Second Chance with Her Guarded GP
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Kate Hardy
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CHAPTER ONE
OLIVER LANGLEY TOOK a deep breath.
This was it. His new start. Not the life he’d thought he’d have, six months ago: but that had been before the world had tilted on its axis and mixed everything up. Before his twin brother Rob had gone to work for a humanitarian aid organisation in the aftermath of an earthquake and his appendix had burst. Before Rob had ended up with severe blood poisoning that had wiped out his kidneys. Before Ollie had donated a kidney to his twin.
Before Ollie’s fiancée had called off their wedding.
Which had been his own fault for asking her to move the wedding. ‘Tab, with Rob being on dialysis, he’s not well enough even to be at the wedding, let alone be my best man.’ He’d been so sure his fiancée would see things the same way that he did. It made perfect sense to move the wedding until after the transplant, giving both him and Rob time to recover from the operation and meaning that Ollie’s entire family would be there to share the day. ‘Let’s move the wedding back a few months. The transplant’s hopefully going to be at the beginning of June, so we’ll both be properly recovered by August. We can have a late summer wedding instead.’
‘Move the wedding.’ It had been a statement, not a question. She’d gone silent, as if considering it, then shaken her head. ‘No.’
He’d stared at her. ‘Tab, I know it’ll be a bit of work, changing all the arrangements, but I’ll do as much of it as I can.’
‘That’s not what I mean, Ollie.’
He’d stared at her, not understanding. ‘Then what do you mean?’
‘I—I’ve been thinking for a while. We should call it off.’
‘Call it off?’ He’d gone cold. ‘Why? Have you met someone else?’
‘No. It’s not you. It’s me.’
Which meant the problem was him and she was trying to be nice. ‘Tab, whatever it is, we can work it out. Whatever I’ve done to upset you, I’m sorry.’ He loved her. He wanted to marry her, to make a family with her. He’d thought she felt the same way and wanted the same things. But it was becoming horribly clear that he’d got it all wrong.
Her eyes had filled with tears. ‘It’s not you, it’s me,’ she said again. ‘You’re giving Rob a kidney—of course you are. He’s your brother and you love him. Anyone would do the same, in your shoes.’
‘But?’ He’d forced himself to say the word she’d left out.
She’d looked him in the eye. ‘What if something goes wrong? What if you get ill, and your one remaining kidney doesn’t work any more, and you have to go on dialysis? What if they can’t find a match for you, and you die?’
‘That’s not going to happen, Tab.’ He’d tried to put his arms round her to comfort and reassure her but she’d pulled away.
‘You’re not listening, Ollie. I can’t do this.’
‘Why?’
‘You know how it’s been with my dad.’
‘Yes.’ Tabby’s father had chronic fatigue syndrome. He’d been too ill to do much for years.
‘Mum stuck by her wedding vows—in sickness and in health. I didn’t realise when I was younger, but she worked herself to the bone, making sure my brother and I were OK, and keeping us financially afloat, and looking after Dad. Obviously when we got older and realised how ill Dad was, Tom and I did as much as we could do to help. But my mum’s struggled every single day, Ollie. She’s sacrificed her life to look after Dad. And I can’t do that for you. I just can’t.’
He’d frowned. ‘But I’m not ill, Tab. OK, I’ll need a bit of time to recover from the transplant, but I’ll be fine. Rob will get better and everything will be back to normal soon enough.’
‘But you can’t promise me you’ll always be well and I won’t have to look after you, Ollie. You can’t possibly promise something like that.’ Tabby had shaken her head. ‘I’m sorry, Ollie. I can’t marry you.’ She’d fought to hold back the tears. ‘I know it’s selfish and I know it’s unfair, but I just don’t love you enough to take that risk. I don’t want a life like my mum’s. I don’t want to marry you.’ She’d taken off the engagement ring and given it back to him. ‘I’m so sorry, Ollie. But I can’t do this.’
‘Tab, you’ve just got an attack of cold feet. We’ll get through this,’ he said. ‘We love each other. It’ll be fine.’
‘No, Ollie. That’s the point. I do love you—but not enough. I’m sorry.’
He hadn’t been able to change her mind.
She’d got in touch to wish him and Rob luck with the transplant, but she’d made it clear she didn’t want him back. He wasn’t enough for her. To the point where she hadn’t even wanted him to help cancel all the arrangements; Tabby insisted on doing it all herself.
Ollie had spent a couple of weeks brooding after the operation, and he’d realised that he needed some time away from London. So he’d taken a six-month sabbatical from the practice in Camden where he was a salaried GP, lent his flat to a friend, and had gone back to Northumbria to stay with Rob and their parents. The open skies, hills and greenery had given him a breathing space from the bustle of London and time to think about what he wanted to do with his life.
