The Emergency Specialist

‘Would you mind if I made a quick phone call?’ he asked.

‘No, please do,’ she said, relief flooding over her. He was a gorgeous, handsome man, with a sexy voice, and no doubt most other women would have been delighted for him to kiss them, but not Anna. She was completely immune to his obvious charms…indeed, she was completely immune to any man’s charms. She must have a heart in there somewhere, but she felt as if it was made of stone.

Jack retrieved his mobile from a bag he’d placed behind her seat. He dialled a number which was answered almost immediately.

‘Hi, it’s me,’ he said. ‘I’m on my way home. Is there anything you need me to pick up from the shops on the way back?’

He paused while the person at the other end replied.

‘OK,’ he said, ‘just some yoghurts. Is strawberry still her favourite?’

Another pause.

‘Fine. See you in a few minutes.’ He ended the call and replaced the mobile in his bag.

Anna didn’t show any curiosity about the phone call. Her mind was elsewhere, conjuring up images of Liam, wondering what he was doing right now.

Jack started the car again. ‘I was just phoning my housekeeper,’ he explained. ‘Damn, I meant to ask her if Saskia was still awake. I like to see her before she goes to bed but it’s not always possible with my irregular hours of work.’

‘Saskia?’ Anna asked.

‘My daughter.’ Jack gave her a quick glance. ‘Didn’t I mention her? I suppose I was too busy boring you with stories of my misspent youth.’

Anna felt stung. ‘You didn’t bore me!’ Was her disinterest so obvious to him? And now, just as he was about to take her home, he mentioned that he had a child! She would have found that a much more interesting topic of conversation than hearing all about Anneka-the-party-girl.

‘Tell me about Saskia,’ coaxed Anna. ‘How old is she?’

‘Three. She had her birthday last week…we had a little tea-party for her.’

‘We?’ All of a sudden she was finding the conversation intriguing.

‘There was Christine, my housekeeper-cum-nanny, Saskia’s three little chums from nursery school and my parents, who came up from Cornwall. And I managed to make it through the whole party without getting called in to the hospital.’

‘Sounds fun, the party,’ said Anna. ‘I’ve got three nephews and two nieces and I adored helping out at their birthday parties when they were small… Oh, you turn left here and my road is immediately on the right,’ she instructed. ‘I live in the block of flats near the postbox.’

Jack followed her directions and pulled to a stop outside her flat. He ran his eyes over her but this time they had a softer look, not the unsettling scrutiny that he’d been giving her ever since they’d met.

‘Do you like children?’ he asked.

‘Very much,’ she replied, reaching for the doorhandle. ‘Anyway, Jack, thanks for the drink.’

He saw her to the front door and then walked back to his car.

‘See you at the hospital,’ he called to her retreating back.

* * *

Jack drove home via the supermarket and picked up the strawberry yoghurt. When he arrived at his house he was told that Saskia was already in bed and asleep. He’d been hoping that Christine might have kept her up after her bath, as she often did, so that he could see his daughter and put her to bed himself. He liked reading bedtime stories to her and asking what she’d done during the day. It was for him one of the highlights of the day.

‘I thought you’d probably be home late,’ said Christine, ‘with you going out with a colleague.’ He noted the hint of criticism in her voice.

He couldn’t remember whether he’d mentioned that it was a female work colleague—but from the disapproving way she was reacting he guessed that he must have let slip that it had been a woman he was meeting. Christine, wonderful nanny and housekeeper that she was, was also overly protective of her employer. She was always warning him about ‘unscrupulous women’—according to her, there were hordes of them who were just waiting to grab someone like him and trick him into marriage. If there were women throwing themselves at him, Jack had been too grief-stricken or too busy to notice. In fact, Anna Craven was the first woman he’d asked out since his wife died.

He went upstairs and crept into his daughter’s room. He could see in the soft glow from her nightlight that she was asleep. He knelt by the side of her small bed and moved the teddy bear that was pressed up against her chubby cheek. She stirred slightly before resuming her blissful slumber. Her rounded features were still those of a baby even though she proudly told everyone that she was a ‘big girl’ now that she was three.

He touched her golden hair, stroking it gently with his fingers. Her mother’s golden hair…the mother she’d never known.

‘Saskia,’ he whispered softly, ‘Sweet dreams, my darling.’

