He disinfected the wound and dressed it, then broke open the blister pack, taking the first of the antibiotic tablets out. ‘Take this one now. Then three times a day for the next week. It should start to feel better in a couple of days, but if it gets any worse call us again.’
‘Wasn’t me as called you the first time.’ Now that Toby was reassured about his leg, a mischievous sense of humour had begun to surface. Mimi remonstrated with him and, after another short battle of wills, it was time to pack up and go.
‘You know him?’ Rafe asked as he settled back behind the wheel of the car.
‘Yeah. He broke his hip about three years ago, up at his grandson’s farm, and Jack and I attended. I went to see how he was doing in hospital, and he had all the nurses wound around his little finger. When he got better, he turned up at the ambulance station with two bags of home-grown strawberries, one each for me and Jack.’
‘Nice.’
‘They were. They had a real flavour to them, not like the ones you get in the supermarket.’ Even though they were alone in the car, Mimi’s smile wasn’t for him. It was for Toby and the strawberries, and maybe for Jack. She must be missing Jack.
Rafe reminded himself that he shouldn’t need her smile in order to work effectively. Despite all their good intentions, he and Mimi just weren’t functioning as a team and they needed to address that. Quickly, if Toby was to be believed, because the sun was going down. He leaned back in his seat, trying to think of some way to broach the subject casually.
‘So, marks out of ten. What would you give us?’ Rafe accompanied the words with a smile, hoping that it would soften them. ‘I reckon ten out of ten for individual performances, and a lot less for teamwork.’
She coloured suddenly. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, how many marks out of ten do you give me for teamwork?’
Mimi shrugged. ‘Can’t we leave the psych assessments until later?’
Something in her tone made Rafe press the point. ‘I’d say one. Two if I was being generous. How many marks do you give yourself?’
She turned her gaze on him, luminous in the gathering dusk. Her eyes, wide and dark, seemed almost to be pleading with him.
‘I...I probably don’t deserve any more than one. But I can do better.’ Her words were almost a whisper.
She looked so deflated, so hurt, that he instinctively reached out for her, stopping only a moment away from touching her hand. The problem was almost entirely of his making and he’d blundered in, trying to fix it. And somehow all he’d managed to do was to wound Mimi.
‘It’s me that needs to do better, not you.’ Mimi looked as if she was on the edge of tears and the impulse to comfort her was almost irresistible.
None of his old coping strategies were going to work. Rafe knew that he needed to try something new.
‘We need to talk.’
* * *
She was doing it again, judging herself, doing herself down, before Rafe got the chance. And now he wanted to talk? Somewhere in the universe, something very big must have jolted out of alignment because Rafe didn’t talk.
Even though she’d cursed him a million times in her head for not sharing how he felt, now that he’d offered she didn’t want to hear it. The thought that Rafe’s list might be far more damning than anything which Graham might have concocted terrified her.
‘You want me...?’ She couldn’t even say it.
‘I’ll give it a go if you will.’ His voice was suddenly tender. ‘We’re both so busy doing our own thing that... Well, neither of us has put a foot wrong with a patient yet, but that might be only a matter of time. I want to do better, and I’d like you to help me.’
There wasn’t enough air in here. Her heart was labouring and her head was spinning.
But he was right. They had too much baggage, and it could so easily blind them to something important.
‘We...can’t do it now.’ She needed some time to think.
‘No. Later?’
She looked at her watch. ‘It’s eight o’clock...’ It would take them at least another two hours to get through the calls they already had. She would rather have the option of going with him to a pub or a coffee bar, but they’d barely make it before closing time. ‘Are you staying in town tonight?’
‘I’ve got one of the on-call rooms at the hospital.’
That wasn’t going to work either. The last thing that Mimi wanted was to be overheard by anyone there. She needed to be clear about what she was offering, though. ‘Before you go back there, you can come to my place. Just...half an hour.’