as he spoke. ‘Whenever he feels ready,’ he called back. ‘I suspect about a week. Then he’ll need two weeks at least with it up, and another week or two slowly mobilising. Five to six before he’s walking regularly with crutches. And no, he can’t fly tomorrow.’
She went back into the cubicle. ‘Did you hear that?’
‘Bloody ridiculous,’ he growled. ‘Is he a consultant?’
Anna took a steadying breath. ‘No, he’s a senior registrar.’
‘I want to see the big cheese—I’m not going to be fobbed off with some incompetent junior doctor.’
She hung on to her temper with difficulty. ‘I can assure you, Mr Davidson isn’t a junior doctor, nor is he incompetent! His next post will be a consultancy—probably in the fairly near future. And he’s more than qualified to mend your ankle!’
Mr James was stubbornly unrepentant. ‘I want it done privately,’ he stated. ‘I don’t have time to mess about like this.’
She eyed him with disfavour. ‘Could you explain something to me? Would you tell me how paying for it is going to make your leg heal any quicker?’
‘I might get better treatment,’ he grumbled. ‘At least a real specialist. I can’t afford to take weeks off,’ he added petulantly.
‘You should have thought of that when you weren’t looking where you were going, shouldn’t you?’ she said sweetly, and with that she swished out into the corridor smack into a laughing Patrick Haddon.
She glared at him, but he winked and took her arm, leading her away.
‘Calm down,’ he soothed, and led her into the staff-room, pressing a cup of coffee into her hand. ‘Drink this. There’s nothing requiring your immediate attention, so take a little time out and relax.’
She snorted. ‘Pompous ass. I don’t suppose there’s the slightest chance he’ll get pneumonia from the anaesthetic?’
Patrick laughed again, his eyes creased with delight. ‘You’re a wicked woman.’
‘Only when provoked, and boy, did that man provoke me!’ She sipped her coffee, then sighed. ‘Oh, this is luxury. What a nasty shock, coming back to that after a wonderful weekend!’
‘What do you expect—gratitude? This is the great British public. We’re here to serve them, and do it on time, regardless of what might have just gone on behind the scenes.’
She stared at him. ‘You sound really bitter.’
‘Do I?’ He gave a quick grin. ‘Sorry. I’ve been in Africa for the last two years. They queue up there for days to see you, and never complain. Mostly they’re too weak, but they’re pathetically grateful for any slight kindness. It’s very humbling.’
The weary smile didn’t reach his eyes. ‘Sorry. Don’t let me get on my hobby-horse. I’m back here now, and I should just accept the absurd plethora of medical equipment and facilities instead of begrudging it to these miserable ingrates.’
His smile robbed his words of any offence, and Anna found herself even more curious about him. If he felt so passionately about Africa, why come home? Now was not the time to ask him, though, because he was still speaking, asking for her help.
‘Sit down for a minute,’ he suggested. ‘I could do with being filled in on procedure, names, places—that sort of thing. Who do I call, who do I avoid, who’s got a tetchy temper?—apart from you, of course.’
His smile took the criticism out of his words, and she found herself smiling back.
‘I’m normally very calm, but when someone questions a colleague’s competence, and says they’d get better treatment if they paid for it, I get very, very cross.’
‘Let him pay. It relieves the stress on the hospital’s funds. Anyway, you shouldn’t get so worked up. You’ll get ulcers.’
‘No, I won’t. Not if I haven’t got Helicobacter pylori.’
‘Smart-mouth.’
There was no malice in his remark, and they shared a smile.
‘Thanks for the coffee.’
She dropped into a chair and sighed. The weekend had been hectic, and already seemed a long way away. Flissy had been dancing in her ballet class, and Anna had had to dress her and pile her wispy hair up into a bun, and then watch the tiny little scrap trip and dither her way across the room, pretending to be a butterfly.
A virtuoso performance it wasn’t, but it had reduced Anna to a sniffling, pink-eyed heap. Pride was a ridiculous thing, she thought.
‘What are you thinking about?’
She blinked. Oh—nothing. Something that happened at the weekend, that’s all.’
‘It must have been pretty good—you were all misty-eyed.’
She laughed self-consciously, not ready to tell this stranger about her little Flissy. Men had a way of judging a single mother, and Anna wasn’t ready to be judged by this man. Not judged and found wanting.
‘It was good,’ she said, and deliberately changed the subject. ‘So, tell me about Africa. Was that where the earthquake was?’
A shadow crossed his eyes. ‘No,’ he said, effectively cutting off the conversation.
She blinked. So he, too, had things he wasn’t prepared to talk about.
She studied her cup, swirling the dregs of her coffee round and wondering why he was suddenly so remote and cut off. Had someone he loved died in the earthquake? Perhaps a wife or child? Oh, God, not a child! He’d said it was a school …
‘You didn’t lose someone—not your child?’ she asked, unable to help herself.
He met her eyes, his own revealing a flash of pain. ‘No,’ he agreed quietly. ‘Not my child.’
But someone. What was the saying about fools rushing in? Her shoulders drooped. ‘Look, I’m sorry I dragged the whole thing up—’
She jerked to her feet, almost dropping her cup back on the table, and fled.
She heard him call her name, but she didn’t stop. She went out to the front desk, glanced round, and picked up the notes for a patient who had just arrived.
‘Mrs Lucas? Would you like to come with me, please?’
He caught up with her at lunchtime, when she was just grabbing ten minutes for another coffee and a biscuit.
‘Is that all you’re having?’ he asked in disbelief.
‘I don’t eat much during the day,’ she told him, unprepared to get into discussion about it.
‘You can’t work as hard as you have been on that. Come and have some lunch with me—we never did have that conversation. I’ll offend someone mortally, and it will be your fault. Do you really
