Trauma Doc to Redeem the Rebel
Author
Charlotte Hawkes
Reads
15.9K
Chapters
12
Sparks fly with the trauma doc…but could she be the one to heal him?
WILL LETTING GO SET HIM FREE?
Former army surgeon Connor is instantly drawn to ER doc Nell. She's beautiful, intelligent and the first person to really see him — ever. Rebel Connor has spent years running away from his painful past, relationships and himself. But since Nell understands being abandoned in childhood, as he was, could she be the one woman to finally break through his barriers…and redeem his barricaded heart?
CHAPTER ONE
CONNOR MASON SLID his motorbike—an Italian super-sport racing motorcycle that was equal parts impressive and aggressive—to a razor-sharp halt in the layby and glowered down the valley to the chocolate-box-quaint houses below as they basked in summer’s evening glow. This was the place at its best, the bucolic-looking villages of Upper Meadwood and Little Meadwood, and Connor’s glower deepened.
He’d never really had much of an appetite for either place.
Gripping the handlebars of his bike white-knuckle-tight, he allowed his gaze to sweep from one side of the valley to the other. Rolling meadows swept down the south-west side, all dotted with cows and sheep, whilst a vast woodland still blanketed the north and east sides. Meadwood, where the meadow and woods met, and all held within the gentle embrace of two remaining arms of a freshwater river, which was the destination of eager fishermen all year round. Those picture-postcard houses with their pretty thatched roofs, hewn from local stone, all circled a village green that hosted everything from farmers’ markets to national cross-country events, and from summer fetes to Christmas fairs.
And Connor loathed it all.
In the city you could slip by unnoticed. Anonymous. In a place like this, where everyone knew everyone else’s business, it was impossible to do anything without the entire village having an opinion on the matter and voicing it. Loudly.
Not least the disdain many of them had felt at having the roustabout spawn of a drug-addled mother foisted on their peaceful little haven. He hadn’t been that welcome the first time, and he’d been positively loathed the second time. Little wonder that he’d made his final escape a couple of months before his sixteenth birthday. If he could have left earlier, then he would have.
But he wasn’t that angry, poverty-stricken, good-for-nothing kid any more. He didn’t have to be here.
With a sharp kick, his obscenely expensive and even more obscenely well-tuned motorbike rumbled comfortingly into life as Connor held it motionless in the layby. Quietly reassuring him that with one acceleration, one spin, it could take him back away from this damned place with little more than a cloud of dust and a deep-throated roar and no one would ever know that he had come back.
But then...that would mean Vivian would never know that he had come back.
Vivian.
The foster mum who had been the closest person he’d ever had to a proper maternal figure—the only person. His biological mother wouldn’t have even noticed whether he was there or not, had it not been for the fact that she could put her toddler son to work as a useful distraction whilst she stole more from whichever unsuspecting target had fallen into her path on any given day. Actually being loved, or cared about, had never factored into Connor’s early life—until Vivian.
From the day he’d first been brought to her as a scrappy, dirty, malnourished six-year-old to the day his wicked excuse for a biological mother had tracked him down and snatched him back—and then again from the day he’d made Vivian his one phone call from that police station to the day he’d left her for that army assessment centre at fifteen years and ten months.
No matter what, Vivian had been the one person to always have his back. Unequivocally and vociferously. Taking no nonsense from anyone who had tried to say that she was wasting her time on a down-and-out kid like him.
Connor grinned suddenly—unexpectedly—at the memory of his foster mother. He remembered her as characteristically calm, caring and gentle, but when someone mistreated one of her foster kids...woe betide them!
As for her fierce independence...
Well! If that was why she hadn’t told him about her declining health months ago—years, even—then he was only grateful for the message that had reached him via his former army commander’s widow, whose husband had once been one of Vivian’s contacts for her fostering.
He owed her everything, and now she needed him. Which meant that turning around and leaving simply wasn’t an option.
Dammit.
