Special Deliveries: Wanted: A Daddy: Dr. Dark and Far Too Delicious / Royal Rescue / Father by Choice

‘Are you okay?’ Vanessa checked later as they headed out of the locker rooms.

‘I’m fine,’ Jasmine said, but hearing the tension in her own voice and realising she’d been slamming about a bit in the locker room, she conceded, ‘My divorce just came through.’

‘Yay!’ said Vanessa, and it was a new friend she turned to rather than her family. ‘You should be out celebrating instead of working.’

‘I will,’ Jasmine said. ‘Just not yet.’

‘Are you upset?’

‘Not upset,’ Jasmine said. ‘Just angry.’

‘Excuse me.’ They stepped aside as a rather grumpy Dr Devlin brushed passed.

‘Someone got out of the wrong side of bed,’ Vanessa said.

Jasmine didn’t get Jed.

She did not understand why he had changed so rapidly.

But he had.

From the nice guy she had met he was very brusque.

Very brusque.

Not just to her, but to everyone. Still, Jasmine could be brusque too when she had to be, and on a busy night in Emergency, sometimes that was exactly what you had to be.

‘You’ve done this before!’ Greg, the charge nurse, grinned as Jasmine shooed a group of inebriated teenagers down to the waiting room. They were worried about their friend who’d been stabbed but were starting to fight amongst themselves.

‘I used to be a bouncer at a night club.’ Jasmine winked at her patient, who was being examined by Jed.

Greg laughed and even the patient smiled.

Jed just carried right on ignoring her.

Which was understandable perhaps, given that they were incredibly busy.

But what wasn’t understandable to Jasmine was that he refused a piece of the massive hazelnut chocolate bar she opened at about one a.m., when everyone else fell on it.

Who doesn’t like chocolate? Jasmine thought as he drank water.

Maybe he was worried about his figure?

He stood outside the cubicle now, writing up the card. ‘Check his pedal pulses every fifteen minutes.’ He thrust her a card and she read his instructions.

‘What about analgesia?’ Jasmine checked.

‘I’ve written him up for pethidine.’

‘No.’ Jasmine glanced down at the card. ‘You haven’t.’

Jed took the card from her and rubbed his hand over his unshaven chin, and Jasmine tried to tell herself that he had his razor set that way, that he cultivated the unshaven, up-all-night, just-got-out-of-bed look, that this man’s looks were no accident.

Except he had been up all night.

Jed let out an irritated hiss as he read through the patient’s treatment card, as if she were the one who had made the simple mistake, and then wrote up the prescription in his messy scrawl.

‘Thank you!’ Jasmine smiled sweetly—just to annoy him.

She didn’t get a smile back.

Mind you, the place was too busy to worry about Jed’s bad mood and brooding good looks, which seemed to get more brooding with every hour that passed.

At six a.m., just as things were starting to calm down, just as they were starting to catch up and tidy the place for the day staff, Jasmine found out just how hard this job could be at times.

Found, just as she was starting to maybe get into the swing of things, that perhaps this wasn’t the place she really wanted to be after all.

They were alerted that a two-week-old paediatric arrest was on his way in but the ambulance had arrived before they had even put the emergency call out.

Jasmine took the hysterical parents into an interview room and tried to get any details as best she could as the overhead loudspeaker went off, urgently summoning the paediatric crash team to Emergency. It played loudly in the interview room also, each chime echoing the urgency, and there was the sound of footsteps running and doors slamming, adding to the parents’ fear.

‘The doctors are all with your baby,’ Jasmine said. ‘Let them do their work.’ Cathy, the new mum, still looked pregnant. She kept saying she had only had him two weeks and that this couldn’t be happening, that she’d taken him out of his crib and brought him back to bed, and when the alarm had gone off for her husband to go to work … And then the sobbing would start again.

She kept trying to push past Jasmine to get to her baby, but eventually she collapsed into a chair and sobbed with her husband that she just wanted to know what was going on.

‘As soon as there’s some news, someone will be in.’ There was a knock at the door and she saw a policeman and -woman standing there. Jasmine excused herself, went outside and closed the door so she could speak to them.

‘How are they?’ the policewoman asked.

‘Not great,’ Jasmine said. ‘A doctor hasn’t spoken to them yet.’

