before Marcus had begun his tantrum, and she’d do well to remember that!
Leo Fenchurch, the other doctor in the practice, had been out on an early call and appeared while she was making the usual big pot of tea for the staff before the day commenced. He brought a blast of cold air in with him and while warming his hands around a mug of the welcoming brew he said, ‘So, what do you think of the new guy, Phoebe?’
He was a fair-haired six-footer with a charm that appealed to most women, but not to her she thought. He was an excellent doctor but a bit lightweight for her to succumb to his charms.
‘I’m not sure,’ she said in answer to his question. ‘I feel that he isn’t going to be an easy person to get to know, that he is very much his own man. Yet I’m sure he will be good for the practice, even if he can be somewhat unpredictable on occasion.’ And of that I have on-the-spot experience, she thought.
‘But, Leo, we have to remember that Harry has lost his wife in tragic circumstances. I’m not sure how, but it was an accident of some kind, and for a marriage to end like that must have been horrendous.
‘Mine fell apart because of a huge divide in our priorities, but we at least we had a choice, not like Harry.’
‘Wow!’ he exclaimed. ‘That summing-up comes after him having spent just a short time among us? You must have seen more of him than we have.’
She wasn’t going to enlighten him on that and almost dropped the mug she was holding when Harry’s voice said from behind her in the passage, ‘Is there any tea on offer, Nurse Howard?’
As she reached for the teapot, Phoebe was praying that he hadn’t heard her discussing him with Leo. It would be just too embarrassing if he had, but his expression was serene enough, and once she’d poured him the tea, he returned to his room without further comment. As the rest of the staff were appearing in varying degrees of haste for their early brew, she tried to put the incident out of her mind.
She wouldn’t have been able to if she’d seen Harry’s expression as he sat gazing into space behind his desk with the tea untouched. It would seem that little Baby Bunting’s mother had him well and truly catalogued, he thought dryly.
Thankfully his visit to her apartment in the middle of the night hadn’t been mentioned—it would have gone around the surgery like wildfire! Noting that it was almost time for the day to start, he went out into Reception to have a word with Phoebe before she left.
She was halfway through the main door when he called her back. He saw her shoulders stiffen and almost smiled. What did she think he wanted her for, to tell her that he’d heard what she’d said to Leo?
‘Did you manage to get some sleep after I left?’ he asked in a low voice.
‘Er…yes,’ she replied, looking around her quickly to make sure no one was near enough to jump to any wrong conclusions. ‘Marcus was fine this morning. It seems as if the tooth might have come through.’
He was smiling and she thought how different he looked when he did, but a second later he was the man in charge as he said, ‘You’ve got young Rory down for a visit, I hope.’
‘He’s top of my list, Dr Balfour,’ she said stiffly. ‘If I am still concerned about his leg I will be asking for your presence or that of Dr Fenchurch.’
‘Good,’ he said briskly, as if he hadn’t picked up on the drop in temperature. ‘Hope you have a good day after a not-so-good night. I see that the waiting room is filling up so must go.’ And off he went, wishing that he hadn’t come over as quite so bossy with Phoebe. He wouldn’t be surprised if she had him labelled as a control freak!
Conversely, as Phoebe drove the short distance to the fishing-tackle shop she was thinking that the man was only doing his job. So why had she let him get to her like that? He’d been kind and supportive in the middle of the night, even though she could tell that he wasn’t used to babies. It was ungrateful of her to take offence at what, to Harry, would just be part of the job.
The infection around the sutures on Rory’s leg had improved overnight, and with it the boy’s mood. As she changed the dressing, with his uncle looking on anxiously, Phoebe told him, ‘Make sure that he takes all the antibiotics he was given when he left the hospital, Jake. That and the different kind of ointment we’re using now should do the trick.’
He breathed a sigh of relief. ‘The last thing I would want to tell my sister is that her boy isn’t well, so that’s good news, Nurse.’
‘How are his parents progressing?’ she questioned.
‘Not bad, but they have a way to go yet before Hunter’s Hill will be ready to send them home. So it’s just the two of us for a while, isn’t it, Rory?’ he said to his nephew, who was still in his pyjamas.
‘Yes, Uncle Jake,’ he chirped. ‘And don’t forget, as soon as my leg is all right, we’re going out in your boat.’
‘There’s no chance of me forgetting,’ was the teasing reply. ‘You won’t let me!’
Jake turned to Phoebe. ‘How about a coffee before you go, Nurse?’
She shook her head. ‘No, thanks just the same, I’ve got a rather long list of patients to see and must be on my way.’
He was smiling. ‘If I can’t make you a drink, how about letting me take you for a sail when this young fellow is well enough to come along?’
‘I don’t think so,’ she told him gently. ‘You wouldn’t want a young baby on the boat.’
‘So you’re married,’ he said disappointedly.
‘No. I’m a single mother,’ she explained, and could tell from his expression that a possible relationship had just gone down the drain. Yet who could blame him? She couldn’t help but think it would take a lot for a man to be willing to fill the gap of a father in the life of another man’s child, however nice he was.
She’d also only met Jake for the first time the day before. It would take longer than that for her to want to know him better or introduce him to her son. But as a vision of Harry Balfour awkwardly holding Marcus safe and secure in his arms came to mind, she thought that she’d only known him for a similar length of time, yet she would trust him with her child.
When she arrived at her next call, pulling up in front of the biggest farmhouse in the area, Phoebe was amazed to see the man who had been in her thoughts getting out of the brand-new red convertible he’d had delivered to the surgery that morning. The question was immediately there in her mind—was he checking up on her?
It seemed that he wasn’t. Harry was already ringing the bell and called across to her, ‘Well timed. We have an emergency.’
She was out of her car in a flash and hurried to the door, wondering what could be wrong at Wheatlands Farm.
She visited the place every week to put a fresh dressing on a varicose ulcer that was plaguing old George Enderby, the patriarch of the family. As far as she was aware, that was the only thing wrong with the cheerful old guy, but if what Harry was saying was correct…
‘Is it George that you’re here about?’ she asked as footsteps pounded towards them from inside the house.
He shook his head. ‘No. A call came through to the surgery to say his daughter-in-law Pamela had fallen downstairs early this morning and almost knocked herself senseless with a crack to her head. She was soon back working on the farm, until a few minutes ago when suddenly she didn’t seem to know where she was.’
The door was being wrenched open as he spoke and George’s son Ian was there, his face taut with anxiety.
‘Thanks for coming so quickly, Harry,’ he said urgently. ‘I wasn’t expecting us to be renewing our acquaintance so soon. Pamela is upstairs resting with a huge bump on her head and isn’t very coherent.’
‘So let’s have a look,