With that grim curse, Connor straightened up and rotated his hand inward to give the bike some throttle, and then began to pull out of the layby just as a loud rattling broke the silence, and a rusty pick-up truck appeared out of a hidden dip in front of him.
Hurtling up the narrow, winding country lane from the village, clearly on the wrong side of the road, the vehicle rattled worryingly as it lurched and bumped on the gravelly surface, bearing down on Connor far too fast. It was all he could do to throw all his body weight on one side in order to skid himself and his pride-and-joy motorbike into the safety of the ditch on the opposite side of the road as the truck flew by.
A few heart-stopping seconds later, the old truck careened off into the ditch on what would have been Connor’s side of the road.
But there wasn’t time to lie there. There wasn’t even time for him to catch his breath. Scrambling to his feet, adrenalin still pumping through his veins, Connor threw off his crash helmet and vaulted out of the narrow channel, ignoring the screams of protest from his right thigh and arm. In the split second before the crash, he had caught sight of the elderly driver and now, with his surgeon instincts prickling the back of his neck, he couldn’t shake the notion that something had been...off.
Connor raced back up the road and to the crashed pick-up truck, ignoring the way his stomach churned in horror.
The rear end was up out of the ditch with one wheel barely skimming the road, and the other clearly in the air, with most of the weight resting on the crumpled tin can of a bonnet. However, it was the stench of burning oil that assailed Connor’s senses the most, clinging in the air and warning of a potential explosion.
Half jumping, half sliding into the ditch, he made for the driver’s door and peered through the mud-caked window. It wasn’t entirely a shock to see the grey-and-white-haired driver slumped unconscious against the steering wheel—if Connor’s fleeting pre-crash memory was accurate, then the man had already been slumped over the wheel at the time of the accident—a heart attack, perhaps? Either way, the blood seeping out of a wound on his forehead and down to his equally grey beard was a concerning sight. Grasping the rusted handle of the pick-up’s door, Connor yanked with all of his considerable might.
The metal creaked worryingly, but it refused to open, no match for the buckled vehicle’s frame. A second heft yielded no better a result. Connor released the door for a moment to regroup. He could smash the glass, but that would mean raining shards down on his impromptu patient. Hardly ideal.
With a low curse, Connor launched himself over the bonnet and to the other side.
The angle of the car into the ditch meant that any effort to open this door was going to be just as futile, but at least smashing this window wouldn’t risk harming the unconscious driver. Taking a deep breath and turning his head over one shoulder, Connor lifted his elbow and showered glass over the grass below him and the dirty, ripped passenger seat. A few seconds later, he was through the window and into the compact cab where a melee of aromas seemed to attack his olfactory senses.
First was the smell of alcohol that was somehow both fruity sweet and gut-wrenchingly sour, but, more concerningly, there was the pungent smell of leaking fuel.
He needed to get the old man out of there. Fast.
‘Hey. Hey!’ Connor shouted, hoping to rouse the man even as he lifted his fingers to check for a pulse, the adrenalin kicking harder at the incredibly weak beat. ‘You awake?’
It wasn’t a good sign that the man didn’t even stir. From alcohol? Or from some medical emergency?
The lack of a seat belt certainly couldn’t have helped the old man’s chances, either. Though it might make it easier for Connor to move him now—if he could figure out how to get his patient out of the vehicle.
Leaning back on the filthy seats, Connor carefully extended his good leg across the man’s chest and kicked hard at the driver’s door, shocked when it groaned but then gave way.
Crawling quickly back out of the passenger window, he raced around the truck and heaved the damaged door open the rest of the way before hauling the old guy out a foot. Then, keeping the old man’s back to his own chest, and slipping his arms under his patient’s armpits, Connor prepared to haul him all the way out.
‘Wait. Stop!’
Connor lifted his head at the shout, just as a woman ran down the hill towards him.
And for a moment, he forgot where he was.
