you like a lift?’ Dan offered quietly, when they’d watched her parents scurry out of the unit before he began to push her in the same direction.
‘Don’t you have to go to work today?’ she asked, desperate to spend what time she could with him but knowing it wasn’t a sensible idea. ‘You don’t have time to keep ferrying me about.’
‘Actually, I’ve got all the time in the world, having just been banned from visiting until evening visiting hours,’ he contradicted her as he pushed the button for the lift that was just taking the Walkers down to the main reception area.
All Sara hoped was that it would deliver the two of them to the ground floor before it returned for Dan and her. She didn’t think she could bear to be shut up in such a small space with her parents, even for the short time it would take to travel a couple of floors. Mr Shah’s office had been bad enough with all that animosity flying around.
‘Anyway …’ Dan continued, breaking into her silent replay of the moment when her mother had glibly talked about aborting the precious pair already making their presence felt under her protective hand, the curve of her belly already noticeably bigger than it would have been for a single baby at the same number of weeks. ‘As I’m on compassionate leave until we know what the situation is with Zara, you can just name your destination.’
‘You’re going to regret that offer when you find out where I need to go,’ she warned, suddenly immeasurably grateful that the rest of the day didn’t stretch out in front of her like an arid desert.
‘Don’t tell me!’ Dan said with a groan as he pushed the chair into the waiting lift. ‘You need to go shopping!’
‘All right, I won’t tell you … but that doesn’t mean that I don’t need to go.’
‘All right,’ he said with an air of long-suffering that caused several smiles on the faces of the people sharing the lift. ‘I offered so I’ll take you. Just tell me where you need to go and let’s get it over with.’
‘What is it with men that they don’t like shopping? Is it a genetic thing?’ Sara mused aloud, drawing a few smiles of her own, then relented. ‘It shouldn’t take very long because I only need to do some grocery shopping while I’ve got someone to carry the bags for me,’ she added with a grin, then another thought struck her.
She hesitated for a moment, wondering if there was some other way she could achieve what she wanted and feeling the increased warmth in her cheeks that told her she still hadn’t grown out of the habit of blushing. ‘I’m sorry but I’ll also need to do a bit of clothes shopping.’
He groaned as he waited for their companions to exit first then pushed the wheelchair out into the spacious reception area, thronged as ever by a constantly changing stream of visitors going in and out of the hospital. ‘My absolute favourite occupation … not!’ he complained in tones of disgust. ‘If you’re anything like your sister, that will take the rest of the day.’
His assumption stung her more than she had a right to feel and loosened the leash on her tongue. ‘Apart from the obvious physical resemblance, over which I have no control, I am absolutely nothing like my sister!’ she snapped. ‘And furthermore, far from taking the rest of the day, my shopping should take me no more than five minutes because I only need some comfortable underwear that I can pull on over my cast.’
The words almost seemed to echo around the whole reception area—probably right around the whole of the hospital if the gossip grapevine was operating in its usual mysterious way.
‘Oh, good grief!’ she moaned, and covered her face when she saw just how many inquisitive faces were turned in their direction, and how many of them were sporting broad grins. ‘Just get me out of here,’ she ordered through clenched teeth, hoping that her long curtain of her hair was hiding the furious heat of her blush.
Dan didn’t make the situation any better when he leaned forward and murmured in her ear, ‘Comfortable underwear, Sara? Is that what they call black lace thongs these days?’
‘Shut up!’ she hissed. ‘Just shut up and get me to the car.’
‘Ah … in just a second,’ he promised as he veered the chair towards the policeman who had just entered the reception area. Then he abandoned her in the middle of the floor to hail the man and the two of them stood talking earnestly for several minutes.
Sara was puzzled when Dan reached into his pocket to pull out a disposable glove, especially when the two of them peered at something inside the glove.
They both had serious expressions on their faces but she was far too far away to hear a single word either of them said, especially with the constant hubbub of passing humanity around her.
‘Right! To the car!’ Dan announced as he came back to her with the air of a man pleased with a mission accomplished. ‘Which would you rather do first—groceries or underwear?’ he demanded cheerfully, and the chance to ask what that little episode had been about was lost in the return of her embarrassment.
The grocery shopping was done and they were standing in front of an embarrassing display of female underwear in her favourite high-street shop when Dan’s mobile burst into the opening bars of the 1812 Overture.
Grateful for the fact that he wouldn’t be looking over her shoulder for a moment, Sara grabbed a packet containing some very definitely non-sexy underwear in a size several larger than her usual one, in the hope that the leg opening would be loose enough to accommodate her cast. But she couldn’t resist grabbing another containing a rainbow mix of coloured thongs, telling herself that at least she knew that they were relatively easy to get on. The fact that they were far sexier than the ‘old lady’ pants in her other hand had absolutely nothing to do with her choice.
There was a frown on his face when he turned back to her.
‘That was the hospital,’ he began, and her heart leapt into her throat.
‘Zara?’ she said, immediately feeling guilty that she and Dan were out shopping for her underwear when he should have been waiting for news of his wife. ‘Is she worse?’
‘No, Sara, no,’ he soothed, looking contrite that he hadn’t realised that she’d immediately panic. ‘It was nothing to do with your sister. It was A and E, asking if I could possibly go in. With the two of us out and two others called in sick—that flu bug that’s going around has finally felled Derek when he was only boasting the other day that he never catches anything—they’re desperate for another doctor.’
‘Desperate? As in … they’re building up a logjam of patients and the waiting time’s becoming unacceptable?’ she asked as she handed over the two packages and had to submit to the indignity of having Dan pay for her underwear, too. He’d already paid for her groceries when she’d belatedly realised that sneaking out of the ward meant that she hadn’t collected the purse that had been given into Sister’s safekeeping.
‘That, and the fact that the traffic lights are on the blink at one of the crossroads and there’s been a whole series of prangs as people take the law into their own hands. Pedestrians, cyclists and car-drivers, some more serious than others.’
‘Ouch!’ She pursed her lips as frustration swept through her. She was certain she would be able to work if she’d only injured her leg. Having a doctor working away in minors, doing the bread-and-butter jobs of stitching and retrieving foreign bodies
