didn’t know how to handle it, but somehow he put it aside. His examination of the young mother must be careful and thorough. Charlotte needed him. She was only one day post-op, and she was still suffering from her battering in the car crash.
‘Talk to her by herself,’ Amy said, leaving him at her bedroom door. ‘She’s traumatised and I don’t know why. Maybe she’ll be more willing to speak to you if you’re alone.’
Amy was sensitive as well as competent, Joss thought, watching her retreating back.
She was a woman in a million.
She had nothing to do with him, he told himself for what was surely the twentieth time this morning. Concentrate on Charlotte!
Physically Charlotte was recovering well. His medical examination finished, he replaced the dressing over her wound and hauled over a chair to the bedside. Charlotte eyed him with caution as he sat.
‘Hey, I’m not about to bite,’ he told her, and she managed a smile.
‘I didn’t say-’
‘No, but you looked.’ He’d asked for her baby-Ilona-to be brought back into the room. Now he looked into the makeshift cot and smiled. ‘Ilona’s just right for a name. She’s definitely beautiful.’
‘Yes.’
‘Does she have a surname?’
‘I…I haven’t decided yet.’
‘Whether you’ll use your name or her father’s name?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Are you going to tell me your surname?’ Jeff had given him her surname but he wanted it to be the girl herself who gave it to him. The last thing he wanted was for her to think he’d instigated a police investigation.
She hesitated but Joss’s hand came out and caught hers. ‘I’m not sure what you’re running from,’ he said gently. ‘But whatever it is, I’m not about to hand you over.’
‘I’m not running.’ She hesitated. ‘My name…my name’s Charlotte Brooke but… There’s people I don’t want to know…’
‘That you’re here?’
‘That’s right.’
‘You need a bit of thinking time?’
‘I do,’ she said gratefully. ‘I know it’s messy, with medical insurance and things…’
‘We can do all the paperwork when we discharge you,’ he told her. ‘That’ll give you the time you need.’
‘You won’t tell Amy? Who I am?’
Joss frowned. Amy already knew but Charlotte’s name had meant nothing to her. ‘Is Amy one of the people you’re hiding from?’
‘No.’ She bit her lip. ‘But you won’t tell her?’
‘No.’ But he was still frowning.
‘I just want to do what’s best.’
‘Don’t we all,’ he managed. He was still holding her hand and now he looked down at the coverlet at her fingers. They were work-worn and there were traces of soil in her fingernails. She was used to hard physical labour. There was no ring on her finger. Nothing.
‘Charlotte, if I can help…’
‘You’ve done enough. You’ve given me my baby.’
‘Amy did that.’
‘That’s what I mean.’ Charlotte sighed and withdrew her hand. ‘Before…it all seemed so easy. So possible. But now…’
‘Now what?’
She turned away, wincing as the stitches caught. ‘Now it just seems impossible,’ she said.
‘Did she tell you who she was?’ Amy asked as he gently closed the door behind her. Joss had given Charlotte something to ease the pain and she should sleep until lunchtime.
‘Yes.’
She caught his look and held. ‘But she still doesn’t want everyone to know?’
‘Now how did you know that?’
‘I’m a mind-reader.’
She was laughing at him. Her eyes were so disconcerting. They danced, he decided. She really did have the most extraordinary eyes.
‘She told me who she was and she asked me to keep it to myself. I agreed. It means we can’t bill her through Medicare until she allows us to, but she’s agreed to let us use her name at the end of her stay.’
‘It doesn’t make any sense.’
‘No.’
‘But you agreed?’
‘I agreed.’
She looked at him for a long moment. And then the smile returned to her eyes. ‘You really are a very nice man, Joss Braden.’
It threw him. It was all he could do not to blush.
‘I know,’ he managed, and she grinned.
‘And modest, too.’
‘I can’t deny it.’
‘I’ve put you down as a fourth at bridge,’ she told him, and that shut him up entirely.
‘You haven’t.’
‘Someone had to do it,’ she said demurely. ‘My oldies tell me it takes brains to play bridge so who am I, a mere nurse, to take the place of a specialist?’
A mere nurse. She was no such thing.
She was enchanting.
‘I was planning on…’
‘Yes?’ She fixed him with a challenging gaze. ‘You were planning on what?’
‘Doing more of my conference notes.’
‘There’s the whole afternoon to do that,’ she told him. ‘And tonight. And tomorrow morning and-’
‘Whoa!’
‘There’s no urgency about this place,’ she told him. ‘Haven’t you realised that yet?’
‘Yes, but-’
‘There you go, then.’ She smiled her very nicest smile. ‘Bridge, Dr Braden.’ She pointed to the lounge. Looking through the glass door, he saw three old ladies clustered around a bridge table. Waiting.
When they saw him looking they smiled and waved.
‘You’ve set me up.’
‘Yep.’ Her grin broadened. ‘You’ve done your ward rounds and you’re cadging board and lodging from yours truly. You have to pay some way.’
He had to pay.
The thought stayed in his mind while he learned the intricacies of bridge.
It stayed while he took Lionel and Bertram for a walk in the rain and listened to Lionel tell him a long and involved joke-four times. What was that joke about Alzheimer’s? You can tell the same joke every time and get a laugh. You needn’t bother getting fresh whodunits from the library-because you never remember whodunit. And you can tell the same joke every time and get a laugh.
Very funny.
He checked Marigold’s heart and did some adjusting of the Lanoxin, checked on Rhonda’s lungs, and that was it. It wasn’t exactly intense medicine.
Amy was busy during the day but it was mostly administrative stuff. Organising meals on wheels. Sorting out the myriad problems of an aging community. She was wasted in this job, he thought. Her medical skills were far too
