CHAPTER TEN

      HE TRIED to leave it.

      Cort really did.

      But when he was called in late on Monday night, he sensed the second he arrived that Ruby wasn’t there.

      There was no one he could ask without making things obvious, which was what he was hoping to avoid.

      He couldn’t even ring her, because they hadn’t even swapped phone numbers, which, Cort told himself, was a pretty good indicator as to what they had both wanted from each other that night.

      It just felt like something more now.

      ‘I’m going to lie down in the on-call room for a couple of hours.’ Cort yawned around seven a.m., because he was officially on duty at nine a.m. and two hours’ sleep was too good to pass up.

      ‘No, you’re not.’ Hannah grinned as she walked over. ‘We’ve got a mum who’s not going to make it up to Maternity.’

      ‘Oh, God,’ Cort groaned, because this was happening rather too often. The car park for Maternity was currently closed so that new boom gates could be erected, which meant mums-to-be were currently having to walk a considerable distance further, and on more than a couple of occasions they landed in Emergency.

      ‘We’ve rung Maternity, they’re sending someone down.’ Hannah smiled ‘Come on, Cort—let’s go and have a baby!’

      ‘I’m not responsible enough,’ Cort said, and Hannah grinned back, but it was Cort who checked himself, because normally he’d have said nothing. Normally, he didn’t joke along with the staff, not even a little bit. Usually he just rolled up his sleeves and got on with whatever job presented itself. Ruby had changed him, Cort realised. Ruby really was infectious.

      ‘Hi, there …’ Cort smiled at the mother who was groaning in pain but, unlike the last couple of maternity patients who had landed in Emergency, Cort wasn’t quite sure if she was at that toe-curling, holding-it-in stage. He put a hand on her stomach and asked a couple of questions, but to save her from two examinations, as Maternity was sending someone down, he decided to hold off for a moment.

      ‘Can you believe it?’ Hannah was looking more than a little boot-faced when Cort stepped outside. ‘Maternity sent a grad midwife—she’s just washing her hands.’ Hannah rolled her eyes. ‘She looks about twelve!’

      Cort said nothing. Hannah was clearly offended that, on her summons, the entire obstetric team wasn’t running down the corridors now, but privately he thought it was a little wishful thinking on Hannah’s part that an emergency room birth was imminent.

      ‘Hi, there!’ Cort deliberately didn’t react when it was Tilly who walked towards them and was also quietly grateful that she introduced herself as if they had never met. ‘I’m Matilda. Tilly. We’re incredibly busy in Maternity at the moment, so they asked me to dash down and see if I could help.’

      ‘She’s through there,’ Cort said, and told her a little of his findings, adding, ‘Though I haven’t done an internal yet.’

      ‘I’ll come in with you,’ Hannah said.

      ‘I’ll be fine,’ Tilly politely declined.

      She was very calm and unruffled and thanked both Cort and Hannah then disappeared into the cubicle as Hannah sat brooding at the nurses’ station, staring at the curtains like a cat put out in a storm. ‘If we say we need help,’ Hannah said, ‘surely they should send—’

      ‘They’re busy,’ Cort interrupted. ‘And I guess they figured the patient can’t come to much harm as there are doctors and nurses here.’ He would normally have left it there, but Ruby must still be in the air for him, because he looked over and continued the conversation with Hannah. ‘Have you thought about doing midwifery?’

      ‘Me?’ Hannah scoffed, then rolled her eyes and added a little sheepishly, ‘Every day for the last six months or so. I’m just not sure it’s worth trying—I’m nearly fifty. I’ve been in Emergency for ever.’

      ‘Maybe if you’re nicer to Tilly you could see if you could spend a few hours up there. It might help you make up your mind.’ He looked over as Tilly came towards them.

      ‘She’s fine.’ Tilly smiled. ‘Still a while to go, I think. I’ll take her up to Maternity—how do I arrange a porter?’

      ‘The porters are just having a coffee. I’ll take her up with you if you like,’ Hannah offered. ‘I’ll just go and grab my cardigan.’

      And there was a moment, just a moment where he could have asked Tilly why Ruby hadn’t come in—to check if she was okay or had, in fact, just not shown up. A moment to acknowledge Tilly and to step down from the safe higher ground of Senior Reg and just talk as you would to someone you knew casually, who was a friend of someone you cared about.

      He chose not to take it.

      Hannah returned with her cardigan and a marked shift in attitude towards the grad midwife and Cort pushed through the morning, but it all felt wrong. The busy department felt strangely quiet without that blaze of red to silently ponder, and at lunchtime, unable to face the staffroom, Cort headed up to the canteen.

      ‘It’s good to get away from there, even for a little while.’ Sheila joined him in the canteen queue and Cort gave her a smile, though his own company was really all that he wanted. It had been a long night, followed by a very long morning.

      ‘I thought you were on nights this week.’

      ‘I’m supposed to be in for a management day,’ Sheila said as they shuffled down the queue and rather dispiritedly checked out the food on offer. ‘Which is a bit of a joke—I haven’t even seen my off ice.’

      The queue slowed down and Cort yawned and asked for another shot to be added to his coffee. Instead of the chicken salad he was half considering, or the cream-cheese bagel that was curling at the edges, he decided to push his luck with the canteen lady.

      ‘Can I have a bacon sandwich?’

      ‘Then they’ll all want one,’ she said, because most of the meals were wrapped in plastic and pre-made now, except on very rare occasions.

      ‘He’s been here eighteen hours straight.’ Sheila put in a word for him and as Cort turned to thank her, a normal day, a normal shuffle along the queue in the canteen suddenly somehow brightened.

      She was like a butterfly.

      Swooping in on a gloomy canteen, which was wall to wall navy and white uniforms and dark green scrubs or sensible suits, Ruby gave it colour.

      Her hair was down and she was wearing denim shorts that showed slim, pale legs and a sort of mesh shirt that was reds and golds and swirls of white, and she had on leather strappy sandals and was just so light and breezy that apart from the lanyard round her neck and the anxious-looking woman by her side, you’d never have known she was working.

      The queue passed him as he stood waiting for his order and he listened as she stood and helped her patient with her food selection, encouraging her and gently suggesting alternatives, and she made him notice things that he never had before. Like how kind the staff were with the patient, and how other staff behind in the queue didn’t huff and puff and moan about how long she was taking, but with a nod from the cashier moved subtly past.

      He saw Ruby’s calm presence, and he saw something else too—that just as she felt she couldn’t do Emergency, couldn’t stand what