‘A child. About six years old. Playing in the garden. I know,’ Tally said, her voice shaky as she continued what he’d been about to say. ‘I…went back, too. A couple of weeks ago. The woman was weeding the garden.’ Her breath hitched. ‘She was pregnant.’
Kit could remember Tally, pregnant, weeding their garden. Tending her flowers—she’d made it a proper cottage garden with hollyhocks and lavender and love-in-a-mist. To see another woman doing the same thing, in their garden—pregnant, with a child around six years old cycling round the garden—must have burned like acid in her soul. He’d found it hard enough to handle, seeing someone else living their dreams. For Tally, it must have been so much worse. And he hated the fact that he hadn’t been there to hold her, comfort her when she’d discovered it.
But he was here now. He could do something now. He reached out and took her free hand. Squeezed it gently. ‘It should have been us, Tally,’ he said quietly. ‘It should have been us.’
She wrenched her hand away. ‘But it isn’t. Wasn’t. We can’t change the past, Kit. We can’t go back. Someone else lives there now.’
In their house. The house where they’d made love. The house where they’d made a baby.
The house where their dreams had died. Where their love had been reduced to solicitors’ letters. Cold legal words. The end of everything.
‘We have to work together,’ Tally said, ‘but that’s as far as it goes. I’m sure we’re both mature enough to be civil to each other.’
‘Of course.’
A muscle flickered in her jaw. ‘I don’t think there’s anything left to say. We’ve both moved on.’
Had they? Are you married?’
‘That’s not relevant.’
Which told him nothing. And she clearly didn’t want to know whether he was or not, because she didn’t ask. He really, really should let this go.
So why couldn’t he?
‘Tal— Natalie,’ he corrected himself swiftly, ‘It doesn’t have to be like this.’
She pushed her chair back. ‘Let’s just agree to disagree, hmm?’
And then she was walking away from him.
Again.
And he was left with the feeling that he’d just made things a hell of a lot worse.
FOR the next couple of days, Natalie successfully continued to avoid Kit. But then they were rostered together again, this time on the paediatric assessment unit.
‘Dr Wilkins, I take it this is your first PAU?’ Kit asked.
On an intellectual level, she knew the formality was the right way to go—keeping a professional distance between them would be a good thing—but, oh, it stung. Had they really been reduced to this, to titles and surnames, after everything they’d shared? ‘Correct, Dr Rodgers,’ she responded, equally coolly.
‘Do you want to do this as a teaching session, or would you like to lead and I’ll back you up?’
He was giving her the choice. Not much of one. Either way, they had to work together. Closely. And she was finding it harder than she’d expected. Every time she glanced up at him she remembered other places, other times, when she’d caught his eye and seen a different expression there. Blue eyes filled with love and laughter. A lazy smile that had promised her some very personal attention once they were alone.
And now he was this cool, remote stranger. Just like he’d been at the end of their marriage. Reacting to nothing and nobody. Closed off.
‘PAU’s where we get the urgent referrals, isn’t it?’ she asked.
‘Yes.’
Where her diagnoses really could mean life or death. She took a deep breath. ‘Right.’ Was she ready for this?
‘Or we could lead on alternate cases. Do it together,’ Kit added.
His tone of voice on the last word made her look at him. The expression in his eyes was quickly masked, but she’d seen something there. Something that surprised her. Regret, wishing things could have been different?
She pushed it to the back of her mind. Of course not. She was just wishing for something that wasn’t there. Kit had shut her out six years ago, and he wasn’t about to invite her back into his life now.
They’d both moved on.
Well, he had.
‘OK.’
‘Want me to take the first one?’ he asked.
‘Whatever you think best, Dr Rodgers,’ she said, her voice completely without expression.
‘In that case,’ Kit said, ‘I’m throwing you in at the deep end. You go first.’
Oh, Lord. She hadn’t been expecting that. But if that was the way he wanted to play it, she’d show him she could do it—that she didn’t need his help.
Their first case was a two-year-old with a fever and a rash. Ross Morley’s eyes were red, as if he had conjunctivitis, although there didn’t appear to be any discharge. ‘He’s had a temperature for a couple of days but he seems to be getting worse,’ Mrs Morley said, twisting her hands together. ‘His hands and feet look a bit red and I’m sure they’re not normally as puffy as this. And then I saw this rash…’
‘And you’re worried that it’s meningitis?’ Natalie guessed.
Mrs Morley dragged in a breath. ‘Don’t let it be that. He’s my only one. Please, don’t let it be that.’
‘Rashes can be scary,’ Natalie said gently, ‘but there are lots of things that can cause a rash like this.’ Gently, she stretched the little boy’s skin over the spotty area. ‘The spots have faded, see? So it’s unlikely to be meningitis— though you’ve done absolutely the right thing to bring him here,’ she reassured Mrs Morley. ‘If it had been meningitis, he could have become seriously ill extremely quickly. Has he been immunised against measles?’
‘Yes. He had the MMR at fifteen months.’
‘It’s unlikely to be rubella or measles, then.’ Natalie swiftly took the little boy’s temperature with the ear thermometer—definitely raised. She continued examining him and noted that the lymph nodes in his neck were swollen. ‘It could be glandular fever—what we call infectious mononucleosis—or this could be his body’s reaction to a virus, most likely an echovirus.’ She swallowed hard. ‘Or Coxsackie virus.’
She couldn’t help glancing at Kit. Saw her own pain echoed in his eyes. And she had to look away and clamp her teeth together so the sob would stay back. Coxsackie B. The tiny, invisible virus that had smashed her life into equally tiny pieces.
She turned back to the little boy and finished her examination. ‘His skin’s starting to peel at the fingertips.’
‘He doesn’t suck his thumb or anything,’ Mrs Morley said. ‘Never has.’
‘I think Ross has Kawasaki disease,’ Natalie said. ‘Peeling skin’s one of the signs, plus he has the rash, the redness and slight swelling in his hands, his eyes are red, his lips are dry and cracked, and he has a fever.’ Kawasaki disease tended to be diagnosed clinically rather than through blood tests, and Ross Morley’s case ticked all the boxes. She glanced at Kit for confirmation.
He nodded, and mouthed, ‘Good call.’
She damped down the feeling of pleasure. She was doing this to help people, not to prove something to Kit.