Questions Of Trust: A Medical Romance (21 page)

She recited a few details to the operator, then folded her phone away. ‘It’s on its way,’ she said. To the drover she said, ‘Please. Keep back.’ When he didn’t move she took him gently by the arm and drew him on to the pavement, then returned to Tom.

Rebecca was crumpled with one leg at an awkward angle. There was blood on her dress, not a lot of it but enough to stain the expensive silk grotesquely. She was breathing, Chloe noticed, but it wasn’t a normal sort of breathing. Her chest was jerking in gasps, and as Chloe watched, Rebecca’s lips seemed to be turning an ominous blue.

Tom’s hands roved over Rebecca, probing, feeling for injuries, Chloe assumed. His fingers moved to her throat and he felt for her pulse, then laid his middle finger on the centre of her throat where a man’s Adam’s apple would be. Then he pressed his ear to her chest, beneath each breast in turn, raised his head once more and laid a hand on her chest, moving it about and tapping on one of his knuckles with a finger on his other hand. The tapping produced a hollow sound on the left side, but on the right, Chloe thought it sounded like rapping on a solid concrete wall.

Tom muttered something grimly to himself which Chloe didn’t catch. He glanced up at her. ‘Have you got something sharp? Scissors, a nail file?’

She fumbled in her bag, which she still had slung over her shoulder as she hadn’t taken it off inside the house, and brought out a small pair of scissors which she handed to Tom.

‘And I  need a pen’

‘What?’ She wasn’t sure she’d heard right.

‘A ballpoint pen. Quickly.’

There was a cheap plastic pen at the very bottom of the bag. This too Chloe passed it to Tom. He removed the cap and pulled the nib out, then snapped about one third of the length of the plastic off.

Chloe stared in appalled fascination as Tom tore open the front of Rebecca’s dress, then probed with his fingertips below the right cup of her bra near her armpit. He seemed to find the spot he was looking for and, keeping it marked with one finger, he pressed the closed points of the scissors against the bared skin. Chloe cringed as the metal points penetrated the flesh. Rebecca didn’t flinch, but her mouth and cheeks were turning a deeper tint of blue.

Tom worked with his fingers, widening the slit he’d made. Then he grasped the broken casing of the ballpoint pen and pushed the jagged plastic end into the hole. He twisted it slightly, grimacing.

And Chloe heard a hiss of air, as if a balloon were suddenly being deflated. Rebecca began to gasp, but it was much freer breathing now. Rapidly her face started to lose its ghastly blue-grey tinge.

In the distance, a siren was approaching rapidly.

Tom slumped forward, a hand across his mouth, sweat matting his hair to his forehead. Below him Rebecca was groaning, shifting lightly, rolling her head from side to side. But breathing.

The ambulance came screaming up, and events began to move even more quickly after that. All Chloe remembered clearly from that time was Tom’s face. Exhausted, bewildered, it was the face of a man who’d suffered more in the way of conflicting emotion in a short time than anyone deserved to experience.

It was the face of a man who had just, Chloe understood, saved another human being’s life.

And it was the face of the man she loved.

***

The cottage was in darkness except for a dim light coming though the drawn living room curtains. Tom stumbled up to the door and knocked hesitantly.

After a minute he was about to knock again when the door opened. Chloe peered out, fully dressed though her feet were bare, the befuddlement of the newly wakened in her eyes.

‘Sorry, didn’t mean to startle you,’ he whispered. ‘I knocked because I thought the doorbell might wake the kids up.’

She stood aside for him, her smile full of concern. ‘They’ve both been asleep for hours,’ she said. ‘I think I must’ve nodded off for a few minutes myself.’

In the living room he glanced at the clock on the wall. Three fifteen. ‘Look, I’m sorry. I should have gone back home.’

‘Nonsense,’ she said. ‘Cup of tea?’

‘Yes,’ he said, thankfully. ‘That would be wonderful.’ He’d had his fill of hospital coffee in plastic cups from vending machines over the last few hours, but a good home-brewed mug of tea would really hit the spot.

In the kitchen, over their beverages, Tom brought Chloe up to date.

