One Night to Forever Family
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Meredith Webber
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CHAPTER ONE
SAM REILLY KNEW she shouldn’t be walking into a large hospital with a well-travelled and probably germ-laden backpack towering over her, the soft roll of the sleeping bag on the top pushing her head forward so she probably resembled a bedraggled turtle as she made her way towards the reception desk.
She leant against the counter, easing the weight on her back slightly.
‘I know I don’t look much,’ she said to the polite woman on the other side of the desk, ‘but the road out from where I was working was washed away in a typhoon and it’s taken me a month to get here. I need a shower, some scrubs, and if possible a white coat so that I can present myself as a reasonably competent doctor up in the PICU. My name’s Sam Reilly—well, Samantha, really, but people call me Sam.’
‘You’re the new PICU doctor? I was told to expect you but, oh, my dear, you can’t possibly go up there looking like that! Think of the germs you’re probably carrying.’
‘Exactly!’ Sam said. ‘Which is why I need that shower and something clean to wear. Can you help me out?’
The woman eyed her doubtfully.
‘I guess you’d be okay in the ED staffroom. There are always plenty of clean sets of scrubs in there—showers, too, of course. Just continue down this passage and you’ll find it on the left.’ The woman hesitated. ‘It’s often a bit messy,’ she added, as if a scrawny, redheaded backpacker might not have understood messy...
‘And I’m not?’ Sam queried with a smile.
Apart from a youngish man, sleeping like the dead on a most uncomfortable-looking couch, the staffroom was empty—but it was only six in the morning and he’d probably been on duty all night.
The showers were easy to find, but the cubicles were small, so Sam set her backpack down in the adjoining changing room, removed the sleeping bag—why on earth had she not thrown it away?—and dug into her pack for the meagre selection of new clothes she’d bought at Bangkok airport.
Four bras, four pairs of knickers, three pairs of socks and a new pair of sneakers, which had cost more than double all her other purchases put together. She found her toiletries, too, deodorant, toothpaste and brush, a wide-toothed comb that could handle her unruly locks, and a couple of strong hair clips she hoped could hold those locks in place.
Next, she removed a plastic-wrapped bundle and took out her stethoscope, watch and tiny torch.
A cupboard on one side of the changing room yielded sets of scrubs stacked under small, medium and large labels. Sam selected a large, which would swim on her small frame but experience told her she needed them for her height, though she’d also need something to use as a belt to hold up the trousers.
And finally, leaving everything she wanted to wear on the small bench in the cubicle, she stripped off and stepped under the water, cold at first but then so deliciously warm she could have stayed there for hours.
Unfortunately, the time she’d spent with her mother in the small hospital near the Thai-Cambodian border—three weeks that had become seven when the typhoon had taken out the access road—had taught her the importance of clean water. She used soap from the dispenser on the wall to wash her hair and then the rest of her body, sluicing away the stiffness of thirty hours’, mostly uncomfortable, travel, and whatever foreign microbes she might have been carrying.
Once clean she roughly towelled her hair as dry as she could get it, used another towel on her body, then dressed in new underwear and the scrub suit—way too big but still better than a medium that would have her ankles and wrists sticking out.
She dragged the comb through her hair, taming it sufficiently to pull it up onto the top of her head and secure it with a couple of clips. Somewhere there’d be a supply of bandanas—one to cover her hair and another she could possibly use as a belt—but in the meantime, with a white coat purloined from the cupboard—she felt presentable enough to find a café or canteen and have breakfast before fronting up for work.
In the outer passage, she found a row of lockers and spotted an empty one with a key in the door. She dumped her gear into it, locked it and pocketed the key. Now to find the canteen and some much-needed food.
Excitement at being back at work and back at home—back where she belonged, even if was a new hospital in a new city—made her want to skip along the corridor, but hunger was gnawing at her stomach. She’d been travelling for hours and she knew she had to eat before starting work as a senior PICU physician.