He gazed at her silently for several minutes, conscious of the almost imperceptible rise and fall of her breathing, watching over her like a guardian angel.

What a strange couple of days it had been! Days of such contrasting emotions. Yesterday, when he’d first seen Anna, the shock had almost felled him. He truly had thought he’d been starting to hallucinate…the pain he’d experienced had almost been physical in its intensity. Three years had been swept away in the blink of an eye when he’d come face to face with Anneka’s double. Anneka, his adored wife, taken from him so suddenly and so cruelly.

Jack sighed deeply. Thank goodness for work, he mused. It had given him something other than his bereavement to focus on. And, later that day, when he’d found himself working with Anna, he’d been able to put the whole episode in perspective. He now realised that, apart from the close physical resemblance, Dr Anna Craven was very different from his late wife. He was so glad she’d agreed to go out with him for a drink—especially as she was the only woman he’d found remotely attractive in the last three years. Asking her out tonight had helped him to get over yet another obstacle as he clawed his way back to emotional normality. It hadn’t been easy…to other men it would have been just a quick drink after work, but for Jack it had constantly brought back memories of happier times. There had been a time when he hadn’t been able to imagine ever wanting to go out with another woman—but today he’d desperately wanted Anna to come out with him. Furthermore, he’d found her attractive. Extremely attractive.

‘Welcome back to the land of the living,’ he murmured to himself, still gazing fondly at his daughter.

Then he kissed her softly on the forehead, placed the teddy bear at the end of the bed and let himself out of the room, closing the door silently behind him.

CHAPTER TWO

THE following week, Anna changed from the day shift to the night shift. Although it played havoc with her sleep pattern, in some ways she preferred the night shift. The atmosphere in the hospital was completely different—a strange mixture of cosiness and danger.

During the long hours of the night shift, Anna was frequently reminded of why she’d chosen to specialise in A and E. It made her feel as if she was right in the centre of everything, with her finger on the pulse of life.

As she strode through the swing doors that led into the accident and emergency department, a small knot of tension formed in her stomach. It happened every time, particularly when she was on the night shift. She knew it would only be temporary and would disappear within a couple of minutes. It told her that the adrenalin rush had begun and that she was ready to swing into action without a moment’s delay.

She hadn’t taken more than a dozen steps when one of the nurses grabbed her.

‘Dr Craven, you’re needed in Resus One,’ she said. ‘Patient just admitted…young child…rescued from a house fire…extensive burns to his legs. Mr Harvey is in charge.’

She put on a sterile gown and walked briskly towards the resuscitation room. A light over the entrance was signalling a code blue. She quickened her pace. A code blue meant that a life-threatening crisis was on hand.

Resus One was a hive of activity. Several people in theatre blues and surgical gowns were circling the trolley and on it was the small, motionless figure of a child. The bottom half of his body was covered with the special wet dressings used for burns. Through the antiseptic-smelling air drifted another smell, the nauseating, never-to-be-forgotten smell of burnt flesh.

Jack looked up. Once again he experienced a chilling moment as the woman who so resembled his late wife walked into the resus room.

‘Glad to have your assistance, Dr Craven,’ he said, keeping his voice on an even keel, though his heartbeat had gone into overdrive. He’d get used to it, he told himself, working with her on a daily basis—and the shock waves would become less each time they met. Or maybe not…because these particular shock waves were becoming very pleasurable, he had to admit.

‘We’re prepping this young patent for a transfusion,’ he told her. ‘The burns are so bad that he needs blood as soon as possible or there’s a good chance he’ll die of shock.’

‘What’s his blood pressure?’ she asked.

‘Eighty over sixty,’ a nurse replied. ‘He’s showing signs of shock.’

‘How old is he?’

‘About six, we think,’ replied Jack. ‘We don’t know for sure because he was alone in the house when the fire started. His parents haven’t been contacted yet.’ He gave this information factually but Anna could see the rage in his eyes.

At that moment, the monitors surrounding the boy began to bleep erratically as the lines on the screens became jagged and irregular.

‘Get the defibrillator over here,’ Jack shouted. ‘He’s arrested!’

Anna and the rest of the team went to work. The boy’s oxygen level was increased and Anna moved forward, holding the defibrillator paddles.

