One Night, One Unexpected Miracle. Caroline Anderson

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       CHAPTER TWO

      ‘MORNING.’

      Alice swallowed a wave of nausea and looked up from her desk.

      ‘Do you ever knock?’

      He went back out of the door, knocked, walked in again and smiled mischievously. ‘Good morning. There, is that better?’

      She put her pen down and leant back with a sigh, stifling the urge to smile. ‘You’re supposed to wait for an answer. I assume you want something? And shut the door, please.’

      He peered closer, and frowned. ‘Are you OK?’

      ‘Yes, I’m fine,’ she lied. ‘Thank you for last night—for looking after me—I appreciated it, but I’m fine now. So, what did you want?’

      He shrugged as if he didn’t believe her, but he let it pass. ‘Just an update for you. I’ve checked the post-ops from yesterday, spent a few minutes with Amil and his parents in PICU—the boy with Crohn’s?’’

      ‘I do know who Amil is. How is he today?’

      ‘OK. He’s had a reasonable night, apparently, which is excellent news, and we should be able to move him out of there later onto a ward. Hopefully the surgery will have done the trick for now and once he’s on the mend we can hand him over to gastroenterology and see if they can get him a bit more settled on a new drug regime. So, boss lady, what’s on the agenda for today?’

      She swallowed another wave of nausea and looked down at the file of notes on her desk.

      ‘Daisy Lawrence. She was diagnosed with malrotation of the gut as a toddler because she was having lots of stomach cramps without any other symptoms, but it wasn’t considered severe enough for surgery at the time and they adopted a watch and wait policy, but she’s flared up again, they’ve got private medical insurance and they wanted a second opinion so they chose us.’

      He perched on the corner of her desk beside her and studied the notes. ‘So what are we doing? X-rays, MRI, CT?’

      ‘I’m not sure. I think we’ll start with a follow-through contrast scan to see what’s going on in there, so I’ve booked that with the imaging suite for this morning, and we’ll review the results and see where we go from there, but I think we need to go and meet them and examine her and talk it through.’

      ‘Are they here?’

      She shook her head. ‘I don’t believe so. They’re not due until nine. I was just going through her notes again.’

      ‘So—have you had breakfast?’ he asked, and she swallowed again and shook her head.

      ‘I couldn’t—’

      ‘Well, isn’t it a good job you have me to feed you?’ he said, passing her a small packet of salty wholewheat crackers.

      She eyed them with suspicion. Food? Really—?

      ‘Eat them,’ he instructed gently, and she tore the bag open reluctantly and tried one.

      Surprisingly edible. She had another.

      ‘OK?’

      She nodded. ‘Yes—thanks.’ She took a sip of water and had another one while he flicked through the notes.

      ‘Apparently watermelon is good if you feel sick,’ he told her without looking up. ‘Just a little piece. I’ve put some in the fridge in the staffroom where you keep your lunch. And you need carbs.’

      ‘I don’t eat carbs.’

      He looked up and met her eyes. ‘I noticed. That’s why you’re feeling sick, because your blood sugar is low because you’re on one of these crazy celebrity diets where your body’s in a permanently ketogenic state. It’s bad for you.’

      ‘It isn’t. A ketogenic diet means I maintain a healthy weight and keep my blood sugar and cholesterol under control,’ she said, feeling a little flicker of panic because he was getting too close to the truth and she didn’t want to tell him, or at least not yet.

      ‘Why on earth do you need to do that? You’re not overweight, you’re under if anything, and you spend your free time in the gym.’

      ‘How do you know that? You’re never in there.’

      ‘No. I don’t do gyms, but our colleagues use them, and they talk.’

      She hated the idea of people talking about her. Speculating?

      ‘So I keep fit—and I’m not underweight, my BMI is nineteen point five.’

      ‘That’s borderline underweight.’ He frowned, his voice softening. ‘Alice, is food a problem for you? Do you have an eating disorder?’

      She stared at him, stunned. ‘No! Of course I don’t have an eating disorder! I’ve told you, I’m just keeping healthy—’

      ‘Then why don’t you eat cake if it’s someone’s birthday? Why do you always say no to snacks and biscuits? They won’t kill you occasionally if you make an exception to avoid hurting someone’s feelings.’

      She sighed and gave up. ‘Because I have insulin resistance,’ she said flatly, giving him a symptom rather than a diagnosis just to get him off her back, but she could see it wasn’t working. He frowned, looked thoughtful and tipped his head on one side.

      ‘I just don’t buy it. The only way you have insulin resistance is if you’re borderline diabetic and have metabolic syndrome, which you haven’t because you’re much too thin for that, or you’ve got a hormonal imbalance or something like PCOS...’

      He trailed to a halt, frowned again and searched her face, and she could hear the cogs turning as the frown softened into concern.

      ‘Is that it? Is that why you were so surprised that you were pregnant, because you have PCOS?’

      ‘That’s a bit of a quantum leap, isn’t it, from insulin resistance to polycystic ovaries?’ she said, flannelling furiously because she wasn’t ready to have this conversation. Wouldn’t ever be ready to have it—

      ‘Not for a doctor. And I know I’m a paediatric surgeon, but I’m still a doctor and I haven’t forgotten everything I learned in med school. So is this why you were surprised you’re pregnant, and why you’re so convinced you could lose the baby, because of the risk of high blood pressure, pre-eclampsia, gestational diabetes, miscarriage—is there anything else? I’m sure there must be other things you’re torturing yourself with.’

      ‘So СКАЧАТЬ