* This story is the next in my series. It is set just over three months after the conclusion of my last story, ‘One For My Baby’.
* The song featured is… ‘Acquiesce’ by Oasis. It is taken from their album, ‘The Masterplan’.
* These are not my characters. They belong to Constant-C, Warner Brothers or whomever. I do this for fun and receive no money from it.
* Thank you to my wonderful editors and friends, Emily, Amanda, and the new guy on the block, Michael. Your time, help and inspiration is greatly appreciated.
* And of course, never forgetting my readers. Thank you for your unending interest in my little hobby…
‘All that matters is love and work.’
- Sigmund Freud -
All That Matters
By Jo
dynamojo26@hotmail.com
"Okay… it’s official. I am taking a break…" Carol sighed, pushing back her hair and feeling the sweat beading on her forehead. "My legs feel like chewed string."
Joe Angelis chuckled at her in his warm, charismatic tone as they walked down the corridor beside one another. "It’s quite convenient being pregnant, isn’t it?" he teased. "All these spontaneous coffee breaks… putting your feet up when you’ve had enough…" Carol fixed him with a long, vaguely amused stare and replied,
"Uh-huh, that’s right… Pregnancy’s a picnic, Joe… to look like the back end of a bus is my life’s ambition." He laughed and held the door open for her as she headed into the lounge.
"So I guess you want me to make you a coffee, then?"
She smiled angelically. "You read my mind." He rolled his eyes and headed over to the counter, reaching for a couple of mugs from the wall and taking the coffee jug out of the machine.
"You take milk, don’t you?" he asked, mostly in confirmation, and she nodded, her eyes closed and one hand resting instinctively on her stomach. It had been the longest twelve-hour shift Carol had worked in living memory, and though there’d been no major traumas, there had been a steady stream of patients, and they had been working constantly. He handed her a mug and then balanced himself on the windowsill, crossing his legs loosely in front of him.
"I really wish you wouldn’t do that…" Carol objected. Joe glanced up.
"Do what?"
"Sit on the edge of the sill like that. It makes me nervous."
He grinned and stood up, moving around to the sofa where she was sitting, her feet up on the coffee table. "Sorry…" He sat down and stretched out his tall frame as best he could, his legs far too long and gangly to join hers on the coffee table. "There, is that better?"
"Much…" Carol smiled. "Have you called anyone else? Are they gonna make it to relieve anyone this evening?"
Joe shook his head. "Clare is still in Barcelona. The Embassy’s processing her a temporary passport, but she’s not gonna make it back till tomorrow morning at the earliest… and Jamal and Paula," Joe sighed. "Still can’t keep anything more than water down."
"Who are you gonna get to cover, then?" Carol asked, concerned, her staff-nurse persona stirring from its buried depths. "Temp staff?"
"No way… I’ll end up with someone from Oncology who hasn’t got a clue and spends all evening getting under everyone else’s feet…"
"Then who?"
"I don’t know…" He ran his hands through his hair and tugged his glasses off so he could rub his eyes. "It’s something I’d prefer not think about at this stage."
They were silent, Carol’s brain ticking over, wondering what they could do. "You could ask Doug…" she suggested after a moment’s thought. "He might cover for Paula."
"Doug? After a whole day in the office?" Joe looked at her sceptically.
"Depends if you can make it worth his while…"
"And how will I do that, huh? Trying to tempt him with a bonus for pulling a shift in the ER is a little like asking Bill Gates to babysit your kids for a couple of bucks."
Carol laughed. "You never know till you try, Joe…" she reasoned. "Anyway, he was just saying to me the other day that he missed seeing patients." At that moment, Joe’s pager went off, and he reached into his pocket and pulled it out, shaking his head,
"He misses this job?" he said, incredulously. "He’s crazy." He took a swig of coffee, and set down his mug, still only half drunk. "Well, my coffee break’s over…" he explained, adjusting his white coat. Another high-pitched bleeping began and Carol sighed,
"Looks like mine’s over, too…"
****
I don't know what it is
That makes me feel alive
I don't know how to wake
The things that sleep inside
I only wanna see the light
That shines behind your eyes
****
Doug was on the telephone when Cindy swept silently through to his office and started making off the wall hand signals at him. He tried to understand her, but couldn’t, and so shook his head and ignored her. She gave up and sat down on the edge of his desk, fidgeting as he finished the call. "What’s the problem?" he asked with a sigh, as he set the receiver down and looked up at her.
"I have to go to the airport."
"You have to…? What?" Doug stared, confused.
"I have to go pick Will up, remember?" She tilted her head. "I told you the other day."
"You did?"
"Oh, well, I do, anyway. Will you let me go?"
"When do you have to be there?" Cindy made a great show of checking her watch and weighing the situation up.
"About five minutes ago," she concluded. Doug chuckled.
"Ah… I guess you better go then, hmm?" He grinned at her as she slipped off the desk. "So much for those letters you were gonna type out for me…"
"On my desk," she said cheerily, as she headed out of the door. He chuckled, and followed her to the door. "One jump ahead of you, boy…" she added, nodding in the direction of a bundle of blue-enveloped letters, all neatly typed and addressed in Doug’s preferred font. She grabbed her denim jacket off the coat stand and swung it on, picking up her bag as she did so.
"Are you bringing him back here?"
She frowned, "Why, do you wanna see him about something?" Doug gave a little shrug.
"Nah, not really… I just thought we could… catch dinner or something. Carol’s off in an hour."
Cindy nodded, "Sure, good idea. I bet he’ll be starving." She searched in her bag for her car keys, and on locating them, opened the main door. "I’ll see you in a half hour or so, then?"
"Okay… I’ll go tell Carol…" he smiled.
****
Doug was on his way down to the ER to find Carol when Joe Angelis swooped up to him on the stairs, his face scowling, blinded with anger. "Hey…!" Doug exclaimed as Joe barrelled into him. "What’s the rush?"
"Where are all the damn surgeons?!" Joe yelled rhetorically, his blue eyes burning with a ferocity Doug had never seen before. "We’ve got an ER full of majors and nobody’s answering their pagers!" Doug’s eyebrows rose, as Joe started to run up the stairs again, calling back as he went,
"If you’re not busy, we could really use your help, Doug…" Doug frowned, thinking to himself that Joe was probably exaggerating the situation.
"Sure…" he agreed readily.
"Great… I owe you one…" came the answering shout down the stairwell. Doug grinned back and started downward again, hearing noise increasing with every step he took. As he pushed open the doors at the bottom, he was immediately met by a whirlwind of activity such as he’d not seen for years. He scanned for a familiar face, but the corridors were filled only with patients, walking wounded with gauze pressed to their heads or arms, people in wheelchairs, kids screaming, mothers fretting and fathers arguing with housekeeping staff. Aware that his suit camouflaged him to some degree, Doug wove in and out of the crowds, heading toward the trauma rooms.
As he got near, the doors flew open and Carol span out, her scrub shirt covered in blood and what looked like oil. "Hey, hey," he called, grabbing her arm as she rushed in front of him, unseeing. "What’s going on?"
"Oh, it’s you…" she said sharply, after she’d tugged her arm away viciously, believing he was a bad-tempered relative. "Sorry…" He followed her down the corridor as she jogged toward the storeroom. "Train versus school bus at a level crossing," she informed him as she wheeled inside and grabbed fresh lidocaine from the closet. "Can you help us out?" she asked, heading back out. Ben Campbell’s voice rang out from the trauma room,
"Carol! Where’s that lidocaine?!"
"Why do we have everything?" Doug asked, bemused.
"Our radio’s down," she explained. "One of the cars on the train is on fire and there’s something like forty majors and who knows how many minors. They’re sending everything our way, because we’re the nearest hospital, but we can’t cope… we’re short-staffed anyway." As she pushed open the swing doors to the trauma room, sound exploded in Doug’s ears, the dramatic but oddly alluring bleeps and squeals of machinery ringing loud and clear in his memory. Carol handed the lidocaine to Campbell, and then glanced around at Doug, shooting him a smile. "So, glove up and jump in."
Doug threw her smile straight back, and then shrugged off his suit jacket and rolled up his sleeves. "Gloves down there…" Carol instructed him and he tugged a pair out of the cart she had pointed to. "I think they need someone out front to receive. We’re getting more all the time."
"Sure…" he replied, and strode out of the doors.
He avoided the screaming children and worrying mothers and fathers, until he came to the ambulance bay and the automatic doors slid open for him. For an April evening, it was still bitingly cold outside, and his teeth instantly started to chatter as the wall of ice-sharp air hit him square in the face. He blinked a couple of times, and clasped his hands together, squeezing them to try to retain some of their warmth. Darkness was gathering slowly, the sky the sort of hypnotic graded blue that promised a cold, frosty night; the contrast between the clamour of the ER and the relative quiet outside was palpable. He took a deep breath and scanned the scene in front of him, his eyes tracing around the ambulance bay and then up toward the tree-lined sweeping ramp road that drew the emergency traffic up to the hospital.
A police car stood a short distance from the entrance, two burly cops talking rapidly into walkie-talkies, and another standing further down the ramp road. Doug walked up to them and asked, "You guys got an update?"
The elder of the two policemen at the car turned to him and confronted him with a steely glare, looking him up and down, taking in the business suit and the polished shoes. "Can’t disclose anything at the moment…" he said sharply, and turned back to his walkie-talkie. Doug grabbed his arm,
"I’m a doctor… I need to know if there’s more injured headed here." He took a few steps out toward the ramp road, searching for the sound of any sirens. The policeman stared at him, as if adjudging whether he was telling the truth or not, then reluctantly revealed,
"They don’t know. There’s a fire. They’re trying to get all the injured out of the way."
"Is anyone trapped?"
"No… thank God…" The policeman blew out air sharply. "The fire’s in the engine section, so the only people in it were the two engineers. They got out okay…" Inside the car, the radio crackled into life. "Hold on…" he said and dived inside. A flurry of exchanges took place, and then the policeman emerged again, "You got another one coming, doc…"
"Can you get anything on the patient?" Doug demanded. "A… a bullet report or something?" The policeman yelled into his walkie-talkie again.
"Er… you listen, doc…" He handed the radio over to Doug who was thrown into the middle of a broken bullet.
"Start again, start again!" he called into the receiver, but the paramedic had already signed off. "Damnit!" Doug cursed.
