Claws of a wildcat, p.1
Claws of a Wildcat, page 1
CLAWS OF A WILDCAT
Sue Peters
She didn’t need a man in her life
Dr. Margaret Warrender’s air of professional detachment kept everyone from knowing the sensitive, vulnerable woman underneath. And that was just the way she wanted it.
Until now. From their first meeting, Dominic Orr, the giant, blond geologist, intruded on her feelings, made her aware that she had personal needs.
For the first time in her life things were happening that were beyond her control…. And she wasn’t at all sure she liked it!
CHAPTER ONE
‘Men! They’re one commodity I could do without!’
‘He couldn’t help getting his face cut,’ Bill pointed out mildly.
‘They were two grown men, fighting like a pair of silly schoolboys,’ Margaret retorted scathingly. ‘And as a result, We’ve both had an hour’s unnecessary hard work we could well have done without. Like I could do without men, right now,’ she reiterated feelingly.
‘Not present company, I hope?’ Bill Quinn perched his angular frame nonchalantly on a corner of the leather-topped desk and regarded her quizzically.
‘Certainly not present company,’ Margaret amended hastily. ‘With the Chief skittering off down country, and leaving us short-handed, I can’t do without you as well.’
‘Nice to know you’re wanted,’ her white-coated companion grinned. ‘But be fair,’ he urged, ‘the Chief’s hardly on a pleasure cruise. I should think trying to squeeze money out of the powers that be, for a new wing here, is a mission designed to make him a patient in his own hospital by the time he returns,’ he predicted gloomily.
‘I know.’ Margaret Warrender passed a hand across her forehead with a weary gesture and leaned back in the shabby hide chair that was built to take the bear-like bulk of Neil Venables, her absent Chief, and dwarfed her own slight figure so that she seemed lost in its well-worn depths.
‘You’re tired,’ the young house surgeon eyed her narrowly. ‘Being in charge while Neil’s away doesn’t usually bother you.’
‘I know,’ she confessed, feeling rather ashamed now of her sudden outburst. ‘And under our normal workload, it wouldn’t worry me now. It’s just….’ Her voice trailed off.
‘We’ve always had the losers of Saturday night free-for-alls in Casualty,’ Bill pointed out philosophically.
‘I know that, too, but these days it seems to be a never-ending stream,’ Margaret protested. ‘We’re just not big enough to cope any longer.’
‘Which is why the Chief’s gone south with a begging bowl to get some more money to build an extension, and employ extra staff,’ Bill repeated patiently.
‘That won’t help us now.’ She was not to be appeased. ‘It isn’t as if it’s all happened gradually,’ she wailed despairingly.
‘Like evolution, you mean?’ her companion asked amusedly.
‘Call it what you like,’ she retorted crossly, ‘the town has nearly doubled its population within the space of a few weeks, since the oil companies decided to come exploring in the area, and it feels as if we’ve been taken over by an invading horde. Why did they have to park their beastly oil rig just offshore of us?’ she demanded peevishly.
‘Because that’s where they reckon they’ll find the oil, I guess. It’s exciting when you think about it,’ Bill warmed to the subject. ‘Who’d have thought our insignificant little patch of the globe would sport an oil well?’ he asked.
‘It doesn’t, yet,’ she retorted crushingly. ‘From what I can gather, they’re still prospecting, or whatever it is they do for oil,’ she shrugged indifferently. She was not particularly interested in what they did, only in its effect on the beleaguered Meldonmouth General Hospital.
‘Future oil well, then,’ Bill conceded.
‘It’s the present I’m worried about,’ Margaret interrupted impatiently. ‘The town’s expanded to bursting point, and we simply haven’t got the facilities or the staff to cope. And as if that isn’t enough,’ she went on, her voice rising, ‘before he went away Neil agreed that we’d provide an emergency back-up medical service to the oil rig—if required,’ she emphasised, heavily sarcastic. ‘How many pairs of hands do they think we’ve got?’ she asked wrathfully. ‘I’m beginning to feel like an octopus as it is!’
