Fling with the doc next.., p.7
Fling with the Doc Next Door, page 7
A bit like Logan Walsh himself?
‘Right on time,’ she said as she opened the passenger door and climbed in. ‘I like that.’
She also liked what Logan was wearing, although she certainly wasn’t going to tell him that. He had well-worn jeans on and a plain black tee shirt but what took his outfit to a very different level was the ancient-looking leather jacket he had on top. Racer style, with a neck strap instead of a collar and no flashy metal to be seen. Even the zips were hidden. It was the kind of jacket a lot of men might wear to try and look cool but Ella had the impression that Logan would look just as comfortable and confident if he was wearing the most boring anorak on earth.
He waited for Ella to put her bag on the floor and reach for her safety belt. He clearly didn’t have the same reticence about commenting on what someone was wearing.
‘You’ve got the llamas on again,’ he said.
‘These are alpacas,’ Ella corrected. ‘Classic Peruvian design, probably because it’s made out of alpaca wool.’
‘What’s the difference?’ Logan was watching for a gap in the traffic to pull out.
‘Llamas are much bigger, have a longer face and their ears are kind of banana-shaped. But you’re right, there’s not much difference from a distance. I don’t think I’d like to wear something knitted from llama wool, though. It would be too scratchy.’
Logan’s sideways glance was curious. ‘You seem to know a lot about this. Are camelids another odd hobby of yours?’
Ella grinned at him. ‘By “odd”, I take it you mean “interesting”?’
He was smiling but busy watching the road ahead of them. ‘Absolutely. And I’m very lucky you don’t have normal hobbies. I’m looking forward to seeing what you think of the barn.’
‘I’m not that into alpacas,’ Ella confessed. ‘They’re not in the same league as dogs or ducks when it comes to rescuing them, but I did have a great time hiking the Incan trail to Machu Picchu a few years ago. This jumper was a souvenir and, I have to say, it’s proving useful already in this Scottish climate.’ She looked at a signpost they were passing. ‘We’re heading for Balmoral?’
‘Well, we’re going in that direction and following the River Dee but it’s less than halfway to Balmoral. The closest town is Banchory so it’s no more than thirty minutes away even if there’s traffic in the city. Ideal for someone that doesn’t mind a bit of a commute.’
‘It’s good.’ Ella nodded happily. ‘It gives you enough time to start telling me about the course. What’s the scope of things that you cover?’
‘Depends who I’m talking to,’ Logan said. ‘It’s an intensive one-day seminar so it needs to deliver the information and practical training that is most likely to be of benefit and save lives. So, for example, if I’m talking to paramedics we might put more emphasis on emergencies that can evolve very rapidly, like a placental abruption following trauma or a cord prolapse at the start of labour. Unexpected out-of-hospital deliveries can mean that paramedics might need to manage a severe post-partum haemorrhage or neonatal life support too.’
‘And something like complications from a breech delivery or shoulder dystocia are more likely to happen well into labour, which has given the mother more time to get to a hospital,’ Ella observed. ‘So that would be something that midwives or ED docs might want to brush up on.’
‘Exactly. I’ve got great manikinsto practice the manoeuvres for correcting a shoulder dystocia.’
‘I’ve got an excellent video tutorial that helped me when I was learning to deal with a nuchal arm breech birth complication scenario like the second twin the other day. I could send you a link?’ Ella was enjoying the more rural views now they’d left the city behind them.
‘That would be great. And I need to send you the draft of a paper I’m working on, because you’ll be a co-author.’
‘Oh...?’ Ella turned a startled glance to Logan but he was focused on the road ahead so she allowed her gaze to rest on his profile a moment or two longer, taking in the strong angles of his face and lines that suggested he frowned more often than he smiled. The sombre tone didn’t detract from his attractiveness, however. Quite the opposite...
‘One of a few because I’m including everyone that made a significant contribution to the case, but it’ll be directed to an obstetric publication so you’ll be the first co-author.’
Ella blinked. That was quite an honour, considering Logan Walsh’s prominence in the field and that she was only a locum colleague. ‘Is it a case presentation?’ she guessed. ‘For the resuscitative hysterotomy?’
‘Yeah... Success stories can be important. They may well contribute to someone making a decision to do a procedure that is, let’s face it, more than a little daunting but making the decision in time might make the difference between life and death.’
‘Mmm...’ The sound Ella made was thoughtful. She turned to look at the countryside rolling past but, in reality, she was completely focused on the man sitting so close to her.
If Logan had been daunted when faced with that decision on performing such an invasive procedure when the odds were against it being successful, he hadn’t shown it and that confidence and control of the situation had been pivotal to the entire team that day. How good was he at hiding his feelings? Ella wondered—a thought that was instantly followed by wondering why he was alone in life and whether anybody had ever got close enough to be allowed to know what was going on in his head. Or his heart?