Though the enforced time off after the transplant, once he’d untangled the wedding, had left Ollie with the fidgets. Much as he loved their parents and completely understood why their mum was fussing over her twin boys, Ollie liked having his own space and the smothering was driving him mad. He was pretty sure that doing the job he loved would help him get his equilibrium back and help him move on from the mess of his wedding-that-wasn’t.
Then he’d seen the ad for a three-month maternity cover post at Ashermouth Bay Surgery, which would take him nearly up to the end of his sabbatical. He’d applied for the job; once the practice had given him a formal offer, he’d found a three-month let and moved into one of the old fishermen’s cottages near the harbour, within walking distance of the practice.
And today was his first day at his new job. He might not have been enough for his fiancée, but he knew he was definitely good enough as a doctor.
The building was single-storey, built of red brick and with a tiled roof. There were window-boxes filled with welcoming bright red geraniums, and a raised brick flower bed in front of the door, filled with lavender. The whole place looked bright and welcoming; and next to the door was a sign listing the practice staff, from the doctors and nurses through to the reception and admin team.
Ollie was slightly surprised to see his own name on the sign, underneath that of Aadya Devi, the GP whose maternity leave he was covering, but it made him feel welcome. Part of the team. He really liked that.
He took a deep breath, pushed the door open and walked in to the reception area.
The receptionist was chatting to a woman in a nurse’s uniform, who had her back to him. Clearly neither of them had heard him come in, because they were too busy talking about him.
‘Dr Langley’s starting this morning,’ the receptionist said.
‘Our newbie,’ the nurse said, sounding pleased.
At thirty, Ollie didn’t quite see himself as a ‘newbie’, but never mind. He was new to the practice, so he supposed it was an accurate description.
‘Caroline’s asked me to help him settle in, as she’s away this week,’ the nurse added.
Caroline was the senior partner at the practice: a GP in her late fifties, with a no-nonsense attitude and a ready laugh. Ollie had liked her very much at the interview.
He didn’t really need someone to help him settle in, but OK. He got that this place was a welcoming one. That they believed in teamwork.
‘And, of course, he’s fresh meat,’ the nurse said.
The receptionist laughed. ‘Oh, Gem. Trust you to think of that.’
Ollie, who had just opened his mouth ready to say hello, stood there in silence, gobsmacked.
Fresh meat?
Right now, he was still smarting too much from the fallout from the wedding-that-wasn’t to want any kind of relationship. And it rankled that someone was discussing him in that way. Fresh meat. A slab of beefcake. Clearly this ‘Gem’ woman made a habit of this, given the receptionist’s comment.
Well, he’d just have to make sure she realised that she was barking up completely the wrong tree. And he didn’t care if his metaphors were mixed.
He gave a loud cough. ‘Good morning.’
‘Oh! Good morning.’ The receptionist smiled at him. ‘We’re not actually open yet, but can I help you?’
‘I’m Oliver Langley,’ he said.
The receptionist’s cheeks went pink as she clearly realised that he’d overheard the end of their conversation.
Yeah. She might well be embarrassed. Fresh meat, indeed.
‘I’m Maddie Jones, the receptionist—well, obviously,’ she said. ‘Welcome to the practice. Can I get you a cup of coffee, Dr Langley?’
‘Thank you, but I’m fine,’ he said coolly. ‘I don’t expect to be waited on.’
The nurse next to her also turned round to greet him.
‘Good morning, Dr Langley. Nice to meet you,’ she said with a smile.
Surely she must realise that he’d overheard what she’d just said about him? And yet she was still being all smiley and sparkly-eyed. Brazening it out? That didn’t sit well with him at all.
‘I’m Gemma Baxter,’ she said. ‘I’m one of the practice nurse practitioners. Caroline asked me to look after you this week, as she’s away on holiday.’
‘That’s kind of you, Nurse Baxter,’ he said, keeping his voice expressionless, ‘but quite unnecessary.’
‘Call me Gemma. And, if nothing else,’ she said, ‘I can at least show you where everything is in the surgery.’ She disappeared for a moment, then came through to join him in the waiting area. ‘It’s pretty obvious that this is the waiting area,’ she said, gesturing to the chairs. ‘The nurses’ and HCA’s rooms are this side of Reception—’ she gestured to the corridor to their left ‘—the pharmacy’s through the double doors to the right, the patient toilets are over there in the corner, and the doctors’ rooms are this side.’
She gestured to the other corridor. ‘If you’d like to follow me? The staff toilets, the kitchen and rest room are here, behind Reception and the admin team.’ She led him into the kitchen. ‘Coffee, tea, hot chocolate and fruit tea are in the cupboard above the kettle, along with the mugs. The dishwasher’s next to the fridge, and there’s a rota for emptying it; and the microwave’s self-explanatory. We all put a couple of pounds into the kitty every week and Maddie keeps the supplies topped up. If there’s anything you want that isn’t here, just let Maddie know.’
