Accidental Rendezvous

‘She’s breathing all right for herself still, so hopefully her spine’s intact. Let’s check her reflexes.’

He ran a quick neurological check to see if there was any likelihood of spinal damage, and incredibly she seemed to have been lucky. ‘Looks OK. Wonders will never cease,’ he murmured under his breath.

He gave her a little more pain relief, then bent over her, speaking clearly. ‘OK, Jodie, I’m just going to have a look at your mouth and see what you’ve done,’ he told her, then carefully removed the tape from the neck brace and opened her lower jaw a fraction to make sure there was nothing life-threatening that they’d yet to find. He was gentle, but of necessity thorough, and she moaned softly.

‘Sorry, sweetheart,’ he soothed. ‘I won’t be long.’ He sucked out her mouth, his hands gentle as he probed the shattered jaw, and he shook his head.

‘We need to tape this up to support it but there’s nothing much to tape it to. She’ll need it fixing a.s.a.p., and her tongue needs stitching fairly soon, it’s still oozing. Where’s the faciomaxillary surgeon, for heaven’s sake?’

‘Here.’ The door slapped shut behind him, and he moved up beside Nick and assessed the patient rapidly. ‘OK, I can see why you called me,’ he said under his breath. ‘Has she got a name?’

‘Jodie Farmer.’

‘Hello, Jodie, I’m Tom Kievenaar. Don’t worry, we’ll soon have you much more comfortable.’ He turned back to Nick. ‘Got any plates of this yet?’

‘Right here,’ the radiographer said, snapping them up onto the light box.

The evidence was incontrovertible. ‘Ouch,’ Nick said softly, and Tom gave a short, humourless laugh.

‘Oh, yes, this one’s a lulu. Lower jaw, upper jaw, cheekbone, nose, all the top front teeth—there’s enough material here for a whole symposium. The rest of her skull looks all right, though, by a miracle. What’s her GCS?’

‘Fifteen at the scene, but she might have been KO’d. No deterioration since admission.’

‘OK. No obvious neurological signs?’

Nick shook his head. ‘Nothing so far.’

‘Good—let’s hope it stays like that. OK, let’s get cracking. Anything else you’ve found out?’

‘She’s bitten her tongue—it’s still bleeding slightly and it needs stitches, but it’s not a priority. I haven’t checked the spinal X-rays yet, though, so we need to do that before she’s moved.’

They went over them together while Sally continued to monitor their patient and stabilise her. Her pressure was dropping slightly, probably due to the huge blood loss from her many fractures, and Sally opened up the flow on the plasma expander to maximum and reported the pressure drop to the two men.

‘Is she cross-matched?’ Tom asked, and Sally nodded.

‘Six units on their way.’

‘We’d better make it ten,’ Nick said, running an eye rapidly over her again. ‘Those pelvic injuries are worse than we’d thought.’

‘They seem to have taken the brunt of the impact,’ Tom murmured. ‘The orthos might want to work at the other end while I do her face. I wouldn’t want to move her too much until that lot’s stabilised. Let’s get some more plasma expander into her while we wait.’

It took a few more minutes before the orthopaedic registrar had come down and conferred with them, by which time the blood had arrived. Then Jodie was wheeled away and Sally felt the tension drain from her body as the responsibility for their patient passed on to the next team.

‘Nasty mess,’ Nick murmured, watching the trolley disappear through the double doors.

‘Certainly is. I don’t envy her. I wonder why she jumped?’

‘I don’t know, but the third floor isn’t high enough, obviously. If you’re going to do that, you need friends in higher places.’

‘Or a friend with enough gumption to talk you out of it,’ Sally said shortly, and stripped off her blood-streaked gloves and apron, dropping them into the bin. She glanced up at the clock and did a mild double-take. ‘Good grief, is it really five-thirty?’

‘Looks like it.’

She rolled her eyes. ‘Marvellous. I finished at three.’

‘Yes, I can see that,’ Nick said with a grin.

‘Oh, it’s par for the course round here,’ she assured him. ‘If I ever manage to get home before the rush hour, I’m doing well. I usually fail.’

‘Such dedication to duty,’ he teased, and she glowered at him, not in the mood to be criticised for doing her job properly.

‘Don’t knock it,’ she advised tightly. ‘Some of us have to be dedicated.’

He blinked and backed away a step. ‘Ouch,’ he murmured, his mouth twisting in a rueful smile. ‘That wasn’t criticism.’