****
Meanwhile, at the airport, it didn’t take Cindy long to find Will, dressed in jeans and a black, tight-fitting shirt, standing alone and confused-looking in the concourse, two co-ordinated suitcases, a carryall and a sports bag at his feet. Slipping through the groups of waiting passengers, she walked over, a grin on her face. "Hey there, stranger…" she greeted. He was turned the other way, and didn’t notice her until she spoke, whereupon he spun around and enveloped her instantly in a somewhat overenthusiastic hug. "Woah…" she said, pleased and taken aback by his reaction, and tugged him slightly away.
"I was beginning to think you’d abandoned me," he admitted, smiling widely at her. "I had such a shitty flight. The man next to me stank like a rugby player after eighty minutes."
Cindy laughed at his familiar, odd sort of humour. "Isn’t that the point of transatlantic flights?" she questioned dryly. "To sit next to somebody completely revolting?" Will raised one eyebrow at her.
"No… that’s the point of the Underground. I expect better service from British Airways… I mean, they could have provided me with air freshener…" He rolled his eyes jokingly and grinned.
"Well, how about I buy you dinner? Will that make you feel better?"
"You have no idea," he sighed. "Can you carry the sports bag?" Cindy picked it up, was surprised by its lightness, and swung it over her shoulder. Will grabbed the carryall and slipped his arms through the handles so it could be carried on his back like a rucksack, then lifted the two suitcases with apparent ease.
She led him through the concourse and out toward the parking lot, "You cut your hair…" she noted as they reached the car and began loading his baggage into the trunk. He glanced at her and ran a hand through the short crewcut.
"Yeah… It’s my summer cut…" He tilted his head. "Don’t you like it?" She studied him a moment, frowning gently.
"I don’t know. It’s just kinda different, that’s all…" Will bobbed his eyebrows wickedly.
"But you liked it longer…?"
"I didn’t say that!" Cindy admonished, then corrected herself. "Okay, maybe I did kinda say that, but I don’t judge people by their haircuts."
"Oh noo…" He grinned. "Cos you’re sweetness and light itself, aren’t you?"
"That’s right. My halo is well and truly polished," she affirmed sarcastically. "Now… are you getting in or staying out?" He stared her out for a moment, and then swung himself into the car, chuckling.
They headed out of the airport and onto the road back to the hospital, but quickly found themselves in a line of traffic that appeared to be backed up almost as far as the eye could see. "What the Hell’s going on?" Cindy moaned, sliding the car out of gear and pulling the parking brake on. "It can’t be rush hour…"
"Well, not unless you have rush hour at four thirty in this city…" Will craned his head up against the window to try to see up the line of cars. "There’s flashing lights ahead," he announced. "You think there’s been a crash?"
"Someone’s probably t-boned someone else at the intersection or something…" She took her hands off the wheel and ran them restlessly through her hair. "They better hurry up, though. I promised Doug we’d meet him in an hour…"
Will made a doubtful face. "It looks quite busy up there… Maybe I should go and take a closer look?"
"It’ll clear…" Cindy explained rationally. "The fire trucks’ll be there…"
"Still…" Will reached for the door. "I’m going to go and take a look."
"Will, don’t…" But he was already out of the car.
"I won’t be a minute, and then I’ll come back, okay?" He gave her an encouraging smile, then slammed the door shut and was heading off down the road. Cindy sighed, watching his walk become a slow jog, realising not for the first time that Will Kelly had a mind of his own and was apt to use it.
****
Doug was fighting with the wind and the plastic apron Carol had tied around him when he stepped out again into the ambulance bay. The casualties had kept coming, unheeding of his demand to the police officers standing outside, and now the ER was at saturation point. "Send them away!" he called to the cops again. "We can’t take any more!"
"Can’t do anything about it, doc!" They yelled back. "You gotta take these next ones… You’re the nearest hospital…"
Doug sighed. There was something about these chaotic occasions that made him both helpless and incensed. "Okay… but no more! I’m shutting the ER down so we can get a handle on what we already got." The older officer cast him a vague sneer and then picked up his radio receiver and began talking. Doug felt his shoulders slump a little. A siren was howling somewhere in the distance, and was clearly getting closer.
He listened, judging the rising and falling pitch of the sound, trying to place where it was coming from and how close it was, feeling his breath coming quicker. The air he drew in was expectant, like the pause between the intake of breath and the uttering of words, and he waited, feeling the hairs on the back of his neck rise instinctively, and the blood begin to pound just that bit faster. It was a familiar feeling, but one he hadn’t really felt since he left Chicago, a sacrifice he had made to the secure but sterile monotony of an office post. Soon the ambulance would come swooping around the corner and into the bay, its lights flashing frantically in the half-darkness of the evening, and would empty its distressed contents onto the pavement, like a beast of mercy discharging its latest salvation.
The wind had picked up even while he’d been standing there, and was now roaring through the gap between the hospital buildings, picking up stray leaves and pieces of garbage as it gusted. Doug watched a skittering plastic coffee cup for a moment, spellbound by the strange, swirling dance it performed in the gutter to the right of him, before plunging away down the street.
The sirens were growing ever louder, and suddenly, through the break in the artificially planted row of lime trees, he saw the blue lights spinning. He fought a final time with his apron before the ambulance rolled up to him, shunted around and then reversed backwards a little, so its doors were pointing toward the main entrance.
A brief second passed before those doors swung open with a crash, and a non-uniformed paramedic and a gurney were disgorged. Doug blinked, and ran forward, "What have you got?" he demanded, barely even looking up. "This is Tyler. Ten-years-old. Blunt force trauma to the thorax and compound fracture of the right tibia and fibia. Unconscious from the pick-up. Pulse weak and thready, BP 60 over 40. Put in a tube thoracostomy at the site, and we’ve been bagging him ever since. He’s had two litres of normal saline, wide bore…"
"Will?" Doug managed to utter, belatedly recognising the voice as they juggled the gurney between them and rushed for the ER. "What are you doing here?"
Will glanced up and smiled. His face was smeared somewhat dramatically with soot, and there was blood on his shirt. "Ran into a bit of an upheaval on the way back from the airport," he explained quickly, following Doug’s lead with the gurney. "They were quite grateful for the extra hands." Doug bobbed his eyebrows.
"And Cindy?"
"I left her stuck in the traffic… I’m gonna phone her now, because I trust you people can handle it from here on." Doug chuckled,
"Handle it? Just about…" He banged the gurney into one the trauma rooms, and immediately began to bark out instructions to the waiting nursing staff. Will jumped back from Doug’s practiced routine, and skipped out of the trauma room. He looked right and left down the corridor, deciding which way to go, and then tracked back on himself, and headed out to the ambulance bay where it was quieter. He reached into the pocket of his jeans and pulled out his cellphone, switching it on as he exited, glad he’d temporarily had it signed up to a roaming tariff. Another man walked with him outside, tall and from the state of his navy-blue scrubs, clearly a doctor in the ER. Will smiled casually, then took a step to one side, flipping his phone open and dialling a number swiftly from memory.
"Cin… it’s me…" he said. On the other end, Cindy’s voice crackled back,
"Where the Hell are you, Will? Everything’s cleared. I’ve been driving around for twenty minutes trying to find you."
"I’m at the hospital. I kind of hitched a ride with a paramedic…" he explained with an ironic chuckle. "Can you get here?"
"Of course I can, but it’s gonna take me a while," she hissed. "They’ve detoured us right out onto the ring and the traffic’s… Damnit, why are you stopping now?!" She gave a frustrated moan, and Will heard her hit the steering wheel with a flattened hand.
"Hey, calm down," he sympathised. "Take your time and don’t do anything risky. I’m going to go back in and see if I can help out a bit more, okay? See you soon." He flicked his cellphone closed and dropped it back into his pocket. Glancing to one side, he saw that the doctor at the entrance had been watching him, and he cast him another polite smile, and headed over, "Do you work here, mate?" he asked casually.
"Yes,"
"Well, just wondering if you needed some help? I’m a doctor…"
"I figured… The blood on your shirt kinda gave it away," Will looked down at his shirt and chuckled.
"Oh well, good thing I brought my bottle of Stain Devil with me. Who are you?"
"Joe Angelis. This is my ER…" Will nodded.
"Oh, nice one… Great to meet you… Will Kelly…" He held out his hand, and Joe shook it.
"So, can I do anything?" Will repeated eagerly. "I’m from Britain, but take my word for it, I’m a qualified doctor… paediatrician, actually…" Joe paused.
"Do you have a job here?"
"No, no, not just yet… I’ve… I just flew over today, and I thought I could scout around once I’d got my stuff in order. You know, check a few places out before I made any definite commitments."
Joe nodded, cleared his throat and looked firmly at him. "Oh, well, I can’t let you work if you haven’t been registered by the AMA… You don’t have the paperwork." Will blinked and glanced away, surprised by the response.
"You just look like you’re pretty busy…" he noted. Joe had turned and was heading back inside. Will followed him, a pace behind due to Joe’s massive strides. "Surely I can help out with something…?"
"No, sorry. Rules are rules…" He spread his hands emphatically. "Are you with somebody?"
"I know Doug Ross…" Will replied, a little dejected. Joe nodded,
"Okay, well, if you wanna wait over there, in the lounge, I’ll get him to find you as soon as he has a spare moment…" He pointed to the lounge, next to the packed triage section, filled with walking wounded and anxious relatives.
"Are you sure I can’t…?"
"Hey… What’s going on?" Doug’s voice came from behind Will, and he turned slightly.
"You didn’t tell me you had a friend coming over the water, Doug?" Doug flicked his head to face Joe quickly,
"No…" He paused. "Is something up? I heard you yelling…" Joe shook his head.
"No, no… I was just pointing your friend in the direction of the lounge."
"Ah," Doug blinked in surprise. "And you don’t think there’s anything for him to do?"
"He’s not registered to work in this country…"
"I know, but I don’t think…" Doug glanced pointedly over to the triage section. "We’re in too much of a position to be choosy…" Joe followed his gaze.
"Doug… you know we can’t allow that… He’s not insured. The hospital’s not covered…" He paused. "If we toe the line like that, it could backfire and we’d end up in all sorts of problems." He crossed his arms across his chest in a manner that suggested he was not going to be swayed easily. Will shifted his weight, feeling uncomfortable that Doug should be standing up for him while he was silent.
"Look, mate, forgive me for being so bold," he began, "but you appear to have at the very least, walking wounded all over your department. If you ask me, you need all the bloody help you can get." Joe opened his mouth to reply. "I’m a doctor," Will continued. "Are you seriously telling me to go and sit on my arse when I could be getting those patients out from under your feet?"
