Resisting Her English Doc
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Annie Claydon
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CHAPTER ONE
RICK FLEMING FELT as if he was more than two weeks away from London. Much more than an ocean away. His old job and his family and friends seemed as if they were a world away.
Coming to the Maple Island Clinic was much more than just a new job. The island itself, situated two miles off the coast of Boston, was more than just a new place to live. It felt as if it just might be the end of a journey, one that had taken on the quality of a pilgrimage in his mind.
He’d promised his wife this before she’d died, four years ago. Their daughter had been just a baby, and all Ellie knew of her mother was what Rick could tell her. This was a chance for Ellie to see more of her grandparents in Boston, and for her to call America home, the way that Lara had done. And it was Rick’s chance to learn whether he might call somewhere home, too.
“I hope you’re settling in.” Alex Kirkland, the director responsible for rehabilitation, was ensconced in one of the easy chairs in his office, clearly the spokesperson for the two-man welcoming committee. His co-director, Cody Brennan, who led the surgical team, sat silently to one side.
“Yes, thank you.”
“And how’s Ellie?”
“She’s good. I brought her in to visit the clinic’s daycare center yesterday, and this morning she didn’t even look back to say goodbye to me when I left.”
Alex chuckled. “I know that feeling. I’m really happy that Jake looks forward to spending time in daycare after school while I’m still at work, but he might spare a thought for his dad’s feelings and pretend that he’s sorry to see me go. You’re both settling in at the lighthouse?”
“Ellie loves it. We stayed with her grandparents in Boston for a week before we came here, and on a clear day you can just see the tip of the lighthouse from the roof of their apartment block. She’s been insisting on going up to the viewing gallery every evening to wave them goodnight before she goes to bed.”
Alex and Cody both smiled. Being able—no, encouraged—to talk about Ellie’s needs as part of his own work experience was novel, but Rick had already realized that it was the norm here at the Maple Island Clinic. Two single fathers, who’d wanted to give their children the best, had founded a clinic that combined professional excellence with the very best daycare facilities. This was Rick’s dream job, in more ways than one.
“I’ll be going through your case-load with you over the next couple of days.” Alex picked up a patient file from the coffee table in front of him, slipping effortlessly from childcare to clinic business. “But I’d like to draw your attention to one of the patients I’m considering adding to your list. I think that your background in counseling, as well as physical rehabilitation, might put you in a unique position to help her.”
Rick took the file, opening it and scanning the details quickly, before his eye was drawn to the photograph stapled inside the front cover. One look at the blue eyes, staring candidly at the camera, and he forgot about everything else. Long, dark hair framed a face that no one in their right mind could fail to consider beautiful, but her eyes held something more. The promise that this woman was a force to be reckoned with.
“Fleur Miller came to us before Christmas.” Alex’s voice cut through the spell that seemed to bind Rick to the image. “She was part of a theater group—See the Beat.”
“I think I’ve heard of them. They specialize in theatrical dance and acrobatics.” He remembered them from one of those late-night arts programs that he’d had a habit of dozing through, instead of going to bed.
“Yes, that’s right. Fleur had a bad fall and sustained extensive injuries. They’re all in the file.”
Rick concentrated on the print, trying to ignore the photograph. Severe concussion, a broken shoulder and collarbone, a fractured hip and a knee that had been so badly damaged that the joint had required replacement.
“Is all her surgery complete?”
“Everything major. She has a ganglion on her wrist, probably caused by the trauma of the fall, but that’s relatively insignificant and we’ve decided to wait until she’s moving around without crutches. Cody will take care of it then.”
“She should be almost recovered by now, though. Eight weeks at the Boston Harbor Hospital, and then several more weeks here.”
“Yes, physically she’s doing well. Emotionally, not so much. She’s a model patient, smiles at all the nurses, does what she’s told when the physio’s watching her. But when she’s alone, she just lies down on her bed and stares at the ceiling. We reckon she’s having a good day when we find her staring out of the window.”
Rick frowned. He wasn’t usually mistaken about a face, and he thought he’d seen determination in Fleur’s. “Has the clinic’s mental health team been involved?”
“Yes, they have, but she’s stonewalled them. Her attitude is that loss is a perfectly normal thing for a person to feel, and that we should just leave her alone while she deals with it.”
