The Consultant's New-Found Family

In the week she’d been here, Mark, one of the paramedics, had asked her out; so had the registrar on the maternity ward, Jack Harrowven. Lisa had turned them both down—though she’d gone out of her way to be charming in her refusal, and they’d agreed to stay purely friends and colleagues.

Which was just how it should be with Joel Mortimer. Especially as she knew he wasn’t available.

Her body seemed to have other ideas and wasn’t listening to the messages her brain was sending to it. Every time she caught his eye, there was a weird tingle at the base of her spine. Every time he spoke to her, her pulse sped up. Every time his hand brushed against hers when she handed over a set of notes or a piece of equipment, it felt as if an electric shock had gone through her. And it was wrong, wrong, wrong.

You, she told herself silently, need to get a life.

Starting tonight, when she was going out with the team for a Chinese meal.

The little boy’s breathing was ragged, as if he was trying to hold back tears. Lisa glanced swiftly at his notes. She could still remember being nine and how uncool it was to cry, especially for boys. ‘That looks painful,’ she said gently. ‘You’re being very brave, Sam.’

‘Yeah.’ The word was clipped, as if he didn’t trust himself to say any more. Didn’t trust himself not to start howling.

He’d clearly hit the ground hard, at speed, because his sweatshirt was in ribbons. The skin beneath it was lacerated and studded with gravel—it would need proper irrigation or he’d end up with an infection. And Lisa didn’t like the way he was nursing his arm. A dislocation at best—and a fracture at worst. Especially if the fracture involved the epiphyses, the growing ends of the long bones in the body, which could result in the growth plates fusing too early so the arm would be too short when Sam was fully grown. ‘What happened?’ she asked.

‘Fell off my bike,’ Sam muttered.

‘Tell the doctor the truth,’ his mother said, rolling her eyes.

‘I fell off,’ the boy insisted.

His mother sighed. ‘And you’re not getting any sympathy from me. I’ve told you before you’re not to go near Mr Cooper’s drive. And to wear elbow pads when you’re on your bike. At least you had the sense to keep your cycling helmet on.’ She looked at Lisa. ‘We live in a culde-sac. The boys all race like mad down it and stop just before they hit the old man’s drive at the end. It’s some stupid game where they see who can stop the fastest and the nearest to the gravel. Half the time they come straight over the handlebars. The other half, they skid on the gravel and come off. Just like that.’ She gestured to her son’s arm. ‘We’ve all told the kids not to do it—because it’s not fair to the old man, having them scatter his gravel everywhere, as well as it being dangerous for them—but since when do little boys ever listen to their mothers?’

‘I’m not a little boy. I’m almost a teenager,’ Sam grumbled.

‘You’ve got four years until you’re a teenager. That isn’t “almost”,’ his mother retorted. ‘Now, let the doctor look at your arm.’

‘It hurts,’ Sam said between clenched teeth.

‘I know, sweetheart, and I’ll try to make it stop hurting very soon. Can you wiggle your fingers for me?’ Lisa asked.

He did, but she noticed him flinching.

‘Where did it hurt most?’ she asked.

‘My arm.’

Wrist? Elbow?’

‘All of it.’

‘I really need to examine your arm properly,’ she said gently, ‘because you might have broken something or dislocated a joint. But first I think we need to stop it hurting, and I’ll also need to get all that grit out of your arm so it doesn’t get really sore.’

‘It hurts now.’ His eyes widened as she stepped nearer. ‘Don’t touch it. Please, don’t.’

She smiled at the boy. ‘I could leave it so you can gross out all your mates with the pus that’ll appear over the next day or so, but that’ll hurt an awful lot more in the long run. Trust me, it’ll hurt a lot less and heal much faster if you let me clean it properly now. What I’ll do is numb the area first so you won’t feel any pain.’

His eyes widened. ‘You mean, you’re going to stick a needle into me?’ He dragged in a shaky breath. ‘But they—they hurt!’

‘He had a bit of a bad time when the nurse at the surgery gave him his tetanus jab,’ Sam’s mother explained.

‘Poor you,’ Lisa said sympathetically. ‘But I’m really good at this. I bet you won’t even notice.’

‘I will,’ Sam said, and this time the tears came.

Oh, Lord. The poor kid really must be in pain: boys that age, in her experience, tried to tough it out as much as they could and hated to be treated as a baby. She had to do something—and fast.

‘Hey.’ She took his hand and squeezed it. ‘I know injections can be scary. But I promise you, it won’t hurt. And then all this pain in your arm will stop hurting, too. And did you know I have a special bravery certificate for boys who are being very, very brave like you are right now?’