‘How are things looking for the baby?’

‘Not great either,’ Jasmine said. ‘I really don’t know much, though, I’ve just been in with the parents. I’m going to go and try to find out for them what’s happening.’ Though she was pretty sure she knew. One look at the tiny infant as he had arrived and her heart had sunk.

‘Everything okay?’ Lisa, early as always, was just coming on duty and she came straight over.

‘We’ve got a two-week-old who’s been brought in in full arrest,’ Jasmine explained. ‘I was just going to try and get an update for the parents.’

‘Okay.’ Lisa nodded. ‘You do that and I’ll stay with them.’

Jasmine wasn’t sure what was worse, sitting in with the hysterical, terrified parents or walking into Resus and hearing the silence as they paused the resuscitation for a moment to see if there was any response.

There was none.

Jed put his two fingers back onto the baby’s chest and started the massage again, but the paediatrician shook his head.

‘I’m calling it.’

It was six twenty-five and the paediatrician’s voice was assertive.

‘We’re not going to get him back.’

He was absolutely right—the parents had started the resuscitation and the paramedics had continued it for the last thirty-five futile minutes. Jasmine, who would normally have shed a tear at this point before bracing herself to face the family, just stood frozen.

Vanessa cried. Not loudly. She took some hand wipes from the dispenser and blew her nose and Jed took his fingers off the little infant and sort of held his nose between thumb and finger for a second.

It was a horrible place to be.

‘Are you okay?’ Greg looked over at Jasmine and she gave a short nod. She dared not cry, even a little, because if she started she thought she might not stop.

It was the first paediatric death she had dealt with since she’d had Simon and she was shocked at her own reaction. She just couldn’t stop looking at the tiny scrap of a thing and comparing him to her own child, and how the parents must be feeling. She jumped when she heard the sharp trill of a pager.

‘Sorry.’ The paediatrician looked down at his pager. ‘I’m needed urgently on NICU.’

‘Jed, can you …?’

Jed nodded as he accepted the grim task. ‘I’ll tell the parents.’

‘Thanks, and tell them that I’ll come back down and talk to them at length as soon as I can.’

‘Who’s been dealing with the parents?’ Jed asked when the paediatrician had gone.

‘Me,’ Jasmine said. ‘Lisa’s in there with them now. The police are here as well.’

‘I’ll speak first to the parents,’ Jed said. ‘Probably just keep it with Lisa. She’ll be dealing with them all day.’

Jasmine nodded. ‘They wanted a chaplain.’ She could hear the police walkie-talkies outside and her heart ached for the parents, not just for the terrible news but having to go over and over it, not only with family but with doctors and the police, and for all that was to come.

‘I’ll go and ring the chaplain,’ Greg said. ‘And I’d better write up the drugs now.’ He looked at the chaos. There were vials and wrappers everywhere, all the drawers on the trolley were open. They really had tried everything, but all to no avail.

‘I’ll sort out the baby,’ Vanessa said, and Jasmine, who had never shied away from anything before, was relieved that she wouldn’t have to deal with him.

‘I’ll restock,’ Jasmine said.

Which was as essential as the other two things, Jasmine told herself as she started to tidy up, because you never knew what was coming through the door. The day staff were arriving and things needed to be left in order.

Except Jasmine was hiding and deep down she knew it, had been so relieved when Jed had suggested keeping things with Lisa. She screwed her eyes closed as screams carried through the department. Jed must have broken the news.

She just wanted to go home to her own baby, could not stand to think of their grief.

‘Are you okay, Jasmine?’ Vanessa asked as she stocked her trolley to take into Resus, preparing to wash and dress the baby so that his parents could hold him.

‘I’ll get there.’ She just wanted the shift to be over, to ring her mum and check that Simon was okay, for the past hour not to have happened, because it wasn’t fair, it simply was not fair. But of course patients kept coming in with headaches and chest pains and toothaches and there was still the crash trolley to restock and plenty of work to do.

And now here was Penny, all crisp and ready for work.

‘Morning!’ She smiled and no one really returned it. ‘Bad night?’ she asked Jed, who, having told the parents and spoken to the police, was admitting another patient.

‘We just had a neonatal death,’ Jed said. ‘Two weeks old.’

‘God.’ Penny closed her eyes. ‘How are the parents?’

