The Consultant's Italian Knight Read online

  ‘He is also a jerk,’ Mario interrupted, and Kate’s lips twitched.

  ‘He certainly doesn’t seem to like you very much,’ she conceded, then her smile deepened. ‘Maybe he’s afraid you’re going to ask him out.’

  ‘Tell him he can sleep easy. I prefer the more macho type,’ Mario replied and, as he crossed the treatment room, Kate had to bite down hard on her lip to stop herself from laughing.

  He was impossible—absolutely impossible—but she couldn’t help but like him. More than like him, if she was honest, but she was very proud of the way she was managing to keep a lid on her feelings, and whenever the lid threatened to blow off he invariably said something which riled her, which was fine.

  Sort of.

  ‘He’s fitting in really well, isn’t he?’ Terri observed, seeing the direction of Kate’s gaze as she joined her. ‘And, boy, does he suit that uniform. I thought he was a good-looking man when he was wearing those denims and had all that stubble, but clean-shaven, and dressed in a nurse’s whites…’ She smacked her lips. ‘Definite eye candy.’

  ‘For both sexes, it would appear.’ Kate laughed, and Terri did, too.

  ‘I don’t know why so many of our male patients assume he must be gay,’ the sister observed. ‘I suppose it’s stereotyping—the supposition that if you’re a nurse you must be a woman—but if ever there was a male man, Mario Volante is it.’

  He was, too, Kate thought. Very male. Extremely male. Toecurlingly, every-nerve-ending-aware male.

  And you’re only just divorced, her mind reminded her. You’re off men for the duration, remember? And she was. She most definitely was, but if she was ever to fall off the wagon…

  No, absolutely not, she told herself. She’d need her head examined if she was ever to get involved with a man like Mario Volante. Always presupposing he wanted to get involved with her, she thought with a slight sigh, and she wasn’t at all certain that he did. For sure he flirted with her, and for sure he continually teased her, but that was all he’d done. He’d never asked her out, not even for a coffee in the canteen.

  ‘It’s odd, though,’ Terri continued with a slight frown, ‘but I would never have pegged Mario as a nurse, far less an auxiliary nurse, and it’s not just because of the breadth of his knowledge. It’s his whole manner. As though he’s used to giving orders, rather than taking them. Maybe it’s because he’s worked overseas. Maybe nurses are given more authority there than they are here?’

  Oh, hell, Kate thought, as she stared at the sister. Mario’s decision to come into work with her had been made so fast that they hadn’t had time to concoct even the most rudimentary of back stories for him. Most of the unit nurses had settled for his vague ‘I’ve been overseas for the past eight years’ story, but Paul would persist in asking Mario about the hospitals he’d worked in, and if Terri started doing it, too…

  ‘Terri—’

  ‘Are you two going to move out of my way?’ Bill, their porter, snapped. ‘Or am I supposed to levitate this damn thing over you?’

  ‘Sorry, Bill,’ Kate said, moving quickly aside so the porter could get past them with the wheelchair he was pushing, but a small frown pleated her forehead when he grumbled his way out of the treatment room. ‘What’s up with him today? He’s not usually so snippy.’

  ‘He heard yesterday that one of his granddaughters in New Zealand has been in a car crash,’ Terri replied, ‘and he’s stressed about not being able to afford to go out and see her.’

  ‘Oh, the poor man!’ Kate exclaimed. ‘Is there anything we can do?’

  ‘I was wondering whether we could perhaps organise a whip-round, or something?’ Terri declared. ‘We’d have to do it tactfully—you know how Bill feels about charity—but if we did it carefully, bought him the plane ticket…’

  ‘I think that’s an excellent idea,’ Kate said. ‘Maybe we could tell him…’ She paused. Mario and Paul were standing outside cubicle 5, practically nose to nose, and she didn’t think they were exchanging telephone numbers. ‘What the…?’

  ‘If I were in the business of making educated guesses,’ Terri murmured, ‘I’d say Paul and Mario were having a humdinger of a row.’

  That would have been Kate’s guess, too, and she stepped forward, only to stop. The nursing staff weren’t her responsibility, they were Terri’s, but the sister must have read her mind because she shook her head quickly.

  ‘Nope—absolutely not,’ she declared. ‘No way am I getting in between those two.’

