Читать книгу Emergency Baby - Алисон Робертс - Страница 7

SOMETHING had changed.

Alex couldn’t quite put his finger on what it was, but that disturbing little niggle had been there ever since that caving job a week ago and it kept popping up at the oddest times.

Like now, when they were in the middle of dealing with a three-car pile-up on the main road near the airport and he should be totally focussed on the patient he was currently assessing.

He was focussed—kind of. Fortunately, no life-threatening injuries had been caused by the accident even though one of the cars had been travelling at a fairly high speed on one of the semi-rural roads. SERT members were based at the airport, in order to be near their helicopter transport, but they also crewed a standard ambulance and were used as first response to any callouts that wouldn’t take them more than five minutes’ drive away from their base.

Such as this scene, where an elderly driver had failed to stop at an intersection and had gone into the side of a car that had then swerved into the lane of opposing traffic. The driver coming the other way had luckily had time to brake as he’d swerved himself but he had still connected with the elderly woman’s car with enough force to cave in the passenger side.

Remarkably, she appeared to be unhurt. She was also very cross.

‘Someone is going to have to pay for this damage to my car!’

‘Do you have any medical conditions that you’re being treated for, ma’am? Problems with your heart or blood pressure perhaps?’

‘Are you suggesting this accident was my fault, young man?’

Alex almost grinned. It was all relative, he supposed, and thirty-eight would make him a whippersnapper to someone who looked to be well into their eighties. This accident could not have been anyone else’s fault, however. The faded blue eyes glaring at him belonged to someone who had just gone through a very clearly marked ‘stop’ sign.

‘I just want to check you out and make sure you haven’t been hurt,’ he told her.

‘I’m not hurt but I could have been killed! I want to know who’s responsible.’

‘Are you having any trouble breathing?’ Silly question. Nobody would be snapping at him like an angry barracuda if they were in serious respiratory distress. ‘Do you have any pain anywhere?’

Alex glanced up to see whether he might be needed with a more seriously injured person in one of the other vehicles. No such luck. The male driver of the third vehicle involved was talking to a police officer and his wild gesticulations towards the ‘stop’ sign and then Alex’s position suggested that he wasn’t in any degree of physical distress.

Sam was with the occupants of the car that had been hit side on by the old woman’s car. She was crouched in front of a baby’s seat that had been lifted from the rear of the car. A young woman stood beside her, looking very anxious. Even from this distance Alex could see that the baby was smiling in response to whatever noises or exaggerated facial expressions Sam was making and her posture made it quite obvious that everything was under control there.

And there it was again.

That disturbing little niggle.

A curious disappointment, perhaps, that this job wasn’t going to provide the kind of challenge that his partner thrived on. One that would drive any current dissatisfaction with her career into the background.

Where it belonged.

‘I’m bleeding! Oh, my goodness! I’ve ruined a brand-new pair of stockings.’ The dismay in his patient’s voice was wildly misplaced. The thin leg Alex could see now protruding from the car had had a sizeable flap of skin peeled back from the shin. He snapped open the catches on his kit and reached for a gauze pad and a saline sachet to dampen it.

‘I’m going to cover this to stop the bleeding, ma’am. This might sting a little bit.’

‘It’s not going to fix my stocking, is it? Someone’s going to have to replace these as well. They’re not cheap, you know. I only buy the best. None of that nasty supermarket rubbish!’

‘Of course,’ Alex murmured. ‘Can you tell me your name, please, ma’am?’

‘What for?’

‘I’m going to need to fill in some paperwork.’

‘Oh…all right. It’s Esme. Esme Dickson.’

Alex wound the bandage around Esme’s leg to hold the dressing in place and apply enough pressure to stop the bleeding. ‘And how old are you, Mrs Dickson?’

‘None of your business. And it’s “Miss”, not “Mrs”.’

It was a relief to see a police officer approaching. Alex should be able to get the information he needed with a lot less angst after Miss Dickson had had her interview with more authoritative personnel.

‘Is she all right?’

