‘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.’
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!
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