Unlocking the Doctor's Secrets Read online

  ‘Well, hopefully the break has put him in a more cheerful mood,’ May said, and then, because she’d just seen him in the kitchen, added loudly. ‘And I’d say it to his face if he were here.’

  ‘I know you would, May,’ Garth responded as he squeezed out his teabag with a wry smile and then took his mug into the crowded staffroom.

  He glanced around for a seat and took one of the few available.

  ‘Well, has it?’ May pushed, but then forgot about the consultant on call tonight, clearly delighted by who had just walked in. ‘Lina!’ She gave a bright smile. ‘I was hoping that we’d get you.’

  ‘I thought I was going to be late...’ she said, and as he stirred his tea Garth glanced up at the new arrival.

  She looked late.

  Her long dark hair was untied and she was wrapping a stethoscope round her neck and clipping on a lanyard, as well as seeming a little breathless and just...rushing. ‘I promised to drop in on Mum and she wouldn’t stop talking and then when I got here I couldn’t find the scrubs...’

  ‘They’ve been moved,’ Dianne said. ‘The surgeons keep pinching them so they’re behind the lockers...’

  ‘I know that now,’ Lina said as she took a seat next to Garth and bent over to do her runners up. ‘But I felt like the new girl having to ask where they were...’

  ‘You’re never the new girl,’ May said. ‘How’s Mum?’

  ‘Off out on a hot date,’ Lina replied. ‘I had to do her roots. She tells them she’s mid-forties.’

  ‘If I remember rightly she was mid-forties when you did your training.’ May laughed and then added for the benefit of anyone who didn’t know, ‘Lina did her placements here.’

  It was as much of an introduction as anyone really got—the roster was so big and fluid that there were new faces all the time, except it was clear to Garth that, though in his six months at The Primary he’d never come across her, Lina was something of a regular.

  Still, the new addition to the room was quickly forgotten by all as May resumed her grilling of him.

  ‘Well, has it?’ May said, and looked at directly at Garth.

  ‘Sorry?’ He was more than used to a break in the conversation and May’s ability to pick up from where she’d left off, but unusually he was completely unable to recall what they’d been talking about before Lina had arrived.

  The new addition’s arrival hadn’t been forgotten by all. In fact, Garth was by far too aware of her.

  She took up too much space.

  Well, she barely touched him, but she’d moved on from doing up her runners to pulling her long black hair into a ponytail and was just this fidgeting ball beside him, filling up his senses, flooding them with newly washed hair and then the sound of a fizzy pop as she opened a can of soft drink and took a sip.

  ‘That’s better,’ she said, completely to herself—except he had to actively resist responding.

  Yes, it was hard to focus as she tapped little chinks of awareness into his usually impervious shield. He checked himself and tried to get back to whatever it was they’d been discussing before this woman who took up too much headroom had taken a seat beside him. ‘You’ve lost me, May,’ Garth admitted. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Has the time off put you in a better mood?’

  ‘Of course,’ he responded wryly. Garth knew that May was half teasing and half delving.

  He’d hoped the break would improve things, and for a while it had, but there had been grey skies and a steady drizzle of rain on his drive back from Wales that had matched his mood exactly. The days were still short and so by the time he had arrived back at his flat it had been dark, and the place that had been bought to provide a new start had felt nothing but cold and empty.

  Or was it that he felt cold and empty?

  It really was a case of one foot forward and ten steps back, but then trips to Wales always did that to him.

  ‘How was your break?’ Dianne asked.

  ‘Fine.’ Garth answered, when in truth the last part had been hell.

  A necessary hell, though.

  ‘You had two weeks off, didn’t you?’

  God, why didn’t they let it drop? Garth thought to himself. Yet, conversely, he knew he’d be the first to ask about a colleague’s holiday, or how their weekend off had been. As well as that, he’d promised he would make more effort, really give his all to this new start, and so he answered, ‘Yes, two weeks.’

