Читать книгу Sydney Harbour Hospital: Luca's Bad Girl - Amy Andrews - Страница 8

DR MIA MCKENZIE didn’t know it yet but her night was about to go from bad to worse.

And that was no mean feat.

A full moon didn’t usually bode well for emergency departments and this clear, cold Saturday night was no different. Moonbeams sprinkled like fairy dust on the world-renowned surface of Sydney Harbour, lending a deceptive calm to the view from the windows of Sydney Harbour Hospital.

But inside the walls of the emergency department it was crazy town!

At two in the morning there had been no let up from the insanity. SHH, or The Harbour to those who worked there, was living up to its reputation as the busiest emergency department in the city.

‘I could have been a dermatologist,’ Mia grumbled to Dr Evie Lockheart, her best friend and flatmate, as she strode out of the resus cubical, turning her back on the torrent of abuse from a drug addict she’d just brought back from the brink of death.

‘They don’t get abused by patients at half past stupid o’clock. You know why? Because they’re sleeping. No on-call, no such thing as a dermatological emergency in the middle of the night, no urgent consults required.’

Evie, clutching a portable ultrasound unit, grinned. ‘You’d be bored to tears.’

Mia’s long blonde ponytail swished against her shoulder blades as she made her way to the central nurses’ station with the patient’s chart in hand. ‘I could do bored.’

Evie snorted. ‘Yep, whatever you say.’

Mia ignored her friend’s sarcasm. ‘How much longer are you and George Clooney going to be with the MVA?’

Evie laughed. ‘The name is Luca. Dr Luca di Angelo.’

As far as Mia was concerned, the hospital’s new director of trauma looked more like the devil than an angel.

He certainly seemed to be having a devil of a time with every available female walking the halls of SHH in the very short time he’d been here.

Which was fine by her. It was his life. And in a way she admired him for it. She too liked to keep her liaisons short and sweet.

But maybe that’s what caused an itch up her spine whenever he was around—besides his disturbing good looks apparently honed beneath a Sicilian sun. She recognised a kindred spirit.

And didn’t like what she saw.

‘And he really is quite dishy.’

‘Yes,’ Mia mused. ‘That he is.’

Evie grinned. Now, why couldn’t she be interested in a tall, dark, handsome Italian who was living up to the reputation of sex god that had preceded his arrival at The Harbour a few weeks ago? Why was it the infuriating, dictatorial Dr Finn Kennedy that her brain insisted on conjuring up with monotonous regularity?

‘Anyway,’ she said shaking the thought away. ‘We’re stabilising the patient at the moment. He needs to go to Theatre for a laparotomy.’

Mia nodded. ‘Okay, but when he’s gone, go home. You were supposed to have finished three hours ago.’

‘Yeah, yeah.’ Evie grinned as she departed.

Mia had ten minutes’ respite to catch up on some charts before a stocky man with swarthy features and wild eyes burst through the ambulance bay doors. ‘My wife … she’s in labour. The baby’s coming now!’ And then turned around and raced out the door again.

Mia sprang to her feet as a shot of adrenaline surged into her system. She hurried after the man, followed by Caroline, the triage nurse. She didn’t notice the chill in the air, just the beaten-up old car parked at a crazy angle near the doors and a woman’s urgent cries.

‘Hurry,’ the man yelled, wringing his hands.

Mia was there in seconds. The woman was lying on the back seat yelling, ‘It’s coming, it’s coming.’

‘Hi, I’m Dr McKenzie,’ Mia said over the din. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Rh-Rhiannon,’ the woman panted.

Mia smiled at her encouragingly. ‘How far along are you?’

‘Thirty weeks, she’s thirty weeks, all right?’ the husband barked.

The man seemed hostile and had his wife’s needs not been so urgent she’d have told him to back off. The last thing she needed right now while having to deliver a ten-week premature baby was a man with some kind of chip on his shoulder.

‘Caroline, page the neonatology team, please,’ Mia said quietly as she reached for the endless supply of gloves she had stashed in her pockets. ‘And get Arthur to bring out a gurney.

