Joanna Neil – New Surgeon at Ashvale A&E (страница 2)
He was wearing a suit, the immaculate, dark grey jacket sitting easily on broad shoulders, while the trousers fitted him to perfection, outlining a washboard-flat stomach and long, strong legs. Altogether, he made an immediate, disturbing impact on her.
‘Do you need any help to get to where you need to be? Perhaps I could carry the child for you?’ He was watching her closely, his gaze skimming over her, taking in her casual summer clothes, a button-through cotton top and gently flowing skirt, before coming to rest once more on her face.
She blinked, trying to pull her thoughts back on track. She shook her head. ‘No, thanks all the same. I’ll manage.’ She smiled. ‘Besides, I expect you have places you need to be…unless you’d finished your business here?’ Why else would he have been standing outside the hospital? He looked like a man who would be continually on the move, energetic, a force to be reckoned with. Perhaps it was the suit that gave her that impression. It somehow denoted a businesslike demeanour, a man at the height of his profession.
‘You’re right. I was just taking a break for a while, enjoying the sunshine and the cooling breeze. Hospitals can seem like soulless places at times, can’t they, even here in beautiful Buckinghamshire?’
‘That’s true.’ She nodded. ‘I wasn’t much looking forward to coming here today, but unfortunately I have a meeting to go to.’
He frowned. ‘Is that so? Nothing badly wrong, I hope—with you or the baby?’
She made a wry face. ‘Nothing at all. I’m fighting fit, and so is Becky, which is just as well, since I have to go and do battle, so to speak. It won’t do to let the chiefs have everything their own way.’
A puzzled look crossed his features, and it seemed as though he expected her to say more, but she didn’t try to explain any further. ‘I must go,’ she said. ‘I’m late already. Thanks very much for coming to help me. I do appreciate it.’
She had delayed long enough, and the meeting must be well under way by now. If she hurried, there was still time to make her presence felt. She picked up the baby carrier and, with a nod in his direction, she walked swiftly into the building.
James and Olivia, two senior house officers from her team, met her at the door to the room where the meeting was taking place.
‘Thank heaven you made it at last,’ Olivia said. ‘We were beginning to think you would never get here.’ She turned to greet Becky with a smile, picking up the baby’s rattle and gently waving it in front of the child, so that the infant tried to grab it and pull it to her mouth. Olivia laughed softly. ‘Okay, okay, you can have it. I was just teasing.’ She turned back to Ruby. ‘Everyone’s taking a break for coffee just now. We had to stop for a while…emotions were threatening to boil over.’
‘So I gathered.’ Ruby’s expression was sombre. ‘Is the new man making his presence felt?’
‘Oh, yes.’ James nodded. Lean and fit-looking, with dark brown hair that was cut in a short, neat style, he was an energetic, efficient colleague. ‘He’s definitely on the side of the board. Cuts, cuts and more cuts. That seems to be his mantra. That’s why I called you. I couldn’t believe you weren’t going to be here to argue our corner.’ He led the way towards the back of the room. ‘Some of the senior managers look as though they’ve been up half the night working out what they can chop next. The trust is in so much debt that they say drastic measures are called for.’
‘I wanted to be here right from the beginning,’ Ruby said. ‘You know I did…only I agreed to look after Becky while my sister went to see the doctor at the local surgery. There would have been plenty of time for me to come to the meeting afterwards, except that Sophie didn’t come home to take over from me. I waited and waited, and then I got to wondering whether there was any point in my coming along and saying anything at all at the meeting. After all, the new man is the one who’ll be making all the decisions from now on.’
‘And that was where the management made their big mistake.’ Olivia frowned. ‘You should have been the one to take charge, we all know that. You’ve been the mainstay of the A&E department for years, keeping things running smoothly while the boss readied himself for retirement. This job should have been the reward for all your hard work.’
