Silence. Ryan’s eyebrows hit his hairline.
But, to her satisfaction, Sam gave a weak chuckle. ‘You always did have such a persuasive way with you, young Abbey,’ he whispered. ‘OK, then. I’ll wear your dratted wires. Now get off with you and let a man get to sleep.’
‘Do you always gain patient compliance by threatening them with the mortuary?’ Ryan asked as he wheeled Abbey back into the corridor. His voice sounded drained and weary, but also calmer. The electrodes attached to Sam’s chest were giving a cautiously optimistic message. A nurse was sitting beside Sam’s bed and there was every reason to hope he’d live a bit longer. Live to be persuaded to have his by-pass…
‘I use it all the time.’ Abbey chuckled. ‘Works a treat. Especially since Ted started taking guided tours of his underground room.’
‘Ted…’ Ryan frowned. ‘Is that the ghoul I saw, stalking the hospital corridors, as I came in?’
‘If he looked like a ghoul it was definitely Ted.’
Ryan frowned. ‘He looks familiar. Do I… did I know him?’
‘Probably,’ Abbey told him, ‘but I wouldn’t imagine you were on close terms. He’s Ted Hammond.’
The wheelchair came to an abrupt halt. Ryan stared down in incredulity. ‘Abbey, Ted Hammond was a derelict when I was a kid. How-?’
‘He wasn’t a derelict,’ Abbey said. ‘He was just bored and lonely. He was out of work and didn’t know how to fill in his time. Ted came back from the war to find his wife and kids had left him. He had one leg shorter than the other and he had nerve damage. So… he drifted on the streets and he stayed there. Then…’
‘Yeah, tell me what happened then.’ Ryan straightened and started walking again-and Abbey frowned. It was a strange sensation, being wheeled by Ryan Henry.
Concentrate on Ted…
‘Well, a couple of months after the hospital opened we had an awful car crash down near the beach,’ Abbey told him. ‘Ted was first on the scene. When I got there with the ambulance Ted had hauled a couple of kids clear before the car burst into flames. There were a couple of others dead inside. Ted coped-in fact, he coped a lot better than I or the ambulance officers did. And I saw a side that he’d kept hidden for years behind a wall of misery. So I offered him a job.’
‘Abbey, he was a street bum…’
‘No. He was a lonely old man without friends and family and without an aim,’ Abbey said roundly. ‘People like your mother classified him as a bum while he was ill and desperate, and the label just stuck. Ted didn’t drink. He just didn’t know what else to do with himself but sit on park benches and look desolate. And if he looked unkempt it was because he couldn’t see the point of being anything else. He’s not unkempt now.’
Silence.
Oh, dear. Abbey bit her lip. She’d just criticised Ryan’s mother-again. She and Ryan were doomed not to be friends any more, Abbey thought miserably. Then she looked up as the night sister approached.
‘Sister?’
‘I was just wondering,’ the nurse said, and smiled shyly up at Ryan. ‘Dr Henry, are you going home?’
‘I thought I’d check our jellyfish victim once more, then take Dr Wittner home and go on to sleep at my father’s,’ Ryan said brusquely, still mulling over Abbey’s words. He motioned to the phone on his belt. ‘Call me if you need me.’
The nurse hesitated. ‘But…’
‘Ryan, when I have someone in hospital with heart problems I don’t go home,’ Abbey interjected. ‘And the jellyfish toxin is still a risk, despite the antivenom. So, as you’re now doctor in lieu of me…’
‘Abbey…’
‘Ryan, I don’t know whether you realise what you’ve let yourself in for here,’ Abbey told him. ‘You’re it. There’s no resident or intern backing you up. If your father goes into cardiac arrest then there’s only you.’
Ryan frowned. Sleep at the hospital? He’d never thought of doing that.
But if he didn’t? If his father went into cardiac arrest? Trained nurses could start emergency procedures but…
Abbey was right. To drive the five minutes to take Abbey home was one thing. To be fifteen minutes out of range at his father’s house…
He hardly had a choice here. But if he had to stay at the hospital for the entire week… well, Felicity would not be pleased.
‘What do you do with your little boy when you need to stay here?’ he asked, and Abbey shrugged.
‘If I can, I bring Jack with me and settle him into the children’s ward. That’s possible if I have warning but Janet copes if there’s not time to bring him. She can’t bath him, but she can do most other things. He helps her by climbing in and out of his own cot now.’
‘But you milk.’
Abbey smiled. ‘Yeah. I dash home and milk with the mobile phone beside me and I dash back if needed. The locals are accustomed to the smell of cow dung mixed with antibiotic, and the cows have learned to be a bit negotiable in their milking times.’
‘You’re kidding,’ Ryan said faintly. ‘Abbey, what sort of life is that for a…?’ He had been going to say a girl. And then Ryan looked down at Abbey’s work-worn hands and corrected himself. ‘For a woman?’
‘It’s my life.’ Abbey sighed and smiled again. ‘Well, maybe it’s not for a while. It’s now your life for a week-or at least the medical part is. After that, though, then it’ll be my life ever after. I don’t ask for anything more. Now… If you would, I would like you to take me home.’
‘Abbey…’ Ryan looked down at the white-faced girl in the wheelchair. She was still dressed in the stained shorts and T-shirt she’d worn all day. She looked weary beyond belief, in pain and looking to a future that held nothing but hard work.
And something twisted inside Ryan that hadn’t been twisted in a long time. Something deep and strong and urgent.
It was only that he felt sorry for her, he told himself harshly, but he found his hand wandering to touch Abbey’s dusky curls.
‘You’re hurting.’
‘Just take me home, Ryan,’ Abbey said. ‘Ted can’t drive or I’d ask him to take me.’
‘Stay here,’ he said.
‘I can’t.’
‘You should be in hospital yourself.’ Ryan let his fingers drift though her curls. Absently. Almost as if he wasn’t noticing what he was doing. But he was noticing. He was very definitely noticing. The touch was doing strange things to his insides.
‘And where would that leave Jack and Janet?’ Abbey demanded, ignoring the feel of Ryan’s fingers. Or trying to ignore them. ‘I have to milk in the morning.’
‘I’ll do that.’
‘You can’t.’
‘If you can do it,’ Ryan said gently, ‘so can I. You just said that your life is mine for a week. That includes your cows.’
‘It’s not necessary.’
‘It is.’
‘Ryan…’
‘Look, I’m a country boy from way back,’ Ryan told her, exasperated. ‘I can milk a cow and I have your medical training. This is my honeymoon you’re supposed to be on, Dr Wittner. I don’t offer every girl a honeymoon. So I suggest you just take yourself to bed and get on with it.’
If only she could.
Abbey looked up into Ryan’s face and thought of the impossibility of doing what he’d suggested. Taking a honeymoon.
Taking a holiday.
‘Work never stops,’ she said wearily. ‘Never. Don’t you know that, Ryan Henry?’
‘It does, Abbey,’ he said gently. ‘It must.’
Only it didn’t. It hadn’t even now. Before Ryan finished speaking there was an urgent screech of brakes outside the casualty entrance. Three seconds later the glass doors opened and a young man burst in. He looked wildly around, dishevelled and frantic, and his eyes focussed on Ryan.