‘Okay, let’s have a look here,’ Mia said calmly.

The woman groaned again and it took Mia two seconds to identify a crowning head, despite the poor light. ‘Right, well, you’re absolutely correct, Rhiannon, this baby is coming.’

‘I have to push,’ Rhiannon yelled.

‘That’s fine.’ Mia nodded, her heart bonging in her chest like the bells of a clock tower. ‘I’m here to catch.’

Thirty seconds later the scrawny bawling infant slipped into Mia’s waiting hands. ‘You have a boy.’ Mia grinned, laying the baby on the cloth seat and hoping that Caroline thought to bring back something warm to protect the newborn from the brisk air.

‘Let me see it,’ the father demanded.

But Caroline arrived, blocking his view as she handed Mia a pre-packaged emergency birth pack and some blankets fresh out of the blanket warmer. ‘Neonates are doing an emergency intubation in Labour ward,’ she said quietly. ‘They’ll get here as soon as they can.’

Mia nodded as she quickly laid the babe on a warm soft blanket, unwrapped the birth pack and efficiently clamped and cut the cord. She bundled the still crying baby up and handed him to Caroline.

‘Get him into Resus so we can give him a proper check over, although his lungs seem pretty fine to me.’

Caroline laughed as she turned to go.

‘Where are you taking it?’ the father demanded.

‘Inside,’ Caroline said calmly. ‘You can come too if you like.’

The father stalked after Caroline while Mia and Arthur helped Rhiannon onto the gurney. They covered her in warm blankets and pushed her inside to the resus cube next to her baby. The little boy was quiet now as he basked beneath the warm rays of a cot’s overhead heater.

The father was pacing the cubicle when they arrived and seemed agitated. ‘Red hair. It’s got red hair,’ the father growled at Rhiannon as he approached her with a sneer on his face.

‘Oh, for crying out loud, Stan. Your grandfather had red hair.’

‘Whose is it?’ he demanded, rattling the rail of the gurney. ‘Who’s the father?’

Mia felt the hairs rise on the back of her neck as the father’s puzzling behaviour gained some context. But context or not, he didn’t get to act like a bully in her ER.

Thoughts of her own father wormed their way into her head and she quashed them ruthlessly.

‘Sir!’ Mia stood between him and the exhausted Rhiannon. ‘You will not raise your voice in here. Whatever the issue is, this is not the time or place for it. Now, why don’t you go and shift your car from the ambulance bay? When you come back, you’d better have calmed down or I will call Security.’

Mia was used to dealing with emotionally charged situations. Also drunks, drug addicts and a whole bunch of other people who didn’t respect the sanctity of a hospital.

But she was a doctor. And Rhiannon and the baby were her patients. It was her duty to protect them.

The man scowled at her and left, muttering to himself.

‘I’m sorry,’ Rhiannon apologised. ‘He gets so paranoid sometimes but he’s harmless.’

Mia smiled. ‘It’s fine.’

A midwife from the maternity ward chose that moment to arrive. ‘The team’s going to be another twenty minutes or so,’ she apologised.

‘That’s all right,’ Mia dismissed. ‘I think this little tyke’s going to be fine.’

The ugly incident with Stan was forgotten as the midwife tended to Rhiannon, delivering the placenta while Mia gave the baby a check over. ‘They’ll probably want to keep him for the night in Special Care, given his early arrival, just to be on the safe side,’ Mia pronounced, ‘but everything checks out so far.’

She stood aside for the midwife to wrap the little boy up in that special way they did with babies so they looked just like glowworms, with only their little faces showing. Then Mia picked up the precious little package and asked, ‘Would you like to hold your son?’

Rhiannon nodded and Mia was walking the baby over to her when the curtain flicked back a little and Stan stood there, looking slightly mollified. The time away seemed to have helped. Mia changed tack. ‘Would you like to hold him?’ she asked.

