Читать книгу Secrets of a Career Girl - Carol Marinelli, Carol Marinelli - Страница 6

‘WHERE THE HELL is X-ray?’ Penny snapped at Jasmine the next afternoon, just as she would to anyone—they weren’t sisters here and no feelings were spared.

They were struggling to stabilise a patient in congestive heart failure who wasn’t responding to the usual treatment regimes. John Douglas had presented to the department struggling to breathe, his heart beating dangerously fast and his lungs overloaded with fluid. It was a common emergency that Penny was more than used to dealing with, but what was compounding the problem was that John was also a renal patient and undergoing regular dialysis at a major city hospital so Penny was trying to sort out the far higher drug doses that were needed in his case.

‘I’m just going to lean you forward, John,’ Penny said, and listened again to her patient’s chest. The oxygen saturation machine was bleeping its alarm. Vanessa, another nurse, returned with John’s blood-gas results and it was confirmed to Penny that things were really grim. She had already paged the medics to come down urgently and was now considering putting out a crash call, because even though he hadn’t gone into cardiac arrest he was very close.

‘Give him another forty milligrams,’ Penny called out to Jasmine, though she wasn’t cross when Jasmine hesitated. ‘He’s a renal patient,’ Penny explained, ‘so he’ll need massive doses of diuretics.’

Still, Penny was concerned about the amount of medication she was having to give and was carefully checking the drug guide, wishing the medics would hurry up and get there. She had just decided to put out a crash call when Ethan approached.

‘Problem?’ Ethan asked, and Penny quickly brought him up to speed.

‘He’s not responding,’ Penny said. ‘And neither are the medics to their fast page. I’m going to call the crash team.’

‘Hold off for just a moment.’ Ethan scanned the drug sheet to see what had been given. He had just come from working a rotation in the major renal unit in a city hospital, so he was familiar with the drug doses required in a case like this and he quickly examined the patient. ‘He needs a large bolus.’

Ethan saw Penny’s face go bright red as he took over the patient’s care. ‘Penny, where I worked before …’ He didn’t really have time to explain things and he wasn’t about to compromise patient care by pandering to Penny’s fragile ego—she was spitting with rage, Ethan could see it. In fact, he was tempted to lick his finger and put it onto her flaming cheek just so that he could hear the hiss.

‘Go ahead,’ came Penny’s curt response, and she thrust the patient notes into his hands and walked off quickly.

‘Have we ordered a portable chest X-ray?’ he asked Jasmine.

‘It’s supposed to be on its way,’ Jasmine answered.

‘You’re going to be okay, sir.’ Ethan listened to his chest and considered calling the crash team himself.

He could see Jasmine was blushing too at her sister’s little outburst and was sorely tempted to ask Jasmine just what the hell her sister’s problem was, though of course Ethan knew. Well, he wasn’t just going to stand back, and if Penny didn’t like it, she’d better start getting used to it. Penny Masters was an absolute … Ethan kept the word in his head as he saw the fluid start to gush into the catheter bag. The patient’s oxygen saturations started to rise slowly. He was just ordering some more morphine when the radiographer arrived for the chest X-ray, along with a much calmer-looking Penny.

‘Thanks for that,’ she said, completely unable to look him in the eye. She had fled to her office, which had a small sink in it, and splashed her face with cold water and run her wrists under the tap. Penny would never have left the patient had Ethan not been there, but she had never had a hot flash so severe. She knew that Ethan was less than impressed, especially when, without a further word, he stalked off.

‘Are you okay?’ Jasmine checked as they waited outside while the patient was being X-rayed, Vanessa staying in with him.

‘Of course I’m not.’ Rarely for Penny, she was close to tears. ‘He thought I was cross at him for making suggestions and that I just walked off in a temper.’

He’d thought exactly that, Jasmine knew. She had seen the roll of his tongue in his cheek and the less than impressed rise of Ethan’s brows. ‘Penny, if people just knew—’

‘What?’ Penny interrupted. ‘Do you really think that I’m going to explain to him that I just had a hot flash?’

Penny was mortified—absolutely and completely mortified. The down-regulation medication to stop her own cycle was in full effect, and she had a splitting headache as well, another of the side effects. The headache she could deal with, but for a woman who was usually so able to keep things in check, the rip of heat that had seared through her face and the rapid flutter of her heart in her chest had felt appalling. She had hardly been able to breathe in there but she had absolutely no intention of telling Ethan Lewis why. ‘Do you really think that Neanderthal would be understanding?’

‘Neanderthal?’ Jasmine grinned in delight at her sister’s choice of word.

‘Just leave it,’ Penny snapped.

Ethan didn’t leave it, though.

Before heading for home, he passed her office, where Penny sat busily writing up her notes. She was sitting very straight, like some schoolmarm, Ethan thought as he knocked a couple of times on her open door.

In fact, it was rather like walking into the headmistress’s office as those cold blue eyes lifted to his and gave him a very stern stare.

‘What time are you on till?’ Ethan asked.

‘Midnight,’ Penny answered—she knew that he hadn’t just popped in for a chat.

‘How is Mr Douglas doing now?’

‘He’s a lot better, but the medics are still stabilising him and then he’ll be transferred so he can have his dialysis.’ She wished he would just leave; she really didn’t want to discuss what had taken place. ‘Thank you for your help with him.’

