Читать книгу Miracle Times Two - Josie Metcalfe - Страница 8

‘ARE the babies still alive? Have they gone to Josh’s unit?’

Even babies that premature were often born alive and a few of them actually pulled through, albeit with a legacy of permanent disabilities, but it was an outside chance that they would have survived anything other than a Caesarean birth.

‘One is.’ Daniel grimaced, silently, the brilliant colour of his dancing blue eyes strangely flat. ‘I’ve admitted Sheelagh into the isolation room overnight. I told her it was in case of complications, but they both know it’s just a matter of time before …’

She nodded her understanding even as she thought that they really should think of a better name for the little suite at the furthest end of the unit. Apparently, that little area had been one of the arrangements Daniel had instigated within the first few days of his appointment—a place where mothers who had lost their babies could stay for monitoring and treatment without fear that their devastation would be made worse by the sights and sounds of pregnant women or healthy newborn babies all around them.

‘Did it happen because of the accident?’ Jenny demanded, something about the tension surrounding him like an electrical field warning her that there was worse news to come.

‘My guess is that one of the babies died in utero and that triggered a spontaneous abortion of both foetuses.’ He sank heavily into the chair and came to rest with his hands tightly linked together on the array of happy photos still spread over the inevitable pile of papers in front of him. He gazed blankly at them for several endless seconds while she fought the urge to go to him and throw her arms around him, to cradle his head against her and ask if there was anything she could do.

‘The person they ran down was Aliyah’s husband,’ he announced rawly, and his devastated expression rocked her back on her heels.

‘Dear Lord,’ she gasped, sinking heavily onto the edge of the nearest chair when her legs refused to support her. ‘Is he …?’ She couldn’t bring herself to say the word, but she didn’t need to for him to know what she was asking.

‘He’s in theatre. Depressed skull fracture, punctured lung, broken leg … you name it, he’s got it,’ he listed grimly and she felt her eyes widen with each additional injury on the list.

‘But he’s still alive?’ she pleaded anxiously.

‘For the moment,’ he agreed and it only took the tone of his voice to know that the prognosis wasn’t good.

Her heart sank like a stone. ‘What are you going to tell Aliyah?’ The image in her head of how tenderly the injured man had been supporting his wife less than an hour ago was so clear that it was almost painful.

‘How on earth was he injured so badly?’ she demanded on a sudden surge of anger for the destruction of such a perfect couple made even more tragic by the fact they were finally expecting the babies they both wanted so badly.

‘Did he forget where he was and step out into the traffic, or …?’

‘Apparently, the Griffiths’ car went out of control and mounted the pavement at the entrance to the hospital. He was slammed against one of the pillars and trapped.’

Jenny winced as she imagined a human head coming into contact with that impressive construction of unforgiving Cornish granite.

‘And I have absolutely no idea what I’m going to say to Aliyah,’ he said finally, his voice as rough as gravel. ‘She’s still shaky after that scare with the baby and we’re waiting for the antibiotics to do their thing. I don’t know whether I should hold off telling her in the hopes that he comes out of surgery with some sort of positive prognosis, or whether I should go to her straight away in case she needs to prepare herself to say her final farewell while he’s still alive.’

‘Or at least given a semblance of life by various machinery,’ she muttered, feeling sickened by the awful possibility.

How would she feel if she were in the same position?

Would she rather know, immediately, that the man she loved had been terribly injured and was not expected to live, and have to agonise for hours imagining what was going on in theatre? Or would she prefer to receive the news after every effort had been made to repair the damage?

‘If she weren’t pregnant …’ Daniel muttered and she knew he was weighing up exactly the same options and trying to balance their patient’s right to know against the increased risk to her pregnancy such a shock might cause.

A sudden unearthly scream from further along the corridor sent all the hairs up on the back of Jenny’s neck.

‘What on earth …?’ She whirled and took off out of Daniel’s office at a fast clip, almost colliding with a young nurse catapulting out of Aliyah Farouk’s room.

‘Nooo!’ The unearthly scream sounded again, then was replaced by a wail that degenerated into inconsolable weeping.

‘What’s going on here?’ Daniel demanded, glaring fiercely at the shocked-looking nurse.

‘I don’t know, s-sir!’ The poor girl’s teeth were almost chattering. ‘Sh-she was trying to phone her husband’s work to leave a message and they said he hadn’t arrived. S-so she said she was going to try his mobile phone and … and …’

Jenny winced as she put two and two together. It didn’t take much to imagine the scene in a busy A and E, especially as her husband’s clothing would have been summarily cut off his body to enable swift access to his injuries. Keeping track of his mobile phone would have been a low priority, everything being stuffed into the same bag for later retrieval.

