A Family To Come Home To

‘But it’s not a method I’d recommend,’ she said sternly, as she padded the lengths of board Sam had found and placed wedges of towels between his ankles before Rose helped her to bind everything into position with several swift turns of bandage. The support he needed closer to the fracture was much more difficult, especially as she was all too aware that it would be the most painful.

Finally, she’d done as much as she was able and it was time to get him into the car.

‘Sam, can you open the back door for us?’ she directed, wondering how on earth she was going to get Ben up onto his feet, never mind getting him onto the back seat. He was definitely taller than her own five and a half feet—probably several inches over six—and while he looked as if he could do with carrying a bit more weight on his lean frame, it would still be more than enough as dead weight on her much slighter build.

She drew in a deep breath and approached his upper half, sitting him up being the first essential stage.

‘If you can help me while I sit you up, well and good,’ she said briskly to hide her trepidation. ‘If it hurts too much, let me do all the work.’

His half-stifled groan told her that the manoeuvre was painful, but that didn’t stop him doing more than his share of the work.

‘Right. Catch your breath,’ she suggested, while she tried to work out her next step to getting him vertical. She may as well have saved her breath.

Almost as soon as he was sitting upright he somehow managed to take the bulk of the weight of his torso onto his hands and drag himself along for nearly six inches.

‘What do you think you’re doing?’ she demanded, too slow to prevent him doing it a second and a third time while she tried to work out how to stop him without hurting him.

‘Positioning myself by the car door,’ he said, his voice slightly laboured as the strenuous activity took its toll. ‘There’s no way someone your size could ever lift me, so we’ll have to do it this way.’

Kat could see the logic of his decision, even as she deplored it. She only had his word and her own cursory examination to tell her that he hadn’t sustained other injuries besides his broken leg. If there had been any spinal injuries…

She shuddered at the potential consequences.

‘If only you’d let me call the ambulance,’ she began, but by that time he’d managed to position himself right against the side of her car with his back against the door opening.

‘I’ll need some help for this bit,’ he admitted grimly, as though it went against the grain.

‘You don’t say,’ she muttered under her breath as she stepped forward until her feet straddled his. ‘What do you want me to do?’

‘I’m going to have to do the next bit in two stages,’ he explained, wiping a trickle of sweat from his forehead with an impatient swipe of one arm. ‘Could you support my legs while I lift myself onto the sill and then again when I transfer up onto the seat?’

‘Only if you promise that you’ll tell me if I’m hurting you,’ she insisted. ‘I couldn’t bear it if I were causing you more—’

‘I’ll be all right,’he broke in with a meaningful glance in her sons’ direction, apparently more aware than she was that the two of them were hanging on every syllable of their conversation.

All she could do was send him a fierce glare that promised retribution at some later date.

‘So, are you ready?’ he said, and she knelt hurriedly to slide her arms around his legs, splints and all.

As if they’d practised the manoeuvre many times before, he put the heels of his hands on the sill behind him and with strength alone heaved himself off the ground. He was heavier than she’d expected, his thighs larger and far more muscular than she’d anticipated, but she managed to synchronise her effort exactly with his so that mere seconds later he had propped his hips on the sill between his hands.

‘And again,’ he directed, when he’d repositioned his hands to grip the door frame above his head, his voice definitely hoarser this time and his face so pale with the pain that it looked almost green. ‘Now!’

And then he was sitting on the edge of the seat while she supported his legs and it was comparatively easy for him to shuffle backwards until his back was resting against the opposite door.

He leant his head back against the window but only allowed himself a couple of breaths to recover before he opened his eyes again.

‘Can Josh come in the back with me?’ he suggested. ‘If he has something to pad his legs, could I rest mine on him?’

‘Of course you can,’ Josh declared almost eagerly. ‘The hospital’s not far…only about twenty minutes.’

Kat shut the door, leaving the two of them to settle Ben’s weight to their satisfaction while she checked that Sam was safely belted in and hurried towards the driver’s door.

‘Do you want me to wait till you come back?’ Rose asked, clearly flustered by such goings-on.

‘No, Rose. You’ve done a full day,’ Kat reminded her. ‘If you could check with the on-call service to make sure that they’re going to be picking up any after-hours calls and switch the phone through, that will be great. I’ll see you in the morning.’

‘Oh, please, Kat!’ she exclaimed. ‘You have to ring me when you get back from the hospital. I won’t be able to sleep a wink until I know Dr Ben’s going to be all right.’

‘Only if I’m back before ten,’ she conceded. ‘You know how long it can take sometimes, waiting for X-rays and then finding out whether the leg can just be put in a cast or whether he’ll need surgery.’

‘The poor man!’ Rose said softly, her pale blue eyes showing her concern clearly. ‘And all this because he worried more about saving Sam than himself.’

‘What?’ Kat wasn’t certain what she meant. Sam had apologised for running behind the car, but…

‘I thought you knew,’ Rose said in surprise. ‘I saw the whole thing out of the window. He saw what was going to happen and ran forward to push Sam out of the way. He just didn’t have a chance to move far enough before the car hit him. Kat, he’s a hero.’

CHAPTER TWO (#u2af183d6-c936-5a8e-a81b-214aef67446e)

HE’S a hero…The words played over and over in Ben’s head as he waited interminably for his leg to be dealt with.

‘Hah! If only they knew,’ he muttered, startling the poor woman who’d been detailed to put the temporary backslab on his leg.

‘I’m sorry. Did you say something?’ she asked nervously with her plaster-coated hands suspended in mid-air. Perhaps it was the fact that he was a doctor, or perhaps it was nothing more than the scowl he could feel tugging at his face.

‘No. I’m sorry,’ he countered with a deliberately ingratiating smile. ‘And I’m very grateful for the fact that you bumped me up to the head of the queue to get this job done.’

But in spite of that, he was very aware that Kat and her two sons were waiting for him out in the reception area. He’d tried to suggest that she should take Josh and Sam to their sports club, but both boys had protested vigorously, as had Kat when he’d proposed getting a taxi when he was released.

And he’d been determined he was going to be released, the sooner the better. Just spending this long in a hospital was stretching his nerves. If he never had to smell this dreadful mixture of antiseptic and death again, it would be too soon.

‘Where will I have to go to get some crutches?’ he asked, suddenly realising that no one had mentioned that important item of equipment.

‘Oh, you don’t have to worry about that today,’ she said with a smile. ‘The physiotherapy department will sort all that out. Your leg will be checked tomorrow morning to see whether we can put the fibreglass cast on and the physio will do the crutches thing before you’re released. For now, you’ll only need a wheelchair to get you up to the ward for a night on observation.’

Tension tightened round his head and his chest like steel bands.

‘Except I’m not going up to the ward,’ he pointed out through gritted teeth. ‘My lift is waiting patiently to take me home, and she’s a qualified doctor eminently qualified to do any necessary observations. So I’ll need some crutches tonight.’

‘Oh, but—’

‘Tonight,’ he repeated implacably, staring her earnest expression down and feeling like the worst kind of bully. ‘With or without crutches.’

‘I’ll see what I can do,’ she conceded as she bent to her task again, smoothing her hands over the wet plaster of the backslab.

Battle won, Ben idly watched the woman’s experienced hands shaping and moulding the heavy material around his leg. He was contemplating just how lucky he’d been to sustain nothing more complicated than a clean fracture of his tibia when he found himself wondering whether it would feel any different if it were Kat applying the cast…having her slender, capable hands smoothing the finish from ankle to thigh, stroking the…

Whoa! Bad idea!