The Italian, His Pup and Me
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Alison Roberts
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CHAPTER ONE
RULES COULD BE BROKEN, couldn’t they?
When they were rules that you’d given yourself? And when there might be a very good reason to break them?
Like...if it seemed as if the perfect man had just walked into your life but you were not allowed to be remotely interested in him just because...
...because he was Italian?
Francesca Moretti let her breath out in a sigh that was melodramatic enough to attract the attention of the men sharing this table with her. She could feel several sets of eyes shifting to focus on her.
‘What’s up, Frankie?’ Colin, shift manager for the South Sydney Air Rescue base, sounded genuinely concerned. ‘Sounds like you just found out the world was ending. Did I miss a headline on that front page of the paper?’
‘We’ve been on shift for too long with no action, that’s all.’ Mozzie, one of the Red Watch helicopter pilots shook his head. ‘Interhospital transfers don’t quite cut the mustard when our Frankie has such a low boredom threshold.’
‘Not true.’ Frankie waved a dismissive hand. ‘I have no objection to transfers, even when they have an escort and we’re just providing a taxi service. In theory, that is. And only in moderation, of course.’ She put her empty coffee mug on top of the plate that had crumbs and melted cheese left over from her lunch toastie. ‘But you’re right. I’ve been sitting on my bum for too long and I just ate the biggest toasted cheese sandwich in the world. I’m going to go and lift some weights in the gym or something. It was windy enough this morning to bring tree branches down and it made it a bit dangerous to do my usual run through the bush reserve.’
‘At least it’s settled down now,’ Mozzie said. ‘Might still be a bit lumpy up there for a while, though.’
‘Bring it on.’ Frankie grinned. ‘Lumpier the better as far as I’m concerned.’
She couldn’t help shifting her gaze as she got to her feet.
To Mr Perfect.
The new addition to Red Watch—the helicopter rescue crew she had become a part of a couple of years ago now. Thanks to a relationship that had gone bad in a rather spectacular fashion, her best friend and colleague, Jenny, had thrown in the most exciting job in the world to go and be a paramedic in a small town much further south of Sydney and her position on the crew had been filled by...
Nico.
Nico Romano.
It wasn’t just his name that was so obviously Italian. He had olive skin and wildly curly black hair that was long enough to need restraining in a kind of messy man bun thing at the back of his head while he was on duty. He had facial hair that was so neatly trimmed, in contrast, that it looked like designer stubble and his eyes were as dark as sin.
As dark as Frankie’s were. And they were looking straight back at her. Frankie had to ignore the weird tingle that eye contact with this man had given her ever since they’d been introduced for the first time the other day. Now that they were working on their first shift together, she really needed to get it under firm control. She didn’t actually know this man at all so this was vaguely reminiscent of a teenage crush on a movie star. Good grief...if she kept this up, she’d be putting a poster of the man on her bedroom wall and that thought was so ridiculous she could give herself the mental shove she needed to douse that tingle.
‘You don’t get air sick, do you, Nico?’ She kept her tone light. Casual. Totally impersonal, even. ‘Mozzie’s quite happy to take on some pretty gnarly weather sometimes.’
‘I never get sick,’ he said. ‘For any reason. I am...’ He frowned. ‘What’s the expression? As healthy as a...hose?’
‘That’s a horse, mate.’ Colin was laughing.
‘That’s what I said.’
‘No...you said hose, which is what you water the garden with.’
‘I thought he said house,’ Mozzie said.
Everybody was laughing now. Except Frankie. Because Nico had an accent that was as Italian as everything else about him. He’d become a paramedic and gone on to work on helicopters in Milan and had only come to Australia to take up a position with an air ambulance in Queensland a handful of years ago but his English was as impressive as the CV that had put him at the top of a long list of contenders for the position of being part of this prestigious air rescue base.
Frankie had been born in Australia but she had grown up in an Italian community and been raised by her mother and grandmother. Both strong, independent women but they still bought into notions that should have been left behind in the old country generations ago. Frankie could actually hear an echo of her nonna’s voice in the back of her head.
‘Why is it you want to keep doing a dangerous job like being a paramedic? In a helicopter, per amor del cielo! Find a nice Italian boy, Francesca, and settle down to have molte bambini. Give me some pronipoti before I die...’
Nico shrugged off the laughter with a resigned shrug and went back to reading the SOPs—Standard Operating Procedures—for his new base. Frankie knew he’d done an initiation protocol during her last few days off and he’d been working already with an Australian helicopter crew as a paramedic so he should fit in seamlessly with her crew, but the glue that held people together in stressful situations wasn’t just about having expertise in invasive interventions in a trauma case, for example, or being skilled at winch operations.