  And before Kate could say anything Terri had slipped into one of the cubicles, leaving her with no alternative but to walk slowly and extremely reluctantly towards the two men.

  ‘Kate, could you explain to this…this moron that I’m the specialist registrar in this department,’ Paul exclaimed as soon as she drew near, ‘and that when I give an order I expect it to be obeyed.’

  ‘Even if it’s wrong?’ Mario retorted, and Kate groaned inwardly.

  She didn’t need this, she really didn’t. They had a waiting room full of people, and yet every nurse in the treatment room was standing, frozen, watching to see what she would do.

  ‘Can I have a word, Nurse Volante?’ she said.

  ‘But—’

  ‘Now, Nurse Volante,’ Kate continued, and waited only until they were out of Paul’s earshot before she muttered, ‘OK, I know Paul can sometimes be a jerk, but—’

  ‘This has nothing to do with Paul’s personality,’ Mario interrupted. ‘He thinks the man in cubicle 5 has viral hepatitis, and I think it’s something else, so I want you to examine him.’

  ‘You want me to…?’ Kate gazed at Mario in horror. ‘You know I can’t. No matter what I might think of Paul, he’s my specialist registrar, and I can’t query his diagnosis.’

  ‘I’m not asking you to query it,’ Mario declared. ‘I’m asking you to confirm it.’

  ‘But that’s the same as asking me to query it,’ she protested. ‘It would be completely unprofessional, Mario.’

  ‘Please, Kate. I wouldn’t ask you to do this if I didn’t truly believe I am right and Paul is wrong.’

  His blue eyes were fixed on hers, and she bit her lip.

  ‘Every time you say, “please”, and I agree to whatever you’re suggesting, I live to regret it,’ she observed, then sighed as she saw Mario open his mouth, clearly intending to continue the argument. ‘OK, all right. I’ll take a look at this patient, and I hope to heaven you’re right.’

  ‘I’m sorry, but I think Mr Nicolson has viral hepatitis,’ Kate declared, taking her stethoscope out of her ears as she straightened up, and Paul shot Mario a look that spoke volumes.

  ‘Well, now we’ve established that!’ the specialist registrar exclaimed. ‘Can I please get on with treating him?’

  ‘Kate, have you seen Mr Nicolson’s clothes?’ Mario declared, completely ignoring Paul. ‘He was wearing a hand woven jacket when he came in, and his shirt’s unbleached linen.’

  ‘While I’m sure your knowledge of fabrics is absolutely fascinating, Nurse Volante,’ Paul replied, his voice positively glacial, ‘I hardly think this is relevant, do you?’

  ‘His wife said they pride themselves on growing as much of their own food as they can,’ Mario continued doggedly. ‘Of being self-sufficient, living off the land.’

  ‘Lot’s of people do, Mario,’ Kate said gently. ‘Organic farming is really big now, and as Paul said—’

  ‘I think Mr Nicolson has eaten something poisonous, and my guess is mushrooms.’

  ‘Mushrooms?’ Kate repeated as Paul uttered a barely disguised exclamation of impatience. ‘Why mushrooms?’

  ‘Because I’ve seen the symptoms before,’ Mario declared. ‘In my work.’

  ‘They have epidemics of mushroom poisonings overseas, do they?’ Paul said with derision, but Kate’s gaze was fixed on Mario.

  He hadn’t meant what Paul thought, and she knew he hadn’t.

  ‘OK, run through his symptoms for me again,’ she said, and tho
ugh Paul’s eyes rose heavenwards in exasperation there was no way the specialist registrar could refuse to answer her.

  ‘Mr Nicolson developed severe abdominal pain, with persistent vomiting and watery diarrhoea yesterday morning,’ he declared. ‘He was also extremely thirsty, and yet despite all the fluid he drank he couldn’t produce any urine. By last night he seemed a lot better, but this morning he could hardly get out of bed, seemed to have no energy, and the pain in his stomach was back. In other words, he has all the classic symptoms of viral hepatitis.’

  But those symptoms could also fit mushroom poisoning, Kate thought, staring down at Grant Nicolson, and the longer they waited the more likelihood there was of his liver being irreparably damaged.

  ‘Get his wife in here,’ she said. ‘I want to talk to her.’

  ‘You…you’re actually giving credence to the half-baked theory of an auxiliary nurse?’ Paul said, two livid spots of colour appearing on his cheeks, as Mario sped away. ‘You’re actually going to overrule my considered, professional—’

  ‘I’m not overruling anything,’ Kate interrupted. ‘I simply want to talk to Mrs Nicolson.’

