Top-Notch Men!

Allegra thought back to her earlier conversation with Susie but decided against mentioning it. The nursing staff were well used to dealing with all sorts of people and could be relied on to remain professional at all times.

After a short pause she released a heartfelt sigh. ‘I often wonder how they get on—you know, once they leave ICU. We patch them up and send them on their way, but we get very little long-term feedback. Don’t you wonder how they manage to adjust, especially the ones with permanent disability?’

Joel examined the contents of his wineglass, a shadow of something coming and going in his dark eyes. ‘I try not to think about it too much.’

She looked at him, her expression softening. ‘But you do, don’t you?’

He gave her a twisted, humourless smile. ‘Well, it’s part of the job, isn’t it? You go home exhausted after long shifts, then you can’t sleep, worrying you could have done more.’

‘I know … It’s a wonder we don’t all end up on stress leave.’

‘It’s why doctors’ marriages have a higher than average failure rate,’ he said, reaching for his wine and taking a sip.

The waiter arrived with their meals and once he’d left, Allegra said into the little silence that had fallen, ‘You never told me what your parents do for a living.’

Joel put his glass back on the table before answering. ‘My father is a teacher and my mother hasn’t worked outside the home since my brother and I were born.’

‘That must have been nice for you and your brother,’ she said, ‘having a full-time mum at home.’

‘It certainly had its advantages.’ He reached for his cutlery and asked, ‘What about your early childhood? Did your mother choose to work or stay at home?’

‘My mother wasn’t the stay-at-home type. My father did a lot of the child care in the early days, but I seem to remember a few child-care centres along the way.’

‘But you had a happy childhood?’

‘Of course. My parents were a bit “out there” at times, but I can’t remember ever being unhappy. Even when they went their separate ways, they did it so wonderfully well that I was the envy of all my friends for having such trendy, cool parents.’

Joel looked at her in silent envy. His childhood had been marked with tragedy, a tragedy relentless and ongoing. The last time he’d visited, just two days ago, his mother had aged and visibly shrunk even further, and his father’s face had become a mask of pain from their situation, each line more deeply etched, each shadow a darker curtain.

Allegra became aware of his silence and wondered if she was boring him. ‘I’m sorry …’ She pushed her glass out of her reach. ‘I tend to talk too much about myself when I drink wine.’

He gave her a lopsided smile. ‘Truth serum?’

‘Next I’ll be telling you all my innermost secrets.’

‘You seem to be pretty much an open book to me. You wear your heart on your sleeve, which is unusual in a medico. It usually gets hammered out of you at medical school.’

She lowered her gaze to the small flickering candle on the table, a small frown bringing her finely arched brows together for a moment. ‘Well I must have been absent that day at medical school.’

‘What happened?’

Allegra brought her eyes back to his, surprised yet again at the warmth she could see reflected there. ‘I lost my best friend during second year.’

‘An accident?’

She shook her head. ‘Suicide.’

‘I’m sorry. That must have been a tough time.’

‘It was … I blamed myself for not seeing the signs.’

‘Most people who know a suicide victim suffer the same guilt. Look at Mr Lowe today. I’m sure that’s why he’s unable to cope. He probably thinks it’s his fault.’

‘Yes … but in Julie’s case I should have known. I was her best friend. We’d shared everything since the first day we met during orientation week at university.’

‘You can’t always read people’s minds,’ he pointed out.

‘My mother would totally disagree with you,’ she said, trying to lighten the conversation. She gave him a little smile and added, ‘She insists she can infallibly detect what people are thinking just by looking deeply into their eyes.’

‘Oh, really?’ He didn’t bother disguising his scepticism but this time it was tempered with a smile. ‘And have you perhaps inherited this little gift?’

‘I don’t know. I haven’t really put it to the test.’ She leaned forward to look into his eyes. ‘Let me see now … Hmm—you definitely have sleep on your mind. I can see you haven’t had a decent night’s sleep in weeks if not months.’

‘Not bad,’ he said. ‘There might be something in this after all.’

She leaned closer to peer even more, her hair falling forward to brush the back of his hand where it rested on the table near his glass in a soft-as-air caress that sent a charge of electricity straight to his groin as her greener-than-green gaze meshed with his.

‘What do you see in my eyes now?’ he asked, his voice sounding a little rough around the edges.

