A Baby to Rescue Their Hearts
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Louisa Heaton
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CHAPTER ONE
SOPHIE FIGURED THERE were three different types of men in the world.
The first kind she knew very well. Those men told you that they loved you, that you were the centre of their world, their beating heart—but then they left you because you’d become ‘complicated’ or ‘needed more’ or they thought they’d found someone ‘easier’.
The second kind were the nice guys. Those were rare—in short supply. In fact, she wasn’t sure they truly existed, having never met one herself, but she’d heard her friends talk about them. The boys next door, who never seemed to be anything special at first, but were always snapped up by other, luckier women, before you realised who’d been living under your nose all that time.
And then there was the third kind. The kind who were often seen posing as half-naked firefighters for calendars, holding a cute puppy whilst their biceps, pecs and six-packs gleamed with oil. All square jaws and designer stubble, with perfect white teeth and a sexually charged smoulder.
And one of those was currently walking into her ambulance station.
‘Wowser...’ she breathed, trying to hide her stare, pretending to check the equipment in the back of her rapid response vehicle, occasionally peeking over the roof as if to confirm that he was actually real and not a hallucination.
His green paramedic uniform fitted him very well. A little too well, in fact. Surely it was against the law to look that good? Or maybe it just fitted him perfectly but her pregnancy-induced hormones, which had been starved of male attention for months and months, were transforming what she could actually see. Sex-starved goggles, rather than beer goggles...
He was the big three—tall, dark and handsome—with a killer smile that did strange things to her insides as, from behind her car, she watched him conversing with her boss over by his office.
She couldn’t hear their conversation and she was curious. She was expecting a student paramedic to join her for a couple of weeks—but there was no way this guy was the student she was expecting! In her experience students were younger, fresh out of the lecture hall, their faces filled with eagerness and apprehension. Nervous. Anxious.
This guy was sure of himself, confident and more mature, and possibly in his thirties. The prime of his life. No doubt he was virile and physical and...
Taken. He’s taken—obviously! I mean, come on, look at the guy!
She blew out a calming breath. Probably he was someone from higher up the chain who’d suddenly decided to do an inspection, or something. Nothing to do with her. Nothing that—
Her boss, Pete, laughed at something the guy said and nodded in Sophie’s direction.
She dipped down beneath the roof of the car, cursing silently. Had they noticed her staring?
That would be embarrassing.
She yanked open the drawer that held the adult masks and counted them once again, her mind racing at what was going on as her cheeks bloomed with heat and desire. She’d expected a lot of things from pregnancy, like a huge belly and puffy ankles and weird food cravings, but these sexual feelings all the time... It was typical that she turned out to be one of those, when there was no bloke around to sort them out for her!
Was the new guy from head office or something?
Was he here to tell her she’d have to go on maternity leave early?
Because she refused to! She would work for as long as she could. Now that she was on her own she couldn’t afford to take time off for longer than she needed to—and besides, she still felt fit. She could lift, she could run, she could do CPR...all the things required of a rapid response paramedic. It would be madness to take someone with her skills off the road and tell her to go and knit bootees or something.
‘Hi.’
She jumped, and banged her head on the roof of the car, wincing and feeling her cheeks colour. Rubbing at her head, she peered over the top. ‘Hey.’
Firefighter Calendar Guy stood by the driver’s door, smiling at her. ‘You okay?’
‘I’m fine, thank you.” She rubbed hard at her bruised scalp. “Can I help you?’
‘I’m Theo Finch.’
Theo. Of course. A guy like him would have a beautiful name. Something that rolled off the tongue...that would sound perfect as she breathed it out, her lips caressing the name as they brushed against his neck...
Sophie cleared her throat. ‘Pleased to meet you, Theo. What can I do for you?’
She could think of many things he could do for her, and her brain thoughtfully provided the imagery for all of those and more as she tried to appear nonchalant and carefree and as innocent as a nun.
‘I’m your student. I’m shadowing you for the next month?’
She almost laughed. A nervous, hysterical laugh that would have sounded as if she deserved to be assessed by a mental health clinician. But she managed to hold it in.
