Maggie Kingsley – Dr Mathieson's Daughter (страница 2)

‘Something like that.’ She nodded. And she did. Well, almost everything. She had a job as senior sister in A and E, which she loved, a flat that might be a shoebox but at least it was hers, and if there was no man in her life, well, two out of three wasn’t bad. ‘How about you, Charlie?’ she asked. ‘What would you do with a windfall?’

‘Send a bottle of champagne and a huge box of chocolates to my girlfriend in Shrewsbury every day to make sure she doesn’t forget me.’

‘And in six months she’d be a twenty-stone alcoholic, you idiot!’ Floella laughed.

A deep blush of embarrassed colour spread across the SHO’s face and Jane quickly came to his rescue. ‘I think it’s a lovely idea, Charlie, and your girlfriend’s a very lucky girl.’

And she was, too, Jane thought as the SHO hurried away, the colour on his cheeks even darker. They were lucky to have him. Big, bluff, and hearty, Charlie had settled in well into Elliot’s old SHO job. It was just a pity the same couldn’t be said for their new junior doctor, she thought with a groan as she noticed the man in question bearing down on her. Richard Connery might be bright and enthusiastic, but he was also abrasive and far too self-confident for his own good.

‘My patient in 6 has a fractured right arm, Sister Halden,’ he declared without preamble. ‘Please, arrange for him to go to X-Ray.’

Like he couldn’t arrange it himself? she thought as he strode away again before she could reply. No, of course he couldn’t. It was obviously too far beneath his dignity to speak to anyone as lowly as a porter so he expected her to drop everything and do it for him.

‘And what—pray tell—did his last servant die of?’ Floella exclaimed angrily. ‘Honestly, Jane—’

‘I know, I know,’ she interrupted, ‘but just leave it right now, Flo, OK?’

‘But he has no right to talk to you like that,’ the staff nurse protested. ‘You’re the senior sister in A and E. You’ve at least six years more medical experience than he has—’

‘And if you say I’m old enough to be his mother I’ll hit you!’ Jane declared, her grey eyes dancing, and a reluctant smile curved Floella’s lips.

‘Yeah, right. Like you’re old Ma Moses. But you know what I mean. It’s just not on.’

It wasn’t, but working in A and E was difficult enough at the moment, what with Elliot still finding his feet as special registrar and Charlie Gordon learning the ropes as SHO, and the last thing they needed was a full-scale row.

‘Try to be patient with him, Flo. I know he can be difficult,’ she continued as the staff nurse shook her head, ‘but he’s only been with us a month, and I’m sure a lot of his abrasiveness is due to him finding the work a lot harder than he imagined.’

‘Rubbish!’ Floella retorted. ‘He just enjoys treating nurses like dirt!’

She didn’t need this, not right now, Jane thought as the staff nurse stalked off. Teamwork was important in every department in the hospital, but in A and E it was vital. Without teamwork they couldn’t function, but it was going to take time to create a new team, and time, as Floella had just so forcefully revealed, was the one thing they didn’t have.

With a sigh she went into cubicle 6 where Richard’s patient was still waiting.

‘My arm is definitely broken, then?’ the elderly man queried, wincing slightly as she helped him into a wheelchair. ‘The young lad who saw me earlier said he thought it was, but I wasn’t sure whether he was fully qualified to make the diagnosis or not.’

Jane hid a smile. ‘Dr Connery’s pretty sure your arm’s fractured, but to make one hundred per cent sure we’re going to send you along to X-Ray. Hey, look on the bright side,’ she added encouragingly as his face fell, ‘you’ll get lots of sympathy from your female admirers.’

‘I hope not or my wife will break my other arm,’ he observed, his faded brown eyes twinkling. ‘Oh, well, I suppose it could have been worse, and at least it’s given me the opportunity to meet a very pretty and charming young lady.’

Jane chuckled. She knew very well that she wasn’t pretty, and she supposed that at twenty-eight she wasn’t exactly young any more, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t nice to hear a compliment.

Right now, she could have done with hearing a lot more. It might have cheered her up. In fact, ever since Hannah had married Robert—and it had been a lovely wedding despite the bride’s leg being in plaster—she’d been feeling oddly down.