Allegra looked deeply into his darker-than-night eyes, an unexpected pulse of desire beginning to beat a steady tattoo low and deep in her body. Her chest felt as if it had shrunk to half its size, the air she tried to breathe into her lungs catching on its way down. She moistened her lips, her skin lifting in awareness in a way that had never happened to her before. Her breasts felt full and heavy, her nipples puckering beneath her black lace bra as she felt the searing burn of his dark gaze as it held hers.

She sat back in her chair and tucked her hair behind her ear as she gave a little self-conscious laugh. ‘I’ve definitely had way too much wine to drink.’

‘The eyes are supposed to be the window to the soul,’ he said as he signalled to the waiter for the bill. ‘But what if you don’t have one?’

‘Everyone has a soul,’ she protested.

He gave her one of his cynical smiles. ‘Don’t go looking for one in me, Allegra, for you won’t find one. It died a long time ago.’

Allegra followed him out of the restaurant a short time later, her heart contracting painfully at the thought of what he had seen and experienced out in the field to have hardened him in such a way. She’d seen shadows of pain in his eyes that she knew no amount of sleep would ever erase. And she knew if he’d looked deeply into her own he would have found the very same shadows lurking there …

CHAPTER SEVEN

‘THANK you for dinner,’ Allegra said once he’d walked her to the door of her apartment block. ‘I had a good time. It was a nice restaurant. Not a pizza in sight.’

‘Aren’t you going to ask me in for coffee?’

‘I was going to but I wasn’t sure if you would take it the wrong way.’

‘I take it the same way you do—black.’

She gave him a quelling look. ‘I meant … well, you know what I meant.’

He smiled at her flustered expression and before he could stop himself lifted a finger to her cheek, trailing his knuckle over the creamy curve where a spot of heightened colour had pooled.

Allegra ran her tongue over her lips in a nervous gesture. ‘I’d better go in. It’s getting late and I’m on early and …’ She stopped when she saw the dark glitter in his eyes as they caught and held hers, her stomach hollowing in anticipation.

His head came down slowly, his warm breath brushing over her lips before he placed his mouth on hers in a soft, hardly touching kiss.

She looked up at him, her heart increasing its pace as he ran his tongue over his lips as if tasting her sweetness.

‘I probably shouldn’t have done that,’ he said.

She swallowed the restriction in her throat and croaked, ‘Why?’

‘Because now I know what it feels like, I want to do it again.’

‘Oh …’

‘It could cause all sorts of problems,’ he said, taking her by the shoulders and bringing her one tiny step closer, her breasts brushing against his chest.

‘You think so?’ she asked, leaning into his hardness instinctively.

‘I know so.’

‘Too bad …’

He held her gaze for several pulsing seconds. ‘The gossip would be unbearable.’

‘Totally …’

‘And then there’s the problem of shifts.’

‘Yes …’ She moistened her lips again. ‘That’s always a downside.’

‘And then there’s the issue of your place or mine.’

‘Tricky.’

He smiled and tipped up her chin. ‘You are one hell of a temptation, Allegra Tallis, but I’m going to be the strong one here and step back before we drift into dangerous territory.’

‘OK …’ She swallowed again as she felt the hard ridge of his growing erection against her. ‘That would be wise, I guess.’

‘Very wise.’

A full thirty seconds passed.

‘So … so why aren’t you doing it?’ she asked.

‘Doing what?’

‘Stepping back,’ she said. ‘You said you were going to be the strong one and step back.’

‘You’re right,’ he said, his gaze dipping to her mouth. ‘Now would be a good time.’

‘A very good time …’

Her stomach did a complete somersault as his hands slid down the length of her bare arms to encircle her wrists.

‘Why don’t we do it on the count of three?’ he suggested, after another heart-stopping pause.

Allegra’s fingers curled around the length and strength of his. ‘Right … let’s do that. On the count of three.’ She took a breath and began the countdown, ‘One …’

‘Two …’ he said, and released her wrists to place his hands on her hips.

Another deep throb of silence passed. Allegra knew it was her turn to say the last number but somehow she couldn’t get the one word past the trembling shield of her lips. Her gaze locked with his as the time beat on, his hands on her hips feeling like a slow burn as his heat passed from his body to hers.