Andy looked up from the meal he was eating, unsure whether it was dinner or breakfast—just that he’d needed it after a more than hectic night on call for the PICU. The little boy with the burns to the soles of his feet had reacted badly to the pain relief they’d given him in the Emergency Department and had had to be stabilised before they could turn their attention to his injuries.
Redheaded little boy...
Andy smiled to himself. He’d once heard a statistic about children with self-inflicted burns that suggested nearly all of them were redheaded boys, and since he’d heard it he’d been surprised by how often it had turned out to be true.
Just then, he noticed another redhead who entered the canteen. She was anything but a boy, and he felt an all-too-familiar jolt in his chest.
He’d known she was coming, of course—how could he not? As head of the PICU he’d read her résumé and been present at her interview. But the interview itself had been by a very static-filled radio link-up to some obscure place on the Thai border with Cambodia, and he hadn’t seen her.
Not physically at least.
But in his mind’s eye, she’d been as clear as day—a tall, redheaded woman who strode through life towards whatever it could throw at her, prepared to meet and beat any challenge.
Except that the last time he’d seen her she’d been in a hospital bed, the scattering of freckles across her nose and cheeks standing out against sheet-white skin, fury flashing in her pale green eyes as she’d told him to get out and never come back...
‘Now!’ she’d added in a strangled voice, and he’d left—walked away, his heart heavy with the loss of his best friend and aching for the woman on the bed who had looked so lost and vulnerable. Sorrow, anger and grief had churned inside him—fear for her, too—and words he should never have said had come out of his mouth. But now his head had told him just how stupid he had been, virtually accusing her of Nick’s death, adding to her pain, while his heart?
Who knew where his heart had been back then...?
Life had thrown plenty at her since then, yet here she was—shoulders back, head held high, walking into the place as if she owned it.
Hiding the butterflies in her stomach—surely she’d worked in enough places to no longer have that uneasy feeling when she entered somewhere new—Sam crossed the canteen towards the self-serve shelves. She slotted onto the end of a small queue of people either coming off duty and needing food because they’d been too busy to eat all night or going on duty but needing sustenance before they tackled a new day.
She grabbed a packet of sandwiches and a bottle of some greeny-yellow juice and headed for the checkout, suddenly aware of a prickly feeling on her skin, as though someone was watching her.
She glanced around at what appeared to be a typical crowd in any hospital canteen at change of shifts, with subdued conversation and exhaustion leaking into the air. Sam paid her bill and headed for an empty table she’d spotted on the far side of the room. She had an hour before she was due to report to the head of department, but she’d eat then go on up to the ward, explain who she was and familiarise herself with the place—once she’d found a belt.
‘You’ve gone all out to impress your new colleagues in that outfit,’ a voice said above her head, and as her heart registered just who the voice belonged to, Andy Wilkie lowered his tall, solid frame into the chair opposite her.
‘Andy?’
Damn her voice! The word came out as a pathetic squeak!
‘What are you doing here?’
Much better—practically a demand...
‘Did you not do any research on the place before you applied for a job?’
Andy’s expressive eyebrows lifted above blue, blue eyes.
Sardonically?
Damn the man!
‘I saw the ad online in an internet café in Bangkok. I’d just got off a flight from London and knew my stay with Mum would only be a few weeks, so I shot off an application and résumé while I was there. But I didn’t have time to look into either the hospital or the staffing side of things.’
She hoped she sounded more composed than she felt, because the realisation that she’d be working with Andy had caused panic and despair to swell inside her.
The same Andy who’d blamed her for his best friend’s death...
Which she probably had been...
But that was her guilt to cope with, her memories to haunt her, and right now she had to make some rational explanation about why this had come as a total shock. This was the start of a whole new life for her—she had to put the past behind her and start afresh.
She slammed the door closed on those painful memories, and remembered instead the good times when she, Nick and Andy had been friends—good friends who had laughed together. Although she’d seen less of Andy after she’d married Nick...
But right now she had to explain. Preferably without sounding as if she was making excuses.