"Yeah, Joe," Doug argued. "Okay, keep him away from the majors, but he can’t mess up a few sutures…"
Joe’s face was impassive, staring somewhere into the middle distance. "I can’t let him work…" he said finally. "It’s illegal." Doug gave a shake of his head, feeling the same sort of frustration and irritation rising that he’d felt when he’d been confronted with, what seemed to him, irrational responses in the past, usually at the hands of Kerry Weaver. He took a breath and resisted his temper,
"Cut the crap, Joe… Let the guy do his stuff and we’ll deal with the consequences later."
Joe looked at him, his face changing, and then spread his arms. "Okay, fine… but on your head be it, Doug. I’m gonna make it known that I objected to this decision though…"
"You do that, Joe…" Doug half-growled back, and they parted. Doug turned back to Will, who was looking a little culpable.
"Shit, sorry, Doug," he apologised. "I didn’t mean to drop you in it like that…" Doug gave a little shrug.
"Ah, forget it. He does this sometimes. He’ll cool off in a while and everything’ll go back to normal. You can count on it." He slapped Will on the back gently. "Now go and check out some of those patients."
****
I hope that I can say
The things I wish I'd said
To sing my soul to sleep
And take me back to bed
You want to be alone
When we could be alive instead
****
Doug wandered back along the corridor, enjoying the thought that now the ER was closed to trauma, there would be a lull in activity. He traced his steps back to the exam room he had left and opened the door again. "Carol, you finished up in here?"
He caught sight of her and laughed aloud. She was lying prostrate on an empty bed, a towel lying over her face, one hand on her stomach, the other curled around her head. "What you doin’?" he asked, coming up to her. She grunted from underneath the towel and replied,
"Cooling down…" Doug noticed that the towel was damp. "I’ve got a furious headache."
"Want me to get you something?"
She shook her head, then slowly sat up, removing the towel, blinking instinctively at the brightness. She’d taken her hair out of its tight braid, and it was loose and wild around her shoulders, the way he liked it best. But despite her naturally forgiving curls, there could be no mistaking that her face was tired, drained and pale, and Doug frowned, thinking she looked sick. "When was the last time you had a break, kiddo?" She thought for a moment,
"A few hours ago… I grabbed a coffee at lunch…" He gazed at her, concerned,
"A few hours? That’s more like five, Carol…" She shrugged her shoulders, and roughly pulled back her hair again, gathering it into a ponytail and securing it.
"I know, but things have been pretty busy. And apart from Ellen, I’m the only fully qualified nurse on today… I couldn’t just leave them to handle everything on their own. They wouldn’t have coped." He looked at her closely, still not quite understanding her system of logic. Despite all the warnings and medical risks, she was still living life completely unchanged, throwing herself into chaotic traumas, agreeing to pull shifts for colleagues or just staying on overtime when she should have been at home with her feet up. It was almost as if she were ignoring everything she’d been told on purpose.
And he felt like such an ogre for dragging the issue back out into the light. He sighed and gently reasoned, "Carol, Emilie gave you orders to take it easy. No stress… no hard work, plenty of breaks…"
"Oh, Doug, it’s been one day!" Carol exclaimed in what had come to be her usual dismissive tone and swung her legs over the edge of the bed so she could sit facing him. "Anyway, I’m fine… really…" She smiled reassuringly at him. He studied her for a moment.
"You know I don’t believe you…" he said after a moment. She grinned,
"I know, but you can’t blame a girl for trying…" She leaned forward and kissed him gently, holding her lips against his for a few seconds.
"Mmm…" They broke apart and gazed at each other. "Are you gonna work that shift for Joe?" she asked, laying her hands on his shoulders as he stood in front of her. He made a less than enthusiastic face,
"I dunno… I haven’t really thought about it yet…" He waited for her to encourage him, as was her way, to help their friend out, but it did not come, and instead, she was silent. "What’s up?" he added, noticing her mood. She smiled softly,
"Oh, nothing, I’m okay… I just…" The smile became a small, mischievous grin. "After today, I really wanted to go home together… Have a quiet night in." Doug’s eyes sparkled and he grinned in reply.
"Yeah? It’d be the first time in a long while…"
"Too long…" He reached up and encased her perfect, precise, face in his hands and cradled it for a moment.
"I miss working together…" he said in a low voice, still holding her face. Carol chuckled,
"Yeah, I bet you do," He chuckled with her, catching her meaning. "Not the same as it used to be, hmm?"
"Mm… You know, I remember the first time I saw you…" He lowered his hands and let them fall to her waist. "You were coming out of the washrooms… You’d been in there to wash your face… I knew because you had these little wet spots…" He brought his hand up to her face again, and ran it gently along her hairline. "All along here… and, you turned and looked at me, and I could see your cheeks were flushed and your eyelashes were all wet…" He touched the outside edge of her right eye with his thumb delicately. "And you know what I thought?"
She smiled tolerantly, "Do I wanna know?" Doug grinned wickedly,
"I thought about whether that was how you looked when you made love in the shower…" Carol gazed at him, a laugh in her eyes, then giggled quietly.
"And when you found out… Was it how I looked?" His hands were back up at her face. He was smiling.
"I was spot on, kiddo…" And he leaned in and kissed her, deeper than before, shifting himself slightly so he was standing between her legs. As she was reaching up to bring his face in still closer, the door of the exam room banged open, and they jerked apart, Carol immediately dropping her gaze in embarrassment.
"Ooh, excuse me…" It was Will Kelly, his familiar, clipped voice deliberately saucy. "Someone called Ellen told me you were in here looking at x-rays. She was clearly misinformed…" Doug cast him an amused, but unimpressed look,
"What do you want, Will?"
"Well, I hate to, er, dampen your ardour, but there’s a kid out here I really want someone to take a look at. I think he might be a surgical case…" Doug’s eyes instantly changed, and he stepped away from Carol, putting on his doctor’s hat.
"Yeah?"
"Abdominal pains," Will explained. "But he’s got some guarding and rebound. If I could take a guess, I’d think it was his spleen… Probably a slow bleeder that was missed from before."
"And who saw him before?"
"I’m not sure. I don’t know whose initials are whose… Er, I think it was J. A…"
"That’s Joe… but it’s not like him to miss something…" Doug said aloud, taking the chart that Will was holding out for him. He scan read it quickly, then turned back to Carol. "I’m gonna go and take a look at this one, okay?" She nodded.
"Sure…"
Doug and Will walked out of the exam room, and Will led him along the corridor to where the young patient was waiting, on a gurney, hidden by a curtain. "Hey there, Chris…" Will greeted the teenager who was lying back, looking a little pale, but otherwise unscathed. "This is Doctor Ross, he’s going to have a quick look at your stomach, okay? Just to be on the safe side…"
Chris glanced at Doug with a slightly bemused expression. "But I’m okay, someone saw me before and said I was okay…"
"Yeah, we know, buddy," Doug added, "but we need to be sure. Can you pull your shirt up for me?" Chris obliged, unbuttoning his checked shirt to the mid-chest. Doug leaned forward and began a quick examination. Immediately, two other, much younger, faces appeared right beside Chris,
"Expelliarmus!" They yelled together, and pointed two foot-long pieces of twig at Doug, who jumped slightly at the odd appearance,
"Hey, where did you guys come from?"
"They were under the gurney… They’re pretending to be Harry Potter hiding from Lord Voldemort." Will explained, and walked around to tactfully extract them from Doug’s work. "This is Thomas, and this is Madison. They’re Chris’s brother and sister."
"I’m supposed to be looking after them while Mom’s away…" Chris told Doug, who nodded, and grinned at the two younger children.
"Well, looks like you’re entertaining them…" Thomas and Madison looked at him suspiciously, as if he were up to something they weren’t quite sure if they liked. Doug cast a warning look at Will. "Okay, let’s take at look at your belly, then…" He started to examine Chris.
"Ow… watch what you’re doing…" Chris objected as Doug gently pressed his belly.
"Okay, that’s okay… sorry, buddy… Where’s your Mom, Chris?"
"She’s getting some x-rays done, and a thingy… a, er…" He looked to Will for the word.
"A CT… They’ve been waiting for her to come back down, but Radiology are so busy, they’re taking their time processing everyone." Doug nodded.
"Okay, Chris, that’s not a problem. I’m a bit concerned about your belly… So, I’m gonna take you up to surgery and they’re gonna to do an operation, just to see what’s going on, okay?"
"An operation? They’re gonna cut me open?" He was startled. Doug paused, and looked at the two kid siblings, who were still pointing their makeshift wands at him, watching with glaring eyes and ruddy faces. "Will, can you take them away?" he whispered. Will nodded, and took Madison’s hand.
"Come on, you two, I think I know where we could find Lord Voldemort. Shall we go search for him, before he escapes?" Madison and Thomas nodded eagerly, and amazingly, happily pottered off with Will.
"I’m gonna have to have an operation?" Chris repeated, and Doug drew his attention back to his patient.
"There’s nothing to worry about, Chris," Doug explained. "But when you were in the accident, you must have hit your belly… And because you hit it quite hard, you could’ve damaged some of the blood vessels inside you. And the doctors need to find out if you have, so they can fix them and make you better…"
"But I feel fine…"
"I know you do, but that could change, and we don’t want you to go home and start feeling sick there, okay?"
Chris stared at Doug, his eyes frightened. "I never had an operation before…" he said quietly.
"No…? I never broke a bone before," Doug replied. "Have you ever broken one?"
"Oh, yeah," Chris said nonchalantly. "I broke my arm twice when I was a kid, and I do judo at school, so I’m always getting hurt like that…"
"Ah, there you go, this’ll be a piece of cake for you, buddy…" Doug grinned, and Chris grinned back, his anxiety fast disappearing.
****
Will wandered along the corridors with Thomas and Madison in tow, pretending to be looking for Lord Voldemort, before giving up and taking them into the lounge. Carol was in there, downing a cup of coffee. "Wow, you must have a mouth made of asbestos…" he murmured, and she looked up, grinning, and admitted,
"No, it’s cold… It’s been here since lunch…"
"Ew…"
"I know, it’s disgusting… But I don’t have time to grab a fresh one and wait for it to cool." She glanced at Thomas and Madison. "Who’ve we got here?" she asked.
"This is Thomas and Madison…" He winked, "Or Harry Potter and Hermione Granger. We’re trying to find Lord Voldemort…"
"Ah…" Carol smiled at the two kids. A surreptitious smile crept across Madison’s face and she set off toward Carol in a determined fashion. Carol bent down as she got near, and Madison put her hot little hands on her thigh and whispered up in her ear,
"That man’s from Ingerland…" she said in a conspiratorial voice, as if she wasn’t quite sure if Will wasn’t Lord Voldemort. Carol chuckled,
"Yes, he is… And where are you from?"
