in the first place. ‘You’re a doctor,’ he said.
‘Was,’ she said grimly, and left the cubicle.
Was? What did she mean, was? Had she been struck off? Or…? His mind refused to make any connections, and he sank back against his pillows. All he could think about right now was the dull ache that beat through his body.
She returned a couple of minutes later with a nurse who carried two white tablets in a small cup.
‘Paracetamol?’ Will asked hopefully.
Mallory smiled. ‘Don’t you think you might need just a little bit more than that?’
‘Yeah,’ he admitted, as another wave of pain shot through him.
‘I’ll do your obs first,’ the nurse said. She checked his temperature, pulse and respiration. Though her hands weren’t like Mallory’s. They were just as cool and professional, but the touch of her skin hadn’t heated his blood the way Mallory’s had.
No. Absolutely not. He wasn’t going to start thinking of Mallory in those terms.
He sneaked a glance at her. And wished he hadn’t when his gaze met hers. It felt as if lightning had just coursed through him. His pulse was racing, too. Not good. How could he explain to the nurse that it wasn’t anything to do with the accident? It was…the look of a stranger. A perfect stranger. All he knew about her was her name, her previous occupation and the fact she was here on holiday.
So how on earth could she make him feel like an overgrown, gawky teenager, just with one look? And how on earth could the nurse write so calmly on her chart as if an earthquake hadn’t just happened before her eyes—wasn’t still happening?
‘Shall I get him some water to go with the analgesics?’ Mallory asked.
‘Thanks.’ The nurse smiled at her. ‘I’ll leave him in your capable hands, Dr Ryman.’
‘Have you had co-proxamol before?’ Mallory asked as the nurse left the cubicle.
‘Yes.’
‘Any reaction to it at all? Any dizziness, blurred vision, slurring your words?’
‘No.’ She knew he hurt. Why didn’t she just give him the painkillers? ‘Are you the ward doctor?’ he asked.
‘No.’ She flushed spectacularly, her face clashing wildly with her hair. And then she went white. Absolutely white.
Will could have kicked himself. Considering that she’d come to his rescue after the accident and now she was looking after him—something she really didn’t have to do—he’d been ungracious. Worse, he must have touched some sort of sore nerve. She’d only just told him that she used to be a doctor and, whatever the reason for her not being one now, the pain was clearly still raw. ‘Sorry. Didn’t mean to be nasty.’
‘You’re in pain and I’m holding up your pain relief. And I’m sure the ward doctor checked your records before he wrote you up for co-proxamol,’ Mallory said. She handed him the cup and waited until he’d tipped the tablets into his mouth before giving him the beaker of water.
‘Thanks,’ he said when he’d swallowed the tablets.
‘Is there anything else you need?’ she asked.
A new head, he thought. One that didn’t hurt. ‘No. I’m fine, thanks,’ he said.
‘I’ll be off, then.’
‘Stay a bit longer. Please?’ The words were out before he’d even finished thinking them.
‘I…Look, you ought to rest.’
At least she was saying no in a nice way. She was probably with someone on her walking trip. He’d already taken up too much of her time. This not-wanting-to-let-her-go type of feeling…Well, the accident must have addled his brains as well as smashed his bones. ‘Sorry. Selfish,’ he mumbled. ‘Your friends…’ Must be waiting for her, though he couldn’t get the words out.
She shook her head. ‘I’m on my own.’
So she could stay, if she wanted to. But he’d already wrecked her holiday. ‘Too dark to walk now. Sorry.’
‘Climb,’ she corrected.
Climb. The word slammed into his mind and he flinched. Today had been tough. But it had just become a whole heap worse, raking up old wounds. Climbing had already cost him Roland and Julie—his brother and his fiancée. He really should have moved when it had all happened. Gone somewhere flat and quiet and as far from mountains as he could possibly find.
‘Are you all right?’ she asked. ‘Does something new hurt?’
Only my heart. And that was a long, long time ago, he thought. When my fiancée fell in love with my brother. And I wasn’t there when the mountain rescue team needed me. And Roly…
‘No. I’m fine.’ With an effort, Will pulled his concentration back from the memories of that terrible night. ‘I hope the duty doctors are as on the ball as you are.’
‘If they are, you’d be better off somewhere else,’ she muttered.
He could see the pain in her eyes. The kind of pain he knew only too well, the kind of pain that all the medicine in the world couldn’t heal. Because the only way to heal it was to face your demons head on. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Asks the man with a comminuted fracture of the upper tibia, a fractured radius and concussion,’ she quipped. The car crash had shattered the bone in Will’s leg, and when the impact had knocked him to the ground, he’d landed on his arm and the bone had snapped.
‘Comminuted fracture?’
‘Uh-huh. You got off lightly—just the tibia and not the fibula as well. And it was a closed fracture.’
She wasn’t teasing him. If your tibia broke, the force of the impact normally went through your interosseous membrane, the connective tissue lying between the two lower leg bones, and fractured your fibia as well. The layers of skin and tissues over the area were very thin, which usually meant that the broken bone pierced your skin, known as an ‘open fracture’. In Will’s case, the bone hadn’t gone through the skin.
But a comminuted fracture, meaning that the bone had shattered…There could be only one reason why he didn’t have a cast on. ‘Internal fixation?’ he asked.
Mallory nodded. ‘Absolutely. So no weight on that leg until the bone knits together again.’
He closed his eyes. ‘Three months.’ He’d be stuck, unable to do anything, for three whole months. At least.
‘Could be worse,’ she said, as if she’d read his mind—though his feelings had probably been written all over his face. ‘If it’d been your femur, you’d be in traction so you couldn’t even get around on crutches.’ If you’d broken your thigh bone, you needed traction to stop the large thigh muscles contracting and interfering with the blood supply, or even displacing the broken bone again. ‘And you’d have lost a lot more blood.’ Enough even to go into shock.
And she was changing the subject. ‘Lucky me,’ he said dryly, opening his eyes again. ‘But what about you?’
She shrugged. ‘I’m fine.’
She didn’t look it. Again, the words were out of his mouth before his brain had registered them. His brain definitely wasn’t involved because he sounded far more coherent than he felt. ‘Why don’t you grab a cup of coffee, sit down and tell me about it?’
‘Nothing to tell.’
‘Looks to me,’ he said quietly, ‘as if you need someone to listen. I’m not going anywhere. And I’m a doctor—what you tell me is just between us.’
‘You need to rest.’
He nodded. ‘And I also need