‘But you can!’ Keren exclaimed as she hurried across to a cupboard at the other side of the room. ‘I’m sorry, but I completely forgot to give you the camera.’
‘Ah!’ the little girl exclaimed when she saw what Keren was fetching. She obviously knew what was expected of her and pulled her sleeve up again, this time proudly showing off her straight arm with a broad smile.
‘Thank you so much,’ her mother said, her dark eyes glittering with the threat of happy tears. ‘Everybody. Thank you so much for Ameera arm.’
‘You’d better go away before you make us all cry,’ Keren said, and when the interpreter translated what she’d said, everybody gave a watery laugh.
‘It’s a good job I didn’t have time to put any mascara on after my shower,’ Emily muttered wryly after the door closed behind them. ‘If they’re all going to be like that one, I’d have ended up with a bad case of panda eyes.’
‘Maid, that’s why mine is waterproof,’ Keren confided. ‘If it isn’t the successes like Ameera tugging at your heartstrings when you see them put right, it’s the parents arriving with their kids, terrified that no one’s going to be able to do anything to help.’
Emily suggested that she show the next patient in, suddenly conscious that being close to Beabea wasn’t the only reason why she wanted Zayed Khalil to confirm her position on his team.
In little more than half a day she’d been allowed to
assist in an operation that would change a tiny child’s life expectation and had seen a little girl’s hopeless expression change to one filled with the joys of being alive. And neither would have been possible without the unit to which she was now attached, and the man whose determination had driven its inception.
S
HE’D
been wrong about the hair on his chest, she thought as she drove towards Penhally that evening, grateful that she hadn’t been asked to be on duty this evening.
She hoped that Mr Breyley had explained the special circumstances that had led him to absolve her from staying within easy reach of the hospital while her grandmother was so ill, but she certainly hadn’t felt up to discussing the matter with her new boss—at least, not until she’d sorted her head out and relegated her crazy awareness of the man to its proper place.
A blush heated her cheeks at the realisation that she’d actually been…what was the current term?…checking her new boss out while he’d been bending over Abir’s head on the operating table.
That was something she’d never done before, never been interested in doing, if the truth be told, but when Zayed Khalil had leant forward over Abir and the V of his top had gaped forward…
‘Well, I could hardly help seeing, unless I closed my eyes,’ she muttered defensively, and even that wouldn’t have erased the image once it had been imprinted on her retinas.
She’d wondered about his chest when she’d seen the
hint of dark hair at the opening of his shirt, and had speculated about the amount of body hair he would display if she were ever to see him naked.
‘Well, it certainly isn’t a mean scattering of wiry hairs,’ she said with a strange sense of satisfaction, even as her body sizzled with heat at the idea of seeing the man totally naked. Mean was the last word she would use to describe the thick, dark pelt that had covered him as far as she could see down the front of his scrub top. As for whether it was wiry…She snorted aloud at the thought that she might ever have the opportunity to find out.
‘As if!’ she scoffed at the idea of ever becoming familiar enough with the man to run her fingers over the dark swells of his pectorals, trailing them through the thick silky-looking strands until she found the flat coppery discs of his male nipples and—
‘Enough!’ she snapped into the privacy of her little car, and leant forward to flick the radio on, loudly. ‘The last thing I need is to arrive at the home looking all hot and bothered.’ Her grandmother may be just weeks away from the end of her life but she certainly hadn’t lost her keen eyesight or her unfailing instinct for when there was something on Emily’s mind.
‘So, how’s the job going?’ Beabea asked, almost before Emily had settled into the chair beside her bed. ‘Are you still enjoying it as much as you thought you would?’
Emily smiled wryly at the fact that her grandmother had picked the one topic that she would rather not have talked about, at least until she’d banished those strange new feelings of awareness that were plaguing her.
‘By the time I got to work this morning, Mr Breyley was on his way to New Zealand,’ she announced, hoping
that the ramifications of her side-tracked job would fill the time until Beabea’s next round of medication made her too drowsy to pick up anything untoward.
The story of the consultant’s concerned dash to the other side of the world so that he and his wife could be there for their daughter and new grandchild was like meat and drink to a woman who knew almost everything that happened within a fifty-mile radius of Penhally. It was testimony to the fogging effect of the analgesics that it was some time later before she suddenly realised what a disastrous effect it might have on her granddaughter’s employment.