“She has a point. With these injuries it doesn’t look likely that she’ll be returning to a career in dance anytime soon, if ever. Everyone needs a bit of time to grieve, whatever the nature of their loss.”
Alex and Cody knew that too. And all three men knew that there must be a time for moving forward as well. In the time it had taken Rick to kick-start his own life, after Lara’s death, he’d almost lost everything else that he’d cared about. It sounded as if Fleur was in danger of making the same mistake that he had.
Alex broke the short silence. “We think that Fleur has found herself a comfort zone, and she won’t venture out of it. She’s made up her mind that she can just sit her time out here.”
“Which isn’t what the clinic’s all about,” Rick mused. It was one of the topics that Alex and Cody had discussed with Rick during a series of in-depth video interviews. The clinic aimed to prepare its patients for life, and not just attend to their medical needs.
“No, it isn’t. We’d like to hear some ideas on how you think you might get through to her.”
“Everyone else has failed,” Cody interjected with a frown. It was clear that both Alex and Cody were taking this personally. Committed doctors had a habit of thinking that way.
Rick took a few moments to read through the patient profile. Fleur had grown up on the island, leaving when she was fifteen to go to theater school in Boston... Her parents were still on the island, visited every day and were supportive... No financial issues...
Almost against his will, his gaze was drawn back to the photograph. The confidence in Fleur’s gaze suggested that this was someone who knew how to meet the world headlong. Someone who could fight. Rick dismissed the thought that if she could be persuaded to fight him there was the strong possibility that he might enjoy every moment of it, and then come crawling back for more. Fleur Miller would be nothing more than a patient who presented him with a medical conundrum.
“If Fleur’s reached the kind of standard she has in dance, then she’s clearly no stranger to meeting a challenge.” Rick ventured an opinion. “Perhaps the difficulty for her now is that she can’t see any challenge ahead of her. I can imagine that for someone like her, that must be very demotivating.”
“And your solution?” Alex pursed his lips.
Rick grinned. “This is a wonderful place, but maybe that’s just the problem. It’s making everything a bit too easy for Fleur. We need to find something that will confront her and give her a reason to start fighting. I think that then the underlying emotional issues that are getting in the way of her recovery might become more apparent and we’ll have a chance to address them.”
Alex exchanged a glance with Cody, and then nodded. “Agreed. And we can rely on you to pursue that approach?”
It made sense. He was a new face, and that meant a fresh start and a chance to succeed where others had failed.
“Yes. I’d welcome the challenge.”
The next hour was devoted to a bombardment of names, smiles and handshakes as Alex and Cody took him on a whistle-stop tour of the clinic. This place had everything. But the smiling faces, the state-of-the-art gym equipment and the beautiful setting didn’t provide the one thing that he guessed his newest patient might need.
He spent half an hour with Ellie at lunchtime. She had obviously been exploring her new surroundings, and excitedly showed him around the daycare center. Their second goodbye of the day was only marginally less harrowing than the first, but Ellie took it in her stride, running back to the play area where she’d already made some friends.
Rick walked determinedly to the private room marked on Fleur’s notes. The door was open, and he could see a figure lying on the bed, her back to the door. She didn’t move when he knocked so Rick walked inside.
“Hello, I’m Dr. Richard Fleming. I’m going to be overseeing your rehab for the next few weeks.”
The woman rolled slowly onto her back, giving him a smile that was clearly a matter of doing what was expected of her. “You’re new here, aren’t you?”
It was like a before and after. The woman in the photograph didn’t know the meaning of failure. The one in front of him looked beaten. It was nothing to do with the fact that her dark hair was in a messy plait instead of a shining waterfall around her shoulders, or that she had a small healed scar on her lip. It was everything to do with the blank look in her eyes.
“Yes. Fresh off the plane.” Rick sat down in the easy chair beside her bed to signal that this wasn’t a flying visit.
“You’re... English?”
“Yes, from London.”
She gave a small nod. Rick reckoned he could have told her that he was from Mars and she probably would have shown the same indifference. But he was going to get a reaction out of her, and if he had to work for it, then so be it.
He opened the file he’d brought with him, deliberately angling it on his lap so that Fleur couldn’t see the contents. “As I’m going to be your new doctor, I’d like to review your case notes with you.”
“All right.” She didn’t move.
“And that’s better done while you’re sitting up.”