‘I was spending a few weeks working in a small hospital—more a clinic, really—near the Thai border with Cambodia when the phone interview was set up. Actually, the interview on my side was mostly static. Were you one of the voices on the phone?’
‘Of course!’ he replied, no glimmer of expression on his face. ‘I am, after all, the department head.’
Her boss!
Andy had employed her in spite of what had happened between them in the past?
‘But you must have known it was me. After all, you had my application and résumé,’ she said, trying to ease the tension in her body, praying it wasn’t revealed in her voice. ‘You gave me the job.’
He half smiled, and while her heart skipped a beat at the sign of this softening on his part, his voice was still cool and unemotional as he said, ‘You were by far the best applicant. Anyone who’s done eighteen months in the PICU in the biggest children’s hospital in London has had more experience than all the other applicants put together.’
Sam closed her eyes, just briefly, stilling the confusion inside her.
She could do this.
She could work with Andy.
Actually, she doubted there were many better than Andy to work with. He’d headed east to America after Nick’s death, while she’d fled west, first to Perth on the other side of the country and then London—the other side of the world—before spending three weeks that had grown to nearly seven with her mother in the tiny medical outpost on the Thai-Cambodian border.
Of course she could do it!
Play it cool!
‘I’m sorry about the scrubs, but we had a typhoon a month ago just when I was due to leave, and the road to the nearest town was washed away. I finally got out, and onto a flight from Bangkok last night, changed flights in Sydney, and came straight from the local airport.’
‘With no clothes?’
He sounded so disbelieving she had to smile.
‘I could hardly take my winter clothes to Thailand, but I did buy some new undies at the airport in Bangkok,’ she assured him, ‘and as today was to be an orientation day, I’m hoping I’ll have some time later to get out and buy something new. I’ll need to book into a hotel, too, until I find somewhere to stay.’
He shook his head—disbelief at her story clear in his eyes.
‘I’d have been here a month ago if it hadn’t been for the typhoon. Plenty of time to have found things to wear and a place to live!’ she said, cross with herself for the defensive justification.
‘Well, eat up and we’ll do the business side of things, and then I’ll show you around the hospital. Just get some clothes, but don’t bother with a hotel. I can give you a bed at my apartment for a night or two.’
He flung the words at her so casually—coolly—she didn’t have a clue how to take them.
Simple politeness?
Or exasperation that she was so disorganised?
‘You don’t have to do that. I’ll be fine in a hotel,’ she told him, not adding that she’d also be far more comfortable away from him.
Staying with Andy? The very thought had tension tightening her nerves...
He studied her, eyes revealing nothing, although the words, when they came, were cold—their meaning clear.
‘You are the widow of my best friend, of course you should stay with me, Sam.’
The best friend you think I killed, Sam thought as she drained the rest of her juice to help swallow the dry piece of sandwich.
But given that, could she really stay with him, even for a few days while she found somewhere else to live?
Although the offer might just be a peace offering. And it wasn’t going to be for ever, she might have found somewhere else to stay by tomorrow...
And they had been friends.
And just what were you thinking? Andy asked himself. Inviting her to stay like that?
Especially as just seeing her again had stirred up so much consternation in his gut.
Even in baggy scrubs and her wet hair bunched somehow on the top of her head, she was still one of the most attractive women he’d ever met.
But she’d ended up with Nick—and, as far as Nick was concerned, she’d belonged to him. But could a woman as strong-willed and determined as Sam ever belong to anyone? Nick had certainly thought so, and somehow she’d made their marriage work. Though, knowing Nick, that wouldn’t have been easy...
Why was he thinking of the past when it was the immediate future he needed to solve?
It could be weeks before she found a place, months even, because the summer holiday season was approaching fast and accommodation owners made more money with short-term holiday rentals at this time of the year.
So why the hell had he suggested she stay with him, even for a couple of nights?