‘That’s only in case of a dire emergency,’ Bill placated. ‘Their own resident medical staff on the rig would cope in all but exceptional circumstances. I’d be interested to see over the rig hospital,’ he added, ‘it might be miniature, but from what Neil told me, they’re remarkably well equipped. No expense spared, apparently,’ he added wistfully.
‘We haven’t got an oil company sponsoring us,’ Margaret retorted drily, ‘so let’s hope a dire emergency doesn’t arise, at least until Neil can beg enough funds for an extension. The people from the rig and their families are proving about the last straw for the General as it is, without drawing staff away from the hospital to cope outside.’
‘The oil men seem a fairly quiet lot on the whole,’ Bill replied mildly, ‘it’s only when they change crews on the rig, they seem to celebrate.’
‘They’re no better and no worse than the locals,’ Margaret acknowledged, ‘it’s just that they’re doubling our workload on an already over-stretched Casualty Department, in what is, after all, little more than a cottage hospital. That man’s face, tonight….’ Despite her years of experience, she shuddered. ‘He was one of the oil rig crew. I can’t remember what he said he did. It sounded something like a roundabout,’ she said vaguely.
‘What’s the matter with his face?’ a cheerful voice asked her.
‘Sue!’ Margaret sat up and stared at the newcomer in surprise. ‘What are you doing here at this time of the night? Therapists work civilised hours,’ she added enviously.
‘I came to pick up my fiancé.’ Sue Marlow dropped a light kiss on Bill’s wiry dark head. ‘When he’s on this shift, it’s the only way I get to see him. Who’d marry a doctor?’ she sighed.
‘You’re going to.’ Bill reached out a possessive arm.
‘Hey, watch what you’re doing!’ She neatly dodged his grasp. ‘You’ll spill the coffee.’
‘Coffee? You angel!’ The house surgeon grasped gratefully at her offering, and Sue laughed.
‘It’s all cupboard love, with the men.’ She handed another cup to Margaret. ‘Sister Casualty said you’d had a busy time tonight, and I guessed a hot drink wouldn’t come amiss. Even if it is out of a plastic beaker,’ she grimaced.
‘It’s nectar.’ Margaret sipped her own with a relish she rarely accorded the outpourings of the mechanical drinks dispenser.
‘What about the man you were talking about, when I came in? What happened to him?’ Sue asked curiously.
‘He got cut across the face and head by broken glass,’ Margaret said briefly. ‘I stopped counting after I’d put forty stitches in him.’
‘One of his mates crowned him with a bottle, and it broke,’ Bill explained succinctly. ‘What a waste of good Scotch,’ he mourned. ‘Still, it had one beneficial effect, the whisky cleaned the cut as soon as it was done, there wasn’t a germ to be seen by the time he got here.’
‘With a cut like that, he was lucky to get here at all.’
‘His mate brought him in. He wouldn’t have made it, otherwise.’
‘You mean the man who hit him?’ Sue regarded incredulously.
‘He didn’t mean to hit him so hard. He said it was an accident that the bottle broke,’ Bill said seriously, ‘and I believed him. Fortunately there’s no permanent harm done, it missed his eyes.’
‘What on earth were they fighting about?’
‘A woman.’ Bill leered at the brown-haired therapist. ‘What else is there worth fighting over?’ he said sententiously.
‘Clot!’ Sue cuffed him lightly, and wriggled into a comfortable position on his knee. ‘You’ll get into rare trouble if you’re found cuddling me while you’re on duty,’ she said, with not very convincing severity.
‘There probably won’t be any more patients until the morning,’ Bill murmured contentedly. ‘The pubs closed an hour ago, and anything the homegoing tide was likely to wash in our direction has beached by now,’ he said with the confidence of long experience.
‘Like that man?’
‘Like that man,’ her fiancé agreed solemnly. ‘What a waste of…
‘Good Scotch,’ Sue finished for him with a laugh. ‘You’re impossible!’ she scolded.