‘But your job!’ she exclaimed breathlessly. ‘If he’s gone away, does this mean that you’re going to have to move away? Oh, Emily! And you’ve only just moved back, and I was so enjoying being able to see you each day…’
‘Hush, Beabea, it’s not a problem,’ she soothed, squeezing her grandmother’s hand gently, almost afraid that she might shatter the delicate bones. ‘Before he left, Mr Breyley organised another job for me in the interim, until he comes back.’
‘What sort of job? There can’t be two posts for the same work, surely?’ She was still fretting.
‘Not exactly the same, no,’ Emily conceded. ‘But I’ve certainly fallen on my feet with the new post. It’s paediatric orthopaedics and I went into Theatre this morning and the consultant actually let me assist.’
‘On your first day in the job?’ Beabea was understandably amazed. She’d had to listen patiently at the beginning of Emily’s time on Mr Breyley’s firm while she had moaned about wanting to do more than observe and do endless paperwork and legwork.
‘On my very first day,’ she agreed with a triumphant grin. ‘It was an operation on a little boy. The bones of his skull had fused too soon and we had to—’
‘Don’t tell me any of the gory stuff,’ Beabea warned with a grimace. ‘I don’t like thinking about it when it’s happening to little ones. It’s bad enough when it’s adults. At least they can understand what’s happening and why.’
‘Softy,’ Emily teased. ‘But I know what you mean. I hate the idea that they’ll be in pain so I always double-check their medication.’
‘But you say this new man let you assist. Does that mean passing the tools or instruments or whatever they’re called, or—’
‘No. There’s a member of theatre staff who does that. I was allowed to irrigate the incision—’
‘Irrigate? That sounds like something I’d do in the garden,’ Beabea teased, and Emily’s heart lifted that she was in good enough spirits to joke.
‘Then I stitched everything up and put the dressings on before he was transferred to Intensive Care.’
‘And what did the consultant think of your work?’ Beabea quizzed, and Emily felt the swift tide of heat flood into her cheeks. She was so grateful that there was a knock at the door before she could find an answer that wouldn’t reveal her own thoughts about the consultant.
‘Am I intruding?’ said an unexpected male voice, and a greying head appeared round the edge of the door.
‘Dr Tremayne!’ Beabea exclaimed, and Emily was amused that her grandmother sounded almost flustered. Well, for an older man he wasn’t bad looking, she supposed, and for a woman of her grandmother’s generation,
the idea of a good-looking younger man seeing her in her bed was probably plenty of reason for embarrassment.
‘I was just visiting a couple of patients and thought I’d call in on one of my favourite ladies—unless it’s inconvenient. I can always come back another time.’
‘Not at all!’ Beabea exclaimed, her cheeks several shades pinker. ‘Emily, can you get another chair for Dr Tremayne? This is my granddaughter, Emily Livingston—
Dr
Emily Livingston,’ she amended with evident pride. ‘She’s working at St Piran’s.’
‘Is she now?’ His dark brown eyes twinkled at Emily but didn’t cause so much as a twinge of reaction. ‘She hardly looks old enough and definitely looks far too pretty to toil away in a hospital. Are you sure you aren’t harbouring a longing to train as a GP and move back to Penhally?’
‘There isn’t a lot of call for paediatric orthopaedic surgery in Penhally,’ she pointed out politely. ‘And I’m thoroughly enjoying working with Mr Khalil in the unit he’s set up to operate on the children he flies in from his own country.’
Uh-oh! she thought as she saw the distinct spark of interest in her grandmother’s eyes. She had definitely said far more than she’d intended, and it was time to beat a hasty retreat before she was subjected to an embarrassing grilling in front of the GP.
She stood up and gestured towards the chair she’d been using. ‘If you’ll excuse me, I’ll just go and see if there’s any possibility of an extra cup of tea while you talk to my grandmother.’
‘There’s no need to leave on my account,’ he began, but she made her escape and hurried down the corridor,
suddenly overwhelmed anew by the significance of the GP’s visit.
It had been bad enough when she had been taking care of Beabea in her little cottage. But at least there, any professional medical visits from Dr Tremayne and the health visitors and nurses had taken place while she had been at work. Any adjustments to her medication had already been made by the time she’d returned.
Nick Tremayne was obviously a caring doctor who was concerned enough about his elderly patient to visit frequently and spend time making sure she was comfortable, but to actually be in the room while they discussed her worsening pain and, God forbid, speculated on how much worse it would get, was more than Emily could deal with.
This was her grandmother, the last member of her family left alive. Once she was gone, Emily would be totally alone in the world and she didn’t think she could cope with talking about how little time there was left.
