many times have I told you—?’ Fran’s father-in-law started, and Fran just smiled, stepped back and left them to it. She didn’t need to strangle him. His parents would do it for her. In the meantime, she might go and get herself a cup of coffee.
‘So how’s the invalid?’ Ben asked as she bumped into him at the ward entrance.
‘Getting an earful from everyone,’ Fran told Ben with a wry smile.
Ben smiled back, but his eyes were gentle with concern, and she felt hers fill again. ‘You OK?’ he asked, and she nodded, then shook her head, then shrugged a little helplessly and laughed, her traitorous eyes welling.
‘I don’t know. Yes. Maybe. At least he’s alive.’
‘He’ll be fine. He’ll be going to Theatre shortly to have it plated, and he’ll be in for a couple of days, then they’ll send him home in a cast to rest.’
‘He’ll be horrible. He’ll be so bored,’ Fran said with a sigh, and Ben raised an eyebrow.
‘So entertain him,’ he said with a smile. ‘He’ll be laid up and fizzing over with all that pent-up energy. I’m sure you’ll be able to find something to do together to alleviate the boredom!’
She felt herself colour slightly, and found a smile. If only, she thought. ‘I’ll buy him a Sudoku book,’ she said, and Ben chuckled.
‘Yeah, right. Like that’ll do it!’ He tipped his head on one side. ‘You going anywhere important?’
‘Yes—to get a coffee,’ she said, wondering if it mattered if she started Kate’s diet a day later and deciding that today justified it. She could have lost Mike—so easily. And today had proved to her beyond any doubt that she wasn’t ready to lose him. Not in any way. There was nothing like staring that dreadful possibility in the face to bring it home to her, so, yes, today justified a delay in the start of the diet, because at the moment whether or not they had a child was way down the list of her priorities.
And Mike—her beloved, darling, infuriating, broken Mike—was right at the top.
‘Mind if I join you?’ Ben was saying. ‘I was just about to make a drink when I called him, and I still haven’t had one yet. I’ll even treat you to a chocolate muffin.’
She laughed. ‘You truly know the way to a woman’s heart,’ she replied, and wondered when she and Mike had last laughed like that, about nothing in particular, just for the sake of laughing. Ages. A lifetime.
But they would again. She’d make sure of it…
CHAPTER FOUR
THEY were sending him home on Friday, and he couldn’t get out of hospital quickly enough.
Not that he’d really known that much about it for the first twenty-four hours, because he’d been in so much pain he’d been drugged up to the eyeballs.
It was the bottom of his fibula where it joined the tibia on the outside of his ankle—the lateral maleolus, or some such bone—that had sheared off, and his fibula was fractured again just above the ankle joint. Such a skinny little bone to cause so much pain, although the ligaments between the two bones hadn’t ripped. This, apparently, was a good thing, or it would have been ages before he could bear weight.
Even so, he’d have to be in a cast for weeks.
Fabulous. In the summer, when he relied on the longer hours of daylight to do all those endless jobs about the farm that he couldn’t simply do in the dark. Hedging, fencing, repairing the fabric of the buildings—cutting up fallen trees?
But on the bright side, luckily the skin hadn’t broken. It seemed a very slight thing to worry about, considering they’d had to cut it open anyway, but apparently it made a great difference to the sort of repair they could do, and it meant it could be plated and screwed, and he didn’t have to have an external fixator.
Thank God, because there was no way he could work on the farm with a metal frame on the outside of his leg and pins going through into the bone, carrying filth and infection right into the heart of the injury. And, anyway, even the sight of them made him feel sick. There were several people in the orthopaedic ward with them on, and others in traction, even one screwed into a special revolving frame, bolts into his head and shoulders and hips and legs…
Hideous. God only knows what it must feel like to be in there, he thought, but the man didn’t seem to be aware of too much. That had to be a good thing—probably the only good thing, if the drawn faces of his relatives were anything to go by.
He glanced across at the man. On second thoughts, maybe it wasn’t a good thing. He discovered he was extremely grateful he wasn’t in so bad a way that he wasn’t aware of his surroundings, never mind his ankle.
Although he felt all too aware of it most of the time, and he was desperate for a good night’s sleep in his own bed, with soft cotton sheets, their lovely down duvet and his own pillow.
And Fran.
God, he missed her. She’d been in to visit him each evening, but it wasn’t enough, and he couldn’t believe he’d been so reluctant to go away with her this coming weekend for the night. He’d give his eye teeth for the chance to do it now, he thought, lying there waiting for someone to come and discharge him.
And then Ben strolled in, hitched his hip onto the edge of the bed and grinned. ‘Want to cut loose?’
‘Oh, do I ever!’ he said fervently. ‘Got the power to spring me?’
‘Absolutely. Well, not really, but I’ve just seen your consultant and he’s happy to lose you. They’re just filling in the paperwork, and I thought, as I’ve got the afternoon off, I’d give you a lift—unless you’re organised?’
He shook his head. ‘No, not at all. I was going to ring my father or my brother, but I haven’t done that yet. I’m supposed to be getting a lesson on my crutches.’
‘Yeah, the physio’s on her way. I’ll get them to give me a call when you’re done, and I’ll get you out of here.’
‘You’re a star. Cheers.’
‘My pleasure.’
It took another hour, but finally he was ready to go, and Ben came up, put him into a wheelchair and trundled him out into the fresh air. He dragged in a great lungful of it, closed his eyes and sighed hugely. ‘Oh, that feels so good. You can’t imagine what it’s like when you’re used to being outside all the time, to be cooped up in there without feeling the wind in your hair and the sun on your face. I just kept telling myself I was lucky not to be six feet under.’
‘Shouldn’t think you needed to,’ Ben said dryly, pushing him through the car park to his BMW. ‘I would have thought you’d got Fran doing that for you, on the minute every minute. She was beside herself, you know, when she realised how dangerous it might have been.’
Mike gave a rusty chuckle. ‘She wasn’t alone. When I heard that tree go—well, let’s just say I won’t be taking chances like that again.’
‘Good. I’m glad to hear it, and I’m sure she will be. Right, shift across and I’ll get rid of the wheels
