Читать книгу Miracle Times Two - Josie Metcalfe - Страница 7

‘UM … THANK you for the other night,’ Jenny said, the heat of embarrassment crawling visibly up her throat and into her face.

‘No thanks necessary,’ Daniel Carterton said lightly, guessing that the newest member of his team must have spent the whole of her day off working up to this apology. ‘I just happened to be in the right place at the right time.’ And if she believed that, there was a rather ornate bridge in central London on special offer.

He’d chosen his seat at the banquet honouring her father so that he could lighten the boredom of the affair by catching glimpses of Jenny across the room. That self-indulgence had been the only reason why he’d noticed the surreptitious way her companion had been topping up her glass throughout the evening. His suspicions were raised by the smug look of satisfaction on the man’s face when Jenny had been less than steady on her feet when she’d finally got up from the table, but that didn’t stop him from feeling almost like a stalker when he’d decided to follow them to make sure she arrived home safely.

‘Do you want to answer that thing?’ Daniel asked as Jenny’s phone rang.

‘Not in this lifetime,’ she said grimly after a glance at the screen, silencing the noise with a press of a button to send the call direct to voicemail. ‘And if I knew how to bar him from connecting with my mobile at all, I’d be happier still.’

‘Trouble in paradise, Jennywren?’ he teased, knowing he should go straight to hell for crossing his fingers that he was right. Jenny Sinclair was a genuinely lovely person who deserved a happy life with someone her equal … something he could never be. He’d been born so far on the other side of the tracks that he couldn’t even hear the train from there.

And it certainly wouldn’t make any difference that he’d worked his cotton socks off to become one of the youngest consultants in his field. As someone who’d only scraped into one of the lesser medical schools at his second attempt, he wouldn’t stand a chance of gaining her parents’ approval. Their blatant professional elitism meant that the fact that he’d been self-supporting and working crazy hours to earn every penny necessary to put himself through his training would count for nothing … even if he were ever to tell them about it. It certainly wouldn’t make them look any more favourably on him for daring to look at their daughter.

So, he’d resigned himself to the fact that the only woman who could make his heart give that extra beat just by thinking about her was the one he could never have.

Well, if he was forever condemned to the role of colleague, occasional guardian angel and potential friend, he might just as well enjoy it while he could. Since Jenny had joined his unit he’d already seen a number of men make a blatant play for her, but without apparent success. Whoever was trying to ring her wasn’t going to fare any better, if the expression on her face was anything to go by, but it wouldn’t be long before another took his place, not with someone as special as his little Jennywren.

Except … there was something different, this time. A shadow that hadn’t been there before?

‘Come on. Spill the beans,’ he coaxed lightly, knowing he was venturing into new ground. ‘Which one’s causing a problem? Tell big brother all about it.’

‘Big brother?’ She threw him an old-fashioned look from those fascinating hazel eyes before she pondered darkly for a moment.

He was almost holding his breath hoping she would confide in him when she suddenly burst into speech.

‘It’s Colin Fletcher,’ she revealed grimly. ‘He’s obviously so thick-skinned that he can’t take a hint … even after you sent him off with a flea in his ear the other night.’

‘That man was Colin Fletcher? As in, your father’s blue-eyed boy, Fletcher?’ That did surprise him. He knew the name from hospital gossip but hadn’t realised the man had been Jenny’s escort that night. He was reputed to be a born social climber from an apparently well-to-do family, and it had been hinted that the man had his eye set firmly on taking over Jenny’s father’s prestigious position at the hospital, to say nothing of inheriting his lucrative private practice when the great man could be persuaded to retire. It was now blindingly obvious to Daniel that, as his son-in-law, Fletcher would be the obvious choice, and if he were to have a glowing recommendation from the great man himself, it would practically make any interviews for a replacement unnecessary.

He saw her shudder with something more than distaste in her expression, and knowing that she was remembering what had happened that night, every protective instinct leapt to attention.