Exhaustion was the answer. He’d been operating the department without a first-class number two for nearly six months, the previous incumbent having left in a huff for not getting the top job. Others had filled in, of course, but none of them had wanted to take on too much responsibility for a job they’d never get.
But he’d asked her now and he had to live with her answer. Maybe she’d feel just as uncomfortable about the arrangement as he did and would find somewhere else really quickly.
But there was no time for conjecture, Sam was already on her feet, pushing back her chair, the far too big scrubs sliding down her legs to reveal a startling pair of lacy purple panties.
Scarlet with embarrassment, she grabbed the trousers and pulled them up, glaring at him as she muttered, ‘There was very little choice of underwear at Bangkok airport!’
‘Great colour!’ he said, mainly to see her blush deepen. ‘Pity you can’t wear them on the outside like a superhero.’
She looked seriously at him and he guessed she was wondering how things would be between them, working together in the PICU.
‘I’m no superhero,’ she said quietly. ‘But I’ve learned a lot and can do my job.’
And having put him right back in his place, she offered a small smile before adding, ‘But right now I need a bit of string or something to hold up these trousers.’
She marched ahead of him out of the canteen, one hand holding the errant scrub trousers tightly to her waist.
He followed close behind her, his head still asking why the hell he’d done this—chosen her for the job when he’d known it would mean the pair of them working closely together.
Yes, she’d been the best candidate and he had no doubt she’d be superb, but that strong niggle of attraction—he’d always hesitated to call it more—he’d felt from the first moment he and Nick had laid eyes on her, in the staff’s favourite bar across the road from their old hospital, had never really gone away.
He flinched with embarrassment as he remembered that night. He and Nick had done Rock, Paper, Scissors to see who’d ask her out and the rest, as the saying went, was history. Sam and Nick had been married within three months, and he’d managed to distance himself from the happy couple as much as possible. Nick had been his friend from childhood—no way could he be lusting after Nick’s wife...
‘Something to keep my trousers up,’ that same woman reminded him, bringing him out of the past and back to the present—and to the decision that as Nick’s widow Sam was even more unattainable.
‘There’ll be a bungy cord in the janitors’ room—everyone needs bungy cords.’
He ducked in front of her to lead the way, but as he passed, he couldn’t help wondering how she was feeling about this. She’d certainly been startled to see him, so obviously hadn’t had time to learn much about the new hospital or its PICU staffing.
He opened a door on the right and rummaged around through miscellaneous junk, finally finding not a bungy cord but a ball of twine.
‘Put your hands out from your sides while I measure how much we’ll need,’ he said, stepping behind her and unrolling the twine, wrapping it around her waist—not easy when one hand still held tightly to the trousers—until his fingers met at the front.
‘Leave enough to tie a bow,’ she said, grabbing at the other side of the trousers before they slid down again. ‘I don’t want to be cutting myself out of it later.’
He didn’t answer—couldn’t. This was Sam, right here in front of him, more or less in his arms...
He’d denied this attraction, even to himself, for the three long years she and Nick had been married. He’d avoided her—avoided seeing her with Nick—and now she was here, and her closeness filled his senses. The smell of her seemed to invade his whole body.
It was hard to deny his attraction now, when she was so close.
So why the hell had he asked her to stay with him?
And why had she agreed? Especially given how much he must have hurt her with his accusation as she had lain in hospital...
Or had she agreed?
Not in as many words.
She just hadn’t outright refused.
There’d surely be a hotel available—could he find her one?
Or would that look churlish?
Yep!
And it wasn’t as if he’d asked her to live with him, He’d just offered her a bed until she found something else.
Soon, he hoped...
He pulled back, away from her, the twine ball clutched in his hands. He had to get a life, find a diversion, take out a woman, any woman—anything to keep Sam out of his system.
He found a knife and cut the length, then handed it to her to tie it around her own waist, easing further away from her, his mind churning with the knowledge that she still had such an effect on him.
