Emergency: Wife Lost and Found (6 page)

‘Well, now I really do wish I’d just stayed home that day!’ She attempted a bright smile, but it faltered. ‘I don’t have enough experience…’

‘You’re a great doctor.’

‘You never knew me as a doctor,’ Lorna pointed out, ‘but, yes, I am. I’m just not the one they want for the job.’ She gave a small shrug, but it hurt to do so and she grimaced, not at the job loss but at the pain.

‘Do you need something for pain?’ James checked.

‘I had something an hour ago.’

‘Well, it isn’t working. They can be mean with painkillers.’ He stood up and picked up her chart, a doctor through and through. It didn’t enter his head that it might be intrusive. ‘You need to be doing some deep breathing and coughing if you don’t want to get a chest infection and two paracetamol aren’t…’ His voice trailed off. He even blinked a couple of times when he saw just how strong the painkillers were that she was on.

‘I’m on plenty.’ Lorna tried to make light of it. ‘It just hurts, that’s all. Apart from getting someone to knock me out, I’m just going to have to put up with it.’ She could see his worried features as he sat down. ‘Mr Braun did the rounds this morning and he explained how long the cardiac massage went on for. Add that to fractured ribs and a seat-belt injury, well, I’m just going to have to put up with it for a while.’

‘That bruise.’ James pointed to his own chest, but they both knew he meant hers. ‘How far does it go?’

‘Down to my stomach, under my arms. It really is quite spectacular!’ It was, black and purple now, smudged with dirty yellow around the edges. In Emergency she’d been lily white with just a few shiny new blue bruises, with her hypothermia there had been no real sign of the extensive bruising that would follow.

‘You poor thing.’ James said simply, and it was said in such a way that it was more a fact he delivered, a statement that touched somewhere inside, made her feel like someone understood, because bruising and rib fractures didn’t really describe the battering her body had taken. ‘Lorna,’ James said, ‘you can’t go home on Wednesday.’

‘I know,’ she answered, because since Mr. Braun had said that an hour or so ago, her mind had been going
like a table-tennis ball, pinging back and forward with possibilities. As well as dealing with the pain, as well as remembering her baby, as well as seeing James, even if she looked as if she was just lying back on the pillow, she was multitasking. ‘I’ve been thinking of going to a hotel for a few days.’

‘A hotel?’

‘That’s what they do now for some women when they’ve had a baby—rather than take up a hospital bed, they send them—’

‘Lorna!’

‘It’s a good idea! Meals sent up, fresh towels, the bed made and then when I’m feeling up to the journey…well, I’ll think about that then.’

‘You’ll stay with me.’ It was as simple and as complicated as that.

‘How?’ Lorna asked. A single word but there were so many questions behind it. ‘I just need to rest, James.’

‘You can do that at my place.’

‘How?’ she asked again, because quite simply she wasn’t up to raking over the past, or catching up to the present. She wasn’t sure that moving in with her ex, even if it was just for a few days, was a good idea.

‘Look—we’re adults.’ James clearly had the same set of questions. ‘We were over a long time ago, we’ve both moved on, but we
were
married and, yes, I do care. I’m sure if the roles were reversed, you’d do the same for me?’ She heard the question and she nodded.

‘Of course I would.’

‘So it’s simple. I’ll be at work most of the time and I’m not going to be demanding answers about the past or anything like that. Anyway, you’ve got your guy in Africa.’

‘Africa?’

‘Kenya,’ James said, and Lorna started laughing.

‘Did my Dad tell you that?’

‘Oh, yes.’ James grinned. ‘When he told me not to come and see you!’

‘He’s unbelievable!’ Lorna snarled. ‘I haven’t seen Matthew in two years! You know I feel sorry for unconscious people—it’s bad enough being half-dead, let alone having people talking for you who haven’t got a clue what you want.’

James laughed, glimpsed for the first time the old Lorna McClelland, her fiery little ways, her strange thought processes that had once made him smile. Lorna would have laughed again, too. Actually she started to, but it hurt too much so she gave up.

