Dr Mathieson's Daughter. Maggie Kingsley

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ then?’ the elderly man queried, wincing slightly as she helped him into a wheelchair. ‘The young lad who saw me earlier said he thought it was, but I wasn’t sure whether he was fully qualified to make the diagnosis or not.’

      Jane hid a smile. ‘Dr Connery’s pretty sure your arm’s fractured, but to make one hundred per cent sure we’re going to send you along to X-Ray. Hey, look on the bright side,’ she added encouragingly as his face fell, ‘you’ll get lots of sympathy from your female admirers.’

      ‘I hope not or my wife will break my other arm,’ he observed, his faded brown eyes twinkling. ‘Oh, well, I suppose it could have been worse, and at least it’s given me the opportunity to meet a very pretty and charming young lady.’

      Jane chuckled. She knew very well that she wasn’t pretty, and she supposed that at twenty-eight she wasn’t exactly young any more, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t nice to hear a compliment.

      Right now, she could have done with hearing a lot more. It might have cheered her up. In fact, ever since Hannah had married Robert—and it had been a lovely wedding despite the bride’s leg being in plaster—she’d been feeling oddly down.

      Probably because it’s the fourth wedding you’ve been to in as many months, her mind pointed out, whereas you…

      No, she wasn’t going to think about her love life. Actually, her completely non-existent love life.

      And whose fault is that? Her little voice asked. OK, so Frank was a rat, and you wasted two years of your life believing his protestations of undying love, but what happened after he dumped you? You promptly fell in love with Elliot Mathieson. A man who’s had more girlfriends since he got divorced than most other men have had hot dinners. A man who could hurt you a hundred times more than Frank ever did if he found out how you really feel about him.

      ‘Jane, we’ve got trouble!’

      With an effort she turned to see their student nurse gazing at her in dismay. ‘What’s up, Kelly?’

      ‘We’ve got that man back in again—the one who thinks his brain’s been taken over by aliens. I’ve phoned Social Services but—’

      ‘They said it’s our pigeon,’ she finished for her wryly. Social Services always said psychiatric cases were their pigeon unless someone was so bad they had to be sectioned. And Harry’s delusions weren’t nearly frequent enough yet to have him compulsorily detained in a psychiatric ward. ‘Has Charlie seen him?’

      ‘He’s given him a tranquilliser, and he seems pretty quiet at the moment, but you know what happened last time.’

      Jane did. Before the tranquilliser could take effect Harry had practically wrecked one of their ECG machines, thinking it was an alien life form. ‘OK. I’ll sit with him—’

      ‘RTA on the way, Jane!’ Floella suddenly called from the end of the treatment room. ‘Three casualties, and two look really serious!’

      Jane bit her lip. Damn, this would have to happen right now with Mr Mackay, the consultant in charge of A and E, off on his annual break and Elliot not back from the solicitors yet.

      ‘Kelly—’

      ‘Yeah, I know.’ The student nurse sighed. ‘Make the alien a nice cup of tea, and do my best.’

      ‘Good girl.’ Jane nodded, but as she hurried down the treatment room a sigh of relief came from her when Elliot suddenly appeared.

      ‘Now, that’s what I call perfect timing,’ she said with a smile.

      ‘Perfect timing?’

      ‘We’ve an RTA on the way,’ she explained, ‘and I was just wondering how on earth we were going to cope with the casualties.’

      ‘Oh—Right. I see.’

      She glanced up at him, her grey eyes concerned. ‘Everything OK, Elliot?’

      ‘Great. Fine,’ he replied, but he was anything but fine she decided as he walked quickly across to Charlie Gordon.

      He looked…Not worried. Elliot never looked worried no matter how dire the situation, but he most definitely looked preoccupied. Preoccupied and tense, and still quite the handsomest man she’d ever laid eyes on.

      In fact, there ought to have been a law against any man being quite so handsome, she thought ruefully. His thick blond hair, deep blue eyes and devastating smile would have been quite potent enough, but when you added a six-foot muscular frame, a pair of shoulders which looked as though they’d been purpose-built for a girl to lean her head against…

      It was an unbeatable combination. The kind of combination which turned even the most sensible women into slack-jawed idiots whenever he was around. Herself included, as Jane knew only too well, but she’d always had sense enough not to show it.

      Not that it would have made any difference if she had, of course, she realised. Elliot’s taste ran to tall, leggy women. Women like Gussie Granton from Paediatrics whose figure would have made a pin-up girl gnash her teeth.

      Nobody would ever gnash their teeth over her figure, she thought wistfully, unless it was in complete despair. She was too short, and too fat, and a pair of ordinary grey eyes and stubbornly straight shoulder-length black hair were never going to make up for those deficiencies.

      ‘You have a wonderful sense of humour, Jane,’ her mother had told her encouragingly when she was growing up. ‘Men like that.’

      Yeah, right, Mother. And Frank’s admiration for my sense of humour lasted only until a red-haired bimbo with the IQ of a gerbil drifted into his sights, and then he was off.

      What on earth was wrong with her today? she wondered crossly as she heard the sound of an ambulance arriving, its siren blaring. All this maudlin self-pity. All right, so she was in love with Elliot Mathieson, and had been ever since he’d come to St Stephen’s two years ago, but he was never going to fall in love with her. She was simply good old Janey and it was high time she accepted that. Time she realised it was only in the movies that the plain, ordinary heroine got the handsome hero, and this wasn’t the movies—this was real life.

      ‘OK, what have you got for us?’ Elliot asked as the doors of the treatment room banged open and the paramedics appeared with their casualties.

      ‘One adult, plus a seventeen-year-old boy and fifteen-year-old girl. The youngsters suffered the worst damage. They were in the back seat and neither was wearing seat belts.’

      Elliot swore under his breath. ‘Are they related in any way?’

      ‘The adult’s the father. He has a fractured wrist, ankle and minor lacerations.’

      ‘Richard, Kelly—you take the adult—’

      ‘But what about my alien?’ the student nurse exclaimed.

      ‘Oh, Lord, he’s not back in again, is he?’ Elliot groaned. ‘Has anyone given him any tranquillisers?’

      ‘I have,’ Charlie Gordon said, nodding.

      ‘Then get one of the porters to take him up to Social Services.’

      ‘Elliot, СКАЧАТЬ