‘Relatively minor skin tear.’Alex had cleaned the wound and eased the skin back into place before bandaging. ‘I don’t think she needs transport to hospital unless it’s what she wants.’

‘Of course it isn’t,’ Esme declared. ‘There’s nothing wrong with me that a good cup of tea won’t fix.’

‘A visit to her GP might be in order to ensure that it doesn’t get infected.’

‘And “she’s” the cat’s mother.’ Esme wagged a finger at Alex. ‘I do have a name, as you well know, young man.’

‘This is Miss Dickson,’ Alex told the police officer, keeping the twitch of his lips firmly under control. ‘I’ll just do a quick check of her blood pressure and so on and then she’s all yours.’

The expression on the officer’s face did not suggest delight. ‘Do you have your driver’s licence available, Miss Dickson?’

‘I hope you’re not suggesting I don’t have one.’

‘Not at all, but it would be helpful if you could show it to me.’

‘It’s right here, in my handbag. Oh…Where is my handbag? It was just here, on the seat beside me.’

‘Is this it?’Alex fished a cavernous bright green bag with thick handles and an ornate clasp from behind the front seat.

‘Yes. Thank you. Now I just need to find my glasses.’

The police officer almost sighed aloud. ‘Do you require your glasses for driving, Miss Dickson?’

‘Of course I do. And I was wearing them. They must have fallen off.’

Alex could see a pair of spectacles, minus their case, inside the now open green bag as he wound the blood-pressure cuff around his patient’s upper arm. ‘Those wouldn’t be the ones you’re looking for, by any chance?’

Miss Dickson looked disconcerted. ‘Goodness! How on earth did they manage to fall in there?’

Alex let down the cuff. ‘Blood pressure’s fine,’ he announced. ‘Heart rate and rhythm are also normal. I’ll come back in a minute to get the details I need for the paperwork.’ He straightened and gave the police officer a sympathetic lift of his eyebrows. ‘I’d better go and see whether my partner needs any assistance.’

She didn’t, of course. By the time Alex approached the knot of people around the back of the ambulance, Sam had lifted the infant from its car seat, presumably having given it a thorough check, and it was bouncing in her arms, looking delighted at the amount of attention being bestowed on it.

There was something just not quite right any more about seeing Samantha Moore with a baby in her arms. Maybe that was what had started making things seem different.

That weird feeling he’d experienced last week, seeing Sam staring at the baby she’d just delivered. Holding it as though…as though it was her own child.

Alex had joked about it at the time, warning Sam not to get any ‘ideas’, but he was quite sure now that he’d discovered the cause of what had been bothering him for the last few days. That Sam’s biological clock had inexplicably started ticking and she was going to go off and have babies and leave him to try and find another partner that he could work with as well as he worked with Sam.

As if!

On both counts. Alex smiled at Sam. A relieved smile. He knew perfectly well how Sam felt about marriage. He’d even met her overpoweringly successful father and the brother that had gone into the fire service rather than trying to follow in his father’s footsteps and join the police force, as her other two brothers had.

Alex could understand why Sam was so fiercely protective of her independence. That was why she was so adamant about never sharing her life with any other male on a permanent basis. And a child would sap that independence even more. Of course he could understand. He felt the same way himself, cherishing his own independence enough to make even a relationship of a few months’ duration seem long term. The idea of permanence or, worse, dependants, was a fate worse than death.

The idea of finding someone else he could work with so well was equally ludicrous. It might have taken a while to get used to in the beginning but Sam was special. As good as any bloke to work with. Better, really, because there were times that Alex’s extra physical strength was needed and he could provide it and feel great. There was none of that subtle competitive stuff you’d get working with another male. And then there were times when a feminine touch was needed. The sympathy angle or an examination on a female patient that everybody was more comfortable having another female providing. Sam could do that and feel great.

Neither of them ever held such advantages over the other. They complemented each other perfectly. They were the best team.

Alex took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. He could put that disturbing niggle to rest now. It was something that he had got entirely out of proportion because Sam had been so tired that night and had made those comments about there being more to life than their jobs. About them being crazy, doing what they did. Seeing her holding that baby on top of the odd comments had triggered an entirely unfounded fear.

