Stolen Nights with the Single Dad
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Alison Roberts
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CHAPTER ONE
‘ALL SET FOR TOMORROW, Mitch?’
‘Almost.’ Dr Andrew Mitchell looked up from where he was filing a laboratory report into a set of patient notes. ‘How ’bout you, Euan? I’m sorry it’s such short notice to cover my list as well as yours. I wasn’t really expecting them to still have a place available on this course when I rang yesterday.’
Euan McKendry added a shrug to his smile as he stepped further into this consulting room in Allensbury’s medical centre. ‘It’s not a problem. You’re covering for me through the Christmas holidays—like you always do.’ His smile widened. ‘This is the first chance I’ve had to repay that cover.’ He was beside Mitch’s desk now. Close enough to pick up the glossy pamphlet that had been anchored by a plastic model of a human heart.
‘Don’t lose that. I need it to find where I’m going tomorrow morning or I might get horribly lost.’
‘At least it’s on the south side of London. You must know the area around Croydon pretty well, given thatit’s not too far from where you used to work.’
‘I haven’t had that much to do with the ambulance service there, though, and that’s where the course is being held.’
Mitch closed the patient notes and put them to one side, going back to his computer screen to make sure the digital copy had also been filed. A bit like this picturesque village in Surrey, Allensbury Surgery and Dispensary’s filing system was a mix of modern with the trusted, traditional way of doing things. And he was fine with that. It was one of the things that had drawn him back to his childhood home, after all.
‘FRAME.’ Euan was reading the pamphlet. ‘Catchy name.’
‘First Responder at Medical Emergencies.’
‘I’ve heard about it. I thought it was a course to train people like nurses in remote areas so that they had the skills to bridge the gap until air rescue or ambulance services could get there.’
‘It is.’ Mitch nodded. ‘There’s a five-day course for that. But they also run a two-day initiation course specifically for GPs so that we can keep up to date with skills we might not get to use that often. Like, you know, intubation or cricothyroidotomy.’
‘Should be the rest of us here doing that. It’s only a few years since you were running one of London’s busiest emergency departments, Mitch. If anyone’s up to date with critical interventions, it’s you. You could be running these sessions yourself.’ He was clearly peering at the bullet points covering the course material. ‘Acute pulmonary oedema, anaphylaxis, management of arrhythmias. A difficult airway...’
A difficult airway.
A succinct description often used by doctors or paramedics to label anatomy or circumstances that made it challenging and sadly sometimes impossible, to ensure that someone could continue breathing if they needed a critical intervention like intubation and ventilation. A situation that was up there with the most dramatic kind of life or death crises any medic had to face.
‘Hmm...’ The sound was a noncommittal grunt as Mitch clicked out of various windows to close down his computer.
He knew where his colleague was tempted to take this conversation and he needed to shut it down fast. Because, even now, more than a year since it had happened, those three words could make his breath catch in his throat and he’d have to brace himself for the flashback that could replay itself in his mind in the space of a heartbeat. A montage of emotions more than actual images, the trigger almost always a faint echo of that trickle of despair down his spine when he’d known he was fighting a battle that he wasn’t going to win.
That his skills hadn’t been enough to save a young mother’s life...
They were three words that would also make an eye-catching title for something other than a critical care workshop—a case history report in an emergency medicine journal, perhaps. The kind of article that someone like Andrew Mitchell might well have picked up and read, years ago, as he grabbed a sandwich or a cup of coffee during a break in a relentlessly busy shift as head of an emergency department in a huge, London hospital.
He could write it himself now. He probably should, in fact, as a warning for doctors who might think that working in a big city emergency department could prepare them for coping with anything, even if they’d chosen to take a completely different direction in life to live and work in a small village less than an hour’s drive from the outskirts of London.He would write it one of these days. Just...not yet.
Everybody had told him that nobody could have won that particular battle. The post-mortem had confirmed it but that reassurance hadn’t stopped the flashbacks. Or those ‘what ifs...’? that always bubbled to the surface whenever the incident was mentioned. At least he was quick enough to deflect them this time and he even stood up to signal the new direction he was taking.
‘You’ve got a good point, though,’ he told Euan briskly. ‘If it’s as useful as I think it might be, we’ll arrange for everybody else to do the course.’ This thriving small town medical centre had four doctors on staff and could easily employ another one soon. Their senior practice nurse, Meg, would probably love the challenge of attending a full course herself.
‘What makes you so confident it’ll be that useful?’ Euan raised an eyebrow. ‘What can a paramedic teach someone who was an emergency medicine consultant?’