‘He must be the slimiest, most insincere, self-serving … weasel in the whole hospital,’ she continued heatedly, sparks almost radiating from her. ‘He insisted on holding me to the arrangement to sit at my parents’ table at that big “do” the other night—in spite of the fact we weren’t going out any more. He then plastered himself to my side as if we were Siamese twins, and even though I never have more than two glasses of wine when I go out, he must have been topping up my glass on the sly all evening, so he’d have the perfect excuse to see me home.’

‘You’d already told him you wouldn’t be going out with him any more?’ Daniel gave her points for working out exactly what had happened at the same time as he added another item to the list of why he didn’t like this Fletcher character. Top of the list was the fact that the man was the immaculately groomed poster boy for the perfect man for Jenny, unlike himself.

‘I’d told him in words of one syllable that I had no intention of ever going out with him again—and that was more than two weeks earlier—so where he got the idea that he had the right to insist on partnering me for the evening … to virtually take over control of my life …’ It did Daniel’s heart good to hear the anger in her voice, knowing she was coping with her near miss. The fact that she was talking about it at all was far better than bottling it up inside, and that she was comfortable using him as a confidant …

‘Well, he could hardly leave you to make your own way home if you were three sheets to the wind,’ he pointed out, trying to be fair even while he was rejoicing, inside, that she’d obviously seen through the little toady.

‘I suppose not, even if it was his fault for topping up my glass without asking.’

Just the thought that the man might have set the whole thing up deliberately, that he had been within seconds of locking the two of them in Jenny’s flat, was enough to have a red haze of protective fury descend over him, again, and he had to force himself to swallow the bile that rose in his throat at the very idea of this precious unattainable woman being at the mercy of that.

‘I just feel so stupid that I didn’t realise what he was doing until it was nearly too late. I’m just so grateful that you were there to …’

‘No thanks necessary,’ he said, again, hoping she wouldn’t think to ask why he’d ‘just happened’ to be there at that time of night. He could hardly tell her he’d been watching her during the dinner and had a bad feeling about her escort’s intentions, could he?

‘Well, I certainly won’t be getting into that sort of situation, again, even if it means suffering from dehydration,’ she announced grimly. ‘At least, then, I’d be sober enough to kick him out of my flat.’

‘You? Kick someone out?’ He raised an eyebrow and ran a teasing glance over her slender frame, mentally estimating that, while Colin wasn’t particularly overweight—yet—he must be more than a head taller than she was and weigh at least half as much again. Any future escort was unlikely to be very much smaller, so her chances of overpowering an adult male were virtually nil.

‘Remember, I went to those self-defence classes?’ she prompted, and he almost groaned aloud at the swiftly repressed memory of the one and only time when he’d been cajoled into being her practice partner. He’d barely survived with his sanity intact after an hour of Jenny’s sweetly curvaceous body climbing all over him in her attempts to pin him to the floor.

‘Actually, I probably wouldn’t need to do much more than twist his arm behind his back to frogmarch him to the door. He’d probably be squealing that I was damaging his hand and destroying his career,’ she muttered and he couldn’t help snorting with laughter.

‘The mouse that roared,’ he teased and tapped her on the nose, wishing he dared linger long enough to enjoy the silky texture of her skin, but they could never have that sort of relationship.

‘Hey! Who are you calling a mouse?’ she demanded, smacking his hand away. ‘Not that I’m not grateful for your help, but I’m sure I’d have been able to deal with him if he hadn’t been topping up my glass all evening.’ Then her shoulders slumped and she sighed into her coffee. ‘Unfortunately, he’s been bombarding me with calls, messages and texts ever since. If there was a way I could strong-arm him into leaving me alone …’

‘Do you want me to have a word with him?’ he offered, relishing the thought of even the slightest chance of messing with pretty boy’s perfect dentistry.

‘I couldn’t ask you to do that,’ she said, the light striking coppery sparks off her hair as she shook her head, adding firmly, ‘I’m a grown woman. I should be able to deal with situations like this for myself. Anyway, he’s bound to get tired of it, eventually.’

‘Well, at least I can sort your phone out for you.’ He held out his hand. ‘Tell me the weasel’s number and I’ll set it up so his calls are barred.’