‘Better not have been,’ she retorted, suppressing a twinge of guilt. ‘Right, I’m going before anything else happens. I’ll see you tomorrow.’

‘How about a cup of tea first?’ he suggested, but she shook her head. She was tempted—oh, how she was tempted—but she knew all about his charm. It was lethal, and she had absolutely no defences against it.

‘I don’t think so, not tonight. I’ve got to do some washing, I’ve got no clothes left.’

‘Now that’s an interesting thought,’ he said softly, and his eyes caressed her, jamming the breath in her throat and draining the strength from her legs again.

‘Forget it,’ she advised, and walked away, resisting the urge to weaken and take him up on the offer of tea. All she needed now was to settle down with him for a cosy chat!

Little chats with Nick had a habit of getting much too cosy, and that lazy charm hadn’t diminished over the years, not one iota. Besides, seeing him again after all this time had left her thoughts in turmoil, and she needed time alone to sort herself out.

Sally kept walking.

CHAPTER TWO

‘SO, YOU and Sally were quite close at one time, I gather?’

Nick flicked a quick glance at Ryan, but his expression was innocent. ‘We were good friends,’ he said guardedly, unsure what Sally might have told the Canadian consultant and unwilling to fuel hospital gossip at her expense—or his own, come to that.

On the other hand, he was perfectly willing to pump the man for anything he would reveal about Sally’s life now.

‘I haven’t seen her for years,’ he added with truth. ‘It’s good to see her looking so well and happy—I take it she is happy?’

‘Yeah, she seems to be happy—and, no, I’m not going to tell you any more than that,’ Ryan replied with a knowing smile. ‘You want answers to questions, just ask her. I’m sure she’ll tell you anything she wants you to know, she’s usually pretty open.’

That sounded like his Sally, he thought with a pang of sadness. Open and honest and full of the joys of spring. Damn.

‘What about you?’ Ryan asked. ‘Anyone in your life going to be affected by you two meeting up again like this? Strange coincidence, wasn’t it?’

Nick gave a short huff of laughter. Ryan was altogether too smart.

‘Wasn’t it just?’ he said noncommittally. ‘But since you ask, no, there’s no woman in my life.’

‘And what about all the ghosts you’ve got behind you?’ Ryan probed. ‘Is it going to make it difficult for you two to work together?’

‘No,’ Nick said firmly. ‘There won’t be a problem.’

‘I hope not,’ he said, his voice mild but the warning there for all that. ‘I don’t want the department grinding to a halt because two of the main players are at each other’s throats or weeping in the toilets.’

Nick’s mouth kicked up in a grin as he crossed his fingers behind his back. ‘I think you’re safe—I’m not given to weeping in the toilets, and would you challenge Sally’s temper?’

‘Not knowingly,’ Ryan admitted with a chuckle, and to Nick’s relief the conversation moved onto safer topics. It had given him plenty to think about, though, and one thing in particular.

Ryan, despite the mild tone of his enquiries, was fiercely protective of Sally.

Fine. So was Nick. Just so long as Ryan didn’t want her for himself …

‘Nick was asking questions about you yesterday,’ Ryan said quietly as they paused between patients.

Startled, Sally looked up and met his eyes. ‘He was?’

Ryan nodded. ‘I told him to ask you himself. I didn’t want to tell tales.’

She shrugged, her heart thumping. He was asking about her? Was that good or bad? She picked up the next set of notes and glanced down at them, pretending interest.

‘He was probably only being curious. We haven’t seen each other for years,’ she said, and Ryan nodded.

‘Yeah, he said that. It could have been just idle curiosity.’

She shot him a quick glance. ‘You don’t think so, do you?’ she asked, and Ryan shrugged.

‘I don’t know the man. You don’t think he’s a threat to you, Sally, do you?’

‘A threat?’ Oh, yes, he was a threat, but not in the sense Ryan meant. ‘No,’ she told Ryan. ‘He’s not a threat.’ Not much. Her mouth dried, and she stared blindly at the notes. Only to her sanity—

‘Sally? Those notes you’re studying so avidly? They’re upside down.’

She felt the colour run up her cheeks, and she turned on her heel and walked away from Ryan, cutting through to the waiting room to retrieve her next patient. Just by the door she paused, gathering her wits, and tried to put thoughts of him out of her mind.