‘I want to go home,’ he said, hiccuping through his sobs.

‘Give him a cuddle,’ she said softly to Sam’s mother, ‘and I’ll be back in a tick.’ She needed someone who was good at distracting—and that included the mum as well as the little boy. Lisa could understand the woman’s exasperation, because she’d obviously told her son time and time again to be careful on his bike and he hadn’t listened, but right now in her view Sam needed a cuddle more than a lecture. There would be time enough for telling him off later, when he’d stopped hurting.

Lisa twitched back the curtain, and nearly walked straight into Joel. She put both hands up in a gesture of apology. ‘Whoops! Sorry. I wasn’t looking where I was going.’ Though she was very, very aware of his physical presence. Tall and strong and reliable.

‘No worries. Everything all right?’

This was a very straightforward case and she really shouldn’t be asking a registrar for help with it, but Joel was good at the Sir Galahad bit. And if he did coastguard rescues, he’d probably dealt with a lot of really frightened children—boys around Sam’s age who went out on an inflatable full of bravado but then got trapped by the tide and ended up in tears.

And she’d just bet he’d be able to charm Sam’s mum. No woman would be immune to a smile from a man this gorgeous.

She screwed up her nose. ‘Have you got a minute, Joel?’

‘What’s up?’

She closed the curtain behind her and lowered her voice so her patient and his mother wouldn’t hear. ‘I’ve got a young lad who’s fallen off his bike. His arm’s a bit of a mess—and I’m not sure if he’s broken or dislocated something. He’s a bit chary about letting me look at it, and he’s scared stiff of needles. I need something to distract him so I can get a proper look and work out if he needs an X-ray. And I could really do with getting the mum to stop nagging him.’ She didn’t dare tell Joel she wanted him to use his sex appeal on the mum—because that would be a dead giveaway that she found him sexy. She’d concentrate on the little boy’s needs. ‘Are you good with kids, by any chance?’

Joel gave her an unreadable glance. ‘You could say that.’ Then the odd expression on his face vanished, and he smiled at her. ‘Want me to come and talk him into letting us have a look?’

Oh, yes. That smile would definitely work on Sam’s mum. It had just made her own knees go weak. She nodded. ‘Please.’

‘OK. I’ll distract him and you sort out the business end of the needle—assuming you’re comfortable with that?’

‘Sure. I’ll use a fine needle—and I’ll warm the local an-aesthetic and buffer it.’ That would help to make the injection less painful, and if Joel could keep Sam distracted she could inject the anaesthetic really slowly, which made it easier for children to tolerate. The last thing she wanted to do was make the little boy’s fear of needles worse.

Joel followed her back into the cubicle and allowed her to introduce him to Sam and his mother.

Within seconds Joel had Sam laughing at a stream of silly jokes and had drawn him into talking about his favourite football team. Lisa prepared a syringe, waited for Joel’s signal and swiftly eased the needle into place.

Sam was so busy telling Joel about the last football match he’d gone to with his dad he barely noticed what Lisa was doing. Gently she removed the needle and nodded to Joel.

‘Right, then, Super Sam. Going to let us look at that arm now?’ Joel asked.

‘I…’ The little boy went white. ‘You’re not going to put a needle in me now, are you?’

‘No. Because I’ve already done it,’ Lisa said quietly.

He stared at her, clearly surprised. ‘But…but I didn’t feel a thing!’

‘Told you I was good at this.’ She winked at him. ‘I’m a doctor. I don’t tell fibs. Any second now your arm’s going to stop hurting.’

Sam’s mother smiled in relief. Now Sam had stopped making a fuss, she seemed to have calmed down, too. Or maybe—as Lisa suspected—she’d been so stunned by how good-looking Joel was that she’d forgotten to be angry with her son. ‘Thank you,’ she said.

‘That’s what we’re here for. Now, let’s have a look at that arm.’ Gently, Joel examined the boy and Lisa noted the way he was checking Sam’s pulse and hand for any circulatory or neural problems. The discoloration of Sam’s skin, the swelling and the odd angle of his arm made Lisa think the little boy had a fracture. Joel clearly thought so too because he said, ‘I’m pretty sure you’ve broken your arm, so I’m going to send you for an X-ray to see what’s happened.’

‘Will it mean I have to have a plaster?’ Sam asked.

‘Yup. Though what sort of plaster depends on the type of fracture,’ Joel said. ‘And I need to know what sort of fracture it is before we can make it better. Do you know what an X-ray is?’

