she seemed oblivious to it. ‘I’m on duty at six tomorrow morning,’ she said. ‘I have no milk. How can I have coffee with no milk? And how can I start work with no coffee?’
‘I see your need,’ he said gravely. ‘And I’m trained for triage. Priority one, the lady needs milk. Priority two, the lady needs home, wash, sleep. I can cope with milk and home. Can you take it from there?’
It was the right thing to say. Setting limits. Giving her a plan. He’d used this with parents of his patients hovering at the edges of control, and it worked now.
There were no more arguments. She gave him another smile, albeit a weak one, and he led her to his car.
He climbed in beside her, but still he felt strange. Why?
Forget imagined links, he told himself. This was crazy. He didn’t do emotional connection. He would not.
Get this night over with, he told himself. Buy the lady some milk and say goodnight.
He drove a great vehicle for surfing. It was no doctor’s car, she thought as he threw a heap of towels on the front seat. The Jeep was battered, coated with sand and salt, and liberally sprinkled with Labrador hair. Any qualms she had about spoiling the beauty of one of the sleek, expensive sets of wheels she was used to seeing in most doctors’ car parks went right out the window.
Sam wasn’t your normal doctor.
He didn’t look your normal doctor either. He was sand-and salt-stained as well, with his sun-bleached hair and crinkled eyes telling her that surfing was something he did all the time, as much a part of him as his medicine must be.
But he was a doctor, and a good one, she suspected. She’d seen his skill at stitching. She’d also heard the transition from personal to professional as he’d coped with her emotional outburst.
Though there’d been personal in there as well. There’d been raw emotion as he’d seen Bonnie—and there’d been something more than professional care as he’d held her.
Well, she’d saved his dog.
She was trying to get a handle on it. She was trying to fit the evening’s events into the impersonal. Nurse saves doctor’s dog, nurse angry at doctor for leaving dog on beach, nurse hits doctor, doctor hugs nurse.
It didn’t quite fit.
‘I’m normally quite sane,’ she ventured as he pulled up outside a convenience store.
‘Me, too.’ He grinned. ‘Mostly. What sort of milk?’
‘White.’
His grin widened. ‘What, no unpasteurised, low-fat, high-calcium, no permeate added…’
‘Oi,’ she said. ‘White.’
He chuckled and went to buy it. She watched him go, lean, lithe, tanned, muscled legs, board shorts, T-shirt, salt-stiff hair—everything about him screaming surfer.
He was pin-up material, she thought suddenly. He was the type of guy whose picture she’d have pinned on her wall when she’d been fifteen.
She’d pinned these sorts of pictures all over her wall when she’d been a kid. Her parents had had a board they’d brought in to her various hospital wards to make her feel at home. She’d had pictures of surfing all over it. She would lie and watch the images of lean bodies catching perfect waves and dream…
But then Sam was back with her milk and she had to haul herself back to the here and now.
‘My purse is in my car,’ she said, suddenly horrified.
‘I’ll fix it,’ he said. ‘You’ll get it back tonight.’
She knew he would. I’ll fix it.
She actually didn’t like it all that much. Other people fixing stuff for her…
She had to get a grip here. Getting her purse and paying for her milk were not enough to start a war over.
She subsided while he drove the short distance to the hospital apartment car park. The parking space he drove into indicated it belonged to ‘Mr Sam Webster. Paediatric Cardiology’.
Mr. That meant he was a surgeon.
Paediatric cardiology. Clever.
She glanced across at him and tried to meld the two images together—the specialist surgeons she’d worked with before and the surfer guy beside her.
‘I clean up okay,’ he said, and it felt weird that he’d guessed her thoughts. ‘I make it a rule never to wear board shorts when consulting. Hey, Callie!’
A woman was pulling in beside them—Dr Callie Richards, neonatal specialist. Zoe had met this woman during the week and was already seriously impressed. Callie was maybe five years older than Zoe but a world apart in medical experience. In life experience, too, Zoe had thought. She’d seemed smart, confident, kind—the sort of colleague you didn’t want to meet when you were looking…like she was looking now. She’d also seemed aloof.
But Sam was greeting her warmly, calling her over.
‘Callie, could you spare us a few minutes?’ he called. ‘We’ve had a bit of a traumatic time. Bonnie was hit by a car.’
‘Bonnie!’ Callie’s face stilled in shock and Zoe realised she knew the dog. Maybe the whole hospital knew Bonnie, she decided, thinking back to those trusting Labrador eyes. Bonnie was the sort of dog who made friends.
‘We think she’ll be okay,’ Sam said hurriedly, responding to the shock on Callie’s face, ‘but I need to get back to the vet’s. This is Zoe…’ He looked a query at Zoe. ‘Zoe…’
‘Payne,’ Zoe said. She was on the opposite side of the Jeep from Sam and Callie, and knowing how she looked she was reluctant to move.
‘I know Zoe,’ Callie said, smiling at her. ‘New this week? From Adelaide?’
That was impressive. One brief meeting in the wards, doctor and nurse, and Callie had it.
‘Yeah, well, she’s had a baptism by fire,’ Sam said grimly. ‘I was out in the surf when Bonnie was hit, and she saved her life. We’ve just spent two hours operating and Zoe rocks. But now she’s covered in gore and she’s got a bit of delayed shock. I don’t want to leave her but I need—’
‘To get back to Bonnie—of course you do.’ And Callie moved into caretaker mode, just like that. ‘Go, Sam, I’ll take care of Zoe.’
‘I don’t need—’
‘Let Sam go and then we’ll discuss it,’ Callie said, and Zoe hauled herself together—again—and gave a rueful smile. Sam handed Callie Zoe’s milk, as Zoe climbed out of the Jeep. Then, he was gone.
Callie was brisk, efficient and not about to listen to quibbles. She ushered Zoe into the lift and when it stopped on the first floor to admit a couple of nurses she held up her hand to stop them coming in.
‘Closed
