poorly head is coming to see you and then we’ll give you something to make it feel better.’
It was the same as before. He heard the door behind him open and shut and she was standing beside him, the pale-faced doctor who had been there for Lucy when he hadn’t been.
‘Hello, Lucy,’ she said quietly. ‘How are you feeling?’
‘My head hurts,’ she said fretfully.
‘I’m sure that it does. You gave it a nasty knock and I had to put you together again like they tried to do for Humpty Dumpty. Sister is going to give you something to stop it hurting and a nice cool drink. Then later on we’ll take some pictures of your head.’
‘Will that hurt?’ Lucy asked.
‘We’ll be very gentle,’ Annabel promised, then turned to the tall figure beside her. ‘Does she remember what happened?’
‘Yes, thank goodness.’
His eyes were moist and if he hadn’t been Head of Paediatrics she would have put a comforting hand out to him, but she’d never operated on the child of a top doctor before, she thought wryly, and didn’t know what the rules were.
Aaron’s glance had switched to his mother.
‘Go home and get some rest,’ he told her gently. ‘You’ve had an anxious time. I wish you could have been spared it. The folks in Reception will get you a taxi and I’ll use your car when I come home, which will be a while yet.’
‘All right,’ she agreed, getting to her feet. ‘Now that I’ve seen Lucy awake I feel better.’ Planting a kiss on her granddaughter’s bruised cheek, she went.
As a nurse gave the little girl something for the pain and a drink in a cup with a spout so that she didn’t have to move, Annabel said, ‘You are lucky to have such a wonderful mother. Does she live with you?’
He was staring at her with raised brows and she felt her cheeks reddening. Aaron Lewis must think her extremely nosy, she thought as she fiddled with her stethoscope and pushed back a strand of hair off her brow.
It seemed an eternity before he spoke and then he said, ‘Yes, my mother is wonderful and, yes, she does live with us. Having her there helps to make up for Lucy’s mother not being around any more.’
If he was expecting her to start asking questions about that after her first display of curiosity he was very much mistaken, she decided. Though by now she was intrigued.
It would all come out eventually as they were going to be working together, most of the time in close proximity. Aaron and his team were involved in diagnosis and treatment, while the other surgeons and herself performed the necessary surgery that would bring their small patients back to health. And for those who were not so lucky, a better quality of life...
* * *
Aaron was still there late that evening. He wasn’t officially on duty for a couple of days, which would have given him time to relax before going back to Barnaby’s, but all that had changed and Annabel thought that, jetlagged or not, this man was staying put until he was happy about his daughter’s condition.
A junior doctor and a relief surgeon from the General Hospital were due to come on duty at ten o’clock and that would be the routine until the other two regulars came back.
Aaron had been by Lucy’s side while further scans had been done to check on the success of the operation, and soon they would know whether the man who was seeing the other face of medicine, from the position of anxious parent, could relax.
Annabel didn’t know why but she felt an affinity with him. Maybe it was because she’d recently suffered a great loss herself and had known the aching grief that had come with the knowledge that her baby would never see the light of day.
She’d dealt with grieving and frantic parents since then but had never felt like this, and she told herself it must be because they were both doctors seeing life from the opposite side of the fence.
The results came through just as she was due to go off duty at ten o’clock and as they studied them the two doctors were smiling. The skull was as back to normal in shape and size as it could be so soon after surgery. There was no bleeding and the bone fragments were still in place where she’d repaired them.
When he turned to her there was warmth in his eyes for the first time and he said abruptly, ‘I think some thanks are overdue, Dr Swain. Charles Drury, who I hold in high esteem, couldn’t have done better.’
She smiled and he thought that with a bit more life in her and some natural colour in her cheeks this hazel-eyed doctor would be quite something. His glance went to her hands. There was no wedding ring on view. But that didn’t mean anything these days. She could have a partner. Though that wasn’t likely if she was living in the soulless block in the hospital grounds.
There was a solitariness about her. The air of a loner. Curiosity was stirring in him, but he wasn’t going to let her see it. He would find out soon enough what was going on in her life if they were going to be teaming up on the wards.
She was ready to leave and Aaron was still sitting beside a sleeping Lucy.
‘I’m finished for the day, Dr Lewis,’ she said quietly. ‘But if you need me at all during the night, call me. A junior doctor and a surgeon on loan from the General are taking over now, but Lucy is my patient and I want it to stay that way.’
He nodded, almost asleep himself as jet-lag was beginning to take over.
‘Why don’t you go home for a couple of hours?’ she suggested. ‘It must be quite some time since you slept. I believe you’ve been on a tour of paediatric hospitals in America and were met at the airport with news of Lucy’s accident.’
‘I suppose I could pop home for an hour,’ he was saying. ‘I need a shower and a change of clothes, and at the moment all is quiet with Lucy so, yes, Dr Swain, I’ll take your advice.’
‘The name is Annabel,’ she told him.
Again he was aware of her in a strange sort of way.
‘Suits you,’ he commented briefly. ‘At least it would if...’
His voice had trailed away and with a wry smile she finished the sentence for him, ‘I wasn’t such a washed-out mess?’
For the first time in ages she was bothered about what someone thought of her.
It was Aaron’s turn to smile.
‘That isn’t how I would describe you. It would be more along the lines of someone who looks as if they need plenty of rest and vitamins. Have you been ill recently?’
‘No,’ she said, not sure if a painful miscarriage came into that category.
‘So it must just be due to the strains and stresses of health care that get to us all at one time or another,’ he commented, and with nothing further to say she nodded.
* * *
When Annabel had gone, Aaron did as she’d suggested and drove the short distance to the house that he
