Their Very Special Marriage (16 page)

‘Wouldn't she be better going straight to the emergency department?' Rachel asked.

‘Dervla can't drive and Mick's working away.'

‘Then an ambulance. They'll have a nebuliser.'

‘I've already told her to call the ambulance. But we don't know how long they'll take to get there. I'm nearer. I said I'd go.' His eyes beseeched her to understand that he was a doctor and he had to put his patients first. But Rachel saw it another way. Although there were alternatives, Oliver would always put his patients first. Before his own family, before his marriage, before everything.

Sometimes Rachel wished he'd never, ever become a GP. At least when he'd reached a certain level as a hospital doctor, he wouldn't have been on call every single night. ‘I'll come with you.'

‘You don't have to.'

He was hardly going to come back here to finish his meal when he'd seen his patient. For a start, he had no idea how long he'd be. If he ended up going to hospital with the Bradys, he could be hours. And Rachel had no intention of waiting on her own in the restaurant and being aware of the pitying looks from other diners. It was either go home alone or go with him. ‘Oliver, we're not going to eat now so I might as well come with you. And you know how scary acute asthma attacks can be. If Niamh's really bad, Dervla's going to be panicking. I can calm her down and explain what's going on while you're helping Niamh—or we can do it the other way round.'

‘You've been drinking.'

‘One glass.' On an empty stomach. ‘OK, you help Niamh. Go and get the car while I settle up and explain to the waiter.'

‘I'll make it up to you,' Oliver said.

Yeah, right, Rachel thought. She had a nasty feeling that Oliver was secretly relieved he didn't have to spend time with her on his own. So maybe her don't-rock-the-boat approach
wasn't the right one. On the way home from seeing Niamh, maybe it would be time to confront Oliver about Caroline and find out what he was planning to do.

Make or break.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

‘T
HIS
isn't how I planned tonight,' Oliver said as Rachel climbed into the passenger seat.

‘Me neither.'

‘It was supposed to be just you and me tonight. Dinner.' He changed gear, then rested his hand on her knee. ‘And you look gorgeous.' She looked stunning. There was something different about her but he couldn't work out what it was, and he didn't want to upset her by asking. Hell. Most of the time nowadays he got it wrong, and the last thing they needed was more distance between them. ‘I was going to rush you through dinner anyway—but not for work. I was going to sneak you off somewhere.' He swallowed. ‘I wanted to make love to you under the stars.' Something they hadn't done since the children were born. He'd wanted to recapture some of the magic, the sparkle of their early years together, when they'd walked hand in hand along the beach in the moonlight. And then they'd have gone home and rediscovered each other, made love until the silly hours of the morning.

Rachel said nothing, and he sighed inwardly. What had he expected—a ‘we still can'? The call-out had completely broken the mood. And when he snatched a glance at her face, her expression said it all for her.
If you'd used a call-out service, everything would have gone as planned.

But instead he'd taken a gamble that he wouldn't be called out. A gamble that he'd lost. Please, please, don't let it have cost him his marriage. He bit his lip. ‘Rach. Talk to me.'

She pushed his hand off her knee. ‘Let's just get to Dervla's.'

Her voice sounded very, very tight. As if she were a wound-up spring. One wrong touch could trigger something nasty. If he pushed her now, they'd have an almighty row—a row that would widen the gulf between them even more. He could tell she was on the verge of giving him an ultimatum, telling him to choose between his job and his family. But how could he choose? Being a doctor: that was who he was. Why couldn't he be a doctor
and
a husband and father at the same time?

Caroline's voice echoed in his head.
You need to get your priorities sorted out.

He wanted Rachel and the kids to come first. But if he used a locum call-out service for evenings and weekends, he'd be flying in the face of everything his father had done.
Doctors never desert their patients.
It was how he'd been brought up. Years and years and years of conditioning. He could hear his father saying it even now. His mother had always accepted it. Why couldn't Rachel accept it, too?

‘I'd better check everything's OK at home,' she said, taking her mobile phone from her handbag. A few moments later she gave a worried murmur. ‘Ginny's not answering.'

‘She's probably reading Sophie a story. You know what Sophie's like if you try to stop reading in the middle of a story.'