Sam tied the twine around her waist then turned the top of the trousers over it so the tunic hung neatly over them—more or less. Fiddling, fiddling, giving herself time to get over the startling discovery that Andy’s arms around her—innocent as the movement had been—had brought heat to her cheeks and sent shivers down her spine.
Prolonged abstinence—that’s all it was! In the three years since Nick’s death she’d had only one relationship and although occasional sex had been involved in it, it had been more comfort than physical fulfilment that she’d wanted.
But Andy?
She’d met him and Nick together, and although it had been Nick who’d asked her out then courted her into a whirlwind marriage, she’d always liked Andy, had felt a kind of kinship with him. There’d always been something steady and reliable about Andy, though she’d seen less of him after her marriage.
Now he marched away after handing her the twine, and she had to hurry to catch up with him, falling in almost beside him, just a half-step back.
Deference to the boss, or fear that being closer might disturb her in some way?
Nonsense. It was simply because of the past that she was feeling uneasy...
He used a card to access what was obviously a staff elevator and punched the number for the fourth floor.
‘You’ll get one of these with your information pack,’ he told her, ‘and sometime today you’ll need to have a photo taken to put on your ID—it only takes a few minutes.’
End of conversation, the elevator doors opened and they stepped into a corridor, Andy turning left and pushing through pneumatic doors.
They’d barely entered when a nurse appeared.
‘Andy, they need someone down in the ED, eighteen-month-old with a temp of thirty-nine C, listless, flushed, unresponsive.’
‘Come with me,’ Andy said to Sam as he turned on his heel and headed back to the elevator.
‘These two elevators are staff only. Well, they’re used for moving patients as well, but the hospital is fairly new and the design is really brilliant, which makes working here a dream.’
He paused, then added, ‘How often have you stood in an elevator and known there are at least three people in it who’d like to ask you a question about a patient?’
‘And often did,’ she added as she nodded her agreement.
This was good, this was work. She could not only handle working with Andy but she would enjoy it, aware that he was extremely good at what he did.
If she locked the past away where it belonged, treated Andy like any other colleague, and just concentrated on work...
He led the way into the ED, which was strangely quiet early in the morning, and a nurse hailed him as he walked in.
‘We’ve put her in an isolation room—she’s pink but that could just be the fever,’ she explained.
‘Or measles,’ Andy ground out savagely.
He walked into the room and leant over the child, Sam slipping around to the other side of the bed, the small girl on it staring blankly at the ceiling. Her eyes were red, her nose oozing mucus, and flat red spots covered her forehead and were appearing as they watched, down her face and neck and onto her torso.
Speaking quietly to the child, Andy eased her mouth open and peered inside, finding tell-tale signs of measles in there as well.
‘We need to check with her parents if she’s been vaccinated, although somehow I doubt it as the measles vaccine provides almost one hundred percent protection.
‘What checks have you done so far?’ he asked the nurse.
‘We’ve removed her clothes and sponged her down, given her twenty milligrams of paracetamol, tried to get some water into her but she’s so unresponsive I was afraid she’d choke.’
Andy nodded.
‘We’ll admit her, take her up to PICU and isolate her up there. We can use IV fluids and add ibuprofen six hourly via her drip.’ He paused, drew a deep breath, then said, ‘I’d better talk to the parents. Who brought her in?’
‘The father, but he had to leave. Both parents are lawyers apparently, but I have a phone number for him.’
Sam followed, trying to thrust images of the sick child from her mind, wondering just how this had happened in this day and age of preventative measures. But as Andy used the card for the elevator, another thought struck her.
‘You’ve just come off duty, haven’t you? Why are you following up on this infant?’
‘You’ve never worked a few hours after your shift ended?’ he asked, and she shrugged because, of course, she, and probably thousands of other doctors, had.
‘Thought not,’ he said. ‘But I’ve not just come off night shift—it’s one of the few perks of the job that I don’t do night shifts. I came in earlier and then again at about four to see a child on the ward who was having breathing problems.’
He smiled, and although it was a tired smile, it affected her, deep inside, in a way she certainly didn’t want to think about.