It didn’t matter that he was here, she told herself sternly. He was bound to ask questions about her, but it was irrelevant. Their affair was finished, over. She wasn’t going to allow him to talk her into anything—not ever again.

‘I’ve made coffee.’

Sally’s hand flew up to cover her pounding heart, and she whirled on Nick. ‘Will you not creep up on me!’ she snarled furiously. ‘You’re going to give me a heart attack!’

His grin was unabashed. ‘You’ll get over it, you’re made of sterner stuff than that.’ He bent closer. ‘I brought some really good Colombian coffee in—it’s gorgeous. Come and have a cup.’

His voice was coaxing, and she could almost taste the coffee. She was parched, and they were fairly quiet, and she was overdue for a break …

‘I’m only offering coffee,’ he said in a gently teasing voice, and she felt soft colour brush her cheeks.

‘I was just trying to work out if I’d got time,’ she ad-libbed weakly.

‘Liar. Come on, Sal, I’m not going to jump your bones. If you don’t get in there soon the vultures will have descended on the pot and drained it.’

She summoned a smile. ‘I’d better come now, then, hadn’t I?’

‘Dr Baker?’

They turned towards the voice of the young SHO, who was looking hopelessly out of his depth. ‘Yes, Toby?’

‘Um—I wonder if you could look at this X-ray for me, sir. I’m not sure if it’s a fracture.’

Nick turned back to Sally and gave her a wry grin. ‘Now you’re definitely safe,’ he murmured, and went into the cubicle, leaving her heading towards the staffroom with a sense of lingering disappointment that she was totally at a loss to understand.

There was still half a pot of coffee, and there was nobody in there, so she filled a mug, curled up in one of the chairs near the corner of the little room and rested her head against the back of the chair.

Bliss. The coffee smelt wonderful, and for a moment she was content just to inhale the aroma and relax. She hadn’t slept well—too many painful memories churning, too much turbulent thought to be able to escape to oblivion. Seeing Nick again had stirred up a whole hornet’s nest, and she felt edgy and restless and unhappy.

Still, for a moment she could relax. She opened her eyes, and jumped, almost slopping her coffee in her lap as she focused on him lounging against the worktop on the far side of the room.

‘You’ve done it again!’ she snapped, and he gave a wry grin.

‘Sorry. I thought you were asleep. I was just contemplating my options.’

‘Options?’ she said suspiciously. ‘What options?’

The smile was lazy. ‘Foregoing the coffee and leaving you in peace, removing the cup so you didn’t drown yourself in it when it tipped over, or waking you up. You’ve saved me from doing the wrong thing—unless just existing is enough to put me in your bad books?’

He looked so crestfallen she had to smile, even though she knew it was all an act.

‘I’m awake,’ she assured him, and he grinned and filled a mug, sitting down at right angles to her on the other side of the corner.

‘How’s the coffee?’ he asked.

‘I haven’t tried it yet. I was getting high just smelling it.’

‘You’ll be glue-sniffing in a minute. Just drink it.’

She buried her nose in the mug, breathed again and tasted. ‘Oh, gorgeous. You always could make good coffee.’

‘Yours was always lousy, if I remember,’ he said softly, and she could have kicked herself for bringing up the past.

‘I’ve got better,’ she said, firmly switching to the present, and he let it go. Not for long, though, she was sure. She had a feeling Nick was headed for memory lane with her in tow, whether she wanted to go there or not.

And she didn’t. The past was buried, her memories and her happiness and everything she cared for with it, and the last thing she needed was Nick dredging it all up again and throwing her life into chaos.

She drained her coffee, almost scalding her tongue and throat and not caring. ‘Lovely,’ she lied, not having tasted it in the end, and she unfolded her legs, stood up and tugged her dress straight. ‘I have to fly. We aren’t that quiet. Thanks for the coffee.’

She put her mug down and made her escape, leaving Nick to drink his coffee alone.

An hour later she was kicking herself. She shouldn’t have said that about being quiet. They were never quiet, not this quiet, eerily so, as if the world had ground to a halt.

She grabbed the chance to do some teaching with her new nurses, told them to do a totally unnecessary stock-check of the stores and went round the waiting room, ripping down torn posters and sticking up fresh ones.

‘Very pretty,’ Nick said from behind her. ‘How about a breath of fresh air? I’ve got some sandwiches from the trolley—care to join me?’

‘I’m busy,’ she lied, and he snorted.

‘Sally, you’ve been killing time for the past hour. You have to eat, you may as well do it now.’