  ‘Where did you go?’ May joined in the rather one-sided conversation. ‘What did you do with yourself? Did you catch up with your family?’

  He was tempted to answer honestly, not because he wanted the sympathy, more for the bliss of the silence that would inevitably follow, but instead he deflected. ‘No.’ Garth gave a shake of his head. ‘There just wasn’t time. To tell you the truth, I was busy with...’

  His voice lowered and he leaned forward a little, as if about to share a secret, and May eagerly leaned forward too, clearly delighted that the very private Garth was about to reveal more of himself. ‘Did I tell you that I booked in to have a personality transplant during my leave, in the hope I’d suddenly start sharing with all of you the ins and outs of my private life?’ There was the sound of laughter from beside him and clearly Lina got his slightly sarcastic response.

  So too did May. ‘It didn’t take, then.’

  ‘No,’ Garth said, ‘it didn’t take.’

  ‘Oh, well.’ May stood up to head out and face the night, as did the rest of the nursing team. ‘We’ll just have to work with what we’ve got.’

  It was all good-natured teasing, and as the staff, Lina included, stood to leave, he called them back. ‘I did bring you these, though.’ He placed a ginormous paper bag, all shiny with butter, on the coffee table. ‘They’re best eaten on the day they were made...’

  ‘What are they?’ May asked, picking up the bag and peering into it.

  ‘Welsh cakes.’

  ‘They don’t look like cakes.’ May frowned as she took one.

  ‘They’re called bakestones,’ Dianne said as she helped herself to two. ‘My gran used to make them for us.’

  ‘Well, I’ve never heard of them,’ May admitted, taking one herself and wrapping it in tissue. ‘I’ll have one with my next coffee.’

  A few others dived in, but he found himself watching as Lina held back, even though she sniffed the air and gave a slight lick of her lips. ‘Help yourself,’ Garth offered, guessing she wasn’t taking one as she wasn’t a permanent member of staff.

  ‘Maybe on my break...’

  ‘They’ll be gone by then,’ Garth said. ‘I wouldn’t wait if I were you.’

  ‘Well...’ Lina said as she took one and wrapped it in a tissue. ‘Thanks very much.’

  ‘You’re welcome.’

  ‘Don’t mind him,’ Garth heard May saying to Lina as the nursing staff spread out across the department. ‘I’ll warn you now, his bark is worse than his bite.’

  As their voices faded into the distance, Garth wasn’t exactly surprised to hear May’s first summing up of him but, yes, it both registered and stung. He’d been determined to come back from his break with a new attitude.

  New flat.

  New start.

  Well, that had been the plan, but instead, when they’d asked about his break, he had fallen at the first hurdle.

  May had had a quiet word with him before he’d left.

  Well, not a word, more she had asked a pointed question. They’d been drinking tea in May’s office, going through the mountain of paperwork that was always piling up, when she’d asked if there was trouble at home.

  ‘Trouble at home?’ He’d frowned, wondering where the hell that had come from.

  ‘I’m just asking because when I was going through some difficulties with my son, well, I tended to bring things to work a bit. I never m
eant to, of course. If there is a problem at home then know that you can speak to me—it would never go any further.’

  ‘May...’ He’d given an incredulous smile. How the hell could there be trouble at home when there was no one at home? But then he’d swallowed, realised perhaps that he was being told, albeit kindly, that he wasn’t the sunniest to have around. ‘There’s no trouble at home.’

  ‘Good,’ May had said. ‘It was just a stab in the dark. I mean, I don’t even know if you’ve a family...’ Perhaps she registered his frown. ‘Okay, I know a little. I was on the interview panel, Garth...’

  He gritted his teeth because, yes, there was a large gap in his résumé that protocol dictated he explain the necessary, but from that point on he had refused to discuss it. ‘We don’t all put photos up on our desk, May,’ he had said tartly, glancing at the array on hers. ‘Are there any problems with my work?’

  ‘None,’ she’d said. ‘You’re an excellent doctor.’ Which might sound like a compliment except there was no elaboration.

