‘Go right ahead,’ Joss told him, and Amy could only stare.

‘I swear… Joss, yesterday that man could hardly remember his wife’s name.’

‘Dogs do that to people.’ Joss looked at the old man’s retreating back and Bertram’s waving plume of a tail with satisfaction. ‘Pet therapy. It’s well documented. You want me to order you a dog or two as resident therapy?’

‘You’re kidding.’

‘Just say the word.’

It was too much for her. Amy subsided into silence-which was just as well. They opened the doors to the sitting room and anything they said would have been drowned out straight away by baby screams. Ilona was being washed in preparation for her morning feed, and she was objecting in no uncertain terms to the violation of her small person.

The day took over.

Sue-Ellen greeted them as they walked in the door with a request for Joss to ring Emma’s parents. To have their child so ill with no way of reaching her was making them feel desperate, and they wanted their daughter’s progress given to them by a real doctor. Then Sue-Ellen handed over medical reports of all acute patients. All five of them.

This felt terrific, Amy thought contentedly as Joss read through Sue-Ellen’s change-over notes. She stared around at the buzzing sitting room. Three of her oldies were helping bathe the baby and there were a couple more looking on with pleasure. One of those watching was Jock Barnaby. Jock had stared at the floor and nothing else since his wife had died two years ago!

Amazing!

What else? The knitting club-five ladies and one gentleman in their eighties-were trying to outdo each other by finishing the first matinée jacket. Through an open door she could see a couple of her inmates sitting by Emma’s bed, just watching. Marie and Thelma were clucking over their pneumonia patient.

The place had come alive.

It could be like this all the time, she thought, dazed. It would be. If she had a doctor here. But how on earth could she ever attract anyone to practise here?

She couldn’t. In a few days Joss would leave and it would go back to being same old, same old.

But meanwhile…she was going to soak it up for all she was worth, she decided. As she looked around her, her eyes danced with laughter and delight. ‘This is great,’ she said happily. ‘Don’t you think so, Dr Braden?’

‘Just great,’ he agreed weakly, and thought, Hell, it really is, but why?


Emma was recovering nicely.

Rhonda Coutts was looking good and her breathing had eased. Her pneumonia seemed to be settling.

Marigold’s heart rate had settled after a good night’s sleep. Joss needed a blood test to be sure, but he was more and more certain that his thyroid diagnosis was right. Marigold and Lionel had Bertram on her bed and the pair were petting and cooing over the big dog like first-time parents with their baby. Bertram was soaking it up with the air of a dog who’d found his nirvana.

This was a really strange ward round, Joss thought as he went from patient to patient, and it took an effort to keep his thoughts on medicine. He must-any of them could have a significant need that might be missed if he didn’t treat this seriously-but with a nursing staff whose average age was about ninety it was a bit hard.

Amy didn’t help. She couldn’t disguise the fact that she loved what was happening around her, and her dancing eyes and bright laughter were enough to distract him all by themselves.

These people loved her. But she deserved better than to be stuck here for ever, Joss thought.

What did she deserve? A job in the city?

She’d do well in a city hospital, he decided. She was a magnificently skilled nurse, and she had the intelligence to be even more, given the right training. If she’d had the opportunity, she could be working alongside him as a fellow doctor, he thought, and the thought made him feel…odd.

All the thoughts he was having were odd. Stupid! It was increasingly obvious that by leaving her he’d be abandoning her.

It was no such thing, he reminded himself sharply. His life wasn’t here. For heaven’s sake, he couldn’t set up medical practice in a town of geriatrics. He’d go nuts within a week.

As Amy was going nuts.

Amy had nothing to do with him.

He had one patient left to see-the new mother. By the time he reached Charlotte’s room he was so confused he didn’t know how to handle it, but somehow he put it aside. His examination of the young mother must be careful and thorough. Charlotte needed him. She was only one day post-op, and she was still suffering from her battering in the car crash.

‘Talk to her by herself,’ Amy said, leaving him at her bedroom door. ‘She’s traumatised and I don’t know why. Maybe she’ll be more willing to speak to you if you’re alone.’

Amy was sensitive as well as competent, Joss thought, watching her retreating back.

She was a woman in a million.

She had nothing to do with him, he told himself for what was surely the twentieth time this morning. Concentrate on Charlotte!

Physically Charlotte was recovering well. His medical examination finished, he replaced the dressing over her wound and hauled over a chair to the bedside. Charlotte eyed him with caution as he sat.

‘Hey, I’m not about to bite,’ he told her, and she managed a smile.