It was all too easy to imagine the junior member of staff detailed to take charge of yet another patient’s belongings to think it was a good idea to tell a seriously injured patient’s wife that she needed to come to the hospital as soon as possible.

‘Okay, Joanne. Go and get yourself a cup of tea and don’t come back until you’ve stopped shaking. Let someone know where you’re going,’ Jenny said.

‘Th-thank you,’ she stammered, but Jenny was already following Daniel into the room, shutting the door firmly against any intrusion.

She was just in time to see him reach out to the keening woman and gasped in disbelief when Aliyah turned on him like a rabid dog, her eyes wild and her fingers stiffly curved as though ready to rip him to shreds.

‘No, Aliyah, no,’ Daniel said, his deep voice almost crooning as, far from backing away, he stepped straight into the danger zone and wrapped a consoling arm around her shoulders. ‘Gently. Gently,’ he said. ‘This is not good for the babies. Think about those precious babies.’ His words were almost hypnotic in their gentle rise and fall, but it took several racking moments before Aliyah’s devastation would allow her to hear what he was saying.

Suddenly, she flung herself into Daniel’s arms and he had to ease himself onto the side of the bed to support her weight as she sobbed, clearly broken-hearted.

‘Why?’ she wailed at intervals, but there was obviously no answer for the randomness of chance. If her husband had decided not to go back to his office, or if he had decided to leave even a couple of minutes earlier, this would not have happened.

It was only when she finally drew back from Daniel’s comforting hold and looked up at him from tear-swollen eyes she demanded, ‘Why did he have to die before he could even see our sons?’ that Jenny understood the enormity of her devastation.

For a moment, she wondered whether the information was true. Then she put her rational head on and recognised that the person who had answered the phone in A and E was unlikely to have more up-to-date news than Daniel.

Still, she reached for the phone and pressed the relevant numbers.

‘Theatres,’ said a crisply efficient voice when the call was answered.

‘This is Jenny Sinclair calling on behalf of Daniel Carterton,’ she announced. ‘Can you give me an update on Mr Farouk’s surgery? His wife’s a patient in our unit.’

‘Oh, no!’ the voice exclaimed, instantly sympathetic, then, ‘Just give me a minute to check,’ but Jenny wasn’t worried about a moment or two’s delay. It might give Aliyah time to comprehend the fact that her husband hadn’t died at the scene of the accident, as she seemed to believe.

‘Surgery’s still ongoing,’ the voice reported in her ear while she watched Daniel try to calm his patient enough to listen to what he needed to explain. ‘There are three of them working on him at the moment—a thoracic surgeon, an orthopod and a neurosurgeon. They said they’ve managed to stop the bleeding but there’s still a long way to go before they’ll know anything definite. Do you want someone to phone with updates?’

‘Please,’ Jenny confirmed. ‘Updates would be good,’ and she put the phone down.

‘He’s still alive?’ Aliyah breathed with tremulous disbelief, her thick dark lashes clumped by tears. ‘Please, tell me he’s still alive.’

‘So far,’ Jenny cautioned, stepping close enough to take the hand the young woman held out to her. She squeezed it reassuringly between both of hers as she paraphrased the information she’d just been given. ‘So far, they’ve managed to stop him bleeding, but that’s only the first step.’

‘What else do they have to do? When will I be able to see him?’ She flipped back the covers and started to slide her feet over the side of the bed. ‘Please, can I go to him? I need to be with him.’

Daniel had to step in with a doctor’s authority before they could persuade their patient that there was absolutely no point in trailing through the hospital only to have to sit in a surgical waiting room.

‘We’ll probably receive news, here, before you would, there,’ Daniel pointed out. ‘Jenny has arranged for someone in the surgical department to phone through updates as soon as there is anything to tell us.’

‘You promise?’ Her dark eyes flicked frantically from one to the other. ‘You will tell me as soon as you hear anything?’

‘I’ll promise if you’ll promise, too,’ Daniel said firmly, then pointed to the figures on the monitor panel. ‘You must lie back and relax and concentrate on bringing your pulse and blood pressure down, for your babies’ sakes. Do you think your husband would forgive himself if worrying about him damaged your sons?’