She smiled at him. ‘I need to start checking the out-of-hours notifications and hospital letters before my triage calls and vaccination clinic this morning, so I’m going to leave you here. Your room’s the third on the right, but obviously you’ll see your name on the door anyway.’
‘Thank you for the tour,’ he said. That ‘fresh meat’ comment had rubbed him up the wrong way, but he was going to have to work with her for the next three months so it’d be sensible to be polite and make the best of it.
‘I’ll come and find you at lunchtime,’ she said. ‘As it’s your first day, lunch is on me.’
‘That’s—’ But he didn’t have time to tell her that it was totally unnecessary and he’d sort out his own lunch, thanks all the same, because she’d already gone through to the other corridor.
Ollie made himself a coffee, then headed for his consulting room. It was a bright, airy space; there was a watercolour on the wall of a castle overlooking the sea, which he vaguely recognised as a local attraction. A desk; a couple of chairs for his patient and a parent or support person; and a computer. Everything neatly ordered and in its place; nothing personal.
He checked his phone for the username and password the practice administrator had sent him last week, logged on to the system and changed the password. Then he put an alarm on his phone to remind him when telephone triage started, and once his emails came up he started to work through the discharge summaries, hospital letters and referrals from over the weekend.
Gemma knew she was making a bit of a snap judgement—the sort of thing she normally disapproved of—but Oliver Langley seemed so closed-off. He hadn’t responded to the warmth of her smile or her greeting, and he’d been positively chilly when she’d said she’d show him round. She sincerely hoped he’d be a bit warmer with their patients. When you were worried about your health, the last thing you needed was a doctor being snooty with you. You needed someone who’d listen and who’d reassure you.
Yes, sure, he was gorgeous: tall, with dark floppy hair and blue eyes, reminding her of a young Hugh Grant. But, when you were a medic, it didn’t matter what you looked like; what mattered was how you behaved towards people. So far, from what Gemma had seen, Oliver Langley was very self-contained. If he was the best fit for the practice, as Caroline had claimed, Gemma hated to think what the other interviewees had been like. Robots, perhaps?
Hopefully she could work some kind of charm offensive on him over lunch. She intended to get a genuine smile out of him, even if she had to exhaust her entire stock of terrible jokes.
She took a gulp of the coffee she’d made earlier and checked the out-of-hours log, to see which of their patients had needed urgent treatment over the weekend and needed following up. Then she clicked onto the triage list Maddie had sent through, before starting her hour and a half of phone triage.
The system was one of the things the practice had kept from the Covid days. It was more efficient for dealing with minor illnesses and giving advice about coughs and colds and minor fevers; but in Gemma’s view you could often tell a lot from a patient’s body language—something that could prompt her to ask questions to unlock what her patient was really worrying about. That was something that telephone triage had taken away, since the Covid days. And trying to diagnose a rash or whether a wound had turned septic, from looking at a blurred photograph taken on a phone and sent in low resolution so it would actually reach the surgery email, had been next to impossible.
At least things were a bit easier now. They were all adjusting to the ‘new normal’. She worked her way through the triage list until it was time to start her vaccination clinic. Even though the vaccination meant she had to make little ones cry, it also meant she got a chance for baby cuddles. Gemma would never admit to being broody, but if she was honest with herself her biological clock always sat up and took notice when she had this kind of clinic.
It had been twelve years since she’d lost her little sister—since she’d lost her entire family, because her parents had closed off, too, unable to deal with their loss. Gemma had been so desperate to feel loved and to stop the pain of missing Sarah that she’d chosen completely the wrong way to do it; she’d gone off the rails and slept with way too many boys. Once her best friend’s mum had sat her down and talked some sense into her, Gemma had ended up going the other way: so determined not to be needy that she wouldn’t let her boyfriends close, and the relationships had fizzled out within weeks. She’d never managed to find anyone she’d really clicked with.
So the chances of her attending this particular clinic rather than running it were looking more and more remote. It was a good six months since she’d last had a casual date, let alone anything more meaningful. The nearest she’d get to having a real family of her own was being godmother to Scarlett, her best friend’s daughter. She was grateful for that, but at the same time she wondered why she still hadn’t been able to fix her own family. Why she still couldn’t get through to her parents.
She shook herself. Ridiculous. Why was she thinking about this now?
Perhaps, she thought, because Oliver Langley was precisely the sort of man she’d gone for, back in her difficult days. Tall, dark-haired, blue-eyed and gorgeous. And his coolness towards her had unsettled her; she was used to people reacting to her warmth and friendliness in kind.
Well, tough. It was his problem, not hers, and she didn’t have time to worry about it now. She had a job to do. She went into the corridor and called her first patient for her clinic.
