A Very Special Proposal

‘Just until you come back to have your stitches taken out?’ she bargained, her heart aching that there was so little she could do for him. ‘A week? Would you be able to keep them out of sight for a week?’

‘Make it five days and I’ll do my best,’ he countered, then grinned cheekily. ‘And that’s only because you asked nicely.’

‘They break your heart sometimes, the way they’ve had to survive,’ said a quiet voice just behind her, and when Amy looked over her shoulder and up into Zach’s dark eyes she realised that he understood far more about the hell Tommy had gone through than she would ever know.

‘So, who is Mr Willmott?’ said that same voice right behind her in the cafeteria queue, and Amy gasped, dragged out of her pessimistic thoughts about young Tommy’s chances of surviving into his twenties by the man who could have ended up just like Tommy, if his teachers had been right.

‘Dr Willmott,’ she corrected automatically, only remembering as she said it that, of course, it had reverted to Mr when Edward had climbed up the next rung of the promotion ladder. Not that it was relevant any more.

‘Really,’ Zach said as he took a tray from the pile and kept pace with her slow shuffle in the queue towards the hot meals. ‘I presume he works here. Is he in A and E, too, or one of the other departments?’

‘No, he doesn’t work here.’ Suddenly she felt strangely guilty to be talking about her husband with Zach, but couldn’t find a way to end the conversation without sounding rude. ‘He’s…He was killed. A year ago. On the motorway.’

The words emerged in jerky lumps. Uncomfortable. Unpractised.

After the initial ‘getting to know you’ enquiries, the other A and E staff had tactfully refrained from asking for any more painful details and she certainly hadn’t volunteered. The only people who talked about Edward any more were her parents, bewailing the loss of her handsome, successful husband every time she set foot in their house, and his parents, endlessly, when she made her duty visits.

And yet…for the first time, she actually wanted to talk about what had happened. Did this mean that she was actually coming to terms with her loss, or was it because it was Zach she was telling?

Almost as soon as they were sitting down she found the stark details pouring out of her as if she needed to purge herself of the words. Somehow, in spite of the fact that she hadn’t seen him for so many years—and hadn’t really known him well even then—she knew that she could trust him with her confidences.

‘There was a pile-up in bad weather…dozens of cars involved…a woman had been thrown out of a vehicle. Apparently, Edward saw it happen. He pulled over and got out to help and was hit by another car. He was killed instantly.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Zach said, visibly shocked and clearly at a loss for what to say.

‘He was on his way back from a conference,’ Amy went on, the words coming easier now that she’d started. ‘I didn’t even know it had happened…that he was dead…until the police came to tell me.’ She shuddered at the memory of the late-night knock at the door.

‘Did you have any children?’ he asked, a perfectly ordinary question but one that caused a familiar pang for lost opportunities.

‘No. We hadn’t got as far as starting a family,’ she admitted sadly. ‘It’s still just me and my parents.’

For a second she thought she saw something dark in his eyes at that information, but couldn’t be sure—it was gone too soon.

She knew it couldn’t have been put there by her mention of her family, because he’d never met them, but that didn’t stop her speculating that she might have reminded him about something painful in his past.

How many relationships had he had since the days when she’d sighed over him in their biology and chemistry lessons? Probably far too many to count, with his bad-boy good looks…and why the thought of all those women should cause something painful to tighten around her heart…

‘Do you still live in the same place?’ he asked. ‘The big stone house near the top of the hill?’

‘I’ve got my own place now, not far from the hospital, but…How did you know where I lived?’

There was a glimpse of that shadow in his eyes again but then it was gone, hidden behind those thick dark lashes that he still seemed to have a habit of using to camouflage his thoughts.

‘How did I know where the princess’s castle was?’ he teased, looking up from the coffee he’d purchased to finish his meal, but there was an edge to his voice that was all too reminiscent of the old Zach. ‘Everyone knew where the Bowes Clarks lived. It certainly wasn’t any secret.’

And how Amy had hated the fact that, all too often, as soon as people realised who her parents were, they treated her differently, as though family wealth made her something other than just another teenager trying to get good exam results. Unfortunately, her parents still had some sort of crazy idea that their family was somehow inherently ‘better class’ than their neighbours and that their daughter should automatically—

Her thoughts were cut off by the simultaneous shrilling of their pagers.

‘Well, we almost managed an uninterrupted meal,’ Zach said as they both hastily piled the debris onto a single tray, depositing it in the appropriate place as they hurried towards the door, knowing that the ‘multiple trauma’ message could be anything from a small handful to dozens that would require all available staff.

‘Sorry to interrupt your meal break,’ the co-ordinator said as they appeared in the department, her gaze taking on a speculative air as she saw them arrive together. ‘We’re taking in the overflow from a major motorway incident. Initial estimates of ten vehicles involved seems to be going up every time the emergency services speak to us. The last person I spoke to said it could be as many as thirty.’

‘So, where do you want us, Liz?’ Amy offered, not envying her the major logistical nightmare she was going to have to deal with over the next few hours.