‘Aren’t you going to say it?’ he asked, his breath caressing the surface of her mouth as his head came inexorably closer.

‘I was getting to it …’

She felt the imprint of his lazy smile on her lips before he gradually increased the pressure, each slow drugging movement of his mouth on hers sending her senses into overload. The sexual charge of his tongue probing for entry made her legs buckle with instant uncontrollable need and she pressed herself against him, relishing in the feel of his body’s instant reaction to hers. She wasn’t without experience but never had she felt the energy and force of such fierce attraction before. It was like her body had been storing up its need for this moment when his mouth scorched its timeless message on hers.

Her tongue played with his boldly, each movement inciting her desire to a higher level, moving even further out of her control. Her mind swam with images of how they would be together, his strong leanly muscled body pinning her beneath him.

A passing car’s headlights brought her back to earth with a shaft of exposing light that she knew would do her no credit with her overly conservative neighbours.

She eased her mouth away from his and said somewhat breathlessly, ‘Th-three.’

Joel’s hands moved from her hips, his wry smile sending another wave of longing through her. ‘There, I knew you could do it.’

‘It was a tough call but I guess someone has to do it.’

‘Yes,’ he said, brushing the curve of her cheek once more. ‘Someone does.’

‘So …’ She tried to sound casually unaffected, as if she kissed handsome, full-blooded men on her doorstep all the time. ‘I guess I’ll see you at work tomorrow.’

‘Yes, I guess you will.’

‘‘Night …’

‘Goodnight, Allegra. I really enjoyed this evening. You’re surprisingly good company.’

‘Better than an internet date?’

‘Way better,’ he said, staring again at her mouth.

‘Um … this is the bit where you go down those steps and get in your car and drive home,’ she said, pointing to where his car was. ‘Do you think you can manage that?’

‘I’m working myself up to it.’

She couldn’t help laughing. ‘You have definitely graduated with honours from the school of irresistible charm.’

He bent his head and pressed a soft kiss to the side of her mouth. ‘So have you, Dr Tallis.’ He gave her cheek one last gentle flick with his finger and stepped away, walking with long strides towards his car.

‘Have a good sleep,’ she called out, as he got in his car.

He turned his head to lock gazes with her. ‘Are you joking?’

‘No … not really …’

He lifted his hand in a wave and with a deep throaty roar of the engine drove off and disappeared around the corner.

Joel hadn’t expected to sleep but when the phone rang beside his bed at three a.m. he realised he’d been in a deep dreamless slumber that took some effort on his part to come out of. He reached blindly for the phone and answered it groggily, ‘Joel Addison.’

‘Dr Addison, it’s Brian Willis, I’m on night shift for the unit. We’ve got one hell of a problem here. I thought I should tell you about it now instead of when you come in the morning.’

Joel rubbed his face and sat up. ‘What problem? What’s going on?’

‘It’s Mrs Lowe,’ Brian said. ‘Her ventilator has been tampered with and she had a respiratory arrest.’

‘What?’ Joel leapt off the bed, his pulse accelerating. ‘What the hell do you mean, her ventilator was interfered with? Interfered with by whom? Is she all right?’

‘She’s fine, Dr Addison. It’s all back under control here, but the nursing staff are very shaken. Judy Newlands was looking after her and raised the alarm. If she wasn’t as organised and level-headed as she is, it could have been a total disaster,’ Brian said. ‘Someone had switched off the ventilator alarms and switched oxygen and nitrous oxide inputs to the ventilator—she was breathing a 50-50 mix of nitrous and air.’

‘That’s impossible, Brian, the connectors are different. You can’t screw an oxygen supply to a nitrous inlet, or vice versa.’

‘I know that, but that’s not how they did it. They cut the tubing and used clip-on joiners to switch the tubing. Nitrous comes out of the wall, and halfway along the tubing it changes into the oxygen tubing input of the ventilator. And the opposite for the oxygen supply.’

‘This is serious, Brian. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes. Have hospital security and the police been notified?’

‘The place is crawling with them right now, Dr Addison, and somehow the press has been informed. There are at least two newspapers here already and security tells me there’s a TV news van setting up a satellite dish out the front.’

Joel let out one sharp expletive. ‘I’ll be there as soon as I can.’

