a deep breath and went back to the videos. He needed to do something constructive and worthwhile.
The call to the emergency room—hardly big enough to deserve the name ‘department’—sent him in search of work, which was an even better diversion than the soccer team.
Although the ghost of Ellie always worked beside him, for this had been their dream: to work together in the country, bringing much-needed medical services to people who’d so often had to go without.
The patient was a child, a young boy—maybe twelve—bravely biting his lip to stem the tears while he clutched at his injured side.
‘Bloody fence strainers broke,’ a man Andy assumed was the father said. ‘The barbed wire whipped around him like a serpent. I’m Tim Roberts, and this here’s Jonah.’
Andy shook hands with the pair, then leant over to examine the wound. A red weal showed where the wire had hit the boy, but the serious wound was just above his right groin.
‘Bit of a barb got in there, but the wife pulled it out with tweezers and put some cream on it last night, but you can see how it is now.’
The area was red, swollen, and obviously infected.
‘I’ll need to open it up,’ he said. ‘We’ll just give Jonah light sedation and clean out the wound.’
There was no need to mention there could be damage to the bowel, but Andy would have to look carefully, which was why he’d chosen to give an anaesthetic over a local pain injection.
His mind ran through the roster of staff on duty. Tony was a good theatre nurse but Andrea—who was the only nurse trained to give anaesthetic—was off duty. He’d have to phone Ellie to come in and do it.
And the stupid flip of his heart when he even thought her name reminded him that the love he felt for his wife had never gone away.
Yes, they’d parted—pushed apart by the pain of loss—but the love he felt for her was as strong as ever.
Or was it longing more than love...?
‘I won’t be able to operate until later,’ he told Tim. ‘If you’ve other things to do in town, Jonah will be quite safe here. In fact, he’ll probably be thoroughly spoilt by the nurses.
Ellie was about to tackle her first patient of the day when her cellphone rang.
Her heart leapt when she saw it was Andy.
‘Sorry, El, love, but could you grab a half-hour later in the day to do a mild anaesthetic for me? Kid with infection just above the right groin. X-ray shows foreign object in there. He’s had breakfast so I’m happy to wait a few hours. How’s your day looking?’
Ellie switched back to her patient list.
‘I could do eleven-thirty,’ she said. ‘That would run into my lunch break so there’d be no rush.’
‘Grand!’
And he was gone, so suddenly that Ellie found herself peering at her cellphone as if it, rather than Andy, had caused the abrupt farewell.
Grand?
How could their love have grown so cold that ‘grand’ had become ‘goodbye’?
She was being silly, of course. It had been months since a telephone conversation had finished with ‘love you’.
Although he had called her ‘love’, the way he always had done...
That was just habit, she told herself firmly and hauled her mind back to work.
For all their separate lives at home, their professional lives had barely changed, their work lives remaining stable as they followed their usual routine, assisting each other when needed, discussing patients they shared.
They were even enjoying the togetherness of that side of things—well, Ellie did and she thought Andy seemed to...
Although that would stop—and soon—if she went ahead and moved.
Even thinking about it caused her pain.
Putting the mail aside for later, she powered up her computer, checked test results that had come in, then switched to her appointments list.
Back in work mode, she speed-read down the appointments, putting asterisks against the patients who’d be coming in for test results so she could be sure she’d re-read the results before the patient arrived.
Busy with the list, she barely heard the outer door open, but Maureen was greeting the first arrival, no doubt handing her the patient information forms to fill in.
She pressed the buzzer, and heard Maureen tell Chelsea to go on through.
It was a pregnant young woman who came in. A very young, not very pregnant woman, slight and blonde, who seemed strangely familiar.
‘Don’t I know you?’ she asked, smiling at the obviously nervous young woman.
A nod in response.
Ellie smiled again as she asked, ‘Do I have to guess how, or will you tell me?’
Another nod, then Chelsea drew in a deep breath.
‘I thought Andy might be here,’ she said, ‘although Aunty Meg always worked here and Uncle Doug at the hospital.’
Aunty Meg, Uncle Doug: Andy’s parents?
Light dawned.
‘Of course I know you! You’re Chelsea Fraser. I’m so sorry I didn’t recognise you, but you’ve kind of grown since you were flower-girl at our wedding. Did you come here to see Andy?’
Chelsea frowned.
‘Well, I came to see both of you really. I’m pregnant, you see, and I wondered whether I could stay with you until I have the baby, because you probably heard Mum and Dad split up and Mum’s gone off to find herself, whatever that means. She’s in India, or maybe Nepal, and Dad’s gone to Antarctica again, and Harry—you remember my older brother Harry?—well, he’s supposed to be looking after me but he’s at uni most of the time or out partying so he’s never there.’
‘You’re all on your own?’ Ellie asked.
‘Well, Alex—that’s my boyfriend—he comes over...’
Tears began to stream down Chelsea’s face, and Ellie left her chair to walk around and wrap her arms around the unhappy, lonely child. Ellie held her tightly and let her cry out her tension, handing her the box of tissues when the sobs became hiccups as the tears dried up.
‘I didn’t mean for this to happen,’ Chelsea whispered, patting the bump. ‘But I was so lonely and Alex loves me, and I was on the Pill but must have forgotten to take it or something and then I wasn’t sure, you see... But of course I was pregnant
