his little joke—which he’d probably told a million times—had fallen flat, but Annie was too busy absorbing his name to be smiling at weak jokes.
Phillip Park. His name was on the list of new staff—one of the doctors who had come along in the new boss’s train. Paediatric surgery fellow? Anaesthetist? No, Annie was pretty sure the anaesthetist was a woman—Maggie Walsh.
Annie had personnel files of all the new appointees on her desk, but she’d purposely not read through them, deciding to meet the new staff without any preconceived ideas. Now she was sorry she hadn’t checked. She’d known Alexander Attwood was American, but had assumed the other staff would be Australians from Melbourne, where Dr Attwood had been working for six months.
‘And you are?’ Phil was saying politely.
‘Annie Talbot, former sister in charge of the neonatal special care unit at St James’s Hospital and, from today, manager of the new paediatric surgical unit. Great way to start a working relationship—running headlong into you.’
Phil Park’s hand clasped hers, warm fingers engulfing her palm, holding her hand just a fraction too long.
She withdrew hers carefully and moved a little further away from him, guessing he was a toucher, and not wanting to be the touchee.
‘But that’s great!’ he said. ‘We’ll be working together, and neighbours as well for a while. At least I assume we’ll be neighbours—or are you a health nut, and had covered several kilometres before you bumped into me?’
‘No, we’ll be neighbours,’ Annie told him, though she didn’t share his enthusiasm. Because, with the smiling eyes and hand held too long, she was sure he was flirting with her?
Or because the smiling eyes and hand held too long reminded her of Dennis?
‘Manager of the new surgical unit, eh?’ he asked, not in the least put out by her lack of enthusiasm. ‘How do you feel about that—coming from hands-on nursing in the PICU? That is what your special care unit is, isn’t it? A paediatric intensive care unit? And don’t most unit managers come from a secretarial or management background rather than a nursing one?’
Annie breathed easier. He might rattle on but she’d followed his thoughts and talking work was much better than considering flirtatious new neighbours.
Or Dennis.
‘I’ve mixed feelings about the shift from nursing,’ she told him, ‘but the new job’s a challenge. The new unit is a challenge—I imagine that’s why someone like your boss has come on board. Shifting to Jimmie’s isn’t like taking up a post at one of the renowned children’s hospitals. We’re just starting up. Neurologists and cardiologists—all the specialists, in fact—are still going to refer patients to the bigger hospitals.’
‘Not for paediatric cardiac surgery—not with Alexander the Great on board,’ he said.
‘You call Dr Attwood Alexander the Great?’ Annie was awed by such daring. Everything she’d heard or read about the man had instilled her with enormous respect for him.
Not to mention apprehension about the ‘ruthless’ part.
‘Not to his face.’ Phil retreated. ‘But all of us—Maggie, Kurt, Rachel—use the title when we’re talking about him. He’s come here because of the opportunity to start a small specialised unit that he hopes will be used as a model for other small units. Other hospitals have paediatric surgical units, but they’re not specialised to the extent we’d like to be. They do some congenital heart defects, which is our specialty, but they also do other congenital defects and things like brain tumours, gut obstructions, kidney and liver transplants—the lot.’
He glanced at her as if to see if she was listening, and as she was—and was fascinated as well—she encouraged him with a smile and a quiet, ‘Go on.’
‘Well, Alex hopes that if a small cardiac surgical unit can be made to work, physically, medically and financially, he’ll have a model to set up similar units in city hospitals across the US. At the moment, over there, they have places like Boston Children’s and Cleveland Clinic, maybe ten large hospitals with elite paediatric surgery units, but that means seriously ill babies, often newborn, with complex heart problems requiring surgery, have to travel huge distances for treatment, which not only puts extra stress on them but also disrupts family life and support systems.’
Annie took it all in—even felt a skip of excitement for the vision in her own heart—but at the same time his words puzzled her.
‘Does anyone else know of this plan of Dr Attwood’s? Is the hospital CEO on side? Does the board know? The government? After all, most of our funds come from them.’
She glanced towards Phil and for the first time saw his smile replaced by a frown. She hurried to dispel it.
‘I’m only asking because, as unit manager, I hadn’t heard any of this,’ she explained. ‘I thought we were going to be just another paediatric surgical unit like the ones you’ve mentioned.’
Her voice trailed away as she wondered if she’d missed something in the job description and in the interviews that had followed her application. Although that might explain the ‘little talks’ and her feeling that something ‘dodgy’ was going on!
‘A number of people know,’ Phil said, then he must have realised he’d spoken abruptly, for he found his smile again and favoured her with a particularly warm and teasing version of it. ‘Though I’ve just committed the cardinal sin in Alex’s book and blabbed about it to a virtual stranger before he’s held his briefing.’
A pause, then he grasped her arm and added, ‘You won’t give me away, will you? You’ll look suitably surprised and then delighted when he tells everyone at the staff meeting?’
They were walking through the hospital gates and up the paved path towards the main staff entrance as Phil made this plea. Annie studied him for a moment, wondering why an attractive, self-assured man should be worrying over such a minor indiscretion as telling a colleague something she’d hear very shortly anyway.
The word ‘ruthless’ echoed in her head. Was the gossip even half-right? Was the new boss tyrannical enough to cause his colleague such alarm?
She patted Phil’s hand, still resting on her arm, to reassure him and led the way through the doors, nodding at other staff arriving early for their shift.
‘Trust you to find a beautiful woman before you’ve even entered the hospital,’ a deep voice said, and Annie turned to see another immaculate three-piece suit standing just inside the entrance. Inside it was a tall, rangy man, with a craggy face and the coolest, clearest grey eyes she’d ever seen.
Her heart stopped beating, stuttered back to life, then raced out of control. It couldn’t be…
Yet she knew it was.
Had known it was from the moment she’d heard his voice…
‘Do I know you?’ He reached out a hand towards her as he asked the question, and Annie stepped back.
He sounded perplexed and when she glanced at him again she saw the untidy brows drawn together in a frown as if perplexed wasn’t an emotion he enjoyed.
‘No!’ she said, far too loudly in the small space, then wondered if something less definite—a vague I don’t think so—might have been more believable.
‘This is Annie Talbot,’ Phil said to the suit. ‘She’s our neighbour and our new unit manager. She bumped into me—literally—outside our gate. Your gate. Annie, this is Alex Attwood.’
This cannot be happening. That was Annie’s first thought.
But it is, was her second.
The third suggested it wouldn’t matter. Might not matter. Especially if she stuck to her denial. She’d just go through to her office, sit down and think things through.
After