A group of journalists approached Joel as soon as he headed for the front doors of the unit. ‘Dr Addison? You’re the new director of Melbourne Memorial’s innovative new ICTU. Do you have any comments on Kate or Tommy Lowe’s condition? Has this incident or accident in the unit involved either of them?’ one of them fired at him.

‘I’m sorry but I am not at liberty to discuss patient details with anyone other than close family members,’ he said, and made to brush past.

‘Dr Addison, there are rumours that Kate Lowe tried to kill herself and her son, and there are rumours that an attempt was made on her life in the early hours of this morning in your unit. Do you believe there is a major weakness in security in the new unit? Could anyone just walk in and interfere with patients?’

‘Is the public safe in your unit, Dr Addison?’ another journalist persisted.

‘Please, get out of my way,’ Joel said, swiping his pass key to enter the building.

He located Brian Willis and almost frog-marched him into his office. Once there, the door shutting behind them with a snap, he asked Brian to fill him in on events of the night in detail.

‘Whoever did this didn’t realise about all the other separate alarms,’ Brian said. ‘The first thing to go off was the alarm on the pulse oximeter. Then the heartrate alarm went off at the desk. We were a bit short on staff, and had a one-to-three nursing ratio for about fifteen minutes down that end of the unit. Judy had gone to mix an antibiotic dose for Tommy, I was in the office. Judy heard the first alarm and came back in. The ventilator seemed to be working fine, she saw the alarms were off and switched them back on, and of course they all started sounding off. Oxygen sats had dropped to 70 per cent, so Judy just disconnected Mrs Lowe from the ventilator and hand-bagged her. Her obs came back to normal. She then reset all the ventilator settings and reconnected her, but within a minute all the alarms went off again.

We decided the ventilator was faulty. We bagged her while one of the unused machines was brought across by Chris Farmer, the orderly. We set her up on it on its bottle supply and it worked fine, so we disconnected the wall supply, moved out the old one, moved in the new one, connected the wall supply to the new one, then all the alarms went off on the new one. We knew the wall supply must have been OK because it’s driving every other ventilator in the unit. It’s just didn’t add up. Then Chris found the connectors and switched-over tubing—one loop of it, with the connectors, was concealed under the equipment trolley in the corner of the cubicle.’

‘This is not just sabotage, Brian, this is attempted murder,’ Joel said.

‘I agree. The police think so, too. They’re interviewing Judy and Chris now. I gave a statement a while ago. They want to talk to you at some point.’

‘Were there any relatives in the unit?’

‘There were people coming and going earlier in the night, up till pretty late actually,’ Brian answered. ‘You know what it’s like in here sometimes, we allow relatives as much contact as possible. That boy that came in the other day—you know, the spinal injury? His parents have barely left his bedside. I think his sister and girlfriend have been in, too, but it’s impossible to keep track of everybody in a unit as big as this.’

Joel ran a distracted hand through his hair. ‘I know … it’s hard to tell people to stay away when it could be the last time they see the patient.’ His hand fell to his side. ‘Has Mrs Lowe’s husband been informed?’

‘Yes.’

‘What was his reaction?’

‘Apparently pretty cold and dismissive about it,’ Brian said. ‘Quite frankly, I don’t think he’d care if someone pulled the plug on his wife.’

Joel frowned. ‘Was he in the unit at any time during the night?’

‘I’m not sure, I’d have to check with the nursing staff. Do you think he did this?’

‘It’d be a pretty stupid thing to do under the circumstances,’ Joel said. ‘The finger of blame would point straight at him.’

‘Yeah, I guess you’re right. But he must be extremely cheesed off about it all the same. The kid isn’t doing so well. Mr Lowe will probably lose it if his son doesn’t recover or if he’s left permanently brain-damaged.’

‘Let’s hope it doesn’t turn out to be permanent,’ Joel said, at the same time as his phone rang.

‘I’ll leave you to it,’ Brian said and made his way out.

‘Joel, it’s Patrick Naylor here,’ said the voice on the phone. ‘What the hell is going on in the unit? I just had a call from Switchboard that the press and the police are crawling all over the place.’

‘There’s been an incident in ICTU with a patient,’ Joel explained, pinching the bridge of his nose with two fingers to release the tension he could feel building behind his eyes. ‘It’s under control now but the press will expect a statement from one of us—if it’s me, I want you to clear it before I make it. You’d better come in and I’ll fill you in with the details.’