In Mia’s experience, babies melted even the hardest of hearts. What man could resist such a gorgeous package? Hopefully this little impatient cherub would help Stan focus on what was important in life.

He looked uncertain for a moment then looked at Rhiannon. ‘Can I?’

She smiled at him and Mia could see the love shining in the other woman’s eyes. ‘Of course.’

Mia eased the little bundle into Stan’s arms. He seemed more dazed than elated but Mia knew that for some new fathers it was a big adjustment. He walked up and down the length of the cubicle with the baby, rocking him as he went, his gaze fixed on his face.

‘What are you going to call him?’ Caroline asked.

‘I like Michael,’ Rhiannon murmured.

The tight swaddling had loosened a little from the rocking and the baby stirred, displacing the wrap covering his head. Stan stopped as he stared down at a shock of red hair. He whipped around to face his wife. ‘Is that his name?’ he demanded. The baby started to cry. ‘Michael? The man you’ve been sleeping with?’

Rhiannon groaned. ‘Stop it, Stan. I’m sick of these accusations. You know there’s only ever been you.’

‘I want a paternity test,’ he yelled.

Mia looked at Caroline then at a near-to-tears Rhiannon. ‘Stan—’

Stan swung wildly around to face her and the baby cried louder. ‘I want you …’ he jabbed the air with an index finger ‘… to do a paternity test.’

‘Stan this is ridiculous,’ Rhiannon wailed, a tear trekking down her face.

Stan swung back. ‘Are you refusing?’

‘Okay, Stan, enough,’ Mia said firmly. Stan turned abruptly and faced her. ‘That is no way to be talking and certainly no way to be flinging a baby around. Listen to him, you’re making him cry.’

She walked briskly towards Stan, her arms extended. ‘Give him to me.’

Stan leapt back, his eyes wild again as he pulled a pocket knife out of his back pocket, flicking the blade open with one hand while he clutched his son in the other.

‘Stay back,’ he screamed. Caroline gasped, Rhiannon wailed and Mia stopped in her tracks. ‘Don’t come near me.’

Stan swung wildly from side to side, brandishing the knife as he backed slowly away from Mia.

Oh, good Lord! Mia felt a spurt of annoyance. She did not have time for this.

‘Okay, Stan.’ Mia summoned her most placatory voice as she put her hands out to calm the situation. She didn’t think that Stan would harm anyone but that wasn’t the way to play it when he was holding a brand-new thirty weeker in one arm and a knife in the other.

‘Okay, I can do that for you,’ she soothed, deftly placing her own body between Stan and Caroline.

Caroline, bless her cotton socks, picked up on her cue and quietly crept out of the cubicle. Mia knew one push of the panic button located under the desk in the nurses’ station and every security guard rostered for the shift would be here in under two minutes.

‘But you’re going to need to give me the baby first.’ She took another step towards Stan, tuning out the lusty newborn’s cries and Rhiannon’s pleading.

Stan slashed the blade through the air. ‘No! Get back,’ he yelled.

Luca di Angelo, who was passing the resus bay, frowned at the raised voice, louder even than the squalling baby. He strode in through the partially open curtain, surveying the scene rapidly.

A man with a knife. A bawling baby being held to ransom. A crying woman. A terrified nurse. And gutsy Dr Mia McKenzie—aloof, frosty little Mia—standing in the thick of it.

‘What the devil is going on here?’ he demanded.

Stan swung around again, slashing the air in Luca’s general direction. ‘Stay back,’ he yelled.

Luca stopped. ‘Dr McKenzie?’

‘It’s fine, Dr di Angelo,’ she said, a placid smile plastered to her face as she inched closer to Stan. Very soon there’d be maximum force at her disposal—she could do without the Lone Ranger potentially ramping the situation up in the mean time.

Even if he did look good enough to spread on toast.

Mia’s stomach rumbled.

‘Stan here just wants a paternity test so he’s going to give me the baby and I’ll draw some blood. Right, Stan?’