Rebecca was out of danger. She had a mild concussion but had avoided serious head injury, and although her tibia, the shinbone, was broken, it was a clean fracture and should heal completely given enough time. The potentially most serious injury had been the one to her chest. One of her ribs on the right-hand side had been broken and punctured the pleura, the sac encasing the lung. Air had been sucked into the cavity around the lung and had been building up, compressing the lung and forcing her windpipe over to one side. In a few more minutes, perhaps seconds, she would have gone into respiratory arrest, and her heart function might have been compromised.

Tom explained as simply as he could what he’ done. He had used the scissors to gain entry to the pleural cavity, then used the shell of the ballpoint pen to open a makeshift channel so that air couldn’t build up around the lung any longer. The hiss Chloe had heard was the compressed air escaping from around the lung.

‘She’s got a proper drain in her chest now to get rid of any remaining air,’ he said. ‘They’ll take it out in a day or two. But she’ll need surgery on that leg.’

‘How is she?’ said Chloe. Tom glanced across the table at her. She must be as exhausted as he was; she’d been awake about as long, going to pick up Kelly after Tom had departed for the hospital and looking after the girl at the cottage with Jake, feeding and bathing them both and putting them both to bed.

‘I mean… I know you’ve told me how she is,’ chloe said. ‘But – how
is
she? Otherwise?’

He gave a weary shrug. ‘She’s not great,’ he said. ‘Rebecca’s a troubled woman. As you know only too well, Chloe. She’s going to need to get help after all this. I think she knows it. We had a bit of a heart-to-heart, though she wasn’t really in the best state to talk about things like that.’

‘Do you think she did it deliberately? Jump in front of that car?’

Again he raised a shoulder. ‘Who knows? Only Rebecca. And even she probably isn’t certain.’

‘Is her man coming?’

‘Andrew? Yes, he’s on his way. He’s been abroad in the Middle East on business but he’s flying in. He’s an okay guy, even if he did run off with my wife. He’ll be a good source of support for her.’

Tom realised he must have been lost in thought, because he became aware that Chloe had been watching him for some time. Her elbow was propped on the table top, her chin resting on her hand. The faintest of smiles touched her lips.

‘What?’ he grinned, all at once as self-conscious as an adolescent.

‘I was just thinking,’ she murmured. ‘Marvelling, actually. After everything, after all that’s happened, even right up until this afternoon… you had every reason to hate Rebecca. And yet you’re still concerned about her. You still saved her life.’

‘I couldn’t very well let her die there on the road,’ he said. ‘I am a doctor, after all. I took an oath.’

‘I know. Of course you had to do what you did. I understand that. It’s just…’ She broke off, looked down, almost shyly. ‘You said this Andrew’s an “okay guy”. Well,
you’re
an okay guy, Tom Carlyle. No, you’re
more
than an okay guy.’ She lifted her eyes to meet his again. ‘You’re a quite wonderful guy.’

He watched her eyes, absorbed by how even in spite of her exhaustion they sparkled.

Tom opened his mouth, to say he was sorry. Sorry he’d got her involved in all of this in the first place. Sorry he’d been unappreciative of her help. Sorry he’d kept his feelings for her under wraps instead of shouting them from the rooftops. And he wanted to thank her. Thank her for her loyalty, her doggedness, her brilliance. Her kindness, and her compassion, and her grit.

And as he opened his mouth he saw her lips part, because there were things he knew she wanted to say too. That she shouldn’t have interfered, should have respected his wishes to handle his problems on his own… a catalogue of other things. None of which, really, mattered at all now.

They spoke at the same time, but there were no
sorrys
, or
thanks
, or anything of that sort.

What they each said, at the same time, was: ‘I love you.’

***

Chloe traced a fingertip down Tom’s profile, across the smooth, almost unlined plain of his forehead, down the slight curve of the bridge of his nose, across his closed lips, over the bump of a chin with its hint of stubble.

She returned her fingertips to his lips, and they parted a fraction, then swelled in a gentle kiss.

She was snuggled against him on the couch in his living room. It was a Saturday evening, and the detritus of a home-cooked meal lingered on the table. It needed clearing away, but not now.