This guy was her student? How the hell was she supposed to concentrate and do her job with him around?
‘My student? I’m sorry,’ she said with a laugh, ‘I was expecting someone more...’
‘Green-looking?’
She smiled. They all looked green. It was the uniform. But she didn’t want to look at his uniform. Moulded as it was to his masculine, muscled form. Because all that made her think about was what lay beneath it...
She tried to work out how she would cope with this new development in her life. Realised she would just have to deal with it. Besides, he wouldn’t be interested in her in that way. She looked like a beached whale, and men like him dated sylph-like girls with big hair, big boobs, talon-sharp fake nails and no real eyelashes of their own.
And, for the record, she wasn’t really interested in him, either!
I’ve sworn off men. My life is just going to be me and my daughter. That’s it. Nothing else needed. Except maybe one hot night occasionally, because why not?
She was a grown woman. She had needs.
She looked at him more intently, her gaze taking in his dark-lashed blue-green eyes, the beautiful curve of his lips, the fine dark hair covering his muscled forearms.
I need to get a grip. That’s what I need.
‘Hi, I’m Sophie Westbrook.’
Theo had been waiting for this day for a long time. He’d always been one of those guys who’d never quite thought about what he wanted from life, growing up. There’d never seemed time to be worrying about career choices—not when he’d had to be the man in his family and help look after his ailing mother and three younger sisters.
A career had seemed like something other people talked about, and when he’d had to meet with the careers advisor at his secondary school he’d told the softly spoken woman behind the large glasses that he’d probably just look for some menial work to fit in around helping run the house.
The advisor had told him that he was something called ‘a carer’, and that he was entitled to support, but somehow none of that had actually panned out. His mother had not been a woman to accept charity, so Theo had simply carried on carrying on—until his mother had died and his sisters had flown the nest and he’d gone to an army recruiting office and signed up.
But his time in the army, following in his father’s footsteps, had not been what he’d hoped it would be. He’d thought he would find routine and rules—something that would take care of him for a change. Instead he’d found himself caring intensely for his new family—the other soldiers in his battalion. Losing some of them in Afghanistan had been brutal—totally unexpected—and he’d left before he could lose any more.
You’re a carer.
Those were the words he kept hearing, over and over in his skull, and he knew them to be right. It was all he’d done. But how to do that in life, without getting attached to people?
He’d considered becoming a doctor, but the training lasted years and years and he wasn’t sure he had that in him. Being a nurse was something he was familiar with, but the idea of being on a ward and getting to know his patients over time, caring for them, worrying about them, seemed too much.
He’d had enough of sitting by someone’s bedside watching them die, trying to convince them to take their medicine and holding their hands through nights of pain and discomfort. It hurt too much. He’d known he needed something different. Something less attachment-forming. So he’d decided on being a paramedic.
He’d get the drama, the adrenaline rush that he was used to from being in the army, and he would get to care for people, to try and make them better, and then he could walk away. No long-term commitment needed. No getting to know someone before watching them die. No having to deal with that loss. If a patient died on him? Yes, it would be sad, but not as upsetting as losing someone he’d come to care for deeply.
The first few weeks of university had been fascinating, and now he was here on his very first placement—and it was with a rapid response paramedic. Just the kind of thing he imagined doing himself. Working solo in a vehicle like this, or maybe being a paramedic on a motorbike?
And he’d been placed with Sophie.
She was cute. In fact, she was more than that. His first thought had been that she was strikingly beautiful. Dark blonde hair that fell in waves to her shoulders, large blue eyes, a slightly wonky smile that was wide and caused her eyes to gleam, and...
Sophie came out from behind the vehicle and the first thing he saw—couldn’t help but see—was her enormous abdomen, swollen with a baby.
‘You’re pregnant.’ Then he coloured at stating the obvious!
She smiled. ‘And you’ve just made your first assessment and diagnosis. We’ll make a paramedic of you yet.’
He laughed. ‘I’m sorry, I—’
‘Is my being pregnant a problem for you?’ She was looking at him curiously, her head tilted to one side in a challenge.
‘No!’
‘Good.”
