But it wasn’t going to happen.
Climbing—a chance to think. Will knew someone else who’d taken that point of view. Two people, in fact. One of them was dead and the other was hundreds of miles away in a war zone, working for Médicins Sans Frontières. Just as Mallory could be doing shortly.
And it was all his fault. He had to live with the guilt for the rest of his life. If he’d been different, been a daredevil risk-taking climber like Roly instead of the sort who double-checked all his equipment and never took risks…But he wasn’t. And his fiancée Julie had fallen out of love with him and in love with his twin brother.
The night Roly and Julie had told him about their love affair, Will had switched his mobile phone off, taken his phone off the hook and tried to drown his sorrows—knowing that he wasn’t on call that night or over the weekend, so he wouldn’t be letting his patients down. But he’d been in no mood to think about the weather. He hadn’t even realised how bad the storm had got. The mountain rescue team hadn’t been able to get in touch with him. But they had managed to contact Roly. So Roly had been the one abseiling down the cliff to rescue the stupid, irresponsible, brainless climber who’d decided to tackle Sharp Edge—the scariest slopes in the Lakes—in appalling weather and had got stuck.
If he himself hadn’t been so selfish, trying to blot out his feeling of misery and betrayal, he would have been the one who’d answered the call. He would have been the one who’d plummeted down the cliff when the rope had snapped. Roly would still be alive, and Julie wouldn’t be nursing a broken heart. She wouldn’t be feeling so miserable without the love of her life that she’d be risking her own life in a war zone, because nothing mattered to her any more…
He pulled his thoughts away with difficulty. This wasn’t about him. It was about Mallory. Mallory, the stranger who’d come to his rescue at the accident and who even now was keeping him company when she owed him absolutely nothing.
Mallory, who was a trained GP.
And, like it or not, he had problems of his own to face as well. Such as who was going to replace him until he was fit enough to work again.
‘I might have a solution,’ Will said slowly. To both their situations.
She frowned. ‘What?’
‘Look at me.’ He gestured to himself. ‘I’m a GP. But I can’t see my patients from a hospital bed. And I’m left-handed.’ He gave his cast a rueful look. ‘Can’t update patient notes, can’t write out a prescription—can’t even sign one printed off the computer. Or drive out to house calls.’
‘I think driving’s out for a few weeks.’
She smiled. And it transformed her face so much he almost wished he hadn’t made her smile. Because it was like being a child with his nose pressed against the toyshop window, longing for something he couldn’t have.
‘Look, you need some space to think, a chance to see if you still want to work as a doctor, but without any pressure. I need a locum. And I really hate interviewing. Interviewing with a headache’s going to be even worse. So if you agree to be my locum, we could solve each other’s problems.’
She frowned. ‘But I’ve just told you. I nearly killed someone.’
‘You made a mistake—a mistake that anyone could have made in the circumstances,’ he corrected. ‘And you’ve already shown me that you’ve learned from it. Look at the way you double-checked whether I’d had a previous bad reaction to co-proxamol.’
‘Ye-es.’
Co-proxamol, which had taken away the pain. At least he could think clearly again. He wasn’t slurring any more either. And hopefully his mouth was working in synch with his brain again and he sounded coherent. Because he really, really needed to talk Mallory round to his way of thinking. ‘Everyone doubts themselves at some point. If a patient dies on you, you always think it’s your fault—that maybe you could have saved them if only you’d done something else, tried another drug or referred them for a different procedure.’
‘That’s different. It’s not the same as making a stupid mistake in the first place.’
‘A mistake that you won’t repeat. Don’t be so hard on yourself,’ Will said softly. ‘Everyone deserves a second chance.’
‘Can’t the others at your practice cover you?’
‘They’ve probably taken care of my list for today, they’ll manage tomorrow and it’s not my weekend on call anyway,’ Will said, ‘but it wouldn’t be fair of me to ask for more. I need a locum, starting Monday. It’s going to take—what, six weeks?—until my arm’s out of plaster, and who knows how long before my leg’s right again? Three months?’
‘Not to mention the physio you’ll need to stop your muscles atrophying. And remember, no weight on that leg—you don’t want to risk malunion. It’s the most common problem with a fractured tibia.’
He nodded. ‘See? You think like a doctor, Mallory.’
‘Maybe.’
‘Even if it’s only for a month, it’ll take the pressure off my partners,’ Will said.
‘And what will your senior partner have to say about it?’ Mallory persisted.
‘He agrees with me.’
She frowned. ‘But I’m the only one who’s visited you.’
‘I’m the senior partner.’
Mallory stared at him. ‘Either you’re incredibly young to be a senior partner, or you’ve got a picture in your attic.’
Well, of course he was young. He’d thrown himself into his work since the accident. But Mallory had enough on her plate. He wasn’t going to lay his own guilt trip on her. ‘Maybe both. I’m thirty-four.’
‘What will your partners think when you tell them you’ve picked a stranger off the streets to be your locum?’
‘A qualified doctor,’ he corrected, ‘who rescued me from the accident. Siobhan’ll say it’s fate. She and Tom’ll be delighted to have you on board. Nathan—he’s my practice manager—will be only too pleased not to have to go through the list of locums and find someone who wants to do more than one morning a week.’ He paused. ‘Um…you do want to do more than one morning a week?’
‘Yes. I could do three or four surgeries a week—even five—and still get a chance to explore the area.’
She meant ‘climb’. He forced himself to ignore the ache in his heart. ‘So. You’re a qualified GP. Vocational training up to date?’
She nodded. ‘And I’ve got certificates to prove it.’
‘Fully insured?’
‘Yes. I’ve got the papers, too.’
‘You’re MRCGP?’
‘Yes, I’m a Member of the Royal College of General Practitioners.’ She smiled. ‘OK, now I believe you’re an extremely young senior partner.’
‘Huh?’
