Caroline Anderson - Tempted by Dr Daisy

She coloured slightly, her thoughts chasing each other transparently through her eyes, and he had to stifle a smile as she gathered herself up and sucked in a breath.

‘Sorry. None of my business,’ she said hastily. ‘And talking of suits, I dropped yours into the dry cleaners in the main reception on the way in, and it’ll be ready at five—and before you panic, I told them to take good care of it.’

‘Chasing brownie points, Daisy?’ he murmured, and she laughed.

‘Hardly. I didn’t know who you were then. I’m just a nice person.’

‘You are, aren’t you?’

‘Not that nice. I’ve still got my eye on dinner,’ she said with a teasing grin that diverted the blood from his brain, and he wondered how the hell he was going to keep this sudden and unwanted attraction in its box.

With huge difficulty. Damn.

He turned his attention back to his coffee, and then she said quietly, ‘Thanks for covering for me so smoothly, by the way. Evan’s a stickler for punctuality, and he was getting all ready to flay me later.’

‘It was the least I could do. I was hardly going to throw you to the wolves for bailing me out—literally! And Evan doesn’t strike me as the friendliest of characters. He was pretty dismissive when you asked about that patient.’

A flicker of what could have been worry showed in her eyes. ‘Oh, he’s OK really. He can come over as a patronising jerk, but he’s a good doctor. He’s just a bit miffed that you got the job, I think. He was advised to apply for it, and I reckon he thought it was a shoo-in.’

‘And then they had to advertise it by law, and I applied. And with all due respect to Evan, I would imagine my CV knocks spots off his.’

‘Exactly. So he won’t welcome you with open arms, but you should be able to rely on him.’

He gave a choked laugh. ‘Well, that’s good to know.’

Her mouth twitched, and those mischievous green eyes were twinkling at him again. ‘So, I hope you’ve got some good ideas about what I was supposedly doing for you?’

He leant back in his chair and met her eyes with a twinkle of his own. ‘Oh, let’s say finding me some statistics on twins on the antenatal list. That should cover it. Anyway, I thought it was pretty good for a spur-of-the-moment thing. Sorry if it sounded a bit patronising, but I thought it was better than explaining I’d already had a shower in your bathroom,’ he said softly, and then felt his legs disintegrate when a soft wash of colour touched her cheeks.

He cleared his throat.

‘Tell me about Yoxburgh Park Hospital,’ he suggested hastily, and she collected herself and gave a tiny shrug.

‘It’s old and new, it’s on the site of the old lunatic asylum—’

‘How delightfully politically incorrect,’ he said drily, and she chuckled.

‘Isn’t it? Nearly as politically incorrect as locking up fifteen-year-old girls because their fathers or brothers had got them knocked up and if they were put away here for life then the family could pretend they’d gone mad and carry on as normal.’

‘Lovely.’

‘It was. It was a workhouse, really, and the pauper lunatic label was just a way of covering up what they were doing, apparently. I mean, who’s going to go near a lunatic asylum? You might end up inside, and so they got away with murder, literally. But life was cheap then, wasn’t it?’

‘So was building, which I guess is why the old Victorian part is so magnificent.’

‘Oh, absolutely, and the other plus side is that because they wanted it isolated, we’ve got glorious parkland all around us, tons of parking and plenty of room to expand. The locals have access to it for recreation, we have a lovely outlook—it couldn’t be better, and the hospital’s great. Quite a few areas of it are brand new and state of the art, like the maternity wing, and it’s earning an excellent reputation. We’ve got a bit of everything, but it’s still small enough to be friendly and it’s a good place to work. Everybody knows everybody.’

‘Is that necessarily a good thing?’

She gave a wry smile. ‘Not always. You wait till they find out we’re neighbours, for instance.’

‘You think they will?’

She laughed. ‘I give it three days—maybe less.’

Oh, that laugh! Musical, infectious—it was going to kill him. And then she flicked the tip of her tongue out and licked the icing off her lips, and his eyes zeroed in on them and locked.

‘So—guided tour?’ he suggested hastily, because if he had to sit there opposite her for very many more minutes, he was going to have to strap his hands down by his sides to stop himself reaching out and lifting that tiny smear of icing off the corner of her mouth with his fingertip.

‘Sure. Where do you want to start?’

‘Maternity Outpatients?’ he suggested wryly. ‘Then you can ask about the twins, so it’s not a lie, and there’s an antenatal clinic with my name on it later today, so

I’m told, and it would look better if I could find it.’ His eyes twinkled. ‘Can’t have me turning up late, clearly. Evan would have a field day with it.’

IT WAS a hectic day, with very little time to think about her new boss and neighbour.

She took Ben for a quick walk through the hospital—the antenatal clinic, as they’d discussed, and other key areas that he might need to visit as well as the location of the dry cleaners, and then armed with the twin statistics she took him back to the maternity unit and gave him a lightning tour of the department—the gynae, antenatal and postnatal wards, the labour ward, the theatre suite, SCBU as well, just for information, and then handed him over to Evan Jones on the dot of nine thirty and went back to the gynae ward to check her patients from last week. She had three to discharge before the afternoon antenatal clinic, then it was back to the antenatal ward and the young first-time mum with pre-eclampsia that she’d been worrying about.

