Miracle Times Two

‘Now that the ultrasound’s been done, it would be a good time to do some urine tests, too,’ Jenny suggested. ‘Aliyah’s probably desperate for the bathroom by now.’

‘Good idea,’ Daniel agreed. ‘And then, could we find her a comfortable place to rest until we know what’s going on?’

‘You think I need to stay in hospital?’ The idea clearly horrified her. ‘You think it’s something so serious that I can’t go home?’

‘I’ve no idea at the moment,’ he said and Jenny registered that, although she hadn’t known Daniel for very long, in that time he’d never been anything less than absolutely honest with a patient. ‘But it would be a good idea if you tried to stay as calm as possible until we get all the results, if only for the sake of your blood pressure. It would be better for the babies, too.’

‘And for me,’ her harried husband added.

Jenny stayed until Aliyah was as settled as she was going to be in one of the side rooms closest to Daniel’s office, adding her voice to the young woman’s when she urged her husband to go back to the important business meeting he’d been called out of.

‘Your wife and baby are safe here,’ she pointed out logically. ‘They’re surrounded by doctors and nurses, and if it’s a problem caused by some sort of infection, the antibiotics we’ve given her will already be starting to do their job.’

‘I have this mask to hand if the pains return,’ Aliyah added as she held up the clear plastic face mask attached to the Entonox. ‘And anyway, this is a room where I can have my mobile switched on, so I can call you or receive your calls whenever you wish.’

It took several minutes of reassurance and then several more supplying the suddenly tearful woman with tissues after her husband left before Jenny was free to set off in search of Daniel.

She found him just as he was reaching for a piece of paper being spat out by the printer.

‘Please, tell me that’s the preliminary report from the lab and it’s just a simple waterworks infection; bladder or kidney, I don’t mind which, just as long as there’s nothing wrong with the pregnancy,’ she demanded and was rewarded with a broad grin.

‘Your every wish is my command,’ he said with a flourishing bow, then handed her the paper to add to Aliyah’s file. ‘Obviously, there hasn’t been time to isolate the particular bug causing the problem, but as we put her on trimethoprim in the interim …’

‘She could have relief from her symptoms within an hour,’ Jenny finished for him.

‘Within one to four hours,’ he temporised. ‘It would probably be quicker relief with ciprofloxacin, but that’s not so good for the pregnancy.’

He went on to run through the progress on several other cases, but Jenny suddenly knew that he was feeling every bit as relieved and delighted with the prospects for Aliyah’s pregnancy as she was.

The realisation was so unexpected that, for a moment, she completely lost track of what Daniel was saying.

Was she just imagining that she could read his feelings, or was she actually beginning to be able to see beyond the cheerfully professional persona he showed the world?

It was always unlikely that one person could be that unfailingly even-tempered and still be human, and that opened up a whole new world of possibilities in the mystery of the gorgeous specimen of masculinity that was Daniel Carterton. Possibilities such as, if his smiles were a camouflage for other, deeper thoughts, was he hiding secrets … and if so, what sort of secrets?

Not that it would ever be something dark—such as Colin’s underhanded ploy to get her alone when he obviously cared very little for her other than the fact of who her father was.

No. If Daniel had secrets they would be … what?

‘What?’ the man in question echoed, snapping her out of her crazy thoughts and into the real world and the recognition that she had absolutely no idea what he was talking about.

‘What?’ she repeated, feeling stupid and horribly afraid that she was going to blush.

‘That’s what I asked you,’ he said with a puzzled frown. ‘You were just standing there, staring at me as if you were trying to unravel the secrets of the universe on the end of my nose.’

She closed her eyes for a second, grateful that at least he hadn’t realised it was those gorgeous deep blue eyes and their unfairly long lashes she’d been gazing at, or the rogue curl of dark hair curving forward onto his forehead as he worked his way through the basket of correspondence waiting for his attention.

One envelope contained a photograph of a perfect set of twins, obviously identical, even down to the slightly cross expression on their faces, and she couldn’t help chuckling.

‘Anybody you know?’ she asked.