Colin lifted his hand in a wave as he went back to his office. Mozzie said he was off to do another check on his beloved helicopter—a brand new Airbus H145 that was his pride and joy. Ricky—an aircrew officer, whose role included assisting the pilot, paramedics or doctors with medical care, looking after equipment and operating the winch—reached for Frankie’s empty coffee mug and plate to take to the dishwasher with his lunch dishes.
‘You don’t have to tidy up after me, Ricky.’
‘And there I was thinking that was the only reason you kept me around, Frankie.’
Frankie rolled her eyes but she was smiling. Red Watch was a tight team and the reason for that was the X factor in whether a crew became tight enough for trust to be automatic. The cohesion of any group like this depended on the personalities of the people as much as, or possibly even more than any other factor.
The jury was still out on Nico Romano. Except that Frankie knew she shouldn’t even be on the jury because she was clinging to some rebellious streak that she’d developed decades ago, thanks to her nonna and the community she’d grown up within. A stupid rule she’d made into a sacred vow and stuck to ever since. She also knew that it wasn’t remotely acceptable to be judging someone simply on their appearance, nationality or accent. She had to give the man a chance, for heaven’s sake. She didn’t actually know anything about him.
Except that he was drop-dead gorgeous.
And he could do strange things to her body just by looking at her...
Oh, help...
Frankie had never been more grateful for the vibration and beep of the pager attached to her belt. She could see Colin coming out of the office at the same time and he had a look on his face that she could read instantly.
There was an emergency somewhere within their reach and they were about to get dispatched to where they were needed most. Frankie had no idea where it might be or how serious it was but she could feel her adrenaline levels rising fast. This was what she loved about this job. You started every single mission not knowing what kind of challenges you could be up against, but that only made it more exciting. The goal was always the same. To help people in what might be the biggest challenge they would ever face.
To stay alive.
Nico Romano was in one of his favourite places.
Sitting in the open doorway of a helicopter, with one foot balanced on the skid, trusting the strap he had hooked to the roof of the cabin as he leaned out, trying to be the first to spot their target amongst the challenging landscape below.
Finally, after a couple of trauma cases that were satisfying but pretty routine, they were way out in the Central Blue Mountains, west of Sydney, on a mission that was promising to be a lot less ordinary. They had landed some distance away from the scene location to rendezvous with the Blue Mountains Police, configure the helicopter for a winch operation and get all the details they could on the incident they’d been dispatched to. It was a mission that was already ticking a lot of boxes near the top of a job satisfaction scoresheet for Nico.
The incident had happened halfway down a canyon, which added all sorts of challenges to extract the patient. The injured hiker’s accident might have only resulted in a probable ankle fracture but the sixty-five-year-old man had since developed chest pain and other symptoms that suggested he might be having a heart attack, so it could prove to be a challenge medically as well as logistically. They had hovered over the scene before landing, long enough to make a plan of action, and Mozzie reckoned he could perch a skid on the edge of a ledge, which would let the medic jump out and save the time it would take to winch them down and then back up with the patient attached to him.
Best of all, it was Nico who was going to be the one leaping out onto that ledge.
It had been Frankie’s suggestion how they would decide who would take the lead in what was likely to be the last mission and the first winch operation for this shift. She’d caught Nico’s glance as they moved swiftly back to the helicopter.
‘Want to do the winch?’
‘If you’re happy, yes, absolutely.’ He gave her a quick smile. ‘But I wouldn’t want you to get bored on your first day working with me.’
She didn’t exactly smile back but there was a gleam in her eyes that looked like approval and that was a win all by itself, given the cool reception he’d noted in his new colleague up till now.
‘Rock, paper, scissors, then?’
Nobody could hear them over the crescendo of the helicopter rotors gaining speed. It took no more than five seconds. Nobody would have noticed the swift hand gestures either. And Nico had won, scissors over paper, no doubt thanks to the many games of sasso, carta, forbici he had played with his sisters to also settle arguments about who got to have the best treat being offered or first turn at an activity they all wanted to do.
Frankie reminded him very much of his sisters, to be honest, with that long, curly black hair that was barely tamed by a braid and dark eyes beneath a heavy fringe and a luxuriant tangle of eyelashes. She might sound like an Australian but there was no mistaking her Italian genes. She was confident. A bit loud. She used her hands a lot when she was talking and...she talked—and laughed—a lot.