Andy had been Nick’s friend, and for all the irritations she might have felt in her marriage, the difficulties and disappointments, she still felt loyalty to Nick’s memory, and somehow being attracted to his best friend was surely the ultimate disloyalty...
And, anyway, it was just a smile!
Andy had always had a nice smile.
They left the elevator, and Andy led her to the main monitoring desk, pointing out the way all the rooms could be monitored at once and introducing her to Karen, who was the head nurse on duty that morning.
She watched as his eyes scanned the monitors, and knew he’d been taking a mental note of every patient, even leaning over the desk and picking up a paper file to check on something he’d seen.
He explained the new admission to Karen, adding, ‘Keep trying the number they have for the father in case the ED didn’t get hold of him. Let him know where we are at and how to find us.’
A short discussion on their other patients, then Andy turned away, leading Sam along a corridor and returning to the conversation they’d been having.
‘Actually, it was my last shift on call, and I’d worked my schedule so I could be here for your orientation before heading off this afternoon for a rest and to try to get my biorhythms back into sync.’
‘I thought biorhythms had been totally debunked,’ she said as the elevator doors slid open.
‘Not totally and anyway it always seems to me that it’s a better word to use because it’s more than the physical side of yourself—well, myself anyway—that has to sort itself out after being on call, but the emotional and intellectual sides as well. I don’t know about you, but I don’t think well after a change of shifts—not until the sleep thing is sorted.’
‘And the emotional side?’ Sam asked as she followed him along the corridor.
‘Oh, that’s been totally stuffed for years,’ he said. ‘Unless you’re involved with someone else who works ridiculous hours and often has to dash off at two in the morning for an emergency, a normal relationship is impossible.’
‘Is there such a thing as a normal relationship?’ she couldn’t resist asking, thinking of the trials and anxiety she’d often felt in her marriage to Nick. But they’d reached the room where the little girl was already up from the ED and was being intubated by a nurse in full sterile covering, while Andy was looking intently at the chart he’d collected from the door.
With ninety-nine percent of his attention on the child in front of him, that tiny one percent had been caught by something in Sam’s voice as she’d asked that question. The one about relationships...
Had her and Nick’s marriage not been the one of connubial bliss he and everyone else had always thought it?
Nick had certainly painted it that way.
‘We’ll need to find out about her family,’ he said, dragging that errant one percent back into place. ‘Siblings, parents and grandparents, children she might mix with in day care or kindy.’
‘I know most kindergartens won’t accept unimmunised children. I’m not certain whether family day care is covered by it,’ Sam told him, although he’d been speaking to the nurse.
‘Her family—or at least one of them—should be with her,’ the nurse muttered, but Andy ignored them both.
‘There’s a phone number for the father. When you speak to him just check out all you can about anyone she’s been in contact with. If she has siblings who haven’t been vaccinated, we need to get them in—or get them to their local doctor—for vaccination now. If she’s been with other children at risk, we need to find them and get them vaccinated too.’
‘Within seventy-two hours,’ Sam finished for him. ‘I could do that.’
He frowned at her.
‘You’re here for orientation,’ he reminded her, a little too sharply because what he could only put down to lack of sleep was making him overly aware of Sam by his side. Reminding him he’d been foolish enough to ask her to stay with him at his apartment.
He stepped aside and wrote up the protocols for the day, handed the chart to the nurse, saying, ‘I’d have liked to speak to a family member before admitting her, but I couldn’t leave her in the ED. We’ll have to explain that to someone later.’
He left the room, Sam on his heels.
‘Why Intensive Care not the children’s ward?’ she asked, and he seized on the question to shake off the weirdness going on with this woman’s reappearance in his life. Dear God, he’d known she was coming—had been looking forward to working with her again, given the experience she’d gained—and stupidest of all, he’d thought that long-ago attraction would surely have burnt out...
He banished the distracting thoughts, put them down to tiredness. This was work, a child’s life was at stake.