‘One, two, three—clear!’ she called. Down went the paddles onto the boy’s chest. There was a loud buzzing and the boy’s small body was practically lifted off the operating trolley.

Everyone turned their attention to the monitor. The boy’s heart was beating regularly again but the rate was weak, the green lines barely moving up and down.

‘I think you should try again,’ said Jack. ‘Two hundred and forty joules again.’

Anna recharged the paddles and waited.

‘One, two, three—clear!’ she called, before again applying the defibrillator.

The team waited anxiously, all eyes on the monitor as the oxygen mask was clamped over the boy’s face. The green lines on the screen settled into a regular rhythm, this time stronger than before.

‘He’s stabilising,’ said Jack. ‘Good. Keep the oxygen at ninety-five per cent. Well done, everyone!’

He looked at Anna as he said this. He would have liked to have said more. He’d have liked to have said, You are terrific, Dr Craven, one of the best registrars I’ve ever worked with. But instead he just kept on looking at her, his eyes dancing—and even though he was wearing a surgical mask she must have known he was smiling at her.

Now that they’d stabilised the boy’s heart, the team turned their attention to his legs. Jack gently pulled back the wet dressings, revealing the young boy’s mottled, bleeding legs which had pieces of charred material stuck to them. The smell of burnt flesh intensified. But while his legs were very badly burned, the rest of his small body was mainly unaffected.

‘He must have been wearing just pyjama bottoms,’ said Jack as he set up the line for the blood transfusion, ‘and they must have been made of untreated cotton. That’s why they burst into flame with such tragic results.’

A nurse wheeled an intravenous pole across the room to the head of the trolley. ‘I thought pyjamas had to be made of flame-retardant material,’ she said. ‘I thought it was the law.’

‘It is,’ said Jack bitterly, ‘but this kid’s pyjamas were certainly not flame-retardant. Any news of his parents yet?’ He looked towards the door but no one was waiting outside.

‘I’ll go and find out, shall I?’ asked Tammy, one of the nurses whom Anna recognised from the triage desk—the reception area where patients were sorted into categories depending on medical priority.

‘Yes, please,’ said Jack. ‘There may be decisions to make about operating and we may need parental permission. Though what kind of parents must they be? People who leave a young kid alone in a house at night, while they, most likely, go out on the town! The police have been informed, I do know that.’

He watched as the first bag of blood was hooked onto the intravenous pole and the line attached to the patient. ‘Now we need to set up the intravenous antibiotics,’ he instructed.

Jack and Anna worked together smoothly and silently, each anticipating the other’s actions. He was good to work with, Anna thought. He was quick and efficient and he exuded a calmness and confidence that she found mentally stimulating and physically reassuring. He was the ideal surgeon for the kind of situations they constantly faced in A and E.

‘I wasn’t expecting to find you on the night shift,’ she said.

‘I’m not,’ he said wryly. ‘I’m on the day shift but was asked to stay on when we got the call from the emergency services.’

Tammy came back into the resuscitation room, followed by a distraught man.

‘This is the boy’s father,’ she said.

‘How’s my son? How’s Jamie?’ he asked anxiously. The medical team parted slightly, leaving a small gap through which the boy’s father was confronted by the gory sight on the surgical trolley.

‘Oh, my God!’ he said. ‘He’s not dead, is he? Tell me he isn’t dead!’

‘He’s alive but he isn’t out of danger by any means,’ said Jack, not wishing to soften the blow. His eyes were blazing. He was so mad that he wanted to put his blood-stained hands round the throat of the man who had allowed this to happen.

‘I feel it’s my fault!’ said the man, running a hand through his tousled hair.

‘I would imagine it is your fault,’ Jack shot back, ‘leaving a child as young as this on his own.’

‘But it was only meant to be for a few minutes!’ said the man wretchedly. ‘I had to go—I had to take my wife to the hospital! She’s eight months pregnant and she was bleeding and—’

‘I thought I recognised you,’ interrupted Tammy. ‘I remember you coming in with your wife earlier in the evening. You’re Mr Wyatt, aren’t you?’

‘Yes,’ he confirmed. ‘Todd Wyatt.’

‘Well, Mr Wyatt, why didn’t you call an ambulance?’ Jack asked him, his anger barely concealed below the surface.