‘The woman running this course is an APP—a critical care, advanced paramedic practitioner. You know, the ones that crew those single-responder vehicles or motorbikes and get to the scene before anyone else?’
Euan nodded. ‘Yeah... I guess they get more experience with serious situations than any of us see in sleepy little Allensbury.’
‘Not only that...the whole initiative is the brainchild of the instructor who’s running this particular course and when I rang to book in, I was told that I was super lucky because Jenna Armstrong is the best. She’s the senior instructor for FRAME nationwide. She trains the trainers.’
‘Sounds formidable.’ Euan was grinning. ‘What’s the bet she’s in her fifties, single and built like a battleship?’
Mitch laughed. ‘I couldn’t care less as long as she’s good at her job.’ He reached to take the pamphlet out of Euan’s hands. ‘I’ve got to get going. I promised Ollie we’d have hamburgers and chips for dinner tonight at the Riverside pub and then we both need an early night. I’ll have to be on the road by seven a.m. at the latest for the next couple of mornings.’
‘You could always stay in town for a night or two. Your dad’s there for Ollie, isn’t he? Like he is when you’re on call at night?’
‘Of course.’ But it was Mitch’s turn to shrug as he slipped the pamphlet into his laptop bag. ‘But I don’t want to change his routine any more than I have to. Having his grandpa look after him for a few hours here and there is a lot different to having his dad vanish for two days. He’s just started school and that’s enough change for a four-year-old to cope with for the next few weeks at least.’
Euan blew out a breath. ‘They complicate life, don’t they? Kids?’
‘It’s worth it.’ Mitch could feel a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. He could feel a squeeze around his heart at the same time that was sending a warmth into every cell in his body. ‘You’ll find out one of these days.’
‘Not me.’ Euan was shaking his head as he followed Mitch out of the room. ‘No, thank you.’
How could someone be that sure about something as huge as turning your back on ever having a family of your own?
Mitch had to swallow a rather large lump in his throat as he looked down at the spiky black hair of the small boy who’d fallen asleep, cuddled up to him, as he listened to the story he’d been reading. It felt as though his heart could actually burst with the amount of love he had for this child and that made his movements even more gentle as he slipped his arm free from beneath Ollie, tucked the duvet securely around his son and stooped to press a kiss onto that soft hair, gently enough not to wake him, inhaling that familiar and delicious smell of baby shampoo that never seemed to fade completely between washes.
Avoiding the creaky board in front of the chest of drawers was so automatic he didn’t even notice he was doing it but then everything about this small room tucked into a corner of the upper level of this rambling, old house was as familiar as the back of his own hand. Mitch had been sleeping in this room when he’d been Ollie’s age. He’d never lived anywhere else, in fact, until he’d headed off to university and then medical school.
He paused by the windows to draw the curtains enough to close the gap in the middle and keep out any draughts and caught a glimpse of the garden below. His father was outside, patiently waiting for Jet, their sixteen-year-old black Labrador, to finish a slow perimeter patrol of the property and people he needed to protect.
Mitch knew as well as Jet exactly what was out there, beyond the garden gate. A narrow street filled with solid, red brick houses like this one, with its tall chimneys and the hidden garden out the back. Some of them were whitewashed and half-timbered like the old dwelling that had been converted into the medical centre and some still had thatched roofs. Allensbury was one of the Surrey villages that always made the list of ‘must see’ attractions not too far from London with its pretty streets, welcoming pubs, stone churches, a village square with a weekend market and the quiet river with its tree-lined banks. The surrounding forest was a little wilder but just as familiar to Mitch as this house and his childhood bedroom had been.
That familiarity that felt like safety—like home—had been the reason he’d turned his life upside down and come back here.
No...that wasn’t true, was it? His world had already been well and truly turned upside down before he’d had to admit defeat and give up on the lifestyle and career that had been a dream come true. If he had known what was coming—the brutal rollercoaster of just a few, short days in which his son had been born but he’d lost his wife—would he have chosen to go down that path? Or would he have been just as emphatic as Euan in vowing that it wasn’t for him?
Maybe he would have been. Who, in their right mind, would ever put their hand up to experience that kind of pain? That lump was back in his throat as he took one more glance at Ollie’s face, bathed in the soft glow from his dinosaur nightlight, dark lashes fluttering on pale cheeks as his dreams captured him.
It was just as well Mitch had never been given that choice, then, because he would never have known just how much it was possible to love a small human. How, from that first moment of holding his tiny son in his arms, he’d discovered a new form of love that could actually change how you viewed the entire world, including the new appreciation for the love of his own parent. Sadly, he’d lost his mum years before but his dad, Michael—along with his childhood home and even Jet the dog–had been the anchor he’d badly needed in a world that had suddenly gone so very, very wrong.