‘For God’s sake, man, it’s four a.m.!’ the CEO said. ‘Can’t it wait until morning? I normally don’t get in till eight-thirty.’

Joel dropped his hand and rolled his eyes, actively forcing himself to remain polite. ‘If that’s what you’d prefer.’

‘Good. I’ll see you in my office at eight-thirty. And get Security to get rid of the press. I don’t want to be harassed by journalists getting from my car to the lifts.’

‘Fine, but if it’s going to be eight-thirty I can’t be held responsible for whatever unenlightened speculation appears on the front of the Melbourne papers,’ Joel said, but the CEO had already hung up.

CHAPTER EIGHT

‘DID you hear what happened last night in ICTU?’ Margaret Hoffman, the anaesthetic registrar, said the next morning as she came into the main operating theatre change room where Allegra was changing for the first case on Harry Upton’s long list.

‘No, I came straight up here. I’m doing my round later. What happened?’

‘Someone tried to kill Kate Lowe.’

‘What?’ Allegra’s eyes went wide. ‘How?’

‘They tampered with the ventilator, cut and switched nitrous and oxygen gas lines into her ventilator.’

‘That’s incredible! Have they caught the person responsible?’

‘No, but I bet it was the father,’ Margaret said.

‘It could have been anyone,’ Allegra said, not sure why she was springing to Keith Lowe’s defence. ‘It might have even been a member of staff.’

Margaret frowned as she tightened the waist ties on her scrub trousers. ‘But if it was a staff member, they would have known how the alarm system worked and circumvented it. That woman would be dead by now and I know a few people who would be glad of it.’

‘Come on, Margaret, that’s a bit harsh, isn’t it? The police haven’t even established whether it was an attempted murder-suicide.’

Margaret handed her the newspaper from inside her locker. ‘Haven’t you read this morning’s paper?’

Allegra unfolded it and looked down at the front-page story, her stomach sinking in alarm. There was a fairly recent picture of Kate and Tommy and below, the stark black headlines couldn’t have been more condemning of the mother’s motives.

‘She’s as guilty as all get-out,’ Margaret said. ‘Look at her. She looks the type, all dowdy and depressed. The inside story is the husband asked for a divorce and it sent her crazy. She didn’t want to give up custody of the little boy so decided to take matters into her own hands.’

Allegra refolded the paper and handed it back. ‘She’s still entitled to a fair trial.’

‘Yeah, right, where she gets some hot-shot lawyer to get her to plead temporary insanity and she gets off scot-free,’ Margaret said in a scathing tone. ‘What’s fair about that? How does that help that poor little kid hooked up on that ventilator?’

‘What would help both Tommy and his mother would be the staff getting on with their job of taking care of their recovery instead of gossiping and speculating about them,’ Allegra said.

‘Surely you don’t think she’s innocent, do you?’ Margaret asked. ‘How can she be when she was high on drugs and drink? She was driving the car, remember, no one else.’

‘I know …’ Allegra sighed as she stepped out of her skirt. ‘But I just can’t get my head around the idea of someone trying to kill their own child, not unless they were actually not in their right mind.’

‘I feel sorry for the husband,’ Margaret said. ‘It said in the paper how he’d done everything he could to try and save the marriage.’

Allegra frowned as she tied her hair with a bandana. ‘And yet the paper said he asked for a divorce.’

‘Well, everyone has their limits,’ Margaret said. ‘Maybe he’d finally had enough and found someone else. That’s the trend, isn’t it? Trade in the old wife for an updated version?’

Allegra turned to face her, a contemplative expression beginning to settle on her features. ‘Or get rid of the old wife.’

Margaret’s mouth dropped open. ‘But how would he have done it? When it happened he was in Melbourne. He’s got an iron-clad alibi.’ She folded her arms across her chest and added, ‘Now who is doing the speculating?’

‘You’re right,’ Allegra said with a rueful twist to her mouth. ‘We’d better leave this stuff to the professionals while we get on with what we’re trained to do. Is Harry here yet? I want to get on with the list so I can do some preliminary work on Tommy and his mother.’

‘So you’ve managed to convince the new director, have you?’