‘How come you know how to do that?’ She pushed the slender gadget across the table with a surprised expression on her face.

‘Perhaps it’s a boy thing,’ he joked and had to duck her retribution as he accessed her contact details and pressed the relevant buttons to refuse all future calls from Colin Fletcher’s mobile even as he added his own number to her phone book. ‘There you are; all done. He’s history.’ He paused a second, but his ingrained sense of honesty forced him to admit what else he’d done. ‘I’ve also put myself as number one on your speed dial—in place of the Chinese takeaway. So if you have any further problems…’

His offer was cut off by the insistent sound of the pager clipped to his belt and he reached for his own phone to return the call.

‘This is Daniel Carterton. You paged me?’ he said tersely, knowing the call was unlikely to be trivial. It very rarely was in his chosen specialty.

‘One of your at-risk mums is on her way in,’ the voice on the other end responded equally crisply. ‘It’s Aliyah Farouk. She says she’s started having contractions.’

‘Send someone down to A and E to bring her straight up to the unit. Whatever you do, don’t let her get trapped down there by the paperwork police. I’ll be there in four minutes.’ He cut the connection before he swore ripely under his breath.

‘Problems?’ Jenny demanded, already on her feet and straightening the hem of her top and smoothing both hands over her hair to ensure it was tidy, all trace of laughter gone from her lively face.

‘Apparently, Aliyah Farouk’s having contractions,’ he said, knowing he didn’t need to say any more to Jenny for her to know the seriousness of the situation.

‘Damn,’ she muttered forcefully. ‘We thought we’d got away with it; that she was finally on the home stretch,’ she added as she followed him out of the door at a rapid clip, and sudden warmth wrapped around his heart that she’d automatically referred to the two of them as we. That was something, he consoled himself as he strode along the corridor. At least he could savour the two of them linked together as we in a work situation.

‘If she is in labour, let’s see if we can do something about slowing things down … at least long enough so we can do something to give the babies’ lungs a chance,’ he said, putting such thoughts to the back of his head with all the other things about Jenny that he had to ignore, like her surprisingly long legs that almost enabled her to keep pace with him. Instead, it was time to concentrate, setting his brain working to produce a list of possible complications that could have sparked this situation with Aliyah.

‘Hi, Aliyah,’ Jenny called as soon as she caught sight of their white-faced patient being wheeled swiftly into the unit by a uniformed paramedic. ‘You love us so much that you couldn’t stay away?’

‘S-something like that,’ the young woman muttered through trembling lips, then burst into noisy sobs. ‘P-please help me,’ she begged, clutching at Jenny’s hand as tears coursed down her elegant cheeks. ‘I can’t lose my babies. I can’t … not after everything we’ve gone through. You must save my little boys, even if you can’t save …’

‘Aliyah, no!’ her darkly handsome husband interrupted fiercely before dropping to his knees in front of the wheelchair. ‘I couldn’t bear to lose you,’ he said before breaking into an impassioned speech in his own language.

‘Jenny …’ said Daniel’s familiar deep voice behind her, and instantly she snapped out of her unexpected fascination with the scene in front of her.

She quickly slipped into her proper role, escorting Aliyah through to Daniel’s examination room and taking her vital signs in preparation for his evaluation of the situation, but that didn’t mean that she couldn’t feel a residual ache of envy for the depth of love between Aliyah and her husband.

‘So, let’s see what’s going on, then, shall we?’ Daniel said as she finished adding the latest findings to Aliyah’s file. ‘Your blood pressure’s up and so is your pulse—which is perfectly logical in a stressful situation—but they shouldn’t be raising your temperature.’

Jenny had thought the same thing and had the necessary vials ready when the decision was made to do a range of blood tests.

‘In the meantime, you say you haven’t been spotting but you have been experiencing pains.’ His dark brows drew together thoughtfully. ‘Shall we do an ultrasound to check up on your little passengers before we do anything else?’

‘Please!’

‘Yes, please!’ The Farouks answered almost simultaneously, making everyone smile in spite of the tension in the room.

