A Consultant's Special Care. Joanna Neil

had said curiously, ‘Dat man still in your house, Abby?’

      Abby had blinked. ‘What man, sweetheart?’

      Chloe had shrugged awkwardly and had then looked at her with a touch of uncertainty as though she had felt she might have said something wrong. ‘I sawed him.’

      ‘When did you see him, Chloe?’

      ‘In the dark. I looked out my window.’ Then Chloe had stopped speaking, and had resolutely refused to answer any more questions, no matter how tentatively they had been put to her.

      Abby had been worried. She had made a quick check of the house, realising too late that she had left the back door unlocked in her haste last night, but there had been no sign of anything untoward, nothing appeared to be missing, and she had begun to wonder whether Chloe had imagined it.

      Then, as she had been preparing to set off for work, she had discovered the imprint of a man’s shoe in the shrubbery outside her patio doors. The sight of it had sent a chill through her whole body.

      Perhaps Jordan recognised that she was out of sorts and not to be messed with, because he gave her a sideways glance as she snatched up a patient’s case file from the desk and briskly scanned it, but he said nothing.

      ‘I’ve had Mr Stevens’ test results back from the lab,’ Sarah said, coming up behind her, and Abby jumped as though she had been scalded.

      Recovering, she said quietly, ‘Thanks, Sarah. I’ll let him know.’

      They were busy in the department, and she didn’t have time to stop and dwell on things, but in the late afternoon, when they had finished dealing with a nasty road traffic accident, she was having a quick cup of coffee when Sarah called her to her next patient.

      ‘She’s been brought in by a neighbour,’ Sarah said. ‘The neighbour thinks she’s been knocked about by her boyfriend—there’s a history of injuries over the past three years, but the woman isn’t admitting to anything. She has a fever and she looks very poorly. She’s complaining of severe headache and pain in and above the eye. I’ve put her in cubicle five.’

      ‘OK, I’ll take a look at her right away.’

      Abby was shocked by the woman’s facial injuries, but she didn’t let her see that she was affected. Instead, she murmured sympathetically, ‘That looks as though it must be really hurting, Rhea. How did it happen?’

      ‘I tripped and banged my face on a door,’ the woman answered. She was aged around thirty, and her cheekbone and eye socket were swollen. There was also a split in the skin, which looked as though it had started healing but infection had set in. She looked ill.

      ‘This must have happened a few days ago,’ Abby murmured, inspecting the wound. ‘It looks as though the cheek has become infected…it must be very tender. Didn’t you go and see your doctor for treatment?’

      ‘No, I…I didn’t want to bother him. I thought it would clear up on its own.’

      ‘Are you having any problems with your vision?’

      ‘Yes, things are a bit blurred.’

      ‘All right, Rhea. You rest there, while I go and consult with a colleague. We’re going to have to admit you, so that we can clear up the infection as quickly as possible. It’s possible that there’s a small clot forming at the back of the eye, which is building up the pressure there and causing your visual disturbance, so we need to deal with that as well. I’ll leave you with the nurse, so that she can take a swab. That will help us to identify the bacterium causing the infection.’

      She left the cubicle and went to find Jordan. He was with a patient, but he came to talk to her as soon as she asked, and she quickly told him about Rhea.

      ‘I think I need to start her on antibiotics straight away, and I’m organising a scan. Should I give her anticoagulants? I’m pretty sure that she has a thrombosis as a result of the infection, and her sight is already being affected.’

      ‘Yes, that’s the best course of action. If we don’t act quickly she could lose her sight altogether. It’s not something that we come across often these days—mostly infections are cleared up by antibiotics before they can get this far, but she probably left it because she didn’t want to let anyone see what had happened.’