shrug and a corresponding grunt of pain when the manoeuvre jarred his ribs.
‘Have you been taking any anti-retroviral medications?’ Even as she asked, Amy realised that Tommy’s drug abuse would probably preclude his adherence to any regular preventative treatment.
‘Nah,’ he said dismissively, obeying her silent gesture to turn his head for the next set of stitches to close the wound in his scalp. ‘They made me feel worse than coming off dope, and it was already too late to have any real effect. Anyway, if I was given a supply of drugs…any drugs…I’d more than likely be mugged for them.’
Amy couldn’t argue with that. Tommy was the expert when it came to conditions on the streets.
‘Well, you probably already know that one of the dangers now is developing an infection that your body can’t fight.’
‘So they tell me, but I’ve been lucky so far—apart from having the crap kicked out of me. Haven’t had anything more than a cold.’
The conversation died for a few minutes while Amy concentrated on making a neat job of his scalp, grateful that he’d chosen such a brutally short hairstyle as it made the task so much easier.
Finally, as she handed over to the nurse to tape a protective dressing in place, she positioned herself so that she met his gaze head on, her pen poised over the clipboard that held his notes.
‘So, Tommy, if I give you a course of antibiotics, will you promise me that you’ll take the whole course?’
‘How long is a course?’ he parried warily.
‘Just until you come back to have your stitches taken out?’ she bargained, her heart aching that there was so little she could do for him. ‘A week? Would you be able to keep them out of sight for a week?’
‘Make it five days and I’ll do my best,’ he countered, then grinned cheekily. ‘And that’s only because you asked nicely.’
‘They break your heart sometimes, the way they’ve had to survive,’ said a quiet voice just behind her, and when Amy looked over her shoulder and up into Zach’s dark eyes she realised that he understood far more about the hell Tommy had gone through than she would ever know.
‘So, who is Mr Willmott?’ said that same voice right behind her in the cafeteria queue, and Amy gasped, dragged out of her pessimistic thoughts about young Tommy’s chances of surviving into his twenties by the man who could have ended up just like Tommy, if his teachers had been right.
‘Dr Willmott,’ she corrected automatically, only remembering as she said it that, of course, it had reverted to Mr when Edward had climbed up the next rung of the promotion ladder. Not that it was relevant any more.
‘Really,’ Zach said as he took a tray from the pile and kept pace with her slow shuffle in the queue towards the hot meals. ‘I presume he works here. Is he in A and E, too, or one of the other departments?’
‘No, he doesn’t work here.’ Suddenly she felt strangely guilty to be talking about her husband with Zach, but couldn’t find a way to end the conversation without sounding rude. ‘He’s…He was killed. A year ago. On the motorway.’
The words emerged in jerky lumps. Uncomfortable. Unpractised.
After the initial ‘getting to know you’ enquiries, the other A and E staff had tactfully refrained from asking for any more painful details and she certainly hadn’t volunteered. The only people who talked about Edward any more were her parents, bewailing the loss of her handsome, successful husband every time she set foot in their house, and his parents, endlessly, when she made her duty visits.
And yet…for the first time, she actually wanted to talk about what had happened. Did this mean that she was actually coming to terms with her loss, or was it because it was Zach she was telling?
Almost as soon as they were sitting down she found the stark details pouring out of her as if she needed to purge herself of the words. Somehow, in spite of the fact that she hadn’t seen him for so many years—and hadn’t really known him well even then—she knew that she could trust him with her confidences.
‘There was a pile-up in bad weather…dozens of cars involved…a woman had been thrown out of a vehicle. Apparently, Edward saw it happen. He pulled over and got out to help and was hit by another car. He was killed instantly.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Zach said, visibly shocked and clearly at a loss for what to say.
‘He was on his way back from a conference,’ Amy went on, the words coming easier now that she’d started. ‘I didn’t even know it had happened…that he was dead…until the police came to tell me.’ She shuddered at the memory of the late-night knock at the door.
‘Did you have any children?’ he asked, a perfectly ordinary question but one that caused a familiar pang for lost opportunities.
‘No. We hadn’t got as far as starting a family,’ she admitted sadly. ‘It’s still just me and my parents.’
For a second she thought she saw something dark in his eyes at that information, but couldn’t be sure—it was gone too soon.
She knew it couldn’t have been put there by her mention of her family, because he’d never met them, but that didn’t stop her speculating that she might have reminded him about something painful in his past.
How many relationships had he had since the days when she’d sighed over him in their biology and chemistry lessons? Probably far too many to count, with his bad-boy good looks…and why the thought of all those women should cause something painful to tighten around her heart…
‘Do you still live in the same place?’ he asked. ‘The big stone house near the top of the hill?’
‘I’ve got my own place now, not far from the hospital, but…How did you know where I lived?’
There was a glimpse of that shadow in his eyes again but then it was gone, hidden behind those thick dark lashes that he still seemed to have a habit of using to camouflage his thoughts.
‘How did I know where the princess’s castle was?’ he teased, looking up from the coffee he’d purchased to finish his meal, but there was an edge to his voice that was all too reminiscent of the old Zach. ‘Everyone knew where the Bowes Clarks lived. It certainly wasn’t any secret.’
And how Amy had hated the fact that, all too often, as soon as people realised who her parents were, they treated her differently, as though family wealth made her something other than just another teenager trying to get good exam results. Unfortunately, her parents still had some sort of crazy idea that their family was somehow inherently ‘better class’ than their neighbours and that their daughter should automatically—
Her thoughts were cut off by the simultaneous shrilling of their pagers.
‘Well, we almost managed an uninterrupted meal,’ Zach said as they both hastily piled the debris onto a single tray, depositing it in the appropriate place as they hurried towards the door, knowing that the ‘multiple trauma’ message could be anything from a small handful to dozens that would require all available staff.
‘Sorry to interrupt your meal break,’ the co-ordinator said as they appeared in the department, her