"Mommy’s stomach," She replied matter-of-factly, and Carol smiled. Slowly, Madison pressed a finger into Carol’s bump and added, "Are you having a little brother too?" Carol laughed aloud again.
"Not a brother, sweetheart… I’m having a baby of my own…"
"Oh," Madison studied her carefully, then walked back to Will.
There was a brief knock at the door and Cindy stepped inside, "Oh, am I glad I found you guys…" she sighed. "It’s mad out there." She threw a thumb back toward the ER. "A couple of police officers just arrived, Carol… They need someone to see to some cuts they got from the accident and then get back again. Can you find someone to see them?"
"I can stitch them up…" suggested Will. Carol glanced at him.
"Yeah, I guess you could… Do you mind?"
"Not at all."
"What about these two?" Carol angled her head in the direction of Thomas and Madison. "Aren’t you supposed to be looking after them?"
"Ah… yeah…" Will glanced down at the two kids, then immediately up at Cindy. "Cin?"
"Yes, alright," she sighed, rolling her eyes. He shot her a grin, and departed with Carol.
****
Carol showed Will his way through to an empty exam room, and then invited the first police officer to come in. He was bleeding only slowly from a slight head wound, but two or three sutures would be needed to close the cut. She laid out all the instruments he would need on a tray and stood by while he numbed the wound with local anaesthetic. It was interesting to watch Will, who amounted to a foreign doctor, perform the same task she’d seen a thousand times before, but in a uniquely different way. He was slower, extremely methodical, and talked through the entire procedure, as if dictating to a silent watcher. "Why are you telling me all this?" she asked after a moment, curious as to why he thought she needed the information. Will looked up, a confused expression on his face and frowned,
"I’m not telling you it," he said. "It’s just what I do… Why, don’t you do that over here?"
"Only in trauma," Carol laughed. Will smiled at her,
"Oh, sorry… So you want me to shut up, then?"
"I didn’t say that…" she grinned. He chuckled, and went back to his work, holding back his monologue.
"I hear Doug’s staying on for an extra shift?"
"He’s not sure yet…" Carol told him. "But, I don’t think he really wants to. He’s been working all day. We both have, and I’m so tired I can’t even think straight."
Will bobbed his head. "Probably a good idea to go home and relax, then…" He finished up his final suture, and carefully tied off the thread and cut it clean. "Right…" he said, turning to face the police officer. "I think you’ll do, mate. Just take care of that over the next week or so. Keep it as dry as you can…" The police officer nodded, and headed out wordlessly, holding the piece of gauze Carol had cut him to his head. "Do you want to ask the next one to come in?"
Carol didn’t reply, and Will turned to her. She was suddenly very pale, with eerie concentration etched on her face, and he looked at her with a faintly amused smile, thinking she was teasing him, "Very funny, you’re an Oscar-winner darlin’…" He turned away again, opening his mouth to make another irreverent comment, but as he did so there was a crash and suddenly, she was falling from beside him, her legs crumpling underneath her. Reaching out with an instinctive hand he snagged her as she fell, grabbing her arm before she quite hit the floor. "Woah…" He adjusted her dangling position and laid her gently on the ground. "Where’d that come from? Carol? Can you hear me?"
There was no response. Smartly, Will checked her pulse and her pupil response, and then lifted her up and carried her out of the exam room. Ben Campbell was in the corridor as he stepped out and shouted, "Oh, my God, Carol!"
He ran to Will’s side. "What happened?!"
"It’s okay, I got her. She just flopped… Have you got somewhere we can check her out?" Campbell nodded and side-stepped in his nervous manner along the corridor to one of the trauma rooms. "Where’s Doug?"
"I don’t know. He went out to get a coffee with Joe…"
"Can you find him?"
Campbell nodded. Will set Carol’s limp body down on the gurney and adjusted her legs. "What do you want, doc?" Will turned and saw the older lady he’d been speaking to before, the one called Ellen with the short brown hair and rounded figure. He tilted his head in acknowledgement of her presence and replied,
"Full blood count… chems… er, I have the feeling I know what this is though…" He paused and added, "Do you have a blood sugar tester?" Ellen nodded and grabbed one from the trolley.
"Okay…" Will picked up her finger and pressed the machine against the tip, drawing a little droplet of blood. He waited a moment, while the machine did its quick calculations, and then bleeped twice. He nodded at the result, "Can we hook up a saline drip with 5pc dextrose solution in it, please? Her blood sugar’s about as low as it can go…"
The doors swung open and Doug burst in, a look on his face like someone had just told him a nightmare had come true. Will had the feeling Campbell had exaggerated. "What happened?"
"It’s okay," he explained, calmly. "She just lost it in there… could be something to do with the fact that her blood sugar’s two…" There was a pause, filled with the sound of Doug murmuring something inaudible. He had taken Carol’s hand and was clasping it tightly, as if he thought that if he squeezed hard enough, it would bring her around.
"She didn’t eat lunch…" He thought aloud, and shook his head. "I told her I’d take her to lunch today, but I didn’t have time. I just assumed she’d…" He ran his hands through his hair distractedly. "Damnit, Carol, you’re supposed to be looking after yourself…" He took a quick look at the IV Will had hooked up and then suddenly remembered and felt his heart shoot into his throat. "Is… is the baby okay?"
"Can we get an ultrasound scanner in here, please?" Will asked Ellen. "Doug, I don’t think it’s anything to worry about… Just a minor LOC…"
As he spoke, Carol’s eyes rolled and opened, dull and disorientated. She stared distantly at the ceiling for a moment, then appeared to focus in and picked out the two familiar faces beside her. "Hey…" Doug leaned forward, studying her languid, faraway gaze. "You’re back…" He smiled and took a step closer in. "You blacked out on us for a minute." Her face was distant, as if trying to gather her thoughts into coherency. Her lips were paler than usual, but they curved up slowly, and her lashes seemed even darker than ever against the china white of her skin. Doug’s heart was hammering in his chest, and he knew that if he let go of her, his hand would start to tremble.
She rolled her head to one side and studied him frankly for a moment and then she sighed, lifting her hand along with his and squeezing it. He nodded almost imperceptibly in acknowledgement of the action. "I feel dizzy…" she murmured hoarsely.
"You will do. Your blood sugar was through the floor…" Will explained. "You didn’t have lunch, did you?"
She broke Doug’s gaze and stared at Will. "No… I forgot…" For almost the first time since she had met him, Carol saw utter sincerity on Will Kelly’s face as he replied,
"Carol, I don’t think I have to remind you that you’re eating for two now…" Doug lowered his head.
"I know…" she began. "I just forgot, that’s all…"
"You can’t do that, Carol," Doug interrupted tiredly, his emotions rising to a lump in his throat. She had once half-teasingly accused him of being ‘insouciant’, and now he felt as if the characteristic had been transferred and she was the one who was playing recklessly. "You have to look after yourself or things are gonna end up even more screwed up than they already are. You worked fourteen hours straight today, yeah?" He glanced at her and she nodded awkwardly, feeling an odd mixture of guilt, anger and regret churning in her stomach. "You can’t do that and expect to be okay when all you’ve eaten all day is a bowl of cornflakes…"
She looked down and Doug realised that his voice had been sharper than it should have been. "I… Sorry, I shouldn’t have yelled…" he apologised, and she glanced up and gave him a troubled smile. Will stepped away and said discreetly,
"I’m going to see where that ultrasound has got to…" He cast her a gentle smile and left them alone.
Carol was silent for a long moment, as if gathering her thoughts, and when she spoke, her voice was barely above a whisper. "You think I’m wrecking this, don’t you?"
"No… no, of course I don’t…" he answered quickly. She looked away, then slowly sat herself up, frowning as her head complained with a sharp twinge of pain.
"But you don’t think I’m taking it seriously enough, do you?"
He stared at her, not quite sure whether she was probing for a truth or whether she wanted him to tell a white lie to bolster her spirits. "I, ah… the thought has crossed my mind…" he murmured finally. She nodded, but fell silent again. He waited.
"Doug, I’m sorry… I’m so…"
Suddenly, she was crying, and Doug didn’t know what to do. He stared at her for a moment as she furiously wiped away her tears, angry with herself for letting them out, then slowly brought his arms around her and embraced her. "Carol… what are you saying sorry for? There’s nothing to be sorry about…"
"There is…!" she exclaimed, still tearful. She pulled away from him, fighting his arms off her and shook her head. "I can’t do this… I, I can’t…" She sighed, exasperated by her own inability to form words, to make sense of her own thoughts. "I look at myself in the mirror every morning and I can see this… baby… this bump just growing and growing… And I, I can barely look at it." She stopped and Doug found himself stunned into silence. He had never expected to hear this from her, the one who had been so sure, so damned sure of this pregnancy and everything surrounding it. It was only he, he thought, who constantly worried if this was the day something terrible would happen, only he who prayed every time he looked at her that everything would work out fine. She, he had thought, was contented, projecting an inner calm he was secretly jealous of… but suddenly, now, it was all pouring out, and she had fooled him utterly.
"Carol… what are you trying to say?" He looked at her and saw a world of uncertainty and trepidation in her eyes. She was trying to hold back her tears again.
"I’m scared, Doug…"
"Oh, sweetheart…" He reached out and enveloped her in his arms again, and this time, she didn’t object. For a moment, they just held each other, rocking silently, but it was what spilled from his mouth next that shocked him, given his predominate state of mind. "There’s nothing to be scared about…"
"Really? Is that what you think?" She was hopeful.
"Sure it is…"
"You’re not worried?"
"Of course I’m worried, but we’ll be okay… we’re gonna get through this…" He smoothed her hair tenderly. She shook her head against him,
"I… I lie awake in bed at night thinking about whether I made the right decision… and then I come to work in the morning and I bury myself in everything I possibly can so I can think about something else…" Doug listened, realising that this was affecting her more than she had ever let on. "I don’t know if everything’s gonna be okay," she confessed. "I said I did, but I… I don’t know anymore… I don’t think I ever did... I just…" She pulled away from him and looked up at him. "I just wanted it so badly. I wanted to do this again… for you…"
He blinked in surprise, "For me?" A thin, wry smile crossed her lips,
"Because you missed it last time… and that was my fault…"
"Oh, Carol…" he sighed. "You have nothing to prove to me…"
"But that’s the thing," she explained, finding herself almost laughing at the cruel irony. "I know I don’t have anything to prove now, but then… I was still thinking about it… about everything that happened, and I wasn’t sure if you had ever really forgiven me."