‘Yes. I've read enough of them to her.'

He could hear the subtext very clearly:
unlike you
. But before he could think up a suitable retort, they were at Dervla's house. Time to put their patient first.

‘How is she?' Oliver asked when Dervla answered the door.

Dervla was shaking. ‘She can't breathe. I'm so scared she's going to die!'

‘No, she's not. It's an asthma attack—a bad one, but we
can get her through it and help her breathe normally again,' Rachel soothed her. ‘Niamh's got through them in the past and she'll get through them again.'

‘Have you been getting her to take her inhaler over the last five minutes?' Oliver asked. The inhaler contained bronchodilator drugs, which would reduce inflammation in Niamh's airways and open them up again so she could breathe more easily.

Dervla nodded.

‘Is it helping?'

She shook her head helplessly. ‘Not really.'

‘OK. Did they say how long the ambulance would take?' he asked.

‘I don't know. I just don't want my baby to die!' Dervla burst out.

Rachel squeezed her shoulders. ‘Try not to worry, Dervla. We're here to help her.'

‘I'll take a look at her and see if I can make her more comfortable while we're waiting for the ambulance,' Oliver said.

Dervla led them through to the sitting room, where eight-year-old Niamh was sitting on the sofa, wheezing and gasping for breath.

‘OK, Niamh, we'll have you breathing more easily in a minute,' Oliver reassured the little girl. ‘I'm just going to do a couple of quick checks to see how you're doing, OK?'

She nodded.

Her pulse was rapid, at 140 beats a minute. A quick question showed Oliver that she couldn't complete a sentence in one breath, and six seconds of counting her breaths showed him that she was breathing way too fast at fifty breaths a minute. He knew he wouldn't even need to do a PEF or peak expiratory flow test, measuring how much air she breathed out compared to what she should be able to breathe
out for her height. From the look of her, it was very likely to be less than half her normal flow.

Please, don't let her have a silent chest, he prayed as he took out his stethoscope. A ‘silent chest' was where air entry to the lungs was reduced so much he wouldn't be able to hear her breathing.

His prayers were answered. So it hadn't got to the stage where it was life-threatening, he thought with relief. ‘Good girl, Niamh. You're doing really well. Let me see you take another puff of your inhaler,' he said.

She struggled to breathe it in, but her technique was good, he noted. So the attack probably hadn't been caused by poor management of her asthma. ‘As soon as the ambulance comes, they'll give you a mask with some oxygen to help you breathe,' he said. ‘I'm going to give you a tablet which will help.'

Before he could even reach for his bag, Rachel was silently handing him the prednisolone. He squeezed her fingers, mouthing his thanks. They were a good team—always had been, he thought. Clearly Rachel had been watching him and had guessed exactly what he'd been doing. Hopefully the prednisolone would kick in by the time the ambulance arrived—otherwise, he'd need to give Niamh a hydrocortisone injection, and suggest the paramedics give her ipratropium bromide through the nebuliser on the way to the hospital.

‘Dervla, do you have any idea what triggered this? Did you do anything unusual today?' Rachel asked, going back to sit beside Dervla and taking her hand.

She shook her head. ‘The only thing I can think of is that I was cutting down the weeds at the bottom of the garden.'

‘Could be weed pollen,' Rachel said.

Dervla sucked in some air. ‘It's my fault.'

‘Not if you didn't know that weed pollen was a trigger,' Rachel said comfortingly.

Dervla looked at her. ‘I've just realised—you're all dressed up. I've called you both away from—'

‘Just dinner. No special occasion,' Oliver cut in. ‘So don't worry about it. We're GPs. That's what we're here for, and we're used to it.' He didn't dare look at Rachel's face.

‘I'm sorry I spoiled it for you,' Dervla said. ‘I just, well, panicked.'

‘Any mum does. You should see me when Rob or Soph bang their head. I always think of the worst-case scenario,' Rachel said, swallowing her disappointment and trying to sound light and cheery.
No special occasion.
Just trying to get their marriage back on the rails. And, in the scheme of things, that wasn't so important to Oliver, was it?

Before Oliver could say anything else, Rachel's mobile shrilled.

