed specifically to make young patients feel at home, at present it was only adding fuel to Nicolette’s conviction that she didn’t look fit to be in charge of the ward!

Her cheeks were as pink and as shiny as if she’d spent the morning out gathering hay, and her blue eyes were bright—two chips of dazzling sapphire in her square face. Puzzlingly, she looked so alive and so vibrant that it almost shocked her, but it was the state of her hair that most caught her attention.

Difficult to control at the best of times, the frizzy black curls had clearly been affected by the steam, the fall and the subsequent collision because it now looked as though a swarm of ebony snakes was protruding from her head.

There were tendrils threatening to escape everywhere, and, worse still, some which already had escaped and were lying on her cheeks and coiling down the back of her long neck.

It would be hopeless, she knew, to try to mend the damage; her hair needed completely redoing. And she couldn’t, she just couldn’t leave Dr Le Saux waiting for her while she went off and did her hair. Just imagine what he would think of her then!

So she automatically smoothed her hands down the sides of her blue cotton dress, unconsciously moulding the curving lines of her hips as she did so, and set off with a heavy heart to do a ward round with Dr L Le Saux.

CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_e67f6449-448e-5606-9fd3-be074d46d537)

NICOLETTE spotted that the curtains had been drawn round one of the beds and that Dr Le Saux’s white coat was just disappearing behind it, reminding her a little of the white rabbit in Alice in Wonderland!

The paediatric ward was not of the old-fashioned ‘Nightingale’ design that Nicolette was used to, with two long stark lines of beds on either side, although perhaps the ‘orderly’ Dr Le Saux might have preferred that, she thought wickedly. Instead, as was the modern way of nursing, the ward was divided into four-bedded cubicles, with the nurses’ station in the centre but close enough to be able to observe the four side-rooms, where the very sick or infectious patients were looked after.

Nicolette moved the curtains aside and stepped in.

Dr Le Saux was bending over a child aged about nine, a child who was staring up at him with big, trusting eyes. The tall doctor straightened up when Nicolette walked in, and the corner of his mouth moved very slightly upwards in a derisive little curve, indicating that his mood remained as prickly as before.

‘So here you are,’ he observed. ‘At last,’ he added unreasonably.

My, but he was irascible! Did his wife nag him, or what? Nicolette found herself staring into eyes which had suddenly taken on a brooding, stormy quality. It would take a strong woman to nag Dr Le Saux, she decided! His name badge, so embarrassingly close earlier, now winked at her like a diamond. ‘Dr L Le Saux’, it said, and she wondered idly what the ‘L’ might stand for. Lucifer, most probably, she thought, biting back a grin with difficulty. ‘Yes. Here I am,’ she said airily.

She turned to face the little boy on the bed who had been admitted earlier that week. She had said a quick ‘good morning’ after report when she had briefly gone round the ward to try to acquaint herself with the patients, but that had been all she had had time for. None the less, Nicolette knew the boy’s name; she had arrived half an hour early and had memorised every single patient’s name.

The little boy who lay in the bed was pale and thin, with a pinched little face. ‘Hi, Simon,’ said Nicolette.

‘Hi,’ said Simon, giving her the wary little once-over that children always seemed to give when they met someone who would be involved with their care during their stay in hospital. ‘How d’you know my name?’

Nicolette tapped the side of her nose, rolled her eyes, then giggled. ‘Magic. I’m a mind-reader!’

At the sight of her open grin, the slightly suspicious look on Simon’s face evaporated. ‘You saw it in the Kardex?’ he guessed.

‘Right first time!’

‘And what’s your name?’ he asked her.

She looked down at the small boy understandingly. He could read on her badge what her surname was; he wanted to know what her real name was, her Christian name. ‘Nicolette.’ She smiled broadly, thankful that she lived in a time where hospital traditions were no longer as starchy as they had used to be. Indeed, the use of Christian names was positively encouraged these days.

Simon responded to the warm grin. ‘That’s pretty,’ he said. ‘An’ you’re pretty, too! Isn’t she pretty, Doctor?’

Nicolette was too busy trying to stop herself from blushing to take much notice of the fact that the stern-faced Dr Le Saux had not encouraged the use of his Christian name!

His face went even sterner as he managed to ignore Simon’s question by saying smoothly, ‘Perhaps you’d like to give me a brief run-through of Simon’s history, Staff Nurse? I am assuming, of course, that you managed to find the time to read it up?’

She had, thank heavens! Nicolette gave Simon’s hand a quick squeeze, pleased as punch when he squeezed hers back. ‘He has cystic fibrosis.’

Dr Le Saux nodded. ‘And what can you tell me about the disease?’

At least medical staff could now speak frankly in front of their young charges—which was a relief, thought Nicolette as she gave Simon a dazzling smile. Research had long since shown that honesty was the best policy when dealing with children and that ‘protecting’ them by concealing the nature of their illness often led to their constructing frightening fantasies that were far worse than the truth.

‘It’s an inherited condition, affecting many tissues, particularly those with endocrine glands,’ she summarised fluently.

‘And how would you describe the endocrine glands, very simply, to a junior nurse?’ he probed.

Nicolette decided that she would have to award him ten out of ten for persistence, but just about resisted pulling a face at him because she had to concede that he had a point. Some senior nurses did waffle on without knowing how to explain a subject adequately yet succinctly. None-the-less, the last time she had been asked directly about the endocrine glands had been during her last set of examination papers!

She creased her brows together in concentration. ‘They are a series of small glands, situated in various parts of the body, which form secretions known as hormones,’ she told him.

He nodded. ‘Good. So tell me how cystic fibrosis presents?’ he queried immediately.

Nicolette could see that she was going to have to spend every evening with her nose in a textbook if she was to continue working on Dr Le Saux’s ward! ‘The majority of patients present with diarrhoea and failure to thrive, due to malabsorption or recurrent persistent chest infection. Or both. The diagnosis is made by—’

‘I’m the one asking the questions, Staff,’ he growled impatiently.

‘Certainly, Doctor,’ she answered politely, but her eyes flashed a spark of defiance at the way he had just arrogantly butted in like that. Talking to her as though she were fresh off her first ward, instead of a highly qualified nurse with five years of exacting training behind her! She caught Simon looking up and watching her, a broad grin on his pale face.

‘Don’t take any notice of him, Nurse,’ he told her, almost cheerfully. ‘He’s always growling. He has to—he’s a lion man!’

‘That’s enough, Simon!’said Dr Le Saux warningly.

Teasing his doctor seemed to have given Simon a definite rise in spirits. ‘That’s what he’s called, too—lion man! Suits him, doesn’t it?’

Nicolette raised her thick black brows above clear blue eyes and looked with frank curiosity at Dr Le Saux. Lion man? ‘Oh?’ she queried in a faint, soft voice.