His Longed-For Baby

His soul-searching ground to an instant halt. Gone were all thoughts of telling her that this couldn’t happen again when it obviously was.

Without him even having to think about it, his hands were already cupping her, stroking her, positioning her for his—

‘Jake?’ Suddenly, she was stiffening against him. ‘Is that your pager?’

He’d been totally deaf to anything but her soft murmurs and the blood pounding through his veins, but now he could hear the wretched thing, too.

‘I don’t believe it!’ he groaned as he dropped his head back on the pillow, squeezing his eyes tight shut against the enticing view.

‘It can’t be mine,’ she reasoned. ‘I didn’t bring one home with me because I’m not on duty for two weeks.’

‘Well, I’m not due on for hours yet,’ he growled in frustration. If this was all he was ever going to have of Maggie, he really didn’t want anyone or anything interrupting…

The ringing of Maggie’s phone halted his unhappy thoughts.

‘We’ll just have to remember where we were, so we can take up where we left off,’ she suggested with a fascinating blush—a blush that amazed him when he remembered all the things the two of them had done since he’d joined her in the shower last night. He’d never had such a generous lover before, or such an eager one, and if he allowed himself to think about all he would be missing for the rest of his life without Maggie in it, he would probably want to slit his throat.

He would just have to settle for slitting the throat of whoever had misread the on-duty roster and dialled his number instead.

He padded across the room to retrieve the insistent thing from his trouser pocket.

‘Whoever this is, I’ll get them off the line as soon as possible so you can make your call,’ Maggie said, modestly tugging the duvet over herself with one hand as she reached for the phone with the other.

When he saw her disappear behind thoroughly rumpled cotton Jake stifled another groan. The mood had been well and truly broken now, and that dreaded ‘this shouldn’t have happened’ conversation was suddenly imminent.

‘Hi, Karen!’ Maggie said, and he grimaced at the thought that he was probably going to have to work out what to say to Maggie’s friend, too. After all, Karen knew that he’d intended speaking to Maggie last night, and if she found out that he’d spent the night…

‘No, you didn’t wake me. What can I do for—? Oh, no!’ she exclaimed suddenly, dragging him out of his tangled thoughts. ‘Of course I’ll come in—I’m not doing anything important today after all. I should be there in twenty minutes. Thirty at the most.’

‘What’s going on?’ Jake demanded as she cut the call and handed the phone to him, apparently unaware that she’d let the bedclothes fall to her lap during her phone call. He was so busy admiring her sweet curves that he almost missed what she was saying.

‘Major incident—traffic pile-up on the motorway. Multiple traumas on their way in so they’re rounding up all the staff they can reach,’ she added with a nod towards his pager.

It didn’t take long for Jake to confirm that he too would get to the hospital as soon as he could. If the estimates for the number of casualties were right, this was going to be a day in hell.

He reached for his clothes, sparing a longing thought for the luxury of a long hot shower. Unfortunately, there was going to be no time for that, and certainly no time for that serious discussion he’d been going to have with Maggie.

‘Did you walk or drive last night?’ she asked suddenly.

‘Walked,’ he called back as he scrabbled around in the bathroom, trying to find his other shoe. Thank goodness he would be able to change out of his wrinkled clothes as soon as he reached the hospital. A night on a damp bathroom floor hadn’t done them any favours. ‘Liam insisted he was going to buy me a drink.’

‘And you never drive after you’ve had alcohol,’ she finished for him, something they’d long ago discovered they both believed in. ‘Drat! I forgot that. I was hoping you could give me a lift, for speed.’

‘We’ll just have to run to save time,’ he said distractedly, wondering how his second shoe had ended up by the fridge. He was certain he’d been wearing both of them when he’d walked into the bathroom last night, and he definitely hadn’t bothered walking around her flat with a shoe in his hand since then. He’d had far more interesting things to—

That was enough!

The night was well and truly over now, all bar the post-mortem. There was no point in tormenting himself with full-colour replays when he was going to need every scrap of concentration to help his patients.

‘Ready to go?’ he called, checking that he’d put his pager back in his pocket just as Maggie emerged from the bathroom fully clothed and obviously set for action.

At the last moment Maggie suddenly worried that it might not be a good idea for people to see her arriving for work with Jake. The last thing she needed was to give the hospital grapevine something else to get their teeth into. At least Jake could blame the state of his clothes on the downpour outside.

In the event, the whole department was already working to such a pitch that the only notice anyone took of the two of them was to set them to work the moment they arrived.

‘Thank God you’re both here!’ Senior Sister Lina Mackey said when she caught sight of them. ‘Can you go to Resus Two? We’ve already got three beds going in One and another ambulance due any second with a tension pneumothorax on board.’

‘Can you give us thirty seconds to change into scrubs?’ Jake asked, his long legs already taking him towards the locker room at a rapid clip.

If she’d had her way, Maggie thought as she pulled the faded green cotton top over her head and tightened the baggy drawstring waist on the matching trousers, she wouldn’t have been working in the same room as Jake. She’d barely had time to draw breath since she’d woken up this morning and it didn’t look as if it was going to get any better. Even so, working in the close proximity that such a multiple trauma scenario demanded wouldn’t give her the space to put her thoughts and feelings into order.

