Carrying a large tray with all the necessary paraphernalia on it, Liz approached the patient. The student nurses were already gathered round his bed. If any one of them giggled, she’d have their guts for garters. Always supposing Sister MacLean didn’t get there before her.
‘You’re working well, MacMillan,’ observed a light, mocking voice from behind her.
Liz spun round so quickly that she dropped the tray. It appeared to fall in slow motion, taking what seemed like minutes to hit the floor. It bounced when it got there, its contents leaping gracefully into the air before spilling in a series of crashes and clatters.
‘And for your next trick?’ asked Adam once everything had finally come to rest and the noise at last died away. Sauntering forward, he stood on the other side of the debris. He was in civilian clothes, elegant in a belted trenchcoat, his fair head bare. She’d forgotten how tall he was.
No she hadn’t. She hadn’t forgotten a single thing about him. Not the height, not the thick fair hair, not the hazel eyes - currently surveying the damage with an elegantly quizzical air.
The probationers stood open-mouthed. Sister MacLean’s mouth also opened, but Adam pre-empted her. Reaching out, he coiled his fingers around Liz’s wrist and pulled her towards him, angling her so that she side-stepped the mess on the floor.
‘I want fifteen minutes with Nurse - I beg her pardon - Staff Nurse MacMillan, Sister.’
‘You can have five, Dr Buchanan.’
‘Ten.’
‘As long as it takes this lot to clear up the mess. Not a second more.’
He didn’t waste any time, leading Liz out of the ward and into the corridor. When they got there, he backed her up against the wall, but then the forceful decisiveness seemed to desert him, and he took a step back.
‘Look, Liz,’ he said. ‘I’ve got something to say. Will you hear me out? Not say anything till I’ve finished?’
He ran a hand through his hair and darted a quick glance at her from under his fair brows.
‘I had a speech all rehearsed,’ he said quietly. ‘Worked it out on the train home.’ He gave her that odd little look again. ‘Right now I can’t seem to string two coherent words together.’
Liz was having some difficulty in speaking herself.
‘Tell me the most important bit,’ she whispered.
‘The m-most important b-bit?’
She had never known him to stutter. He was always so self-possessed, in command of whatever situation he found himself in. Then, all at once, she realized what that nervous stammer meant. Adam Buchanan was scared: of what he was going to say next.
Before she could think of a way to help him, he squared his shoulders, looked her straight in the eye, and came out with it.
‘I love you.’
There had been no stutter that time.
Liz saw that she’d been wrong. It wasn’t those three little words which frightened him. It was her reaction to them. When he dared to say them again, she felt a lump form in her throat.
‘I love you. That’s all.’ He took another step back, so that he was standing in the middle of the corridor. “That’s what I wanted to say, Liz.’
The look on his face was breaking her heart.
‘Liz,’ he pleaded. ‘Say something.’
She pushed herself off the wall and took a step towards him, lifting her hands, both for the sheer pleasure of touching him and to reassure herself that he really was here, that this wasn’t happening in one of her dreams.
When she trailed her fingertips lightly over his jaw and his mouth, he froze. Then he closed his eyes, and muttered something under his breath.
Liz found her voice at last.
‘I love you too, Adam.’
His eyes snapped open, but he wasn’t prepared to believe her. Not yet. He grabbed her wrists, drawing her hands away from his face.
‘And Mario?’ he asked tightly.
‘A very dear friend. No more, no less.’
He went on as though she hadn’t spoken. ‘Hope wrote to me.’
‘I know,’ she said, bemused by this apparent change of subject. ‘I gave my mother your forwarding address so she could write the envelope for her. I expect it followed you around for a while until you got it.’
He nodded impatiently. ‘Yes, but she sent me this drawing. It was very colourful. It showed her Auntie Liz in the Botanic Gardens. With her Uncle Mario. Hand in hand.’
‘I expect we were holding hands when she drew it,’ Liz said evenly. ‘That wasn’t very long after Mario came home.’ She paused. ‘When he and I were still trying to pretend that everything was exactly the same as it had been before.’
Adam was watching her closely. ‘And it wasn’t?’
Liz smiled, remembering that day in the kitchen of the flat, when Mario had told her to stop talking about washing curtains, when he had crooked his finger at her, more or less ordered her to come to him.
‘It was the day after that walk in the Botanic Gardens,’ she told Adam now. ‘Mario and I were in the flat above the eafé getting ready to start cleaning it up. He kissed me,’ she said. ‘Very passionately.’
The blood drained from Adam’s face and his fingers tightened on her wrists. ‘Liz... please...’
He had to hear this. She forced herself to go on.
‘I did my best to respond, but it wasn’t working. For either of us,’ she said softly. ‘And Mario made a very interesting observation.’
‘Which was?’ Adam’s voice was raw.
‘He told me that it was pretty hard to make love to someone who was quite obviously in love with someone else.’
She saw it then in his hazel eyes: equal parts hope and fear. He took refuge in flippancy. ‘Anyone I know?’
‘Someone into whose arms he’d once put me. Quite symbolic that, he thought,’ she said lightly. ‘At Partick police station - if that helps you work out who he was talking about.’