‘So that’s settled, then.’ James stood up. ‘I’ll take the morning off on Wednesday and take you home and get you settled.’ He frowned down at her. ‘Actually, I’ll take the day off.’

‘You don’t have to.’

‘Just the first day, till you’re settled.’

‘Thank you.’ Lorna said.

‘Your father’s not going to be too pleased.’ He half expected her to come up with some convoluted way to lie to her father, just as she had in the past, but instead she lay back on the pillow and gave the small shrug her bruised chest would allow.

‘Oh, well.’

Lorna woke late afternoon, confused.

She was in a swirling place and her frantic eyes searched for James.

‘It’s okay, Lorna.’ A nameless voice was taking her blood pressure. ‘You’re in hospital.’

Only she wasn’t soothed, she was stuck somewhere between the past and the present, lying in a hospital bed and trying to work out what had happened.

She’d loathed waking without James after her surgery, wanted him to be the one to tell her what had happened to their baby, but he’d been ringing her parents and updating them when the registrar had come round.

She was a ‘lucky girl’, apparently. The Fallopian tube had ruptured about five minutes before they had gone in.

“It’s no wonder you’re sore,’ the registrar had said, upping her pain control and telling her how difficult the procedure had been. The gluey cobweb of adhesions from her appendectomy had enclosed the Fallopian tube. It had been the first glimpse of the problems she had, but at the time it had been easier to ignore them, far easier not to think or ask about the future.

‘Hey.’ He sat down by her bed and took her hand. ‘You’re awake! I was just ringing your parents.’

‘How were they?’

‘Concerned,’ James said, kissing her forehead. ‘But I’ve told them you’re okay…I saw the reg in the corridor. Has she been in?’

‘Just.’

‘What did she say?’

‘Lorna?’ The nurse was fiddling with her IV, dragging her back to the present and asking if she had any pain, to which Lorna nodded.

‘Could you turn down the infusion?’ she asked, to the nurse’s confusion, but Lorna was too tired to explain.

The pain of the present she could deal with, it was the past and the future she didn’t want to drift into.

‘Pauline.’ James ran a slightly exasperated hand through his hair as he eyed his home through Lorna’s eyes. ‘We’re getting a guest.’

That he was even considering discussing with his daily that they hire a cleaner was less a reflection on Lorna’s neatness and more a reflection on Pauline’s lack of it.

He could never consider getting rid of Pauline.

It would be like asking your mother to leave.

Your messy, disorganised, borderline alcoholic mother, perhaps, but at least she knew how he liked his toast. At least she knew that when a telephone marketer rang at 10 a.m. when he was on nights, ‘Professor Morrell’ was not to be disturbed.

Girlfriends had come and gone, pointing out that Pauline did nothing bar empty the dishwasher, shuffle the mess, watch pay TV and make inroads into his whisky—all true. Only not once in the five years she had been with him had James had to think about buying toothpaste, or even a toothbrush, had to iron his shirt, or wonder if there was anything to eat.

Pauline took care of that.

Her chatter drove him crazy—the Irish loved to tell a tale and Pauline certainly could—but, then, the time her knee had played up, to his surprise, he’d missed her moaning.

Whatever dinner she made at home—and her cooking was fabulous—was divided and plated for James and placed in his fridge. If she treated herself and
her husband to a chocolate bar, she treated James too. It would be there waiting for him on the kitchen bench when he came home at two a.m., and after a Saturday night in Emergency, being insulted or dealing with a suicide, well, that chocolate bar was welcome, but more the sentiment behind it—especially when it was accompanied by one of her notes. ‘An Englishman walked into a bar…’ Somehow, Pauline made James feel as if he had come home, and if she hired a movie and liked it, well, it was there waiting, too, on those nights he couldn’t wind down from work and sleep.

A couple of years ago Pauline had taken a month off to go on a cruise with her husband, and James had fast realised that whatever she didn’t do, she made up for with what she did do. She was talking about going on another cruise next year and James was already not looking forward to it.