  ‘Is that a backhanded compliment?’

  ‘It’s an observation, Garth. You’re an excellent doctor, and you’re great to work with, but I can’t attest to much else because you don’t give us anything else to go on.’

  May’s observation he had taken seriously.

  Oh, he wasn’t about to open up to May. And there was never going to be any chance of him being all ho-ho-ho, but with the new flat and two weeks’ break he had been determined to come back a little more, well, open.

  Like Lina.

  She remained in his head and that quietly stunned him—and Garth wasn’t used to feeling like that.

  Aside from the immediate physical attraction to Lina, which was unsettling in itself, were the glaring disparities on display to him. He’d met her for all of two minutes and he already knew more about her life than the entire department knew about his: she had a presumably single mum nearby who lied about her age and dated, and to whom she seemed close, she’d worked at The Primary before and hated feeling like the new girl...

  All that gleaned in one breezy conversation, whereas they had to turn the thumbscrews to get information out of him.

  Garth knew he was way too remote with them all.

  He looked at the stupid cakes, which had been a sort of olive branch, an effort to show that he did appreciate his team.

  They knew that, surely?

  He told them often enough and he thanked them and debriefed them after difficult cases and always had their backs, but, no, he was not going to sit in the staffroom and tell them where he’d been on his days off, or even hint at the hell of the past couple of days.

  It was, he had found, far better to leave his private life at home. Except this wasn’t a locum position or a temporary role, it was a permanent position, his first since—

  Garth closed his eyes.

  All these years on and he still could not say it easily, even to himself.

  * * *

  Lina wasn’t quite sure who May was talking about as they headed through the unit.

  She hoped the conversation was about Garth, because there had been a prickle of awareness between them and she wanted to know more about him, but May’s words about his bark being worse than his bite didn’t quite correlate with the man who, while a touch distant, had seemed friendly.

  ‘Who?’ Lina checked.

  ‘Garth, the consultant on tonight...’

  ‘He seemed okay,’ Lina said. ‘Mind you, he did give me a biscuit and we all know that I can be bought for food!’

  May laughed. ‘Have you come across him before?’

  ‘No.’ Lina said, casting her mind back. Her work as a paramedic was so variable that sometimes she could be at The Primary twice in a single day, while at other times there might be weeks in between cases. ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘He comes across as the most miserable sort—I mean, grumpy doesn’t even begin to describe it—unless you’re a patient, of course, then he’s nice. I’ve a soft spot for him, though.’

  ‘What sort of soft spot?’ Lina nudged, making May laugh.

  ‘A motherly soft spot, you cheeky thing. The trouble with Garth is he’s not...well, he doesn’t let himself be one of us. I’m working on it, though.’

  It sounded like an odd statement, but Lina knew what May meant. ED could be a cliquey place at times, and though Lina only did the occasional shift, she kept herself in—stopping for a chat when she brought in a patient if time allowed, and attending the Christmas do and such. Now that she came to think of it, Garth hadn’t been there—his dark good looks would not have gone unnoticed. A case in point: Lina had noticed him tonight the very second she had come into the staffroom.

  Even sitting down, he stood out!

  His black hair and unshaven scowling face had had her all flustered when she’d seen that the only spare seat was the one next to him.

  Even his voice was sexy, with a deep tone and just a hint of an accent behind his well-schooled accent that she hadn’t quite placed until he had mentioned the Welsh bakestones.

  Yes, he was Welsh.

  ‘Still, he keeps the place running well,’ May added, ‘which is all I’m asking for these days. It’s good to have you with us for the night, Lina.’

  May wasted no time allocating the work when they arrived in Section A. ‘You don’t need to hear the handover up here, Lina. Can you take Tanya the student and keep Section B open, please? Elise is already down there with the aim of having it closed by midnight...’ She peered at the waiting room. ‘Though I doubt that’s going to happen.’