He looked at her straight. "Carol, I never blamed you for anything. Not really…" She ignored him,
"I was so sure because I had convinced myself that whatever doubts there were in my head, a baby would solve them… Because you could see it this time…"
He wondered what he could say to convince her she was wrong. "But, you see," he began after a while, "I did see it." She gave him a peculiar stare. "I mightn’t have seen it for real, but in my head, I was seeing it all along." He smiled at the memory. "I would come home from work and watch cable just so I could see those stupid shows on birth and pregnancy. And I’d imagine you like the women on the television, all soft and rounded, with a big smile on your face… and maybe that was better…" He grinned teasingly. "Because I never had to see you with a backache, or your feet swollen, and feel like a complete useless jerk because I couldn’t help you, when it was me who put you in that position in the first place…"
She chuckled at his attempt at humour. They gazed at each other for a moment, Doug’s chuckle slowly evaporating. "We’ll be okay," he said eventually. "You just gotta be a bit more careful." She nodded, looking down.
The doors swung open and Will Kelly was back, wheeling an ultrasound scanner cumbersomely into the room. He smiled at Carol, "Would you like to see your wee one?" he asked.
"Yeah, I would…" Carol replied. "It’ll be the first time since I started getting big."
"Ah, then it’ll be a good one," Will confidently set up the machine and its equipment. Carol pulled her t-shirt up and her scrub pants down a little and lay back as Will squeezed some Surgi-lube onto her abdomen. "Cold?" he grinned.
"Uh-huh," she grimaced. He picked up the scanner and placed it on her belly. Immediately, the room was filled with gently rhythmic pulsing. He moved the head around a little, smoothing out the lubricant, then settled in one position, a little lower and to the right of her belly button.
"There you go…" Will smiled. "One heartbeat, good and strong…" Carol’s face split into an immense grin and she looked over at Doug. "See look, there’s the wee one," He pointed to the screen, where a fuzzy whiteness was flickering in a dark space. "And he’s moving…"
"It’s a boy?" Carol asked quickly. "Can you tell?"
"Just a turn of phrase, my darlin’," Will laughed. "We’re facing the other way at the moment. A bit camera shy, I suppose." She sighed happily, and stared at the image on the screen a moment longer, then turned to Doug, "What do you think?"
He made a low, indeterminate sound in his throat, and nodded distantly. His eyes were fixed on the little grey blob on the screen, and a smile was fixed on his face. Carol smiled, joy surging through her. This was what she’d wanted to see.
****
Because we need each other
We believe in one another
And I know we're going to uncover
What's sleepin' in our soul
Because we need each other
We believe in one another
(And) I know we're going to uncover
What's sleepin' in our soul
What's sleepin' in our soul
****
They were just packing up the ultrasound scanner as Emilie Jarnet strode into the trauma room, all business in her white coat and a blue surgical cap. "I came as quickly as I could," she explained, sweeping the cap off her head to reveal her chin-length blonde hair. "What happened?"
Will handed her the chart and explained, "Brief LOC, that’s all." His voice was brisk and unfussy. "She’s on a dextrose saline IV at the moment, and is improving all the time. Pulse and BP never dropped enough to cause any problem." Emilie nodded, glancing briefly at Will.
"Who are you?" she asked with a slight frown. Will grinned,
"Friend and knight in shining armour…" He winked at Carol, who shook her head with a smile.
"Ah…" Emilie nodded. "Well, you’ve done a good job." She turned to Carol. "Everything looks fine now, Carol, but I think we’re going to have to keep our eye on your diet from now on. You were very hypoglycaemic, and that could be an indicator that you’re going to develop gestational diabetes in your third trimester. A lot of women can be like that…"
"But everything’s okay now?" Carol asked nervously. Emilie gave her an encouraging smile.
"Sure is… But I think it might be a good idea if we admitted you for the night… Just for observation." Carol looked quickly at Doug.
"Do I have to? I wanted to go home…"
"Well, it’s not entirely my decision, I have to admit," Emilie said, "I have to speak to the ward and see if they’ve got an emergency bed, but I would suggest it, yes, Carol."
"But can’t Doug…?" she began, but Emilie cut her off,
"I don’t think so… Really, you should be on a foetal monitor overnight, to be sure the baby isn’t in any distress. Sometimes these things take a few hours to manifest themselves."
"But we did a scan, and the baby’s okay," Carol argued. The last thing she wanted to do was spend a sleepless night in an uncomfortable hospital bed. "And I’d get more rest at home."
Emilie sighed and made a face, studying the chart carefully. "I don’t know, Carol… I really don’t recommend it…"
"If she wants to come home," Doug interrupted, "it’s not a problem. I can take care of her okay." Emilie glanced at Doug, misgivings written on her face.
"I’m not doubting your ability, Doug," she said in a low voice. "I just think it would be wise…" Doug frowned. "But I’ll see about a second opinion, okay?" His frown lifted and he nodded,
"Can I come with you?"
"If you want…" Emilie agreed, picking up her surgical cap from the end of the gurney and tucking it into the pocket of her white coat. "But if Alicia agrees with my decision, that’s the end of it." He nodded,
"Let’s go, then."
****
Will covered his mouth as he yawned, but it didn’t fool Carol, who was sitting up properly now and feeling much better. "Go, Will…" she murmured, smiling at him. "You don’t have to stay…"
"I know, but it’s only right. Until Doug gets back…"
"He’ll be back soon, it’s okay…" She placed her hand on his arm, but he did not take the hint and remained still. "Really, Will…"
He looked at her carefully. "Carol, I’m not leaving you until he gets back, okay? So stop arguing the toss." His face was firm, and she sighed good-naturedly, giving up. It had been surprisingly nice to have him sitting with her, as it had given her someone to talk to and alleviated her boredom somewhat, but now she could tell his mind was elsewhere.
"What are you thinking about?" she asked. He looked down at her and tilted his head questioningly. "You were somewhere else…"
"Oh… I… I was just thinking about something…" She smiled at him, her expression telling him she was not going to take that for an answer. He sighed, "I was thinking about what on Earth I’m doing here."
"I thought you wanted to come work here…?" Carol replied, confused.
"I do… but that’s not it…" He paused. "I mean, a job is what I thought I’d done this for, but now I’m here I’m still not feeling like it’s all right, if you know what I mean… something’s missing…" He smiled distantly. "And I’m not sure what…"
"Well, you gotta get someplace to live," she reminded him. "And a car…" He made a face, his fingers pulling distractedly at the lace on his shoe.
"Cindy said I could crash at her place till I get somewhere organised…" Carol nodded,
"Is it Cindy?"
Will looked up immediately and frowned. "No, no… it’s not her…" He paused for a long moment. "We’re okay…"
"Oh…" Carol herself didn’t really know what was happening between the two of them, so she decided to probe, "What’s going on with you two, then?"
"We’re friends… that’s all…" He smiled at her curiosity. "Nothing more, nothing less…"
"Nothing more?"
"No…" He grinned teasingly. "You know, Carol, I find this little interest you have in my love life quite entertaining… I mean, your concern is flattering, but really, there’s nothing interesting about my inner thoughts. Frankly, they bore the Hell out of me."
She laughed, "Will, you gotta listen to yourself sometime…"
"Why would I want to do that?" he scoffed.
"Because otherwise you do too much thinking and not enough doing." She paused, weighing up whether she should venture further. "And I think you should go and ask Cindy out on a date."
Will’s face split with a wide grin and he laughed aloud. "Oh, this is precious…!" He shook his head. "You should really think about doing some daytime TV, Carol." He stopped laughing abruptly, realising that she was serious. "You’re serious, aren’t you?" She nodded. "Oh, God… Why are you so keen to get the two of us together?"
She grinned, "Because the two of you are perfect for each other. I haven’t ever seen two people so well suited in all my life… You’ll regret it if you don’t…" He sighed and rubbed his face, feeling like he was having his arm twisted.
"Regret it?"
"Yes!"
"But, Carol… Look, she…" he sighed, unable to find the right words. "She doesn’t need me. I’m not the sort of guy she wants. I mean, my track record’s not exactly glowing with long-lasting romances."
"That’s how you feel, huh?" Carol shook her head. "Will, do you know what your problem is?"
"No, Carol, but I suspect you’re about to tell me…"
"There are some things you convince yourself you can’t do. You’re probably the most bull-headed person I know… well," she chuckled, "apart from someone else who’s even closer to my heart." Will smiled at her. "When you put your mind to something, you always find someway to make it happen, even if it’s almost impossible. When everyone else gives up, you keep on fighting."
"I’m not sure whether I’m supposed to be taking this as a compliment or not…"
She ignored him. "It’s a great quality, Will, but unfortunately, you don’t know where to draw the line." She looked him squarely in the face. "You made up your mind about Cindy back in London, and nothing is gonna change that."
"Carol… I’m not alone… She feels the same way I do. She wants to be friends. How am I supposed to conjure up feelings in her that she doesn’t possess? Through sheer force of will?"
"Well, that is your name," she giggled. Will rolled his eyes.
"So you’d have me go and find her, drop down on one knee and beg her to let me take her to dinner?"
"Well, maybe not that dramatic… but something like that, yeah…" She grinned, enjoying this little tease. "Oh, Will, how will you ever know unless you try? I wouldn’t be sat here married to Doug if I’d decided to play it safe."
On cue, the doors opened and Doug walked in. "Good news!" he exclaimed, spreading his arms wide. They both looked up. "You can come home, kiddo. They’re not gonna keep you in for observation."
"Oh, well, that’s good then, isn’t it?" Will smirked, eyeing her wickedly. "If they’d have looked too closely, you might never have been let out." Carol stuck her tongue out at him and he chuckled.
"Something been going on with you two?" Doug asked nonchalantly, reaching under the gurney to gather up Carol’s things.
"Oh no…" Carol deadpanned. "See you later, Will." He shot her a frown as she started to wave, and he slunk from the room.
Doug chuckled, "He looks like you got him under your thumb…"
"You guessed it," Carol grinned. "But I doubt it’ll be for long." She watched as he picked up her bag and pushed her shoes toward her. She slipped them on, and stood carefully, still feeling a little light-headed, but much better than before, and strangely, filled with energy. "I feel better…" she told him. He slung her coat around her shoulders and put his arm around her.
"Good… When we get home, I’m gonna make you omelettes and toast and as much hot chocolate as you want."
"Mmm…" She kissed him. "Sounds delicious. And will you put me to bed, too?" She cast him a sparkling smile, and he caught her meaning.
"All… part of the service…" he said and took her hand.
