Christmas-Eve Baby by Caroline Anderson Read Free Book Online

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CHAPTER THREE
    T HERE was no sign of Nick, thank goodness. Ben had been in suspense, waiting for him to appear, but he noticed the silver Volvo was gone, so maybe he could relax for now. Not for ever. He knew that, but if they were going to have a confrontation, he’d rather it wasn’t in a crowded surgery in front of half of Penhally Bay’s insatiably curious residents.
    There was no sign of Dragan Lovak either, and Ben wondered if Kate had sent him off on a wild-goose chase or told him that they’d gone for lunch and to take his time. If Lucy was right, that wasn’t beyond the realms of possibility.
    Whatever, Lovak wasn’t there to keep them on the straight and narrow, and he had to force his attention back to the Penhally Bay surgery’s MIU and away from the smooth, firm protrusion that was his child.
    ‘Have you had a scan?’ he asked abruptly, and Lucy stopped talking and turned and looked at him in frustration.
    ‘You haven’t heard a word I’ve said, have you?’
    He opened his mouth to deny it, then shook his head. ‘Sorry. I’m finding it a bit hard to focus.’
    She sighed and reached out a hand, but then thought better of it and withdrew it. ‘Look—are you busy tonight? I’ve gota surgery from five to six-thirty, but I’m not doing anything later. If you’re free, perhaps we could talk then? Deal with some of your questions?’
    He nodded, a little shocked at how eager he was to have that conversation—a conversation about a child that until a very short while ago he hadn’t even known existed. ‘Of course.’
    ‘And for now,’ she said, her voice gently mocking, ‘do you think you could keep your eyes on my face and concentrate on what I’m saying about our minor injuries unit?’
    ‘Sure.’
    He nodded, swallowed and tried to smile, but it was a feeble effort and he just wanted to fast-forward to the evening and get the hell out of there.
    ‘Come and see what we have,’ she said, and led him into the room in question. It was about twice the size of a consulting room, on the upper floor, and not ideal. He forced himself to concentrate.
    ‘It needs to be bigger and it could do with being on the ground floor,’ he told her without preamble.
    ‘We know that. We’re looking at funding for expansion.’
    He nodded.
    ‘In the meantime, this is what we have and what we do. There’s a room next door where we do minor surgery, but it really is minor and very non-invasive—skin lesions, ingrowing toenails and the like. It’s more of a treatment room, it’s not a proper theatre, although of course we use sterile techniques, but I don’t think we can realistically create a dedicated theatre environment either in there or anywhere else in a general practice setting. It simply isn’t called for, but it’s adequate for what we do surgery-wise. And this room is where we do all our minor injury stuff that we handle at present.’
    ‘Such as?’
    ‘Oh, all sorts. If I tell you the areas that we can currently cover and where I feel the holes are in our provision, maybe you can give me some advice on what we’d need both short and long term to improve that?’
    ‘Sure.’
    ‘Good. Right. Well, in the summer, we get tourists, of course, who as well as coming for medical treatment come to the MIU with things like stings, sprains, cuts and fractures. You’d be surprised how many people travel without a first-aid kit.’
    He chuckled. ‘No, I wouldn’t. We get them all the time.’
    ‘Of course you do. I forgot,’ she said, smiling at him and dragging his mind away from medicine and onto something entirely more interesting.
    ‘Then all year round but particularly in the warmer months we have surfers with all their associated injuries—scrapes on rocks, collisions with their own surfboards and with others, the odd weaver fish and all the other touristy things, and we get anyone who needs more than the basic first aid the lifeguards give on the beach, but our baseline local