‘Well, let me get you a nice big glass of water before we set everything up,’ Jenny said. ‘For some reason, that’s the preferred method of torture used by ultrasound technicians … to make pregnant women waddle around with a baby pressing on a full bladder.’ It was a joke that she often told to pregnant women in an attempt at sidetracking their thoughts, but it rarely worked very well with women as stressed-out as Aliyah Farouk, finally pregnant after a string of unexplained spontaneous abortions.

This whole side of the unit was relatively new to Jenny, who’d spent several years working with the most fragile of their premature babies under the unit’s director, Josh Weatherby. Then Daniel had joined the team, the focus of his attention being the at-risk mothers and babies—those who needed his special skills if they were to have a hope of a successful pregnancy—and she’d found herself fascinated by the new field.

Of course, as soon as word had gone round that he was good-looking, heterosexual and single, there had been much laughter among the existing staff about the sudden influx of nurses wanting to join his specialist side of the unit even if it meant undergoing further training, but for Jenny, that had just been a particularly delicious bonus.

She had decided to take advantage of the opportunity when it was offered, as a way to step back from the constant minute-by-minute stress of caring for babies who could stop breathing at any moment, or suffer from a catastrophic intracranial bleed with very little warning, or develop necrotising enterocolitis, or any one of dozens of other complications.

She hadn’t realised until it was too late that it could be every bit as stressful caring for the pregnant women referred to the unit and the children they were fighting to carry, especially as she grew to know them over the weeks of their pregnancy. Anyway, by the time she’d realised it, she was hooked on the job and the delight of working with someone as focused and professional as Daniel. The fact that he also had a wicked sense of humour and was one of the best-looking and sexiest members of staff, causing a spike in her pulse rate whenever he entered a room, had absolutely nothing to do with it.

Aliyah Farouk had been one of the first patients she had met in the at-risk category, and she’d immediately warmed to the woman, feeling an empathy for her desire to continue with her legal work as long as possible. It had been during a wait for an earlier ultrasound that Aliyah had confided the details of her battle with her ultra-traditional parents to be allowed to study the law that had struck a chord with Jenny’s own battles after her decision to become a nurse rather than follow her parents’ preferred route as a third-generation doctor.

‘Let’s see if we can get a clear picture, yet,’ the ultrasound technician said a while later as she squirted a small mound of clear pale blue gel on the neat swell of Aliyah’s belly. ‘And there’s absolutely no truth to the rumour that we keep that gel in the fridge so we can shock the baby into running around.’

A shoulder pressed firmly against hers as Jenny craned her neck to see the shadowy image appearing on the screen and she didn’t need to glance at the lean muscled body or draw in the mixture of soap, hospital laundry starch and warm man to know that it was Daniel standing beside her. Her galloping pulse had already told her that.

‘Well, baby one is still definitely there,’ the technician said as she gestured towards the patterns of dark and light that differentiated between foetus and the surrounding water and maternal tissues. ‘And there’s a second very healthy heart there, too. Listen.’

The rapid patter of two foetal heartbeats, one after the other, filled the room and one of the little creatures suddenly seemed to react to the fact that they were all intruding on what should have been a private place, almost seeming to wave a fist at them.

‘All right, little ones,’ the technician chuckled as she tapped the necessary buttons to record the scan and silence the Doppler. ‘We’ve seen that you’re both safe and sound in there, so we’ll go away and leave you in peace, now.’

Aliyah burst into noisy sobs of relief and Jenny was certain that there was a suspicious gleam in her stoic husband’s eye, too, as he cradled her dark head against his shoulder.

‘So, if there is nothing wrong with the babies, why is Aliyah having pains?’ he demanded, apparently only allowing his fear to show now that his wife couldn’t see his face. ‘Is there something wrong with her?’

‘That’s what we’re trying to find out with the tests we’ve taken,’ Daniel explained calmly. ‘It shouldn’t be long before we have the first of the results back.’

‘Now that the ultrasound’s been done, it would be a good time to do some urine tests, too,’ Jenny suggested. ‘Aliyah’s probably desperate for the bathroom by now.’

‘Good idea,’ Daniel agreed. ‘And then, could we find her a comfortable place to rest until we know what’s going on?’

