to be deep. The blood wasn’t pumping—the radial artery must surely be intact—but the gash from multiple glass shards tentacled out from wrist to palm. In a child, this amount of bleeding could well lead to collapse.
‘I’m a doctor,’ she told him, gentling her voice. ‘The glass has cut your hand, but we can fix it. Right now, though, it’s looking messy, so we need to stop it bleeding. You’ll feel better if you don’t look at it until we’ve cleaned it up. Look at your brothers, or look at the hole in my window. That’s quite a hole.’
She was manoeuvring his hand upward, edging her body to block his gaze. The ball fell to the ground as she lifted his hand high, curling his palm in slightly so the hand created its own pressure on the pierced palm. There could well be shards of glass in there but now wasn’t the time to remove them. She needed a surgery, equipment, help.
‘Can you run inside and get your mum or dad?’ she called to the two boys on the far side of the hedge. ‘Ask them to bring out a towel. Run!
‘Tell me your name,’ she asked the little boy.
She got a blank look in response. Fear.
‘He’s Christopher,’ the elder of the pair behind the hedge called. ‘But we call him Kit. Are you really a doctor?’
‘I am. Could you fetch your parents please? Now! Kit needs your help.’
‘We don’t have parents. Just a stepfather.’
Just a stepfather.
Why did that make her freeze?
The wave of nausea that swept through her was as vicious as it was dumb. Her past was just that—past—and it had no place here, now. Somehow, she managed to fight back the bile rising in her throat, to haul herself together, to become the responsible person these boys needed.
She needed a plan.
She needed a responsible adult to help her.
Her phone was inside. Where had she put it? Somewhere in the muddle of unpacked goods?
She daren’t let Kit’s arm go to find it herself. He was too big for her to pick up and carry. He was also looking increasingly pale. Had these kids been left on their own?
‘Where’s your stepfather now?’ she asked, and stupidly she heard the echoes of her dumb, visceral response to the word in her voice.
‘At work,’ the eldest boy told her.
‘Is there anyone else here?’
‘Christine’s inside, watching telly.’
‘Then fetch her,’ she ordered. ‘Fast. Tell her Kit’s hurt his hand and he’s bleeding. Tell her I need a towel and a phone. Run.’
‘Can you just put a plaster on it?’ the older boy asked. ‘We don’t want to tell Christine. She’ll tell Tom.’
‘What’s your name?’
‘Marcus. And this is Henry. Please don’t tell. If we misbehave, Tom’ll make us go back to our grandparents.’
‘You haven’t misbehaved. The ball broke my window, not you,’ she told him. She’d tell him anything he liked to get help right now. ‘Marcus, this cut is too big for a plaster. Kit needs Christine. I need Christine. Run.’
He shouldn’t have left the boys with Christine. Normally Tom Lavery used his next-door neighbour, Rose, as childminder. Rose was in her seventies, huge-hearted, reliable. The boys loved her, but this morning she’d fallen and hurt her hip. It was only bruised, thank heaven, but she needed rest.
This weekend was also the annual field-day-cum-funfair at Ferndale, two hours’ drive across the mountains. For the isolated town of Shallow Bay, the Ferndale Show was huge. Practically the entire population took part, with cattle parades and judging, baking competitions, kids’ activities. As Shallow Bay emptied, Christine, Rose’s niece, had become his childminder of last resort.
‘Worrying?’ Roscoe, Shallow Bay’s hospital nurse administrator, was watching Tom from the far side of the nurses’ station. Tom was supposed to be filling in patient histories. Instead he’d turned to the window, looking down towards the cottage.
‘Go home and check,’ Roscoe said. For a big man—make that huge—Roscoe was remarkably perceptive. ‘You’ll be writing Bob up for antacids instead of antibiotics if you’re not careful.’
‘I’m careful.’ He hauled his attention back to his job. ‘Christine can cope.’
‘As long as there’s no ad for hair curlers on telly. You know she’s a dipstick,’ Roscoe said bluntly.
Roscoe’s smile was half hidden by his beard, but it didn’t hide the sympathy. ‘Go home, doc,’ he told him again. ‘I’ll ring you if I need you, and I’ll drop these charts off for you to fill in after the boys go to sleep tonight. I wish you could be taking the boys across to Ferndale, but hey, you have another doctor here on Monday. All problems solved, no?’
No, Tom thought as he snagged the next chart and started writing. It was all very well for Roscoe to say he could do these tonight, but if he fell behind in his paperwork he’d never catch up.
Another hour…
But he glanced at the window one last time. The boys were capable of anything.
For what was maybe the four thousandth time over the last two years he thought, What have I let myself in for?
How long’s for ever?
And then his attention was diverted. There was a car speeding up the track from the bay. A scarlet roadster. A two-seater.
Tom’s cottage was one of only three down that road. Few people used it except for Tom, Rose and Rose’s occasional visitors.
And the new doctor? He’d been told she’d collected the key from Reception a couple of hours back. Poppy, the junior nurse who’d given her the key, had been frustratingly vague when asked for a description. ‘Quite old, really,’ she’d said, which in Poppy’s twenty-two-year-old eyes meant anything over twenty-three. ‘And ordinary. Just, you know, dullsville when it comes to clothes. Didn’t say much, just took the key and said she’d be at work at nine on Monday. She drives a cool car, though.’
If this was it, it certainly was cool, a streamlined beauty, the kind of car Tom used to love to drive—in another life.
So this would be Rachel Tilding, the new doctor, the latest of the Lavery Scholarship recipients, here to pay her dues with two years’ service. He imagined she’d be heading to the shops to buy supplies or a takeaway meal for dinner. He should drop over tonight to say hi.
But tonight he didn’t have his normal backup of Rose, who was always ready to slip over and mind the kids whenever he needed to go out. He could scarcely go over bearing wine and casserole and say, Welcome to Shallow Bay. Plus, he was dead tired. If he had the energy to make a casserole there’d be no way it’d leave his house.