‘No.’ Stan looked wildly between the two of them. ‘The baby stays,’ he insisted.

Luca watched Mia in his peripheral vision as she crept forward at a snail’s pace. ‘But how can we take blood when you’re holding a baby, Stan?’ Luca reasoned, distracting the man.

Mia, grateful if a little surprised that Luca had caught on really fast, took another step closer.

‘Stay back,’ Stan bellowed. The baby’s cries rose another octave.

‘I can’t take your blood from here, Stan,’ Mia soothed.

The adrenaline flowing through her system brought everything into sharp focus. The sweat on Stan’s brow. The harsh suck of his breath as he heaved air in and out of his lungs. The white spittle forming at the corner of his mouth. The way he turned the knife over and over in his palm and constantly shifted his weight from one foot to the other as his gaze darted between the two doctors.

But she was probably even more aware of Luca. Somehow it was he who dominated the room, not Stan. He towered over the knife-wielding man, all lean and broad shouldered, in sharp contrast to Stan’s stocky stature. And despite the deceptive casualness of his hands-in-pocket stance, Mia could see the hard clench of his jaw and sense the coiled rigidity in those muscles barely contained behind the snug-fitting polo shirt.

She reminded him of a taipan, ready to strike. Swift and deadly.

Just then there was a commotion behind them as several security staff arrived at once.

Stan looked over Mia’s shoulder. ‘What are they doing here?’ he roared, his hold on the baby tightening and causing further lusty protest.

Luca held out his hand as Stan’s agitation increased. ‘It’s standard hospital procedure,’ Luca soothed, moving a little closer. ‘It’ll be all right, though. I’m going to ask them to stand back, okay?’

‘I don’t think that’s a good idea, Doc,’ the chief security officer said.

‘Back! You heard him, get back!’ Stan shouted, brandishing the knife a little too close to the baby’s head.

The midwife gasped.

Luca turned to the security contingent. ‘It’s okay,’ he assured them. Then he turned back to Stan. ‘They’re going, see?’ Luca said as he heard the guards shuffling away.

Mia kept her gaze focused on Stan and the baby. ‘Okay, Stan, now we’ve done something for you, you’ve got to do something for us.’ She covered up her next step closer by holding out her arms. ‘Give me the baby. He’s scared and hungry. Listen to him. I’m sure a nice feed will settle him down and we can talk about this without upsetting him any more.’

And, frankly, the infant’s cries were getting on her last nerve. The situation was fraught enough without the distinct urgency of an escalating newborn baby’s cries.

‘She’s right, Stan,’ Luca agreed as he edged nearer too. ‘This isn’t something a baby should be part of.’

‘It’s not my fault.’ Stan’s voice cracked as his face beseeched them. ‘I work hard all day and she repays me by sleeping with half the neighbourhood.’

Mia felt a chill as if a ghostly hand from the past had stroked down her spine. She ignored it.

Luca nodded. ‘I know. Believe me, I know.’ And he did. He understood the desperation that Stan was feeling, the sense of betrayal. Intimately.

Mia glanced sharply at Luca. There was empathy, real empathy, in his tone.

‘We can talk about all that, Stan,’ Luca continued. ‘Just give the baby to Dr McKenzie.’

Stan looked from one to the other and Mia saw the uncertainty on his face, saw that even Stan in his crazed state had registered Luca’s compassion. She took advantage and moved forward slowly, unsurprised to sense Luca doing the same.

‘It’s okay, Stan, you’re doing the right thing,’ Mia reassured him.

Stan shook his head from side to side. ‘I just need to know.’

‘Of course,’ Luca murmured. ‘Of course you do, Stan.’

They were close now and Mia could sense Stan weakening. His grip on the knife had slackened. But so had his hold on the baby. Everything inside her urged her to leap forward and snatch the bawling infant from him but she knew any sudden movements would be a bad idea.

‘Give your little boy to me, Stan,’ she implored quietly.

Stan looked down at the crying bundle, the red hair even more vivid against the white of the wrap. He shook his head, his grip tightening again.