‘Could you both start off processing the walking wounded to keep the decks clear for the major injuries coming in? At some stage you’ll have to be redirected to Resus as the more serious patients start arriving, but—’

‘Has someone warned the patients already waiting that they could be about to be pushed to the back of the list again?’ Zach asked with a glance towards the grid on the whiteboard that was heavily populated with the names of the people already signed into the department and waiting for attention.

‘I’m just about to do that,’ the co-ordinator said with a grimace. ‘I wanted to get my troops organised first.’

‘Bang goes the department’s performance targets,’ Amy said grimly. ‘Those politicians who think they can sit at a desk and tell a doctor how many minutes it should take to treat a patient should try coming down here and seeing what it’s like living in the real world. It couldn’t be less like a production line in a factory.’

‘Don’t get me started!’ Liz warned. ‘If they’d only pay the staff properly we’d have enough of them willing to stay to do the job. As it is, all the money seems to be swallowed up by employing more and more administrators to carry stopwatches for the politicians.’

‘I heard that there are now more administrators in the hospital than there are patients!’ offered one of the staff nurses as she moved a patient’s name from one place on the board across to the list signifying that they were now waiting their turn for X-rays.

‘Don’t depress me!’ Liz groaned with a shake of her head as Amy hurried after Zach, her voice carrying along the corridor. ‘I wouldn’t mind if the extra staff were actually doing some of the real work…cleaning floors, delivering meals or spending time with patients. As it is, it seems as if their only function is to draw eye-watering salaries for shuffling unnecessary papers…’

‘Oops! I’m sorry I spoke!’ Amy murmured with a wry grin as she and Zach stationed themselves in adjoining stations in a three-bay treatment room, donning gloves and disposable aprons in preparation for their first patients. ‘I didn’t mean to set her off like that.’

‘It’s such a sore spot with medical personnel that it’s difficult not to,’ Zach said sombrely. ‘When you apply to medical school, they certainly don’t warn you just how demoralised you’ll be by the time you finish your training. You’ve just spent years piling up debt while you slog your guts out to qualify, and you…we…can see what’s wrong and how to fix it, but they bring in someone from big business who hasn’t a clue what medical priorities are and he builds an empire of bean counters trying to run it like…like…’

‘Perhaps you should think about something else, too, or your blood pressure will be astronomical,’ Amy teased, even as she appreciated the fire in his eyes as he voiced his views.

They barely had time to treat one patient apiece before the floodgates opened and from that point on there certainly wasn’t time to conduct a debate about the shortcomings of the health service. There was time, though, for Amy to realise that Zach’s impassioned pronouncement showed a different side of his character to the Zach she’d known all those years ago.

Then he’d mostly kept his head down below the parapet, limiting his subversion to the length of his hair, his leather jacket and his motorbike. Even so, the teachers had seemed to target him for scorn and derision, belittling his work in front of his peers and denigrating his chances of ever making anything of himself.

‘If they could only see him now!’ she breathed into her disposable mask as she hurried to lend him a hand putting in a drain when a patient collapsed spectacularly with a previously undiagnosed flail chest. Every movement was swift, decisive, accurate and, in its own way, beautiful to watch. There was absolutely nothing of the juvenile delinquent in this caring, dedicated man.

‘Thanks for your help,’ he said, the slightly gruff tone to his voice her only clue to the fact that he’d been worried whether he would be able to sort out the problem before it resulted in brain damage and heart failure.

‘You’re welcome,’ she said with a smile that answered his relief, and suddenly knew that there was more to the words than their social meaning.

It had only been a matter of hours since she’d been tempted to try to track him down on an internet website. Not wanting to destroy her teenage fantasies, she’d decided against finding out what had happened to him but, as if by magic, he’d reappeared in her life.

‘So, where do I go from here?’ she murmured, groaning as she tried to stretch the kinks out of her neck and shoulders after long minutes spent retrieving far too much of a shattered windscreen from a child’s face. It was going to take the expert techniques of their most experienced plastic surgeon to minimise the scarring that would be a permanent reminder of this day. In the meantime, she could step out of the way while the cubicle was cleared of debris and readied for the next patient and lean back against the nearest wall to allow her spinal muscles to recover. She didn’t even have the energy to remove her gloves or apron.

‘You’re not thinking of leaving, are you?’ Zach demanded, his shoulder almost touching hers as he joined her against the wall. ‘I thought you were settled in the area?’

Amy blinked at the unexpected questions, belatedly realising that she must have spoken her own thoughts aloud.

What could she say? I was just wondering whether I had any more chance of attracting you now than I did as a teenager?

‘I am settled, I think. I’m close enough to my parents so that visiting them doesn’t have to be a major time-consuming trek, yet far enough away so I can call my life my own…’…More or less, she added silently, hoping she hadn’t grimaced at the thought of the way the two of them still tried to organise her life for her.

Which reminded her, she thought with a barely stifled groan.