She groaned silently, her thoughts still scurrying around in her head in spite of the fact that she’d been trying to keep busy to switch the thoughts off. As if it wasn’t bad enough that she must be the only twenty-six-year-old virgin in Edenthwaite, she had to go and tell Joe, the one man whose opinion of her really mattered.
How was she going to face him again? It had been difficult enough putting up with all the sympathetic murmurs of her colleagues when they’d found out about Nick and Frankie. If they discovered that her adolescent crush on Nick had prevented her from indulging in the flings her colleagues seemed to flit in and out of, she’d probably never live it down.
Could she trust Joe not to say anything?
She could hardly bring herself to think about it, let alone hold a conversation begging for his discretion.
‘Vicky. Phone call for you,’ called one of the juniors, beckoning her from the other side of the ward, and she hurried across to the desk. There were several sets of lab results she’d been chasing up ever since she’d come on duty and they’d promised to phone them through as soon as they were ready.
‘Hello. Vicky Lawrence speaking,’ she said crisply, but when she waited for a reply all she could hear was the faint crackle of an open line. ‘Hello? Is there anyone there?’
When there was still no answer she shrugged and put the phone down. ‘Who was it, Sue? Did they say what they wanted?’
‘Sorry, Vicky.’ Sue shook her head. ‘It was a man and he wanted to speak to you. I don’t know any more than that.’
‘A man?’ The person she was waiting to speak to was definitely not a man, so perhaps it hadn’t been the lab results. ‘Oh, well. They’ll just have to try again.’
‘They will, if it’s important,’ Sue agreed. ‘Let’s hope it isn’t anything complicated and that they don’t phone back in the middle of the patients’ lunch.’
Vicky groaned. It wasn’t often that they had so many who needed individual help with their meals, but the last few days had been dreadful. For some reason there had been an overflow from the geriatric ward into her general one. Now she was trying to cope with one gentleman who was flat on his back with both legs in traction and a woman in her sixties whose years of a strict vegan diet had left her with multiple fractures in a collapsed spine, rendering her all but immobile.
Apart from them, there was a man in his late fifties who had been born with Down’s syndrome. Although Owen was physically capable of feeding himself, he still required constant supervision if the food was actually going to be consumed while it was hot. At least his broken leg was keeping him in one place at the moment. His elderly carers had warned that once he was mobile again he was quite likely to go wandering off at any time.
‘And won’t that be just what I need to brighten my day,’ Vicky muttered as she tried to juggle the number of patients requiring individual attention against the staff available for the task. ‘And some time during all that, the staff have to go for their lunch-breaks, too!’
Her calculations were interrupted by the phone and she reached out to lift the receiver without taking her eyes off her little chart.
‘Hello. Sister Lawrence, General Ward,’ she said automatically, more than half of her mind on possible permutations that would get the job done. Would she need to ring around for some temporary help, just until the older patients were able to move into their proper domain?
It was several seconds before she realised that no one had spoken since she’d answered the phone.
‘Hello?’ she prompted, but once again there was just that faint crackle of an open line. ‘Is there someone there?’
Although there wasn’t a sound from the other end, for some reason she just knew that there was someone there, someone listening to her.
The hairs on the back of her neck felt as if they were standing on end, almost as if a cold draught had blown across her, but she knew that was nonsense in a modern building like this.
‘I’m sorry, but I haven’t got time to waste,’ she said, firmly squashing the sneaking feeling of unease. ‘If you’re not going to speak I’ll have to put the phone down.’
She started counting silently, determined to carry out her threat on the count of five. She’d only got as far as four when she heard a single whispered word before the connection was abruptly broken.
She was sitting there, staring at the receiver still clasped in her shaking hand, when a familiar baritone voice nearly had her jumping out of her skin.
‘Vicky? What on earth’s wrong with you?’ Joe demanded when she’d shrieked and dropped the phone. He picked it up from the floor and put it to his ear before he deposited it where it belonged.
Whether he was checking to see if there was someone still on the line or whether the thing was still working, she didn’t know.
She was trembling all over now, and it wasn’t because Joe had startled her.
‘Are you all right?’ he demanded, so she knew she must be looking as shaky as she felt. ‘Is there something I can do or would you rather I came back later?’
‘No!’ she said hurriedly, suddenly far more worried that he might leave than that his presence might be an embarrassment. She’d been dreading this first meeting, after her blurted revelation, but that phone call had really given her the creeps. ‘No, Joe, please, don’t go.’
‘What’s the matter? Aren’t you feeling well?’ He perched one hip on the corner of the desk, bringing those changeable hazel eyes almost down to her level. The clear concern in them was like a balm to her jangling nerves.
‘I’m all right, except…except for that weird phone call. And I don’t think it was the first one.’ Now that she thought about it, there had been something similar yesterday, too.
‘Weird? How was it weird? Who was calling?’
‘I don’t know who it was.’
‘So, what did they want?’ He was patience itself but that didn’t do anything for her agitation.
‘I don’t know what he wanted,’ she retorted snappishly. ‘The first couple of times he didn’t say anything at all but this time—’
‘Whoa! What do you mean, the first couple of times?’ he interrupted sharply. ‘What’s going on here? It can hardly be a disappointed suitor—there hasn’t been time since your engagement to Nick. Wait a minute! You’re not telling me you’re being stalked, are you? How long has this been going on?’
‘No! Of course I’m not being stalked,’ she countered dismissively, then paused, feeling sick.
It was crazy to even think about it in a place like Edenthwaite, but suddenly she found herself wondering if the idea made sense. Had there been too many ‘silent’ calls over the last few days for it to be an accident?
‘Oh, Joe, I don’t know,’ she admitted in a small voice. ‘Perhaps I am.’
‘Hey, Vicky, take it easy.’ He reached for her hand, and when he tucked it warmly and firmly between his she suddenly had the crazy feeling that Joe was going to keep her safe. ‘Now, take a deep breath and tell me what’s been going on.’
‘There hasn’t really been anything going on except for a few phone calls, and they could have been anything. I didn’t even know it was a man calling until this last time, when he spoke.’
‘So, where were the calls coming from? Inside the hospital through the internal switchboard or from outside? What was the reception like? Could the caller have been using a mobile perhaps? And his voice—did you recognise it? Did it sound local or did it have a different accent?’
‘He only said one word. My name.’ She shuddered at the