Josie Metcalfe – Sheikh Surgeon Claims His Bride (страница 2)
She’d been away for such a long time while she’d gone through her arduous medical training and had only realised that it had been far too long when a visit had revealed the dreadful secret her grandmother had been hiding.
‘I didn’t want you to come home just to watch me die, not when you had all those exams to take,’ she’d explained stubbornly when Emily had arrived for a long weekend visit to give her the latest good news in person.
She’d been so looking forward to seeing Beabea’s face when she told her that she’d just been offered the plum job she’d been after at St Piran’s Hospital. Admittedly, it was only a six-month placement, but she had high hopes that there might be a permanent position she could apply for at the end of that time.
The taste of triumph had turned to ashes in her mouth when she’d realised just how little time she had left with the only family she possessed in the world.
With her grandmother’s permission, she’d spoken to the oncologist at St Piran’s the next day, hoping against hope that there was room for some glimmer of optimism— an operation, perhaps, or chemotherapy—but, if anything, the prognosis was worse than she’d thought.
‘She could have several months, but I really think it’s unlikely,’ the kindly man had said, leaving Emily feeling sick to her stomach. ‘With this sort of thing, the patient is usually fairly well, despite the devastation going on inside, right up until the last couple of weeks. That’s the point when she’ll need to come into hospital or transfer into a hospice—somewhere where they’ll be able to monitor the pain medication, because she’ll need it by then.’
‘If she’s put on PCA, couldn’t I take care of her at home?’ Emily had pleaded, knowing just how much her grandmother loved her little cottage. The place was full of years of love and so many happy memories, and if she was put on a morphine pump for patient-controlled pain relief, Emily wouldn’t have to worry that she wasn’t giving her grandmother the correct dose.
‘You could, initially,’ he’d agreed. ‘But we’ve found that it’s often far too stressful for the patient to stay at home right to the end, knowing that their relatives are having to do so much for them and watching them die by inches. In the end, the two of you will find that you’ll know when it’s time to make the move, for both your sakes.’
And in the meantime, Emily had started her new job under Mr Breyley and had obtained permission to spend her off-duty hours far further away than the immediate vicinity of St Piran’s.
Their little system had worked well, with Emily taking care of her grandmother’s needs before she drove the hour to St Piran’s, knowing that Beabea still had many friends in the Penhally area, including several in the medical profession in one capacity or another, who would be dropping in throughout the time she herself was away on duty.
And while her grandmother slept for longer stretches each day, Emily took herself off for walks along the harbour, past the Penhally Arms and the Anchor Hotel. Each time she glanced in she saw that holidaymakers and locals alike were enjoying themselves, and it seemed somehow wrong that they were oblivious of the life-and-death battle that was going on just around the corner.
A time or two she’d sat at the café on the end of the row, sipping a long frothy latte while she watched the holidaymakers leaning on the parapet of the bridge, who were watching the waters of the river Lanson hurrying on the final stretch of their journey to the sea.
She’d stood there a time or two herself, gazing down at the chuckling, purling waters tumbling over the rocks while she’d pondered on the timelessness of the view. So little had changed from the first time she’d balanced on the parapet on her stomach as a teenager, risking a painful dunking if she’d gone head first over the edge. And yet, even though the stones and the water hadn’t changed, everything else had.
She was a different person from that teenager, a doctor, now, with the job of her dreams. And her grandmother, who had always seemed so ageless that she might live for ever, was now a shrunken old lady with thin grey hair and papery skin and barely enough energy to breathe.
In fact, apart from working under Mr Breyley, which was everything she’d hoped for and more, the one bright spot in her day was if she managed to make it to the beach to complete her mind-numbing run along the hard-packed sand before her mystery man arrived.
Several times she’d been tempted to speak to him, to let him know that she was there and to get her first good look at his face, but that would have spoilt the fantasies she’d been weaving about him, especially if she found out that he was only someone she’d gone to school with.
Then there was the fact that he might see her as some sort of voyeur, hiding in the rocks while she watched him put himself through his nightly torment, but she could always counter that accusation by pointing out that she was doing nothing more than acting as an unofficial lifeguard. Not that she thought that would cut much ice with a man who seemed so driven and so utterly self-contained. In fact, his focus seemed so intense that she found it difficult to imagine that he was the sort who would ever relax enough to reveal a softer side to his nature.
‘But that won’t stop me imagining one,’ Emily murmured as he set off into the water again lit only by the dying rays of the sun.
Today she’d really needed the distraction of watching him, to take her mind off the fact that she’d spent the afternoon settling her grandmother into her room up in the new hospice wing of the nursing home up on Penhally Heights.
The oncologist had been right after all. She’d been utterly determined to take care of her grandmother herself, even if it meant arranging to take some time off from her job. But in the end they had both agreed that it was finally time for Beabea to move out of the bedroom that had been hers ever since the day she’d moved into it as a new bride, more than fifty years ago.
‘And as soon as my mystery man stops punishing himself, it will be time to go back to the cottage and get some sleep,’ she told herself, although she didn’t like the prospect of going back there knowing that she was going to be completely alone in the little stone cottage for the very first time.
At least she had a great job to go to in the morning, and she might hear some more gossip about that foreign surgeon who had been setting up a specialist paediatric surgical unit at St Piran’s.
The buzz had been all around her ever since she’d started working for Mr Breyley at the opposite end of the dedicated paediatric block, and when she had time, she was going to take a walk upstairs to take a look at the setup that had everybody talking. After all, paediatric surgery had been her other choice for her specialty and she hadn’t finally decided which way she was going to go at the end of her six months with Mr Breyley if she
CHAPTER ONE
EMILY paused silently in the shadows outside the recently expanded specialist paediatric surgical unit and fell in love.
Well, she’d needed something good to happen after the shock she’d received down in her own department.
She’d barely stuck her head inside the door when Mr Breyley’s secretary had beckoned her into the office.
‘I’m sorry he’s not here to tell you about it himself, Dr Livingston,’ the rather austere-looking woman had said with a slightly frazzled glance around at the haphazard piles of paper littering her normally pristine desk. Then she had unbent enough to murmur, confidentially, ‘He and his wife flew out to New Zealand this morning. Their first grandchild is on the way. He was diagnosed with transposition of the great arteries
‘Completely understandable,’ Emily had agreed, even as panic had started to set in. Was she about to lose her job? With Mr Breyley on the other side of the world, she had lost her mentor and tutor. The hospital would be unlikely to be able to find someone of his calibre available at short notice.
Then there was the fact that it hadn’t only been the job that had brought her back to Penhally. Of course, it had been a terrific step up on her career path, and the fact that it had been within easy travelling distance of Beabea had been a bonus. But now that her grandmother’s condition was rapidly worsening and now she’d transferred to the hospice, the last thing Emily wanted was to have to move away, perhaps to the other end of the country for a comparable post.
She just couldn’t do that. She needed to be here, in the hospital closest to Penhally, so that she could spend as much of these last precious days with her grandmother as she could. Also, there was the fact that transferring to another hospital at short notice, and so soon after starting a placement, could look bad on her CV. Anyway, there was no guarantee that she would find a comparable post either.