Dressed in running kit, with a longish, blondish ponytail swinging over her shoulders, she was certainly pretty, yet there should have been nothing so strikingly arresting about the woman to cause such an uncharacteristic, uninvited response. An instant attraction, but unlike any he’d experienced before. In Meadwood, of all places.
Well, there was no way he was letting that happen.
Irritated, Connor thrust the unwanted sensation out of the way, and instead turned his attention back to getting his patient away from the vehicle.
‘Stay back,’ he instructed, gritting his teeth as he moved the deadweight of the old man a little further out of the seat. ‘You need to call for an ambulance. Fire service, too.’
‘Stop!’ the woman shouted, a little louder this time as she waggled a phone before thrusting it in her back pocket. ‘I already called them. Air ambulance is on its way. In the meantime, don’t move him. He could have neck or back injuries.’
‘I’m aware of that.’
‘Then you shouldn’t move him until I’ve assessed him.’ She hurried over to within feet of him and he was abruptly struck by stunning blue eyes.
As vivid as the blue of the morpho butterfly that he’d seen on his travels through South America.
Where the heck had that thought come from?
He dragged himself back to the moment to find the woman had inserted herself into his rescue, her head bent to the old man.
‘Excuse me...’
‘Lester?’ she said, ignoring him, concentrating instead on the patient. ‘Lester, it’s Nell, can you hear me?’
Lester?
The name scratched at something deep inside Connor’s chest. In that black place where other, normal people had a heart.
Lester Jones? Old Farmer Jones? One of the villagers who had made Connor’s childhood at Meadwood even harder than it had needed to be? The man who had spent the better part of a decade helping to spread one malicious rumour after another about the feral kid who Vivian Macey had had the poor sense to foster.
Connor had lost count of how many enemy combatants he’d saved over the past decade but he’d take any one of them over Lester-ruddy-Jones right now. Lucky for the farmer that the Hippocratic oath meant so much to him.
Gritting his teeth, Connor secured his grip even tighter on the old man.
‘Stop!’ The woman—Nell—glowered up at him. ‘Can you just set him down for a moment?’
‘Not really.’ Connor didn’t know why it took him such an effort to keep his voice even—he was usually renowned for his cool head under fire. ‘Smell anything?’
‘It isn’t about whether Lester has been drinking or—’
‘Not that; smell again,’ he commanded quietly, even as he hauled Lester out a little further.
The woman—Nell—took a reluctant sniff before her eyes widened slightly.
‘Diesel?’
‘It’s coming from the truck.’ Connor nodded. ‘With the damage to the engine, it could go up at any time. Hence why you should stay back.’
It would be bad enough for him or Lester to get caught in a fireball, he didn’t need this innocent bystander getting injured too.
‘Good call,’ she muttered instead, paling slightly even as she held her ground.
Connor didn’t know why that impressed him as much as it did.
‘Just stay clear.’
‘No.’ She shook her head, moving to the truck door. ‘You keep lifting and I’ll grab Lester’s legs as soon as his torso is free.’
His chest pulled tight.
‘You need to get out of harm’s way...’
‘Not happening.’
The woman was positively infuriating.
‘The truck could go up any moment.’
‘Then the sooner you pull Lester free, the sooner we can get him secured and both get out of harm’s way.’
And as much as he didn’t like it, there was a steely quality to her tone that warned him that she was serious. But the quicker they achieved their objective, the better. His brain whirred.
‘Fine. I think there was a tattered blanket in the footwell. If you can grab that, then perhaps we could use it as a bit of a makeshift stretcher.’
Nodding briskly, Nell obeyed. Moments later, she was back out with the ragged material spread out on the gravel above the ditch.
‘Ready?’ she asked.
‘Lift on three,’ he confirmed. ‘One, two, lift.’
The pair worked together quickly and efficiently to free the unconscious man, moving him as far away from the truck as possible before assessing his injuries. The breathing wasn’t as shallow as he might have feared, and his pulse was surprisingly strong.
