The Life Saver Read online

  And even after the separation, when he had clearly been racked, his competence had only increased. To the point, actually, where Jo had had some professional concern that he might be headed for a breakdown.

  Was that still a risk?

  She considered telling him not to give up the cigarettes yet, that maybe he needed them for a bit longer.

  But she knew that his smoking had always been a weakness he'd despised in himself, so she didn't speak. He'd taken it up at the invincible, all-knowing age of sixteen, and even medical school hadn't scared him away from the vice.

  Tara had succeeded where an internship rotation through the oncology unit had failed. She'd told him that passively inhaling the smoke killed her singing voice, which had been a legitimate concern, given her ambitions in that area.

  'Well, thanks for feeding me, and for forgiving me,' Rip said. His grin took any cloying humility out of the words.

  'You can return the favour some night, if you like,' Jo answered, this time without the necessary pause for thought. Eeahh! She'd sounded as if she was angling for an invitation. Worse. A date.

  He frowned and said vaguely, 'Yeah, that would be nice. Very nice.'

  She didn't believe him, and was a little shocked at how much she suddenly minded that he thought of her so totally as a colleague. Not really a whole person. Definitely not a female.

  Which was ridiculous, because on that front she'd always felt just the same about him.

  Good to work with.

  Very married.

  And then very not, and therefore even more thoroughly off Jo's hormonal radar screen. Not that he'd ever looked hang-dog about it, but he'd been so rigidly encased in his shock and pain for the past, oh, eighteen months or more, no woman could have misread the vibes he gave off.

  'Mmm,' she answered, as if she was already thinking about something else, even though she wasn't.

  She opened the door and he stepped past her before she had it quite wide enough. He brushed close, and even though they didn't touch and their eyes didn't meet, there was something...

  It was her imagination.

  Nothing else.

  'We'll talk about that new partner some more tomorrow, yes?' he said. 'Run it past Trudy and Dotty, see what they say?'

  'Yes, we should.' The two women shared the job of practice manager, overlapping some of their hours and working others separately, and they'd both been at the helm for years. 'Goodnight, then, Rip.'

  'Yeah, see you tomorrow. Thanks again. I...uh...yeah.'

  He turned back to her slightly, in the middle of the porch, shrugging, smiling and frowning all at the same time, poor, helpless, nicotine-deprived man.

  'Get a patch,' she told him.

  'A what?'

  'A nicotine patch.'

  'No, but I will have you over to dinner,' he answered, his tone resolute.

  Nicotine patch. Jo to dinner.

  'Someone tell me the connection, Miffy,' she said to her cat thirty seconds later, with the door safely shut behind her, 'Because I can't spot it.'

  Rip usually gave himself a couple of patient-free hours on a Wednesday morning, and so did Jo. He'd wasted numerous such hours in the months after Tara's dramatic departure. The blurred print of a single page of a medical journal would sit in front of him for an hour at a time while his thoughts churned and his staff wrongly believed he was locked in concentration.

  Lately, he'd been doing a lot better—actually reading when he intended to, getting interested, retaining the information, applying it to patients in his practice, picking up the phone to call a colleague without a feeling of dread in case he got asked some well-meaning question that reminded him of the failure of his marriage.

  Today, he went onto the internet and hunted up any recent detail on nicotine-replacement treatments. It was information he'd glibly recited to some of his patients in the past, but it felt different to think about applying it to himself. He took his own blood pressure, ran through the list of side effects possible when using a patch. The drug company was obligated to list such side effects, and so they should be, but there was a downside—the power of the human imagination.

  So the symptoms of an accidental overdose of nicotine associated with the . use of the patch could include confusion, cold sweats and drooling? On top of the daunting prospect of doing without the familiar ritual of a cigarette, was it surprising if some smokers looked at that list of possibilities, imagined them all happening at once, and lost their taste for quitting?

  As the scientific literature and the anecdotal evidence suggested, the nicotine patch was only effective if you really wanted to stop. You had to do the work yourself, you couldn't expect the nicotine replacement treatment to do it for you.