Her eyes dropped to his very beautiful mouth. When had she first started imagining what it would feel like on her own? ‘The last time I offered you a kiss, you turned me down. Would you refuse me now?’
Adam shook his head. The corners of that beautiful mouth began, very cautiously, to lift.
‘Oh, Adam!’
He pulled her roughly into his arms, the forcefulness back. His kiss was thorough, and everything she had dreamed it would be. When he released her they stayed in each other’s arms.
‘I love you,’ she said again. ‘Do you believe me now?’
Someone coughed. It was one of the pupil nurses, very embarrassed and apologetic.
‘Sister MacLean’s compliments, and she’d be extremely obliged if you could possibly find the time to step back into the ward. Sorry, Staff,’ said the girl a lot less formally. ‘She told me to say it exactly like that. And we tried to take as long as we could clearing it all up, but you know what she’s like!’
‘Don’t we just,’ murmured Adam, taking a firm grip of Liz’s hand. He gave the probationer a dazzling smile. ‘Lead on, Macduff.’
It was obvious that their reappearance had been eagerly awaited. Every head was turned towards them. Sister MacLean spoke, insincerity dripping from every lilting syllable.
‘How kind of you to rejoin us, Staff Nurse MacMillan. I do hope you’ve finished sorting out your private life?’
Adam grinned.’Not quite, Sister.’
She gave him a steely look. ‘She’ll be off duty in one hour, Dr Buchanan. If you’re going to wait for her, kindly do so out in the corridor.’
‘Och, Sister,’ he said. ‘Have a heart. She’s just told me that she loves me.’ With an impish grin, he walked up to the nursing tutor and, before she had time to object, kissed her on the cheek. ‘And we all know you’re not anything like as hard-hearted as you’d have us believe.’
‘Dr Buchanan!’
Liz, watching the reactions of the probationers, was pondering the fact that their mouths had once more quite literally fallen open when Adam walked over to her, pulled her to him and kissed her - briefly, but full on the mouth.
‘Enough!’ yelled Sister MacLean. ‘I won’t have my doctors and nurses kissing and canoodling and putting the patients off their recovery.’
‘The patients are enjoying it, hen,’ came a voice from one of the beds. ‘This is better than the pictures.’
Laughter ran round the ward.
‘Anyway,’ Adam told Sister MacLean cheerfully, ‘I’m not one of your doctors any more. I’m a free agent. Thinking of going into general practice. I thought Clydebank might be able to stand another doctor or two. I’d need a practice nurse, of course. What do you say, MacMillan?’
‘She says,’ broke in the man whose blanket bath had been postponed, and who was hoping that everyone had forgotten about it by now, ‘do you only want her for your nurse or are you planning to make an honest woman of her?’
The laughter died away, the patients sat up straighter in their beds and the student nurses stood stock still. Even Sister MacLean was quiet.
‘Liz,’ he said, ‘I love you. Will you marry me?’
You could have heard a pin drop in the ward. They were all waiting for her reply. She had eyes only for him. She thought of all they had been through, of all they had meant to each other - of all the future might hold for them. Together.
‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘I will.’
A cheer went up in Male Surgical. As it subsided, Sister MacLean drew a sigh of theatrical proportions.
‘And now could we possibly get on with our work?’ Her gaze swept over Adam and Liz. ‘I suppose,’ she said in her lovely Highland accent, ‘we have to be grateful that Staff Nurse MacMillan has finally seen what has been staring her in the face for a long time. Several years, by my estimate.’
Liz and Adam looked at her. Then they looked at each other. Then they burst out laughing.
‘You look perfectly lovely,’ he said.
Liz dropped her head in pleased embarrassment at the admiration evident in Adam’s eyes. ‘Turn around,’ he commanded, ‘so that I can have a good look at you.’
Laughing, she did as she was bid. Her dress was of wine-coloured velvet, simply shaped, with a small matching cape over her shoulders.
‘The material was a gift from a grateful patient,’ she said. ‘No questions asked. No clothing coupons, either.’ She squinted down at herself. ‘Maybe I shouldn’t have made the cape, though. Then the dress could have been a wee bit longer.’
‘I wouldn’t want it any longer,’ he growled, and Liz laughed again. His appreciative gaze travelled up to her head. ‘What do you call that thing you’re wearing on your hair?’
‘A snood.’ She put a hand to the back of her head and patted the heavy black crocheted lace which contained her hair below her ears. ‘Do you like it?’
‘Mmm... Maybe.’ He walked round her to examine it from the back. ‘It’s very chic.’
‘But?’ She went to turn, but his hands came on to her shoulders, holding her where she was. ‘What are you doing?’ she laughed.
‘Checking to see how it’s secured.’ He allowed her to turn to face him, but his hands remained where they were, resting lightly on her shoulders. ‘So I know exactly how to loosen it later. Did you enjoy yourself yesterday evening, by the way?’
‘Couldn’t you tell?’ she murmured. ‘I must say it was very tactful of your mother to suddenly remember a previous engagement.’
‘Wasn’t it? You know,’ he said, his mouth very close to hers, ‘I’m having a terrible problem. I find I can’t stop smiling. D’you think I should see a doctor?’