all the medicine in the world couldn’t heal. Because the only way to heal it was to face your demons head on. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Asks the man with a comminuted fracture of the upper tibia, a fractured radius and concussion,’ she quipped. The car crash had shattered the bone in Will’s leg, and when the impact had knocked him to the ground, he’d landed on his arm and the bone had snapped.
‘Comminuted fracture?’
‘Uh-huh. You got off lightly—just the tibia and not the fibula as well. And it was a closed fracture.’
She wasn’t teasing him. If your tibia broke, the force of the impact normally went through your interosseous membrane, the connective tissue lying between the two lower leg bones, and fractured your fibia as well. The layers of skin and tissues over the area were very thin, which usually meant that the broken bone pierced your skin, known as an ‘open fracture’. In Will’s case, the bone hadn’t gone through the skin.
But a comminuted fracture, meaning that the bone had shattered…There could be only one reason why he didn’t have a cast on. ‘Internal fixation?’ he asked.
Mallory nodded. ‘Absolutely. So no weight on that leg until the bone knits together again.’
He closed his eyes. ‘Three months.’ He’d be stuck, unable to do anything, for three whole months. At least.
‘Could be worse,’ she said, as if she’d read his mind—though his feelings had probably been written all over his face. ‘If it’d been your femur, you’d be in traction so you couldn’t even get around on crutches.’ If you’d broken your thigh bone, you needed traction to stop the large thigh muscles contracting and interfering with the blood supply, or even displacing the broken bone again. ‘And you’d have lost a lot more blood.’ Enough even to go into shock.
And she was changing the subject. ‘Lucky me,’ he said dryly, opening his eyes again. ‘But what about you?’
She shrugged. ‘I’m fine.’
She didn’t look it. Again, the words were out of his mouth before his brain had registered them. His brain definitely wasn’t involved because he sounded far more coherent than he felt. ‘Why don’t you grab a cup of coffee, sit down and tell me about it?’
‘Nothing to tell.’
‘Looks to me,’ he said quietly, ‘as if you need someone to listen. I’m not going anywhere. And I’m a doctor—what you tell me is just between us.’
‘You need to rest.’
He nodded. ‘And I also need something to take my mind off things till the co-proxamol kicks in properly. So talk to me. Tell me what’s wrong.’
Will’s eyes were what won the argument for him. Serious, yet with a certain warmth and honesty. Eyes that she could trust. Sexy, too…
No! She wasn’t going to start thinking that way about him. Even though he was cute. More than cute. Even lying in a hospital bed, in plaster and covered in bruises. Will Cooper was what Renee, her American sister-in-law, would call serious eye-candy. Dark hair that flopped over his forehead, eyes as blue as the sky at the top of a mountain, slight stubble that gave him a piratical look and the suggestion of a dimple in his cheek that would win any argument for him when he smiled.
It would be so easy to give in to the attraction. But Mallory couldn’t. She had nothing to give anyone right now. Not after Geoff. Her eye flicked automatically to Will’s left hand. No wedding ring visible, though that didn’t prove anything. He was probably married, or at least living with someone. So the chances were he wasn’t available anyway.
But she did need to talk. Will was right about that. ‘OK. Thanks.’
‘Coffee-bar on the ground floor. Better than the ward machine,’ he said. ‘They do take-away.’
‘Do you want me to bring you anything back?’
He shook his head. ‘Caffeine, right now, would blow my head off.’
‘I won’t be long,’ she promised.
The coffee-bar did a selection of tempting-looking cakes, including slices of Grasmere gingerbread and Westmorland pepper cake, but Mallory resisted the temptation, sticking to just a double espresso. By the time she got back to the ward, Will had fallen asleep.
She smiled ruefully—maybe their conversation just wasn’t meant to be—and quietly gathered her belongings together. She was about to tiptoe out of the cubicle when a husky voice demanded, ‘Where’re you going?’
Mallory nearly dropped her coffee. ‘I thought you were asleep!’
‘Just resting my eyes,’ He mumbled. ‘Sit. So, what’re you doing in the Lakes in January? Not th’ right time year f’ holiday.’
‘Will, you’re so tired, you’re slurring your words. You need to rest.’ She froze. ‘Unless you’re reacting to the co-proxamol.’
‘Neither. Talk to me,’ he insisted.
Mallory sighed. ‘I just need space to think,’ she said simply, dropping her rucksack and waterproof next to the chair and sitting down. ‘Make some decisions.’
‘Such as?’ he prompted.
This was it. The big one. Could she tell him?
But he was a stranger. Someone who wasn’t involved. Someone who might help her see a way through this whole mess. ‘Whether I’m cut out for a career in medicine. I thought maybe I’d done the wrong thing.’ How could she possibly stay on as a GP after what had happened? But, on the other hand, how could she break her father’s heart by giving up medicine? Whatever she did would be wrong.
‘Did all the right things with me,’ Will said. ‘Checked my pupils, kept me talking—till I passed out on you—double-checked the painkillers.’
‘Yes.’ She bit her lip. ‘When I saw the accident happen, my instincts took over. So maybe it’s a sign that I shouldn’t give up just yet.’
‘What made you think that you should?’
She stared into her coffee. ‘Because I nearly killed someone.’
THERE was a long, long pause. A pause in which Mallory couldn’t bring herself to look back at Will. A pause that seemed to last for hours, though it could only have been seconds.
‘What happened?’
His voice was gentle. Kind, not condemning. She glanced up at him and saw only concern in his eyes, not judgement. And then, at last, she was able to tell him.
‘One of my patients came in complaining of a sore shoulder.’ Mallory swallowed. ‘Lindy had been carrying her toddler about, so I just assumed it was a muscle sprain. I should have thought about shoulder-tip pain being caused by irritation of the diaphragm.’
Will
