A Family To Come Home To

He didn’t have those sorts of thoughts any more, especially while he was sitting in nothing more concealing than his underwear. Not since—He pulled his thoughts up short. That had been forbidden territory for the last three years. He didn’t think about himself with a woman…any woman…any more, not even if the person in his imagination was slender and feminine with soft grey eyes and a sense of responsibility that was heavy enough to flatten a world-class weight-lifter.

‘Right. That’s it,’ the nurse said briskly as she stepped over to the sink to rinse her hands and arms. ‘Wait here for a minute while I see what I can do about some crutches. The backslab isn’t hard, yet, so don’t go moving your leg or you might crack it and displace the ends of the bone. And I’ll need to get the doctor to sign you off,’ she added at the last moment, almost running out of the plaster room, apparently keen to escape from his presence.

‘Well, signature or not, I will be leaving,’ he growled mutinously, only his fear of destroying all the woman’s careful handiwork and having to have it done all over again preventing him from attempting to slide off the table straight away.

It was bad enough that he was going to have to come all the way back again tomorrow. Oh, he knew all the reasons why it was necessary. He’d seen the amount of swelling on his leg that, once it subsided, would leave any cast too ill-fitting to do its job.

It seemed for ever until she scurried back in with a pair of battered aluminium crutches clutched in one hand and a bundle of all-too-familiar green fabric in the other.

‘I thought you might need something to put on,’ she offered, placing the scrubs on the table beside him. ‘Your trousers are unlikely to fit over the slab.’

‘My trousers are residing in a bin somewhere, cut to ribbons,’ Ben said dryly. ‘I’m very grateful you thought of this.’ He shook them out and then realised that he had a major problem. His arms just weren’t long enough to reach.

‘Do you want me to call your wife in to give you a hand?’ The nurse offered helpfully. ‘She’s going to be doing rather a lot of it over the next few weeks.’

‘She’s not my wife.’ Pain made the words hard and abrupt but he only realised it when she took a step back and blinked. He forced himself to attempt a smile. ‘Unfortunately, she’s my new boss,’ he confided, and threw her a wry grin as he gestured towards the backslab. ‘This broken leg has probably lost me the job before I’ve even started it.’

It was strange, but that thought brought with it an unexpected feeling of disappointment.

‘Well, the only way you’ll find out is if you ask her, and you can’t do that without some clothing on,’ she pointed out, as she shook out the generously large scrubs trousers. ‘Now, you’ll find it easiest to put things on the broken leg first, as it’s the least manoeuvrable.’

With the calm competence of an experienced nurse she was soon helping him to pull the gathered fabric up over his hips, and with a complete lack of fanfare put one shoe back on his foot. ‘Hang on to the other one,’ she instructed. ‘You won’t need it for a while, but you don’t want it to get lost in the meantime.’

She bustled out of the room muttering, ‘Now, where has that man got to…?’ only to reappear just moments later with a burly porter in tow with a wheelchair.

‘I don’t need that. You brought me some crutches,’ he protested, hating the idea of being dependent on anybody.

‘Trust me when I tell you that you’ll need this, at least until you get proficient with the crutches,’ she warned. ‘And the leg extension attachment will help to protect the slab while it’s still hardening. It’ll take several hours when the plaster’s this thick.’

He subsided with bad grace, uncomfortably aware that he was behaving every bit as impatiently as Kat’s boys had, but they were only kids. He was a rational adult male who ought to be able to mind his manners better.

The transfer from table to wheelchair was awkward and ungainly and he hated the lack of control he had over his own body, but eventually he was safely settled in the despised thing.

He gave a huge sigh. None of his problems were her fault and yet he’d been taking his frustrations out on the poor woman. ‘I’m sorry I’ve been such a grouch,’ he said, looking up at her penitently.

‘Don’t worry about it,’ she said, her tone almost patronising. For one awful moment he almost thought that she was going to pat him on his head. ‘You’re a doctor. We expect it of you when you’re the patient.’

‘Hmm! Watch it, or I’ll take my apology back,’ he threatened. ‘Can’t be done. Not until you can run faster than I can,’ she said with a smug little wave of her hand as he was wheeled out of the door, clutching the plastic bag that contained the contents of his trouser pockets, a bottle of painkillers, a pair of crutches and a single shoe.

Still, she was good at her job, he mused, remembering her swift expertise. He could do far worse than find her on duty when he returned tomorrow for the fibreglass version.

‘There he is, Mum,’ called a childish voice. ‘There’s Dr Ben…and he’s got an enormous cast on! It’s humungous!’

And there they were, waiting for him, Sam wide-eyed and once again bouncing around, Josh trying hard to seem worldly-wise but still visibly impressed by the bulky green-clad burden stuck out for all the world to see. And Kat…sweet Kat, whose fragility and vulnerability he shouldn’t even be noticing, was standing with her keys clenched tightly in her hand, her soft grey eyes examining him carefully as he was wheeled towards her little family.

‘They said you insisted on coming out tonight.’ Concern was clear as she examined his ungainly leg and the bottle of painkillers. He doubted he looked like anyone’s idea of an ideal house guest.