The sudden, momentary flash of defiance in her eyes stirred something deep in Rick’s gut. If he managed to succeed in what he was setting out to do, there would be a whole new set of problems to contend with. But he’d deal with those, because Fleur was going to start fighting, and the most obvious place to start was to give her a reason to fight him.
He resisted the temptation to position one of the pillows behind her back, leaving her to do it for herself. When she was settled, he unclipped his pen from the top of the file, scanning the paper in front of him as if he was reading something that she wasn’t allowed to see.
“You’ve completed all of your physiotherapy sessions...”
“Yes.”
“And...your progress is satisfactory. Shall we say three out of five?”
From the look on Fleur’s face, Rick would bet that she had never been marked as a three out of five for anything.
“Three out of five?”
“Yes, I think that’s fair.” Rick ticked one of the boxes on the form he’d prepared. “And how do you rate the clinic, in terms of meeting your needs?”
“The clinic’s great. It’s the best there is.”
Rick nodded. “Well, the clinic’s only as good as the results we can achieve. So I suppose that’s a three out of five as well.” He shook his head disapprovingly, and marked it down on the form.
Fleur sighed. “Alex and Cody aren’t going to like that very much.”
“I imagine not.” Rick glossed over the matter and turned his attention to the next question.
The first thing Fleur had noticed about him was that he was handsome. Tall, with a shock of corn-colored hair and a square jaw. It looked as if he was nicely built under that white jacket as well. And the accent...
His accent was to die for. He sounded like a gentleman, but his blue eyes had just a hint of the rogue in them. But this Dr. Fleming seemed intent on diverting her attention from his very obvious appeal by making himself as obnoxious as possible. Fleur endured the three out of five. And since the two out of five that he then gave her for motivation was clearly intended to annoy her, she ignored that as well.
What did he know? He knew nothing about the island, and nothing about her. She agreed to his examination, letting him check the movement in her right leg and shoulder. Not thinking about his scent, or the way that she suddenly felt she had something to prove to him.
“Your shoulder’s improving well.” He seemed almost reluctant to say anything positive about her progress, and Fleur couldn’t help smirking when he turned his back.
“Yeah, I had a bit of trouble using the crutch with my right arm at first. But it’s a lot easier now.”
He nodded, thoughtfully. “Seems you’ve adapted well. To using crutches, I mean...”
He managed to make even that sound as if it wasn’t good enough. He reminded her of her first proper dance teacher, who had pushed her through challenge after challenge, and then on to dizzying success. Fleur didn’t want to think about that. Dance was over. Not a part of her life anymore. That kind of vivid lightning didn’t strike twice in the same lifetime.
“I’d like to see you walking. Nothing too taxing—I’d just like to observe.”
Another hoop for her to jump through. But she could walk. She could blank her mind to everything, and put one foot in front of the other. And there was always the chance that Dr. Rick Fleming might concentrate on observing and stop talking.
He was getting to her. Rick had caught Fleur in an eye-roll when she’d thought he wasn’t looking. And the weary apathy had given way to something a little more tight-lipped.
But Rick needed something more from her. If that meant he was going to have to act out the role of villain, then so be it.
“We’ll be going out of the department, so you might like to get changed.” Fleur would look wonderful in anything, even the shabby, stretched-out sweatpants and top she was wearing now.
“All right.” Her restraint was impressive. Rick hadn’t been aware that he could be quite this annoying, but Fleur was stubbornly refusing to react. If she could be persuaded to divert those energies to getting rid of her crutches and walking, then she’d make a great deal of progress.
She reached for the buzzer to summon one of the nurses and Rick leaned forward, grabbing it from the bed.
“You can get dressed on your own. The nurses aren’t here to wait on you. They have patients who really need their help to attend to.”
Actually, they didn’t. The nurse-to-patient ratio here was way better than it was at the busy hospital in London where he’d last worked, and even there the nurses would have found time to help any patient who asked. But Rick could see that his jibe had hit home. He got to his feet, putting the buzzer on the windowsill, next to a bunch of flowers and well out of Fleur’s reach.
Instead of giving him a piece of her mind, Fleur swung her legs over the edge of the bed, reaching for the elbow crutches that were propped up beside it. One fell to the floor and when Rick didn’t move, she gave a little huff of frustration, picking it up herself and making her way slowly over to the wardrobe.