‘I’m not really thirsty, dear,’ Beabea said when she returned with a little tray, and her voice bore the slurring that told Emily that she’d received a recent boost of medication. ‘I’m feeling quite tired. Perhaps I’ll have a little sleep. Thank you for coming, Doctor. I’ll see you…see you…’
Emily felt the threat of tears burning her eyes.
Not so long ago, Beabea would have been impatiently waiting for the man to go so that she could ask endless questions about the interesting situation her granddaughter had skated over earlier. It was a measure of the rapid progression of the disease that all she’d wanted to do was drift off to sleep.
‘I promise we’ll do our best to keep her discomfort to a minimum,’ Nick Tremayne reassured her quietly. ‘We pride ourselves on making a dreadful situation as easy as possible for both patient and family, but if you have any concerns or need to speak to me at any time…’
‘Thank you,’ she whispered, ‘but nothing can really make it any easier when you’re losing the only person in the world who…’ Her throat closed up completely and she was unable to utter another sound.
To her utter mortification, the tears started to stream down her cheeks and with one last despairing look at the precious figure slumped against the mountain of pillows, she fled from the room.
It wasn’t very far from the front door of the nursing home to the steps from Mevagissey Road down onto the beach and Emily made it at a flat-out run, uncaring for once whether anyone saw her tear-stained cheeks or not.
Once on the beach, she kicked off her shoes and made for the hard-packed sand at the water’s edge, knowing that she desperately needed the physical exertion of a long run to get herself under control again.
There were still a number of surfers taking advantage of the waves ramped up by the evening’s onshore wind, but they seemed every bit as oblivious to her presence as she was to theirs once she hit her stride.
She had no idea how long she pounded backwards and forwards, but eventually the fact that her legs were shaking with a combination of exhaustion and lack of food slowed her pace and forced her to take refuge in her usual spot among the rocks at the base of the cliff.
Almost before she’d settled herself into her little haven she caught sight of her mystery man making his way to
his usual spot, as if he’d been waiting for everybody to leave the foreshore.
As on every other occasion, he began with a series of stretches and warm-up exercises before he started to push himself further and harder than ever.
Even in the depths of her own misery Emily could see that there was something different this time. It was almost as though he couldn’t find his usual rhythm, or perhaps the injury that had given him the limp was more painful than usual. Whatever it was, she could tell that he was struggling, but she had a feeling that he was so stubborn that he would be more likely to do himself further damage than give in to the disability, no matter how temporary it was.
The harder he tried the more concerned she became, until all her concentration was on what he was doing rather than on the misery that had driven her down to the beach so precipitately.
Even as she watched, he faltered and nearly fell, only just managing to stay on his feet, then, with a despairing shout towards the last of the sunset he sank to the sand.
For several minutes he sat hunched over, the very picture of disheartened male ego. She felt so sorry that all his efforts over the last few days seemed to have been for nothing, and for the sake of that dented ego would happily have remained out of sight if he’d simply left the beach when he’d recovered.
As it was, she was still watching him when he gathered up his belongings, but when he went to straighten up, something went wrong and he virtually collapsed onto the sand again with a hoarse cry.
‘Dammit, what have you done to yourself now?’ she demanded under her breath. One half of her wanted to
hurry across to offer her help, but she was almost certain it would be refused—there weren’t many men who would willingly accept physical assistance from a woman.
So she stayed where she was, her gaze riveted to him as she waited for him to make a successful attempt at getting to his feet.
Only it didn’t happen, even though he tried twice more.
‘Enough is enough,’ she growled when he started to make a third attempt, even though she could see clearly that he must be suffering from some sort of muscular spasm in his back or his leg. She snatched a quick breath for courage, hoping that whoever it was would have the sense to accept the helping hand she was about to offer.
‘Hang on a minute,’ she called as she stepped out from the shadows at the base of the cliff. ‘Let me give you a bit of support so you don’t hurt yourself any further.’
She broke into a jog and arrived at the man’s side just as he turned to look up at her from his crumpled position on the sand.
‘Zayed! I mean Mr Khalil,’ she hastily corrected herself when she recognised his unmistakable face in spite of the encroaching dusk.
‘What are
you
doing here?’ he snapped, for all the world like a trapped and wounded beast.
Emily recoiled from his harsh tone, but she’d suffered much worse from patients during her training and survived.
‘I live not far away, in one of the cottages in the old part of Penhally,’ she explained simply, sticking to plain facts. ‘I was visiting my grandmother and came for a run on the beach.’
His frown was disbelieving until his eyes dropped to her bare feet and the sand-encrusted hems of her trousers.
‘In that case, if you have finished your run, you can go home to your cottage and leave me in peace.’