clothes…
He pulled into the driveway, looked down at the list of things he still had to do this morning and went to find his colleague.
He walked through the screen door and stopped dead.
Good grief!
Rachel was sitting at the kitchen table, helping Myra pod peas. She’d obviously reclaimed Penelope. Penelope and Digger were lying side by side under the table looking extraordinarily pleased with each other, but that wasn’t where Hugo’s attention was caught and held.
Rachel was only five-four or so-a good eight inches shorter than he was-but what she lacked in height she made up for in impact. This morning in his pyjamas she’d looked amazing. But now…
She was wearing bright yellow leggings that stopped at mid-calf, and a white overshirt that looked as if it had been splashed by daubs of yellow paint. Her shirt was rolled up, businesslike, but there was nothing businesslike in the way it was unbuttoned to show enough cleavage to be interesting. Very interesting! So interesting he could hardly take his eyes away.
What else? He could scarcely take her in. Apart from the cleavage… Her riot of shining brown curls was caught back with a wide yellow ribbon and her feet were ensconced in gold and white trainers.
‘Christine never gave you those clothes,’ he said faintly, and she chuckled.
‘Good guess. Mrs Sanderson’s a darling and she has such taste. I returned the clothes Christine brought me. I’m very grateful but they just weren’t me.’ She held up a shoe and admired it. ‘And gold and white trainers…how practical are these?’
‘Very practical,’ he said weakly, and she grinned. She rose and looked expectantly out to the car.
‘Are we heading out to the nursing home now?’
‘You’re not wearing that outfit to the nursing home?’
‘Why ever not?’
‘I’m thinking of their hearts. I don’t think I’m carrying enough anginine,’ he said, and she chuckled again. She had the nicest chuckle…
‘You’re telling me the oldies won’t like my clothes?’
‘I have no idea,’ he managed. ‘I do know they’ll never have seen anything like it in their lives.’ He looked down at her amazing shoes. ‘You don’t think gold and white in this ash might be just a little impractical?’
‘They’ll wash. I’m not putting Doris’s sandals back on for quids. They may be sensible but I don’t do sensible.’
‘So I see.’
The oldies not only loved Rachel’s clothes-they loved Rachel.
In this heat and smoke-filled atmosphere, the ills of a group of sixty frail retirees could be depended on to keep Hugo busy for half a day, but only a couple of problems were serious. Hugo expected to do the tricky stuff himself while Rachel took a routine clinic, but Rachel had no sooner been introduced to the sitting room in general, and the nurse in charge in particular, than she balked.
‘Tell me why you’re staying?’
‘I have a couple of bed-bound patients I’ll check before I go.’
‘You’re telling me that I can’t check them? That you don’t think I’m competent?’
‘No, but-’
‘Then you’re not needed anywhere else?’
‘Of course he is.’ Don, the nursing-home charge nurse, a beefy, bearded giant, was clearly amused by the strange tension between the two. And the way Hugo kept glancing at his colleague as if he couldn’t believe his eyes. ‘I’ve had a call from the hospital already saying there’s another couple of firefighters need looking at, and they’ve just admitted Harry Peters’s kid, who fell off the back of the fire truck and broke his arm. They want you back there, Hugo.’
‘I can’t just leave you here,’ Hugo said, frowning at the jonquil-yellow apparition in front of him.
‘Why not?’ The jonquil-yellow apparition raised herself up on her jonquil-yellow toes and glared. ‘Are you saying you’re a better doctor than I am?’
‘No, but-’
‘Then take me to the patients you’re worried about, talk me through what needs to be done and then get out of here. No more buts. You’re wasting time, Dr McInnes.’
Wasting time?
No one had ever accused Hugo McInnes of wasting time. Ever. It was all he could do not to gasp.
‘Go on, then.’ Don was clearly intrigued and enjoying himself. ‘What are you waiting for, Hugo?’
He hardly knew.
CHAPTER FIVE
IT WAS harder work than she’d thought it would be.
Rachel had been working in an emergency department for the last four years, coping with emergencies. These weren’t emergencies. She had to scour her brain for the things she’d learned in basic training-how to dress and treat leg ulcers, how to look after a man who was suffering long-term effects of the cortisone he’d taken after suffering rheumatoid arthritis for forty years, how to ease the passing of an old lady-ninety-eight, her bed card said, but she was still able to smile and grasp Rachel’s hand in greeting-a lady who might only have days left to live.
Rachel had asked Hugo to let her do this, so he had left her to it. She hadn’t realised until he’d gone that it had been quite an act of faith. Of trust.
‘I’ll come back and collect you at lunchtime,’ he’d told her, and had gone off to see to his town patients and his firefighters. He was needed.
So was she. She couldn’t think about Hugo. She had enough to concentrate on herself.
But the oldies were lovely. They helped her all the way. Don was at her side, and everyone knew the routine.
‘Dr Hugo uses that sort of dressing,’ she was told by a patient, the very elderly Mrs Collins, before Don could open his mouth. She cast him a sideways grin and started wrapping Mrs Collins’s ulcer with the dressing the old lady had pointed at.
‘Do I get the feeling this place would run on its own if we weren’t here?’ she asked. 86
‘We learn to be self-sufficient,’ Don told her. ‘There’s days when Hugo can’t come.’
‘When he’s on holidays?’
‘When there are emergencies in the town he can’t come,’ Don told her. ‘Only then. Our Dr McInnes doesn’t do holidays.’
‘What, never?’
‘He last took a holiday three years ago.’ Don bent and helped her adjust the dressing. Mrs Collins, eighty-nine and very, very interested in this yellow doctor, was listening avidly as she was treated. ‘I don’t think he knows the meaning of the word holiday. Christine takes Toby to New York to visit his grandmother during school holidays-paid for by Hugo-and that’s it.’
‘It sounds a pretty dreary life.’
‘It’s a better life now than when he was married,’ Don said bluntly. ‘Some marriages are the pits.’
Hmm. ‘Should you be saying this to me?’ Rachel raised her eyebrows at the bearded nurse and Don grinned.
‘Nope. But if we can’t gossip, what’s the use of living? Isn’t that right, Mrs Collins?’
‘That’s dead right.’ Sheila Collins’s old eyes perused Rachel and suddenly she leaned over and grabbed her hand. She held it up.
‘You’re married yourself?’ she demanded, and Rachel met her look square on.
‘Yes.’
‘Not separated or anything?’