What on earth had possessed her last night? She’d never been so brazen in her life. Even now, remembering the way she’d given up on taking his coffee-soaked clothes off his body and had dragged him fully clothed to join her in the shower cubicle made her whole body grow hot.

And this definitely wasn’t the time or the place for such thoughts, not when their patients were going to be fighting for their very lives.

The fact that she and Jake had spent the night together mustn’t be allowed to interfere with the way the two of them worked together.

Both of them reached Resus Two before their first patient, but only just.

Swiftly, she grabbed two disposable plastic aprons and thrust one in his direction before pulling hers over her head and wrapping the ties around her waist. She reached for the box of small disposable gloves, her hand colliding with Jake’s as he reached across her for the larger size.

‘Sorry,’ she muttered, horrified to feel a sudden wash of heat surge into her cheeks. For heaven’s sake! What was the matter with her? They’d been brushing against each other over and over again for the last two years without a problem. Was she going to blush every time now?

Concentrate! she reminded herself, grateful to find the paramedic’s report far more urgent than her own petty worries.

‘ABCs were relatively normal when we reached him,’ the young woman reported briskly, referring to the notes on her clipboard. ‘But he’d been trapped in his seat by the steering-wheel when the whole front of his vehicle collapsed towards him. While he was being cut out of the vehicle we put him on oxygen and got an IV in, but as soon as we removed him he started to crash.’

‘Hypovolaemic shock,’ Maggie heard Jake mutter as she stepped aside while the patient was transferred with the backboard and cervical collar still in place. The young man was certainly showing all the classic signs of severe blood loss.

‘Also increasing difficulty in breathing,’ the paramedic continued seamlessly. ‘There was no sign of a penetrating wound into the chest, so I went with the probability that his lung had been pierced by a broken rib.’

The needle protruding from the midaxillary line of the fourth intercostal space looked surreal under the stark white lighting, especially with a flaccid condom taped to it as a makeshift flutter valve.

‘What were his vital signs once his lung reinflated?’ Jake demanded as the radiographer positioned the first X-ray cassette under their patient’s neck.

‘Pulse and breathing both a little rapid, but fear of asphyxia will do that to anyone,’ the paramedic added wryly as she handed over the notes that would form part of the patient’s case history and collected her equipment. ‘My vehicle should be restocked and ready to roll by now. No doubt I’ll be seeing you again soon. It’s a mess out there.’

‘Can somebody find out if there’s space in Theatre?’ Jake asked urgently, not needing to look up from what he was doing to know that his request would receive immediate attention with a rapid phone call. ‘Maggie, get over here quick and get another line in. He needs more blood. It must be more than his lung. If there’s no room in Theatre we might have to open his chest down here.’

Almost as if he’d given the cue, several sets of monitoring equipment started sounding out their various warnings even as Maggie started manually pumping another unit of blood.

‘He’s crashing again!’ she exclaimed, reading the display charting pulse and blood pressure. ‘Where’s the anaesthetist?’ She handed over her task to the nearest pair of willing hands and grabbed the sealed tray thrust towards her. Even as she ripped off the protective cover to reveal the set of sterile equipment, the door swung open to admit the hurrying anaesthetist.

It was like a well-oiled machine. Each of the members of the team performed their part of the job, with items of equipment appearing almost before Jake could ask. With the speed of experience, the chest and upper abdomen were swiftly swabbed to minimise the risk of infection, and after a brief pause for the anaesthetist to nod that the patient was ready Jake was applying the scalpel in a midline incision.

Maggie had suction ready for the moment he opened up the body cavity, but she was horrified by the amount of blood filling the visual field.

‘Has the heart been pierced, or is it the aorta?’ she asked, her words almost hidden by the continuing sound of suction as she tried to clear enough away for Jake to see what had happened.

‘Aorta,’ he said succinctly, reaching into the cavity to find out exactly how extensive the damage was. ‘Not too bad,’ he conceded after a moment. ‘Puncture rather than dissection.’

‘But bad enough that we’re having trouble maintaining enough pressure to keep him alive,’ the anaesthetist butted in tersely.

‘In other words, get on with it?’ Jake challenged without looking away from his task, but Maggie could still see the familiar gleam of determination in his eyes that appeared every time he knew he had a fight on his hands.

Knowing that time was of the essence if the young man was to survive, she could only look on in admiration at the speed with which Jake effected a workable repair, concentrating on stabilising their patient so that he would survive the trip up to Theatre.

‘Pressure’s better!’ the anaesthetist reported. ‘Not great, but better.’

In the background, Maggie heard the phone ring.

‘That was Liam Blake,’ a female voice called a moment later. ‘There’s a table free in Theatre, if you’re ready for it.’

Maggie felt a swift jolt at the unexpected mention of her ex-fiancé’s name and a wash of heat over her cheeks at the sudden silence that told her that the rest of her colleagues had suddenly remembered that neither she nor Liam should have been at the hospital. This should have been their wedding day.

