The House on Hope Street - By Danielle Steel Page 0,83
home too.” Jamie did things like that sometimes. All kids did. And Jamie was a little less sensible and less steady than most boys his age, for obvious reasons. Liz tried fruitlessly to calm him down, but he was screaming so loud he couldn't even hear her. He was in so much pain, he just sat on the gurney shrinking from all of them, and wouldn't let her hold him. It was very upsetting. And she was looking frazzled and worn out as she tried to talk to him again, and heard a familiar voice just behind her shoulder. “What's going on here?”
Liz turned instinctively and found herself looking into the eyes of Bill Webster. He had been in the ER to take a patient to the trauma unit when he heard the fuss, and saw the familiar red hair, and couldn't stop himself from coming over. “What happened?” he asked her, without introduction or greeting.
“He fell off a ladder and broke his arm,” she said simply, as he walked in front of Jamie and put himself in the child's field of vision to be sure he saw him. And for an instant, the wailing abated. It tuned down to vehement sobs, and as Jamie looked at Bill, his little shoulders were heaving.
“What happened, champ? Were you training for the Olympics again? It's not time yet. Didn't you know that?” He gently reached for the arm, and although Jamie shrank from him, he didn't scream or jump off the gurney, and let Bill touch him.
“I fffelllll … offffff … a lllladdddder.”
“Putting something on the Christmas tree?” Jamie nodded. “You know what we're going to do? We're going to give you a cast for that arm, and you have to make me a promise. Will you do that?”
“Wwwwhhhatt's the ppppromise?” Jamie was shaking from head to foot from all the crying, but as Bill talked to him he was gently feeling the arm, and distracting Jamie. And the child made no objection, as his mother watched him.
“I want to be the first one to sign your cast. Is that a deal? Not the second or the third … I've got to be first. Okay?”
“Okay,” Jamie nodded, as the surgeon arrived, and the two doctors conferred, and as they finished, Bill glanced at Liz. She was looking very thin, and at the moment distraught over Jamie's broken arm, which was why he had made the suggestion he just had to the surgeon.
“You know what we're going to do?” Bill asked Jamie as though he had a terrific surprise for him. “We're going to go upstairs and put on your cast now. And I'm going to come with you, just to be sure that no one else signs it first. How does that sound to you? You're going to sleep for a few minutes, and when you wake up, presto magic, the cast will be on, and I'll sign it.”
“Can I make the bed go up and down?” He still remembered that from Peter's stay there.
“We'll find you one you can turn every way you want, but first let's get that cast on.” He glanced at Liz to reassure her, and she nodded. She knew then what he had done, he had asked the surgeon if he could stay in the OR with Jamie, and the gesture touched her. She wanted to thank him, but he was already pushing Jamie toward the elevator on the gurney, and the surgeon was right behind them. She didn't want to call out to the child for fear that it would remind him that she couldn't go with him. So instead she huddled in a chair miserably, worrying about him, and thinking about Bill. It had been a shock to see him, but there had been so much else happening that they couldn't even speak to each other, which was probably better. There was nothing left to say anyway. It had been a month since she'd seen him, and it felt like aeons. She still cried herself to sleep at night over him, but there was no way for him to know that.
It was over an hour before they returned, and when they did, Jamie was still groggy, and Bill was still with him. The surgeon had gone on to another case, and Bill told her very professionally that everything had gone smoothly. It had been a clean break, and in six weeks they could take the cast off. They'd even given him one he could wear