‘We can isolate her better here, watch for any signs of complication.’
‘Pneumonia, encephalitis?’
‘Ear infections,’ he added, shaking his own head as if that might dislodge the softness of her voice.
Forcing his mind back to work, he led her towards the nurses’ station, situated in the centre of the ward where a team of five nurses monitored the live feeds from all the PICU beds while two clerical staff handled phones and paperwork.
‘This is Dr Sam Reilly,’ he said as several of them looked up. ‘She starts here tomorrow and I’m showing her around.’
He waved Sam forward before adding, ‘No point in introducing you all now, she’ll meet you in time.’
He turned to one of the clerical workers.
‘I’ve just admitted a three-year-old girl with measles and put her in Isolation Room Two. Could you chase up the electronic file from the ED and make sure the room’s online for monitoring?’
‘We use paper files that stay with the patient, as well as electronic,’ he said to Sam as he whisked away, aware she was just a step behind him—aware, too, that he should slow, they should walk together, as colleagues did.
But although he’d been prepared for her arrival, even looked forward to seeing her again, having her on his team, the fact that her physical presence still perturbed him had thrown his mind into chaos.
It was only temporary, this reaction. They hadn’t parted on the best of terms—no, they’d parted on the worst of terms, he’d hurt her badly—so this would pass.
Soon, he hoped...
He thought back to that day in shame, but he’d seen her there in the hospital bed, so pale she’d have disappeared against the white pillow case if the scattering of freckles across her nose and the tangled red hair hadn’t stood out so clearly.
She’d been injured, but just the sight of her—the pain he’d read on her face—had knotted something in his gut, something that he’d tried to burn away with anger.
And now?
Now she was a colleague, and he had to think of her that way, because that was surely the only way she thought of him, She’d certainly never given the slightest indication that she was interested in him—in anyone but Nick, in fact...
‘Abby has encephalitis,’ he said, forcing his mind back to work as he led Sam into another room.
The young girl in the bed opened her eyes and smiled wanly at them.
‘We’ve no idea what brought it on, have we, Abs?’ he added, coming closer to take Abby’s hand, ‘but we do know she’s on the mend.’
He motioned Sam forward.
‘This is Sam, Abby, a new doctor and a very good one. We’ll let her have a go at your records and see what she can sniff out, eh?’
Abby smiled again, then her eyes closed and she drifted back to sleep.
Andy handed the file he’d picked up from the back of the door to Sam, but kept his eyes on the sleeping girl.
Abby was thirteen, the same age Sarah had been when she’d died—Sarah, his beautiful, loving, always happy sister...
Sam flipped through the pages, noting the myriad tests that had been carried out on the sick child, realising that nothing had shown up as a possible trigger.
‘Had she had a sore throat—could it have been as simple as a cold virus that triggered the swelling in her brain?’ she asked as she slotted the file back in its place on the door, knowing she could read up on it on the computer later.
‘Or some autoimmune thing, we’ve been thinking,’ Andy replied, obviously still puzzled over the case. ‘In fact, we did the regular tests, then stopped worrying what might have caused it and simply treated her. She’s a little more alert every day, so I’m hopeful, given time and rest, she’ll make a full recovery.’
‘So much of what we do in PICU is rest and monitoring, isn’t it?’ Sam said, hoping she sounded rational and professional, although this being with Andy, trying to pretend he was nothing more than a colleague, was tying her stomach in knots.
And then he grinned at her.
‘Ah, but the monitoring needs to be constant,’ he said, while her head whirled. But Andy had always had that teasing grin so why...?
She dragged her mind back into gear and caught up with the conversation.
‘Which is why the children are here and not down in the normal kids’ wards. Come and meet Ryan—he’s one of our frequent flyers.’
Sam laughed at the familiar phrase, reminding herself that this was work.
‘Premmie?’ she asked, and Andy nodded.
‘He’s two years old now, but still susceptible to any damn virus floating past in the air.’