‘Their mother was one of the earliest patients I saw when I came to work here—before you joined the unit,’ he said and reached for a manila folder standing beside his computer to slip the photo inside with what looked like quite a few others.

‘Are they all your babies in there?’ she demanded, holding out a hand for the folder before she thought how intrusive he might find it.

‘Sometimes parents send me a picture to let me know their babies have arrived safely,’ he said, upending the folder in the middle of his desk to reveal dozens of babies, from the smallest, wrinkliest preemie to some that looked to be at least three months old when they were born.

‘Why have you got all these hidden away?’ she demanded as she spread them out across his paperwork. ‘These should all be on display somewhere.’

‘On display?’ He looked as if the idea had never crossed his mind. ‘Why?’

‘For reassurance,’ she said impatiently. ‘You deal with at-risk mums and babies, so you have a far higher mortality rate than an ordinary Obs and Gynae department. Most parents–to-be come here expecting the worst and it would be so good if the first thing they saw when they came into your room is a whole array of photos of the healthy happy babies you’ve helped on their way … far more babies than the number that don’t survive,’ she pointed out.

His attempt at a response was cut short by the strident ring of the telephone and she’d only taken a couple of steps towards the door to afford him some privacy for the call when the sudden tension in his voice stopped her in her tracks.

‘When? Where? How long ago?’ he snapped out in short order. ‘Well, find out and ring me back as soon as you do. Have you notified Josh Weatherby?’

With the mention of the senior consultant a shiver of dread ran up Jenny’s spine, every hair standing up on end in its wake.

Whatever it was, this did not sound good; not if it involved the man who took charge of all the seriously premature babies or those with peri-natal problems.

‘What’s happened?’ she asked as soon as he took the phone away from his ear.

Her words collided with his as he rapped out, ‘There’s been an accident, right outside the hospital.’

‘Not one of our mums,’ she pleaded, but the grim expression on his face was enough to confirm the bad news.

‘Sheelagh Griffin,’ he said, already tapping to access the young woman’s file on the computer. ‘Apparently, she started spotting heavily and cramping this morning, so her husband insisted on driving her in. He hit a pedestrian as he was turning in through the gates and smashed their car into one of the granite pillars.’

‘Do you need me to come down with you?’ It was a given that he would be going down to A and E to speed the young woman’s admission to the unit, otherwise she could be caught up in the nightmare of paperwork until it was too late to do anything for the precious babies.

‘Stay up here, for now,’ he said after only a moment’s hesitation. ‘I can call you down if I need to, but you’ll be my eyes and ears up here while I’m away.’

Jenny was immensely flattered that he would already think her competent for such a responsibility. She had done extra training for this new position but she was a nurse rather than a doctor—much to her parents’ enduring disappointment.

‘Let me know if you want me to get anything organised,’ she said, startled to realise that what she’d really wanted to say was Hurry back.

And how stupid is that? she berated herself before he was even out of sight. She and Daniel didn’t have that sort of relationship, and there was very little chance that they ever would. After all, no matter what her parents’ narrow-minded view was of people who had risen to the top in spite of starting off at one of the less elite medical schools, Daniel was something of a high-flier, and as such, was stratospherically beyond the reach of a humble nurse, no matter how well trained and good at her job.

Anyway, hadn’t Daniel categorised their relationship just a short while ago when he’d invited her to ‘tell big brother’ about her troubles?

Colleague … little sister … friend, perhaps? She might slot into several niches in Daniel’s life, but there was very little chance that he would be interested in seeing her in a role that she was only now beginning to realise might be the one she really wanted.

The phone rang stridently at her elbow, snapping her out of her pointless reflections and doubling her pulse rate with the expectation that she would hear Daniel’s voice when she answered it. It was a complete letdown to realise that the caller had simply been connected to the wrong department.

‘Jenny?’ Daniel’s voice behind her had her whirling to face him, the first of at least a dozen questions on the tip of her tongue until she saw his face.

‘Daniel? What’s happened?’ she demanded, automatically reaching out to take his arm. ‘Are you ill?’ He looked positively grim, and in the short time he’d been away from the department, his face had somehow become hollow-looking, his eyes filled with shadows.