He’d seen Sam dealing with kids dozens of times over the last few years, hadn’t he? Just like now. She was terrific in handling them and perfectly happy to give them back to whoever they belonged to. The mother of this particular rugrat was smiling rather tentatively as she took her baby from Sam.

‘Are you sure she’s OK?’

‘She seems absolutely fine. We can take you into hospital to have her checked out again if you’re still worried, though.’

‘I don’t know…Maybe I should…’

‘I’ll just get some paperwork done while you think about it.’ Sam climbed into the back of the ambulance where Alex had beaten her to the patient report forms.

He ripped some pages off for her. ‘Do you want me to arrange transport for the kid? I’ve already contacted Control and told them a second vehicle wasn’t needed.’

‘I thought we could take them in,’ Sam said. ‘We’re due to take the truck back to Headquarters in half an hour or so.’ She smiled at Alex. ‘And if we happened to be in the hospital, we could take a few minutes and go and see whether Steve’s out of Intensive Care yet.’

It was a winning smile that made it quite clear how keen Sam was to follow up on the victims of the caving incident. After more than twelve hours of being trapped by rubble, one of the men last week had succumbed to a head injury but Steve, the father of the baby Sam had delivered, had survived. He’d been in the ICU the last time they’d visited but any day now he should be joining Bruce, who was still in the ward recovering from the surgery needed on his fractured femur.

Maybe this time Alex could ask about the chance of getting another underground trip. He didn’t need that special smile from Sam to persuade him.

‘Works for me,’ he said. ‘I’ll talk to Control again and I need to get some patient details from the others involved here.’

It was ten minutes before they left the scene and another fifteen minutes to get to the emergency department of Christchurch General Hospital. By the time they had handed over the only patient they’d transported, Sam and Alex were officially off duty.

‘They don’t mind if we’re a bit late back with the truck,’ Sam informed Alex. ‘Angus and Tom are having a coffee and they can find another vehicle for them to get to Base if there’s a callout.’

‘Great. Quick visit to the ward, then?’

‘Absolutely.’

They stopped at the ward clerk’s desk to see whether Steve had been transferred from the intensive care unit yet. The nurse who overheard their request happened to be the one looking after both Steve and Bruce for the afternoon shift and she was more than happy to discuss her patients with Alex.

Big blue eyes were fastened on Sam’s partner and the eager, if subtle, leaning forward posture was nothing new, either. Sam was quite used to the interest women showed in Alex. She would have felt the same way in their position but it had never occurred to her to do anything more than appreciate his looks in a very academic way.

‘No fishing off the company pier’ had been a maxim handed down from her brothers well before Sam had seen for herself what damage such relationships could do to a working environment. Hardly a refined pearl of wisdom but very good advice nonetheless, and Sam’s narrow brush with disaster had sealed her acceptance. When her relationship with an ED doctor had petered out somewhat acrimoniously, the time spent in that department had been uncomfortable for months afterwards.

This pretty young nurse had dragged Steve’s notes from the trolley to show Alex.

‘He had a massive haemopneumothorax. Six fractured ribs. Would you like to see the X-ray?’

‘Maybe later. So he’ll still be pretty sore, then?’

‘Mmm. The chest drain only came out today. He’s had another CT scan on his head and neck, too. Did you know there was a hairline fracture in C6/7? Just as well you guys knew how to take such good care of him.’

Sam’s attention wandered as the nurse’s dimples flashed. There was a noticeboard in the central corridor beside the main desk. Photographs and thank-you cards from patients were interspersed with notices from support groups, rules for visitors and hospital services such as the hairdressing salon and chemist.

Below the large pinboard was a long, custom-built pocket that housed a variety of pamphlets. Idly, Sam scanned the titles. There were tips for incorporating a healthy level of exercise into a daily routine— ‘Push play for thirty minutes a day’. Dietary guidelines for a heart healthy eating plan had a cute little smiley red heart with legs. More professional looking were the warning signs and self-help checks for testicular and prostate cancer, but not many had been taken.