‘Yes, we did it at school. It’s like a camera and it shows your bones.’

‘That’s right. And the best thing is, it doesn’t hurt,’ Joel said with a smile.

‘I’ll get you booked in and clean up your arm while we’re waiting for a free slot on the X-ray machines,’ Lisa said.

‘All right,’ Sam said, perking up.

The local anaesthetic was working, she thought. Clearly the pain had eased, and Sam had turned from a sullen child into a chatty, interested little boy.

‘Can I see my X-ray?’ he asked.

‘Of course you can. Do you think you might want to be a doctor when you grow up?’

‘And have a white coat and stethoscope like yours? Mmm. I think I’d like to make people better. But not if someone’s sick over me.’ Sam pulled a face. ‘It smells disgusting when someone throws up at school. The classroom stinks for ages afterwards. And it always looks like chopped carrots. Gross!’

Lisa laughed. ‘I’m afraid we get quite a bit of that in here.’ Particularly on Friday and Saturday nights, when people tended to overdo things in the pubs and clubs.

Sam looked disappointed. ‘Oh. Maybe I won’t be a doctor, then.’

‘I’ll be back in two ticks, when I’ve booked you in,’ Lisa said, ‘and then we’ll get all the gunge out of your arm.’

Joel left the cubicles with her.

‘Thanks for that,’ she said. ‘It really helped.’

‘No worries.’

Just what he’d said when he’d rescued her on the hill. She smiled wryly. ‘You seem to be making a habit of this.’

‘Of what?’

‘Rescuing me,’ Lisa said. ‘First on that hill, now today when I needed help with a scared kid and a mum who’d lost her patience. I owe you.’

‘Hey, everyone gets the odd case where they need help. We’re a team here. Anyway, you’ll probably return the favour by the end of the week. Kids I can do. Geriatric men—now, they loathe me.’

‘Yeah, right,’ she said with a grin. She couldn’t imagine anyone loathing Joel Mortimer. There was just something about him: he was the sort men would want to be their friend and women would want to be their lover. Those gorgeous eyes…She could just imagine them, slightly hooded, looking at her across a crowded room. A private signal, telling her exactly what he was going to do when they were alone…

Oh, lord. She needed to get her thoughts under control. Fast. Joel wasn’t free and she didn’t do relationships anyway. And fantasising about the man who was practically her boss would definitely end in tears.

‘Just call me if you need me,’ Joel said.

Down, girl, Lisa scolded her libido silently. She wasn’t going to make a move on Joel Mortimer. Even if he did have the most beautiful eyes in the world and a sensual mouth that made her quiver. ‘Thanks,’ she said, in the most professional tones she could muster, and went to book Sam’s X-ray before she said something really stupid to Joel.

She cleaned all the grit out of Sam’s arm while they were waiting for the slot in Radiology and immobilised his arm in a sling. She asked for two films—one lateral and one antero-posterior, both including the joints and covering the entire radius and ulna so she didn’t miss any problems—and was just checking them against a lightbox when Joel came up beside her. ‘How’s it looking?’

‘Greenstick,’ she said, showing him the section on the X-ray where it was clear that one side of the ulna shaft had bent while the other side had broken. ‘I’m just checking in case there’s an ephiphysal injury. It looks normal, but…’

‘Worried about a Salter-Harris type V?’ Joel asked.

She nodded. With a Salter-Harris Type V injury—also known as a crush injury to the growing plate—the X-ray could look absolutely normal. It was notoriously difficult to diagnose the injury, but it had the greatest risk of causing the growth plates to fuse prematurely so the limb would always be too short.

‘It’s very rare,’ Joel reassured her, his eyes narrowing as he looked at the films. ‘And it’s more common on the distal tibia. It’s much more likely you’d find a Salter-Harris II fracture—’ this was where the epiphysis separated from the bone, with a shape almost like a reverse tick ‘—but it looks as if he’s been lucky.’ He traced the outline of the cortex: a procedure Lisa had been taught to do as a house officer to make sure she didn’t miss a subtle fracture by mistaking it for an ossification centre on the growing bone. ‘Anything else you’d be worried about?’

‘With an ulnar fracture, you need to check for a Monteggia fracture-dislocation,’ she said. If you fell onto your ulna, as Sam had done, you could dislocate the head of the radius, the other main bone of the forearm, and the dislocation needed to be treated as well as the fracture. ‘But there aren’t any signs of it on the X-rays.’