‘I was too late to do anything to slow down Sheelagh’s labour,’ he said bluntly, and she could hear the same defeated tone that always emerged in his voice whenever something happened to one of their special babies, but this time there was something more, something infinitely darker.

CHAPTER TWO

‘ARE the babies still alive? Have they gone to Josh’s unit?’

Even babies that premature were often born alive and a few of them actually pulled through, albeit with a legacy of permanent disabilities, but it was an outside chance that they would have survived anything other than a Caesarean birth.

‘One is.’ Daniel grimaced, silently, the brilliant colour of his dancing blue eyes strangely flat. ‘I’ve admitted Sheelagh into the isolation room overnight. I told her it was in case of complications, but they both know it’s just a matter of time before …’

She nodded her understanding even as she thought that they really should think of a better name for the little suite at the furthest end of the unit. Apparently, that little area had been one of the arrangements Daniel had instigated within the first few days of his appointment—a place where mothers who had lost their babies could stay for monitoring and treatment without fear that their devastation would be made worse by the sights and sounds of pregnant women or healthy newborn babies all around them.

‘Did it happen because of the accident?’ Jenny demanded, something about the tension surrounding him like an electrical field warning her that there was worse news to come.

‘My guess is that one of the babies died in utero and that triggered a spontaneous abortion of both foetuses.’ He sank heavily into the chair and came to rest with his hands tightly linked together on the array of happy photos still spread over the inevitable pile of papers in front of him. He gazed blankly at them for several endless seconds while she fought the urge to go to him and throw her arms around him, to cradle his head against her and ask if there was anything she could do.

‘The person they ran down was Aliyah’s husband,’ he announced rawly, and his devastated expression rocked her back on her heels.

‘Dear Lord,’ she gasped, sinking heavily onto the edge of the nearest chair when her legs refused to support her. ‘Is he …?’ She couldn’t bring herself to say the word, but she didn’t need to for him to know what she was asking.

‘He’s in theatre. Depressed skull fracture, punctured lung, broken leg … you name it, he’s got it,’ he listed grimly and she felt her eyes widen with each additional injury on the list.

‘But he’s still alive?’ she pleaded anxiously.

‘For the moment,’ he agreed and it only took the tone of his voice to know that the prognosis wasn’t good.

Her heart sank like a stone. ‘What are you going to tell Aliyah?’ The image in her head of how tenderly the injured man had been supporting his wife less than an hour ago was so clear that it was almost painful.

‘How on earth was he injured so badly?’ she demanded on a sudden surge of anger for the destruction of such a perfect couple made even more tragic by the fact they were finally expecting the babies they both wanted so badly.

‘Did he forget where he was and step out into the traffic, or …?’

‘Apparently, the Griffiths’ car went out of control and mounted the pavement at the entrance to the hospital. He was slammed against one of the pillars and trapped.’

Jenny winced as she imagined a human head coming into contact with that impressive construction of unforgiving Cornish granite.

‘And I have absolutely no idea what I’m going to say to Aliyah,’ he said finally, his voice as rough as gravel. ‘She’s still shaky after that scare with the baby and we’re waiting for the antibiotics to do their thing. I don’t know whether I should hold off telling her in the hopes that he comes out of surgery with some sort of positive prognosis, or whether I should go to her straight away in case she needs to prepare herself to say her final farewell while he’s still alive.’

‘Or at least given a semblance of life by various machinery,’ she muttered, feeling sickened by the awful possibility.

How would she feel if she were in the same position?

Would she rather know, immediately, that the man she loved had been terribly injured and was not expected to live, and have to agonise for hours imagining what was going on in theatre? Or would she prefer to receive the news after every effort had been made to repair the damage?

‘If she weren’t pregnant …’ Daniel muttered and she knew he was weighing up exactly the same options and trying to balance their patient’s right to know against the increased risk to her pregnancy such a shock might cause.

A sudden unearthly scream from further along the corridor sent all the hairs up on the back of Jenny’s neck.

