easy.’ She poured them both a coffee, topped up the water in the filter machine and handed him a mug. ‘My office?’
‘Sure.’ Was she pushy or just efficient? Jack wanted to think it was the former, but he had a niggling feeling that it was the latter. And then he had an even more niggling feeling: he admired her for it. Oh, hell. Why couldn’t Miranda Turner be just an ordinary person? Why did she have to be the clinical director’s daughter? Why had she had to come onto his ward and throw his brain into chaos?
‘Right, then. Sid’s having surgery on Friday; Jane’s awaiting tests with a query valve replacement; Joe’s under obs and Martyn’s going home.’ She ticked the cases off on her fingers.
Definitely efficient, Jack thought. She didn’t waste words.
‘That leaves Imogen. Her angina’s unstable and the drugs aren’t working.’ She flipped through the file and looked at the angiography results. ‘We’ve got two options—a bypass graft or an angioplasty.’ An angioplasty was where a small balloon was inserted in the narrowed artery and inflated so it flattened out the fatty plaques lining the blood vessel.
‘Angioplasties often have to be repeated and a bypass gives better symptom control,’ Jack said.
‘But if she has a bypass it’ll take her longer to recover and she’ll have to stay here longer—which will worry her more, because of her dog. And worry leads to higher blood pressure—’
‘Which increases her risk of a heart attack,’ Jack finished.
‘Given her age, and the fact that only a couple of the vessels show narrowing—here and here—I’d prefer an angioplasty. It’s not quite so invasive so it’ll be less of a shock to her system, and the newer heparinised stents lower the risk of a heart attack.’
‘And if it doesn’t work?’
‘Then we’ll have to do a bypass.’ She looked levelly at him. ‘Do you think a bypass is the better option?’
He shook his head. ‘We’ll play it your way.’
‘No. We’re a team. We do what we agree is best for the patient. Ego doesn’t come into it,’ she said crisply.
Jack sucked his teeth. ‘And that’s telling me.’
Her eyes narrowed. ‘I don’t like playing games, Dr Sawyer. If you have a problem with me, let’s get it out in the open now.’
‘Is it that obvious?’
‘That you resent me? Yes. Though I don’t know what I’ve done to upset you—apart from the car-park incident, and I’ve already apologised for that. Besides, it was a win-win situation.’
He lifted his chin. ‘How do you work that out?’
‘We both got what we wanted. You were all too happy to park the Roadster, and I got the car parked without a scratch on it so Seb didn’t murder me.’
Her boyfriend? Even though it was none of his business—and he shouldn’t even want to know anyway—he couldn’t help asking. ‘Seb?’
‘My next-door neighbour in Glasgow.’
No reason for his heart to give that little lurch of relief. No reason at all.
‘My car decided not to start the day of the interview. Seb took pity on me and lent me the Roadster—on condition there wasn’t so much as a speck of dust on it when I got back.’
Was that a glint of mischief in her eyes? He couldn’t tell. ‘You believe in straight talking, don’t you?’
‘It makes life simpler.’
He nodded. ‘OK. Then you may as well know that I went for this job, too.’
‘And you think I got it because I’m Ralph Turner’s daughter.’
‘I didn’t say that.’
‘But it’s what you’re thinking.’ She shrugged. ‘I got the job because of what I can do, not for who I am.’
‘On the round, you sounded as if you knew what you were talking about.’
‘Well, thanks for the vote of confidence,’ she said dryly.
‘And that came out badly. I didn’t mean it like that.’ He sighed. ‘We’ve got off to a bad start.’
‘Look, I’m sorry you didn’t get the job, but I hope it’s not going to cause us problems working together. From my point of view, I get a special reg who knows exactly what he’s doing. From your point of view, I’m not going to change the way you work—and you can get on with being a doctor and leave the hospital politics to someone else. So, let’s start again. Perhaps, this time, we can do it on first-name terms.’ She held out her hand. ‘I’m Miranda Turner. Pleased to meet you, Jack.’
‘Pleased to meet you, Miranda.’ Jack took her proffered hand. ‘I’ve seen your re´sume´. If that didn’t convince me, the ward round proved you know your stuff.’
She didn’t push for a grovelling apology, he noticed. She just gave him a quick smile. ‘Thanks.’
Jack refused to acknowledge the beat his heart had just missed. Nothing was going to happen between them. They were colleagues and that was it. And even if Miranda hadn’t been the professor’s daughter, he’d already learned his lesson with Jessica. The hard way. ‘I’ll ring Jordan Francis—he’s our theatre manager, if you haven’t met him yet—and see if he can fit us in tomorrow.’
‘If Imogen agrees,’ Miranda added. ‘We need to talk to her great-niece as well. I don’t want to send her home without any support.’ Not after what had happened to May. ‘Perhaps there’s someone else in the family who can help. Or maybe Imogen could stay in a convalescent home short term, then we can arrange to get someone to look in on her at set times when she comes home and take her dog for a walk.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘Speaking of which, I need to phone the kennels.’
By the time they’d finished writing up their notes, Jack had booked theatre time and Miranda had reassured Imogen that Floss was fine, it was nearly lunchtime.
‘So, are you having lunch with your father?’ Jack asked.
‘You must be joking!’ Was that a look of horror on her face or was it his imagination? When he looked again, her expression had been carefully schooled into neutral. ‘I doubt if he’d have time.’
‘On your first day?’
She shrugged. ‘Would you expect him to have lunch with any other consultant on their first day?’
‘Well—maybe not. But you’re his daughter.’ If he’d been in her position, his mother would have had lunch booked from the word go. His father…Well, Jack tried not to think about his father. But any normal father would make sure she’d settled in OK, surely?
‘Here I’m a doctor. Family doesn’t come into it.’
Was she upset about that? Or was she the one who’d insisted on it? Jack