‘I did, but it didn’t come! I thought my wife was going to die. I went upstairs to Jamie’s room and he was asleep. I thought I’d better not wake him up and bring him along with us because there was all this blood and everything. I thought it would really upset him. So when the ambulance didn’t come I decided to drive her to hospital myself, thinking it would only take a few minutes, but the car broke down on the way back. When I finally got home the whole place was in flames, fire-engines everywhere.’

He put his hands over his face and sobbed. ‘It was terrible! I thought Jamie was still in the house!’

Anna stripped off her latex gloves and binned them before putting a comforting hand on Todd Wyatt’s shoulder.

‘We hope it’s going to be all right, Mr Wyatt. Your son’s heart stopped at one point but he’s stabilised now. He’s been very badly burned and we’re now sending him to the hospital’s burns unit. They can do miraculous things these days with skin grafts. What happened to your wife? How is she?’

It was as though the man had completely forgotten about her for the moment.

‘Oh,’ he said, trying to cast his mind back to his other, earlier traumatic event. ‘They’ve taken her in for observation. The baby might be born prematurely, they said. I’ll go and check on her when I know what’s going to happen with Jamie. I’ll have to tell her, of course. Oh, hell, how am I going to tell her?’

‘I’d like to talk to you about Jamie’s pyjamas,’ said Jack, still extremely angry with the man but accepting that he had been placed in a terrible dilemma.

‘Pyjamas?’ said the man, still in a state of shock. ‘I don’t know anything about pyjamas.’

‘One of the reasons Jamie got so badly burned was because he wasn’t wearing flame-retardant pyjamas. They’re the only kind they’re supposed to sell for children. It’s the law.’

‘I think he’d gone to bed in his new judo outfit, or just the bottom half of it. He was very chuffed with it, wanted to wear it all the time. My wife made it for him from some material she got from the market, you know, to save money. She’s very clever with the sewing machine.’

Jack caught Anna’s eye. ‘Not so very clever, as it turned out,’ he said under his breath.

The trolley, with Jamie on it, was in the process of being transferred to the burns unit.

‘Tammy,’ said Anna to the nurse, ‘would you help Mr Wyatt find out what’s happened to his wife?’ Turning to the distraught man, she said, ‘Jamie’s condition is under control now. He’s sedated and he’s in good hands, and he won’t really know whether you’re here or not, Mr Wyatt, so you may as well go and be with your wife, particularly if they’re delivering the baby. I’m sure you’ll want to be there to give her support.’

Todd Wyatt followed the nurse to the main desk area and she sat him down while she made enquiries from the maternity unit.

Anna and Jack went into the changing room where they removed their surgical gowns, masks and hats.

‘I must have a shower before I even think of going home, I’m so hot and sticky,’ he said, reaching for a clean towel from the overhead lockers. ‘You look as fresh as a daisy,’ he said to Anna, his body very close to hers. ‘It’s always the way with the shift hand-over. The freshly laundered taking over from the jaded, perspiring ones!’

As he stretched up and grabbed the fluffy white towel provided by the hospital laundry, the heady scent of fresh, male sweat invaded her nostrils.

She was a fastidious person. Normally she couldn’t stand being too close to a sweaty person—man or woman. But she didn’t find Jack’s glowing proximity at all repellent. Far from it. She amazed herself by actually finding it quite attractive. She breathed in again and almost felt like swooning. Must be something to do with pheromones, she thought with an inward laugh…although she’d always believed those special sexual chemicals were reserved for the animal kingdom—in particular, moths! She found herself laughing out loud.

‘What’s so funny?’ he asked.

‘I was just thinking about moths,’ she said, then, moving away, added, ‘It’s too complicated to explain.’

‘Do you like Mozart?’ he asked.

She puzzled over the connection between moths and Mozart.

‘Give up,’ she said. ‘I know he wrote something about a bat, Die Fledermaus? Or was that another composer?’

Jack leaned on the metal doors of the locker, his body relaxed, all the tension from his long working day vanished. Her misunderstanding appeared to amuse him greatly.

‘Forget moths,’ he said, grinning at her. ‘I’m talking about a Mozart concert at the Bridgemore Hall. Do you fancy coming along?’

Anna was about to refuse. Her mouth opened, but before she could get the words out he was one jump ahead.

