say it was just for a few days, and we have a couple of vacant places available while people are away on holiday.’ The woman smiled, watching Becky as she lay gurgling on the mat, trying to clasp the plastic toys that dangled overhead from the play gym. ‘She looks as though she’s a contented child.’
‘Yes, she is, for the most part.’ Which was just as well, because with all the problems that had cropped up of late, Ruby was sure she wouldn’t have been able to cope with a fractious infant. Things had been going reasonably well until the day before yesterday, when Sophie had gone out, saying she was going on an errand to the shops. When she didn’t return, Ruby had begun to worry.
There was still no sign of her, and Ruby was becoming increasingly anxious. She had tried contacting her by phone, and she’d searched high and low before frantically enlisting the help of the police. Sophie was now officially a missing person, and no one had any idea where she had gone.
It had all come as such a shock, and now Ruby was finding it difficult to juggle work in A&E with looking after the baby. How was she going to cope when she had to move into the farmhouse over the weekend now that Sophie was gone? There would be a whole lot more problems for her to concentrate on then.
‘I’ll come back at lunchtime to see how she’s getting on,’ she said, reluctantly preparing to leave.
‘That’s good.’ The nursery matron gave Ruby a reassuring smile, probably sensing her underlying anxiety. ‘I’m sure she’ll be fine.’
Yes, most likely she would. Ruby cast a last, fleeting glance at the baby before she left the room. Becky had no idea of the disturbance that had ebbed and flowed around her since her mother’s health had begun to decline. And now Sophie was missing.
Bracing herself to face the rest of the day, Ruby made her way back down to A&E. She stopped by the central desk and made a few phone calls, first of all, checking up on the patients who had spent the previous day in the observation ward.
‘No problems to speak of,’ Lorraine, the nursing supervisor, told her. ‘We’ve arranged for two children with chest infections, query pneumonia, to be admitted, as you asked. Apart from those, everyone else looks fit enough to be discharged.’
‘That’s good to hear. I’ll drop by later this morning and finish the paperwork.’ Ruby hesitated. ‘Is there any news on Charlie—the infant with breathing difficulties? I put him on humidified oxygen, and then we had to add nebulised adrenaline because he wasn’t responding too well to treatment. Last time I went to see him he was showing a little bit of improvement.’
‘The boy with bronchiolitis? Yes, I checked for you. He was admitted to the paediatric ward from Intensive Care, and by all accounts he’s doing fine.’
‘Oh, that’s brilliant. Thanks for checking for me, Lorraine.’
‘You’re very welcome. See you later, then.’
‘Yes, I’ll come over to you in a couple of hours or so.’ Ruby replaced the receiver and began to hunt through a pile of papers in the wire tray on the desk.
‘Nothing’s going according to plan lately,’ Olivia said, coming to stand beside her. ‘I thought things were bad enough when I heard that we have two nurses off sick, but then I saw the management circular that was passed around first thing this morning. They’re talking about downgrading us to an urgent care centre…and that’s even before the meeting where it’s all supposed to be decided.’ She huffed, showing her annoyance.
‘I don’t know how our trauma victims would have fared if they’d been sent to the Heritage,’ Ruby commented. ‘Some of them were in a precarious condition when they arrived here.’ As it was, the patients who had been involved in traffic accidents a few days ago had either been operated on and were now recovering on the wards, or had been discharged.
Ruby glanced at the senior house officer briefly. Olivia was in a decidedly crotchety mood today, her usually serene face etched with lines of tension. ‘Is that all that’s bothering you?’
‘Not really. I took a look in the waiting room, and straightaway I wished I hadn’t.’
‘Oh, why’s that?’ Ruby glanced through a sheaf of lab test results, searching for a diagnosis on a small patient. If only her sister Sophie’s medical problems could have been properly diagnosed before she’d decided to take off. For that must be what lay behind her disappearance, surely? She didn’t think anything more sinister lay behind her failure to return, given that the police had let her know that she had been spotted boarding a bus in town on the day she had vanished without a trace.
Olivia started to answer, and Ruby dragged her mind back to the job in hand.
‘I’m out of sorts because that man’s in there again…the one who’s kept complaining of back pain ever since he was involved in a car accident some time ago. He’s been in here several times over the last few months, but we never seem to be able to get to the bottom of what’s causing his problems. Dr Stanford said they’d done all the tests and found no lasting damage. He told him he should go and see his GP about any symptoms he has, but he always comes up with some reason why he has to be here in emergency. Today it’s because he almost passed out when he went to fetch something from the local garage, and the manager brought him straight to the hospital.’
‘Oh, I see.’ Ruby nodded. ‘Well, I’ll take a look at him if you like. We’re not exactly overrun with dire emergencies at the moment, are we?’ She clamped a hand over her mouth. ‘Oh, I can’t believe I just said that.’
‘Said what? Is there a problem?’ Sam came to join them at the desk, tilting his head slightly to one side as he cast a quizzical glance over her. His black hair was crisply styled, framing his strong-boned features to perfection. His blue-grey eyes studied her curiously. ‘You’ve not been your usual self these last few days, have you? Is something wrong?’
Ruby gazed at him in wonder, slightly thrown by his tall, dark presence. She ought to be used by now to the way he had of appearing out of nowhere, but perhaps she wasn’t fully on the ball. Somehow or other he always managed to make her heart leap into an odd, hasty rhythm.
As to her mood, she was startled that he had even noticed her frame of mind. He was always so busy tending to seriously ill patients or organising the day-to-day management of the unit. Because of the cutbacks he had been forced to make, there were new difficulties arising all the time.
She shook her head. ‘Nothing’s wrong. Everything’s fine.’ She wasn’t going to lay out all her troubles for him to pick over. He was a man, first of all, energetic, efficient and direct, everything appearing clearly black or white, and he would probably have next to no understanding of the emotional side of things, the grey edges that tended to blur judgement.
‘Except that she just said how quiet it is in here today,’ Olivia pointed out. ‘You know what that means, don’t you? Lights will start flashing and sirens will be blaring within seconds, and the next thing you know, we’ll be swamped under a deluge of patients.’ She shook her head. ‘Even I know not to tempt fate that way.’ Her mouth made a flat line. ‘Still, we have to make allowances, I suppose. Ruby has to go and take over at her Gran’s smallholding this weekend, so she’s probably not thinking straight. Just contemplating the work involved would be enough to make me quake. Cleaning out the chicken run…mucking out after the ponies…and that’s before we even get to the goats.’
‘Goats? Good grief.’ Sam’s brows shot up. ‘You’re not seriously going to do all that,