****
There are many things
That I would like to know
And there are many places
That I wish to go
But everything's depending
On the way the wind may blow
I don't know what it is
That makes me feel alive
I don't know how to wake
The things that sleep inside
I only wanna see the light
That shines behind your eyes
****
Will was pointed in the direction of exam room three when he asked where Thomas and Madison Tierney were waiting for their mother to sign herself out and take them home, but as he approached the door, he heard laughing and a familiar voice singing a familiar song. He grinned and crept up the door and peered through the glass. Inside, Cindy was goofing with the two kids, a sick basin on her head, like a hat, and lipstick on her cheeks in two clownish red circles.
Thomas and Madison were looking up to the light box, where the words to the song had been written on a piece of paper and stuck up, and Cindy was pointing at them with crutch. They started to sing again, with gusto, and Will gently pushed the door open and joined in with a flourish. "So we sailed into the sun, till we found a sea of green… And we lived beneath the waves, in our yellow submarine…!"
Cindy jumped and turned around, laughing at him as he bowed Chaplin-style, and swept up to take her sick basin hat off her and drop it onto his own head. "Come on then, everyone together now!" He elbowed Cindy and they all started together, the kid’s voices coming loudest of all, "We all live in a yellow submarine, a yellow submarine, yellow submarine. We all live in a yellow submarine, yellow submarine, yellow submarine!"
"Yeah, yeah!" Madison squealed, clapping her hands excitedly. "Let’s do another one!"
"Okay…" Will came up to her and knelt down beside her. "Shall I teach you one that I know, huh?" She nodded definitely.
"Yeah…"
"Do you like going to the zoo?"
She eyed him carefully, and then nodded. "We did that in New York, when we went to see Grandpa…" she explained.
"Yeah? Well, there you go then…" He cleared his throat. "This is song I used to sing when I was a kid…"
"Did you go to the zoo too?" she asked him.
"Mm… Oh, yeah… I liked the monkeys the best." He looked up at Cindy with a smile.
"How’s it go?" Thomas piped up.
"Ah, well… I think you might know it. You probably sang it at kindergarten."
"Yeah, we sing loads of songs at kindergarten," he replied.
"There you go… so, are you ready?" They both nodded. Cindy came closer, so she could hear what he was going to sing and pick up the words too. "I went to the animal zoo. The birds and bees were there. The giddy baboon by the light of the moon, was combing his auburn hair. The monkey fell out of his bunk." He clapped his hands sharply twice, making Madison jump and giggle. "And slid down the elephant’s trunk… Whee!" He grinned up at Cindy. "The elephant sneezed… A-tish-oo! And fell on his knees… But what became of the monkey, monkey, monkey…" He started to go round again, but Cindy interrupted,
"Will, that’s awful! You can’t teach them that, what if they want to know what became of the monkey?!"
He looked up at her sceptically. "All nursery rhymes are horrible, Cin. I’d hardly call Humpty Dumpty or Ring Around The Rosies positive psychology for kids." She narrowed her eye jokingly at him.
"Maybe… but I think I prefer Yellow Submarine." He shook his head easily.
"Oh well…"
The door opened and in walked a slim, tallish woman in her early thirties with her hand plastered up and in a sling, and a piece of paper sticking out of her jean pocket. "Hey guys," she greeted, and Thomas and Madison looked up and squealed,
"Mom!"
They quickly enveloped her in a crushing hug and she stumbled backward a little bit under the force. "Thank you for looking after them," she smiled at Will and Cindy. "I don’t know what would’ve happened if someone hadn’t been here to keep an eye on them."
"We were good kids, Mommy…" Madison informed her in a serious tone.
"That’s very good, Madi," she replied. "Now, what do you say to the nice doctor and nurse…?" Cindy glanced sideways at Will at the sudden upgrade in profession and he looked down, smiling to himself. Thomas held out his hand to Will in a way that suggested it was what he’d seen his father do and thought it now an appropriate thing to copy. Will took it and shook it,
"Nice to meet you, Thomas." He nodded his head, then turned to Madison, who was watching him with regarding eyes and a tilting head. "And you, Madison…" She studied him for a moment, then came right up to him and whispered in his ear,
"Are you going to go home now too?"
"Home?"
"To Ingerland?" Will glanced at Cindy and grinned,
"No, sweetheart… not just yet…" Madison blinked and frowned in a confused manner.
"Oh…"
"I might see you again, hmm?" She nodded, then put her fingers into her mouth, pulled out a half-sucked mint humbug and pushed it into his mouth.
"That’s for on the airplane…" she told him in a quiet voice. "Mommy says you have to have a candy to stop your ears blowing up."
"Popping, honey," Madison’s mother explained with a chuckle. "Your ears popping…" Madison looked at her as if she were stupid, then slowly moved away. "Thank you again, then," she added, and they stepped out of the room. Will watched them leave, and then turned back to Cindy. Her face was broken with a brilliant smile and at the sight of his face she burst into riotous laughter.
"Oh, God… that was adorable!" she exclaimed. "How’s it taste?"
Will made a face, "A little slimy… but weirdly okay…" He grinned and she grinned back, swallowing her giggles. They stared at each other. "So…" Will began, climbing to his feet. "Do you have to pick Hannah and Robbie up?"
"Yeah," she replied, "They’re at Kate’s… Probably being spoiled rotten with Sunny Delight and chocolate cake." Will chuckled, and paused, still staring at her. "Something wrong?" she asked finally, regarding him suspiciously. He looked down at his shoes and shifted his weight uneasily.
"Cindy," he said rather crossly, "Will you have dinner with me?"
She frowned at him. "Have dinner with you? Where did that come from?"
"Er…" He met her stare. "I don’t know… why do people normally go for dinner together?" He smiled slowly. Cindy blinked, surprised by his question and the way it had appeared to come completely out of the blue.
"Well, usually we call something like that a date. I don’t know what you call that…"
"Going out, er, seeing…" He cleared his throat, feeling a bit of an idiot. "Being a couple…" She was smiling, but it was faint, and Will couldn’t be sure if she wasn’t simply humouring him. He shook his head, "Cindy… all the other girls I know are so lacquered over." He sighed and spread his hands out. "I don’t know anyone else who would put a sick-bowl on their heads and lipstick on their cheeks and sing Yellow Submarine to a couple of under-fives…" He chuckled wryly. "Nothing is any fun without you. You don’t care about what people think about you or how big your bum looks in those trousers…"
"Are you saying my butt looks big in these pants?" Her face was unreadable.
"No… no… I mean…" Will looked down and stumbled for a minute. When he looked back up, Cindy was grinning at him. "See, look, this… how everything’s just a joke to you. How you don’t take yourself too seriously. Please… let me take you to dinner…? Just dinner… no funny business, no trying it on, you call the shots…"
"Did Carol put you up to this?" she asked, warily. He smiled,
"Well, yes… but that’s beside the point. I wanted to do it anyway…" She shook her head and rolled her eyes.
"Much as I know you want to, you can’t charm my panties off, you know…" Cindy said quietly, smiling at him.
"In my mind, you’re wearing iron-knickers, darlin’…" She was about to respond with offence, but then strangely laughed, despite herself, and nodded.
"Okay…" She reached for his hand, and he smiled broadly. "You’re on."
****
There was something very pleasing to arrive home at a house where all the lights were on. Carol had first thought that when they’d hired Catherine, the nanny, to look after the girls while both she and Doug were at work. Unusually for nannies, she had proved to be an excellent choice, a college student looking for a few hours of paid work a week, and Carol was so glad she had taken the leap of faith and placed her trust in this youngster. The house was lit up, and the drapes pulled closed in the living room and the hallway, and the outside lamp had been switched on so that the driveway was illuminated, giving Doug an easy job of parking the car up.
"Looks like she’s putting the girls to bed…" Carol noted, as she glanced up at the upstairs window and saw a shadow moving.
"Yeah… it’s getting late…" Doug smiled at her. "You should go in and see them while I put the car in the garage." She nodded, and climbed out of the car.
She headed inside, pushing the door shut behind her and shouted out, "Cathy… we’re home!"
"Hey there!" Her voice called from the landing. "We’re up here getting ready for bed." There was a squeal from one of the girls as they recognised who it was who had arrived. Carol started up the stairs. "Tess is putting up a bit of a fight, mind."
At the mention of her name, Tess came toddling smartly through to the landing and up to the safety gate, where she pushed her hand through the bars and greeted her mother with delighted abandon. "Hello, sweetheart…" Carol smiled, leaning over the gate and picking Tess up. She hugged her daughter close and smelt her hair, which was scented deliciously with a combination of that sweet baby smell and the strawberry no-tears shampoo she liked to use on their hair. She opened the gate and then closed it again behind her, adjusting Tess so her weight was resting on her hip.
"So how was your day?" Cathy enquired, posting her head around the doorframe of the girls’ bedroom and grinning, "Boring, hopeless or just plain crap?" Carol chuckled,
"All of those and more… But that doesn’t matter, does it?" She rubbed noses with Tess. "I’m home now, and that’s all that matters, isn’t it, hmm?"
"All that matters for sure," Cathy agreed. She was wrestling Kate into her pyjamas, trying to teach her to push her hand into the right armhole, but not having much luck. "I hope you don’t mind," she continued, "but I cooked myself a baked potato earlier on. I was starving hungry." Carol shook her head as if she hardly cared,
"No problem… You know I told you to treat the place as your own…"
"Yeah, well, I know you said that, Carol, and tempting as it is to take you at your word and sell the place, I still like to ask, you know…" Carol laughed at Catherine’s dry wit. The girl was in her first year at the state university, but despite being too clever for Carol to really comprehend, she still appreciated her good humour. It was comforting to know that the girls were in the hands of someone who was playful and sensible at the same time.
Downstairs, the door banged as Doug let himself in, and Carol heard the key turn in the lock and then his footsteps on the stairs. "Go get Daddy, then, Kate…" Catherine encouraged, and gave Kate a little push toward the door. She set off unsteadily, planting her feet down on the floor firmly and exaggeratedly and just reached the door as Doug walked in. He almost tripped over her, but quickly turned the stumble right and whisked Kate up off the floor.
"Hey, Katie!" he exclaimed. "You’re right under my feet, little girl…" Kate smiled at him beatifically, completely unaware that she’d almost sent her father flying. "Is it bedtime, huh?" he asked her, and Kate gurgled her usual string of incomprehensible babbling,
"Buh, ba, ba, ba…" Doug shook his head, grinning at his daughter.
"You got a way with words, Mischief, I’ll give you that…" Kate said nothing, but studied him closely. He turned back to Catherine. "Have they been any trouble?"