‘So, did you get any good calls today?’ The nurse was edging the conversation into a more personal arena.

‘Nah. Quiet day for us. Sam? You ready? Steve’s in room 3.’

‘Sure.’ But Sam didn’t turn directly towards Alex because her line of vision had just connected with something interesting.

Very interesting.

‘I’ll come with you,’ the nurse announced. ‘He’s due for obs, anyway.’

Sam started to follow the pair down the corridor but then hesitated. Too quickly for Alex to notice, she turned back, pocketed one of the pamphlets and then strode a step or two to catch up.

‘How’s Bruce doing?’ she queried.

‘Really well.’ You would have thought it had been Alex who’d spoken the way the nurse’s gaze was dragged back to the man she was keeping in step with. ‘They asked to be in the same room, which is why I’ve got them both on my list. He’s been up on his crutches today.’

The men from the caving club were delighted to see their visitors and show off their progress to representatives from the emergency services that had ensured their survival. Sam happily joined in the conversation but part of her mind was still firmly captured by the light-bulb moment she had experienced back at the noticeboard.

It wasn’t a flashy brochure trying to win people over to the benefits of a low-fat diet or thirty minutes of activity every day. It was even more discreet than the testicular cancer one. Sam hoped it would have lots of information inside but the two words that had caught her eye so effectively were enough all by themselves really.

Sperm bank.

A baby bank. An anonymous donation and then a withdrawal and bingo! A ‘no-strings’ baby. Sam’s buttons had not been pushed last week by the notion of falling madly in love, getting married and settling down to raise a family. Oh, no! What Sam wanted, purely and simply…was a baby. A being she could afford to love, heart and soul. A tiny person she could guide and protect and watch grow and develop. Someone who would love her back and could provide the bond between mother and child that had been missing from Sam’s life for what felt like for ever.

It wasn’t as though she needed a man in her life. Not on a permanent basis anyway. She was perfectly happy the way she was, thank you, and who needed the angst and stress of a relationship that didn’t work out long term? The argument that a child needed a father figure didn’t hold much water, either. Sam had no shortage of suitable male role models readily available if she happened to end up raising a son.

Financially she was secure enough and Sam didn’t intend giving up her job for ever anyway. A good day-care centre would have the added benefit of solving any issues regarding a lack of siblings for her child as well.

Dammit! Sam smiled at Bruce, realising she hadn’t heard a word he’d just said and he was looking at her expectantly, waiting for a response.

‘Hmm,’ she said thoughtfully, buying some time.

‘She’d love it,’Alex declared.

They were talking about caving, Sam realised as her brain retrieved snatches of the half-heard patch of recent conversation. Steve was actually looking as enthusiastic as Bruce at the thought of taking Alex off to climb dark vertical walls and squeeze painfully through impossibly small fissures. Did these men have rocks in their heads?

Maybe if Tim—the man who hadn’t made it through the disaster—hadn’t been a new and relatively unknown club member, his death would have made enough impact to dampen that enthusiasm a little longer.

‘I reckon I’ll be fit enough in a month or so,’ Steve was saying. ‘I’ll give you a bell.’

‘We’ll find somewhere easy for your first run,’ Bruce added.

‘Hopefully somewhere away from any fault lines,’ Sam suggested.

The three men looked at her sadly. The looks were eloquent enough to tell her they were using their passion as positive energy to get through their current discomfort and the tragedy that had occurred. They didn’t need someone pulling them down, but her reaction was only to be expected. She was a girl after all.

That was quite enough to push a button that had been well honed throughout Sam’s childhood.

‘Hey, don’t get me wrong,’ she said brightly. ‘I’m in. I need to keep an eye on my partner here, don’t I? Just to make sure he doesn’t get himself into trouble.’

Two sad glances were directed at Alex now.

‘Sounds as bad as being married, mate,’ Steve muttered.

‘Worse,’ Alex said cheerfully. ‘Can’t get away from her even when I’m at work.’