‘I didn’t say-’

‘No, but you looked.’ He’d asked for her baby-Ilona-to be brought back into the room. Now he looked into the makeshift cot and smiled. ‘Ilona’s just right for a name. She’s definitely beautiful.’

‘Yes.’

‘Does she have a surname?’

‘I…I haven’t decided yet.’

‘Whether you’ll use your name or her father’s name?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Are you going to tell me your surname?’ Jeff had given him her surname but he wanted it to be the girl herself who gave it to him. The last thing he wanted was for her to think he’d instigated a police investigation.

She hesitated but Joss’s hand came out and caught hers. ‘I’m not sure what you’re running from,’ he said gently. ‘But whatever it is, I’m not about to hand you over.’

‘I’m not running.’ She hesitated. ‘My name…my name’s Charlotte Brooke but… There’s people I don’t want to know…’

‘That you’re here?’

‘That’s right.’

‘You need a bit of thinking time?’

‘I do,’ she said gratefully. ‘I know it’s messy, with medical insurance and things…’

‘We can do all the paperwork when we discharge you,’ he told her. ‘That’ll give you the time you need.’

‘You won’t tell Amy? Who I am?’

Joss frowned. Amy already knew but Charlotte’s name had meant nothing to her. ‘Is Amy one of the people you’re hiding from?’

‘No.’ She bit her lip. ‘But you won’t tell her?’

‘No.’ But he was still frowning.

‘I just want to do what’s best.’

‘Don’t we all,’ he managed. He was still holding her hand and now he looked down at the coverlet at her fingers. They were work-worn and there were traces of soil in her fingernails. She was used to hard physical labour. There was no ring on her finger. Nothing.

‘Charlotte, if I can help…’

‘You’ve done enough. You’ve given me my baby.’

‘Amy did that.’

‘That’s what I mean.’ Charlotte sighed and withdrew her hand. ‘Before…it all seemed so easy. So possible. But now…’

‘Now what?’

She turned away, wincing as the stitches caught. ‘Now it just seems impossible,’ she said.


‘Did she tell you who she was?’ Amy asked as he gently closed the door behind her. Joss had given Charlotte something to ease the pain and she should sleep until lunchtime.

‘Yes.’

She caught his look and held. ‘But she still doesn’t want everyone to know?’

‘Now how did you know that?’

‘I’m a mind-reader.’

She was laughing at him. Her eyes were so disconcerting. They danced, he decided. She really did have the most extraordinary eyes.

‘She told me who she was and she asked me to keep it to myself. I agreed. It means we can’t bill her through Medicare until she allows us to, but she’s agreed to let us use her name at the end of her stay.’

‘It doesn’t make any sense.’

‘No.’

‘But you agreed?’

‘I agreed.’

She looked at him for a long moment. And then the smile returned to her eyes. ‘You really are a very nice man, Joss Braden.’

It threw him. It was all he could do not to blush.

‘I know,’ he managed, and she grinned.

‘And modest, too.’

‘I can’t deny it.’

‘I’ve put you down as a fourth at bridge,’ she told him, and that shut him up entirely.

‘You haven’t.’

‘Someone had to do it,’ she said demurely. ‘My oldies tell me it takes brains to play bridge so who am I, a mere nurse, to take the place of a specialist?’

A mere nurse. She was no such thing.

She was enchanting.

‘I was planning on…’

‘Yes?’ She fixed him with a challenging gaze. ‘You were planning on what?’

‘Doing more of my conference notes.’

‘There’s the whole afternoon to do that,’ she told him. ‘And tonight. And tomorrow morning and-’

‘Whoa!’

‘There’s no urgency about this place,’ she told him. ‘Haven’t you realised that yet?’

‘Yes, but-’

‘There you go, then.’ She smiled her very nicest smile. ‘Bridge, Dr Braden.’ She pointed to the lounge. Looking through the glass door, he saw three old ladies clustered around a bridge table. Waiting.

When they saw him looking they smiled and waved.

‘You’ve set me up.’

‘Yep.’ Her grin broadened. ‘You’ve done your ward rounds and you’re cadging board and lodging from yours truly. You have to pay some way.’


He had to pay.

The thought stayed in his mind while he learned the intricacies of bridge.

It stayed while he took Lionel and Bertram for a walk in the rain and listened to Lionel tell him a long and involved joke-four times. What was that joke about Alzheimer’s? You can tell the same joke every time and get a laugh. You needn’t bother getting fresh whodunits from the library-because you never remember whodunit. And you can tell the same joke every time and get a laugh.