definitely one of the best anaesthetists I’ve worked with. That woman was emptying out so fast…’ He shook his head at the scary memory. ‘I honestly don’t know how he kept her going long enough for me to tie everything off. And as for you…’
It was her turn to blush, but he wasn’t giving her empty words—he wouldn’t waste his time on anything but the truth.
‘I admit that I was quite surprised to hear that you were one of the applicants for the AR head of department. I couldn’t believe that someone so young could possibly have the necessary skills.’ He bowed briefly towards her. ‘Suffice it to say that since I’ve witnessed your skill and intuition, albeit assisting this time rather than leading, I’m no longer surprised. You knew exactly what I was going to do and how to make it easy for me—proof, in spite of your own doubts, that you would have been equally able to do the job.’
She was obviously trying to bury her embarrassment in her coffee-cup but he could tell that she was pleased with his recognition of her skills. He had a brief image of the chaos that awaited him in his office and suppressed a shudder that it had been allowed to get into such a state. Was it just that organisation was not one of her skills? He supposed he had to make allowances for the fact that she’d been trying to run the department short-handed, but just in case her weakness was paperwork, he was going to offer to write up this morning’s case notes himself.
‘Are you sure?’ she said doubtfully. ‘Donald hated doing them—said he’d rather have his teeth pulled.’
‘I’m sure,’ he said with an even deeper sense of foreboding. Had he been unlucky enough to take over a department that hadn’t had anyone willing to take on the essentials? ‘I’ve brought everything with me and I shall have another cup or three of coffee while I get it done.’
‘In that case, I’m going to check up on Mum then sneak in for a peep at the babies. I wonder if anyone’s been able to contact their father yet.’
‘I’ll leave you to check up on that and I’ll see you in my office at, say, eight?’ he suggested.
For just a moment there was a strange expression on her face but it was gone too quickly for him to decipher it. Was it chagrin that it was now his office rather than hers, or was it the fact that she was handing it over in such a disastrous state? Well, either way, there was nothing she could do about it now. The job was his, and, providing there wasn’t a run of emergencies like this morning’s, it really shouldn’t take him long to get everything organised, even if he had to ask Personnel for the temporary loan of some sort of specialist filing clerk.
In the meantime, he had a complicated surgery to document, right down to the last suture and cc of drugs. At least that ought to push Leah out of his mind until he saw her again at eight.
‘HELLO…Ah, g-good morning, sir,’ Leah ended up stammering, suddenly unaccountably uncertain as to what she should call her new boss.
Working together in Theatre in such fraught conditions had definitely given her a feeling of connection with him, but perhaps he preferred a little more formality from the more junior members of his…
‘Sir?’ he queried with a blink, then ostentatiously looked over his shoulder as if looking for someone else she might be addressing.
Leah couldn’t help the brief giggle that escaped her. It was probably the result of the nerves that had built up while she was trying not to look as if she was hovering around in the corridor, waiting for him to arrive. She’d even unlocked the door in preparation for his arrival, in case he hadn’t been given his own set of keys yet.
Then he’d swept open the door at the other end of the corridor and begun striding towards her, all long lean legs and broad shoulders, and all her rational thought processes had ceased.
‘That’s better,’ he said with an answering smile as he reached for the door handle. ‘Obviously, there has to be a degree of formality when there are patients present, but at all other times you’re free to call me…God! What on earth happened here?’
He took a step back to look at the name-plate on the door, as though doubting that he’d come to the right room, but even that had been changed after she’d chased Maintenance to install his name in place of Donald’s—just one of the last-minute things she’d done while he’d been occupied writing up the post-op notes.
His reaction was everything she could have hoped for, but it was his slip of the tongue that actually made her laugh aloud. It was a struggle to speak for several seconds.
‘So, let me get this right,’ she said, smiling in the face of his frown of puzzlement. ‘You don’t want formality but I’m free to call you…God?’ she teased.
He was walking warily towards the miraculously clear desk.
‘You know I didn’t mean that,’ he objected distractedly as he turned in a circle. ‘When did all this happen and who did it?’ he demanded, then she saw panic take over from approval. ‘What happened to all the files, Leah? Where are they? They haven’t been taken away, have they?’
‘They’re all here,’ she soothed, taking the bunch of keys out of her pocket and selecting the correct one to open the first filing cabinet. ‘And all in their proper alphabetical order, too.’
‘But…I only saw this room on Friday…’
‘And you’ve been having nightmares about it ever since,’ Leah finished for him. ‘The walls were dingy, the curtains were limp, drab and sun-bleached and there was paperwork on every horizontal surface.’
‘Exactly!’ he agreed. ‘So…who, what, when, why and how? Obviously when I saw it before you must have known that the room was due for a visit from Maintenance for some overdue redecoration.’
‘Not exactly.’ She knew it was time to come clean. His surprise had been everything she’d hoped for, but she wanted him to know the real reason for the chaos he’d stumbled into on his first visit. The last thing she wanted was for her new boss to think that had been the way she’d been happy to run the department. That impression might linger and could affect what he wrote about her when she needed a reference when another AR department headship came up.
She refused to let herself ponder the fact that the idea of leaving St Luke’s had suddenly become much less attractive than it had been when she’d been told about David’s appointment. She needed to concentrate on making her explanation.
‘Maintenance were here this morning to install your name-plate and they also supplied the paint and brushes over the weekend.’
‘And?’ he prompted. ‘Am I to take it that you provided the labour? When on earth did you find the time with all the hours you’ve been putting in on keeping the department running?’
‘Well, it only took a couple of hours one evening to give everything a once-over.’ And another couple for a second coat when the dinginess refused to disappear the first time, she added silently, but he didn’t need to know that. Anyway, she wasn’t into blowing her own trumpet. ‘And the curtains were a spare set I had at home. They’ve hardly been used but they don’t fit any of the windows in my new flat.’
‘OK, so that’s how the décor changed, but what about all the
