stare as anything more than curiosity.
‘He’s English. Started work here the day after you left last week. We were all surprised. Turns out that Dave had health issues he didn’t want anyone to know about and finding his replacement had been kept well under wraps. Apparently we really scored getting this Dr Barrett. He’s been the head honcho at some big London hospital for years. Can’t remember which one. Hammersmith, maybe.’
Alice couldn’t trust herself to open her mouth. If she did she might tell Jo that it hadn’t been Hammersmith. It had been the same hospital she had worked in herself for over a year.
Until she’d been as good as fired.
By one Dr Andrew Barrett.
Jo didn’t know any of that story. No one here did and that was exactly the way Alice wanted it to be. No way was she getting pulled back anywhere near that black period of humiliation again. Not now. Apart from the death of her grandmother a year ago and the ten days leave she had just taken to sort out the eventual sale of the isolated cottage the only remaining member of her family had lived in, Alice’s life was finally on track again.
She was still staring at the profile of the man who presented a new and very unwelcome threat. Both professional and personal.
Why had he come all the way to the opposite side of the earth and picked the one place that was hers? It wasn’t as if New Zealand was that small. He could have picked one of the larger cities in the north island. Maybe they didn’t have as many ski fields or mountains to climb but they had plenty of water. He could have learned to sail. Or surf!
Maybe Pam would know why. Contact with the only friend she had kept from her time in London was well overdue and if what she was seeking was the kind of gossip she deliberately avoided, so be it. Knowledge was power and Alice certainly needed a boost.
Just making the decision to email Pam gave Alice the illusion of regaining some control. About to drag her gaze away from the new member of staff, she only just caught the movement as he raised his left hand to indicate something of interest on the image.
Unaware of the frown on her face, she turned to help Jo smooth and tuck fresh linen onto the bed. The last time she had seen Andy Barrett he had been wearing a wedding ring. A tight band of gold that had successfully suffocated any stupid fantasies she might have nurtured.
He wasn’t wearing it now.
The case in Resus 1 was a trauma. A thirty-five-year-old woman who was well known to emergency department staff: one of their ‘frequent flyers’. Her boyfriend had gang affiliations and was only too ready to use his fists and his feet when something displeased him, but Janine had steadfastly refused to lay any complaints against him on earlier visits. Maybe this time would be different, the triage nurse told the consultant. It was the worst punishment they’d ever seen her receive.
Janine lay, oddly quiet, on the bed, her face now so swollen it was obviously painful for her to speak.
‘No!’ she managed in response to Andrew’s careful suggestion. ‘No police. I told you. I fell down the stairs.’
Yeah…right. Stairs that had knuckles and heavy boots. The lacerations on her eyebrow and upper lip needed extensive suturing. A cheekbone was probably fractured and Andrew didn’t like the ugly purple bruises already appearing on her ribs as a nurse cut away her clothing.
‘Can you take a deep breath for me?’ Andrew was using both hands to examine her ribs as gently as he could.
‘Ahhh!’ It was the first indication Janine had given of her level of pain.
‘Pretty sore, isn’t it?’ Her breathing was adequate but unsurprisingly shallow. ‘What score would you give it on a scale of one to ten, Janine? Ten being the worst.’
‘I’m all right.’ Janine sounded as if she was holding her breath now. She had her eyes closed and beads of perspiration mingled with the blood on her forehead. She was a long way from being all right.
‘Anything else hurting that much?’
A tear escaped puffy eyelids. ‘My…arm, I guess.’
The sleeve of a ragged jersey was being peeled away and the deformity of Janine’s wrist and lower arm was obvious. Another fracture. Almost open. Andrew could see the bone just under the skin. Checking limb baselines like movement and sensation and perfusion seemed inadvisable until the fracture was secured. Even trying to wriggle her fingers might be enough to break the skin and risk infection. He turned to the nurse and lowered his voice.
‘She didn’t come in by ambulance, did she?’
Jo shook her head. ‘Private car. She was left outside Reception to make her own way inside.’
Andrew’s mouth tightened as he shook his head in disgust. He had to bury the anger that might have made him storm out of here if the bastard was hanging around. He had to rid his head of the ugly words he would like to have said to the kind of man who could treat a woman like this.
And, most of all, he had to dismiss the memory of what it felt like to be suspected of being that kind of man. ‘Let’s get an IV line in and a splint on this arm,’ he ordered crisply. ‘We’ll get some pain relief on board and then do a thorough secondary survey before we start the X-rays.’
Another nurse entered the resuscitation area as Andrew slipped a tourniquet around Janine’s arm and tightened it. ‘I’m going to put a small needle in your hand,’ he warned his patient. ‘Then we can give you something for the pain. Okay?’
Janine nodded. The movement made her wince. In his peripheral vision, as he anchored a vein and slipped a cannula into place, Andrew could see the new nurse sliding a well padded cardboard splint under Janine’s broken arm and then starting to secure it. Her movements were sure and careful enough not to cause further damage or pain.
He taped the cannula and looked up properly this time, intending to let the nurse know that she’d done a good job. It was just as well he hadn’t done this a few seconds ago. He might have missed the vein completely.
Alice Palmer?
He’d known she came from New Zealand. Why had it not even occurred to him that she might be working in a hospital here again? Because the odds of it being the same one he’d been offered a job in by an old acquaintance were so small? Or was it because he’d been so determined to put any thoughts of her and the period of his life she’d been a part of completely behind him?
How ironic that he’d come this far to get away from it all. To start again and here it was, staring him in the face. Right beside a case that graphically represented most of what he’d been trying to escape.
He stared back.
How much did Alice know? Not much, presumably, because she’d lost her job before it had started. Unfair dismissal, as it had turned out. And he’d been responsible. He had had every intention of telling her, but when he’d gone to the address the woman in Personnel had given, he’d found an empty house with a ‘For Sale’ sign outside that had a cheerful ‘Sold’ sticker planted in the centre. It had been six months after the event, in any case, and someone in Emergency had suggested that Alice had left the country.
He couldn’t
