3
‘Connor! What are you doing here?’
Goodquestion.
Connor wasn’t quite sure of the answer, mind you. He should be playing squash with Mike the anaesthetist. Having a beer after the game and chewing the fat with the lads. He should, at least, be having his dinner.
But here he was in the emergency department of St Pat’s. In a cubicle where Bella was lounging on the bed and Kate was sitting beside her, ramrod straight against the back of the chair.
No. This was Dr Graham sitting here. Connor sighed inwardly, knowing that this was largely why he had found himself drawn in this direction.
It was nearly an hour and a half since he’d left Bella sitting on the kitchen bench and he’d been out on the motorway, with the night air rushing past, while he’d tried to sort out the puzzle in his head.
The puzzle that Kate Graham represented.
The split personality.
Dr Graham. Prim and buttoned up at work. Closed off.
The house fitted with that image of her. Tasteful and perfect and so damned tidy. Like she was now, with her hair scraped back again and her glasses back in place and wearing a skirt and jacket that looked like the female equivalent of a business suit.
But he’d seen Kate and she’d been in frayed jeans and… and bare feet, for God’s sake. And she’d had cute toes. With red nails.
Connor loved red toenails. He couldn’t look at this woman now without remembering those toenails. He knew he wouldn’t be able to pass her in the corridor of St Pat’s from now on without remembering them, and it was messing with his head.
Two women in one body.
Connor was intrigued.
Not that he was attracted to her or anything.Hell, no. It was simply a conundrum.
A challenge.
He’d only come back to St Pat’s because it was too late to jack up a game of squash and, if he was going to eat a microwaved dinner by himself, he wanted the distraction of the new journal he’d left on his desk. So why had he veered into the emergency department on his way out?
‘I just wanted to hear the verdict on the foot,’ he said aloud. ‘If something’s broken, I’ll have a mountain of paperwork on the way. The theatre was booked under my name, you know.’
The foot was propped up on pillows, with an ice pack on the top of it.
‘Look at this.’ Bella leaned forward and lifted the ice pack.
The bruise was starting to look really impressive now. The colour was much darker and the internal bleeding was tracking down the side of the foot to pool in the hollow beneath the ankle bone.
‘Hmm…’ Connor said in his most professional voice.
Bella giggled.
Kate’s voice was clipped. Clearly this was nothing to joke about. ‘We’ve only just got back from X-Ray,’ she said. ‘We’re waiting for the radiologist’s report to come through.’
‘I could pull up the X-ray and have a look myself if you like.’ Connor was surprised they hadn’t been fast-tracked in the first place.
Staff were always given preferential treatment and that was fine by him. It was one of the only perks of a job that required far more commitment than any other career.
‘Bella’s a patient here,’ Kate said. ‘And I’m a relative. The department’s busy.’
She wasn’t about to bend any rules herself and didn’t want them bent for her.
Fine.