They both were. Impossibly in love. Margaret eyed them with a stirring of something that in anyone else she might have suspected was envy. She wondered, not for the first time, how Sue could contemplate giving up a promising career for marriage. It was different for Bill. Men had the best of both worlds, she thought dispassionately, they could get married and still keep their careers. But now, as she looked at Sue snuggled cosily on Bill’s knee, her wondering unexpectedly took another direction. Perhaps if …. she pulled her thoughts to a halt, sharply.
‘I am tired,’ she told herself. ‘Or else it’s spring coming, or something.’
‘I wish you wouldn’t stick your stethoscope in that pocket,’ Sue complained lazily, without bothering to move. ‘It digs in.’
‘Don’t get too comfortable,’ Margaret warned, and found herself taken off guard with a sigh. She did not envy Sue and Bill, why should she? Domesticity did not appeal to her, as it did to the therapist. She had not gone through all those years of training just to give it all up in order to wash dishes. Sue might thi
‘Bill’s off duty as from now,’ she consulted her watch ostentatiously. ‘Take him away, Sue, his stint’s finished for tonight.’ For some reason she wanted, suddenly, to be left on her own, even though normally she welcomed the company of the cheerful young couple. But tonight she did not want to sit and watch them in each other’s arms.
‘I’ll stay on for a bit if you like, just in case?’ Bill offered, and sent her a keen look across the desk. ‘Maggie’s tired,’ he stilled Sue’s quick protest.
‘I’m fine now I’ve had a sit down and some coffee,’ Margaret refused him firmly. ‘And don’t call me Maggie,’ she snapped. ‘Besides, your standin’s just arrived,’ she covered her sharpness with a hasty explanation, as the unmistakable throaty exhaust of a sports car roared to a halt outside the windows, and burbled into silence even as she spoke.
‘In that case, I’m persuaded.’ Bill Quinn yawned, stretched, and grasped the brown-haired Sue round her waist. ‘See you tomorrow, Maggie,’ he jibed with a grin.
‘Oh, come on!’ Sue raised her eyes ceilingwards, grimaced an apology at Margaret, and pulled the young house surgeon unresisting through the door. And left behind a strange feeling of emptiness. Margaret examined it curiously. The emptiness felt as if it was inside her, and had nothing to do with the now silent room. It was not as if something was missing. Rather, as if it had never been. Like a melody played too softly for the listener to quite catch, but haunting the senses nevertheless, making its presence felt even if the sound itself could not be heard. A glimpse of a rainbow, just as it fades….
The three empty plastic beakers littering the desk seemed somehow to symbolise the strangeness of her mood. They were frail, transient, throw-away things, empty. Slowly she reached out and picked them up one by one and stacked them tidily together, then dropped them into the waste basket. The cleaners would remove them when they started their early morning shift.
‘Doctor Warrender?’ A light tap sounded on the office door, and Bill Quinn’s standin poked his head through.
‘Yes? What is it?’
A surge of irritation went through her. The man was new to the hospital, and insufferably formal. Belatedly, she remembered she had snapped at Bill for being just the opposite.
‘Perhaps he’ll put it down to the colour of my hair, and not a nasty nature,’ she thought remorsefully, and raked quick fingers through her close-cropped red-gold hair. She summoned up what she hoped was an encouraging smile, and wondered how she could manage it when she felt literally dropping on her feet.
‘There’s someone called to collect a patient, and Sister won’t let him go unless you give permission.’
The smile must have worked, because the newcomer came further into the room and returned it, albeit tentatively.
‘I’ll come.’
They had only warded one patient that evening, the man with the cut face. She followed her staff man towards the Casualty waiting room, and looked round.
‘Who…?’ She expected to see a woman, the woman Bill Quinn said the men had been fighting over. Instead,
‘I understand you’ve got one of our roustabouts here.’
He turned with a lithe grace from where he had been standing by the window overlooking the concrete ambulance pull-in. He had scorned the two rows of empty chairs, as if he found even the spacious waiting room confining, and opted instead for the wide expanse of glass as the nearest he could get to out-of-doors.
‘He collected a cut face, or something,’ he offered helpfully, as if he thought Margaret might ;not be able to identify the victim from his perfunctory explanation.