‘You think I need to stay in hospital?’ The idea clearly horrified her. ‘You think it’s something so serious that I can’t go home?’

‘I’ve no idea at the moment,’ he said and Jenny registered that, although she hadn’t known Daniel for very long, in that time he’d never been anything less than absolutely honest with a patient. ‘But it would be a good idea if you tried to stay as calm as possible until we get all the results, if only for the sake of your blood pressure. It would be better for the babies, too.’

‘And for me,’ her harried husband added.

Jenny stayed until Aliyah was as settled as she was going to be in one of the side rooms closest to Daniel’s office, adding her voice to the young woman’s when she urged her husband to go back to the important business meeting he’d been called out of.

‘Your wife and baby are safe here,’ she pointed out logically. ‘They’re surrounded by doctors and nurses, and if it’s a problem caused by some sort of infection, the antibiotics we’ve given her will already be starting to do their job.’

‘I have this mask to hand if the pains return,’ Aliyah added as she held up the clear plastic face mask attached to the Entonox. ‘And anyway, this is a room where I can have my mobile switched on, so I can call you or receive your calls whenever you wish.’

It took several minutes of reassurance and then several more supplying the suddenly tearful woman with tissues after her husband left before Jenny was free to set off in search of Daniel.

She found him just as he was reaching for a piece of paper being spat out by the printer.

‘Please, tell me that’s the preliminary report from the lab and it’s just a simple waterworks infection; bladder or kidney, I don’t mind which, just as long as there’s nothing wrong with the pregnancy,’ she demanded and was rewarded with a broad grin.

‘Your every wish is my command,’ he said with a flourishing bow, then handed her the paper to add to Aliyah’s file. ‘Obviously, there hasn’t been time to isolate the particular bug causing the problem, but as we put her on trimethoprim in the interim …’

‘She could have relief from her symptoms within an hour,’ Jenny finished for him.

‘Within one to four hours,’ he temporised. ‘It would probably be quicker relief with ciprofloxacin, but that’s not so good for the pregnancy.’

He went on to run through the progress on several other cases, but Jenny suddenly knew that he was feeling every bit as relieved and delighted with the prospects for Aliyah’s pregnancy as she was.

The realisation was so unexpected that, for a moment, she completely lost track of what Daniel was saying.

Was she just imagining that she could read his feelings, or was she actually beginning to be able to see beyond the cheerfully professional persona he showed the world?

It was always unlikely that one person could be that unfailingly even-tempered and still be human, and that opened up a whole new world of possibilities in the mystery of the gorgeous specimen of masculinity that was Daniel Carterton. Possibilities such as, if his smiles were a camouflage for other, deeper thoughts, was he hiding secrets … and if so, what sort of secrets?

Not that it would ever be something dark—such as Colin’s underhanded ploy to get her alone when he obviously cared very little for her other than the fact of who her father was.

No. If Daniel had secrets they would be … what?

‘What?’ the man in question echoed, snapping her out of her crazy thoughts and into the real world and the recognition that she had absolutely no idea what he was talking about.

‘What?’ she repeated, feeling stupid and horribly afraid that she was going to blush.

‘That’s what I asked you,’ he said with a puzzled frown. ‘You were just standing there, staring at me as if you were trying to unravel the secrets of the universe on the end of my nose.’

She closed her eyes for a second, grateful that at least he hadn’t realised it was those gorgeous deep blue eyes and their unfairly long lashes she’d been gazing at, or the rogue curl of dark hair curving forward onto his forehead as he worked his way through the basket of correspondence waiting for his attention.

One envelope contained a photograph of a perfect set of twins, obviously identical, even down to the slightly cross expression on their faces, and she couldn’t help chuckling.

‘Anybody you know?’ she asked.

‘Their mother was one of the earliest patients I saw when I came to work here—before you joined the unit,’ he said and reached for a manila folder standing beside his computer to slip the photo inside with what looked like quite a few others.

‘Are they all your babies in there?’ she demanded, holding out a hand for the folder before she thought how intrusive he might find it.