Nico didn’t want to like that. He most certainly didn’t want to find it as attractive as he seemed to be finding it. Attraction like this was dangerous and Nico knew exactly why he had alarm bells already sounding, and why he needed to shut it down before it could even start. That way, it could never escalate into something too big to resist. You wouldn’t start trusting someone enough to fall in love with them and you could avoid ending up with that trust shattered, along with any shred of self-esteem.
Nico had made that mistake once before, when he’d fallen for Sofia—his first love—hard enough to marry her and it had, quite literally, scarred him for life. Emotionally and physically.
Never again.
It was all in the past now. That longing to find his soul mate. To be the best husband ever and to have his own children growing up as part of the beloved new generation of the Romano family. That dream, like the kind of trust he had put in the person he had chosen to share that future, no longer existed.
The yearning could still come out of hiding occasionally, however, no matter how unwelcome it was, but Nico had learned how to deflect it, if he couldn’t dismiss it entirely at times. He could find a reason for its appearance that was not going to mess with how happy he was with his new life.
He missed his sisters, that was all—along with the rest of his family. Maybe this attraction wasn’t sexual at all—it could be simply a comforting familiarity to have someone who shared his cultural heritage as a member of his new crew. It didn’t go both ways, that was for sure. There was also no mistaking the suspicion with which Frankie had been regarding him since they were introduced a few days ago. Had she sensed that he was drawn to her and was making it very clear that she wasn’t interested? It obviously wasn’t going to be an instant friendship after bonding over pizza or something, but Nico was hoping that his performance on this next job might at least make him more welcome on her crew.
And that was all he wanted from Frankie Moretti—a professional relationship—no matter how attractive she might be or how easily she might be able to cure any vestige of homesickness after his years away from Italy. Even friendship could well get too close to a boundary Nico had no intention of crossing. With any woman, but especially not with someone like Frankie.
Oddio... She would be the last woman on earth who could change his mind about that, because it wasn’t just his sisters that she reminded him of, was it?
It was every Italian woman.
Including Sofia.
Especially Sofia, thanks to the level of attraction that had been almost a kick in his gut when they’d been introduced.
But it was okay. It might be a bigger challenge than he was used to handling but he knew he wasn’t in any danger. History was not going to be allowed to repeat itself.
Mozzie’s control of the aircraft was impressive as they approached the incident scene again. So was the landscape below, with a waterfall between two rocky cliffs which were far enough apart to let the helicopter drop between them and had the advantage of protecting them from any wind gusts higher up. With one skid delicately touching the very edge of a large outcrop of rocks, Nico was able to jump out, with a backpack containing medical supplies and a winch harness for a patient. An upward glance as Mozzie took the helicopter up to hover nearby, well above the cliffs, showed Frankie leaning out to watch Nico.
His patient wasn’t far away, on the ground, leaning against another member of his hiking group who had climbed down to care for him until help arrived.
‘I’m Nico. I hear you’ve got a sore ankle and some chest pain?’ Nico could already see the deformity of the man’s ankle that indicated a dislocation and probable fracture as well.
‘I didn’t take his boot off,’ the man’s companion said. ‘I didn’t want to hurt Martin here, and I thought it might be providing a bit of a splint.’
‘Good thinking.’ Nico nodded. ‘I’ll give him some pain relief before we do anything to his foot.’ There was something else that was more of a concern right now. ‘Tell me about this chest pain, Martin,’ he said. ‘Have you ever had anything like this before?’
‘No. It’s right here.’ He put a hand on the centre of his chest. ‘And it goes into my neck and up into my jaw as well.’
‘If I give you a scale of zero to ten, with zero being no pain and ten being the worst you can think of, what number would you give this pain?’
‘Ten. It’s worse than my ankle.’
Nico nodded. ‘I’m going to put a needle in your hand and give you something for the pain and then we’re going to get you up into our helicopter as quickly as possible, okay?’
‘Okay...’
Martin lay back against his friend. He looked grey, Nico noted, and he was sweating profusely. He couldn’t do an ECG until he got his patient on board but the urgency to do so was high. Nico opened his kit and pulled items out rapidly.
‘Are you allergic to any drugs that you know of, Martin?’
‘No.’
‘Do you have any medical conditions I should know about? High blood pressure, asthma, diabetes...?’
‘No.’
‘Okay...sharp scratch...there we go.’ Nico secured the line and drew up the drugs he needed to administer. With effective pain relief on board, he removed the heavy boot and splinted the foot and ankle and, with the help of Martin’s friend, he got his patient into a harness. They were able to get him standing on one leg, with the support of being clipped to Nico’s harness.
