The Doctor's Longed-For Family. Joanna Neil

let her go, and slowly her senses began to settle down once more. She felt hot all over and her head was filled with cotton-wool clouds that only dissipated once he had taken a step back from her. It was just as well they did, because she had work to do. How was she supposed to conduct interviews with her brain in absent mode?

      She saw him out of the room, but as she walked out into the corridor with him, she saw that Helen was hurrying towards them. The registrar stopped in her tracks, looking at him in wonder.

      ‘You’re Matt Calder from the TV, aren’t you?’ she said in an oddly breathless tone. ‘I can’t tell you how much I enjoy your programme…and your website…and I always try to catch your radio slot whenever it’s being aired while I’m driving to work.’ She stared at him in open-eyed wonder. ‘Are you here for the A and E post? Please, say that you are…I’ll be the envy of all my friends if you decide to come and work here.’

      Matt smiled at her. ‘Actually, no, I’m not. I wish it were otherwise, but I’m really only free for a few mornings a week.’

      ‘That’s all right. That’ll do fine,’ Helen said, a note of eagerness in her voice. ‘Whatever you can spare—anything—that would be great by me.’ Her eyes were wide with anticipation.

      Matt gave a soft laugh. ‘I’m glad you think so. I’m sure we would work very well together, given the chance, but, alas, I have other commitments at the moment. I’m filming over the next couple of weeks because we still have to do four more shows to complete the series.’

      ‘Couldn’t you do the show from here?’ Helen was clearly getting desperate now, and Abby gave her a sharp nudge with the toe of her shoe.

      ‘What?’ Helen reluctantly turned her gaze to Abby.

      ‘I think Dr Calder is going to be too busy to do that,’ Abby said in an even tone. ‘Besides, we shouldn’t delay him any longer. He has an appointment to keep.’

      ‘Oh, dear,’ Helen murmured. She turned her gaze back to him. ‘Do you really? That’s such a shame.’

      ‘I do. Dr Byford is quite right. I have to be somewhere else in a few minutes, but you’ve certainly given me food for thought and I’ll bear your suggestion in mind. Perhaps when my recording of Emergency Call comes to an end, I’ll have more time to spare.’ Matt threw a brief sideways glance in Abby’s direction, and she wondered if he was deliberately trying to rile her. ‘It’s been a pleasure to meet both of you.’

      ‘Believe me, the pleasure was all mine,’ Helen said huskily.

      Abby tugged on her arm and pulled her into the office as Matt turned away and began to stride down the corridor. ‘You’ve obviously taken leave of your senses,’ she hissed. ‘What are you on?’

      ‘Pheromones,’ Helen replied in a distracted voice. ‘Sheer, unadulterated male pheromones and animal magnetism. He has it in droves. He should bottle it. He’d make a fortune.’

      Abby made a wry face. ‘I think you’d better take a minute to pull yourself together,’ she said. ‘We have work to do.’

      Helen sighed. ‘I suppose we do, but I can tell you now, not one of the candidates is going to stand up to what I have in mind, not after that.’

      ‘Then I suggest you come back down to planet Earth, and make it quick,’ Abby said briskly. ‘We have to do some serious interviewing. I need to find someone who can fit in with the department and take some of the burden off our shoulders.’

      ‘Oh, well, if you put it that way…’

      A couple of hours later, Abby had to admit that they were no nearer to solving their problem. ‘The trouble is, the hours we’re offering people are either too few or too many,’ she told Helen. ‘Nothing seems to fit in with what the interviewees had in mind, and from our point of view we need someone who has strong paediatric qualifications. I don’t think that any of those people would be able to work under pressure. They just don’t seem to have the experience.’

      ‘It looks as though another advert will have to go in, then?’ Helen queried.

      ‘I guess so. I just wonder if we’ll get any more response than we had the first time around.’

      They made their way back to A and E, and she went to check on the progress of three-year-old Adam. He had come through everything all right, and it cheered her up that she could say as much to the distraught parents who were at his bedside.

      ‘Would you come and take a look at the girl in room one?’ Sam asked a little later. ‘She’s the two-year-old that I mentioned earlier. I’m beginning to be quite worried about her. She hasn’t had her full range of vaccinations because of illness in the past, so until the tests come back, I’ve no idea what I’m dealing with. She isn’t responding to antibiotics, and her fever is raging. Her heart rate is fast, as well as her breathing, and the pulse oximetry reading is very low. Do you think we need to do a lumbar puncture?’

      They were already walking towards the treatment room. ‘That’s a very invasive process,’ Abby said. ‘Is there any sign of a rash?’

      Sam shook his head. ‘Not as such, but she appears to be very ill. I’m afraid that she’s not responding to treatment, and that she might be going into septic shock. It seems as though there’s a systemic inflammatory response.’

      Abby looked at the toddler and her heart immediately went out to the child. She was dreadfully ill, unresponsive, and a brief examination left Abby concerned that her circulation was shutting down, despite the resuscitation procedures they had put in place.

      The parents were tearful, pleading with her to do something for their baby.

      ‘I know this is difficult for you,’ she told them. ‘Lucy is very ill, but we’re doing everything possible to help her. It looks as though she has a bacterial infection of some sort, possibly a form of pneumonia, and so far it isn’t responding to treatment. I’m going to change the antibiotics and add something to assist her circulation. We just have to hang in there and wait for the medicine to take effect.’

      Turning to Sam, she said in an undertone, ‘We’ll add a vasopressor to assist the blood flow, and a steroid to see if that will do something to reduce the inflammation.’

      Sam looked anxious, but she said softly, ‘You’re doing all right. You’ve done everything possible.’

      ‘I hope it’s enough.’

      She nodded. It was frightening to see a child looking so ill, and Lucy’s desperate condition weighed heavily on her mind as she left the room.

      Glancing across the expanse of the department, she caught sight of Matt Calder coming in through the main door, and her first instinct was to walk in the opposite direction. She resisted the impulse. Whatever her feelings towards him, she had a job to do, and she couldn’t simply take an escape route and avoid him.

      Then she saw that he wasn’t alone. He had with him the head of administration, and the two of them were chatting amicably, almost as though they were old friends.

      A nurse handed her a chart outlining another patient’s progress, and she quickly checked the details on it before adding her signature and handing it back. ‘You can reduce the observations to half-hourly,’ she told the girl. ‘His condition seems to be improving at last.’

      ‘I’ll do that.’ The nurse hurried away, and Abby headed for the trauma room so that she could examine a child who had just been brought in.

      ‘May we interrupt you for a moment?’ the head of administration queried gently.

      ‘Of course.’ She gave him a polite smile. She had nothing against the man personally, but his department was forever coming up with new edicts to be followed or targets that had to be met, and not one of them ever made her job any easier. The only way he and his kind would ever understand the constraints she was under would be if he was to try working at the rock face, but that wasn’t likely to happen