usually he was, but today was the first day they’d been apart since he’d been born. Please, oh, please, let him be enjoying himself, she prayed. Please, let him not be missing me. If he’s unhappy and miserable, I don’t know what I’m going to do. I have to work. We need the money.
‘I’m sorry, what did you say?’ she asked, suddenly realising that Liz was gazing at her expectantly.
‘Only that I was offering you the choice of the century,’ the girl replied, her lips twitching. ‘Do you want me to assist when you examine Mrs Douglas, or would you prefer me to assist while you examine Mrs Gill?’
Annie stared at her suspiciously. ‘I know Mrs Douglas is suffering from acute constipation after her hysterectomy. What’s wrong with Mrs Gill?’
‘Would you believe acute constipation, too?’ Liz chuckled, and Annie laughed.
‘Great choice. Actually, that reminds me of something that happened at my last hospital…’
She came to a halt. Mr Mountain Man was talking to Tom Brooke at the top of the ward. Nothing unusual about that, of course. Patients’ relatives often wanted a quiet word with the specialist registrar, but it was the way Mr Mountain Man was talking to Dr Brooke. Or rather the way Tom was listening to him. Intently, deeply, almost…almost reverentially.
An awful thought crept into Annie’s mind. A thought which was crazy—insane—but…
‘Liz. That man talking to Dr Brooke. Who is he?’
The sister turned in the direction of her gaze and smiled. ‘That’s Gideon Caldwell. Our consultant.’
The man she’d met on the stairs was Obs and Gynae’s consultant? Oh, heavens.
‘Liz, Mr Caldwell’s wife—she…’ Annie swallowed convulsively. ‘She wouldn’t happen to be a patient on the ward, would she?’
‘Good heavens, no. Gideon’s a widower—has been for five years. Actually, it was terribly tragic. She died of ovarian cancer two years after they were married.’
Not married, but a widower. And not just a widower, but a widower whose wife had tragically died of ovarian cancer. Oh, hell.
‘Hey, are you OK?’ Liz continued, her plump face suddenly concerned. ‘You’ve gone a really funny colour.’
Was it any wonder? Annie thought wretchedly. What must he think of her? At best that she was neurotic. At worst…She didn’t even want to think about the worst.
Maybe he wouldn’t recognise her. Maybe she’d look so different in her white coat that he wouldn’t recognise her.
But he did. As he began walking down the ward, she saw him pause in mid-stride and then keep on coming. And, to her horror, Dr Dunwoody joined him.
‘Annie, what’s wrong?’ Liz asked, looking even more worried. ‘You’re not going to faint, are you? Look, maybe you should sit down in the staffroom…’
The staffroom sounded good. The store cupboard sounded even better. Preferably for the next three months.
Oh, get a grip, Annie. You can hardly spend the next three months hiding in the store cupboard whenever Gideon Caldwell does his rounds. No, but she could hide in there today, and by tomorrow—OK, so it was a very long shot—by tomorrow he might have calmed down.
‘I think you’re right, Liz,’ she said, beginning to back her way up the ward. ‘I think I might just sit down for a couple of minutes.’
‘OK, but—Annie, be careful.’
‘It’s probably just something I ate…’
‘No, I mean—Annie, watch out!’
Too late Annie saw what the sister had been trying to tell her—that the afternoon tea trolley was right behind her. Too late she felt her hip catch it and whirled round quickly, but the damage was done. The trolley toppled over, sending its cups and saucers tumbling to the floor with a resounding crash.
For a second she stared in horror at the devastation she’d created, then turned to find Dr Dunwoody glaring at her furiously, Liz looking dumbfounded and Gideon Caldwell…Was he trying very hard not to laugh? It looked as though he was trying very hard not to laugh.
And suddenly it was all too much. The whole awful, rotten day was too much, and to her utter mortification she burst into tears.
‘I’m sorry—so sorry,’ she sobbed, scrabbling wildly in her pocket for a handkerchief. ‘I’ll get a brush and pan—clean it up…’
She didn’t get a chance to. Before she could move a firm hand had grasped her by the elbow and Gideon Caldwell was propelling her out of the ward and down the corridor.
‘Sir, I have to clean it up,’ she protested as he steered her into his consulting room and towards a chair. ‘I can’t just leave—’
‘One of the cleaners will do it.’
‘But it was my fault,’ she said, dashing a hand across her wet cheeks. ‘I should—’
‘Tea or coffee?’ he asked, opening a cupboard and pulling out two mugs.
‘Neither—I can’t. Dr Dunwoody—’
‘Tea or coffee—black or white—with sugar or without?’
He clearly wasn’t going to take no for an answer. He equally clearly wasn’t used to being refused. ‘Coffee, please,’ she said miserably. ‘Black, no sugar.’
‘Good,’ he said with a nod, switching on the kettle. ‘Now we’re getting somewhere.’
Or merely postponing the inevitable, she thought, miserably blowing her nose. The moment when he told her his ward couldn’t afford a clumsy idiot like her. The moment when he fired her. And she couldn’t afford to be fired. Simply couldn’t.
‘Please, I know I should have been watching where I was going—but, please, won’t you give me another chance? I’m not normally so clumsy, and I don’t make a habit of bursting into tears—’
‘I know you don’t,’ he interrupted, spooning some coffee into the mugs. ‘The woman I met on the stairs didn’t strike me as a wimp. A little strange, perhaps, but certainly not a wimp.’
Oh, cripes, he was bypassing that nightmare on the ward and going straight to her even bigger disaster on the stairs. ‘Mr Caldwell—’
‘The name’s Gideon. I’m only Mr Caldwell in front of patients.’
She would have preferred to call him Mr Caldwell. After what she’d said to him earlier, she’d infinitely have preferred to call him Mr Caldwell.
‘What I said to you on the stairs…’ she said, opting out of calling him anything at all. ‘I can only apologise. I made a mistake—’
‘You thought I was hitting on you, didn’t you?’ he observed. ‘You saw my wedding ring, decided my offer to help was actually a thinly disguised invitation to a future affair,
