Alison Roberts - The Italian Doctor's Perfect Family

‘An ultrasound test is completely painless and it’s better than an X-ray. And an MRI scan is even better. It’s like having photographs taken of what’s inside your tummy. It’s incredibly detailed.’

‘Ooh, gross! Can you see, like, what you had for breakfast?’

Pip laughed. ‘Almost, but I wouldn’t worry about any of it. You might have to wait for weeks to get an appointment for something like an ultrasound. We’ll do what Dr Costa suggests and bring you into hospital next time you get a sore tummy.’

‘Will you come with me?’

‘Of course.’

‘What if you’re working?’

‘Then I’ll stop working to look after you. Like I did today to go to your appointment.’

‘Do you get into trouble for doing that?’

‘Of course not.’ Pip almost managed to convince herself as well as Alice. ‘I just have to make up for it later. Like now. Are you OK to sit in the staffroom and read magazines while I go and look after the patients I still have?’

‘Sure.’

‘You can get a hot chocolate out of the machine. You know how to work it, don’t you?’

‘Yeah.’

They bypassed the main area of the emergency department to reach the staffroom.

‘Hey, Pip?’

‘Yeah?’ When had she picked up Alice’s speech patterns that now came so automatically?

‘Dr Costa’s nice, isn’t he?’

‘Very nice.’ Her agreement was deliberately casual. What an understatement!

‘Is he married?’

‘I have no idea.’ Liar! Pip knew as well as most women on the staff of Christchurch General that Toni Costa was single.

‘Maybe you should find out.’

‘Why?’

‘’Cos it’s about time you got a boyfriend and I think Dr Costa’s hot.’

Pip wasn’t about to engage in that kind of ‘girl-talk’ with any twelve-year-old but most especially not her own daughter. ‘I’m way too busy to fit a boyfriend into my life.’

‘If you leave it too long, you’ll get old and crusty and no one will want you.’

‘Oh, cheers!’ But Pip was grinning. ‘For your information, kid, twenty-eight isn’t old!’

They had reached the staffroom now but, as usual, Alice had to have the last word.

‘Well, he likes you. I could tell.’

Toni sat back in his chair and sighed with relief as the shrieking toddler who had been the last patient in today’s clinic was removed from his consulting room.

He eyed the pile of manila folders and patient notes on his desk and pulled a pen from his pocket. While it would be nice to escape the hospital completely and revel in the peace and quiet of his home, he never left a clinic until he’d expanded his rushed notes to make a detailed summary of each visit. It wouldn’t take long.

When he got the Alice Murdoch’s file, however, he found himself simply staring into space, fiddling with the pen instead of writing efficiently.

How long would it be before he saw the Murdoch sisters again? Not that he’d wish an episode of acute abdominal pain on Alice, of course.

He could always find another reason to visit the emergency department, couldn’t he? A consult that he didn’t send a registrar to do, for example.

It wasn’t as though he intended to ask Pippa out or anything. Good grief, she was the relative of one of his patients.

Only the sister, though, not the mother. Did that somehow make it more acceptable?

But what would be the point of starting something that would go nowhere? He’d done that too many times already. And she was a doctor. A career-woman. Toni wasn’t about to break his number-one rule. However ready he might be to find his life partner, the mother of his children was going to have to be as devoted to them as he intended to be.

As devoted as his own parents had always failed to be.

But he was going to have a career, wasn’t he? Wouldn’t any intelligent woman also want a career—at least part time?

Maybe this Pippa Murdoch was planning to go into general practice some time.

Part time.

Toni tried to shake off his line of thought. Tried, and then failed, to complete the task waiting for him on his desk.

There was just something about the bond between those sisters that was very appealing. It was something special. Unusual.

Her family was clearly very important to her. She had left a patient who sounded as though he could be having a heart attack to accompany Alice to the appointment, and she was concerned enough to be determined to get a more definitive diagnosis than her family doctor had supplied.

He respected that.

And there was no getting away from the fact that she was a beautiful woman.

Different.

Stunning, in fact.

Toni reached for the phone and punched in an extension number.

‘Ultrasound Reception, Marie speaking.’

‘Hello, Marie. It’s Toni Costa here, Paediatrics.’

There was a small noise on the other end of the line. Almost a squeak.

‘You’ll be getting a request for an abdominal ultrasound on a twelve-year-old patient of mine, Alice Murdoch.’

‘Yes?’ Marie sounded keen to be helpful.

‘I’d like you to let me know when you schedule the examination. If I’m available, I’d like to come and watch.’

‘Really?’ Marie recovered from her surprise. ‘Of course, I’ll let you know as soon as it’s in the book. Is it urgent?’

Toni considered that for a moment. ‘It’s important rather than urgent,’ he decided aloud. ‘But it would be very nice if it could happen within the next week or two.’

And it would be very nice, albeit unlikely, if he happened to be free at the time of the appointment. That way, there was at least a chance he might see Pippa again in the not-so-distant future.

He went back to finishing his paperwork.

Quite oblivious to the half-smile that occasionally played at the corners of his mouth.

THE child looked sick.

Pip had gone past the mother, sitting with a boy aged about two on her lap, twice. They had been there for nearly half an hour and should have been seen before this, but a major trauma case had come in and a significant percentage of the senior emergency department staff were tied up with several badly injured patients in the main resus bays.

The department had been crazy all day. Pip currently had three patients under her care and they were all genuinely unwell. Seventy-five-year-old Elena was having an angina attack that was much worse than usual and could herald an imminent myocardial infarction. Her investigations were well under way and adequate pain relief had been achieved, but Pip was trying to keep an eye on her ECG trace as she waited for blood results to come back and the cardiology registrar to arrive.

Doris, in cubicle 3, was eighty-four and had slipped on her bathroom floor to present with a classic neck of femur fracture. The orderlies had just taken her away to X-Ray and then she would most likely need surgical referral for a total hip replacement.

Nine-year-old Jake had had an asthma attack that hadn’t responded well to his usual medications and his frightened mother had rushed him into Emergency just as the victims from the multi-vehicle pile-up on the motorway had started arriving. Judging the attack to be of moderate severity, Pip had started Jack on a continuous inhalation of salbutamol solution nebulised by oxygen. She had also placed a cannula in a forearm vein in case IV drug therapy was needed, but his oxygen saturation levels were creeping up and the anxiety levels dropping in both mother and child.

Pip was about to check on Jake again and consider whether he needed admission to the paediatric ward.

Toni Costa’s ward.

Seeing another child waiting for assessment made her think of Toni again, but Pip was getting quite used to that. It wasn’t just Alice’s fault for making that unwarranted but rather delicious suggestion that he’d been attracted to her. Pip preferred to think the explanation was because she’d been so impressed with the man as a paediatrician. How good he was with interacting with his young patients and what a good example he’d set in making such a thorough assessment of a new case. How he’d taken Pip’s unspoken concerns seriously and made her feel that her daughter was in safe hands.