though he removed his hand, she still felt its warm imprint on her spine as they walked along the corridor towards the lift bay. It was a peculiar, intimate feeling, and she pulled in a quick breath to help her deal with the strange emotions that had suddenly overtaken her.
‘Perhaps.’ She nodded in agreement, though with any luck they’d go their separate ways. She still wasn’t sure quite how to deal with this new-style Matt. Over the last few months, she’d become used to their frequent, fairly good-natured spats, but now that he was being halfway nice to her she didn’t know how to take it.
She went straight to the children’s ward and introduced herself to the registrar on duty and to the nursing staff.
‘It’s good to see you again, Lucy,’ the registrar greeted her with a smile. They’d met before and talked occasionally whenever there had been a gig going on in the student union bar, and the last few times he had made a point of singling her out. James Tyler was tall and good-looking, in his mid-thirties, and she was sure he would be a catch for any girl but she wasn’t inclined to get involved with him, no matter how much he pushed the issue.
She’d been bitten a couple of times before, and he had all the hallmarks of being like the other men in her life—seduced by the way she looked, and interested only in one thing. She just wasn’t prepared to go down that route again, especially not at this particular time when she was completing the most difficult year of her medical studies.
‘You, too,’ she murmured, and listened attentively as he briefly outlined the case histories of the young patients in the unit.
‘Professor Farnham wants you to check on all the youngsters, and make yourself familiar with their conditions, and their treatment, medications and so on. When you’ve done that, he’d like you to take a look at the baby in here,’ he said, taking her over to the neighbouring bay. ‘See what you make of him. He’s ten months old.’
‘Do I get to look at his notes?’
He smiled. ‘Later. I think the professor wants to see what you come up with first.’
Lucy drew in a deep breath. ‘Okay. I’ll do my best.’
‘Good. I’ll leave you to it, if you don’t mind. I have to go and see to a patient who’s being admitted. The professor should be along in around an hour’s time—he’s been liaising with A and E over a ten-year-old who was injured in a traffic accident on the bypass this morning. We’ll be looking after him. The boy has a splenic injury, but he may not need surgery if we can keep him on supportive treatment for a while.’
Lucy frowned. ‘That must have been the accident I came across when I was on my way home from my parents’ house, first thing. Do you know if anyone else was injured?’
‘His parents escaped with minor injuries, and the driver of the other car has a broken arm. It seems they were lucky, all things considered. The boy was hurt when the side of the car was pushed inwards.’
‘Well, I’m glad I found out what happened to them, anyway.’
He moved away from her and Lucy went to introduce herself to the children on the ward. Some of them were very poorly, whilst others were on the way to recovery and greeted her cheerfully.
When she had finished getting to know them, she went back to the bay where her special patient, the ten-month-old baby, was sleeping. She walked over to the cot and gazed down at the tiny, pale-looking infant. He was receiving oxygen through thin tubes inserted in his nostrils, and when she looked at the monitors, she could see that his blood oxygen level was very low. He was breathing fast, and even with the oxygen therapy it seemed as though he was struggling to get enough air into his lungs.
‘You poor little thing,’ she murmured. ‘I’m going to disturb you for just a minute or two, poppet, while I listen to your chest.’ She put the earpieces of the stethoscope into her ears and warmed the chest piece with her hands before running it over the baby’s lungs.
‘What have you managed to find out, Lucy? Anything interesting?’
She jumped as Professor Farnham suddenly appeared at her side. Even more startling was the fact that Matt was with him. She looked at both of them, wide-eyed, before recovering herself and sliding the stethoscope back around her neck.
‘I—uh …’ What was Matt doing here? He wasn’t meant to be on this team, was he? The professor was waiting for an answer, though, and she hurriedly pulled herself together. ‘There are decreased breath sounds bilaterally and I heard inspiratory crackles, suggesting involvement of the deeper lung tissues. He has a high fever, he’s breathing fast and has shortness of breath. I’d say he was suffering from a severe chest infection, possibly pneumonia.’
The professor nodded. ‘And what procedures would you carry out?’
She gave it some thought. ‘Blood cultures, sputum sample and chest X-ray.’
‘Good, well done. Keep that up and you’ll get through your clinical exams without any trouble at all.’ He beamed at her. He was a tall, slim man, in his mid-fifties, she guessed, with dark brown hair that was beginning to grey a little at the sides. His hazel eyes showed an alert, keen intelligence. ‘The tests have already been done. Let’s see what the lab came up with, shall we?’ He moved over to the computer at the other side of the room, leaning over the table and pressing a few keys.
While the professor was otherwise engaged, Lucy sent Matt a narrowed glance. ‘What are you doing here?’ she mouthed silently.
‘New rotation,’ he mouthed back. ‘Paediatric medicine and intensive care.’
A small surge of dismay flowed through her. He could have told her before this, couldn’t he? As things were, it had come as something of a shock to discover that they would be working together, and she felt as though she had been completely wrong-footed. Why had he held back from telling her?
‘I thought it might put you off your stride if I told you this morning,’ he whispered, as though he had read her mind. ‘I only got the placement at the last minute when someone dropped out.’
‘Here we are,’ Professor Farnham said. ‘The test results are on screen. What do you make of them, Lucy?’
Discomfited, she hoped he wouldn’t notice the warm colour that had flooded her cheeks. She hated being put on the spot like this, with Matt looking on.
She went over to the table and studied the lab report. ‘It’s a bacterial infection—Staphylococcus aureus.’ She brought the X-ray film up on screen and studied it for a while. ‘Definitely pneumonia,’ she decided, ‘though there’s something else going on there.’ She hesitated, unsure of what she was seeing. ‘There appears to be some inflammation in the pleural space.’
‘What do you think, Matt?’ The professor waved Matt forward so that he could have a look.
‘I think she’s right. It could be an empyema,’ he said, ‘a collection of pus in the cavity between the lung and the inside of the chest wall. I expect that’s why the baby is in so much distress.’
The consultant nodded. ‘Usually, these things clear up with antibiotic treatment, but he’s already been given that. We might be dealing with a secondary infection here. I don’t think we can leave this one—perhaps you’d like to do the chest-drainage procedure? That should reduce the pressure and help the baby to breathe more comfortably.