Mean drunk or not, looking down at the unconscious man, Connor was glad that he nonetheless felt a sense of duty and responsibility. As a doctor he’d pledged an oath to help people—all people—including those who had made his already miserable childhood even more unpleasant. As a human being, it meant that the lessons Vivian had taught him hadn’t been wasted.
He didn’t care to imagine the hardened, cold human he would surely have become without the intervention of his foster mother. A brief moment of relief stabbed through him.
Returning to Meadwood might have been the last thing he’d ever wanted to do, but if Vivian had died before he’d had a chance to see her again, then he wasn’t sure he’d have been able to live with himself.
‘Breathing and pulse seem good, no broken bones or obvious injuries, and no indication of internal bleeding at this stage. Though I’d have preferred to stabilise him better before moving him to assess any further.’
‘The air ambulance shouldn’t be too long; the base is only about thirty miles away as the crow flies.’
And there was no reason for that to make him feel suddenly oddly nostalgic for the army life he’d only recently left behind, and the fellow soldiers he’d actually thought of as friends.
Then the moment passed as two deep blue pools turned to him and he told himself his insides couldn’t possibly have just flip-flopped in some ridiculous way.
‘Okay.’ His gaze flickered between the old man and the wreck of the pick-up truck. The stench of fuel was now almost overpowering, and Connor felt an odd sense of foreboding. ‘Maybe we should risk moving him a little further away.’
She followed his gaze, her lip caught in her teeth in a way he was sure he had no business noticing.
‘You could be right.’
Taking each end of the blanket and trying to keep it as taut as they could, the pair moved their patient another twenty metres or so down the road, closer to where Connor’s bike was still lodged in its own ditch. They had barely set Lester back down when there was a loud explosion, and a burst of flames shot up from the wrecked pick-up.
‘Your second good call in the space of ten minutes,’ Nell muttered calmly, though her white face betrayed her shock.
‘We need to keep Lester stable until the helicopter arrives.’ He dismissed the compliment. ‘There’s an emergency medical bag in my motorbike top box. Can you grab it?’
Nell nodded, and as he tossed her the keys he got the impression that she was glad of the distraction.
‘I can’t believe he isn’t worse than he is,’ she called over her shoulder. ‘I’d thought maybe a broken rib, maybe even a pneumothorax, given the size of that old steering wheel, but you didn’t find anything?’
‘Nothing apparent,’ Connor confirmed.
Then again, if he was right that the old man had already been half passed-out before the accident—arguably due to alcohol—then his body might not have been braced for impact and so he might have managed to avoid the usual type of RTC injuries.
Not that he was about to say any of that to Nell. She clearly knew and seemed to like Lester, so he wasn’t about to set her against him before he’d had a chance to tell the police his side of events. It was almost a relief when she returned with the medical bag.
‘Thanks. Okay, we should start by stabilising his head and neck,’ Connor determined, delving into the bag. ‘Then we can do a more thorough check-over. Can you hold his head steady whilst I put this on?’
For the next twenty minutes or so, they worked together surprisingly seamlessly as they attended to Lester’s injuries, using the equipment from Connor’s emergency medical kit. Connor found himself uncharacteristically stealing glances at Nell as he admired her calm, collected demeanour, which matched his own so well. By the time the air ambulance touched down in the field next to them he was confident that their patient was as comfortable as he could be.
‘Connor Mason, trauma surgeon,’ Connor introduced himself briefly to the paramedic who reached him first. ‘Patient is a male, late sixties, approximately half an hour ago he drove off the road at around thirty miles per hour, and crashed into the ditch over there but he was already unconscious moments before the accident.’
‘How can you be sure?’
It wasn’t a challenge, merely fact-checking.
‘He nearly collided with me,’ Connor explained. ‘I just about managed to get my motorbike out of his path but he was no more than two metres away when I saw him through the windscreen.’
‘Right.’ The paramedic nodded, clearly taking in all the information.