He was several years older than Ella, which would make him close to being forty years old. Had he been married before—to something other than his work? It was unthinkable to ask such personal questions of this...what was the word that summed Logan up? Taciturn? Yeah...that was it. A good Scottish characteristic. Ella stole another glance in his direction, imagining Logan wearing a kilt, with all the traditional accessories like a sporran and socks and a hat and a fly plaid over his shoulder with maybe a brooch to pin it. Would he be traditional enough not to wear anything underneath his kilt?
And...there it was again. That spear of deliciousness deep in her belly that was undeniably sheer physical desire.
Stop it, Ella chided herself. You’re too close. He might notice and how embarrassing would that be?
She needed to tap into the professional space that was more than acceptable to share but she couldn’t think of anything to say. Thank goodness Logan could.
‘I think the paper will create some interest,’ he said. ‘It’s very unusual for both a mother and baby to survive an RH and in my discussion I’ve talked about how part of the success in a case like this can be due to the pre-hospital management by paramedics and that up-to-date training is vital to maintain.’
Ella was thoroughly back in a professional zone now. ‘You don’t mean having paramedics doing an RH, do you?’
‘Why not? If a specialist paramedic in critical care can do a thoracotomy for a tension pneumothorax and associated cardiac arrest, why not an RH?’ But then Logan shook his head a little. ‘That wasn’t what I meant, though.’
‘What did you mean?’
‘I suspect the course that the paramedics who brought Iona in had just done may have made a difference in this particular case. They knew to use a higher hand position on the sternum and to manually displace the uterus to take pressure off the IVD and aorta. A different crew in a different place might have still been using the old recommendation to have the mother in a thirty-degree, left lateral position that makes effective chest compressions almost impossible.’
This was good. Ella wasn’t thinking of anything personal to do with Logan now. She was so back in that resuscitation room in the emergency department she could actually feel an echo of the calm control that had emanated from Logan.
‘And you knew how fast you needed to make the decision to do the procedure,’ she said quietly. ‘You had the baby out in less than five minutes.’
‘We did.’
Ella could allow herself a small glow of pride in his change of pronoun, even though it could be considered a grey area between professional and personal interaction. Like heading off to see Logan’s personal possession of a barn, even though what they were talking about was purely professional?
‘But those recommended time frames are also outdated,’ Logan added. ‘There are reports of babies being delivered alive up to thirty minutes after CPR’s been started and mothers have survived up to fifteen minutes.’
‘It’s still got to be a good thing to do it as early as possible.’ Ella bit her lip. ‘I know Iona’s doing well but it’s still going to be a long road to a complete recovery, isn’t it?’
Logan nodded. ‘I spent some time with her on my ward round this morning. She’s probably going to be kept in as long as her baby’s in NICU, for some intensive therapy and rehabilitation.’
He knew the baby’s name was Finlay. Was he avoiding using it because he was deliberately creating distance? It couldn’t be because he didn’t like babies—he was an obstetrician, for heaven’s sake.
‘I was a bit shocked by her level of disability when she was first awake,’ Ella confessed. ‘She was having a lot of difficulty speaking and she was quite agitated. I could see how hard it was for her family.’
‘She’s making good progress. She’s lost a lot of her vocabulary and has trouble naming things, but her husband tells me that as soon as he’s told her the word it’s back in her memory. She’s frustrated and is fighting a fatigue that makes it hard to stay awake, but she’s less emotionally labile and apparently determined to recover from the left-sided weakness. She wants to be able to hold her baby.’
He was doing it again. Creating distance by not using names and talking about people as if he was dictating clinical notes. It made Ella feel a little rebellious.
‘I try and find time every day to go and visit Finlay,’ she said. ‘He’s the most adorable baby ever. He’s off CPAP now, although he’s being carefully monitored for any apnoeic episodes, and he’s starting to learn to suck from a bottle. Did you know that Iona’s being helped to express breastmilk for him? The plan is to let her try breastfeeding soon. I’m so excited about that. I bet she and Gregor are too.’
Logan didn’t appear to be listening. He had turned off the road and they were bumping down a rough narrow lane between hedgerows. She could hear the warning sounds of startled birds but wasn’t going to take that as a warning to drop the subject.
‘Have you been to see him?’
‘No. I’ve been getting regular updates on his condition, of course. The data will be included in a table in the paper I’m writing on the RH.’
Maybe Logan could sense Ella’s disapproval of his lack of excitement over Finlay’s progress. He broke the silence as he slowed the car when they reached the end of the lane and had turned to see the barn and meadow and pond—as if one of those photographs, or maybe a landscape painting, had just come to life.
‘NICU is not one of my favourite places,’ he said quietly.
The undercurrent to his words suggested that Logan had seen too many newborn babies that hadn’t survived—maybe from cases that haunted him—but still Ella said nothing. She could feel a compelling peacefulness of the scene in front of them inviting them in. She could also feel quite certain that Logan had just told her something that was intensely personal and private and, as much as she wanted to know more, this felt like a test. Could she be trusted not to pry into places he wasn’t ready to show her, no matter how curious she might be?
Yes. She could.