‘The paediatrician is in there with them now,’ Jed said. Jasmine was restocking the trolley, trying not to listen, just trying to tick everything off her list. ‘But they’re beside themselves, of course,’ Jed said. ‘Beautiful baby,’ he added.

‘Any ideas as to why?’ Penny asked.

‘It looks, at this stage, like an accidental overlay. Mum brought baby back to bed and fell asleep feeding him, Dad woke up to go to work and found him.’

She heard them discussing what had happened and heard Lisa come in and ask Vanessa if the baby was ready, because she wanted to take him into his parents. She didn’t turn around, she didn’t want to risk seeing him, so instead Jasmine just kept restocking the drugs they had used and the needles and wrappers and tiny little ET tubes and trying, and failing, to find a replacement flask of paediatric sodium bicarbonate that had been used in the resuscitation. Then she heard Penny’s voice …

‘The guidelines now say not to co-sleep.’

And it wasn’t because it was Penny that the words riled Jasmine so much, or was it?

No.

It was just the wrong words at the wrong time.

‘Guidelines?’ Jasmine had heard enough, could not stand to hear Penny’s cool analysis, and swung around. ‘Where are the guidelines at three in the morning when you haven’t slept all night and your new baby’s screaming? Where are the guidelines when—?’

‘You need to calm down, Nurse,’ Penny warned.

That just infuriated Jasmine even more. ‘It’s been a long night. I don’t feel particularly calm,’ Jasmine retorted. ‘Those parents have to live with this, have to live with not adhering to the guidelines, when they were simply doing what parents have done for centuries.’

Jasmine marched off to the IV room and swiped her ID card to get in, anger fizzing inside her, not just towards her sister but towards the world that was now minus that beautiful baby, and for all the pain and the grief the parents would face. Would she have said that if Penny hadn’t been her sister?

The fact was, she would have said it, and probably a whole lot more.

Yes, Penny was right.

And the guidelines were right too.

But it was just so unfair.

She still couldn’t find the paediatric sodium bicarbonate solution and rummaged through the racks because it had to be there, or maybe she should ring the children’s ward and ask if they had some till pharmacy was delivered.

Then she heard the door swipe and Jed came in.

He was good like that, often setting up his drips and things himself. ‘Are you okay?’

‘Great!’ she said through gritted teeth.

‘I know that Penny comes across as unfeeling,’ Jed said, ‘but we all deal with this sort of thing in different ways.’

‘I know we do.’ Jasmine climbed up onto a stool, trying to find the IV flask. She so did not need the grief speech right now, did not need the debrief that was supposed to solve everything, that made things manageable, did not really want the world to be put into perspective just yet.

‘She was just going through the thought process,’ Jed continued.

‘I get it.’

He could hear her angrily moving things, hear the upset in her voice, and maybe he should get Lisa to speak to her, except Lisa was busy with the parents right now and Greg was checking drugs and handing over to the day staff. Still, the staff looked out for each other in cases like this, and so that was what Jed did.

Or tried to.

‘Jasmine, why don’t you go and get a coffee and …?’ He decided against suggesting that it might calm her down.

‘I’m just finishing stocking up and then I’m going home.’

‘Not yet. Look—’ he was very patient and practical ‘—you’re clearly upset.’

‘Please.’ Jasmine put up her hand. ‘I really don’t need to hear it.’

‘I think you do,’ Jed said.

‘From whom?’

‘Excuse me?’ He clearly had no idea what she was alluding to, but there was a bubble of anger that was dangerously close to popping now, not just for this morning’s terrible events but for the weeks of confusion, for the man who could be nice one minute and cool and distant the next, and she wanted to know which one she was dealing with.

‘Am I being lectured to by Dr Devlin, or am I being spoken to by Jed?’

‘I have no idea what you’re talking about. You’re distressed.’ He knew exactly what she was talking about, knew exactly what she meant, yet of course he could not tell her that. Jed also knew he was handling this terribly, that fifteen minutes sitting in the staffroom being debriefed by him wasn’t going to help either of them.

‘I’m not distressed.’

‘Perhaps not, but I think it would be very silly to leave like this. It would be extremely irresponsible to get into a car and drive home right now, so I’m suggesting that you go to the staffroom and sit down for fifteen minutes.’ She stood there furious as she was being told what to do, not asked, she knew that.