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to blurt that out. I just wasn’t expecting—’
‘To be lumbered with an elephant?’ She smiled.
Theo let out a breath and then laughed, holding out his hand once again. ‘Can we start over? Hi, I’m Theo.’
She reached out to take his hand and laughed. ‘Sophie. Pleased to meet you, Theo. Now, shall I show you how we check the vehicle to make sure it’s roadworthy before we go out on shift?’
He was very relieved that she’d allowed him her grace. He couldn’t believe he’d been so clumsy to start with. He was lucky that she was as kind as she was. ‘Yes, please.’
He let go of her hand reluctantly, noticing she wore no ring on either hand, before following her to the rear of the vehicle.
‘First we do a stock check and make sure the oxygen and Entonox tanks are full and any medications are well within their use-by date. There’s a checklist here that we work through.’ She pulled out a clipboard and gave it to him. ‘I’ve already gone through it, but we’ll go through it again as it will be good for you to check with me and familiarise yourself with the whereabouts of each item, in case I need you to find something for me when we’re out on a shout. Okay?’
He nodded and pulled his pen from his sleeve pocket, feeling happier now that they were getting down to business, after the awkwardness of before.
Sophie had barely pulled out of the station and signed on for duty with the control room when a call came through. A young girl had been thrown from her horse.
‘Six zero two, responding,’ said Sophie.
‘Thank you, six zero two. HEMS seven four eight also en route,’ said the calm voice over the system.
‘You see that button there?’ Sophie pointed at a switch on the dashboard.
‘Yes.’
‘Press it.’
Theo reached forward and depressed the switch and the sirens began to sound. ‘Blues and twos.’ He smiled.
Sophie checked both ways at a junction before cutting through the traffic, making sure that everyone knew they were there and had stopped, or were stopping, before she pulled out and began to drive down the road towards the motorway that would get them to Cobham the fastest.
At this speed she had to concentrate, because—unfortunate as it was—not everyone on the roads responded in the correct manner when an emergency vehicle was coming up behind them, lights blazing and sirens blaring. She’d lost count of the number of drivers who never bothered to look in their mirrors and didn’t get out of the way. And if she’d got a pound for every driver who had cut her up or refused to let her pass she’d be a millionaire by now, sitting on a baby-soft couch at home being hand-fed grapes by a half-naked Adonis, whilst another bronzed god wafted her with an ostrich feather fan.
‘Hopefully you’ve never travelled at these speeds before?’ she asked Theo.
‘On a road? No.’
She guessed he meant that he’d been in a plane, or a high-speed train, or something. ‘By the time you’ve finished your placement with me you’ll be more than familiar with some of the mistakes other drivers make. If I had my way, I’d make it part of the practical driving test to have to deal with emergency vehicles whilst out on the road.’
‘They’re that bad?’
‘Like you wouldn’t believe! Lots of people are very good at pulling over and getting out of our way, but sometimes they pull over in the wrong place—like on blind corners, forcing us to go head-on into the other lane, not knowing what’s coming. It slows down our response time, and response times are everything.’
‘We have to get there within seven minutes?’
‘For a category one call, yes.’
‘What are those, usually?’
‘Anything considered life-threatening or something that might need immediate intervention.’
‘And is getting there in seven minutes always doable?’
‘It depends on many things—traffic, time of day, roadworks...’
‘Lots of variables come into play?’
‘They most certainly do.’
‘Do you think we’ll get to this call on time?’
She glanced at the clock on her dashboard. ‘Most definitely.’
It was a matter of pride for Sophie and all the other paramedics she knew who worked damned hard to meet response times, ensuring not only patient care, but also the safety of themselves and other road users.
‘Have you had much experience of patient care?’ she asked.
It would be good to know if he had. He was older than the students she usually mentored, so it was likely he had seen more in life. Experienced more. Hopefully he wasn’t the type to faint at the sight of blood.
‘Some.’
Had she noticed a hint of terseness in his voice? ‘Good. When we get there, you must wear a jacket that says you’re an observer. You can help me carry equipment and things, but no rushing forward until I’ve assessed the situation and know that it’s safe for us to approach. At any call—okay?’