"No, not at all… You know Kate… sit her in front of Thomas the Tank Engine and she’s hooked. And Tess is never any trouble. I swear that kid is an angel in disguise."
Carol smiled proudly. "Well, what do good girls get, hmm?" she addressed Tess, who glanced up at her with a frown. Lately, her oldest had been testing out a range of facial expressions she’d picked up from people around her, much to the amusement of her father. Doug grinned at Tess, slipping his arm around Carol and remarking,
"She’s got the same look on her face as her Mom gets…" Carol frowned at him. "See…" Doug said, chuckling, and Carol looked down, realising what he’d done, and shook her head.
"I think we should send Daddy to get the milk, don’t you, Tess?" Tess tilted her head then grinned sanguinely up at her father. She had the right expressions, she just didn’t get them in quite the right places. Doug sighed,
"Okay, I’ll go… Cathy, do you wanna come down with me and I’ll find your pay cheque?" Catherine flicked her head,
"Ah-ha, we like Fridays!" She flashed a grin at Carol.
They disappeared downstairs, and Carol was left with the girls pottering around in their bedroom. There were still a few toys on the floor that Catherine hadn’t tidied away, and Carol went round, picking them up and dropping them in the wooden toy chest. Kate was hugging the wooden bridge that went with the train set, and didn’t appear to be likely to let it go, so Carol let her be. She went to their cribs and pulled back the blankets, then switched the light carousel on and the ceiling light off.
Doug came upstairs a moment later with two sippy cups half full of warmed milk and handed one to each of the girls. "There you go…" he said. Kate stared at hers for a moment, and then began to drink out of it gingerly. They’d only recently gotten rid of the bottles and switched them both to sippy cups, and it had taken a little getting used to. At first, Tess’s reaction had been to throw the thing on the floor and leave it. It had taken Carol several attempts to persuade her that this was not a good idea. Now, however, she was a pro, and was slurping away. "I’m gonna go jump in the shower," Doug murmured after a moment. "That okay?"
"Yeah, that’s fine…" Carol replied distantly. "I’m gonna read them a story and then put them down. It’s getting late." He nodded, and headed for the bathroom.
Carol continued around the room for a moment, straightening the drapes and rearranging the teddy bears on the dresser, before dropping into the armchair and kicking her feet up onto the window seat. Tess came up to her and demanded to be picked up, so she swung her up onto her knee. "What do you want to hear tonight, sweetheart?" she asked her eldest. Tess stared at her. "How about some Squirrel Nutkin, hmm?" She selected the appropriate title out the box set of Beatrix Potter books her mother had bought the girls for their first birthday. "Kate… you coming to hear the story?"
Kate turned around and headed towards her mother at the sound of her name. She dropped her beaker on the floor and sighed, "You wanna come up, too?" Carol leaned over and hauled Kate up onto her knee and settled her weight in a comfortable position. Carefully balancing the two wriggling children and the book, she started to read…
****
Because we need each other
We believe in one another
And I know we're going to uncover
What's sleepin' in our soul
Because we need each other
We believe in one another
(And) I know we're going to uncover
What's sleepin' in our soul
What's sleepin' in our soul
****
In the bathroom, Doug turned on the shower and waited while the water heated up. It had been a very long day, and he could feel the tightness in his muscles as he squeezed his own neck. But as he rolled his shoulders to ease the tension out of them, he realised that he’d enjoyed himself all the same. Strange though that seemed, there was something about diving head first into trauma again that had pleased him, and he’d relished in the change of tempo and the joy of working with others again. An office job was fine, but there was no doubting that it was mundane in comparison, and no matter how much money he was earning, signing forms and writing letters could never beat saving lives.
He shook his head. It was futile to start thinking like that. He wouldn’t give up his job… there was too much money in it for one thing. And, when it came down to it, he was proud of what he did. It was rewarding to see his touch appear in a new paediatric ER.
He stopped and stared into the mirror. There were more grey hairs than usual in his hair, he noticed, as he came up close to his image and examined it. Was that a good thing? Carol said she liked his grey, but he wasn’t so sure. He was only a whisker into his forties, so it seemed vastly too early to be looking old. He tilted his head around, looking at his hairline from different angles. There was no doubt, there were definitely more these days. His beard as well, if he allowed it to grow, had salt and pepper strands in it.
Curls of steam were beginning to emanate from the shower, so he hurried inside, closing his eyes as he thrust his face under the stream of hot water. He soaped up with a sponge then took a few minutes letting the water pour over him. Why was he so bothered about all this all of a sudden? He hadn’t even thought about being dissatisfied with his job before… and he’d pulled shifts before for Joe, so it wasn’t as if his day in the ER had served as a sudden reminder. His job was what most would call a plum position. He’d been given the opportunity to pass his knowledge and expertise onto a wide variety of willing recruits, perhaps even save a few lives in a indirect way. In the end, what he did provided a precious commodity to ER doctors all over the country.
But he kept thinking about those grey hairs.
He stepped out of the shower and stood a moment on the bathmat, letting the water drip off him, then reached for a towel and wrapped it around his midriff, tucking it in. He went back to the mirror and started to shave. Maybe if he slept on it all, it would all be clearer in the morning…
The door opened and she walked in, dressed in her favourite white lace bra and with her pyjama pants slung low underneath her ever-expanding bump. He smiled, casting his eyes over the strangely attractive ensemble. "Hey…"
"Are you shaving for me?" she asked innocently, placing her hands lightly on his waist and peering around his shoulder.
"Who else?" He replied, grinning, as he drew the razor across his cheek. "Girls settled?"
"Like a dream,"
Her hands were wandering now. Rubbing along the edge of the towel, loosening it ever so slightly. "How you feeling?"
"Much better. I just had some toast, and I have hot chocolate in the bedroom…" She smiled wickedly at him, and he bobbed his eyebrows.
"Chocolate kisses, hmm?" he murmured and she giggled and nodded.
"If you’re lucky, yeah…"
"Mmm…" He negotiated his chin warily.
"C’mere…" she murmured, and took the razor from him. "I don’t want you to cut yourself…" He waited while she angled his head, stood on her tip-toes and smoothly and slowly shaved his chin and his left cheek. "There you go… Smooth as a baby’s bottom…"
Doug grinned. "Really?"
"Well, maybe not that smooth…" she smiled back. She noticed the troubled look in his eyes and tilted her head questioningly.
"Something wrong?"
"Nah… nah, I’m fine… Just thinking, that’s all…"
"About what?"
He paused, thinking it was not right to burden her with his own menial problems when she should be concentrating on winding down and relaxing after her frenetic day. "About whether you’d like me," he grinned mischievously, "to read you a bedtime story too…" Her eyebrows arched,
"Uh-huh…" She smiled broadly. "Is that code?"
"I dunno," he chuckled. "What do you think?"
Her reply came as a soft touch of her lips on his own, and the movement of her hands to his waist. She pushed her hands partially inside the back of his towel. He grinned at her. "What do you wanna hear?" he murmured, tangling his fingers in her hair, then tracing down and snaring her own hands in his. "Jack and the Beanstalk…" He gently pulled her hands around to the front of the towel, chuckling low, "Or Dick Whittington and his…" he paused and slipped his own hands inside her pyjama bottoms, "pussy-cat…"
"Doug!" she exclaimed, tugging away from him in mock offence but smiling despite herself. "You are so revolting, you know that?!" He chuckled again, and caught her hands, so she couldn’t escape.
"I know…" he growled. "C’mere…"
Before she could react, he took her into his arms and pulled her into a deep kiss. But she was laughing as he kissed her, and her lips wouldn’t do as they were told. She tried to control herself, but, like a giddy schoolgirl, her efforts only served to multiply the strength of her laughter. Rapidly, her giggling was transmitted to him, and he broke off the kiss, chuckling along with her. He kissed up her bare shoulder then drew his lips along her collarbone. "Mm… Stop laughing," he threatened lightly, "or I’ll have you right here, Nurse Hathaway…"
Carol’s khaki eyes darkened as she burst into laughter again. "I’m sorry… I’m sorry…" she moaned between giggles, backing away from him slowly.
"Okay," he drawled. "That’s it. You’re going to get it now…"
"Ooh…" she grinned back, baiting him. "I hope so!"
****
He chased her into the bedroom, watching with delight as she wheeled around the side of the bed and then collapsed in a giggling pile on the duvet, tugging it back urgently with her hands and feet. He laughed with her, falling down beside her and pushing her over onto her back so he could see her happy, shining face, so different from before.
Her kisses were quick, staccato, never staying longer than a half second in one place, and she devoured him as she had not done for months. Since finding out about the pregnancy, they had kept their love-making muted and unhurried, Doug afraid he would hurt her or the baby, Carol respectful of his unspoken request. But tonight she was heedless of their tacit agreement, passionate and adoring and Doug quickly found himself responding to her urgings, despite himself.
She laid him back and kicked the duvet to the foot of the bed, exposing the sheet around him, framing him with whiteness, and smiled wickedly. In a moment, she had crawled up his legs and was hovering, on all fours, just above him. "My, my…" he growled seductively. "Where’s all this energy come from?" Carol giggled, and leaned forward, pinning his forearms to the bed, looking down at him with eyes sparkling,
"Chocolate," she supplied, cryptically, casting a glance at the mug of steaming hot chocolate on the night table. He looked at her questioningly before she filled in, "Stimulates the same part of the brain as love does… Didn’t you know that?" She was grinning.
"Sadly, no… wish I had known, though. Explains a lot…" He matched her challenging stare.
"And what’s that supposed to mean?" she demanded lightly.
He said nothing, but blew a little breath out of his mouth, then rose up and captured her mouth with his own. She sank down with him, rolling onto her side because it was uncomfortable now to lie on her front, and returned his kiss, her hands flowing along the outline of his body. Slowly, he pushed her over, onto her back, and then stared down at her, at the swell in her stomach, just beginning to be obvious. His eyes were soft, and a faint smile was painted on his lips as he laid a spreading hand on the swell and pressed gently.
Carol waited a moment, wondering what he was trying to do, before she started to feel a little embarrassed, realising the intensity of his scrutiny, and what it was directed at. She put her hand on his and moved it off her bump. He frowned lightly, "What did you do that for?"
"What are you doing?" she asked, leaving his question unanswered. He looked at her oddly,
"I was looking at how much you’d grown…" he supplied with a smile.
"How can you tell that?" He put his hand back on her stomach, and spread it again.
"By seeing how far my thumb reaches from your belly button…"
Carol didn’t really know what to say. "I’ve put on some weight in the last couple of weeks…" she whispered eventually.