  He kept hearing Jo's advice in his head. 'Get a patch.'

  In other words, 'Don't dump your bad mood on the rest of us for the next however many weeks.'

  Last night he'd said an instinctive no, but now he wondered if the advice was right. He didn't want to be unfair to her. She'd said she wasn't planning to leave, but if there was something that could tip the scales for her in that direction it could easily be her professional relationship with him. If that screamed downhill due to the symptoms of his nicotine withdrawal...

  OK. He was motivated. He was a doctor. And he really didn't want Jo to leave. He'd try it.

  Since he had samples in his drawer, he rolled up his sleeve and put one on right away, choosing the twenty-one-milligram size since he'd been smoking slightly more than a pack a day. As the instructions suggested, the patch itched and tingled on his skin for a while. About twenty minutes, which wasn't too bad. He'd seen patients with more sensitive skin have stronger reactions than that.

  Last night he'd also said he would invite Jo to dinner very soon, but for some reason he felt obliged to put that one in the Too Hard basket for the moment. It wasn't as if he lacked opportunities to ask her after all. If one didn't come today, it would tomorrow. He saw her—glimpsed her, smiled at her, exchanged a few words—several times a day, five days a week.

  And today they were having a meeting over lunch, after he'd seen a short morning's worth of patients between ten and noon. Running a little late, he ushered the last one out at twelve-fifteen and invited Trudy, Dotty and Jo in, as well as Practice Nurse Merril Heath and billing clerk Amanda.

  'Are you safe to be around today?' Jo murmured to him as she passed, bringing her own chair.

  'I'm wearing a patch,' he murmured back.

  'Oh, I thought you said no to that idea last night.'

  'Changed my mind.'

  She nodded in approval, and he thought to himself that they shared a secret now.

  As secrets went, it wasn't that earth-shattering or scandalous. If anyone asked, he'd happily tell. But at the meeting no one did ask, and he caught a little twinkle in Jo's eyes occasionally, suggesting that they were conspirators because she knew exactly what an ugly bear he'd been last night, and exactly what was putting him in a much more presentable mood right now.

  That morning, she'd done what he'd asked and had collated some figures on the deterioration in service from their pathology lab that she'd perceived over the past few months. The figures confirmed her intuition and he felt bad, not because he'd asked for the figures, as he really did want some concrete evidence, but because he'd been nasty to her about it.

  She finished, 'Because we obviously couldn't just go with our gut feeling when making a change like this.' Again there was that twinkle in her green eyes as she let her gaze connect for a fraction of a second with his.

  He didn't deserve that at all, he thought. It was typical of her to turn an argument into a good reason to tease each other.

  Trudy and Dotty nodded innocently at her words, uniting Rip and Jo once again in their own private universe. That odd, unsettling, too-nice feeling he'd had with her last night came back, just as strong.

  Merril and Amanda hadn't been with the practice very long and couldn't be expected to pick up on somet
hing so intangible, but even Trudy and Dotty seemed oblivious. They were both comfortable women in their fifties, each a grandmother twice over, great friends, active in the community, discreet about patients, treasured assets to the practice, but apparently blind and deaf when it came to certain nuances in the air.

  Or is it just me?

  Yes, of course it was just him.

  Jo didn't mean it that way. They'd known each other for five years. What could possibly have changed? He'd better get that dinner invitation out of the way as soon as possible, prove there was nothing in this, nip it in the bud before it got out of hand...

  'Handing over to you now, Rip,' Jo said, after they'd decided that she would be the one to follow up on changing pathology services.

  Again, their eyes met, and though he knew it was only because she was wary of getting to the meatiest part of the agenda—the issue of taking on a third partner—and because she guessed that he'd feel the same, it still gave him that...oh...that feeling again.

  He didn't have a name for it.

  He couldn't even describe it.

  It was nothing like what he'd ever felt for Tara.