‘I managed to reach him within a minute after the crash, and he was still totally unresponsive. He hasn’t regained consciousness since, but BP is a little elevated. However, there’s a strong smell of alcohol both on his breath and in the vehicle, so you might want to include that in your initial assessment since heavy alcohol consumption is known to diminish baroreceptor sensitivity.’
‘He has a laceration to his right temple, and a possible head injury hasn’t been ruled out,’ Nell added.
‘I take it that he wasn’t thrown from the vehicle, then?’ the paramedic asked, kneeling down beside the older man to begin a preliminary assessment of his own. ‘You moved him here?’
Connor sensed, rather than saw, Nell nod and open her mouth to speak but he wasn’t about to let her take any blame for moving the patient.
‘That was my call,’ he interjected. ‘I could smell diesel leaking from the vehicle and I felt it safer to move the patient rather than risk him being inside when the explosion happened.’
‘We both deemed it safer to do so,’ Nell added firmly, evidently not wanting him to protect her.
The paramedic nodded, taking in all the information, and beginning to relay it to the doctor who was already hurrying over. Still, Connor held his position until a hand touched his arm gently.
‘Let them take over,’ Nell murmured. ‘You’re clearly a great doctor but he’s their patient now.’
‘Yeah, but—’
‘They have all the equipment, too,’ she cut him off softly.
Reluctantly, Connor bit back any further objection. Whether he liked it or not, she had a point. Forcing himself to take a step back, he watched the crew complete the same assessment that he had, and then be able to check further. Ultimately, however, they confirmed Lester was stable enough to move and began loading him onto a stretcher and into the helicopter.
‘Not accustomed to being on the sidelines, are you?’ that voice asked quietly. Almost empathetically.
‘I prefer being busy,’ he heard himself admit, wondering what it had been that had made him answer this relative stranger, when he usually didn’t reveal much about himself, even to colleagues.
Finally, Connor watched as the bird lifted off, its rotors thrumming powerfully, and felt a strange wave of disappointment that—aside from the less-than-desirable circumstances—his time with the unexpectedly captivating Nell was at an end.
Though perhaps that was a good thing, since he was all too aware of her beside him, brushing against his arm as she turned, and exhaling a long, deep breath.
‘Well, that wasn’t exactly the Saturday afternoon that I’d anticipated. Doubt it was yours either.’
That might have been the understatement of the century.
‘Not exactly,’ he agreed grimly, and then before he could stop the words from tumbling unbidden from his mouth, he heard himself ask, ‘Can I buy you a drink?’
He wasn’t sure which of them was more surprised.
‘I...can’t,’ she answered regretfully after a moment. ‘I was supposed to be somewhere about half an hour ago. I have to go.’
‘I understand.’ He forced a bright smile though he couldn’t explain what it was that made him wish she would delay her plans a little longer. ‘Well, I should see if my ride has fared any better than Lester’s pick-up truck.’
Still he didn’t move.
Why was he wishing he could find a reason to stay and talk to her some more? Properly.
Whatever that meant.
He was hardly known for his love of conversation. After all, why use fifty words when a handful would suffice? Yet in this instant, he would happily have spent the evening sitting across a table from her, in some quiet country pub, learning all about this one particular woman.
Ridiculous.
He stuffed the curious notion back down and resolutely made his way back up the road to where his prized machine was still languishing in the ditch, trying not to notice how fluid it seemed when Nell fell silently into step beside him. This...peculiarity he felt had to just be about the strangeness of being back in this place, after all these years.
They walked together in companionable silence until they reached his crash site. Surprisingly, aside from a few dings to the usually polished paintwork, it looked as though it had come through the ordeal relatively unscathed.
Which was more than could be said for himself.
And he didn’t just mean the burning sensation in his right arm and down the side of his torso.
‘Right,’ Connor announced, manoeuvring the heavy motorcycle upright and out of the ditch before retrieving his crash helmet. ‘I’d offer you a lift but... I don’t have a second crash helmet on me.’