‘It didn’t feel very welcome.’ Ethan waited a moment, but Penny said nothing, just turned her attention back to her notes and, no, he would not just leave it. ‘What the hell happened back there, Penny?’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘I think that you do,’ came Ethan’s swift retort. ‘If there is an issue then it’s time that we discussed it.’

‘There is no issue.’

Ethan begged to differ. She was the most difficult woman that he had ever met and he’d met a lot of women! Yes, she was a fantastic doctor. Ethan had no qualms there, and in fact he was quietly surprised, having seen her work, that she hadn’t been given the consultant’s position. He could well understand how angry she must be, but somehow they had to work together and if she was going to storm off every time he stepped in on a consultation, something had to be said. ‘We have to work together, Penny.’

‘I’m aware of that.’

‘Which means that at times we’ll disagree.’

‘I’m aware of that too.’ Her face was starting to burn again, but from embarrassment this time. ‘Look, thank you for stepping in with Mr Douglas, it was much appreciated. I’m not as familiar as I would like to be with renal patients so I’m very pleased that you were there. We do seem to have our wires crossed, though.’ She gave tight smile. ‘I wasn’t cross or upset.’ She saw his incredulous look.

‘You walked off.’

Penny said nothing, just stared at this huge, very masculine man. She didn’t know how to tell him and she didn’t really want to try, except her silence invited him to continue speaking.

‘I wasn’t trying to take over. You seem to have formed an opinion that I’m—’

‘Formed an opinion?’ Penny stopped him right there. ‘I’m actually a bit busy in my life right now. I haven’t had time to think, let alone form an opinion of you.’

His lips twitched almost into a smile at her not-too-subtle putdown. ‘Oh, but I think that you have,’ Ethan said, and there and then he took the gloves off. He’d tried niceness, he’d tried politeness, he’d accepted that the situation might be a little difficult for her, but at the end of the day Penny needed to get over it and accept that he had been given the job. ‘Do you know what, Penny? I’m starting to form an opinion of you, and your behaviour this afternoon is leading me to think it might be the right one.’

‘Whatever!’ Penny hadn’t got this far in her career on charm. To do her job you needed to be tough and she certainly wasn’t there to make friends. ‘You carry right on forming your opinion of me and, while you do, I’ll get back to my patients.’ Penny stood. ‘Or is there anything else you want to discuss?’

‘Nothing that won’t keep.’

She brushed past him and he was terribly tempted to catch her as she walked past, to turn her round and just have the row that was so clearly needed. Perhaps it was wiser to just let it go, Ethan thought, letting out a rare angry breath as he heard her heels clip down the corridor, but he turned at the sound of Lisa’s voice. ‘There he is.’

‘Kate?’ Ethan smiled when he saw that Lisa was with his sister, wondered, albeit briefly, what on earth she was doing at his workplace, and then properly read her face. ‘One of the kids …’

‘The kids are fine, Ethan.’ She took a breath and he knew what was coming. ‘It’s Phil—we need to get to the hospital.’ And still his brain tried to process things kindly. He waited for her to smile, to hold up crossed fingers and to say ‘this is it,’ that a heart had been found for their cousin, but she just looked at him. ‘Carl’s watching the kids. We need to hurry and get there.’

No, it would seem that Phil wasn’t going to get that heart.

Ethan was glad that Kate hadn’t told him by phone, realised that had he not stopped to talk to Penny he could have been sitting in his car, stuck on the packed Beach Road and finding out that Phil was about to die.

‘I’ll meet you there.’ He was already heading to his office to grab his car keys but Kate shook her head. She knew how close Ethan and Phil were.

‘I’ll drive.’

It was just as well that she did, because the rush-hour traffic didn’t care that there was somewhere they needed to be. Ethan could feel his temper building as they inched towards the hospital, could sense the mounting urgency, especially when his mother called to see how far away they were.

‘A couple of minutes,’ Ethan said.

‘Get here,’ came his mother’s response.

They were pulling into Melbourne Central and again Ethan was very glad that Kate had been driving. He was grateful that there was no competition in the grief stakes between him and his twin—she knew that he and Phil were like brothers. Kate dropped him off at the main entrance and then went to find a place to park the car as Ethan ran through the hospital building, desperate to get to his cousin in time, still holding a small flame of hope that something could yet be done.

It was extinguished even before he got to Phil’s room.

Because standing outside was Phil’s ex-wife, Gina, and unless he was dying she’d never be there otherwise. She’d be sitting outside in the canteen as she usually did when she brought Justin in to visit. It had been a wretched divorce and Phil’s parents hadn’t exactly been kind in their summing up of Gina—and not just behind her back. There had been some terrible arguments too.

‘Gina,’ he said, but she just flashed him a look that said he was a part of the Lewis family and could he please just stay back.

‘I’m here for Justin,’ Gina said, and Ethan nodded and went in the room. His eyes didn’t first go to Phil but to Justin. Ethan could see the bewilderment and fear on the little boy’s face as Vera and Jack, Phil’s parents, told him to be brave. Ethan felt his head tighten, wanted to tell them to stop, but then his eyes moved to the bed and to his cousin and there wasn’t even time to say to Phil all he wanted to.

It was all over by the time Kate arrived.