‘You need to get right back.’ Nico had to raise his voice to a shout over the sound of the helicopter’s rotors after he radioed that he was ready for pickup, and the friend began scrambling back up the cliff to where other hiking club members were huddled. The sound was deafening as Mozzie hovered between the cliffs again and a winch line was being lowered. Ricky was operating the winch and Frankie was where he’d been earlier, with one foot on the skid, waiting to help get their patient on board.
It took very little time. As soon as they were on board the door was closed and Mozzie gained altitude and turned back towards the city.
Nico and Frankie both began to work on Martin, attaching chest pads and other monitoring equipment.
‘Symptoms strongly suggestive of ischaemic chest pain,’ Nico said. ‘No history of cardiac problems. We’re not going to get an accurate twelve-lead ECG en route but I can see significant ST elevation on the single lead rhythm strip.’
‘Oxygen saturation’s below ninety-four percent,’ Frankie said. ‘I’ll put some oxygen on.’
‘Blood pressure?’
‘One seventy over ninety. Heart rate’s sixty-two. Is he on any medication?’
‘No.’
‘What’s our flight time to the nearest PCI unit?’
‘That’ll be St Mary’s. At least twenty-five minutes, I’d guess. Mozzie?’
But Mozzie was busy with a call from the South Coast Emergency Response Centre that controlled the dispatch of all emergency service vehicles and aircraft. Nico could hear him telling the control room that they were unavailable for at least the next thirty minutes and that he’d update them as soon as they were free.
‘How’s that pain in your chest now, Martin?’
‘Not so bad...’
‘Can you score it for me? Out of ten like we did before?’
‘About a six?’
‘I can give you some more medication for that.’
‘I feel a bit sick.’
‘I’ll give you something for that as well. Sorry, it’s a bit bumpy up here today.’
Nico had to focus to be able to draw up the drugs and administer them with the sideways slipping of the helicopter in conditions that were a little turbulent again and then he had to pause to attach the syringe to the plug before injecting the drugs when they hit a sudden drop. He glanced up at Frankie.
‘Lumpy enough for you?’
‘I’m not complaining.’ Frankie was watching his movements and her half smile suggested she was also not complaining about his handling of the conditions and their patient.
They both shifted their gaze to the monitor as an alarm sounded. Martin’s heartrate had dropped below sixty into a bradycardia.
‘Level of consciousness is dropping,’ Frankie warned. ‘Martin?’ She shook their patient’s shoulder. ‘Can you hear me?’
But Martin’s eyes were closed and his head slumped to one side. And Nico could see the ominous wide, bizarre complexes on the ECG trace that suddenly deteriorated into a pattern that was no more than an uncoordinated squiggle.
‘He’s in VF,’ he said tersely. ‘Stand clear, Frankie. I’m going to defibrillate him.’
‘Want me to land?’ Mozzie could hear what was being said between the crew members. He knew how urgent this was and Nico could feel the helicopter losing altitude already.
‘No. We would lose too much time. I’m happy to do it now. Charging to maximum joules.’
Nico caught the startled glances from both Frankie and Ricky and he understood that they might be concerned. Defibrillating during flight was riskier than on land, especially in turbulent conditions, but he had done this before and he was confident. Trying to do effective CPR in a vibrating aircraft for as long as it took to find a suitable landing site and put the chopper down would eat too much into the time it was possible to keep heart muscle alive.
‘Stay clear,’ he warned the others again. ‘Hang onto something in case we hit a bump.’
He pressed the shock button and Martin’s body jerked but the interference on the monitor screen settled to reveal he was still in the fatal cardiac rhythm of ventricular fibrillation.
‘Start CPR, please, Frankie. I will place an LMA. If that’s not adequate, I’ll intubate.’ Nico reached for the laryngeal airway that would be much easier to place than intubating in these cramped conditions. He had to ride the movement of a downdraught before he could insert the airway and fill the cushion with air with the attached syringe to secure it. He clipped a bag mask onto the airway with a practised swiftness and a quick squeeze showed the chest rising adequately. Thankfully, they already had IV access so Nico could draw up the drugs needed and administer them before they had another attempt to defibrillate their patient. Moments later, Nico braced himself to snap open an ampoule of adrenaline and slide a needle in to draw up the drug without stabbing himself in the process. He could see that Frankie was also bracing herself and that she was doing an impressive job of keeping her chest compressions fast and deep enough to be effective. Ricky had managed to fit into a space where he could be providing ventilations and vital oxygen.
Somewhere, in the very back of Nico’s brain, was a passing reminder that he’d hoped this mission would make him a welcome addition to this crew.
He hadn’t expected it to be quite this dramatic. And now he had to focus completely and do his utmost to keep their patient alive.