  'They didn't resign on the spot, which is a good sign,' Jo said, pitching her voice low. The 'they' in question, Dotty and Trudy, were in the practice's tiny kitchen, heating leftovers for lunch in the microwave.

  'Did you expect them to?' Rip leaned on the handle of his office door, making the door swing slightly. To and fro. In and out. Open and not so open.

  The movement irritated Jo.

  No, 'irritated' was the wrong word.

  It frustrated her.

  If they had more to say to each other in private, then Rip should close the door and make it clear. Otherwise, he should open it so she could nip next door to the Harriet Cafe and have some lunch.

  Most often, she either brought a sandwich from home or drove the two and a half minutes it took her to get there and made one fresh. Leftovers from last night's evening meal heated in the microwave were not usually on her menu, because last night's evening meal was rarely substantial enough to generate any. Going to the cafe was a rarer option still, but she'd chosen it today as part of her strategy for climbing out of that rut she'd seen herself in so clearly last night.

  Answering Rip's question, she said, 'No, but it will mean extra work for them, especially at first. It'll lighten our load, but not Dotty and Trudy's.'

  'Or Merril and Amanda's, for that matter.'

  'I had thought they might be a little more resistant to the idea of a third doctor.'

  'I don't think they see it that way. Anything that eases our load is going to make us more relaxed, and a relaxed doctor has to be better for the practice managers than a stressed-out one.'

  'Mmm. True.'

  'And if we can come up with someone who comes with a personal recommendation... I'm going to make a couple of phone calls later today, get the ball rolling on that.'

  'I'll give it some thought, too,' Jo promised, although so far she couldn't think of any obvious prospects.

  She'd led such a quiet life here, and she'd only kept up with a couple of the people who'd gone through medicine with her. Her friendship roster in med school and residency had been slashed in half following the break-up with Jack. He'd put so much effort in getting her to fall for him, and just as much into keeping their mutual friends on his side after he'd ended it. He'd conserved his energy by expending as little as possible on the relationship itself, however.

  And if that sounded cynical, well, the cynicism was hard won. It had taken her a good two or three years to be able to see him that way, and a couple more to let go of her anger. Now she'd moved on. He just wasn't important at all. It felt good, but she needed to widen her horizons. She needed more people in her life who were important.

  Rip let the door swing open again and Jo really thought they were done. She made a move to leave and then stopped as he spoke once more. 'Anyone interesting on your list this afternoon?'

  'Um, I don't think so. Pretty routine.'

  'Right. Same here.' His voice shifted gear. 'If you're not busy tonight, want to do the dinner idea? My place?'

  Oh.

  'That would be nice,' she said, and then added, because it had sounded so insipid, 'It would be great.' She'd honestly expected him to let the whole thing slide, and she never would have thrown out any hints as a reminder. She didn't work that way.

  'Seven?'

  From habit, Jo's mind flipped to her TV guide. At seven on a Wednesday she usually watched—

  No. Stop it, Jo.

  'Seven sounds fine.'

  'Good.' He smiled.

  It wasn't the professional smile he gave to his patients, or the tight, strung-out smile he'd given for most of last year when people had asked him, 'How're you doing?' And it wasn't the smile Jo had seen him give Tara either—that dazzled, helpless, slow-fading grin. It was just a warm, nice smile, with trust and eye contact and the same tiny suggestion of a shared secret that she'd picked up on and shot back at him during the meeting a few minutes ago.

  But somehow it did things to her insides that she wouldn't have believed possible a few days ago.

  He stepped back and closed his door between them, and she went off to the Harriet Cafe, somehow not as hungry as she'd thought she was ten minutes earlier.

  Their routine afternoon unfolded just as she'd expected, until a slightly unusual interruption, in the form of a walk-in at around three-thirty—a six-year-old girl with a splinter in her foot, accompanied by her mother, a manic toddler and a dog who had to be left outside and didn't want to be.

  Jo knew about the dog because her office overlooked the flower-bed at the front of the professional building where the big black poodle was now tethered to a lamppost, obedient and quiet.

