Читать книгу Emergency: Wife Lost and Found - Carol Marinelli, Carol Marinelli - Страница 8

CHAPTER TWO

‘SHE WAS UNRESPONSIVE when they found her, but she had did have a pulse. She arrested when we moved her from the vehicle,’ the paramedic informed them as they raced into Resus.

‘Do we have an ID?’

As she transferred the patient over to the resuscitation bed it was May who asked the question when James didn’t—he was still massaging the chest, even though Lavinia had offered to take over.

‘From the driving licence in the car we have a Lorna McClelland, thirty-two years of age, from Scotland; she’s a doctor apparently…’

‘How was she missed?’ It was the first time James had spoken since her arrival, and it was an irrelevant question really. She had been found, she was ill, for now all they could deal with was what presented, and May frowned as James persisted with the pointless. ‘How could she have been missed?’

‘I’m not sure,’ the paramedic answered. ‘We just got a callout twenty-five minutes ago. Mind you, it’s been chaos out there.’

Instead of the emergency consultant it was Khan, the anaesthetist, who was running the show, flashing lights in the patient’s eyes, frowning up at James as he checked the airway, calling for drugs, and at that moment May stepped in. She had no idea what was wrong with James, but she would find out later. He was standing there, massaging the chest, as grey as sheet metal and instead of assessing the patient and commencing active treatment, still there he stood. It happened now and then, May knew that well, where staff just hit a wall. But maybe it was another peril of working in Emergency that was occurring here, May thought as she watched the beads form on his brow. He knew this patient!

‘Abby.’ Pressing the intercom, she summoned the registrar from her break. ‘We need you in Resus. Lavinia,’ May ordered, ‘take over the massage.’

He stood and watched, half heard May say to Abby something about James not feeling too good, but all he could really hear was the sound of gushing in his ears, and the blip, blip, blip of the cardiac monitor as Lavinia delivered cardiac massage.

Lorna’s blouse was already undone, her bra cut and pushed to the side. Her boots or shoes had already been taken off, where they had attempted IV access. They were slicing through her soaked clothes with scissors, sheering through her torn stockings and underwear. He could see the scars from her operation and it made him want to weep, but instead he just stood there, watching them lift her pale knees and insert a catheter, knowing how much she would hate all this, tempted to tell them to just leave her alone, tempted to pick her up and run, but wanting them to carry on as well.

‘Go to the on-call room,’ May said to him. ‘James, go to the on-call room, you look as if you’re about to pass out.’

‘I’m staying…’

He’d never felt more useless in his life. As an emergency consultant he was accustomed to crises, but to have her slam back into his life like this, he was literally paralysed. She was so white. Lorna had always been pale, yet now she was as white as the sheet she was lying on. Even her lips were white. The only colour on the bed was her hair, thick, long and red still, so she hadn’t dyed it after all. In fact, she hadn’t changed at all. This fragile, slender little thing was just as he remembered her, and the Lorna he’d known was such a private person she would loathe the intrusion on her body very much. The warming unit had been pushed aside as full access to her body was needed. Abby was here now, taking over, asking for peritoneal lavage—where a bag of warmed fluids would be run into her abdominal cavity. The anaesthetist called for an oesophageal warming tube, but then Abby checked the monitor, the fine VF required Lorna be defibrillated. As the first shock was delivered to the frail body, James truly thought he would vomit as her chest lifted off the resus bed.

She didn’t deserve this!

May didn’t just tell him to leave again, she took him. There were plenty of experienced staff in with the patient now and guiding him by the arm through the department as if he were sleepwalking, she took him into his office and sat him at his desk, where he put his head in his hands.

‘Stay in there with her,’ James said, hating being away yet knowing it was right that he was. There wasn’t a hope in hell of being objective with her care. He’d never been able to be objective where Lorna was concerned, so how could he possibly start now? But the thought of her alone, the thought of him not being there for her when she needed him most, had him halting May as she turned to go. ‘May, if they stop…’

‘I’ll come and get you.’

‘Before they stop,’ James added.

‘Of course.’

‘What’s wrong with James?’ Abby frowned, looking up briefly as May made her way back to the resuscitation area.

‘He’sbeen here since 3 a. m.,’ May shrugged. She certainly wasn’t going to fuel the fire! ‘He mentioned he didn’t feel well when we were waiting for the ambulance.’

There was no time to dwell on a consultant missing in action, though.

An hour in, May rang her husband and told him she’d be really late now and to go ahead and have dinner..