Wow...
Just...wow...
Frankie slid yet another glance at their new crew member as they flew back to base. They were already late to finish their shift but what a way to complete a first day. Nico had shown himself to be not only confident but even more capable than any one of them might have hoped he would be. He had undoubtedly saved a man’s life today. The second in-flight defibrillation on Martin had restored a perfusing rhythm and he was actually waking up as they landed on the roof of St Mary’s Hospital in the western suburbs of Sydney, where he would be fast-tracked to the catheter laboratory to have his coronary arteries unblocked and prevent any further damage to his heart.
‘I’ve never done that,’ Frankie confessed. ‘Defibrillated in-flight, that is. Or intubated, for that matter. I’ve always done it prior to transfer. Or we’ve touched down somewhere.’
The corners of Nico’s mouth lifted a little. ‘It’s no different to doing it on the ground,’ he said. ‘You just need to be a little more careful, that’s all. Especially when it’s lumpy.’
‘It saved so much time. It could have tipped the balance to getting him back. Not only getting his heart going again, but fast enough to prevent any hypoxic brain injury.’
‘I couldn’t believe it when he opened his eyes and tried to pull out the LMA.’ Ricky was grinning. ‘Good job, Nico.’
Nico just shrugged. ‘It was a team effort.’ He turned to look out of his window as Mozzie brought the helicopter down on the big cross painted outside the South Sydney Air Rescue hangar.
Frankie let her gaze rest on him a little longer this time. So Nico Romano wasn’t just gorgeous to look at. He was courageous and competent and remarkably modest about his talents, and her being attracted to him had just tipped into something a little more significant.
Good grief...was she in danger of falling in love with this man already?
It was just as well they were colleagues on the same crew because that was as good as an ironclad backup rule. Getting involved with an Italian man might be the first on the list of Frankie’s no-go areas, but someone she had to work with this closely was definitely a close second. She had seen all too often the damage that could be wrought in a career by an ill-advised romantic liaison and she was not about to risk any aspect of the job she loved so much. She only had to remember the reason her friend Jenny had felt forced to leave this air rescue base and that disastrous fallout from a relationship gone very wrong hadn’t even been with someone she worked with every day.
She wanted to echo Ricky’s praise and tell Nico that he’d done well today but, for some reason, Frankie felt very uncharacteristically shy. Maybe because she knew she’d been a little less than entirely welcoming and was now somewhat embarrassed about it? Deliberately putting up a barrier hadn’t been only because Nico was Italian and far too good-looking. Frankie had already been missing working with her best friend.
‘... Jenny?’
‘What?’ Frankie’s glance swerved towards Mozzie, who was catching up behind her. She had clearly missed something he’d been saying.
‘Isn’t Willhua where Jenny moved to?’
‘Yes...’ Frankie’s eyebrows shot up. Had Mozzie been reading her mind? ‘Why?’
‘I was just talking to Donna in Control and they’re about to drop a new job on us.’
‘But we’re way over time to finish our shift already. It’s dark...’
‘There’s no one else available. We got a call about this one when you lot were in the middle of saving that guy from his cardiac arrest. A truck went over a cliff just out of Willhua. The response crew got a status one patient out from the wreck and took him to the local hospital, but apparently they think there may be another person involved. Some guy called Bruce. They just want us to go and have a look. We might be able to see something from out to sea that they can’t see from where they are on the road and, if there is someone down there, they’d rather not leave them until daylight when they can get climbers down.’
‘Okay...’ Frankie nodded. She lifted her helmet to put it back on but Mozzie shook his head.
‘We might be going for just a look-see, but if we do spot something we need to be prepared. Could be a body retrieval and it might end up being a winch operation. It could be wet. We’ll keep the crew minimal so Ricky can go home but at least one of you’d better get a suit on.’
Frankie caught Nico’s glance. He was grinning and she saw his hand form a fist by his side. She followed his example. Mozzie was looking straight ahead and couldn’t see what they were doing. Holding Nico’s gaze, she pumped her fist, once, twice... On the third time she kept it as a fist. Nico had made a V sign with his fingers for scissors. It had taken only a couple of seconds this time and Frankie’s rock had won. Nico conceded defeat with a single nod but held Frankie’s gaze for a moment longer and, in that flick of time, she could feel...something that had nothing to do with that tingle.
The first strand of the kind of bond you wanted to have with a colleague?
The first beat of a friendship?
Whatever...
It felt good.
‘Five minutes,’ she called over her shoulder as her pager sounded and she broke into a run. ‘Don’t go anywhere without me.’