  ‘But…’

  Paul bit off whatever he’d been about to say as Mario reappeared with Grant Nicolson’s wife and Kate smiled encouragingly at the woman.

  ‘Mrs Nicolson, has your husband eaten anything you haven’t in the last seventy-two hours?’

  ‘Definitely not,’ the woman replied. ‘We always eat the same things. Our own home-made muesli for breakfast, home-made soup for lunch, and—’

  ‘He couldn’t perhaps have eaten something when he was away from home?’ Kate interrupted, and Mrs Nicolson shook her head.

  ‘We both work from home, Doctor. Grant and I used to have high-powered jobs in London, but we weren’t happy so we moved to Aberdeenshire three years ago and since then I’ve been working as a potter, and Grant has started his own smallholding. If we do make any trips, we make them together.’

  ‘So there is nothing he can have eaten that you didn’t?’ Kate declared.

  ‘Nothing at all.’

  ‘Well, there you are,’ Paul said. ‘Now, if I might be allowed—’

  ‘Unless you count the mushrooms we gathered on Tuesday afternoon,’ Mrs Nicolson added. ‘I didn’t eat any because I don’t like mushrooms, but they can’t have made Grant ill. He was perfectly fine after he’d eaten them.’

  He would have been, Kate thought, because it could take forty-eight hours for some of the more deadly mushrooms to have their effect.

  ‘I don’t suppose you have any of the mushrooms left?’ she asked, all too certain that the answer would be no, but to her surprise Mrs Nicolson smiled.

  ‘As a matter of fact, I do. I was going to take some round to my friend’s house this morning, but when Grant became ill…’ She delved into her capacious handbag, and produced a brown paper bag. ‘As you can see, they’re just ordinary field mushrooms.’

  Not ordinary field mushrooms at all, Kate thought as she took the paper bag from Mrs Nicolson and shook the contents out onto a kidney dish, but death cap mushrooms. Death cap mushrooms that were full of deadly toxins which attacked the liver, and heart, and could also cause skeletal muscular damage.

  ‘Is there something wrong?’ Mrs Nicolson said hesitantly, her eyes going from Kate to Mario, to Paul, then back again. ‘They are just ordinary mushrooms, aren’t they?’

  ‘I’m afraid they’re not, Mrs Nicolson,’ Kate replied. ‘What you and your husband picked on Tuesday were death cap mushrooms.’

  Mrs Nicolson clasped a hand to her mouth in horror, and when Mario quickly ushered her out of the cubicle, Kate stared awkwardly at her specialist registrar.

  ‘Paul—’

  ‘It’s too late for us to pump out his stomach—the toxins will already be far too well dispersed through his system,’ he interrupted stonily, ‘so I’ll try to correct his electrolyte imbalance by giving him thioctic acid, corticosteroids and high dosages of penicillin.’

  ‘Paul—’

  ‘I’ll also send samples to the lab with a request for them to specifically look for indicators of elevated LDH, and bilirubin levels in Mr Nicolson’s liver,’ he continued, his face blank and expressionless, ‘and notify IC that we’ll be sending them a case of amanita poisoning.’

  ‘Paul, if it’s any consolation, mushroom poisoning wouldn’t have been my first diagnosis either,’ she said gently, but the specialist registrar either didn’t hear her or didn’t choose to.

  ‘Do you think we got him in time?’ Mario asked after Mr Nicolson had been transferred to IC and he and Kate were standing alone at the end of the treatment room.

  ‘I don’t know.’ Kate sighed. ‘Even if he recovers, it’s pretty well certain he’s going to be looking at a liver transplant.’

  ‘It’s a hard way for someone to learn that living off the land isn’t necessarily always a healthy option,’ Mario observed, and Kate nodded.

  ‘What made you think it was mushroom poisoning?’ she asked. ‘I know you said you’d seen it before, but…’

  Mario shrugged matter-of-factly. ‘In my line of work, we mostly see people who have taken magic mushrooms—the ones which will give you a psychedelic high—but occasionally we come across the dummies who think they’ve eaten magic mushrooms only to discover they’ve eaten the deadly ones instead.’

  ‘It’s just as well you were here today,’ she observed, but, when Paul strode past them without a word, Mario’s eyebrows rose.