Very late, she told him a couple of hours later when she got the chance to ring again.

James had been right with his prediction—it was a long resuscitation.

The rapid warming did its job and then they had to work on getting the heart to beat independently, but for now she had an external pacemaker. Then there was a rapid CT scan, which showed a hairline fracture and cerebral swelling, and while all this was going on the police had tracked down her relatives and informed them of the direness of the situation.

‘What do you think, Abby?’ May asked as they walked back from ICU where the ‘forgotten patient’, as all the news channels were calling her now, lay fighting for her life, with many doctors and nurses fighting for it alongside her. But May had heard the consultant talking and could see it well enough herself. The outlook was dim.

‘Well, she’s been given every chance. And she did arrest at the scene, so that’s something, but still it doesn’t look at all good.’ Abby said, her pretty face serious. ‘Poor woman, she’s my age, you know. Hopefully her parents will get here in time.’

‘She could make it.’ May said. ‘We did get her back.’

‘As what, though?’ Abby said, stopping at a water fountain and filling a small cup with water. ‘We’ve been going for hours, she’s already got a head injury from the accident. I just wonder if we’ve done her any favours. Still…’ She screwed her cup up and tossed it in the bin. ‘At least her family might have a chance to say goodbye.’

And now May had to tell James.

The staff all thought he had gone home sick, so he hadn’t been disturbed.

He was just as she’d left him, sitting at the desk with his head in his hands. He hadn’t even turned on his desk light but the anguish in his face when he looked up to her would stay with May for ever.

‘She’s just been moved to ICU.’ May dragged a chair over and sat beside him. ‘She has some fractured ribs and a small hairline fracture to the skull, but…’ James knew the score, but he still needed to hear it. ‘She did make some movement when her temperature came up but Khan was worried she was about to convulse, so he’s keeping her paralysed and intubated for forty-eight hours. She’s had a CT, which shows cerebral swelling, but really…’

‘We won’t know for a while,’ James finished for her.

‘No, we won’t. But, James…’ She took his hand, because she cared about him, and because he really didn’t need false hope, she made herself say it, ‘It really is minute by minute at the moment. She’s very unstable. Khan’s not optimistic about her chances and neither is Abby. We’re just hoping her parents get here soon. According to the papers in her car she was here in London for an interview. The police just contacted her next of kin—her parents. Apparently they’re on their way.’

‘Great!’ There was a bitter note to his voice that May had never heard from James before.

‘I’m sorry, James.’ May patted his arm then rubbed it, hating to see him like this. ‘You obviously know her.’

‘I haven’t seen her in ten years… I knew something was up, though not with her, of course, but since I got back from the accident…’ His logical, analytical mind just tripped at that point. ‘I knew something was wrong, I knew something wasn’t right—it just doesn’t make sense.’

‘It does to me,’ May said. ‘How many times have we had babies brought in a whisper from death because their mums suddenly woke up to check them, or daughter who popped into their dad’s for no real reason only to find him on the floor…’

‘I just knew something was wrong.’

‘And you were right,’ May said, but she couldn’t hold back any longer, she just had to know who this pale red-haired beauty was. ‘Have you worked with her?’ May asked, frowning because she would recognise most of the doctors who had been through the department and certainly Lorna, with her stunning hair, would have stood out, except May couldn’t recall her at all.

‘I knew her from medical school.’

‘That’s right—you went to medical school up in Scotland. Was she in your year?’

James shook his head. ‘No, she was a couple of years below me.’

Even though he was sitting down he still looked as if he was about to pass out and May knew that Lorna must have been more to him that a fellow student a couple of years his junior. One of the downsides of working in Emergency was when friends or relatives came in unexpectedly, and she’d been on duty when James’s own father had suffered a heart attack, yet still he had held it together that day.

He wasn’t holding it together now.

‘Did you used to go out with her?’ May asked gently.

‘A bit more than that.’ James’s voice was suddenly urgent. ‘I need to go and see her, before her parents get here.’

‘Of course,’ May said. ‘I’ll walk up to ICU with you.’ Only she couldn’t hold back the question that was on her mind any longer. They were just past the canteen and turning left for the lifts when May finally cracked and asked what she wanted to know. Yes, she was curious, but it wasn’t just that that had her probing. She wanted to help James just as she did with any friend or relative of a critically ill patient—and to do that, it would help to know.

‘Who is she, James?’

It took till they were in the lift and heading upwards toward ICU for James to answer.

‘She’s my ex-wife.’