‘What on earth …?’ She whirled and took off out of Daniel’s office at a fast clip, almost colliding with a young nurse catapulting out of Aliyah Farouk’s room.

‘Nooo!’ The unearthly scream sounded again, then was replaced by a wail that degenerated into inconsolable weeping.

‘What’s going on here?’ Daniel demanded, glaring fiercely at the shocked-looking nurse.

‘I don’t know, s-sir!’ The poor girl’s teeth were almost chattering. ‘Sh-she was trying to phone her husband’s work to leave a message and they said he hadn’t arrived. S-so she said she was going to try his mobile phone and … and …’

Jenny winced as she put two and two together. It didn’t take much to imagine the scene in a busy A and E, especially as her husband’s clothing would have been summarily cut off his body to enable swift access to his injuries. Keeping track of his mobile phone would have been a low priority, everything being stuffed into the same bag for later retrieval.

It was all too easy to imagine the junior member of staff detailed to take charge of yet another patient’s belongings to think it was a good idea to tell a seriously injured patient’s wife that she needed to come to the hospital as soon as possible.

‘Okay, Joanne. Go and get yourself a cup of tea and don’t come back until you’ve stopped shaking. Let someone know where you’re going,’ Jenny said.

‘Th-thank you,’ she stammered, but Jenny was already following Daniel into the room, shutting the door firmly against any intrusion.

She was just in time to see him reach out to the keening woman and gasped in disbelief when Aliyah turned on him like a rabid dog, her eyes wild and her fingers stiffly curved as though ready to rip him to shreds.

‘No, Aliyah, no,’ Daniel said, his deep voice almost crooning as, far from backing away, he stepped straight into the danger zone and wrapped a consoling arm around her shoulders. ‘Gently. Gently,’ he said. ‘This is not good for the babies. Think about those precious babies.’ His words were almost hypnotic in their gentle rise and fall, but it took several racking moments before Aliyah’s devastation would allow her to hear what he was saying.

Suddenly, she flung herself into Daniel’s arms and he had to ease himself onto the side of the bed to support her weight as she sobbed, clearly broken-hearted.

‘Why?’ she wailed at intervals, but there was obviously no answer for the randomness of chance. If her husband had decided not to go back to his office, or if he had decided to leave even a couple of minutes earlier, this would not have happened.

It was only when she finally drew back from Daniel’s comforting hold and looked up at him from tear-swollen eyes she demanded, ‘Why did he have to die before he could even see our sons?’ that Jenny understood the enormity of her devastation.

For a moment, she wondered whether the information was true. Then she put her rational head on and recognised that the person who had answered the phone in A and E was unlikely to have more up-to-date news than Daniel.

Still, she reached for the phone and pressed the relevant numbers.

‘Theatres,’ said a crisply efficient voice when the call was answered.

‘This is Jenny Sinclair calling on behalf of Daniel Carterton,’ she announced. ‘Can you give me an update on Mr Farouk’s surgery? His wife’s a patient in our unit.’

‘Oh, no!’ the voice exclaimed, instantly sympathetic, then, ‘Just give me a minute to check,’ but Jenny wasn’t worried about a moment or two’s delay. It might give Aliyah time to comprehend the fact that her husband hadn’t died at the scene of the accident, as she seemed to believe.

‘Surgery’s still ongoing,’ the voice reported in her ear while she watched Daniel try to calm his patient enough to listen to what he needed to explain. ‘There are three of them working on him at the moment—a thoracic surgeon, an orthopod and a neurosurgeon. They said they’ve managed to stop the bleeding but there’s still a long way to go before they’ll know anything definite. Do you want someone to phone with updates?’

‘Please,’ Jenny confirmed. ‘Updates would be good,’ and she put the phone down.

‘He’s still alive?’ Aliyah breathed with tremulous disbelief, her thick dark lashes clumped by tears. ‘Please, tell me he’s still alive.’

‘So far,’ Jenny cautioned, stepping close enough to take the hand the young woman held out to her. She squeezed it reassuringly between both of hers as she paraphrased the information she’d just been given. ‘So far, they’ve managed to stop him bleeding, but that’s only the first step.’

