Читать книгу The Emergency Specialist - Barbara Hart - Страница 8

‘THE first thing we have to decide is where we’re holding the party,’ said Rebecca. ‘It can’t be at the Gypsies’ apartment because that’s tiny.’

‘Surely the first thing we have to decide is whether or not we’re going to have a party for Dad. He may prefer not to have one,’ suggested Anna.

‘Nonsense,’ snapped her sister. ‘Of course he’ll want a party!’

‘I think Anna might have a point,’ said her younger sister, Jennifer. ‘Perhaps we could discuss the alternatives.’

The three sisters were seated round the gleaming white table in Rebecca’s expensive new kitchen—a kitchen that had been designed by Jennifer’s husband Neil. Anna felt that she had to make some comment about it or her sisters might imagine she hadn’t noticed the transformation.

‘Nice kitchen,’ she said, looking round the gleaming new units and appliances. ‘Of course, there was nothing much wrong with your old one, but this one is certainly impressive. Neil did a good job.’ Anna hoped she’d used the correct phrases in praising the new kitchen.

‘The old one was so dated that I couldn’t possibly have put up with it for a moment longer,’ said Rebecca scornfully. ‘Neil came up with this brilliant scheme in polished steel and white oak—and we just had to have it!’

‘Is Ted happy with it?’ asked Anna, knowing that Rebecca’s husband would have been given very little choice in the matter.

‘Of course he’s happy with it! Anyway, let’s not change the subject. We’re here to talk about a party for Dad for his sixtieth.’

‘Or something else,’ Jennifer butted in. She was the youngest and still determined not to be railroaded by her older sisters, particularly Rebecca.

‘Like what?’ demanded Rebecca, tapping the end of her pencil on her notepad.

They discussed a variety of alternative suggestions proposed by Jennifer and Anna and after half an hour they decided on a party. Anna had known that Rebecca would get her own way in the end and that it was a waste of time even mentioning anything else—but she also knew that Jennifer wouldn’t be happy unless she’d made some sort of attempt to get her ideas through. Once again, Anna felt like the one in the middle…the peacemaker…the calming influence.

‘So, a party it is!’ announced Rebecca in triumph. ‘Where shall we hold it?’ She looked at the expectant faces of her two sisters. ‘Would you like us to have it here?’ She noticed the relief that momentarily flickered in their eyes. Of course they’d want her to hold the party there! Had a squirrel got a fluffy tail?

‘Won’t you find it a lot of trouble?’ asked Anna, feeling slightly guilty. ‘All the catering and everything?’

‘We’ll help,’ said Jennifer quickly, anxious that her sister shouldn’t change her mind. ‘We’ll do all sorts of baking and cooking, won’t we, Anna?’

Anna’s heart sank at the thought of baking and cooking in her non-existent spare time. She needn’t have worried.

‘No problem,’ assured Rebecca. ‘We’ll get caterers.’

‘Should it be an evening or a lunch party?’ Anna asked.

‘Lunchtime,’ said Rebecca without even hesitating. ‘Dad will want his grandchildren there and I certainly couldn’t cope with five tired and over-excited children whining all evening. The children will also be jolly useful at a lunch party. They can hand round sausage rolls and crisps and generally make themselves useful.’

Jennifer nodded in agreement. ‘The twins would certainly enjoy that. Especially if your boys were here as well.’

Neil and Jennifer had five-year-old twin girls who hero-worshipped Ted and Rebecca’s three boys who were aged ten, eight and six.

‘Now, Anna,’ said Rebecca, not wanting her sister to feel left out of all this family talk, ‘tell us about this man you went out with yesterday. We want to know all about him. Is he a doctor like you?’

Anna’s stomach clenched. She knew that Rebecca wouldn’t have forgotten about her date the previous evening. It had just been a matter of when, not if, she’d mention it.

‘He’s a consultant at the Royal,’ she said. ‘He specialises in accident and emergency and that’s where we met.’

Two pairs of hazel eyes were turned on her like beams from a car’s headlights.

‘And?’ they asked together, expectantly.

‘We went out to a concert last night. That’s all there is to it.’ Anna took a gulp of the remains of her coffee. It was cold, but drinkable.

‘Anna Craven, you are infuriating,’ said Rebecca. ‘Jennifer and I talk about our husbands and our previous boyfriends and all sorts of interesting things like that! Why can’t you be the same as us?’

‘Because I’m not,’ said Anna, groaning inwardly.

‘This is the first man you’ve mentioned for months,’ said Jennifer. ‘Rebecca and I were only saying that you didn’t seem to have had a boyfriend for ages and ages. We decided it was because you work too hard.’

‘I did have a boyfriend until quite recently,’ she said, deciding to throw them a few stale morsels of gossip.

‘You never said!’ exclaimed Jennifer. ‘So who was he and what happened? Was he also a doctor?’

‘No, he wasn’t. He was a bastard.’

Their mouths fell open at her vehemence. ‘Language, Anna!’ said Rebecca in mock horror.

‘I went out with him for six months, he broke my heart and now it’s all over. That’s all I’m going to say. I’ll have another cup of coffee, please.’

The brief outline information about Anna’s former boyfriend appeared to satisfy her sisters’ curiosity. It was more than they normally got out of her. A look of triumph crossed their faces as Jennifer held the cup for Rebecca to pour Anna fresh coffee.

Before the meeting finished they opened up their diaries and fixed a date for the party—a Sunday lunchtime—which was, conveniently, their father’s actual birthday. As she left her sister’s house to drive home, Anna felt a little triumphant herself. By telling her sisters the ancient history of her relationship with Liam, she’d headed them off at the pass. They’d completely forgotten about the new man in her life— which was how Anna was beginning to think of Jack. The new man in her life!