‘He’s not my baby!’ he roared, lunging the knife at her.

Everything slowed as Mia watched it come towards her chest. She wasn’t conscious of anything else, just the hypnotic arc of the blade as its point drew closer to her heart.

‘Mia!’

Luca reached out and grabbed her, pulling her towards him. The sweeping slash of the knife missed her torso completely but sliced into the flesh of her upper arm. Mia gasped as bright, piercing pain stole her breath.

Luca swore in his native tongue as his hand shot out and crushed Stan’s wrist in a vice-like grip. Stan yelped and dropped the knife.

‘Security!’

His voice cracked like a whip into the charged atmosphere and in an instant five burly guards had entered the fray. The fight instantly went out of Stan at the sight of overwhelming force.

‘The baby,’ Luca demanded, and the midwife leapt forward, snatching the squalling infant.

‘Go easy,’ Luca ordered as the guards hauled a now passive Stan away. ‘Are you okay?’ he asked switching his attention to Mia.

She nodded automatically as the baby, now safe in his mother’s embrace, began to settle. ‘I’m fine.’ Even though the hand that had instinctively covered the wound to apply pressure was sticky with her own blood. It had quickly oozed through the material of her cotton shirt.

Luca looked at the dark red blood running down her arm and shook his head. Most women he knew would have been hysterical by now. But not Mia. She’d kept her head in the face of an emotionally overwrought father with a knife and had dismissed what looked like a substantial wound as if it were a paper cut.

‘Go to the minor ops room, I’ll take a look at it.’

‘It’s fine, just superficial,’ she said dismissively.

Luca pointed. ‘Blood is running down your arm.’

Mia looked down at the thick trickle, surprised to see it. ‘I’ll get Evie to look at it.’

‘I sent her home.’

‘Dr di Angelo?’ Caroline interrupted them. ‘The psych reg is on the phone. He wants to speak with you.’

Luca quirked an eyebrow at her. ‘I can’t have one of my staff expiring from blood loss. It wouldn’t look very good. Minor ops. Now. I’ll be along after the call.’

Mia watched him go, a well of resentment rising in her. She’d been looking after herself for a lot of years, she didn’t need Mr Tall Dark and Handsome pulling the boss card and she certainly didn’t need him fussing over her.

No one had ever fussed over her. And that was just the way she liked it.

A couple of steri-strips and she’d be fine.

A few minutes later, Mia pushed into the on-call room and plonked herself down at the table in the kitchen area, spilling her supplies on the cluttered top. Her arm hurt like hell and all she wanted to do was crawl into one of the private rooms off to her left and collapse on one of the pull-out beds.

The adrenaline had worn off and her earlier tiredness had taken hold and intensified.

And if she was asleep, the memories that Stan’s actions had unleashed tonight couldn’t bother her.

It was quiet in the room as she fumbled one-handed with the buttons of her blouse. The sleeves had a firm cuff that sat snugly around her biceps and couldn’t be rolled up enough to gain a good visual of the damage. She winced as she slipped the blouse off, every movement jarring though her lacerated deltoid.

She tossed it on the floor—that was going straight in the bin.

She inspected her spaghetti-strapped top, pleased to see that no blood had seeped into it. This kind of undergarment was a permanent fixture beneath whatever shirt she was wore on a night shift. The hospital air-conditioning seemed to reach freezing point at around four in the morning and, even in summer, the extra layer helped.

Mia was especially grateful for it tonight.

She looked down at the wound on her upper arm. The blood had dried and crusted, making it difficult to tell the extent of the laceration. It looked ugly, though, as she gently probed it with her index finger. It was quite long and for a moment she let herself think about what could have happened had Luca not pulled her out of the way.

She noticed her hand was trembling and she dropped it from the wound, clamping down on her thoughts.

She hadn’t been stabbed in the chest. She hadn’t died.

Luca had pulled her out of the way.