Evan had said he’d already looked at her, but she wanted to see with her own eyes, and she was glad she did. Clare wasn’t looking so great. Her blood pressure was up, her feet and hands were more swollen and she was complaining of a slight headache.

Daisy had thought they should deliver her on Friday, Evan had wanted to give her longer for the sake of the baby. He’d won. And now it was looking as if it might have been the wrong thing to do.

‘Right, I want you much quieter,’ she told her softly, perching on the bed and taking Clare’s hand. ‘I guess you’ve had a bit of a busy weekend, and we’re going to have to slow things down for you and make you rest much more. So the telly’s going, the visits are down to hubby only, once a day, and I really want you to sleep, OK?’

‘I can’t. I’m too scared.’

‘You don’t need to be scared. We’re taking good care of you, and all you need to do is relax, Clare. I know it’s hard, but you just have to try and find that quiet place and let go, OK? Try for me?’

She nodded, rested her head back and closed her eyes.

‘Good girl. We’ll keep a close eye on you, and I’m tweaking your drugs a bit, and you should feel better soon. If anything changes or you feel unwell, press the bell, and I don’t want you out of bed for anything. OK?’

Clare nodded again, and Daisy left the room, closing the door silently behind her, and was repositioning the ‘Quiet, Please’ sign more prominently when she became aware of someone behind her.

‘Is this the woman you were concerned about?’ he said softly.

‘Yes—Clare Griffiths. She’s got pre-eclampsia.’ Daisy’s voice was a quiet murmur. ‘Actually, can I have a word with you about her?’

‘Sure.’

They walked away from the door, and Daisy filled him in. ‘I don’t know if she’s OK to leave. I was going to order another ultrasound. She’s only 32 weeks, and Evan wants the baby to have as long as possible, so I’ve told her not to move a muscle, to close her eyes and rest, but it’s easy to say and much harder to do, and today her hands and feet are more swollen and she’s complaining of a headache. She’s got a urinary catheter and we’re monitoring her fluid balance.’

‘Are those the notes?’

She handed him the file, and he scanned through it, and met her eyes. ‘Gut feeling?’

‘I think we’re going to end up delivering her today.’ She bit her lip. ‘I wanted to do it on Friday, but Evan—’

‘Evan wanted to wait. And you disagreed. He said something about that.’

She frowned. ‘What?’

‘Oh, just the implication that you were over-cautious.’

Daisy shrugged, disappointed that Evan had thought that rather than respecting her judgement, but maybe he’d been right. Maybe she was overreacting now. ‘Do you want to examine her?’

‘I thought you’d just done it?’

‘I have, but—’

‘But nothing. The notes tell me what I need to know. I don’t want to stress her by going in straight away. If she sees me, she’ll think she has to panic. And I trust you, Daisy.’

‘Is that wise? You know nothing about me.’

‘I know you’re thorough and meticulous with the notes. Evan thought you lacked confidence. That implies to me that you should have more confidence in your judgement, not less.’

She nodded and bit her lip. ‘OK. Well, we can watch her if you’re happy to. She’s had steroids, the baby’s as ready as it can be. I’m thinking that waiting much longer’s probably not an option but I could be wrong.’

‘Or you could be right. So alert Theatre, have SCBU on standby, order another ultrasound and hourly obs, and we’ll give the drugs time to work and wait and see. We aren’t fortune-tellers, we just have to watch and wait. Keep me up to speed.’

She nodded, and with an encouraging wink, he handed her back the notes and walked away.

There wasn’t time for lunch, and she arrived at the antenatal clinic at the same time as Ben and Evan.

They were seeing the tricky patients, the mums with known problems, and she was working her way steadily through the more routine cases and trying not to think about her new neighbour and boss when her pager bleeped.

Clare Griffiths. Damn. She must have deteriorated. Handing her patient over to the clinic midwife to refer to Evan, she went straight up to the ward and found Clare looking pale and sweaty. Her face was looking more bloated, and she was clearly wretched.

As soon as she saw her, Clare started to cry.

‘I’m so glad you’re here. My feet really hurt, and I can’t bend my fingers, my headache’s worse, and I can’t really see—there are flashing lights and it’s as if I’ve got worms wriggling about all over the inside of my eyes. I’m so scared.’

Retinal haemorrhages, Daisy thought, scanning the monitor and her test results and fluid balance. The ultrasound result showed that the baby hadn’t grown since the previous Thursday, and that meant it wasn’t getting enough nutrition. She perched on the bed and held her hand, feeling the difference in her fingers even in two short hours. Have more confidence, Ben had said, and he trusted her. Well, let’s hope I’m not overreacting now, she thought.

She rubbed her fingers soothingly. ‘Don’t be scared, Clare, we’re looking after you,’ she said, trying to inject some of that confidence into her voice, ‘but I’m afraid your blood pressure’s gone up again, and your blood results show your kidneys are struggling and the baby’s not growing. Let me call Mr Walker and ask him to come and look at you.’

‘Is this it?’ she asked, sniffing and looking even more worried. ‘Are you going to have to deliver me?’