‘That's my babysitter,' she said as she glanced at the screen. Oliver had been right: Ginny had been reading a story to Sophie, ignored the phone, and was now returning Rachel's call to reassure her that all was well. ‘Hi, Ginny.'

‘Rach. I'm sorry to ring you—I know you wanted a special night out—but Rob's not well.'

‘Rob?' Rachel's heart missed a beat.

‘He's been saying he has a bit of a tummyache, and he's just started throwing up.'

Which meant throwing up a lot. Ginny wasn't the sort who'd be fazed by a child who'd eaten too much chocolate and had brought it back up, Rachel knew. This was serious stuff.

Vomiting and abdominal pains. It could be any number of things. ‘Does it look as if he's throwing up coffee grounds?' she asked, her fingers tightening around the phone.

‘No.'

She almost sagged in relief. At least, then, there was no
gastric bleeding: ‘coffee grounds' was a sign of internal bleeding.

But it could still be something like appendicitis—the condition was more common in the very young and the very old, and the complications could be nasty. ‘I'm on my way,' she said. She switched the phone off. ‘Oliver, that was Ginny. Rob's ill. I'm sorry, Dervla, I would wait for the ambulance with you, but—'

‘If your little boy's ill, you need to be there with him. I'll be all right,' Dervla said. ‘I hope it's nothing serious.'

‘Me, too.' Rachel dug her nails into her palms, willing herself to keep calm. ‘Oliver, I'll take the car. You get a taxi.'

He stared at her in shock. ‘You can't take the car. You're over the limit.'

‘I only had one glass of wine.'

‘Yes, and it was on an empty stomach. It's not worth taking the risk—if you're breathalysed, it'll be an instant ban!'

‘Oliver, Rob's got abdominal pains and he's vomiting.' She stared at him in disbelief. Their child was ill, and he was quibbling about the car? ‘Look, if you won't let me drive, you'll have to go instead. I'll get a taxi home when I've seen Dervla off in the ambulance.'

Dervla started to cry. ‘I'm so sorry. If only I could drive, I wouldn't have had to call you out. I could have taken Niamh to hospital myself.'

‘No, you couldn't,' Rachel said gently. ‘She'd need you to comfort her on the way. It's fine, really. Despite what my husband says, I'm very far from being drunk and I'd never, ever put a child at risk. Niamh's safe with me. Oliver will go to Rob.'

‘I'll see you later,' Oliver said, his face a tight mask.

If you want a fight, Rachel thought grimly, then you can
have one. The second after I get home and find out how my baby is. Right at that moment, she could cheerfully have throttled him.

* * *

When Oliver walked into the house, Ginny was mopping Robin up again and changing him into another pair of trousers. ‘I've put the washing machine on with the last two sets of sheets and pyjamas,' she said quietly. ‘I thought Rachel was coming?'

‘She'd had a glass of wine—she couldn't really risk driving.'

‘I feel awful about spoiling your special night out. I know Rachel really wanted you to have some proper time together as a couple,' Ginny said with a rueful smile.

It took a second or two for her words to sink in, then the full impact hit him. Rachel had obviously been discussing their marriage problems with their next-door neighbour, the fact that they rarely spent time together on their own. Oliver ignored the fact that he'd done exactly the same with Caroline. He was just conscious of a wave of resentment and anger that Rachel had talked about his private life with other people and hadn't bothered discussing it properly with him.

‘I'd better check Robin,' he said, trying to keep his anger under wraps, and quickly assessed his son. Robin definitely had a temperature. Not spiking a fever, but enough to show he wasn't well. His face was pale and his eyes looked huge. ‘Can you tell me where it hurts, sweetheart?' Oliver asked gently.

‘My tummy.' Robin rubbed his stomach. ‘All over.'

‘Has it hurt in the same place all the time?'

‘Yes.'

‘What sort of pain is it? A pushing pain or a poking pain?'

‘A poking pain.'

Appendicitis started with central colicky pain, vomiting,
then a shift of pain to the lower right-hand side of the abdomen. With appendicitis, if you pressed on the left iliac fossa, it sometimes caused pain on the right—known as Rovsing's sign. Oliver tested his theory and Robin winced. ‘It hurts, Daddy,' he said, his bottom lip wobbling.