‘I know. They gave us health and safety lectures at university.’
‘Lectures are one thing. Real life is another. Especially when all your instincts are screaming at you to forget safety and just get in there and help.’
She saw him nod in her peripheral vision.
‘What sort of danger would you expect at this call?’ he asked.
‘Well, she’s fallen off a horse, so the horse might still be around. We’ll need to make sure it’s contained—especially if HEMS are going to be landing.’ He’d know that HEMS was the Helicopter Emergency Medical Service. ‘Any good with animals?’
He gave a small laugh. ‘Not really had the opportunity.’
She smiled. Theo was easy to talk to when she didn’t have to look directly at him. She could pretend he was just another guy. Just her work partner. Her student. He was here to learn, and as long as she stuck to educating him and nothing else, she should be absolutely fine. Keep things serious...no flirting. That was doable, right? Looking directly at him was another thing. Looking into those come-to-bed eyes of his would be distracting.
The turn-off for Cobham came into view and she indicated, checking her mirrors and watching the traffic on the slip road before cleaving her way through the centre at the lights to take the turning they needed. Thankfully, the drivers there got out of her way, and she quickly zipped past a big supermarket on her left and drove through Cobham cautiously, before taking the road she needed for the farm they’d been called to on the outskirts. Her GPS system showed her that she was about a minute away, and above her she could see a helicopter coming in from the east.
Tipton Farm was atop a small hill and had a long, rutted driveway which she drove down cautiously, trying to avoid the potholes and puddles. To one side was a field of cows and on the other a crop of some kind that she couldn’t identify. It stood quite tall—almost waist-height, if she had to guess.
At the end of the driveway, a woman flagged them down. ‘Harriet is down there!’ She pointed to a small path.
‘Thank you.’ Sophie drove towards the path and parked. ‘This is where we disembark,’ she told Theo. ‘Hope you’ve got a strong back—the bags weigh a ton.’
She quickly radioed through to Control to say that she’d arrived on scene, and then she got out of the vehicle and opened up the boot. She passed Theo the jump bag and equipment she thought they might need and grabbed a pair of gloves as well.
‘Ready?’ She took a moment to smile at him, and was rewarded with a dazzling smile that did things to her insides.
Concentrate.
She quickly looked away as they began walking towards the patient. In front of them was a small huddle of people, gathered around somebody on the ground. A woman held a beautiful chestnut-coloured horse by its reins off to one side.
The people stood back to make space for her and Sophie quickly assessed the situation. Her patient—Harriet—was lying flat on her back, covered in some coats that had been laid over her. She wore a riding helmet, which was good, but she looked pale. The ground seemed solid and there didn’t appear to be any hazards that might harm anybody.
‘Could we get rid of the horse? The air ambulance will most probably land in this field next to us, so it would be safer for all involved if it was back in its stable.’
The woman holding the horse nodded and began to lead the animal away.
Sophie put on her gloves, crouched next to her patient and smiled. ‘Hello, Harriet, my name’s Sophie and I’m a paramedic. How old are you, sweetheart?’
‘Fourteen.’ Harriet’s teeth chattered. Most probably from shock.
‘Can you tell me what happened?’
As Harriet spoke, telling Sophie how her horse had been walking quite sedately down the path when it had been startled by a deer jumping out from the underbrush and had thrown her off onto her back, Sophie was assessing her patient’s body by eye, mentally working out the height of her patient’s fall, how the impact might have happened and what she would need to check for.
‘And what hurts...if anything?’
‘My back and my hips.’
‘And if you had to rate your pain from zero to ten, with zero being no pain and ten being the worst you’ve ever felt in your life, where would you say you were?’
‘About a s-s-six?’ Her teeth were still chattering.
‘Okay, Harriet, you’re doing wonderfully. I’m just going to check you out, so you’ll feel me touching you, but I’ll try not to hurt you. Is that okay? Don’t nod—just say yes or no.’
‘Yes.’
Sophie began her primary survey of Harriet. The helmet was not cracked or broken, but that didn’t mean Harriet hadn’t taken a blow to the head when she’d landed. She felt nothing out of place in the girl’s neck or shoulders, arms or legs, but there was tenderness, as Harriet had mentioned, around her pelvis. It was possible it was broken, or there was an injury to her back.