‘What sort of guest?’ Pauline asked, wiping down the bench and working out her excuses, because if his mother was coming again, then her knee was suddenly hurting.

‘Her name’s Lorna.’ The awkwardness in his voice made her look up, her dishcloth pausing in midswipe as James elaborated. ‘My ex-wife.’

She’d known something was up. Her best friend, May, had been dropping hints like a semaphore signaller for well over a week now, but never in her wildest dreams would Pauline have guessed there had once been a Mrs Morrell.

‘Your ex-wife, you say?’ Pauline stopped cleaning the bench and started loading bread into the toaster—pulling ham and cheese out of the fridge and taking a
long time to find the jar of capers. ‘I never knew you’d been married.’ She said to a dozen eggs. She came out of the fridge with a smile on her face. ‘Well, fancy that!’

‘It was ages ago,’ James said, flicking open the paper and pretending to read it. ‘She’s been in a car accident and isn’t well enough yet to travel home.’

‘And where’s home?’

‘Scotland.’ James answered. ‘Fife.’

‘She’s a Fifer.’

‘No,’ James said tartly, ‘she’s from Glasgow, but now she’s in Fife. She’ll only be here for a few days, but she’ll need to stay in my room.’

‘Your room?’

James looked up from the horoscope he was reading. ‘She’s sick—I’ve got an en suite. Can you freshen up the place and make me up a bed in the spare room? Lorna’s a bit…’

‘A bit what?’ Pauline pushed.

‘Fussy.’ James said, then added. ‘Your phone’s bleeping.’

It was too!

A message from May.

Half day 2morrow—coffee in morning?

Can’t.
Pauline texted back.
Have to work—guest arriving.

Need a hand?

Pauline thought of James’s shower that she hadn’t visited in a while, the sheets that needed washing and changing, the ex-wife who was about to descend, and as James bit into his toasted sandwich, Pauline hit the send button.

Please.

May and Pauline had been friends for years. Even though they had grown up near each other, they had only met in London when Pauline had been an orderly on a gynaecology ward and May had been a staff nurse. They had struck up an instant friendship that had easily grown, given how well their husbands got on too.

It had only dawned on Pauline in mid-interview, when James had been telling her about his rather erratic hours, that he was
the
‘lovely Dr James’ that May sometimes mentioned. Some sixth sense had told her to keep quiet, that if her prospective boss knew that her best friend happened to work alongside him, then she wouldn’t get the job.

And she wanted it.

An ex-wife was very different from a new girlfriend.

With as much gusto as if his mother
were
coming, she changed sheets, sorted out the linen cupboard, wiped down the cutlery drawer and cleaned the fridge. In fact, she was kneeling on a rolled-up piece of towel, trying to coax a bit of jelly from last Christmas to melt, when May arrived, bunches of flowers in hand.

‘If James comes home suddenly…’ Pauline fretted, but May shook her head.

‘The place is steaming—he won’t be home for hours yet. Let’s get to work.’

‘We’ll be sailing on the seven seas this time next year,’ May reminded her as she sprayed the shower and Pauline took down the screen to soak it. ‘Just think about that.’

P
ATIENTS
often didn’t realise just how ill they were when they’re in hospital.

It’s only when they went back into the real world and met the million and one things that made it real that they suddenly realised how poorly or sore they really were. And for Lorna the realisation came as she stood up in the wheelchair at the collection point and tried to lower herself into James’s rather low sports car. Even putting on her seat belt herself was impossible. She couldn’t twist to get it and neither could she easily twist to clip it—two simple manoeuvres that she’d never really given a thought to until now.

‘I’ll do it.’

He leant carefully over her and it was, for Lorna, their first contact, his big shoulders so close, his hair in her face. He smelt different but the same, so big and strong and efficient and gentle.

‘Ouch!’ Tears stung her eyes and she felt like the biggest baby in the world, but as he leant back and released the seat belt the pressure was unbearable.

‘God, Lorna, I’m sorry.’ He pulled at the belt and
held it loose, unclipped it again and looked at her with concerned eyes. ‘Just wait there.’