  ‘I’d say it’s also pretty well scotches any chance of me and Paul ever bonding,’ he observed, and Kate’s lips curved.

  ‘Well, you did say you didn’t think he was your type anyway,’ she declared, and Mario laughed.

  ‘Too true. In fact—’

  ‘Look, I really would appreciate it if you people could find somewhere else to have your conversations,’ Bill interrupted, as he struggled to manoeuvre the wheelchair he was pushing past them. ‘This poor girl is supposed to be having her arm X-rayed, and she’d get there a hell of a lot faster if I didn’t have to keep making a detour round people.’

  ‘This is your absolute gem?’ Mario remarked, as he and Kate stepped aside, and Bill pushed the wheelchair past them, still muttering. ‘Seems more like a Mr Grumpy to me.’

  ‘He’s got a lot on his mind at the moment,’ Kate replied. ‘Apparently one of his granddaughters in New Zealand was in a car crash, and he’s very worried about her. Which reminds me,’ she continued. ‘Terri wondered if we could perhaps do some sort of whip-round for him to raise the air fare. I’d better make sure she’s got the ball rolling.’

  Mario stared thoughtfully at her for a second, then nodded as though he’d resolved something he’d been puzzling over.

  ‘Not a control freak,’ he observed. ‘An over-compensator.’

  ‘I am not.’

  ‘Kate, it takes one to know one,’ he declared as she glared at him, fury plain on her face, ‘and I’m not surprised. You’re a woman in what is still seen largely as a man’s profession, and to make it to the top you’d either need to be as tough as old boots—which you most certainly are not—or a person who obsessively dots every “I” and crosses every “T”, to make sure everything’s been done correctly.’

  ‘And if I’m an over-compensator because I’m a woman, then what’s your excuse?’ she demanded, only partly mollified by his observation.

  ‘I’ve spent the last eight years of my life in the police force trying to live down the fact that I have a degree.’

  ‘Why on earth should you need to live it down?’ she said, puzzled.

  ‘Because if you have a degree—no matter what that degree is in—you’re automatically fast-tracked which doesn’t make you the most popular guy in the force.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘I didn’t do time on the beat, Kate. I’m one of those new flash graduates who thinks he knows it all.’ Mario smiled ruefully. ‘Eight years on the job, and everybody’s
still waiting for me to fall flat on my face.’

  ‘They’re waiting for me to do that, too,’ she admitted. ‘I guess that’s why I’m always the first one in the department, and the last one out. Why I constantly check and double-check everything.’

  ‘Right down to whether Terri will remember to start the whip-round,’ Mario said, and Kate bit her lip.

  ‘It’s pathetic, isn’t it? What I do…It used to drive my ex mad.’

  ‘That was his problem, not yours.’

  ‘Was it?’ she said uncertainly, her grey eyes clouded. ‘Sometimes I wonder—’

  ‘Don’t,’ he said firmly. ‘Don’t ever wonder. You’re a first-rate doctor and a first-rate consultant, but more importantly you’re a pretty nice human being, so you have nothing to apologise for.’

  He thought she was a pretty nice human being.

  Why should that mean so much to her? she wondered as she stared up at him and felt tears unaccountably clog her throat. Because he meant it, she realised. Because this big, tough cop, who had seen as much of the horrors of humanity as she had, hadn’t picked out her medical skills as being the most important thing about her, hadn’t even tried to turn the situation into an occasion to flirt with her, he had simply said she was a pretty nice human being, and he had meant it.

  ‘You’re not so bad yourself,’ she said shakily, and he smiled.

  A wide, warm smile that seemed to reach out and surround her, but as her own lips shyly curved in response, the smile in his eyes suddenly disappeared and in its place she saw a deep and unutterable sadness. A sadness that made no sense to her at all, and instinctively she put out her hand to him.

  ‘Mario…?’

  ‘Kate, you are never going to believe this!’ Terri exclaimed as she hurried into the treatment room, then paused. ‘Sorry, did I interrupt something?’

  ‘No—’

  ‘Absolutely not—’

  She and Mario had spoken in unison, Kate realised, and deliberately she avoided his gaze.

  ‘What won’t I believe, Terri?’ she said as evenly as she could, and the sister shook her head.

  ‘You have to see this for yourself.’

  And Kate did.