‘Has it occurred to you that maybe I don’t want to eat with you?’ she snapped, and then regretted it when she saw the flicker of reproach in his eyes. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said with a sigh, too honest to lie to him, too kind to hurt him so casually. ‘OK, I’ll have lunch with you, just this once.’

‘Such generosity,’ he murmured drily, just to make her feel even worse!

They collected the sandwiches from his locker and filled fresh mugs with coffee, then headed out into the warm, humid August day. She led him round the corner of the building to a quiet, shady spot under the trees on the edge of a little garden. There was a bench there, and by a miracle there was nobody sitting on it.

‘Perfect,’ Nick said with a grin, and settled down, opening packets and offering them to her. ‘Prawn salad and mayo, egg mayo or BLT?’

All her favourites. She sighed softly. ‘Thank you,’ she murmured, taking a prawn salad to start with and avoiding the knowing glint in his eye.

‘So, tell me,’ he said without preamble. ‘What have you been up to for the past seven years?’

Getting over you, she thought, but that one was definitely staying private.

‘Work, mostly. I’ve been here three years now, two as a junior sister, one as a G grade.’

‘Still enjoying it?’

She nodded slowly, thoughtfully. ‘Yes. It’s tough—it’s a difficult job, A and E. You see too much.’

‘Tell me about it,’ he said drily. ‘I don’t know why I went for it, except that it appealed to my sense of drama. I’m still an adrenaline junky, and I like making snap decisions and staying on my toes. It seemed to answer all the relevant criteria better than any other branch of medicine.’

That sounded like Nick. She remembered the dangerous sports he’d indulged in, the way he’d always driven just that tiny bit too fast for absolute safety—the times they’d failed to use contraception because they’d been somewhere unprepared and playing Russian roulette had appealed to him.

Except, of course, it hadn’t been him who’d lost—

‘Egg mayo?’

‘Please,’ Sally said, dragging her mind back to the present and safer territory. He held the packet out to her, and she eased the sandwich out, her fingers brushing his as she did so.

Heat shot up her arm, and she all but snatched the sandwich away and scooted further into the corner of the bench, taking her coffee with her and busying herself with eating and drinking for a minute to give her feelings time to subside.

Her body had other ideas, though. It remembered his touch, the caress of his hands, the feel of his body on hers. She closed her eyes, stifling a tiny moan of need.

No, she told herself firmly. He’s bad news for you. You won’t get over him again, it’ll kill you. Just keep your distance.

‘You look tired,’ he said softly, and there was a thread of tender concern in his voice that nearly reduced her to tears.

‘I am tired,’ she confessed, swallowing the lump in her throat. She glanced at her watch and stood up. ‘We need to go back. They don’t know where we are, and I don’t trust this quiet spell. All hell’s going to break loose any minute, I just know it.’

Right on cue a siren sounded, and an ambulance swept out towards the gate, followed by another and another.

‘Looks like trouble brewing,’ Nick murmured. Scooping up the last of the sandwiches and wrappers, he dropped them in a bin and fell in beside her as she hurried round the corner, mugs in hand. The sirens were fading as they went through the doors, and the staff nurse in the triage room stuck her head out.

Thank God you’re back, they were about to page you. There’s been a pile-up on the bypass near the Yarmouth Road roundabout—ten cars or something. At least fifteen casualties coming in, the police say, some serious. The worst are trapped and they want a medical team on the spot. Ryan wants you two to go.’

‘OK,’ she said, her blood pumping, her thoughts whirling. She ran down the corridor past Resus to the store, where Ryan was checking the emergency bag.

‘Ah, you’re here, good—right, Sally, take this lot. You’ll need more fluids as well—there’s another bag there. Don’t think there’s anything hazardous involved, it seems to be just cars, but apparently there was a diesel spill, so take care and keep out of it if you can. You’ll need yellow coats—here, Nick, take this one.’

He handed him a coat with DOCTOR emblazoned across the back, and Sally grabbed her own off the back of the door.

‘Do we have an exact location?’ she asked, rapidly filling the other bag with fluids.

‘East of the roundabout. Just head that way, I don’t think you can miss it, by all accounts. We’ll contact you with more specific directions when we get them.’ Ryan chucked Nick the keys of his car, and they ran out, jumped into it and headed out of the car park.

‘You’ll have to tell me where to go,’ he said, cutting through the traffic with the siren wailing and the green light flashing on the roof.

