Just Friends To Just Married?. Scarlet Wilson

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       CHAPTER FOUR

      VIVIENNE HAD WORKED in a lot of places. She generally lasted between six months and a year before moving on. She made friends superficially at each new workplace. She was good at her job and generally had a good feel for people—she naturally knew who to avoid and who to trust. Her instincts had always been sound—except, of course, when it came to men.

      Viv seemed to have an inbuilt ability to find the worst man in the room—no matter where she was. Her love life had been one disaster after another. The only guy that had been half-good was Archie, an electrician she’d met when she’d worked in Bristol. Archie had been too good, too nice—even Duc had liked him. But Archie had got too close. He’d tried to support her when she’d tried to trace her birth mum and then found out she was dead. His sympathy had felt overwhelming. His questions about how she was feeling had probed into emotions she wasn’t ready to deal with. It was almost like he had been trying to ‘fix her’—and Viv didn’t need to be fixed by anyone.

      So she’d done what she did best, and retreated quickly. Instead, seeking out men who were their own natural disasters, and emotionally unavailable to her, made her life simpler. It made it easier to keep the shell she’d constructed around herself unbroken. Duc was the only person who’d ever been allowed to tap at the surface—the only man she’d ever really trusted. Which was why she was here, trying to get her head around her role within this hospital.

      By day three she’d begun to get a feel for the place again. May Mắn Hospital had always been a little different. She’d only been here for short spells, but there was something about this place—it had a little buzz around it that she couldn’t explain. Before, she’d just imagined it was because of the connection to Duc. His parents had always been the heart and soul of the place.

      Walking through the corridors, she could almost sense the echo of them. She half expected to turn a corner and walk into either one of them.

      Trouble was, the staff had relied on them so much for, well, everything.

      Lien seemed to have a good head on her shoulders for the day-to-day running of the hospital. For the general medical patients she was the go-to clinician. But she didn’t know anything about rotas, ordering supplies, or maintenance of the building. Her husband, Joe, helped out at some of the antenatal clinics. He’d worked as a GP back in Scotland, and could do general antenatal care, as well as regular hospital duties. But what was most interesting was the fact he seemed to have a real panache for working with the kids. They seemed to gravitate towards him—even though he still struggled with the language barrier, much the same as she did. It probably helped that he had a young son of his own, but watching her colleagues gave Viv a chance to understand the skills of those around her.

      While all that was well and good, she hadn’t found anyone who had the skills she needed as an obstetrician. There was a visiting plastic surgeon, there was Duc, and there was a whole host of part-time nurses working within the hospital.

      Trouble was that between Hoa and the other obstetrician there really had been no one else to look after the steady stream of pregnant women who came to the hospital. Viv had learned quickly that not all women in Hanoi presented early enough in their pregnancy to have any kind of antenatal screening.

      Viv was lucky. One of her jobs had been on a Scottish island and had required her to have further training in carrying out sonograms. This meant she found herself doing routine sonograms on a whole range of women at different gestations, coming up against a whole host of potential issues.

      The truth was, she couldn’t do this on her own. She was a midwife. Not a consultant.

      She wandered through the corridors in the midst of another busy day. Duc was sitting at the desk in her father’s office, his head resting on one hand.

      ‘Knock, knock,’ she said as she walked in.

      He looked up. There were dark circles under his eyes. Even though she knew he went to bed at night, it was clear he wasn’t sleeping.

      He started to stand up but she shook her head as she sat in the chair opposite him. ‘Don’t. There’s no emergency. But we need to talk.’

      His brow creased. ‘Just don’t tell me you’re leaving.’

      She gave a weak smile. ‘Not yet. But you know me. I never hang my hat anywhere for long.’

      He opened his mouth as if he was about to respond, then shook his head and held out one hand. ‘So, what’s up?’

      She nodded. This was business. It had to be. She could see gaps that she wasn’t comfortable working around.

      ‘Things need to be clearer. At any other hospital I’ve worked at, we have protocols. A strict set of guidelines that everyone СКАЧАТЬ