‘Fine.’ She gave a terse smile. ‘I will have a coffee and then I’ll go home, but first I have to put this back on the crash trolley and order some more from pharmacy.’

‘Do that, and then I’ll be around shortly to talk to you.’ Jed said, ‘Look, I know it’s hard, especially with one so young. It affects all of us in different ways. I know that I’m upset …’

She didn’t say it, but the roll of her eyes as he spoke told him he couldn’t possibly know, couldn’t possibly understand how she felt.

‘Oh, I get it,’ Jed said. ‘I can’t be upset, I don’t really get it, do I? Because I don’t have a child, I couldn’t possibly be as devastated as you.’ His voice was rising, his own well-restrained anger at this morning’s events starting to build. ‘I’m just the machine that walks in and tells the parents that their baby’s dead. What the hell would I know?’

‘I didn’t mean that.’ She knew then that she was being selfish in her upset, but grief was a selfish place and one not easy to share.

‘Oh, but I think you did,’ Jed said. ‘I think you meant exactly that.’

And he was right, she had, except that wasn’t fair on either of them, because she had cried many times over a lost baby, it just felt different somehow when you had one at home. There was a mixture of guilt and pain tempered with shameful relief that it hadn’t happened to her, because, yes, she’d taken Simon into bed with her, despite what the guidelines might say, and it wasn’t fair on anyone.

It simply wasn’t fair.

Jasmine had no idea how the next part happened. Later she would be tempted to ring Security and ask if she could review the security footage in treatment room two between seven twenty and seven twenty-five, because she’d finally located the sodium bicarbonate and stepped down from the stool and stood facing him, ready to row, both of them ready to argue their point, and the next moment she was being kissed to within an inch of her life.

Or was it the other way around?

She had no way of knowing who had initiated it, all she was certain of was that neither tried to stop it.

It was an angry, out-of-control kiss.

His chin was rough and dragged on her skin, and his tongue was fierce and probing. He tasted of a mixture of peppermint and coffee and she probably tasted of instant tomato soup or salty tears, but it was like no other kiss she had known.

It was violent.

She heard the clatter of a trolley that moved as they did.

It was a kiss that came with no warning and rapidly escalated.

It was a kiss that was completely out of bounds and out of hand.

She was pressed into the wall and Jed was pressing into her; his hands were everywhere and so too were hers; she could feel his erection pressing into her. More than that she too was pushing herself up against him, her hands just as urgent as his, pulling his face into hers, and never had she lost control so quickly, never had she been more unaware of her surroundings because only the crackle of the intercom above reminded them of their location—only that, or shamefully she knew it could have gone further. Somehow they stopped themselves, somehow they halted it, except they were still holding each other’s heads.

‘And you thought driving would be careless and irresponsible,’ Jasmine said.

He sort of blew out his breath. ‘Jasmine …’ He was right on the edge here, Jed realised, shocked at himself. ‘I apologise.’

‘No need to apologise,’ Jasmine said. ‘Or should I?’

‘Of course not.’ His mouth was there, right there, they were holding each other, restraining the other, and both still dangerously close to resuming what they mustn’t. She could hear their breathing, fast and ragged and fighting to slow, and slowly too they let go of each other.

Her blouse was undone, just one button, and she didn’t really know how, but he looked away as she did it up and moved away from him to pick up the flask she had dropped. She left him setting up his IV and went to head back out, but she could still taste him, was still not thinking straight. And then Lisa came in.

‘Shouldn’t you be heading home?’

‘I couldn’t find the paediatric sodium bicarb,’ Jasmine said. ‘There’s only one left after this.’

‘Thanks,’ Lisa said. ‘I’ll get Joan to add it to the pharmacy order. Thanks for everything, Jasmine. I know that can’t have been an easy shift.’

‘How are the parents?’

‘They’re spending some time with him. The hospital chaplain is in with them and the police have been lovely.’ Lisa looked at Jasmine. ‘Maybe go and get a coffee before you go home.’

‘I think I just want my bed,’ Jasmine admitted. ‘I just need to finish the crash trolley off and order some more of this.’