Sam’s eyes widened as a sharp retort sprang to her lips but it died as the softening she detected in Alex’s smile let her know he wasn’t serious. That he didn’t want to get away from her at all.

She smiled at Steve. ‘How’s Courtney?’ she queried. ‘And the baby?’

The memory of that tiny vulnerable face and the way the baby had lain in her arms, totally dependent on her protection, gave Sam a sharp twinge of longing.

It also triggered unease. How could Steve be so keen to put himself back into a situation that had almost denied that baby one of its parents? Sam recognised the hypocrisy of the criticism instantly. Wasn’t she planning to continue what most people would consider a high-risk profession if she had a baby?

But that was different. Her passion was a career, not a hobby. And she was very good at what she did. The risks were carefully calculated. Minimal, really.

Steve was beaming proudly in response to Sam’s query. ‘He’s great,’ he said.

‘He’s noisy,’ Bruce said. ‘That kid yells its head off every time it comes in for a visit.’

‘You might see them if you wait a bit,’ Steve told Sam.

‘We need to hit the road,’ Alex said hurriedly. ‘We’re overdue to hand over our vehicle to the next crew.’

Sam couldn’t object to the reason for their departure but she was surprised by the pace Alex set as they left the ward.

‘What’s the hurry?’

‘Time to go home. I’ve got a cold beer waiting for me in my fridge.’

Sam had her doubts about that response. Not that there was a beer waiting, of course, but she had the distinct impression that Alex was moving fast in order to avoid meeting Courtney and the baby.

Come to think of it, he hadn’t looked too thrilled at having to transport that infant from the accident scene this evening, either. Was Alex developing an aversion to children or was she just overly sensitised towards them at present? Alex would think she was mad and he could well be right, but the last week had proved that fighting this desire was swimming against an astonishingly powerful tide.

On her recent days off, Sam had tried everything she could think of to either distract herself or talk herself out of the idea of having a baby. Visits home to wrangle with her brothers and to try and find something to talk about that might impress her father. Punishing sessions at the gym, one of which had included Alex as they had their regular race along the most difficult climbing wall. She had only won that by the skin of her teeth this time. They’d had another afternoon together, on a refresher course for abseiling skills, and she’d gone out one night to the pub where most of her friends from various branches of the emergency services gathered.

None of these activities were remotely connected to children. They had all been as enjoyable as they always were but the sense that something big was lacking from Sam’s life refused to go away.

It simply got bigger.

‘You’ll need fresh batteries in the life pack.’

‘Cool.’ Angus McBride hung his reflectorised, wet-weather coat behind the driver’s seat in the ambulance. ‘Anything else?’

‘Trace paper might be low. We ran through rather a lot with the arrest we went to this morning.’

‘Successful?’

‘No.’ Sam shook her head with resignation. ‘Sad case, too. Eighty-five-year-old lady was on the plane ready to go for a trip to see all her new great-grandchildren in England. It took years for the family to persuade her to make the trip and a daughter actually came out to accompany her. They were taxiing down the runway for take-off when she collapsed.’

‘And running an arrest scenario in the aisle of economy class is definitely not to be recommended.’ Alex reached past Sam to remove his kit from the back of the ambulance. ‘Which reminds me. What did you do with that code summary, Sam?’

‘Oh—I completely forgot to do anything with it.’ Sam fished in her pocket for the carefully folded strip of paper from the life pack that had recorded each stage of the arrest scenario. ‘Here it is.’

‘What’s this?’ Angus’s partner, Tom, came around the side of the vehicle at that moment and stooped to pick something up. ‘Did you drop this, Sam?’

‘Yeah, thanks.’ Sam reached to grab the item but the look on her colleague’s face told her she was way too late. Tom had already spotted those two eye-catching words. Why on earth hadn’t she thought to fold the dratted pamphlet so they would have been hidden on the inside?

‘Whoa!’ Tom held the pamphlet just high enough for Sam’s reach to be inadequate, which wasn’t difficult given that his height matched that of Alex and Sam was a good six inches shorter.

‘Tom!’