It was a first for them. Their first proper date, for one. And the first occasion on which they had time to spend with one another, just the two of them, without fear of disturbance. Jake and Kelly were back at the cottage, under the care of Mrs McFarland. The older woman had been all too eager to babysit the pair. It was something she’d been offering to do for weeks now, ever since she’d… well, ever since Tom and Chloe had stopped pretending to anyone.

‘Ask Dr Carlyle what young Kelly will have for breakfast,’ Mrs McFarland said that afternoon.

Chloe replied hastily, ‘Oh, no, no, don’t worry. He’ll pick her up later. I’ll be back too. I’m not staying all night.’

‘But why ever not, dear?’ said her friend, innocently enough but with a wicked glint in her eye. Chloe laughed, exasperated.

Now, she nuzzled closer to Tom, relishing the warm aroma of his neck above the collar of his casual shirt, the heavy feel of his arm around her shoulders. He drew her against him and she felt his fingertips beneath her chin. She let him tilt her head back so that her face was lifted to his.

Their lips met, exploring delicately at first, then probing with increasing urgency. Chloe’s teeth pressed against his and she slipped the tip of her tongue between them. His own tongue responded to hers, wrestling it playfully. A slow, fierce heat began to spread from deep in Chloe’s belly in all directions, upwards to her breast and down into her loins, triggering a tingling in the most intimate parts of her.

She drew back, wanting to devour him and yet wanting to gaze at him at the same time. His face, so handsome and affable, had a relaxed purity about it that she’d noticed when she’d first met him, though she’d denied herself awareness of it then. It had disappeared, that look, in the terrible weeks of the early summer; but now, a month after the culmination of the saga, with Rebecca gone to France with her man and Tom back in public esteem, the
Pember Valley News
having had to publish a humiliating apology once the woman calling herself Sabrina Jones had admitted she’d told a pack of lies about Dr Carlyle… now, that serenity was back in Tom’s features.

If Tom had changed, Chloe thought, she’d been transformed. Not physically, but in so many other ways. In the last three or four months, she’d learned about country ways. She’d learned that nosiness wasn’t confined to fussy ladies of a certain age. She’d learned about the extremes to which obsession and a sense of grievance could drive a human being.

She’d learned that not all doctors were incompetent, or arrogant, or malicious. Probably not the vast majority of them.

She’d learned that trust was something that cut both ways.

She gazed into Tom’s eyes, and as if reading her thoughts he murmured, ‘Enough. Enough waiting.’

His hands slipped to the hem of her shirt and swept it up and over her head. She’d put on a half-cup bra, something she’d never worn once since coming to
Pemberham
, and now she enjoyed the look of delight in his eyes as he gazed at her breasts, pushed up and half-exposed. In turn she grabbed at his polo shirt and pulled it up and off. His chest was lightly muscled, smooth with the faintest sprinkling of hair, his belly flat and taut.

Chloe rose on to her knees on the sofa, unclasping her jeans and pulling down the zip, then wriggling her hips to peel the denim down. As she leaned forward to kick the jeans off her legs she grasped Tom’s belt buckle and unfastened his own trousers, pulling them down. Beneath his boxer shorts the evidence of his arousal swelled towards her.

Their bodies joined, her arms winding tightly around his neck, his around her waist, and their mouths met hotly once again. His hands swept up her back and scrabbled with the clasp of her bra. He threw the wisp of lace aside and grasped her back with his flat hands, pressing her closer and ducking his head so that his lips and tongue could flick and suck at her risen nipples. Chloe moaned, long and deep in her throat, urging her body at her lover, wrapping her thighs around his waist and thrusting her pelvis against his stomach.

Somehow with one hand he managed to pull his shorts down, and Chloe felt him engorged against her belly. She loosened the grip of her legs on his waist so that he could slip her panties down her thighs. His hands grasped the globes of her bottom and she lowered herself on to him, both of them groaning as they joined. Tom sank so that his back was propped against the back of the sofa and Chloe moved astride him, rocking at first with a controlled rhythm but, unable to help herself, increasing the pace as the pleasure mounted within her until she reached her peak and heard herself cry out, his own climax melding with hers so that they were fused in a moment of extreme, surpassing joy that seemed eternal.