‘Over there. Want me to guard the door for a minute so you can strip that lot off?’
‘Please. I’m starting to feel a bit queasy myself.’
‘Do you need a shower?’
‘No. It’s just on my scrubs.’ Grace unhooked her stethoscope and then unclipped her phone and pager from her waistband. She put them onto a stainless-steel trolley and then peeled off her tunic. ‘What are you doing in here, anyway?’
‘We were low on blankets in the warmer and everyone was busy. I’m due for a break.’ Helena was leaning against the closed door, blocking the small window. ‘Past due to go home, in fact. We both are.’ Her smile was rueful. ‘How come we were among the ones to offer to stay on?’
‘We were short-staffed and overloaded. It was lucky Sarah Grayson could stay on as well.’
‘I know. Well, I’ve hardly seen you since this morning. You okay?’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘Sorry—silly question. Crazy day, huh?’
‘Mmm.’ Grace was folding the tunic carefully so she could put it into the bag without touching the worst stains. ‘I certainly wouldn’t want another one like this in a hurry.’
Not that staying on past her rostered hours had bothered her, mind you. Or the patient load. She loved a professional challenge. It was the personal challenge she was in the middle of that was a lot less welcome.
‘What are you doing after work? There’s a group going out for Thanksgiving dinner at a local restaurant that sounds like it might be fun. I know you’d be more than welcome.’
But, again, Grace shook her head. ‘I can’t abandon my dog after being at work so much longer than expected. And I need to Skype my dad. I haven’t spoken to him for a while and it’s Thanksgiving. Family time.’
‘Ah...’ Helena’s gaze was mischievous. ‘And there was me thinking you might be going to some glitzy Davenport occasion.’
Pulling on her clean scrub trousers, Grace let the elastic waist band go with more force than necessary. ‘What?’
‘You and Charles...?’ Helena was smiling now. ‘Is that why you were looking so happy first thing this morning? Everybody’s wondering...’
A heavy knot formed in Grace’s gut. People were gossiping about her? And Charles? Had he said something to someone else when he hadn’t bothered talking to her? Or had someone seen something or said something to remind Charles that he would never be able to replace his beloved wife? Maybe that was why he was ignoring her.
‘I have no idea what you’re talking about,’ she said. ‘We’re just friends.’
‘That’s what he said, too.’
‘What?’ Grace fought the shock wave that made it difficult to move. ‘When?’
‘There was someone here earlier this afternoon. A journalist pretending to be a patient and she was asking for you. You’d taken a patient off for an MRI, I think. Or maybe you were finally having a late lunch. Anyway... Charles told her she was wasting her time. That you were nothing more than a colleague and friend. And never would be.’
Was it simply the waft of soiled laundry that was making Grace feel a little faint? She secured the top of the plastic bag and shoved it into the contaminated linen sack.
So she didn’t need to make eye contact with Charles to know that the truth was every bit as gut wrenching as she had suspected it would be.
‘I don’t understand,’ she murmured. ‘Why was he even saying anything?’
‘It’s because of the gossip column. That photo. Any Davenport news is going to be jumped on around here. They’re like New York royalty.’
‘What gossip column? What photo?’
‘You don’t know?’ Helena’s eyes widened. ‘Look. I can show you on my phone. I have to admit, you do look like a really happy little family...’
* * *
Focus, Charles reminded himself. Shut out anything irrelevant that’s only going to make everything worse.
He had responsibilities that took priority over any personal discomfort.
His boys came first. He’d been a little later for work this afternoon, after getting home from the parade, because he’d needed to brief Maria about the renewed media interest in his life and warn her not to say anything about his private life if she was approached by a journalist. He was going to keep the boys away from nursery school for a day or two, as well, for the same reason.
He’d assumed that he’d see Grace at work and be able to have a quiet word and warn her that she might be faced with some unwelcome attention but she hadn’t been in the department when he’d arrived. Instead, he’d been confronted with the reality that interest in the Davenport family’s private lives was never going to vanish. How had someone found out that Grace worked here? Had it helped to deal so brusquely with that journalist who had been masquerading as a patient or had he protested too much?
At least Grace hadn’t been there to hear him dismissing her as someone who would never be anything more significant than a friend but the echo of his own words was haunting him now.
It wasn’t true. He might have no idea how to handle these unexpected emotions that were undermining everything in his personal life that he’d believed would never change but the thing he could be certain of was that his own feelings were irrelevant right now.
He was in a meeting, for heaven’s sake, where his push for additional resources in his department was dependent on being able to defend the statistics of patient outcomes and being able to explain anomalies in terms of scientific reasoning that was balanced by morality and the mission statements of Manhattan Mercy’s emergency room.
He had to focus.
One meeting merged into the next until it was late in the day and he was still caught up in a boardroom. The detailed report of how his department and others had coped in the power cut last month was up for discussion with the purpose of making sure that they would be better prepared if it should ever happen again.
It was hard to focus in this meeting as well. The day of the power cut had been the day that Grace Forbes had walked back into his life in more than a professional sense. It seemed like fate had been determined to bring her close as quickly as possible. How else could he explain the series of events that had led her to meet his sons and remind him of how lucky he actually was? That had been when his barriers had been weakened, he realised. When that curiosity about Grace had put her into a different space than any other woman could have reached.
The kind of determination to focus that was needed here was reminiscent of one of the most difficult times of his life—when he’d had to try and pass his final exams in medicine while the fallout of the Davenport scandal had been exploding around him. How hard that had been had been eclipsed by the tragedy of Nina’s death, of course, but he’d somehow coped then as well.
And he could cope now.
‘We can’t base future plans on the normal throughput of the department,’ he reminded the people gathered in this boardroom. ‘What we have to factor in is that this kind of widespread disruption causes a huge spike in admissions due to the accidents directly caused by it. Fortunately, it’s a rare event so we can’t resource the department to be ready at all times. What we can do is have a management plan in place that will put us in the best position to deal with whatever disaster we find on our doorstep. And haven’t there been predictions already for severe snow storms in December? If it’s correct, that could also impact our power supply and patient numbers.’
By the time his meeting finished, a new shift was staffing the department and Grace was nowhere to be seen.
He could knock on her door when he got home, Charles decided, but a glance at his watch told him that he’d have