Her tone attracted the attention of both Alex and Angus.

‘I know you consider yourself to be one of the boys, Sam,’ Tom said gleefully. ‘But this is going a bit far, isn’t it?’

‘What is it?’ Alex asked with interest.

‘Nothing,’ Sam growled. ‘Just something I picked up on the ward.’

Tom had opened the pamphlet and was holding it above his head to read. ‘Apparently, they’re short of donors for the sperm bank,’ he announced.

Even Angus was grinning. ‘Just how did you think you could help, Sam?’

‘By giving it to you lot,’ she retorted. ‘One of these days you might like to consider doing something useful with all those little tadpoles you waste.’

‘Hmm.’ Alex’s eyebrows rose, which seemed to accentuate a familiar mischievous glint in his dark eyes. ‘She could have a point. Think of all those fantastic genes that aren’t getting passed on.’

‘Especially yours.’ Sam was quite ready to pass this off as a joke and make sure none of these men came anywhere near guessing the real reason she had pocketed that pamphlet. ‘I was intending to leave it in your locker, as a matter of fact.’ She glared at Tom. ‘But somebody has spoiled the surprise factor.’

Angus was still smiling. ‘I think you’re right, Alex. Sam does have a point. With the way you treat your women, it’s probably the only way you’ll ever see a son and heir.’

‘Except I wouldn’t see him, would I?’ Surprisingly, Alex seemed to be giving the notion serious consideration. ‘He’d be some stranger’s kid.’

‘There might be ten of them,’ Tom suggested. ‘You’d go to a job at a kindergarten one day and half the kids would look just like you.’

‘They wouldn’t do that.’ Sam didn’t like the idea of there being an unknown number of half-siblings for any child of her own. ‘Would they?’

‘Depends how short they are on the good oil, I guess.’ Angus certainly wasn’t going to take any of this seriously. ‘Personally, if I was going to have a kid, I’d want to know about it. And I’d want to be there while it was growing up.’

A slightly uncomfortable silence fell for a moment as they all remembered that Angus had recently been dumped by the very woman he would have chosen to be the mother of his children. Alex cleared his throat and took on the task of making the atmosphere less strained.

‘I dunno,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘Speaking as someone who has no intention of getting married, it seems like a socially responsible kind of thing to do. I wonder if they let you know about any kids. Send a photograph on birthdays or something.’

‘Doubt it,’ Tom said. ‘They probably wouldn’t want the sprog to know so they definitely wouldn’t want some stranger who’d insist on turning up at birthday parties.’

‘Try a private arrangement,’ Angus suggested.

‘Yeah.’ Sam didn’t want to appear silent for a suspiciously long time. ‘Put an ad in the paper,’ she said lightly. ‘“Sperm available to the right woman. No-strings baby required to preserve an exceptional gene pool.”’

‘No payment required either.’ Tom chuckled. ‘Provided the applicant has an exceptional body.’

They all laughed.

Except Sam.

She was staring at Alex as she experienced her second light-bulb moment in the same day.

He’d be perfect. Smart as a whip. Good-looking. Healthy. What more could she ask for? He wouldn’t make any claims other than genetic responsibility for the child’s best attributes and he’d probably be invited to the birthday parties in any case.

But Alex was shaking his head firmly, almost as though he could read Sam’s thoughts.

‘No way. I’d probably end up having to pay child support for triplets. I’d rather spend my spare money on beer, thanks.’ He picked up the kit he’d abandoned by his feet. ‘Speaking of which…’

‘Yeah. Have a good night.’ Tom finally held the pamphlet out to Sam. ‘Here you go.’

‘You can keep it,’ Sam told him. ‘I really don’t need it anymore.’

Turning, she caught a glimpse of Alex Henry’s back as he disappeared into the locker room. It was hard not to smile.

Everything happened for a reason, didn’t it? It had been worthwhile picking up that pamphlet, that’s for sure.

She could always go and get another one if she needed information but, with a bit of luck and some careful preparation, Sam was quietly confident that she would not need the services of a sperm bank.

Something much better might just become available.