‘What else do they have to do? When will I be able to see him?’ She flipped back the covers and started to slide her feet over the side of the bed. ‘Please, can I go to him? I need to be with him.’

Daniel had to step in with a doctor’s authority before they could persuade their patient that there was absolutely no point in trailing through the hospital only to have to sit in a surgical waiting room.

‘We’ll probably receive news, here, before you would, there,’ Daniel pointed out. ‘Jenny has arranged for someone in the surgical department to phone through updates as soon as there is anything to tell us.’

‘You promise?’ Her dark eyes flicked frantically from one to the other. ‘You will tell me as soon as you hear anything?’

‘I’ll promise if you’ll promise, too,’ Daniel said firmly, then pointed to the figures on the monitor panel. ‘You must lie back and relax and concentrate on bringing your pulse and blood pressure down, for your babies’ sakes. Do you think your husband would forgive himself if worrying about him damaged your sons?’

The rest of her shift seemed interminable and it almost felt to Jenny as if they were all holding their breath while they waited for news of the surgery.

The report that Aliyah’s husband had survived the removal of several large shards of bone from his brain and that the plate of skull they’d removed to access them would not be replaced until some of the swelling had gone down was the final part in the lengthy process.

Not that surviving the complex operations would guarantee the patient’s survival, and there was still an extremely long way to go before they would even begin to know how much permanent damage his brain had suffered in the impact and its aftermath.

‘Are you as exhausted as I am?’ Jenny demanded as she emerged from the locker room still sliding her arms into the sleeves of her jacket to find Daniel performing almost exactly the same task as he walked towards her.

‘Probably,’ he grumbled. ‘And it’s not as if the day was unusually busy.’

In fact, the unit had been relatively quiet, beyond the usual round of clinics and assessments. Of course, there was an almost electric buzz in the air every time the phone rang, with everyone seeming to hold their breath in case it was news about Sheelagh Griffin’s desperately struggling baby or the outcome of Faz Farouk’s lengthy surgery. It was always that way when one of ‘their’ patients had bad news, and in a unit that saw the highest-risk patients, they saw more sadness than most.

This seemed somehow different, almost as if the whole world was waiting to hear the outcome. And still the tiny baby clung to life as though oblivious to the fact that his fight was doomed to failure, while Aliyah Farouk waited impatiently to be given permission to go to her husband’s side.

‘I never realised that tension could be so draining,’ she said as she automatically fell into step beside him, both of them heading towards the exit after their brief detour to glimpse the tiny scrap that was barely as long as her hand. ‘But I suppose that when everything revs into high gear every time the phone rings …’

‘And your body gets flooded with adrenaline in anticipation of news,’ he added.

‘So your pulse and respiration speed up, causing you to burn up so many calories that you feel completely limp and empty even before the situation resolves itself.’

‘ So, you’re saying that you’re about to collapse with lack of nourishment and are in imminent need of sustenance?’ he asked and she was grateful that he’d changed the topic to something so mundane and normal.

‘How did you guess?’ Jenny pulled a face as she rubbed a hand over the noises coming from her stomach. ‘I know it’s not the best thing nutritionally, but I think I’m going to get a takeaway, for speed.’

‘I could do tagliatelli carbonara, if you’re interested?’ he offered tentatively and she blinked in surprise, then wondered if, like her, he didn’t want to be alone with his thoughts just yet.

She had to squash the bubble of excitement that started to swell inside her at the idea that she’d be spending some off-duty time with him. After all, it hadn’t been so long ago that he’d let her know he saw her as more of a little sister than an attractive woman.

‘How long would I have to wait to eat?’ she demanded, concentrating on looking suspicious. ‘Is that a crafty way of getting me to do the shopping so you’ll have the ingredients to cook?’

‘I’m mortally wounded that you could think me so devious!’ he complained as he stepped aside to allow her to exit the automatic doors first. ‘When have I ever given you cause to think that I’m anything other than honest and straightforward?’

His teasing words died away as she came to a halt, her way blocked by a darkly scowling Colin Fletcher.