She scarcely heard what he said. His words hardly registered against the impact of the man himself. As he turned, she had to raise her eyes a full foot to take in a head of flaxen fairness, his hair looked almost white under the pitiless fluorescent lighting, the startling lightness of it accentuated by the dark mahogany tan of his face, and eyes the deepest blue she had ever seen. They regarded her with dawning impatience.
‘I’ve come to collect a man with a cut face,’ he insisted, and raised his voice, as if he thought she had not heard him the first time.
‘Yes, I know. You said.’ She found herself stammering. ‘I can’t release him, not tonight.’
What on earth was the matter with her? She was reacting like a gauche schoolgirl, she thought disgustedly, and fought down a feeling of almost physical shock that sent her tired senses reeling. No man had the right to look like this, she thought dazedly. He towered above her, all six feet plus of him, like a reincarnation of one of the gods of ancient Norse legend; incredibly tall, incredibly fair, and almost unbelievably handsome. She swallowed convulsively, and managed to find her voice.
‘Come back tomorrow about eleven o’clock. He should be fit enough to be discharged by then.’
Automatically her eyes sought the plain, round face of the electric clock above the entrance doors. The hands said just after midnight. Perhaps that explained it, she thought, with a sudden hysterical desire to giggle. The strange witching hour, that was neither night nor morning, when footsteps made hollow echoes in the empty corridors, whose daytime bustle was peopled now only by shadows.
She was in a strange mood tonight! She almost wished she had risked Sue’s displeasure and accepted Bill’s offer to remain for a while. The house surgeon’s cheerful matter-of-factness was the perfect antidote to the intrusion of fey thoughts, which never normally bothered her. Usually she was too busy to think about anything but immediate necessities. Near-exhaustion must have made her vulnerable.
‘I can’t come back at eleven o’clock tomorrow.’ The impatience manifested itself in a quick spark of anger, and his voice hardened perceptibly. ‘I’ve got something better to do than ride herd on a roustabout,’ he told her bluntly, ‘he’ll have to come now, while I’ve got the helicopter available.’
‘That’s quite impossible.’ Margaret’s chin came up, and her green eyes flashed fire, and the temper that went with her rich red-gold hair rose at the curtness of his tone. ‘The man’s injured.’
‘From what I heard, it’s his own fault,’ he replied uncompromisingly.
‘That’s not my concern,’ Margaret snapped. The man was impossible, she thought angrily—too sure of his own good looks, and expected other people to fall in with his every whim because of them, she diagnosed caustically. She felt too tired to be either generous, or just, tonight.
‘He lost a lot of blood, and we had to give him a transfusion. And now he’s sleeping it off,’ she informed him coldly. ‘Of course, if you want to carry him….’ Her voice bit.
‘No, thanks,’ he refused shortly. ‘He’s made his bed, let him lie on it,’ he added callously. A slight grin tilted the corners of his well cut lips. ‘I leave him in your tender, loving care.’ The mocking inflection in his voice questioned whether she, personally, was capable of any of the three, but before she could find breath to retort, he turned on his heel and strode away, and only the swinging double doors told where he had been.
‘Well! Of all the arrogant, conceited…’ Margaret expelled her breath in a furious hiss.
‘You must admit he’s got something to be conceited about.’ Underneath Sister Casualty’s efficient exterior beat an incurably romantic heart. ‘Who is he, anyway?’ she asked curiously.
‘He must be one of the oil men,’ Margaret answered her in a clipped voice. ‘Certainly he’s a stranger to the town, if you don’t know him.’ Her buxom companion was a great socialiser, and knew practically everyone in the small coastal town by name or sight, a fact which made her a mine of useful information to the medical staff on the backgrounds of their various patients.
‘I wonder what he does?’ Sister pursued interestedly.
‘I couldn’t care less,’ Margaret retorted irately. ‘It’s what he is, not what he does, that’s rattled me. He’s—’
‘Arrogant and conceited. I heard you,’ the older woman laughed. ‘But perhaps he’s got problems, too,’ she appeased. As well as being a romantic, she was a born peacemaker, and Margaret smiled at her affectionately.