‘Sometimes parents send me a picture to let me know their babies have arrived safely,’ he said, upending the folder in the middle of his desk to reveal dozens of babies, from the smallest, wrinkliest preemie to some that looked to be at least three months old when they were born.

‘Why have you got all these hidden away?’ she demanded as she spread them out across his paperwork. ‘These should all be on display somewhere.’

‘On display?’ He looked as if the idea had never crossed his mind. ‘Why?’

‘For reassurance,’ she said impatiently. ‘You deal with at-risk mums and babies, so you have a far higher mortality rate than an ordinary Obs and Gynae department. Most parents–to-be come here expecting the worst and it would be so good if the first thing they saw when they came into your room is a whole array of photos of the healthy happy babies you’ve helped on their way … far more babies than the number that don’t survive,’ she pointed out.

His attempt at a response was cut short by the strident ring of the telephone and she’d only taken a couple of steps towards the door to afford him some privacy for the call when the sudden tension in his voice stopped her in her tracks.

‘When? Where? How long ago?’ he snapped out in short order. ‘Well, find out and ring me back as soon as you do. Have you notified Josh Weatherby?’

With the mention of the senior consultant a shiver of dread ran up Jenny’s spine, every hair standing up on end in its wake.

Whatever it was, this did not sound good; not if it involved the man who took charge of all the seriously premature babies or those with peri-natal problems.

‘What’s happened?’ she asked as soon as he took the phone away from his ear.

Her words collided with his as he rapped out, ‘There’s been an accident, right outside the hospital.’

‘Not one of our mums,’ she pleaded, but the grim expression on his face was enough to confirm the bad news.

‘Sheelagh Griffin,’ he said, already tapping to access the young woman’s file on the computer. ‘Apparently, she started spotting heavily and cramping this morning, so her husband insisted on driving her in. He hit a pedestrian as he was turning in through the gates and smashed their car into one of the granite pillars.’

‘Do you need me to come down with you?’ It was a given that he would be going down to A and E to speed the young woman’s admission to the unit, otherwise she could be caught up in the nightmare of paperwork until it was too late to do anything for the precious babies.

‘Stay up here, for now,’ he said after only a moment’s hesitation. ‘I can call you down if I need to, but you’ll be my eyes and ears up here while I’m away.’

Jenny was immensely flattered that he would already think her competent for such a responsibility. She had done extra training for this new position but she was a nurse rather than a doctor—much to her parents’ enduring disappointment.

‘Let me know if you want me to get anything organised,’ she said, startled to realise that what she’d really wanted to say was Hurry back.

And how stupid is that? she berated herself before he was even out of sight. She and Daniel didn’t have that sort of relationship, and there was very little chance that they ever would. After all, no matter what her parents’ narrow-minded view was of people who had risen to the top in spite of starting off at one of the less elite medical schools, Daniel was something of a high-flier, and as such, was stratospherically beyond the reach of a humble nurse, no matter how well trained and good at her job.

Anyway, hadn’t Daniel categorised their relationship just a short while ago when he’d invited her to ‘tell big brother’ about her troubles?

Colleague … little sister … friend, perhaps? She might slot into several niches in Daniel’s life, but there was very little chance that he would be interested in seeing her in a role that she was only now beginning to realise might be the one she really wanted.

The phone rang stridently at her elbow, snapping her out of her pointless reflections and doubling her pulse rate with the expectation that she would hear Daniel’s voice when she answered it. It was a complete letdown to realise that the caller had simply been connected to the wrong department.

‘Jenny?’ Daniel’s voice behind her had her whirling to face him, the first of at least a dozen questions on the tip of her tongue until she saw his face.

‘Daniel? What’s happened?’ she demanded, automatically reaching out to take his arm. ‘Are you ill?’ He looked positively grim, and in the short time he’d been away from the department, his face had somehow become hollow-looking, his eyes filled with shadows.

‘I was too late to do anything to slow down Sheelagh’s labour,’ he said bluntly, and she could hear the same defeated tone that always emerged in his voice whenever something happened to one of their special babies, but this time there was something more, something infinitely darker.