"Yeah, you will," he replied, still gazing at her belly. "It’s the real start now…" Carol smiled at him.
"I saw you today, you know," she murmured, "When we were looking at the ultrasound scan. I saw the look on your face." Doug glanced up and raised his eyebrows. "You’re looking forward to this, aren’t you?"
"More than you could ever know…" he smiled honestly. "I can’t believe it." He swirled his hand over the taut skin. "It’s like a miracle."
"For you, maybe," Carol laughed, seeking to lighten the moment. "I’m gonna look like a snake who swallowed an egg before long!" He smiled at her,
"You look beautiful… I think you’re more beautiful now than you’ve ever been…"
She shut her eyes and smiled, shaking her head. "Yeah, yeah…" She opened them again and he was grinning at her. "So you thought of any names, huh?" He arched his brows,
"Aah… Will suggested that if it was a boy, we should call him William."
"I don’t think so…" They chuckled together.
"What do you like?"
She considered the question a moment, "I like Robert… but we can’t have that, cos of Robbie. But what about Christopher? Or Henry?" Doug screwed his face up on objection.
"Chris Ross… uh,uh… And Henry? Please…" He made another face. She smiled tolerantly.
"So what your suggestion, then, Dad?" Doug grinned,
"Samuel," he replied. "I always liked that name."
"Samuel," she repeated thoughtfully, "Sam…" Her brows knitted together for a moment, then she smiled, "Yeah, I like that too… Sam Ross… But what if it’s another girl? What do we call her then?"
Doug’s face went blank, as if he’d not ever considered this option. "I dunno… we’ll have to talk about that." He smiled crookedly. "But, right now, there are other things I’d rather do…" Carol giggled.
"Yeah?"
"Yeah…" He slid down the bed and took up the bottle of cocoa butter moisturiser she’d bought at the drugstore the previous day. She watched him closely out of half-closed eyes as he popped open the cap and turned the bottle upside down above her stomach. She recoiled as the cold liquid hit her belly, and wriggled still more when he drizzled a long, wavy line right the way up to her bra. He set the bottle back down on the night table and then adjusted his position, parting her legs and kneeling between them. Slowly, he placed a finger in the white lotion and traced it all around, in ever-widening circles, until her whole belly was covered in a slick film of it.
Carol grinned up at him as he placed both hands on her and started to smooth into her skin, taking long, sweeping movements and mixing them with feather-light caresses. He spread it over the faint, silvery-pink lines just below her belly button that were the tell-tale evidence of her expansion with Tess and Kate, and down onto her thighs. Her muscles tensed as his hands spread over them as wide as they could, and he travelled along the hamstrings, always applying just enough pressure. "So, why is this stuff so good, hm?" he asked in a low voice.
She opened her eyes, and murmured, "It stops you getting too many stretch-marks," He nodded his head.
"Does it work?"
"I guess so," she smiled. "I mean, I’ve only got a few, and I was the size of a house with the girls." He chuckled.
"And I just rub it into your stomach…?"
"And my breasts…" Her voice was soft, and Doug looked up, his eyes sparkling eagerly.
"Yeah?" She giggled again. "Now that sounds like a better idea…"
"I thought so…" She reached behind her and unsnapped her bra clasp, throwing it onto the floor. Doug’s eyes sparkled still brighter when he saw her stretch herself and put her hands behind her head, so her breasts flattened out. He placed his oily hands on her and smiled as her nipples tightened under his touch. "Just massage it in," she murmured, and he obeyed, taking up more moisture from the excess on her belly and using it to make her breasts slick as well.
Carol’s skin was hot to his touch now, and he had to admit that the task, as it was, was incredibly erotic. How had she done this on her own with the girls, he wondered. This was a job that could only be shared. "Am I doing it okay?" he asked her. She opened her eyes and fixed him with a dreamy gaze.
"Mmm…" was her simple reply. Doug grinned.
It took a little longer before the lotion had vanished completely into her skin, and he cupped her face in his hands, letting the last traces of lotion slide onto her cheeks. "And I’ve got to do this every night from now on…" he smiled, "for the next four months…?" She nodded,
"It’s hard work. Are you gonna be up to the task?"
"I’m up for it now if you are…" he winked, and she laughed out loud.
"You’re setting new records of wickedness tonight, aren’t you?" He smiled his usual crooked smile.
"Mm… And are you objecting?"
"Only in theory," she replied.
"But in practice… you’re ready to receive?" He leaned forward a little, letting his erection brush against the inside of her thigh. His eyes were intense on her, as were his hands on her breasts. She nodded, giggling. "Just what I wanted to hear…"
He sank forward completely, and slid inside her, smiling as she gasped involuntarily at the sudden sensation. He tugged her gently, encouraging her to roll over so he wouldn’t be pressing his whole weight against her. She accommodated his shift and spread her legs over him, smiling down at him, grateful for his consideration. Moving indiscernibly at first, she picked up a rhythm and he followed it, leaving all rational thought behind, feeling her wetness seeping onto him. His hands reached out and touched her thighs, where the skin burned with a mixture of heat and sweat and cocoa butter.
Carol leaned forward and caught his lips with her own, feeling her ability to restrain the fever growing within diminishing by the second. Whether he’d had this strange ability with other women, Carol could only guess, but there could be no doubting he had it with her. He could turn her into a wanton, shameless lover, who wanted him so fiercely she couldn’t bear to be separate from him. They had to touch, to be connected as many ways as possible, for her to feel as close to him as she needed to be. She wanted to slip inside his skin. She eased forward, forgetting herself, and whimpered softly as his kiss grew more passionate, his tongue in her mouth, playing chase with her own.
He reached a hand up and pushed the tendrils of damp hair that had fallen in front of her eyes away, tucking them behind her ears, and then dragged his lips wetly across hers, and she smiled against them, performing the same subtle caress herself. He gently kneaded her breasts with the pads of his thumbs, rolling the nipples slightly, feeling his heart surge as her eyes closed and she murmured his name in mindless ecstasy.
"Doug…" She tipped her head forward and began pressing soft, delicate kisses against his chest, finally letting her tongue slip out and trace a wet line up to his neck, where she buried her face completely, taking a deep breath of the scent that lingered there, a heady mixture of Hugo Boss and that smell that was him and him alone.
He could feel the pressure growing inside him, somewhere deep down in his groin, spreading from the base of his spine, upwards and outwards and along every nerve. He pulled her forcefully against him, wanting her to feel it as the shudder passed through him, sending him spinning into a momentary blindness.
When he opened his eyes, she was looking down at him, smiling luminescently as he tried to catch enough breath to fill his lungs. It was almost as if she could see his soul through his skin. She locked her hands behind his head, and rubbed her fingers through the sticky dampness at his hairline. She leaned forward and pressed their foreheads together, still smiling at him. He smiled back, but he wasn’t done yet. He rolled her gently onto her back, and before she had chance to object, sank between her legs, reaching his tongue out to the hot, swollen mass there. Carol’s face took on a shock of rapture as she felt him touch her. She had been so close, but when he’d come, she’d thought he’d been too far away to notice. But he’d noticed… of course he had.
It took just a few short seconds, and then she was there, her legs reaching and tensing, her toes curled, as she came in a blinding flash of sensation, trembling beneath his touch. He let her down slowly, as he always did, then came up and kissed her firmly, feeling her give one last shiver.
They rolled onto their sides and he curled her into his arms. She pushed up against him, wrapping her arms around the base of his spine, and then grinned at him, "You’re very good at that, you know…" she murmured laughingly.
"So I’ve been told…" She let her mouth drop in mock horror.
"By me only, I hope," He smiled, curling his fingers into her ringlets and replied,
"You were the only one who mattered…" She regarded him with her indulgent eyes,
"Really?"
"Yup…" he affirmed. Carol nodded, lapsing into thought a moment,
"You had a good day today, didn’t you?" she asked finally, reaching out her hand to twist a piece of his chest hair. He rolled his head over to her and smiled,
"What? You mean apart from the part where you passed out on me?" She smiled, tolerating his little tease.
"No, I mean seriously… You enjoyed yourself. You had a good day." There was a long pause, as if he were contemplating her statement, during which she kept quiet, knowing the answer before he even dared speak it.
"Yeah, I had a good day." She nodded,
"I could see it on your face." She gently adjusted her position, so she was lying on her side, pressed up against him as close as her swelling belly would allow. "You’ve missed it, haven’t you?"
He made a derisive noise, low in his throat, but then paused and shook his head, "A bit, I guess…" She waited, thinking he would continue, but he did not.
"And…" she prompted.
"And nothing," He gave a small shrug, tilting his head to smile slightly at her. "I already got a job…"
"I know that…" she groaned, rolling her eyes, "but it’s not what you want, is it?" She reached up and ran her hand limply through his short, thick hair. "You wanna go back to how it was before, hmm?"
"The thought has crossed my mind, yeah…" Doug agreed. "And sure, maybe sometime in the future, I’ll give this desk job up and go back to that… or even, maybe try something new…" He sighed lengthily. "But there’s no use in meddling with a good thing."
"Really?" Carol was shocked, but she tried not to show it. That was not the reaction she had suspected. "Is that what you really think, Doug?" She propped herself up on her elbow and stared at him. He shrugged again, in his way, and gave her a lopsided smile.
"Sure it is… The money’s good, so why should I complain?" He leaned in and kissed her, but she frowned,
"You know, sometimes I just can’t figure you out," she murmured, planting her own kiss on his lips in return. He grinned in response,
"And that’s a good thing, yeah?"
"Well, it’s keeps me interested, I s’pose…"
She chuckled, and he tugged her back down, joining in with her light-heartedness. It was only later, when she’d fallen asleep on his shoulder, that he allowed himself to think about what she had said. She had seen right through him, of course, he knew that, but it bothered him that she should have to worry about him at all. She had her own problems to concentrate on, and today had proved emphatically that she certainly didn’t need any more stress adding to what she was already insisting on taking on. Maybe he had made the wrong career decision, but what difference did it make? He always wound up getting where he wanted in the end, even if the course he chose took him on the scenic route, rather than the path of the crow.
And besides, he had a few ideas rattling around that he was willing to have a shot at. He’d sort himself out on his own. All he had to do was hope those shots weren’t as wild as they’d been proven to be in the past.
To be continued…
****
What's sleepin' in our soul
What's sleepin' in our soul
'Cause we believe
'Cause we believe
Yeah, we believe
'Cause we believe
'Cause we believe
'Cause we believe
Because we need
Because we need
****