‘I’ll do that.’ Lisa took the flask from her and they stepped aside as Jed walked past with his IV trolley. Very deliberately, neither met the other’s eye.

‘You go to bed and get a well-earned rest,’ Lisa said.

Fat chance of that.

Jasmine did have a cup of coffee before she drove home.

Except she certainly wasn’t hanging around to see Jed. Instead, she chose to head to the kiosk and get a takeaway.

And, of course, on the way to her car, she rang her mum.

‘How was Simon last night?’ Jasmine asked the second her mum answered.

‘Fantastic. I haven’t heard a peep out of him.’

‘He’s not up yet?’

‘No, but he didn’t go down to sleep till quite late.’

‘You’ve checked him, though?’ Jasmine could hear the anxiety in her voice

‘I checked him before I went to bed. Jasmine, it’s eight a.m. Surely it’s good if he’s having a little lie-in when he often has to be up at six for crèche?’

‘Mum …’

She heard her mother’s weary sigh as she walked through the house and then silence for a moment. She was being ridiculous, but even so, she needed the reassurance.

‘He’s asleep,’ her mum said, ‘and, yes, he’s breathing.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Bad night?’

‘Bad morning.’

‘I’m sorry.’ And then Louise started to laugh. ‘He’s just woken up—can you hear him?’

Jasmine smiled at the lovely morning sounds Simon made, calling out to anyone who was there, but she was dangerously close to tears a second later as she realised again just how lucky she was.

‘Go and have a nice sleep and I’ll see you here for dinner.’

‘Thanks, Mum.’

Her mum could be so nice, Jasmine mused as she drove home. When she had Simon she was wonderful with him. Jasmine completely understood that her mother didn’t want to be a permanent babysitter and she decided that when she woke up she was going to ring Ruby, Vanessa’s babysitter, and maybe get together and see if they could work something out.

All the drive home she thought very practical thoughts, aware she was a little bit more than tired.

And upset.

And confused.

She parked in the carport and looked over at the beach, wondered if a walk might be soothing, but knowing her luck Jed would be running there soon and another encounter with him was the last thing either of them needed now.

So she showered and tried to block out the day with her blinds, set her alarm and did her level best not to think of those poor parents and what they were doing right now, but even trying not to think about them made her cry.

And it made her cry too, that she had been here twelve weeks now and Simon’s father hadn’t even rung once to see how he was, neither had he responded to the occasional photo of his son she sent him.

And then she got to the confusing part and she wasn’t crying now as she went over the latter part of her shift.

Instead she was cringing as her mind wandered to a man who at every turn bemused her, and then to the kiss that they had shared.

She hadn’t been kissed like that, ever.

Their response to each other’s kiss had been so immediate, so consuming that, really, had the intercom not gone off, they’d have been unstoppable, and she burnt in embarrassment at the thought of what Lisa might have come in and found.

And she burnt, too, because in truth it was a side to him she had known was there—something she had felt the second he had jogged up to her on the beach. Jed was the first man to move her in a very long time, but she had never thought her feelings might be reciprocated, had never expected the ferocity of that kiss.

And she’d do very well to forget about it!

They had both been upset, Jasmine decided.

Angry.

Over-emotional.

It had been a one-off. She turned over and very deliberately closed her eyes. Yes, it would be a bit awkward facing him tonight but, hell, she’d faced worse.

She’d just pretend it had never happened.

And no doubt so would he.

She had her whole life to sort out without confusing things further.

And a man like Jed Devlin could only do that.

CHAPTER SEVEN

‘MUM!’ SIMON SAID it more clearly than he ever had before, and Jasmine scooped him up and cuddled him in tight the second she got to her mum’s.

‘You’re early,’ Louise commented. ‘I said you didn’t need to be here till five.’

‘I didn’t sleep very well,’ Jasmine admitted. ‘I’m going to go shopping at the weekend for some decent blinds.’ Not that that was the entire reason! ‘How has he been?’

‘Okay. He’s been asking after you a lot,’ Louise said, when Jasmine rather wished that she wouldn’t as she already felt guilty enough. ‘Right, I’d better get ready.’

Louise appeared a little while later in a smart navy suit, with heels and make-up, looking every bit the professional real estate agent. ‘How did you do it Mum?’ Jasmine asked. ‘I mean, you had evening appointments when we were little.’