‘Agreed. This looks like a pretty straightforward case. What’s your treatment plan?’ Joel asked.

She didn’t mind the questions, because she knew he was doing his job. She was his junior, he hadn’t worked with her much, and he needed to know how competent she was—how far he could trust her to deal with patients on her own or whether she needed closer supervision. ‘It’s an angulated fracture, so I’ll refer him to the orthopods for manipulation under a general anaesthetic. He’ll have a cast on for a while, and I assume you have fracture clinics here in Paeds so I can get him booked in there for a follow-up.’

‘Yup. Obviously you know what you’re doing and you’re sensible enough to ask if you need help. Carry on just as you are,’ he said with a smile.

‘Cheers.’ Before she could stop herself, she added, ‘Are you coming out with the team for the Chinese meal tonight?’

‘No.’ His voice was noticeably cooler. And he didn’t offer an explanation, she noticed.

Not that she should expect one. He was a colleague—a senior colleague; he was barely an acquaintance, let alone a friend, and he didn’t have to explain himself to her. Really, she shouldn’t even have asked. It was none of her business.

‘Um, I’ll get back to my patient,’ she said, and escaped back into the cubicle to show Sam his X-rays, as promised, and explain to him and his mother what was going to happen next.

Lisa didn’t see Joel to speak to for the rest of the afternoon, and she’d put it out of her mind when she met the others at the local Chinese restaurant that evening.

‘So how are you settling in?’ Nell, the other registrar in their ward, asked Lisa.

‘Fine.’ Lisa smiled back at her. ‘Everyone’s really friendly, and I love my job.’

‘So much that you volunteer for extra duties on your day off,’ Julie said. ‘On the air ambulance.’

Lisa blinked. ‘Blimey. The hospital grapevine here’s pretty fast, isn’t it?’ She hadn’t said anything to anyone in the department, not wanting to sound…well…boastful. Setting herself up either as a heroine or a martyr. That wasn’t where she was coming from at all. She had her own reasons for doing her rescue work—reasons she didn’t want to share. And she enjoyed doing it, too.

Julie chuckled. ‘My boyfriend Marty’s one of the full-time paramedics with the air ambulance. He saw your name on the list and asked me if I knew you. Your first duty’s next week, isn’t it?’

Lisa couldn’t help smiling. ‘Yes. I’m doing two slots a month. I’m really glad they accepted me, because I was on secondment to HEMS in London, and I loved every second of it. Though we could only do a six-month stint so we weren’t over-exposed to trauma.’

‘Rather you than me. I don’t know how you do it.’ Julie shivered. ‘Winching out of a helicopter into thin air…No way would you get me doing that!’

‘It’s fine, once you get used to the idea,’ Lisa said. ‘You’re perfectly safe.You’re clipped into a harness, and when you go up with a stretcher, it’s pretty smooth—you don’t spin around on a rope and you don’t even feel the downdraught from the blades. It’s not like these action movies where you see someone hanging onto a ladder and blowing around madly in the wind.’ She grinned. ‘Oh, and you don’t have all the baddies firing at you or have to dive through plate glass into a skyscraper, run out the other side and leap onto the rope ladder from several hundred feet up feet up.’

Julie laughed. ‘Nope, you still haven’t convinced me. I’d rather keep my feet firmly on the ground in the department!’

‘If you’re working with the air ambulance, you’ll end up doing a rescue with the coastguard team at some point, then,’ Ben, one of the other house officers, said to her.

‘Not necessarily. You know as well as I do most of the work of the air ambulance is with RTCs or falls,’ Julie said.

Not surprising, Lisa thought. Road traffic collisions, falls and suspected heart attacks were the most common reason for callouts in all the air ambulance services, usually in cases where it would take too long for a land ambulance to get through or the access to an accident site was poor.

‘But Ben’s right, we do get a few rescues on the cliffs and sea rescues. Joel’ll introduce you to the coastguard team, if you ask him,’ Nell suggested.

Lisa remembered what Joel had told her earlier. ‘It’s a bit unusual, a doctor being a volunteer coastguard.’

‘It probably makes him feel he’s giving something back,’ Ben said quietly.

Lisa frowned. ‘I’m not with you.’

‘His wife died in an accident on the cliffs,’ Nell explained.

It took a moment for it to sink in.

Joel wasn’t committed elsewhere.

But he was so young to be a widower—he couldn’t be more than in his early thirties. Obviously with his work on the coastguard team he was trying to make sure someone else didn’t have to suffer the same kind of loss—just as she was, with the air ambulance.

