“Thank you for telling me,” Anna says. “I’ll try to get home as soon as I’m off, but I know I’m pretty fully loaded when I get back. Perks of being away.” With both her and James out, staffing would have been tight.
“Okay.” Jasmine has a little worried furrow above her brow. “But as soon as. Promise?”
“Promise. Now go and get your candidate elected so you can get away from that bastard,” Anna says with more light-heartedness than she feels.
Jasmine rolls her eyes and disconnects, leaving Anna alone in the foyer. She doesn’t immediately return to her patient. She stands where she is, her heart heavy.
This changes everything.
She may want to fantasise about a future for her and Tolly, one where Eleanor comes around to full acceptance. But there is no way she can add more to her Eleanor’s current burdens. She remembers her stint in obstetrics and gynaecology. She has seen the women sobbing their hearts out, sitting on a hospital bed, waiting for a dilatation and curettage after miscarriage.While she may not want children herself, she understands other women’s longing for a baby and the desperation and devastation when it all goes wrong. What sort of sister would she be to add this news to Eleanor’s suffering? There is no way she and Tolly can continue past this brief encounter. Easier for it to remain a single date, that neither of them thought was a date, and a single kiss. Nothing has happened. She tells herself the lie. What they have is nothing more than a possibility of a future. Best it stay that way. When Tolly wakes, she will tell him she is leaving. For her, at least, there will be things to cushion the heartache. She will remain an excellent doctor; love will have no hold on her. And Eleanor will recover in peace, untroubled by reminders of Tolly.
She turns, about to return to her sleeping patient, but halts when a heavy thud lands on the entrance door. She pulls the catch back to open it, recognising the man on the doorstep. Tolly’s agent.
She searches her memory. “Brian?” she asks.
“Ryan,” he corrects, that one word threaded with hostility. Then his face fixes into a snarl. “Where is he?”
Whistle Down the Wind
Before she can answer, Ryan sweeps her aside and stalks into the house. Anna, not expecting to be manhandled, is off balance. By the time she recovers, Ryan has already started up the stairs, great long strides carrying him upwards, multiple steps at a time.
She hurries in his wake. She supposes she should be grateful Tolly has someone who is concerned about him, except for two things. First, she is uncertain whether the concern stems from genuine affection for Tolly or his earning ability. Second, she would prefer his concern did not put her in opposition, casting her in the role of enemy. Ryan clearly thinks something malevolent is going on.
Upstairs, the agent heads straight for a door at the end of the corridor. He throws it open in triumph and then comes to a skidding halt. Turning, his eyes fix on Anna.
“Where is he?” he demands once more.
Anna walks calmly into the room and shuts the door behind them. She doesn’t want Ryan disturbing her patient, and the man is on the verge of shouting. This is obviously Tolly’s bedroom. She can see the balcony through the glass wall frontage and the view of the city beyond, bathed in the yellow light of early morning sun. White walls and a Statuario marble floor give the room an austere feel. On one side, an enormous television hangs over a long-ribbon gas fire. There is a super-king bed, two bedside tables, each with a lamp, and two easy chairs on either side of a low coffee table, all facing the view. Forsuch a large room, it is surprisingly under-furnished. A single photo frame sits on one side of the pristine bed, but it is too far for Anna to see which lucky person has pride of place.
She turns her attention back to Ryan. It is not the first time she has faced down an aggressive man. If Ryan thinks he can intimidate her, he should try a shift in an Accident and Emergency in central London on a Saturday night.
“He’s safe and I will take you to him,” she says. “But before I do, I need you to understand his situation.”
Ryan huffs and his jaw is clamped tight, probably grinding his teeth. “Listen, you bitch, I’ve dealt with gold-diggers like you many times before. Think you can get your claws into a film star? Not with my talent.”
And Anna laughs. She can’t help it. Here she is planning to give up Tolly in a grand but heart-breaking gesture, and there is Ryan, accusing her of the basest motives. The irony!
She sobers. “Doctor.”
“What?” Ryan jerks backward.
“Not bitch, doctor,” Anna replies. “Not a gold-digger either. I am a doctor.”
“You think the two are mutually exclusive?” Ryan sneers. “But of the two, I’d take a gold-digger over a doctor any day.”
Anna, used to the immediate respect her profession generally generates, blinks. Ryan’s attitude speaks much to the state of American healthcare. But then again, the recent spate of stories of stars dead of an overdose of prescribed medicine must place doctors in Hollywood on a par with drug dealers. Perhaps Ryan’s words can be excused.
She most definitely doesn’t like Ryan, but they need to get past this. “If you are insinuating what I think you are, you should be reassured to know that I have no prescribing rights in the US.”
“That never stopped anyone.” Ryan looks at her as if she is stupid. Perhaps it was naïve to say that. Look how easily Bella had obtained drugs at Tolly’s party and Anna would lay odds her friend hadn’t even paid for them.
“Tolly is ill,” she says with more than a little asperity.
“That’s what Mike said you told him. I’m going to need a little more detail than that and I’m not so easily fobbed off as he is.”
“Tolly has paralytic shellfish poisoning.”
“What?” Ryan’s eyes bug out. “You’ve poisoned him?”