She reached into her bag and got out her SATS probe and slipped it onto Harriet’s finger. Whilst she waited for it to give her the result she got out the Entonox—a mixture of nitrous oxide and oxygen.
‘Just breathe in and out for me...this should help with your pain.’
Behind them, she could hear the whump-whump of the helicopter’s blades as it got closer, and she could feel the downdraft as it lowered to the ground.
She carried on with her assessment. Harriet’s oxygen levels were good. Her pulse rate was a bit high, but that was understandable in this situation. She’d had an accident. She was scared. In pain. She didn’t know what was going to happen.
Sophie tried to shield Harriet from the worst of the downdraft and then, as the engine whined, she took hold of Harriet’s head and held it still. ‘Some nice doctors are about to arrive now. They’ll most likely ask you a few questions, and then they’ll want to put you in a collar to support your neck and get you on a spinal board for a trip to the hospital.’
‘In the helicopter?’
Sophie smiled. ‘Absolutely. Ever been in one before?’
‘No.’
‘Well, you’re about to.’
Sophie glanced up to look at Theo and make sure he was okay. He was doing as she’d asked. Standing back and observing, looking at the patient on the ground with a mixture of concern and apprehension.
The HEMS doctor arrived and she gave a brief hand-over of her findings and let him take control. He was the senior on the scene, though as she was the one with cervical control of Harriet’s neck she would be the one to control her log-roll onto the spinal board that was arriving.
‘Theo? You need to watch how we do this so next time you can help.’
‘I can help you now. I did this in the army.’
The army? Okay, so that explained the proud way he walked, the upright posture, the confidence. ‘Okay, you can grab her legs. You know where to hold them?’
He quickly positioned himself by Harriet’s legs and placed his hands in the right position, giving her confidence in what he’d said.
‘Good. Once we’ve got the pelvic brace on we’ll need you, okay?’
‘I’ll be ready.’
The HEMS doctor quickly tightened a brace around Harriet’s pelvis. ‘She’s secure.’
‘Okay, let’s roll to the right on the count of three, then. One, two, three.’
They rolled Harriet so that the spinal board could be placed underneath her. Then, on another count, they rolled her onto her back. Sophie checked with her small team to make sure everyone was happy before they log-rolled her to the left and back again.
‘Right, we’re just going to get you all strapped in, Harriet, and then you’re going to go in the helicopter with Dr Howard—okay?’
‘Thank you.’ Harriet smiled and giggled slightly. It was a nervous giggle, but at least it showed the Entonox was doing its stuff.
‘Mum and Dad? Harriet will be going to Kingston Hospital. There’s no room for you in the helicopter. Are you able to make your own way there?’
Her parents nodded, looking anxious.
Sophie reached out to lay a hand upon the mother’s arm. ‘She’s in good hands.’
‘She’s all we’ve got...’
Sophie wished she’d had parents who had worried as much as Harriet’s parents seemed to. She was a lucky girl.
With the HEMS team and Theo, she helped carry Harriet across the field to the waiting helicopter. The HEMS doctor swapped Sophie’s Entonox for their own and gave her back her canister. Then she and Theo hurried back to their vehicle and began packing their equipment away.
‘How did you find that?’ she asked him, smiling, hoping that he had loved it as much as she did.
‘It was good!’
‘You enjoyed it?’
‘I did. Which is strange when you think about it. Enjoying someone else being in pain...’
‘But we’re here to help. Without us they’d be in a lot more pain or distress. You enjoyed watching someone receive help and feel better. Not the fact that she was in pain.’
He nodded. ‘Yeah... You think she’ll be okay?’
‘I hope so. She had feelings in all four limbs...could move her toes. We can only hope she’s just suffered bruising from the fall, but there’s always the possibility that there are injuries we couldn’t see.’
‘And that’s why we prepare for the worst?’
‘But hope for the best. Yes.’
A car passed them. Harriet’s parents on their way to the hospital.
