body seemed to have other ideas and wasn’t listening to the messages her brain was sending to it. Every time she caught his eye, there was a weird tingle at the base of her spine. Every time he spoke to her, her pulse sped up. Every time his hand brushed against hers when she handed over a set of notes or a piece of equipment, it felt as if an electric shock had gone through her. And it was wrong, wrong, wrong.
You, she told herself silently, need to get a life.
Starting tonight, when she was going out with the team for a Chinese meal.
The little boy’s breathing was ragged, as if he was trying to hold back tears. Lisa glanced swiftly at his notes. She could still remember being nine and how uncool it was to cry, especially for boys. ‘That looks painful,’ she said gently. ‘You’re being very brave, Sam.’
‘Yeah.’ The word was clipped, as if he didn’t trust himself to say any more. Didn’t trust himself not to start howling.
He’d clearly hit the ground hard, at speed, because his sweatshirt was in ribbons. The skin beneath it was lacerated and studded with gravel—it would need proper irrigation or he’d end up with an infection. And Lisa didn’t like the way he was nursing his arm. A dislocation at best—and a fracture at worst. Especially if the fracture involved the epiphyses, the growing ends of the long bones in the body, which could result in the growth plates fusing too early so the arm would be too short when Sam was fully grown. ‘What happened?’ she asked.
‘Fell off my bike,’ Sam muttered.
‘Tell the doctor the truth,’ his mother said, rolling her eyes.
‘I fell off,’ the boy insisted.
His mother sighed. ‘And you’re not getting any sympathy from me. I’ve told you before you’re not to go near Mr Cooper’s drive. And to wear elbow pads when you’re on your bike. At least you had the sense to keep your cycling helmet on.’ She looked at Lisa. ‘We live in a culde-sac. The boys all race like mad down it and stop just before they hit the old man’s drive at the end. It’s some stupid game where they see who can stop the fastest and the nearest to the gravel. Half the time they come straight over the handlebars. The other half, they skid on the gravel and come off. Just like that.’ She gestured to her son’s arm. ‘We’ve all told the kids not to do it—because it’s not fair to the old man, having them scatter his gravel everywhere, as well as it being dangerous for them—but since when do little boys ever listen to their mothers?’
‘I’m not a little boy. I’m almost a teenager,’ Sam grumbled.
‘You’ve got four years until you’re a teenager. That isn’t “almost”,’ his mother retorted. ‘Now, let the doctor look at your arm.’
‘It hurts,’ Sam said between clenched teeth.
‘I know, sweetheart, and I’ll try to make it stop hurting very soon. Can you wiggle your fingers for me?’ Lisa asked.
He did, but she noticed him flinching.
‘Where did it hurt most?’ she asked.
‘My arm.’
Wrist? Elbow?’
‘All of it.’
‘I really need to examine your arm properly,’ she said gently, ‘because you might have broken something or dislocated a joint. But first I think we need to stop it hurting, and I’ll also need to get all that grit out of your arm so it doesn’t get really sore.’
‘It hurts now.’ His eyes widened as she stepped nearer. ‘Don’t touch it. Please, don’t.’
She smiled at the boy. ‘I could leave it so you can gross out all your mates with the pus that’ll appear over the next day or so, but that’ll hurt an awful lot more in the long run. Trust me, it’ll hurt a lot less and heal much faster if you let me clean it properly now. What I’ll do is numb the area first so you won’t feel any pain.’
His eyes widened. ‘You mean, you’re going to stick a needle into me?’ He dragged in a shaky breath. ‘But they—they hurt!’
‘He had a bit of a bad time when the nurse at the surgery gave him his tetanus jab,’ Sam’s mother explained.
‘Poor you,’ Lisa said sympathetically. ‘But I’m really good at this. I bet you won’t even notice.’
‘I will,’ Sam said, and this time the tears came.
Oh, Lord. The poor kid really must be in pain: boys that age, in her experience, tried to tough it out as much as they could and hated to be treated as a baby. She had to do something—and fast.
‘Hey.’ She took his hand and squeezed it. ‘I know injections can be scary. But I promise you, it won’t hurt. And then all this pain in your arm will stop hurting, too. And did you know I have a special bravery certificate for boys who are being very, very brave like you are right now?’
‘I want to go home,’ he said, hiccuping through his sobs.
‘Give him a cuddle,’ she said softly to Sam’s mother, ‘and I’ll be back in a tick.’ She needed someone who was good at distracting—and that included the mum as well as the little boy. Lisa could understand the woman’s exasperation, because she’d obviously told her son time and time again to be careful on his bike and he hadn’t listened, but right now in her view Sam needed a cuddle more than a lecture. There would be time enough for telling him off later, when he’d stopped hurting.
Lisa twitched back the curtain, and nearly walked straight into Joel. She put both hands up in a gesture of apology. ‘Whoops! Sorry. I wasn’t looking where I was going.’ Though she was very, very aware of his physical presence. Tall and strong and reliable.
‘No worries. Everything all right?’
This was a very straightforward case and she really shouldn’t be asking a registrar for help with it, but Joel was good at the Sir Galahad bit. And if he did coastguard rescues, he’d probably dealt with a lot of really frightened children—boys around Sam’s age who went out on an inflatable full of bravado but then got trapped by the tide and ended up in tears.
And she’d just bet he’d be able to charm Sam’s mum. No woman would be immune to a smile from a man this gorgeous.
She screwed up her nose. ‘Have you got a minute, Joel?’
‘What’s up?’
She closed the curtain behind her and lowered her voice so her patient and his mother wouldn’t hear. ‘I’ve got a young lad who’s fallen off his bike. His arm’s a bit of a mess—and I’m not sure if he’s broken or dislocated something. He’s a bit chary about letting me look at it, and he’s scared stiff of needles. I need something to distract him so I can get a proper look and work out if he needs an X-ray. And I could really do with getting the mum to stop nagging him.’ She didn’t dare tell Joel she wanted him to use his sex appeal on the mum—because that would be a dead giveaway that she found him sexy. She’d concentrate on the little boy’s needs. ‘Are you good with kids, by any chance?’
Joel gave her an unreadable glance. ‘You could say that.’ Then the odd expression on his face vanished, and he smiled at her. ‘Want