‘Usually RSV?’ Sam asked, aware that respiratory syncytial virus, with its respiratory and breathing difficulties, was common in premature children.
Andy nodded.
‘It’s bronchiolitis this time. All the small passages in his lungs are inflamed, but six months ago it was pneumonia.’
‘Poor kid,’ Sam said, entering the room and peering down at the small form in the small cot. The little boy was probably only two thirds the size of a normal two-year-old, though what was really ‘normal’ with any child?
But she was intrigued by the small mask taped to the little boy’s face and the tube from it leading back to a tiny CPAP machine.
‘Non-invasive positive air pressure?’ she said, intrigued why the usual nasal prongs weren’t delivering oxygen to the little body.
‘We’re finding, particularly with smaller children, that it’s easier to get them off the oxygen when we use the continuous pressure air pump. There’ve been various small trials on it, and no definitive data as yet, but it works for young Ryan here, so we stick to it.’
Aware there was no treatment apart from oxygen to help their battling lungs, fluid to keep them hydrated, and paracetamol to keep the child’s temperature down, Sam followed Andy out the door. Studying him, thinking...
He would have had the final decision on her employment, yet he’d employed her anyway—even though he obviously blamed her for Nick’s death.
She shut the box in her mind that held memories of that day. This was now a new life, and Andy would be, inevitably, a big part of it so sometime soon that box had to be opened and some of the contents discussed. Their last encounter especially needed some explanations and she knew they couldn’t go forward with it in both their minds, blocking out any proper conversation or even, possibly, friendship.
But in the meantime, Andy was right here—her boss—and she had to prove herself to him.
He was tall—taller than Nick had been—and he carried himself well, except for stooping slightly to hide his height as he was wont to do. He was good looking, too, with his dark hair and blue eyes.
But not married—well, apparently not—there was no ring on his finger.
And why would you be checking that out? she asked herself. He doesn’t even like you.
‘We talked about monitoring earlier.’
The words brought her mind back to the job. It was probably a bit of jet lag that had it wandering so far and so fast.
‘And though it seems such a simple thing, it’s paramount. It means we can see when they’re about to crash and need resuscitation, or stop breathing and need urgent intubation, or have a seizure and need protective care and medication to ease it.’
He frowned slightly, turning to look directly at her, before adding, ‘Though why I’m justifying our work to someone who is as experienced as you I don’t know!’
Blue eyes looked steadily into her wishy-washy green ones, and about a million synapses in her brain fired to chaotic life.
Breathe!
‘You forget I’ve just come from a hospital that’s barely more than a shed with some beds, and the most sophisticated medical machinery was an X-ray machine that we couldn’t work because of a lack of electricity.’
Andy stared at her. ‘Seriously?’ he said, and she smiled, relaxing as she talked about the place she’d grown to love. A place where her mother, a nurse, had worked for so many years it had become her home.
‘Well, we did have a generator and when we had fuel for it, and it actually decided to work for a while, we could get the occasional X-ray. Whoever had donated the X-ray machine to the clinic had included plenty of film, so from time to time it was very handy. Mind you, I wasn’t there for long enough to get totally frustrated by the lack of technology, but it was very educational in its own way!’
Andy shook his head, and she followed him into the next room, where a very pale girl of about twelve, was lying listlessly on a bed. Her eyes were open but whether she was seeing them, Sam didn’t know.
‘Kayla has recently been diagnosed with Type One diabetes, but it took a while for her GP to get to the root of her problem.’
‘Or for her to agree to even see a doctor,’ Sam suggested, and saw the girl give a wan smile. ‘A lot of girls going into the teenage years complain of being tired, of having headaches, or they’re irritable. So it isn’t always picked up on at home and they don’t always get to a doctor until something drastic happens.’
‘You’re right, of course,’ Andy agreed, and Sam was just deciding that this would be okay—this working with Andy—but then he smiled, and it was such an open, warm, typical Andy smile that something inside her began to crack.
Could it be the film of the ice she’d sheathed around her heart when Nick had died?