Sophie and Theo both waved. Then she turned back to consider him. Her interest in him was rearing its head once again. ‘So...the army, huh?’
He nodded. ‘Yeah.’
‘What made you leave?’
Theo shrugged. ‘I’d had enough.’
Okay. Short and sweet.
‘Didn’t you enjoy it?’
‘I did, but...’
He looked away from her then, and she saw a darkness in his eyes that made her wonder if he’d been hurt in some way.
‘It was just time to make a change,’ he said.
She nodded. Something had affected him. She could tell. Something he didn’t want to talk about. It intrigued her to know that this stunning man at her side might look as if he had no troubles in the world, and as if his life was as perfect as his hair, but in reality he was just as screwed up as the rest of them.
‘Was it a hard adjustment, being a civilian again?’
‘A bit. But a friend of mine got me a job as a rock-climbing instructor, so that’s what I was doing up until going to university.’
‘You like being active?’
She smiled, imagining him climbing the sheer face of a mountain. Bare-chested, his beautiful trim waist holding a cascade of ropes and clips and...what were those things called...? Carabiners? His muscles would be straining and flexing under his skin, droplets of sweat dripping down his—
‘I do.’
‘You look like it.’
She’d said the words without thinking. Now he would think that she’d been staring at his body—which she had. But he didn’t need to know that.
She felt flustered. ‘I mean, I can tell you do a lot of physical things.’
Oh, God, it’s getting worse! Shut your mouth, Sophie!
Fortunately, he just smiled at her.
‘You go to the gym a lot?’ she asked, feeling embarrassed.
‘Yes. I do. You?’
She rubbed at her abdomen. ‘Oh, sure! Can’t you tell?’ Sophie laughed in disbelief at herself. ‘I used to. But I’m more of a swimmer, to be honest.’
He glanced down at her belly. ‘So no doubt the little one will be, too?’
She grimaced. ‘Not so little. She feels enormous already and I’ve still got weeks to go.’
‘She? You know it’s a girl?’
Sophie nodded. ‘I wanted to know. So I could plan...get things sorted. I like to know what’s going to happen ahead of time—that way I can account for contingencies and things going wrong.’
‘Are you a pessimist?’
‘No. I like to think I’m a realist. Life so far has taught me that just when I think I’ve got everything sorted, and my life is on an even keel, something will come along to ruin it. Anyway, enough about me—let’s get this stuff sorted.’
She felt as if his questions were leading her down a route to where she’d end up spilling all her personal secrets, and she didn’t want him thinking that she was a great mess of a human being who had screwed up entirely.
He was her student and she was his mentor. He didn’t need to know anything about her. Not really. Realistically, he’d be in her life for a short time and then he’d go. All she’d be to him was a memory.
She wanted him to look back at that memory with fondness. To smile when he recalled her, the rapid response paramedic he’d done his first placement with, and remember how much fun she’d been. Not to think of it as a time he’d spent with a mentor who’d done nothing but complain about her life and whinge. Besides, that wasn’t who she was. She tried to remain upbeat. Because anything else just led to depression and self-pity and she refused to go down that road.
Sophie showed Theo how all the equipment they’d used went into a clinical waste container. Then she restocked the jump bag and got Theo to check the level of Entonox the way she’d showed him back at the station.
‘It’s half full.’
‘Okay. Let’s get going.’
They got back into the car and Sophie radioed through to Control that they were free from the scene and available.
‘Thank you, six zero two. Everything all right?’
‘All good. Patient with HEMS. Suspected back or pelvic fracture.’
‘Poor kid. Let’s hope she’s okay.’
‘I hear you.’
‘Are you available to attend an RTC on the A3 near the Esher turn-off?’
‘We most certainly are. On our way.’
‘Thank you, six zero two. Safe travels.’
‘Thank you, Control.’ Sophie smiled at Theo. ‘When we get back towards the centre of Cobham, do you want to light us up?’
‘Sure.’ He nodded.
Sophie began the slow drive down the farm’s bumpy driveway that tested the suspension of the vehicle, and it wasn’t long before the blues and twos were creating a clear passageway for them through the mid-afternoon traffic.