Plus, he’d never offered anyone a ride on his motorbike. Never. The bike had always been his, and his alone.
‘It’s fine,’ Nell confirmed, shifting her weight from one foot to the other without leaving.
He wondered if perhaps she was reconsidering the idea of getting a drink.
Wondered, or hoped?
‘Well, thanks again for your help with Lester,’ he told her, hoping to break the awkwardness. ‘And for letting me use your medical kit.’
‘Of course.’ She nodded, still hesitating. As though there was something else she wanted to say but was holding back. ‘And now you’re heading...?’
He could feel the shutters coming down inside him. Familiar. And usually welcome.
But now...? He couldn’t quite explain this odd sensation firing him up inside. As if she was the one causing the blood in his veins to effervesce.
But an attraction was the last thing he needed. This visit was about paying his respects to Vivian; it wasn’t about getting to know some stranger.
‘I’ll just stay here a while,’ he told her. Coldly.
‘Right. Well... I’ll leave you to it.’
One last pause and then she was gone, jogging down the hill in the same direction as the one Connor was headed. Hardly surprising, of course, since the road only led into the Meadwood valley or out of it. Still, Connor found himself pretending that he didn’t lament the loss of her company.
At all.
Nor the evaporation of that inexplicable...something that appeared to have set all sorts of thoughts tumbling through his head—none of which he was ready to identify yet.
And still, as he faltered there on his bike and glowered accusingly down the valley, he couldn’t seem to stop the thoughts altogether.
Like the fact that he couldn’t remember a time he had felt such a strong spark of attraction, but that it should happen here, of all places, was particularly galling.
Another reason to hate this place.
He could pretend that it was because he’d never been built to appreciate the countryside—it was too dull, too uneventful, the exact opposite of the life he’d ultimately craved for himself.
He was a thrill-seeker, a risk-taker, and, more than that, he was a man who had always loved a challenge.
But it was more than just the location.
As pretty as it was, as far as Connor was concerned the quaint, chocolate-box Little Meadwood was all a façade. A mere veil shrouding people who had never really made him feel as if he was one of them. Take an old soak whose own sins were carefully overlooked simply because he’d been born and bred in the village, whilst newcomers like him—even an innocent six-year-old who had simply had a shamefully bad start to life—would always be viewed with suspicion, and distrust.
And Upper Meadwood—lorded over by Lord Percival and his family—was even worse.
Without warning, something flickered deep, deep within him, and Connor was startled to realise that the hurt and resentment that he’d thought he’d long since buried were still simmering somewhere inside.
Or maybe it’s more like fear.
The voice whispered in his head—almost startling him.
Maybe you’re just afraid that coming back here is too much a reminder of the angry, lost kid that you once were?
Swiftly, Connor slammed the uninvited thoughts away—but it was too late. Like it or not, that voice held more than a grain of truth. When he’d turned his back on the village almost twenty years ago to join the army, he’d sworn to himself that he would never, never return.
And by God, he’d remained true to his word.
He’d toured the world, from Cyprus to Belize, and from Iraq to the USA—relishing the fact that he never stayed in the same place for too long. He’d lived the life of ten other men. Maybe a hundred. And he’d put his bitter, grimy childhood firmly in the past where it belonged.
Until now.
And until the unexpected phone call that had him feeling adrift. Lost. Struggling to come to terms with the idea that this unparalleled woman might not be for this world much longer.
It seemed so...wrong.
So now, here he was. Back in Little Meadwood after all.
Something bowled around in his chest, though he pretended he didn’t notice. He’d get in, get out, and be back to his proper life.
Connor revved his engine, the sound echoing through the valley as he skidded out some shale, taking off down the hill towards the village. Adrenalin pumped as he inhaled the mixture of hot, oily engine, tyres burning on the asphalt, and the freshly mown grass of a nearby field, and then he hurtled skilfully through the narrow, winding roads.
And hoped that he wasn’t racing back into the hellfire that was his past.