‘I’ve checked your rota. The concert’s next week when you’re on the day shift.’

‘You checked my rota?’ She wasn’t sure whether to be flattered or annoyed at this evidence of snooping on his part. When he nodded, all she could bring herself to say was, ‘Oh.’

‘Do you like Mozart?’ he repeated. ‘When I mentioned loud disco music the other day you implied that your taste ran more along classical lines. And the tape I was playing in the car on the way to the pub was a Mozart symphony. You said you liked it…so I thought it would be nice to go to a live concert.’

He’d certainly done his homework!

‘Well, I…’ began Anna.

He’d put her in an awkward position. She liked him, and she was even beginning to find herself physically attracted to him, but she wasn’t ready to start dating anyone at the moment. And yet it was going to be very difficult to turn him down, particularly when he said, ‘I do hope you’ll come, Anna. I haven’t been out to a concert or a movie, or anything really, since I lost my wife. Going out on your own can be a very depressing activity in those circumstances.’

‘I’m sure you could have found someone to go with you,’ she exclaimed, before realising how crass it sounded. She bit her lip.

‘I’m sure I could,’ said Jack. ‘But that’s not the point. I haven’t wanted to ask anyone to come with me up to now. That’s the difference. But if you don’t like Mozart, I’ll give the tickets to Christine and she can take a friend along.’

‘Oh, but I do like Mozart,’ said Anna, who was beginning to feel this conversation was leading in one direction only. Jack was so determined that she would go out with him that she might as well give in gracefully.

‘What day is the concert?’ she asked.

‘Thursday,’ he said.

‘I’d love to come, Jack. Thank you very much. Now, you’d better take that shower and I’d better get back on duty.’

* * *

The next day, when she got back home after the night shift, there was a message on her answering machine.

‘Hi, Anna, it’s Rebecca. Give me a ring soon as you can, will you, darling? Bye for now.’

It was the only message waiting for her and, even though she was desperate for a hot bath and a lie-down, she decided she’d better phone her older sister straight away and get it over with. Rebecca didn’t phone her all that frequently and she wondered if it could be something urgent, some family crisis perhaps? The tone of voice on the answering machine gave nothing away but then it never did as far as Rebecca was concerned. Her sister’s ‘telephone voice’ was always the same—bossy, assertive and with a touch of false jollity.

She picked up the phone and dialled her sister’s number.

‘Thanks for ringing back,’ said Rebecca at the other end. ‘I thought you might have been at the hospital or on call or something.’

‘I’ve just come off the night shift,’ she said.

‘Oh, good, then we can chat.’

‘I’m very tired, Rebecca. Was there something special you phoned about? Otherwise I’d rather chat to you when I’ve had a bath and some sleep.’

‘I won’t keep you long, Doctor,’ said Rebecca, who reacted as if she’d been rebuked. ‘It’s about the Gypsies…about Dad, really.’

Rebecca had always referred to their parents as ‘the Gypsies’ ever since their father had retired, sold the large family home and bought a small apartment and a top-of-the-range motor home. Their parents now spent a good part of the year travelling around Europe.

‘What about Dad?’ queried Anna. ‘He’s not ill, is he?’

‘Good heavens, no!’ replied Rebecca. ‘I was talking to Jennifer and we were saying that as it’s Dad’s sixtieth birthday soon we should be thinking of having some sort of celebration. It’s only a few weeks away and they’re planning to be back in England for it.’

‘Yes, you’re right,’ said Anna, her heart sinking at the thought of all the arrangements that would have to be made. ‘We ought to do something for him, but what?’

‘A party, of course,’ replied her sister. ‘That’s why I phoned. I’ve arranged to have a meeting with Jennifer one day next week so that we can discuss it. What about Thursday?’

The day rang a bell with Anna. She knew she wasn’t on night shift…but…oh, yes, that was the day she’d agreed to go out with Jack.

‘Can’t do Thursday, I’m going to a concert,’ she blurted out, before realising what she’d said.

‘That’s nice,’ said Rebecca. ‘With a man?’

Anna could visualise her sister’s antennae whizzing round like mad, hoping to pick up any signals regarding her closely guarded private life.

‘Yes,’ she admitted. She was too tired and too mentally exhausted to attempt to head her off.