She resisted the urge to make a smart remark, and directed him the quickest way out of the town and onto the bypass. Within five minutes Ambulance Control had contacted them with more specific directions, and ten minutes later, her heart in her mouth, Sally saw the first signs of the accident in the tailback ahead.

‘Siren again, I think,’ Nick said, and shot her a grim smile. ‘It’s a pity that the only time I ever get to do this, I’m too busy thinking about what we might find to enjoy the power trip.’

The traffic seemed to melt away in front of them, cars squeezing up onto the verges and pulling over to let them through, and then they were there in the thick of it, surrounded by flashing lights and screams and sobs and shouted commands. People were wandering around aimlessly, obviously in shock, and some of them were bleeding from head wounds.

‘OK, let’s see what the problems are,’ Nick said, hoisting the heavier of the bags into his arms and running towards the ambulance teams.

‘What have you got for us?’ he asked, shrugging into his coat, and the man in charge directed them towards the centre of the carnage.

‘We can handle the walking wounded for now,’ he said, ‘but we’ve got a couple of entrapments that need your help. That blue Fiesta is the worst, I believe, and the red BMW is the other one.’

Sally looked the way he was pointing, and saw a car just like hers with the nose tucked under the side of a lorry. The roof was crushed in, and she gave a little shudder. It was a little close to home.

They walked quickly over there. A paramedic was half in, half out of the back window of the car, contorted into an impossible position, and while Sally tried not to shudder at the state of the car, Nick squatted down and spoke to him.

‘I think this lady’s got a tension pneumothorax, but I’m too big to do anything about it,’ he said over his shoulder. There’s no room to move. Hang on, I’ll come out.’

He squirmed out backwards, and looked assessingly at them both. ‘You could get in,’ he said to Sally, and she nodded, suppressing her feelings.

‘OK. What do you want me to do, Nick?’

‘Check her for signs of pneumothorax or cardiac tamponade,’ he said. ‘Has she got oxygen?’

The paramedic nodded. ‘Yes. She’s in pain, but I didn’t want to give her anything that would lower her blood pressure. The steering-wheel’s rammed into her chest. She’s bound to have internal injuries.’

‘Where are the fire brigade? They should be cutting her out.’

‘They’re here—they’re working on the other entrapment. He’s got severe bleeding from the leg. We’re bagging in fluids but we’re only just holding him. We’ve assessed them all for priority but you might want to reassess them in a minute. There was a doctor in one of the cars, he’s giving us a hand, too.’

‘Where does this one come in the priority list?’ Nick asked, jerking his head towards the Fiesta.

The top at the moment. The other guy’s grim but, like I said we’re holding him for the minute, and we’ve got two fatalities, but this lady’s going to join them if you can’t do something soon.’

‘I’ll go in,’ Sally said. ‘You can pass me the things I need.’

She hated small spaces, but there were times when you just had to forget about things like that. She squirmed through the narrow opening left by the bent roof, and laid her hand on the lady’s shoulder.

She moaned and turned her head towards Sally, but she couldn’t speak.

‘It’s all right, I’m going to help you,’ Sally said with a quick squeeze to her shoulder. Talking softly to reassure her patient, she rapidly checked her symptoms.

The woman had distended jugular veins, which meant that the blood vessels in her chest were being compressed and causing a build-up of pressure. Her chest seemed distended on the left side, although it moved less when she breathed in and out, and she was restless and her pulse was rapid. The picture was consistent with a lung leaking air into the chest and collapsing the lungs—rapidly fatal if left untreated.

Sally turned her head and reported to Nick. ‘I think it is a tension pneumothorax,’ she said. ‘The signs all fit. She’s looking pretty rough.’ She ran through the symptoms and he nodded.

‘Certainly sounds like it. Can you get enough access to do a decompression?’

She looked at the woman’s chest. The simple answer was no, but the simple answer meant that she’d die. ‘Yes, I can do it,’ she said firmly. If she could just get the needle in at the right angle …

‘OK. I’ll talk you through it. Find the second or fourth intercostal space, and insert the needle along the upper border of the rib. Don’t go below it, you’ll get the artery and nerve. I’ll hand you the needle and a wipe now.’

‘Pass me scissors first, her blouse is in the way,’ she said, and, taking them, she sliced away the clothes over the woman’s collar-bone and then handed them back. ‘Right, let’s have a wipe and the needle.’