  Section B was for the ‘walking wounded’, and though Lina would have preferred to be with the main action she was more than happy to go where she was put. Elise and the student were organised and Huba, the junior doctor, clearly knew her stuff, but tended to double-check everything, which rather slowed things down.

  ‘I know you, don’t I?’ Huba said as she wrote up a tetanus shot and some antibiotics for a hand injury that Lina was about to dress, but not until after Garth came to check the wound. ‘Have you worked here before?’

  ‘Not for a while,’ Lina said. ‘Well, not as a nurse. I think you know me from when we brought in a burns patient a couple of months ago and you were on. I’m a paramedic.’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ Her shoulders briefly slumped. ‘I do remember you now.’

  ‘Dreadful, wasn’t it?’ Lina said, but Huba moved the subject away from that night.

  ‘So you’re a paramedic and a nurse? How does that work?’

  ‘I studied nursing and graduated,’ Lina said, ‘but my last placement was here in Emergency and I guess that was when I decided that I wanted to be a paramedic...’ She didn’t get to finish the conversation because Garth had arrived and Huba seemed a bit flustered by that fact.

  ‘Thanks for this, Garth. I just wanted you to check this hand before he goes home. I’m worried that he’s not giving us the full story and that it’s a human bite.’

  ‘You’ve put him on antibiotics?’ Garth checked as he read through the notes, ‘and brought him back to hand clinic for evaluation tomorrow...’

  ‘Yes, but I’d just like you to check for function. I’m worried that there might be a nicked tendon and that he might need admitting.’

  Garth took the card and stalked off to the cubicle then turned and looked at Huba. ‘Are you coming?’

  ‘Of course.’

  They returned just a couple of moments later and he handed Lina the card. ‘Huba’s right—it is a human bite, not that he’s admitting to it. We’ll see him in hand clinic tomorrow. Stress again the importance of elevation and that he really needs to come back for review.’

  ‘I will,’ Lina said as he glanced around at the thinning-out Section B waiting room.

  ‘And perhaps start to close up here,’ Garth said.


  Lina started to respond that she was about to, when Huba chimed in. ‘May wants it kept open till at least midnight.’

  Lina stood up, wearing not quite a frown but a smudge of one, because May hadn’t said that. In fact, May would like nothing more than Section B to be closed in a timely fashion and all staff working the main section, but of course she wasn’t going to correct Huba in front of her senior, so instead she gave a nod to Garth. ‘Sure,’ she said to his departing back, and she could feel not so much a chill in the air but more a certain tension, and that was confirmed when Huba put down her pen and ran a worried hand over her brow.

  ‘I shouldn’t have called him up to check on that hand.’

  ‘Of course you should if you’re concerned. And you’re right about the human bite—they can turn nasty,’ Lina said, though in fairness Huba called Garth up a lot. ‘He shouldn’t make you feel bad for asking.’

  ‘He doesn’t make me feel bad. If anything, he’s more than willing to have me run things by him. It’s just that I’m always asking these days.’ Lina wasn’t sure she understood. ‘That night of the house fire...’ Huba said, and her brown eyes suddenly filled with tears and she shook her head. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  Clearly it did matter, because Huba went very quiet then, and though curious as to what might have happened, Lina decided it would be unfair to push as Huba clearly didn’t want to talk further about it.

  It had been a very fraught night, with three little children fatally injured as well as their mother, and though she couldn’t recall Garth being there as she herself had rushed the mother in, perhaps he had been around, and, like a lot of people that night, not at his sunniest.

  ‘If you want to talk...’ Lina said, and touched Huba’s arm.

  ‘Thank you,’ Huba said, but she shook her head. ‘I’ll be fine.’

  ‘Or a coffee?’ she offered.

  ‘I would love one.’ Huba smiled.

  ‘That I can do!’

  She made Huba a drink and there were still a couple of the Welsh cakes in Garth’s bag, so she put them on a plate and brough them around, but even as she put them down for a grateful Huba, the intercom buzzed and May asked if Lina could come now for a patient expected in Resus. ‘Now!’