She swung the doors open and Rick got to his feet, looking over her shoulder at the contents. A selection of neatly folded sweatpants and tops were stacked within reach, and on a higher shelf there was a pile of colorful, gauzy scarves, pushed right to the back.
“Want a hand? Or can you reach the scarves on the top shelf?”
She turned, a look of incredulous thunder on her face. “You’ve already made it quite clear that I can dress by myself. I think I can just about manage to decide what to wear...”
He was getting there. One more push and she’d explode.
“I’ll let you get on, then. If I give you half an hour, will that be long enough for you to do your hair and make-up?”
He threw the words over his shoulder as he made for the door. Any woman in her right mind would find his attitude outrageous, and Rick was beginning to feel very guilty about the lengths he was going to in order to provoke a reaction from her.
He realized, too late, that turning his back on her wasn’t a good idea. Rick heard one of her crutches fall to the floor and when he looked round Fleur was reaching towards the dressing table that stood next to the wardrobe.
Nice throw!
A box of tissues came whizzing through the air, aimed straight at his head. Rick dodged, and the box thudded against the wall. Fleur reached for her next missile, her movements suddenly less stiff, more fluid.
He’d done what he’d come to do. As he closed the door hurriedly behind him, he heard the hairbrush clatter against it. He could hear Fleur muttering angrily and the wardrobe doors slamming shut. Then silence.
“That’s more of a reaction that we’ve had in the last few weeks.” Alex had been reviewing case notes with one of the nurses, and he’d walked over to the door. Rick wondered whether he might have gone a little too far.
“I don’t blame her. I was just about ready to throw something at myself...” Rick mouthed the words, sotto voce.
Both men inclined their heads toward the door, listening for any indication that Fleur might be in difficulties. Rick heard her curse and his hand moved instinctively to the door handle. Then her voice sounded again, not quite muffled enough to disguise the anger in it.
“One out of five for bedside manner, Dr. Fleming. And I think you’d look particularly fetching with a crutch wrapped around your head...”
Fleur had divined that he was outside, listening at the door. Both he and Alex instinctively took a step away from it.
“I take it you’ve read the health and safety at work policy we sent you?” Alex raised an eyebrow.
“Yes, I did. But she’ll have to catch me first, if she wants to do any real damage.” Rick gave a smile, as if to insinuate that wasn’t likely to happen. The thought of Fleur, alive with anger and taking a swing at him, made his heart beat a little faster. She would undoubtedly be magnificent.
“You haven’t been talking to Maggie, have you?” Alex did him the favor of interrupting his thoughts before he got carried away.
Maggie...? Rick remembered now. Maggie was the hydrotherapist, with red corkscrew curls. They’d been introduced during the tour of the clinic and the way that Alex and Maggie had seemed to be touching, even though they’d been standing a good two yards apart, had made Rick wonder if they were more than just colleagues. The memory of how it felt to be that close to someone had unsettled him a little.
“No. Should I have?”
“If Dr. Fleming wants to know about taking it to the limit, then Maggie’s the one to ask.” The murmured observation came from the nurse that Alex had been talking to, who had followed him over, clearly wondering what the doctors were doing with her patient.
“Yes, she is.” Alex seemed to be savoring the thought and then snapped suddenly back into professional mode. “I’d better be getting on. I’ll leave you to...continue. With whatever degree of caution you think appropriate.”
Rick watched Alex walk away, wondering whether his new boss entirely approved of his approach. When he turned to the nurse, she was smiling.
“Don’t worry. We all used to call Alex ‘Dr. Protocol’. Then Maggie widened his perspective.”
“You have nicknames for all the doctors?” Rick wondered whether he’d been given one yet.
“Just the ones we like.”
He’d better not ask, then. “I’d like you to keep this room under observation for a few minutes, please.”
The nurse raised her eyebrows. “You mean you want me to take over from you and listen at the door?”
“Just in case Miss Miller falls.”
“I don’t think she will. She’s pretty steady on her feet now, she doesn’t really need the crutches.”
Persuading Fleur to get rid of the crutches was already on Rick’s mental list. One thing at a time, though. “All the same, I’d feel better if you’re keeping an eye...ear open. I’ll be back in half an hour to...um...”
“Annoy her a bit more?” The nurse was smiling. “Okay, Doctor. Whatever you say.”