But it didn’t stop the trembling from spreading to all her limbs and then to her insides. She took a couple of deep breaths, desperately trying to quell the outbreak.

It was a reaction, that was all. It would settle.

But the longer she sat, trying to get control of her breathing and the shaking, the more vulnerable she was to her emotions and thoughts. And she hated that—she’d learned long ago they didn’t get you anywhere.

But tonight she didn’t seem to be able to stop them.

Was that how her own father had felt when he’d found out about the paternity of her stillborn sister? Like Stan? Desperate and enraged? If there’d been a knife or a gun handy, would he have used it on her mother?

He’d walked away from them that day but she hadn’t known why until years later. Years of blaming him for abandoning them, years of hating him, only to find out that it had been her mother’s infidelities that had driven her father away.

Mia shook her head. Stop it. Stop it!

This situation tonight had come too close to home but there was no need to fall apart. She wasn’t ten years old any more. She was an adult.

Clean yourself up and get back out there again!

Mia forced herself to action. To tend to the wound. Open the dressing pack, pour in some antiseptic lotion, pick up the gauze, work away at the dried blood.

It was awkward and hurt like the blazes but she welcomed the distraction from her thoughts and her shaking hands settled with a familiar routine.

Two minutes later Luca strode through the door. Mia glanced up at him, feeling strangely naked with her blouse discarded. Which was ridiculous—she was more than adequately covered. She ignored him, returning to the task at hand.

Luca lounged against the table and smiled to himself as Mia barely acknowledged his arrival. ‘You’re making a mess of that,’ he mused.

Mia glared at him. ‘It’s a little difficult.’

‘I do believe I told you I would attend to your wound.’ He folded his arms across his chest. ‘But you don’t like asking for help, do you, little Mia?’

His slight accent gave his deep baritone a very sexy edge as it rolled over her. ‘It’s Mia, or Dr McKenzie. Please refrain from addressing me any other way.’

Luca chuckled as he pushed off the bench. ‘Okay, Mia.’ He sat on the chair next to her. ‘Allow me,’ he said as he picked up some gauze and dabbed at the wound.

Mia didn’t protest—she was making a hash of it anyway. His touch was gentle as he coaxed the dried blood from the cut and she shivered. His fingers were dark against her paler skin and long.

Her father had long fingers. A pianist’s hands. He was tall too, like Luca. He’d told her he was her prince and she was his princess and they’d be together for ever.

And then he’d left.

She squeezed her eyes shut. Stop it. Stop it.

Luca watched her. It was the first time he’d spent any length of time in her company and he was curious. He’d already noticed on their brief acquaintance she was a good-looking woman with a cute mouth and a sassy swagger.

But up close she was really quite exquisite.

Her face was long, as were her eyelashes. A frown appeared between her brows and her lips parted. She looked in pain.

‘Am I hurting you?’ he murmured.

Mia’s eyes fluttered open. How had he got that close? She could see the individual whiskers making up the smooth blue-black of his jaw and just make out the black pupil in the middle of his bottomless brown eyes. His hair, as dark as his eyes, was thick with a slight wave that brushed his forehead and the tops of his ears.

And his mouth. The full curve to that bottom lip was wicked.

His fingers stroked gently over her skin as he cleaned the wound and it reminded her it had been a while since a man had touched her.

She lowered her gaze to the column of his throat. ‘No.’

Luca was captivated by the slide show of emotions in her large blue eyes as magnificent and as transparent as a stained-glass window. The husky timbre of her voice wove between the bands of steel around his heart. ‘Are you okay?’

Mia nodded, keeping her gaze firmly fixed on his throat. The long tanned column of his neck was also shaded in blue-black smoothness. She remembered how she’d loved the sandpaper roughness of her father’s neck as he’d cuddled her close to read to her at night.

Damn it! She gripped the back of the chair hard. ‘I’m fine.’

‘You’ve been through an ordeal tonight. That knife came very close to—’

‘I said I’m fine,’ Mia interrupted, raising her face to scowl at him. ‘Just clean the damn wound.’