He darted into Emergency and came back with a pillow, which she held on her chest as he again went through the rigmarole of clipping her in.

And that was before she’d even got out of the hospital. Everything on the five-minute journey to his home was daunting, the winter sun too bright, the sound of a siren as fire engines raced towards them on the other side of the road made her sweat. Her memory of the accident had returned now. Not that she’d told anyone, but she could remember well the loss of control, the screech of the tyres, the slam of metal as she’d hit a tree. Now even going at twenty miles an hour in the busy London traffic felt way too fast.

‘Nearly there.’ James glanced over but she wished he wouldn’t. She wanted him to keep his eyes on the road.

He had a lovely town house in Islington and he held her arm as slowly she climbed the steps, utterly exhausted by the time she got inside.

‘It’s lovely!’ Lorna blinked at the gleaming furniture, the flowers in the vases. It was nothing like she was used to from James!

‘I’ve got a surprise for you!’ He waited till she’d lowered herself onto the chair.

‘A surprise?’

He held up a bag and then opened it, pulled out pyjamas and dressing gown in soft pinks and greens, slippers, leggings and fluffy socks and lots of
nice
things.

‘You shouldn’t have.’

‘I didn’t.’ James said. ‘It’s from May. The pyjamas
are new, but the dressing gown and other things are her daughter’s. She’s off travelling for a year.’

‘That’s so kind of her.’

‘She’s a lovely woman,’ James said, ‘thoughtful, you know. Anyway—’ his face was deadpan as he spoke, just the same way it used to be when he joked with her ‘—I couldn’t have let you move in here wearing those. They truly are the most disgusting pyjamas I’ve ever seen and they keep getting worse.’

‘It was a pack of three,’ Lorna said glumly. ‘Orange, pink and baby pooh green. I like to think my mother just has no taste, but I’m sure the fact James Morrell was there sent her searching the shops for the ugliest sleepwear in history, to stop him from fancying me.’

‘Well, good for Betty.’ James grinned. ‘Because it worked!’

‘I’ll put them on when Ellie comes round.’ Lorna carried on the joke. ‘Just in case she’s worried that your ex is here!’

He didn’t say anything—he certainly wasn’t going to tell her they’d broken up. That
would
have her worried, would stop the easygoing banter that was starting to come. Lorna knew his rules, knew he would never so much as look at another woman while he was already with one. There was just no need to confuse things. When Lorna admitted she was tired, he helped her up the stairs and took her into the master bedroom. He had upped Pauline’s hours and insisted the room have the biggest spring clean of its life since Monday.

‘I can’t take your room.’

‘It’s got its own toilet and shower,’ James said, ‘and a nice view of the street so you don’t get too bored!’

‘Way better than the hospital generator,’ Lorna agreed.

‘Do you want a shower?’

‘No thanks.’ She shook her head. ‘I just want to sleep.’

‘Go for it, then.’ He pulled the curtains and the room was bathed in lovely darkness, so dark he had to turn on the side-light. ‘I bought decent curtains, this room gets the sun and it’s hell trying to get to sleep in a bright room after working all night.’ Suddenly it was awkward, so he headed for the door. ‘Have a nice rest.’

She did, slid into bed and slept for a solid four hours, only waking again because she started coughing and the painkillers had worn off. She was relieved that James had stayed home for her first day here. She heard his footsteps on the stairs, a knock on the door. He must have been dozing himself, because his face had that lovely sort of crumpled look to it, and his hair was sticking up at the side.

‘Here,’ he said, giving her a drink of water and her lunchtime medicines. ‘I’ll get you some lunch.’

‘I’m not hungry.’

‘I wasn’t asking if you were. I’m making lunch and you’ll eat it whether you want it or not.’

‘You have to be nice to me, remember.’ Lorna smiled. ‘Because I’m sick.’

Oh, and he had to bite his tongue. He was about to remind her that he’d always been nice to her, sick or not, that he’d always tried to do the right thing by her.

Only he’d also promised her that he wouldn’t go over the past.