Probably because it’s the fourth wedding you’ve been to in as many months, her mind pointed out, whereas you…

No, she wasn’t going to think about her love life. Actually, her completely non-existent love life.

And whose fault is that? Her little voice asked. OK, so Frank was a rat, and you wasted two years of your life believing his protestations of undying love, but what happened after he dumped you? You promptly fell in love with Elliot Mathieson. A man who’s had more girlfriends since he got divorced than most other men have had hot dinners. A man who could hurt you a hundred times more than Frank ever did if he found out how you really feel about him.

‘Jane, we’ve got trouble!’

With an effort she turned to see their student nurse gazing at her in dismay. ‘What’s up, Kelly?’

‘We’ve got that man back in again—the one who thinks his brain’s been taken over by aliens. I’ve phoned Social Services but—’

‘They said it’s our pigeon,’ she finished for her wryly. Social Services always said psychiatric cases were their pigeon unless someone was so bad they had to be sectioned. And Harry’s delusions weren’t nearly frequent enough yet to have him compulsorily detained in a psychiatric ward. ‘Has Charlie seen him?’

‘He’s given him a tranquilliser, and he seems pretty quiet at the moment, but you know what happened last time.’

Jane did. Before the tranquilliser could take effect Harry had practically wrecked one of their ECG machines, thinking it was an alien life form. ‘OK. I’ll sit with him—’

‘RTA on the way, Jane!’ Floella suddenly called from the end of the treatment room. ‘Three casualties, and two look really serious!’

Jane bit her lip. Damn, this would have to happen right now with Mr Mackay, the consultant in charge of A and E, off on his annual break and Elliot not back from the solicitors yet.

‘Kelly—’

‘Yeah, I know.’ The student nurse sighed. ‘Make the alien a nice cup of tea, and do my best.’

‘Good girl.’ Jane nodded, but as she hurried down the treatment room a sigh of relief came from her when Elliot suddenly appeared.

‘Now, that’s what I call perfect timing,’ she said with a smile.

‘Perfect timing?’

‘We’ve an RTA on the way,’ she explained, ‘and I was just wondering how on earth we were going to cope with the casualties.’

‘Oh—Right. I see.’

She glanced up at him, her grey eyes concerned. ‘Everything OK, Elliot?’

‘Great. Fine,’ he replied, but he was anything but fine she decided as he walked quickly across to Charlie Gordon.

He looked…Not worried. Elliot never looked worried no matter how dire the situation, but he most definitely looked preoccupied. Preoccupied and tense, and still quite the handsomest man she’d ever laid eyes on.

In fact, there ought to have been a law against any man being quite so handsome, she thought ruefully. His thick blond hair, deep blue eyes and devastating smile would have been quite potent enough, but when you added a six-foot muscular frame, a pair of shoulders which looked as though they’d been purpose-built for a girl to lean her head against…

It was an unbeatable combination. The kind of combination which turned even the most sensible women into slack-jawed idiots whenever he was around. Herself included, as Jane knew only too well, but she’d always had sense enough not to show it.

Not that it would have made any difference if she had, of course, she realised. Elliot’s taste ran to tall, leggy women. Women like Gussie Granton from Paediatrics whose figure would have made a pin-up girl gnash her teeth.

Nobody would ever gnash their teeth over her figure, she thought wistfully, unless it was in complete despair. She was too short, and too fat, and a pair of ordinary grey eyes and stubbornly straight shoulder-length black hair were never going to make up for those deficiencies.

‘You have a wonderful sense of humour, Jane,’ her mother had told her encouragingly when she was growing up. ‘Men like that.’

Yeah, right, Mother. And Frank’s admiration for my sense of humour lasted only until a red-haired bimbo with the IQ of a gerbil drifted into his sights, and then he was off.

What on earth was wrong with her today? she wondered crossly as she heard the sound of an ambulance arriving, its siren blaring. All this maudlin self-pity. All right, so she was in love with Elliot Mathieson, and had been ever since he’d come to St Stephen’s two years ago, but he was never going to fall in love with her. She was simply good old Janey and it was high time she accepted that. Time she realised it was only in the movies that the plain, ordinary heroine got the handsome hero, and this wasn’t the movies—this was real life.

‘OK, what have you got for us?’ Elliot asked as the doors of the treatment room banged open and the paramedics appeared with their casualties.