she relaxed a little. Maybe this wasn’t going to be so bad after all. He looked terrific, lean and flat-stomached, every bit as good as the first day she’d seen him. The jacket of his suit was open, revealing a deep blue shirt teamed with a silver-grey tie. His cufflinks were of the same silver-grey pattern.
‘Dr Reynolds and I have already met,’ he said, addressing his colleagues. ‘It turns out that she’s a neighbour of mine.’ He looked into her green eyes, adding in a low voice, ‘I didn’t know the name of our applicant until this morning, and even then I wasn’t sure it would turn out to be you.’ His well-shaped mouth made a faint curve. ‘Perhaps I should have guessed as time went on. It sort of fitted somehow.’ He didn’t look at his watch, but she caught his drift all the same.
He released her and she sat down carefully. She cleared her throat. ‘I must apologise for being so late,’ she said, looking from one to another. How much should she tell them? ‘I had a few unavoidable domestic issues to contend with this morning—and then the dog was sick just as I was leaving the house. Um...on top of that, I didn’t realise quite how long it would take me to walk to the hospital.’ She winced inwardly. She was babbling, wasn’t she, saying too much? They didn’t need to know all that. ‘It was my mistake, but I’ll be certain to make better arrangements from now on.’
‘I’m sure you will.’ Dr Gregson picked up a folder and leafed through it, saying after a while, ‘Would you like to tell us a bit about your last post? You worked at a hospital in Cornwall, I believe?’
‘That’s right.’ She was on much safer ground with this. ‘I started off there as a senior house officer in the A and E department. I had to deal with all kinds of emergencies, both traumatic and general. A good percentage of my patients were youngsters.’
‘That’s valuable experience. Good...good...’ Dr Gregson riffled through his papers. ‘Your references are all in order from what I can see, and your qualifications are impeccable. You’ve specialised in emergency medicine and paediatrics, as well as spending some time in general practice—that’s excellent, exactly what we’re looking for.’ He glanced at her. ‘It’s a little unusual, though, to mix hospital work with general practice, isn’t it?’
She faltered briefly, caught on the back foot. ‘Ah...that’s true, of course...but...initially I wasn’t sure which specialty appealed to me the most.’ She squirmed a little. Tyler Beckett would never be unsure of himself, would he? ‘I enjoyed working in a GP’s surgery for a year, but after attending several emergency cases during that time I realised that’s what I wanted to do more than anything.’
Dr Gregson nodded. ‘I see.’ He turned to his colleagues. ‘Do you have any questions you’d like to put to Dr Reynolds?’
Tyler nodded. ‘I do have one query,’ he said, his tone sober. ‘Ah...about these references...’ He was sifting through his copy of the paperwork, and she glanced at him, sitting stiffly upright, suddenly on alert.
‘Is there a problem?’
‘Not a problem as such... I’m just a little concerned about one aspect of your work that hasn’t been mentioned here...’
She frowned. ‘I can’t think of anything I might have left out.’
He gave her a direct look. ‘No, except—there was an occasion when you lost a patient, I believe. Would you like to tell us about that incident...about what happened?’
Saskia sucked in a sharp breath. ‘But how did you...? I thought—’ She broke off, uncertain where this line of questioning was coming from.
Noah frowned, sending Tyler a questioning, disbelieving look, as though he couldn’t fathom why his colleague would want to upturn the apple cart this way.
‘It’s just something your previous consultant mentioned.’ Tyler used a soothing voice, as though he wanted to put her at ease. ‘I didn’t fully understand the implications and I thought you might be able to clear it up for us.’
‘M-my consultant?’ She gazed at him in consternation, her green eyes troubled.
‘Yes. It just happened that I rang the hospital in Truro this morning,’ he explained, ‘to enquire about a patient of mine who was recently admitted, and I was put on to Michael Drew. He was your consultant, wasn’t he?’
Michael. The breath left her body in a soft gasp and her stomach began to churn. She might have known this would come up to bite her. She’d made a mistake, getting involved with Michael. In the end he’d been more than just her consultant, and that’s when things had started to go downhill, hadn’t they?
It had been fine at first. They’d dated for a time, and she’d enjoyed his company, but eventually, when she’d realised he was becoming too controlling, she’d called a halt to things between them. Michael hadn’t taken it well, and eventually the situation between them had deteriorated to a point where life at work had become intolerable. That was partly why she’d made up her mind it was time to look around for another job.
And now this... It looked as though Michael had thrown a spanner into the works at the worst possible time. She hadn’t been able to avoid giving his name for a reference, and he’d assured her that she had nothing to worry about. But now—what could he have said to Tyler? Clearly their break-up still rankled with him, and although she’d hoped he would be adult about things, she really wouldn’t put it past him to try to make life difficult for her.
Tyler watched the variety of expressions flit across her face. He said quietly, ‘When I realised who he was, that you and he had worked together, we got to chatting, and that’s when he mentioned your patient. He only brought it up as a humorous anecdote.’
Her mouth made a wry twist at that and he paused momentarily. ‘He said you’d lost her and there was a big hue and cry until she was found again. But by then she needed treatment for another condition.’
He rested his hands on top of the file, lacing his fingers together. ‘It might have seemed slightly amusing afterwards, when the worry was over, but I’m sure you can see why this has to be cleared up, can’t you? We need to be reassured that our patients are going to be in the best possible hands.’
‘Yes, of course, I understand perfectly.’ Saskia moistened her lips, unhappily aware that Noah and Dr Gregson had both straightened and were paying her close attention. ‘The truth is I didn’t find anything at all humorous about the situation at any time, when it was going on or afterwards. And I didn’t lose her—not exactly.’
‘So, what happened?’
‘She was a woman in her sixties suffering from what appeared to be dementia. A passer-by had brought her into the hospital because she’d had a fall and hurt her arm.’
She was silent for a moment, remembering the hectic activity in the emergency unit that day. ‘We were very busy in A and E that morning, and we were short-staffed. Some of the nurses were off sick with a bug that was going around. I didn’t have anyone to assist me, but I was keen to do further tests on my patient—alongside my concerns over her arm I wasn’t absolutely convinced she had dementia. Anyway, I asked her to stay in the treatment cubicle while I went to find a porter to take the blood samples over to Pathology. But when I came back to see her a couple of minutes later, she’d gone walkabout.’
‘That was tough luck,’ Noah sympathised.
She nodded. ‘It was worrying. We couldn’t find her anywhere nearby. Then it