And maybe Logan already knew that. He’d already invited her into a personal space, hadn’t he? Ella had the feeling that she might be the first person he had confessed his preference to avoid the NICU. She was also possibly the first person, other than an architect perhaps, to set foot in this little patch of countryside since Logan had fallen in love with it enough to buy it.
Oops... Since he’d discovered an out of the way, ‘pleasant spot’ and convinced himself it might be a good financial investment.
She opened her door, hiding her smile. ‘We’d better make the most of the sunshine,’ she said. ‘I’m not sure I like the look of those clouds rolling in.’
* * *
Logan hadn’t been out here for months. Good grief...was it coming up to almost a year since his last visit?
He’d never been here with anyone else either, come to think of it. He’d been alone when he’d discovered it and he’d dealt with the estate agent and the purchase without feeling the need to see it again. He’d sent architects the directions to get there and told them where the key to the barn was hidden but he’d never managed to be available to be there at the same time.
Had he wanted to keep this place a purely personal retreat? Or had he, perhaps, been unconsciously worried that the spell it seemed to cast on him whenever he was here would be somehow tainted by sharing it with someone else?
If he had, he’d been very wrong.
Sharing it with Ella was...well, it was a bit of a revelation, to be honest.
He suspected that Ella had no idea just how much her changing expressions—and her eyes—revealed about how she was feeling. And if anyone was capable of something as ridiculous as falling head over heels in love with a property he might have known it would be Ella.
She was enchanted from the moment he reached into the hollow trunk of an ancient oak tree to find the old iron key that had probably been hand forged by the same blacksmith who’d created the heavy lock on the rustic wooden door. She caught her bottom lip between her teeth as he pushed that door open, as if she was holding her breath, and then she actually wrapped her arms around her body when she was standing inside the cavernous space with misty rays of sunshine pouring in through the small, high windows.
Those dark eyes of hers that were such a good match for her hair colour were shining just as brightly. Logan had become used to only seeing her hair tied back at work so it was a bit disconcerting to see it hanging in the long, loose waves that had caused that totally inappropriate thought about her riding a horse with nothing but her hair to cover her body. It was even more disconcerting to see the astonishing array of emotions in her reaction to this historic building.
‘Those beams and the trusses...they’re incredible. Hand-hewn. Maybe oak, or elm or chestnut wood? Oh...can you imagine that mezzanine floor with the bedrooms having those beams on their ceilings? Close enough to see the marks that someone made with an axe or an adze? To be able to touch them?’
Logan was being sucked in again, like he had been the other night when Ella was full of ideas about a conversion project—until she’d accused him of falling in love with the property, which let him escape straight back to a safe distance. It felt more dangerous, somehow, hearing the passion in her voice while they were physically inside this building.
He needed to remember that he’d learned long ago not to play mental games with personal ‘what ifs’ or ‘if onlys’. That it was so much safer to think about facts rather than fantasies. To push forward and focus on doing what mattered to the best of his ability.
His work.
The error of purchasing a project that would require too much of his time and money had taught Logan a good lesson. He hadn’t realised the effect it would have to be forced into a space where you had to dream about the future and he’d quickly found that doing so could unlock doors he’d rather not go through, thanks very much. He needed a place to live that would help him do his work and live his life by not being a distraction or possibly even an ordeal.
‘I still think it should be at the short end of the L shape,’ Ella said. ‘But I didn’t see that stone partition in the photos. There’s room for a stone staircase to lead up to the mezzanine level and that might be the perfect place to build in a gorgeous big open fireplace.’
Okay...he couldn’t stop himself seeing that. Not when the solid stonework was right in front of him. He could actually imagine the roaring flames and a couple of super comfortable leather sofas in front of it. And Ella was sitting there, with a glass of wine in her hand. Smiling...
‘I’m going to take some more photos.’ Ella pulled her phone out of her shoulder bag. ‘I’ve got a sketch pad too, but you probably don’t want to hang around long enough for me to do any drawing here.’
‘Do whatever you need,’ Logan said.
‘What would you need,’ Ella asked, ‘if you were going to be living here?’
‘But I’m not going to be living here.’
Ella gave him a strange look. ‘Help me out here, Logan. Play the game. It’ll make it so much easier to make this real. Otherwise, you’ll only get my ideas and I can probably make it appeal to a much wider market if I know what you’d want.’
Logan shrugged. If it was going to help get rid of this place, being temporarily uncomfortable would be a reasonable price to pay.
‘What’s important to you?’ Ella asked. ‘Outside of work, I mean.’
Logan was silent for a moment, genuinely at a loss to think of something that wasn’t connected to his career that was important enough to need catering for in a dwelling.
‘Do you love books?’ Ella prompted. ‘Would a library with a lovely old desk be attractive? It could be tucked behind the stone partition and the fire.’
Logan could see that too. Shelves and shelves of books, with a whole section for the old medical textbooks he loved to collect that were sitting in boxes in storage. Maybe there were floorboards of the dark grainy wood of reclaimed pine Ella had mentioned, with an old Persian-style carpet square in a lovely deep shade of red.
