The Doctor's Rescue. Kate Hardy
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No! She wasn’t going to start thinking that way about him. Even though he was cute. More than cute. Even lying in a hospital bed, in plaster and covered in bruises. Will Cooper was what Renee, her American sister-in-law, would call serious eye-candy. Dark hair that flopped over his forehead, eyes as blue as the sky at the top of a mountain, slight stubble that gave him a piratical look and the suggestion of a dimple in his cheek that would win any argument for him when he smiled.
It would be so easy to give in to the attraction. But Mallory couldn’t. She had nothing to give anyone right now. Not after Geoff. Her eye flicked automatically to Will’s left hand. No wedding ring visible, though that didn’t prove anything. He was probably married, or at least living with someone. So the chances were he wasn’t available anyway.
But she did need to talk. Will was right about that. ‘OK. Thanks.’
‘Coffee-bar on the ground floor. Better than the ward machine,’ he said. ‘They do take-away.’
‘Do you want me to bring you anything back?’
He shook his head. ‘Caffeine, right now, would blow my head off.’
‘I won’t be long,’ she promised.
The coffee-bar did a selection of tempting-looking cakes, including slices of Grasmere gingerbread and Westmorland pepper cake, but Mallory resisted the temptation, sticking to just a double espresso. By the time she got back to the ward, Will had fallen asleep.
She smiled ruefully—maybe their conversation just wasn’t meant to be—and quietly gathered her belongings together. She was about to tiptoe out of the cubicle when a husky voice demanded, ‘Where’re you going?’
Mallory nearly dropped her coffee. ‘I thought you were asleep!’
‘Just resting my eyes,’ He mumbled. ‘Sit. So, what’re you doing in the Lakes in January? Not th’ right time year f’ holiday.’
‘Will, you’re so tired, you’re slurring your words. You need to rest.’ She froze. ‘Unless you’re reacting to the co-proxamol.’
‘Neither. Talk to me,’ he insisted.
Mallory sighed. ‘I just need space to think,’ she said simply, dropping her rucksack and waterproof next to the chair and sitting down. ‘Make some decisions.’
‘Such as?’ he prompted.
This was it. The big one. Could she tell him?
But he was a stranger. Someone who wasn’t involved. Someone who might help her see a way through this whole mess. ‘Whether I’m cut out for a career in medicine. I thought maybe I’d done the wrong thing.’ How could she possibly stay on as a GP after what had happened? But, on the other hand, how could she break her father’s heart by giving up medicine? Whatever she did would be wrong.
‘Did all the right things with me,’ Will said. ‘Checked my pupils, kept me talking—till I passed out on you—double-checked the painkillers.’
‘Yes.’ She bit her lip. ‘When I saw the accident happen, my instincts took over. So maybe it’s a sign that I shouldn’t give up just yet.’
‘What made you think that you should?’
She stared into her coffee. ‘Because I nearly killed someone.’
THERE was a long, long pause. A pause in which Mallory couldn’t bring herself to look back at Will. A pause that seemed to last for hours, though it could only have been seconds.
‘What happened?’
His voice was gentle. Kind, not condemning. She glanced up at him and saw only concern in his eyes, not judgement. And then, at last, she was able to tell him.
‘One of my patients came in complaining of a sore shoulder.’ Mallory swallowed. ‘Lindy had been carrying her toddler about, so I just assumed it was a muscle sprain. I should have thought about shoulder-tip pain being caused by irritation of the diaphragm.’
Will clearly followed her train of thought, as he said, ‘Did she say she was pregnant?’
Mallory bit her lip. ‘No. She said she was on the Pill, and she’d had a light period a couple of weeks before. I should have known better. As a doctor, I know that you can still have vaginal bleeding in pregnancy, and if she’d missed a pill or had been ill, her contraceptive might have let her down. But I didn’t push it.’ She took a swig of coffee.
‘Ectopic pregnancy?’ Will guessed.
‘Yes. And I didn’t pick it up. I was her GP, and I let her down. Badly. I didn’t give her a pregnancy test, just in case, and I didn’t send her for a scan. If I had, they’d have picked it up early enough.’
‘Any abdominal pain?’
‘No.’
Will shrugged. ‘Hard one to call if she said she wasn’t pregnant, had no abdominal pain.’ He swallowed hard.
Clearly he needed a drink, Mallory thought. How could she be so selfish as to sit here and jabber on at him, burden him with her problems, when he really needed looking after? She put her coffee on his bedside cabinet and brought the cup of water down within his reach.
‘Thanks.’ He took a small sip through the straw, then another. Then stopped. ‘Don’t want you to tell me off again,’ he said.
That half-smile again. She’d bet her last penny that the full monty was the type of smile that would make you cross frozen wastes. Correction. The type of smile that would make frozen wastes feel like lush, temperate pastureland. ‘One in five.’
‘Hmm?’ She’d lost him completely.
‘One in five. Women with ectopic pregnancy who have normal periods.’
She knew the statistic too, but it didn’t make her feel any better.
‘But I should have checked, Will. I didn’t.’
Because she’d been too preoccupied with Geoff. Kind, sweet Geoff and his completely unexpected proposal. Well, it hadn’t been that unexpected—she’d known from the start that his feelings had been stronger than hers. She’d known what the right answer should have been, but had asked him for time to think about it. Think about whether she could settle down at the practice in the New Forest, bury her love for the mountains and become the domesticated doctor he’d wanted her to be; whether she could live someone else’s dreams for the rest of her life. Or whether she could bring herself to hurt him by saying no.
In the end, there had been only one decision. The kindest thing for both of them. She’d told him she loved him, but she couldn’t be the woman he needed. She couldn’t be his wife. She’d written out her resignation and applied to register as a locum in Cumbria—putting distance between them and giving her a chance to climb while she thought about what to do next.
And then, in the grim weeks when she’d worked out her notice, when she’d seen how Geoff had lost weight and she’d had dark shadows under her eyes and had started wondering maybe if she should have just put his happiness before her own and said yes, she’d nearly lost a patient. Lindy. ‘Her tube ruptured the next day. She went into shock, lost a lot of blood. They nearly lost her—as it was, the Fallopian tube had to be removed and she needed a lot of transfusions. And it was all my fault. If I’d done my job properly, sent her for a scan, they’d have seen the problem and taken her into surgery before the tube ruptured.’
‘You’re a doctor—but you’re human.’ Will reached to take her hand with his uninjured one.
The feel of his skin against hers sent a shiver of sheer pleasure down her spine. She should pull her hand away—right now—but she couldn’t.