‘Is he good enough to go?’ Jake asked, deferring to the overriding expertise of the man at the head of the table. ‘I’d rather not mess about with him any more down here if I can help it, especially with a cardiothoracic surgeon available.’

‘A.s.a.p.!’ the anaesthetist said with feeling as he systematically disconnected the various leads connecting their patient to the main life-support and monitoring systems, immediately reconnecting them to the portable system that would maintain him until he reached Theatre.

Even as the doors were closing behind him, they were pushed open by the next trolley, with a second following closely behind.

‘There isn’t going to be time to breathe today,’ muttered one of the nurses as she dodged around the paramedic directing the transfer of their next patient, frantically clearing the detritus from the previous one.

‘Maggie,’ Lina Mackey called from the doorway, beckoning her over with a flustered expression on her usually calm face.

‘Problem?’ Maggie asked, puzzled to find herself drawn out into the corridor.

‘I’m so sorry!’ the woman exclaimed, almost wringing her hands. ‘I’d completely forgotten that you’re getting married today or I’d never have called you in. You should be getting ready for the ceremony…having your hair done or something.’

‘It’s not a problem,’ Maggie soothed, half of her attention on the sudden burst of staccato instructions that told her Jake had another problem patient on his hands. Everything inside her wanted to return to the room to do her part in taking care of the patients. She didn’t have the time or the inclination to explain the shambles of her private life when there were more important things to do.

‘But…what about your wedding?’ Lina demanded. ‘This could go on for hours. You could be stuck here—’

‘Honestly,’ Maggie interrupted, the sound of Jake’s muttered curse so clear that she knew the rest of the team must be able to hear every word being said outside the door…they were probably all but falling over in their efforts to hear more clearly. ‘It’s not a problem, Lina. I can stay as long as I’m needed.’

‘But—’

‘There isn’t going to be a wedding,’ she blurted, then had to stifle a groan when a nearby gasp drew her eyes and she recognised the avid gaze of one of the biggest gossips in the whole department.

‘Oh, Maggie, I’m so sorry,’ Lina said as she patted her arm, but whether it was in support for her cancelled wedding or the fact that her private business would shortly be spread far and wide, Maggie wasn’t certain.

‘Don’t worry about it,’ she said with a weak attempt at a smile, and leant her shoulder against the swing door as she backed away from the encounter. ‘Just be pleased that I was available to come in today and keep wheeling the patients through.’

Maggie had been prepared to be the focus of at least one pair of eyes when the door slapped shut behind her, but everyone seemed to be concentrating on what they were doing, far too busy to even have noticed that there was a conversation going on outside the room. Then she realised with a wash of embarrassment that there was an almost unearthly silence hanging over a room that would normally have been a babble of orders, requests and the odd quip, and knew that she was the reason.

‘I call it true dedication,’ Jake muttered, just loudly enough for everyone in the room to hear, even though they were pretending not to listen, ‘coming in to work when she could have been jetting off into the sunshine.’

Cancelling the honeymoon was something else she’d completely forgotten to do, Maggie realised, and wondered if she would be able to use today’s emergency events as a valid reason to be able to reclaim the cost. If not, perhaps she should just leave this evening as scheduled.

Her primary examination of the patient over, and vital signs recorded, she stepped back behind the screen as a series of X-rays were taken of her next patient and speculated idly that, in the absence of a new husband, she could always ask a handsome Mediterranean waiter to rub sunscreen on the bits she couldn’t reach. With nothing and no one to distract her, she might even end up with a decent tan.

At least if she went away she wouldn’t have to worry about where she was going to be sleeping tonight, but that still left her with the problem of storing her belongings.

‘Fracture at C4, transversely across the vertebral body’ was the verdict, even as her hand hovered over the cervical collar, hoping for the all-clear to remove it.

‘How bad?’ Maggie demanded, suddenly worrying that she might have missed something vital while her thoughts had wandered into her personal life.

‘Whatever you do, don’t take the collar off,’ the radiologist said dryly. ‘It’s a good job the paramedics know their stuff or we’d probably be looking at paralysis.’

Maggie started breathing again, grateful that her medical faculties had been performing in spite of herself. With her patient stabilised as far as possible, all she had to do was hand the rest of his treatment over to someone from Orthopaedics…that and renew her resolve to keep her mind on her job.

When the current crisis was over would be soon enough to worry about moving her belongings out of her place and sorting out the rest of her life.

‘How are you doing?’ Jake murmured some time later, his deep voice breaking into her concentration, startling her when it emerged so close to her and sending a quiver of awareness through her.

Was he asking whether she was coping with the unrelenting pace of work? He shouldn’t, because she was certain she’d more than proved herself capable over the last two years. They’d already had two DOAs since they’d arrived today, and she’d lost count of the other cases who’d come through their hands. And this was just one of the rooms coping with the influx.

Or was he referring to the unspoken rumours surrounding her about the cancelled wedding? She could hardly be oblivious to the mixture of pity and speculation in her colleagues’ eyes, or the odd muttered comments that she wasn’t supposed to hear. More direct interrogation would probably come as soon as anyone had enough spare breath to ask the first question.

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