His small family had been his absolute priority in those darkest of days. The only thing that had really mattered.
It still was.
She’d noticed him the instant she’d walked into the classroom.
It wasn’t simply that he was an extremely good-looking man. Jenna Armstrong had been immune to surface attraction like that for too many years to count now. No...there was something else about him. Something she couldn’t quite define. Maybe it was the way he was sitting, with those long limbs relaxed enough to suggest it would be difficult to find an environment that would intimidate him but with an aura of energy that contradicted any laid-back impression. This was a man who looked as if he could take command of any situation in the space of a finger-click.
‘Welcome, everybody,’ she said, putting the box of handouts she’d just finished printing onto a desk in the corner of the room. ‘I’m Jenna and we’ve got a busy couple of days ahead of us as I take you through our FRAME initiation course for doctors.’
She moved to close a window as the sound of a siren being activated just beneath them startled everybody enough to turn their heads. Everybody except the man at the back, she noticed.
‘Sorry about that. This is a busy ambulance station so we’ll get a bit of that kind of disruption but the resources we have here make this an ideal training space.’ She smiled at the group. ‘It might also remind us of why we’re here. I know that you’re all doctors with your own busy practices so I want to thank you for taking the time to join this programme and become a valuable extension to emergency ambulance services. You’ll leave here with a specialised kit including the latest technology we have available, for example, a video laryngoscope that can make the difference in a difficult intubation but, more importantly, you’ll leave with the skills you need to use it and any rust brushed off other skills you might not use on a regular basis.’
She had the attention of every one of the dozen or so people in this room but Jenna could feel a particular intensity coming from that man at the back. It was an effort not to let her gaze get immediately drawn back to him but, for some reason, that intensity was oddly disturbing.
‘Bit of housekeeping before we start,’ she continued. ‘Toilets are out the door to the left and you’ll find the fire escape there as well. Food and drinks will be supplied for breaks and lunch and, please, if you go outside, stay within the red lines by the buildings. As you can tell by how early the sirens go on, some of our crews are very keen to get to a Code Blue priority call and it wouldn’t be a good look if anyone on a FRAME course got squashed by an ambulance. Now...let’s do a quick round robin, to get started. We’ll introduce ourselves, say where we’re from and maybe why we’re here?’
Her smile widened. ‘I’ll start. I’m Jenna Armstrong, a critical care paramedic. I live not far from this station in south London and I’m here because I’m passionate about this course. I started developing it quite a few years ago and I’ve been all over the country getting it up and running. It’s been going long enough now for statistics to confirm that it’s one of the most effective strategies we’ve put in place to save lives in more remote areas. It’s something I’m very proud of. And it’s something that I can promise has the potential to make an important difference to you—and to the communities that you care for.’
There was a moment’s silence when she finished speaking. Had she sounded a bit over the top? Too passionate? But it was hard not to, when this had been the total focus of her life for so long.
The only thing that had really mattered for so long.
It didn’t take long to get around the group. Jenna ticked names off her list as they introduced themselves. Melanie, Ravi and Judith had come from as far away as rural areas near Basingstoke and Brighton. There were older doctors, like Peter and Jack, who felt they were getting rusty on emergency procedures and young GPs, like Susie and Indira, who were nervous about being so far away from major hospitals and advanced ambulance services. It wasn’t deliberate, but the man at the back was the last person to introduce himself.
‘I’m Mitch,’ he said, quietly. ‘I’m one of four GPs in the only medical centre in Allensbury, which is a small town in Surrey.’
Jenna was frowning at the sheet of paper in front of her. Mitch? The only person who wasn’t ticked off was an Andrew. Then she noticed his surname and almost smiled because it fitted him so well to go by a shortened version of Mitchell.
Because it was just that bit different?
‘I’m here because I think we get so caught up in the ordinary busyness of general practice that we can miss opportunities to keep up to date,’ Mitch said. ‘And...you never know—that one skill we got rusty in might be the one skill we absolutely need to save someone’s life.’
His voice was deep enough to be a bit like his body language and how he looked. Unusually attractive. Calm and confident but...somehow contradictory? Was it Jenna’s imagination or was there something he wasn’t saying, here?
It had only been polite to look up from the paper that listed the expected attendees for the course and meet this man’s gaze as he continued speaking but it was suddenly difficult to break that eye contact.
Because she felt like she recognised what was different about him.
He was searching for something.
Something of personal significance.
And...disturbingly enough to send a tiny chill down Jenna’s spine, it felt like she might have been singled out as the only person who could help him find what it was he was searching for.