Then she became aware that Nell was continuing. ‘That’s why he doesn’t work nights or weekends.’

‘Sorry, Nell. I didn’t catch what you said. Joel doesn’t do nights or weekends?’ Lisa prompted.

‘Childminders don’t tend to do weekends and nights, and his parents are getting on a bit so they don’t help out that much. Actually, to be honest, they were pretty hopeless when it happened,’ Nell confided, ‘and Vanessa’s parents live the other side of the Pennines so they’re no help either. Beth’s a lovely kid but she can be a bit…well…demanding. As any kid would be when there’s only one parent around.’

Oh. So Beth was Joel’s daughter. And he was a single parent. Lisa flushed. ‘Oh, no. I really put my foot in it today. I asked him if he was good with kids.’

‘He is. And you weren’t to know,’ Ben said with a sympathetic smile.

‘How old is she?’ Lisa asked.

‘Five. The accident happened a couple of years back.’

So Beth had been three when she’d lost her mum. It had been hard enough for herself at the age of sixteen, but three was so young. How tough it must be for Beth, seeing all her friends with a mummy and daddy—or even a step-parent—and wondering why she was different. ‘Rough on her. Poor kid.’

‘Yeah. But Joel’s made it clear he’s not looking for a mother figure for her,’ Nell said.

‘Warning received and understood,’ Lisa said quietly. More than Nell would ever know. Because she understood exactly where Joel was coming from, too. She’d learned it well from her mother’s example: nobody would ever match up to the man Ella Richardson had lost, and she’d loved him too much to want anyone else in her life.

Joel clearly felt exactly the same way about his late wife. So he was the last man on earth Lisa should want to get involved with.

‘Joel’s a lovely bloke. Salt of the earth. He’ll do anything to help anyone. All I’m saying is, there’s no point in any woman falling for him—gorgeous as he is—because no way will he let anyone into his life,’ Nell said. ‘Even though it would do him good.’ She sighed. ‘You can’t live in the past. You have to move on, eventually.’

Ha. It had been twelve years, and Ella hadn’t moved on. Lisa had the feeling that she never would. ‘Some people just love one person too much to have room for anyone else,’ Lisa said softly.

‘Maybe.’ Nell grimaced. ‘Sorry, this is a bit of a miserable conversation for a Monday night. Especially as we’re supposed to be welcoming you to the team.’ She topped up Lisa’s glass. ‘Ignore me. I didn’t mean to imply that you’d throw yourself at him. I mean, you might be married.’

Lisa chuckled at the obvious fishing. ‘Actually, I’m single. And that’s the way I like it. I’ve got a career to think of.’

‘Make sure you never sit in our receptionist’s chair, then,’ Ben warned darkly. ‘Every woman who’s sat there for the last three years has been married and off on maternity leave before you can blink!’

‘Oi, you, don’t start spreading rumours. I’m not pregnant,’ Ally, the receptionist, called across the table. ‘And I don’t even have a boyfriend!’

Ben tapped the side of his nose with a forefinger. ‘Just you wait. Give it six months, and you’ll be getting your gran to knit you lots of bootees. That chair’s got a reputation.’

Lisa laughed. ‘Thanks for the warning. I’ll remember that.’ Though she wasn’t planning on getting pregnant or even getting involved with anyone any time soon.

If ever.

CHAPTER THREE

‘DADDY, you look growly,’ Beth said.

Joel ruffled her hair. ‘I’m fine, kitten.’ Actually, he wasn’t fine. Far from it. But he had no intention of worrying his daughter. ‘Come on. Let’s go to school.’ Being on late shift meant that Beth was usually ready for bed when he picked her up from Hannah, her childminder, so he didn’t get time for more than a bedtime story—and most of the time she fell asleep before he’d finished. But the good thing about late shifts was that instead of having to get her ready for school and dropping her off at Hannah’s at the crack of dawn, he was able to take her to school himself. Which meant he saw her smiling, meeting her friends in the playground and running around with them, playing some sort of game or other. He could see for himself that she was happy and well adjusted and settled.

Days like these, he thought maybe he was doing an OK job of being a single parent. That Beth was coping fine without having a mum.

And then the guilt would press down on him. Squash him flat. If he’d taken proper care of Vanessa in the first place…

Guilt that was doubly compounded by the X-rated dreams he’d had for the last week or so. Dreams about a certain SHO with an elfin face, mischievous blue eyes, straightforward manner and infectious smile. Dreams he had no right to have.