‘I hate hospitals,’ he growled, startling a giggle out of Sam. ‘But don’t tell anyone,’ he added conspiratorially. ‘If doctors say that, they get a black mark.’

‘Well, we’d better get you out of here before anyone over-hears you,’ Kat suggested with a tired smile that piled several layers of guilt on top of the mountain he already carried. The poor woman already had enough responsibilities on her plate. She certainly didn’t need him adding to them.

And yet…somehow he couldn’t make himself say the words that would set her free to go on her way. Something inside him was telling him that it was important that he should go home with her little family, that it would be a good thing, but whether that was going to be a good thing for him or for them, he couldn’t guess.

‘Are you going to be all right in the back with me, Josh? My leg’s even heavier this time,’ he warned.

‘Yeah, but it’s only one leg, so that should make it the same as the two together when we were coming to the hospital,’ he pointed out with perfect childish logic. ‘Can I push you to the car?’

‘No! I want to push him,’ objected Sam. ‘You’re going to have his leg on you all the way home so it won’t be fair if you’re the one who pushes him, too!’

‘I think we’re all going to have to take turns pushing,’ Kat mediated swiftly, before the argument could escalate. ‘Remember how far away I had to park the car?’

‘How about if you go to get the car and drive it right up to the entrance?’ Ben suggested, hating the thought that a woman who was already tired to the bone would have to exhaust herself still further. ‘You could leave Josh and Sam with me…to take care of me,’ he added quickly, in case boyish sensibilities were bruised.

He watched those soft grey eyes take in each of her sons’ responses to the suggestion before replying.

‘If you don’t mind waiting while I get it. It shouldn’t take me more than a couple of minutes.’

‘Don’t hurry,’ he said with a sudden flash of inspiration. ‘It they’re as hungry as I am, the boys and I will be discussing the relative merits of the various take-away establishments between the hospital and home.’ And when she looked as if she was going to argue against the idea, he added, ‘I just don’t feel up to cooking for myself tonight, and the boys would be very late to bed if they have to wait for you to make something once you get home.’

‘That seems sensible,’ she agreed blandly, but he caught a glimpse of a keen intelligence behind those soft grey eyes that warned him she wouldn’t allow him to manipulate her into doing anything she didn’t really want to, no matter how much easier it might make her life.

And she certainly needed her life made easier, he realised when he and the two boys tucked into steaming plates of pizza at the kitchen table while she barely sat down.

In the time that it took him to fill the gnawing hollow inside, she’d put a load of washing in the machine, prepared lunch boxes for Josh and Sam for the next day and put them in the fridge ready for the morning and had made several forays out of the room that involved strange unidentified thumps that were only explained when she sent the boys off to the bathroom to get ready for bed.

‘While you’ve got that temporary cast on you won’t be able to get up the stairs, so I’ve put you in one of the rooms down on this level…if that’s all right with you. I thought it would be safer while you’re getting used to using the crutches.’

His first instinct was to object. The very idea of sharing a relatively small space with Kat and her two sons would be too much to cope with, especially if she’d given up her own room for him.

While he’d been trying to find the words to turn down the offer, she’d quietly taken charge of the wheelchair and without any fuss had piloted him along the hall.

‘There are the stairs,’ she said, pointing to the wrought-iron spiral of steps rising from the corner of the hallway through a circular hole in the ceiling—obviously impossible for a leg in a cast, as she had known. ‘And here is the bedroom with a bathroom opening directly off it.’

Kat pushed him into a room that was much bigger than he’d expected, but every breath he took told him that this was her private space he was invading.

There was nothing overtly fussy or flowery about the décor, everything in shades of calm neutrals with accents of a soft sage green. But it smelt like she did, of something not quite flowery but not spicy either. Whatever it was, it wasn’t helping that he was looking at the freshly made bed that she’d been sleeping in last night. And that was another thing he shouldn’t be thinking about.

‘The previous GP who lived here put in this bathroom when his wife had a stroke,’ she said as she pushed him to the open door, continuing with her low-key guided tour. ‘As you can see, it’s got a walk-in shower with a seat that folds away. I thought that would be much easier to cope with unaided if you taped some plastic around the top of your leg to protect your cast.’

He sighed silently, conceding that she was right. He was in no fit state to clamber up those stairs and a bath would be beyond him.

‘I don’t like putting you out of your room,’ he pointed out uncomfortably, wondering if he would be able to sleep, knowing it was her bed. ‘I’ll stay in here just for a few days…until I get proficient on the crutches.’

‘Take your time,’ she said. ‘It’s no problem for me to use the other room.’ She left him for a moment and returned with the small stash of belongings he’d carried home from the hospital, depositing the plastic bag on the bedside cabinet and propping the crutches against the bed. Her second journey had her returning with the suitcase he’d stowed in the back of his car, last seen parked in front of the practice.

‘You didn’t have to do that,’ he objected, his protective male instincts rebelling against the thought of someone as slight as Kat hefting such a heavy weight. She threw a wry glance in the direction of his bulky leg, pointing out without saying a word that he certainly wasn’t in a fit state to carry anything, and he subsided glumly.

‘It hardly seems worthwhile bringing everything in when I won’t be staying long,’ he said, when she returned with the last of his luggage. ‘You’ll be needing the room for whoever takes the job.’