Ruby made a wry smile. ‘Well, in the end it hasn’t happened, and there’s no use crying over spilt milk. Management have chosen the man they feel best to put all their changes into place.’ She gave a soft chuckle. ‘Perhaps they thought things would become a bit too contentious if they put me in charge. I wouldn’t have accepted that their way was the only way.’
‘More than likely. So what happened with Sophie?’ Olivia asked. ‘She must have known this was important to you.’
Ruby frowned. ‘I’m not sure. I was looking forward to hearing how things had gone at the surgery, but when she didn’t come back, I started to worry. Something must have gone wrong…but maybe I should have expected that. She’s definitely not herself these days. She’s not been well for quite some time, and I’ve been trying to persuade her for ages to go for some tests so that we can find out exactly what’s wrong. I suspect it’s a hormonal problem, with her body chemistry being out of synch ever since Becky was born, but she wouldn’t let me do anything to help. I was so pleased when I finally managed to get her to agree to go and talk to our GP.’
The SHOs nodded. ‘But something obviously didn’t go to plan?’ Olivia pointed out some available seats and they went to take their places.
Ruby shook her head. ‘I rang the surgery to see if she’d turned up there, and apparently she did, but then she didn’t wait for her appointment. I’ve absolutely no idea where she might be. I’ve tried ringing her, but she’s not answering her phone. Anything could have happened. She’s just not thinking clearly these days. I dare say I’ll find out later what went wrong.’
‘I’m glad you made it in the end, anyway,’ James murmured. ‘You of all people should be able to make the bosses see sense here. The way things are going, they’ll walk roughshod over all of us. How on earth do they expect us to give a viable service to the local area if they plan to get rid of staff and close units?’
‘I think that’s the least of their worries.’ Ruby set the baby down on the floor and glanced around as people began to troop back into the room. ‘What about the new boss, anyway? What’s he like? Has he not managed to come up with any reasonable suggestions?’
‘You have to be kidding.’ Olivia gave a short, humourless laugh. ‘He may well be an A&E doctor, but he’s management through and through, and
‘We’ll just have to do what we can to make them see sense.’ Ruby moved restlessly in her seat, then ran a hand through the length of her burnished hair, lifting it away from her nape to let a cool waft of air fan her heated skin. ‘It’s so warm in here,’ she commented, ‘with all that sunshine pouring in through the windows.’
She reached into the large linen bag she had brought with her and fished out the printed programme for the meeting. ‘Maybe this will do the trick.’ She leaned back in her seat and began to fan herself lightly with the paper.
‘Oh, that’s so much better.’ She murmured her appreciation of the cool drift of air just as she became aware of a stillness settling in the room. Glancing around, she saw that most of the board members had taken their places on the dais, while one seat remained empty.
A man came through a side door just then and strode purposefully across the back of the room. He turned into the corridor between the mass of seats, passing her just at the moment when she tilted her head back and lightly blew the tendrils of hair away from her brow. Becky gurgled contentedly, and he glanced briefly in their direction.
Ruby’s eyes widened, her senses responding to his presence with a faint frisson of dismay. His tall, lean figure was instantly familiar to her. He had that coolly confident air of a man who was in command of all he surveyed, the measured look of a man who was in control at all times. It was that suit that said it all, along with his authoritative demeanour, the assured way that he moved without faltering towards his goal.
His dark brows made an infinitesimal upward lift as he looked her over, and his expression showed…what was it…? Disbelief…recognition…along with a soupcon of amusement. There was definitely an element of wry humour in that glance, cleverly disguised so as not to be obvious, but it was there, all the same, in the faint twist at the corner of his mouth and in the dancing gleam in his blue-grey eyes.
Ruby stared at him, following his progress as he walked along the aisle and sprang up the steps to the dais with lithe ease. He took his seat at the table alongside the board members.
She frowned, dark brows meeting in her normally unfurrowed brow. Surely he wasn’t her new boss? A sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach told her that he most likely was.