  Trudy knocked discreetly at Jo's door to ask if she could squeeze the little girl in. 'The splinter's the size of a steak-knife blade, but Merril left at lunch, Dr Taylor is doing a procedure, and we had a couple of people he was with for longer than expected, so he's running behind. It's your call, Dr Middleton.'

  'I'm not doing too badly,' Jo said. 'Yes, let me see her. What's her name?'

  'This family isn't on our books. Apparently they've only just moved here. The child is Alice and the mother is Nina. Last name Grafton.'

  'We're just up the road,' the mother explained a minute later, after she'd pushed Alice into the office in a stroller clearly meant for the little boy. 'Walking distance. I'll make an appointment for myself while I'm here, but I thought... I know it's only a splinter, but it's huge, and it's deep, and I don't drive and my husband's at work, which makes a trip to the emergency room... The hospital is, what, twenty minutes from here?'

  'Twenty-five, if you keep to the speed limit,' Jo told her.

  'Yes, that's the only drawback to Harriet.' Mrs Grafton frowned, as if she'd given the subject serious consideration. She looked like a nice woman, around Jo's own age, with dark hair, pale skin, intelligent eyes and a yellowing bruise on her temple. 'Otherwise I know we're going to love it here. We saw the house, so pretty, with the mountain views, and we couldn't resist, and Andy's work is less than ten minutes away. He's with the county engineer's department.'

  Trudy brought in the box of blocks from the waiting room, and the little boy, Cody, began transferring them noisily to the floor.

  'And anyhow an ambulance can get to the hospital in fifteen minutes in an emergency,' Jo offered, in Harriet's defence.

  'Yes, well, that's what we thought, in the end.' Mrs Grafton looked as if she might say more, but then Alice gingerly lifted her foot to inspect it, and gave a hiss and a whimper as she saw again what her barefoot slip on an old shed floor had done. 'For now, this splinter. You're being so brave, Alice, sweetheart.' She kissed her daughter's hair, then mouthed over her head to Jo, 'But not for much longer, I'm warning you. Look, it's gone right beneath the skin.'

  Beneath several layers of skin, it turned out. The injury really was nasty, and after a cl
oser inspection Jo decided to do the thing properly and administer a local anaesthetic. Alice yelped and cried as the needle went in.

  Her mother patted her and told her she was brave again, but Cody had lost interest in the blocks and wanted to play doctor with the equipment in Jo's cupboards and drawers, so most of Mrs Grafton's attention went towards staying one step ahead of him.

  'He's been a horror for the past six months,' she said, over her shoulder. Then she sighed and made a tut-tut sound.

  Alice said suddenly, 'Mommy, do you need Jeannie to come in?'

  'No, honey, it's fine.'

  'Are you sure?' The six-year-old looked oddly concerned, and seemed to have forgotten her foot. The anaesthesia would be taking effect already.

  To distract her as she cut into the skin, Jo asked, 'Is Jeannie your dog?'

  'Yes, and she's very, very special,' Alice said. She gave another frowning glance at her mother.

  'I'm sure she is,' Jo answered. 'Dogs are always special, and they love their families.'

  'Jeannie's the most special. She's a poodle, and poodles are clever and Jeannie is the cleverest.'

  OK, good. Jo had now made a nice-sized opening at the point of the splinter, wide enough for the back end to pass through. She didn't want to reverse direction. Much better to pull it right through the same direction it had gone in, so that with luck she wouldn't leave any barbed pieces behind.

  'Tell me some of the clever things Jeannie does,' she said to Alice, to keep the child talking.

  Nina was desperately trying to focus Cody's attention on the blocks, not on all those easy-to-open doors and drawers full of lovely tongue depressors and paper-sealed dressings and sample boxes which, after all, were just like blocks, only with the allure of the forbidden.

  'She takes care of Mommy,' Alice said. 'Yesterday, she wouldn't let Mommy go down in the basement.'