light swell and passenger ferries crisscrossed their way through the water, carrying people home from work or into the city for entertainment or dinner.
She gripped the balcony rail with an iron grip and lifted her face to the breeze, breathing in the salty air, wishing she could be on one of those yachts and sail away into the sunset.
‘You wouldn’t happen to have a cup of sugar, would you?’ Eamon Chapman’s voice sounded from her right.
Erin swivelled her head to look at him, her heart giving a little free fall. He was bare-chested, his legs encased in dark blue denim slung low on his lean hips. Every muscle on his chest and abdomen looked like it had been carved into place by a master craftsman. She had studied anatomy, yet not one of her textbooks would have done Dr Eamon Chapman justice. ‘Um…sugar?’
His mouth tilted wryly. ‘Yeah, that sweet stuff you put in coffee. I forgot to get some when I shopped on the way home.’
Erin brushed a strand of hair that the breeze had worked loose from her chignon away from her face. ‘The shops are only a short walk away,’ she pointed out.
‘So you don’t have any?’ he asked, leaning on the dividing rail with his strong forearms. ‘Sugar, I mean?’
Erin tried not to look at the way his biceps bulged as he leaned his weight on the railing. He was more or less at eye level, which was disconcerting to say the least. This close she could see tiny brown flecks in his green eyes that fanned out from his dark-as-ink pupils. ‘I…I don’t take sugar,’ she said.
His mouth tilted even further. ‘Sweet enough, huh?’
This time Erin was sure he was mocking her. ‘I have five fillings,’ she said primly. ‘I am not keen on getting any more.’
‘Didn’t your mother teach you the importance of dental care?’ he asked.
She schooled her features into a blank mask, hoping he hadn’t noticed the slight flinch at the mention of her mother. ‘It wasn’t one of her strong points, no.’
Erin felt his silent scrutiny, as if he was reading her word by word, page by page. She wanted to go back inside but she felt inexplicably drawn to him, like tiny iron filings to a strong magnet.
‘It’s quite a coincidence, me moving in next door, don’t you think?’ he asked.
She gave a little shrug. ‘There are three nurses and an orderly in this apartment block. Mosman’s a convenient suburb. It’s close to Sydney Met.’
‘Are you renting or do you own your apartment?’
‘The bank owns it,’ she said. ‘I work to keep up the payments.’
Erin had forgotten to close the balcony doors and Molly chose that moment to strut out like a model on a catwalk.
‘I didn’t realise you were allowed pets here,’ he said, looking down as Molly began to weave around Erin’s legs.
She grimaced as she scooped up the big fluffy bundle of fur. ‘I–I’ve got special permission from the body corporate,’ she lied.
Eamon Chapman cocked his head, as if debating whether to believe her. ‘Isn’t it cruel to house a cat indoors all the time?’
Erin stroked Molly’s silky head. ‘She’s a Ragdoll. They prefer to be indoors.’
‘What’s its name?’
‘Molly.’
‘One of my sisters has a cat,’ he said. ‘Personally I’m a dog man, but yours looks cute.’
‘Thank you.’
He straightened from the railing and stretched. Erin’s eyes nearly popped out of her head, like popcorn from a hot pan, as each of his muscles rippled in response.
‘Have you had time to look at my proposal?’ he asked as his arms came back down to his sides.
Erin had to blink a couple of times to reorient herself. ‘Um…yes, I have. I’m not sure it’s going to work—that follow-through care thing—it’s too complicated. A&E is too busy as it is to expect us to wander off to plump up patients’ pillows on the wards.’
‘You’re missing the point, Dr Taylor,’ he said. ‘It’s not about plumping up pillows; it’s about treating the patient from start to finish as a person, not a statistic.’
‘I don’t treat patients as statistics.’
‘Tell me the names of the last five patients you saw today.’
Erin stared at him as her mind went completely blank. She could barely remember faces, let alone names. It had been so frantic, especially when an elderly woman had been brought in with a cardiac arrest at the same time a head injury had arrived. Names hadn’t been important; what had been important was saving lives that were hanging by a gossamer thread. ‘I didn’t have time to memorise their names,’ she said, putting Molly down. ‘My job is to save their lives.’
‘Do you ever wonder what happens to them after they leave you?’ he asked.
Erin didn’t want to admit how much she wondered about them. She saw it as a weakness in herself, a frailty that should have been knocked out of her way back in medical school. She fought against her human feelings all the time; they kept her awake at night—the sea of faces that floated past like ghosts. ‘Not really,’ she said, her tone chilly. ‘As I said, it’s not my job.’
‘You might want to have a rethink about that, Dr Taylor,’ he said. ‘The first trial ward-round begins tomorrow at the end of your shift.’
Erin forced her gaze to remain connected to his. ‘Well, I can’t see that working. You know as well as anyone that A&E shifts don’t end according to the clock—they end when you finish treating your last patient, or at least get them to the point where you can hand them over to the next shift. You can’t just breeze out to start chatting with folks on the ward.’
‘You’re so right. I am quite aware of that,’ he said. ‘If you read the plan properly, you would see that wind-up on your last patient starts an hour before your shift ends—that gives you at least part of the last hour to do ward follow-through.’
Erin gave him a mutinous look. ‘Oh, so we just walk out an hour before our shift ends then, and I suppose the next shift starts an hour early to fill in the gap? Or maybe we just abandon A&E altogether for an hour. Look, you can hardly force already overworked staff to take on even more responsibility.’
‘If you had read the proposal carefully, Dr Taylor, you would see that new arrangements do not mean more responsibility, just different responsibility. And, as far as implementing this plan, I’m not a great believer in using force to achieve anything,’ he said. ‘But I am the director, and I would like those working in my team to actually be a part of that team. The response from everyone else has been very positive, actually. I think you are going to find yourself out of touch with what everyone else is doing if you simply reject the department’s policies.’
She arched her eyebrows. ‘So, what do you plan to do, Dr Chapman? Hand-hold every A&E doctor until you’re confident they’re doing things your way?’
Eamon held her pert look, privately enjoying the way her burnt-toffee-brown eyes challenged his. Her defensive stance made him wonder why she was so against change. None of the other doctors he had briefed that morning had expressed any opposition to his proposal. In fact, three of them had cited cases where if such a plan had already been in place patient outcomes would have been better.
From what he had heard Erin Taylor was not one of the more social members of the department. Apparently she never joined in with regular drinks on Friday evenings at one of the local bars, and as far as he could tell she lived alone, apart from a contraband cat. She was prickly and unfriendly, yet her clinical management of patients was spot-on. She was competent and efficient, although one or two of the nurses had mentioned in passing her