‘Don’t do that,’ he told her. ‘They’ll think I’m an emergency.’
‘You are an emergency.’
‘I’m fine.’
Ha! She was past arguing. ‘You might be fine, but I’m not,’ she told him. ‘I’m wrecked. Is the duty doctor here now or will he or she have to be called in?’
‘Duty doctor?’
‘Duty doctor.’ She was suffering from reaction here. Why didn’t a whole medical team burst from the doors, ready to take over?
‘There’s no duty doctor. There’s only me, and I’m decidedly off duty.’ Harry’s voice was strained to breaking point and Lizzie stared at him in horror.
‘What?’
‘You heard.’
‘You mean…’ She caught her breath, appalled. ‘You mean this is a one-horse town?’
‘A one-doctor town. Yes. That’s why I need a locum.’
‘They didn’t tell me it was a one-doctor town.’ The doors were finally opening now, and a uniformed nurse was hurrying toward them. The nurse was eye-catchingly lovely, in her early thirties maybe, trim, and elegant and…well, just plain beautiful. Her long black hair was braided into a severe rope hanging over her shoulder almost to her waist. Her hair would be gorgeous unbraided, Lizzie thought inconsequentially. More gorgeous. The woman herself would be even more gorgeous if she didn’t look so worried.
She wasn’t the only one worrying. Lizzie was distracted enough not to be worrying about someone else’s worry. She should be worried about the man on the back seat-she was-but she was also appalled at the thought of not having help.
‘The people at the locum agency told me one of the doctors was getting married and needed a fill-in,’ she said slowly, thinking it through. ‘One of the doctors. Implying several.’
Harry closed his eyes, an unmistakable wash of pain sweeping through. ‘If they said one of the doctors then they lied.’
‘But… I would never have come if…’ Her voice rose in panic. ‘I don’t do this. Not alone. I can’t.’
‘Welcome to Birrini, Dr Darling,’ Harry muttered, his face grim. ‘I think you’ll find you can. It’s amazing what you can do when you have no choice.’ Then, as the nurse reached the car and pulled open the back door, he managed a strained smile. ‘Hello, Emily. This is Dr Darling. Our locum. She’s here to replace me. It was to be while you and I got married, but maybe now it’s while she mends my broken leg.’
She couldn’t worry about her lone status now. Like Harry said, she had no choice.
Once in the relative security of the hospital she turned on her autopilot. Never mind that she was soaked to the skin. Harry needed her more than she needed to take care of herself.
Medicine first, she told herself, and tried to stop the tremors sweeping through her body. Her spare clothes were back at the holiday cottage. She’d worn a smart little business suit into town to meet the medical community. The smart little business suit was now a bedraggled mess, with the jacket wrapped around Harry’s splint. Lizzie’s mass of bright blonde curls had been hauled into a neat businesslike knot when she’d set out that morning but that was a thing of the past, too. Her curls were now hanging in soaked tendrils around her face, mud-matted and coldly dripping.
It didn’t matter. It couldn’t matter.
At least Harry was being warmed. She could examine him now with considerably more care than her roadside check, and she did so as she and Emily stripped him and dried him and gently manoeuvred him into a hospital gown.
‘I’m not wearing a hospital gown,’ he muttered.
‘Harry, stop being silly.’ Emily’s voice was laced with tears and Lizzie gave her a sharp glance. There wasn’t a lot of professional detachment here-though maybe she was being unfair.
If someone brought my fiancé into town, squashed, maybe I’d be a bit tearful too, she told herself.
Maybe. She thought about Edward for a fraction of a second and grimaced. Come to think about it, there was a lot to be said for squashed fiancés.
‘My pyjamas are just through in my quarters,’ Harry was murmuring sleepily, and she forgot thinking about Edward and dredged up a smile.
‘I can’t get at you as easily in your pyjamas.’
‘That’s what I’m afraid of.’
Amazingly he was laughing. He was drifting in and out of sleep, on the edge of pain, but he could still smile. She wished he’d go completely to sleep. Indignity was the last thing he should be thinking of.
He did fade back into sleep as she and Emily prepared him for X-ray. She was grateful. Once again she had to move the leg slightly, straightening it a little more while she had the chance. The last thing she needed now was for that blood vessel to kink and block again.
The woman, Emily, worked by her side, but she worked in silence, her mouth a tight, grim line. Her tears had receded, but she still looked sick.
‘He’ll be OK,’ Lizzie said gently, and Emily gave her a fierce, angry glance.
‘You don’t understand.’
No. She didn’t. She couldn’t understand anything but what was before her. She should probe, but she was too shocked and cold and numb herself to take it further.
Finally, with the analgesia working well, she took the X-rays she wanted. By this stage Harry’s head wound was worrying her more than the leg. He’d lost consciousness back on the road. He was sleeping now. If he was bleeding internally…
‘My headache’s eased,’ he muttered as she took the last film, and her eyes flew wide. She’d thought that he was asleep, and here he was reading her thoughts.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘I don’t have a cracked skull.’
‘I’m checking anyway, if you don’t mind,’ she told him, and he nodded and seemed to drift off again.
Good. The man made her nervous just by…just by being. And so did this silent nurse, hovering over her like a terrified parent.
Wasn’t there anyone else in this hospital?
She couldn’t mind. She just had to ignore them both and do what she thought right. Though she’d quite like someone to notice, a, that she was filthy and (more urgently), b, that she was freezing.
No one did, so neither did she. Or rather, she did notice. She just didn’t turn into an ice cube and melt right there on the floor of the X-ray department. She didn’t have time.
Finally someone noticed. Harry.
After his initial protest Harry had seemed content to leave everything in her hands, and Emily was still working on autopilot. But with the X-rays finished, Lizzie grasped the head of the trolley to push him back through to the ward and his hands reached out and grasped hers. He’d woken properly this time, and his hands had a strength she hadn’t believed possible.
‘You’re still dripping.’ He stared up at her in concern, his face right under hers. ‘Lizzie, it’s time you were warm and dry,’ he managed, his words only slightly slurred. ‘Emily, look after her.’
‘We’ll look after you first,’ Emily told him. The woman seemed almost more shocked than Harry.
‘Can I help?’
And here was the cavalry, in the form of a freckle-faced senior nurse standing in the doorway. She stared from Emily to Harry and then to Lizzie, and her eyes were wide with shock. ‘Joe said there’d been an accident. Dr McKay!’
‘Dr McKay’s broken his leg,’ Emily snapped, and the woman’s eyes widened even further.
‘Right. Goodness. I’ve just come on duty. What needs doing?’
‘Emily will take me through to the ward,’ Harry said strongly. ‘May, can you look after Lizzie? Dr Darling.’
‘Dr Darling?’
‘That’s me,’ Lizzie said wearily. ‘Lizzie Darling. The locum.’ Locum? Even the word sounded wrong. She didn’t feel like a locum. She was tired of being doctor in charge. If she didn’t drop her bundle soon she’d fall straight over.