She sighed contentedly as she drove home. Only a few more hours and she’d be seeing him again! Yesterday, as he’d dropped her home after the concert, he’d asked her out again. He’d kissed her and then walked her to her front door—where he’d kissed her again. As he’d held her body close, a languorous warmth had flooded through her. Then he’d gone, walking briskly back to his car and driving away the moment he’d seen her go safely through the door.

Anna had appreciated that he’d seemed to sense that she was unsure about inviting him in for a coffee or a nightcap. The fact that he hadn’t tried to push his luck, as some others might have done, made her appreciate him all the more. He was as sensitive as he was sexy and for Anna that was a winning combination. And he could kiss for Britain! Her lips were still tingling at the memory of those two blissful kisses. She tried to recall what it had been like kissing Liam but for the life of her she couldn’t remember! One thing was for sure—she was definitely over her former boyfriend, hence the way she was able to talk about him to her sisters.

* * *

The following day, Saturday, Anna wasn’t rostered to work and so she didn’t need to go in to the hospital— but she was on call. She’d arranged to go to the movies with Jack when her on-call hours had finished. She pottered about in the flat, doing all the household chores she never got time to do during her working week. She’d just put a load of sheets and towels into the washing machine when she got a call from the hospital.

‘Road traffic accident,’ said the duty nurse. ‘Three cars involved, eight passengers, three badly hurt. We need you here, Dr Craven.’

When she arrived at the A and E she was directed to Resus Two where an injured woman was being attended by a junior doctor and two nurses. The young doctor was relieved when Anna took over the patient. He gave the verbal history.

‘Middle-aged woman, multiple fractures to both femurs, massive blood loss. We’re transfusing her with O-neg—no time to do a blood match. Her breathing’s shallow, pulse weak.’

As Anna attended to her patient she asked, ‘What about the other casualties? I heard there were eight people in the crash, three of them badly injured.’

‘Dr Harvey is in Resus One with one of them—a man with a suspected ruptured spleen. The other patient was in Resus Three…had a fatal heart attack on the table. Of the five other people brought in, three children and two adults, most have only minor wounds and abrasions. They’re being seen to by the nurses and a junior doctor.’

When Anna and her team had stabilised the woman with the multiple leg injuries and sent her up to Theatre in the care of the orthopaedic registrar, she went into Resus One to see if she could be of assistance to Jack.

Jack turned round momentarily.

‘Hi, Anna. I could do with another pair of hands. Could you transfuse some O-neg and monitor fluids? We’ve sedated the patient because he was in tremendous pain. He had a large swelling on his abdomen. We suspect a ruptured spleen. I’m preparing him for emergency surgery because if it is a ruptured spleen we’ll have to send him to Theatre straight away. Theatre and the surgical team have been alerted. I think a surgeon is coming down to take a look.’

Anna got straight to work, hooking the bagged units onto the transfusion pole and finding a suitable point on the patient’s arm to insert the lead. She was concentrating so hard that it was only when she’d secured the line that she glanced up at the patient’s face. She gave a short gasp and continued staring at the lifeless body on the trolley. ‘I know him! He’s my brother-in-law, Ted Jarvis.’

Jack looked up in surprise. ‘Well, if you’d rather not be involved, being a relative, I’ll call for other assistance.’

Anna shook her head. ‘You need me—there’s nobody else available. The resus rooms are all busy.’

Mr Taylor, the surgeon, arrived and Jack apprised him of the situation. ‘We haven’t a moment to lose,’ he said. ‘We need to assess how bad the injury is— exactly what the problem is—and then get him up to surgery as quickly as we can.’

Mr Taylor quickly put on some latex gloves then looked at the swollen abdomen and felt the area gently. He looked up at the blood-pressure monitor and saw that Ted’s blood pressure was dropping rapidly. ‘I think you’re right. It’s probably a badly ruptured spleen, but we won’t know until we open him up. The sooner, the better.’

‘By the way, the patient is Dr Craven’s brother-in-law,’ Jack said, indicating Anna.

The surgeon looked up in interest. ‘Do you happen to know his blood group?’

‘No, I’m sorry, I don’t,’ she replied. ‘We’ve been transfusing O-neg.’

‘OK, we’ll stick to the O-neg. Let’s take him up. We’ll try to repair it—but spleens are notoriously difficult to repair, even a surgeon of my skill,’ he said, giving Anna an arrogant wink.

As the team wheeled the trolley towards the lift, a dreadful thought occurred to Anna. Had her sister been in the car with Ted? And if so, what had happened to her? She didn’t know why she hadn’t thought about it before, possibly because she’d been so engrossed in helping to save Ted’s life.

‘The patient who died in one of the other resuscitation rooms…the myocardial infarction,’ she said, hardly daring to ask, ‘was it a man or a woman?’

‘Don’t know,’ Jack said, removing his surgical gloves.

‘I need to know,’ said Anna. ‘I need to know if it was my sister because she might have been in the car with Ted.’

Jack reacted immediately. ‘Will someone go and find out, please? As quickly as possible,’ he instructed.

‘I’ll go,’ said one of the nurses.

‘Thanks,’ said Anna, directing her gratitude towards Jack.

The nurse who’d volunteered to find out about the heart-attack victim was gone for a few minutes before returning and telling Anna that the patient was male; at the same time Rebecca came bursting into A and E in a state bordering on hysteria.

‘What’s happened?’ she called out to the girl behind the triage desk. ‘What’s happened to my husband? The police have just been round to my house and said there’s been an accident and—’

At that instant she saw Anna in her blood-splattered white coat holding Ted’s designer loafers and his distinctive blue shirt. She let out a cry of distress.