The rest of her shift seemed interminable and it almost felt to Jenny as if they were all holding their breath while they waited for news of the surgery.

The report that Aliyah’s husband had survived the removal of several large shards of bone from his brain and that the plate of skull they’d removed to access them would not be replaced until some of the swelling had gone down was the final part in the lengthy process.

Not that surviving the complex operations would guarantee the patient’s survival, and there was still an extremely long way to go before they would even begin to know how much permanent damage his brain had suffered in the impact and its aftermath.

‘Are you as exhausted as I am?’ Jenny demanded as she emerged from the locker room still sliding her arms into the sleeves of her jacket to find Daniel performing almost exactly the same task as he walked towards her.

‘Probably,’ he grumbled. ‘And it’s not as if the day was unusually busy.’

In fact, the unit had been relatively quiet, beyond the usual round of clinics and assessments. Of course, there was an almost electric buzz in the air every time the phone rang, with everyone seeming to hold their breath in case it was news about Sheelagh Griffin’s desperately struggling baby or the outcome of Faz Farouk’s lengthy surgery. It was always that way when one of ‘their’ patients had bad news, and in a unit that saw the highest-risk patients, they saw more sadness than most.

This seemed somehow different, almost as if the whole world was waiting to hear the outcome. And still the tiny baby clung to life as though oblivious to the fact that his fight was doomed to failure, while Aliyah Farouk waited impatiently to be given permission to go to her husband’s side.

‘I never realised that tension could be so draining,’ she said as she automatically fell into step beside him, both of them heading towards the exit after their brief detour to glimpse the tiny scrap that was barely as long as her hand. ‘But I suppose that when everything revs into high gear every time the phone rings …’

‘And your body gets flooded with adrenaline in anticipation of news,’ he added.

‘So your pulse and respiration speed up, causing you to burn up so many calories that you feel completely limp and empty even before the situation resolves itself.’

‘ So, you’re saying that you’re about to collapse with lack of nourishment and are in imminent need of sustenance?’ he asked and she was grateful that he’d changed the topic to something so mundane and normal.

‘How did you guess?’ Jenny pulled a face as she rubbed a hand over the noises coming from her stomach. ‘I know it’s not the best thing nutritionally, but I think I’m going to get a takeaway, for speed.’

‘I could do tagliatelli carbonara, if you’re interested?’ he offered tentatively and she blinked in surprise, then wondered if, like her, he didn’t want to be alone with his thoughts just yet.

She had to squash the bubble of excitement that started to swell inside her at the idea that she’d be spending some off-duty time with him. After all, it hadn’t been so long ago that he’d let her know he saw her as more of a little sister than an attractive woman.

‘How long would I have to wait to eat?’ she demanded, concentrating on looking suspicious. ‘Is that a crafty way of getting me to do the shopping so you’ll have the ingredients to cook?’

‘I’m mortally wounded that you could think me so devious!’ he complained as he stepped aside to allow her to exit the automatic doors first. ‘When have I ever given you cause to think that I’m anything other than honest and straightforward?’

His teasing words died away as she came to a halt, her way blocked by a darkly scowling Colin Fletcher.

‘There’s something wrong with your phone,’ he announced bluntly. ‘I’ve been trying to ring you all day to tell you I’d be picking you up at the end of your shift.’

Jenny swallowed hard, tempted to close her eyes tightly to pretend that the obnoxious man wasn’t standing there, clearly unconcerned that he was about to cause a scene in front of goodness knew how many colleagues, patients and visitors.

‘There’s nothing wrong with my phone,’ she said quietly, not certain whether she was glad to have Daniel’s silent presence at her back or embarrassed that he was a witness to the result of her stupidity in ever agreeing to go out with Colin in the first place.

‘There must be something wrong because I haven’t been able to get through,’ Colin argued with a pointed glance at his watch then a disparaging look at her favourite pair of well-worn jeans. ‘You’ll need to get yourself tidied up enough to go somewhere decent like the Pastorale. I’d better give you a lift to your flat or you’re not going to have enough time to make a good job of it.’

The classy French restaurant that had opened recently at the top end of the high street had quickly made a name for its elegant ambiance and superb cuisine, but it certainly wasn’t the place she wanted to go after a stressful day like today … nor was Colin the company she’d ever choose.

‘Thank you for the invitation, Colin,’ she said, so perfectly politely that even the pickiest manners maven couldn’t have found fault, ‘but I’m really not in the mood for—’

‘Not in the mood!’ he interrupted angrily. ‘Do you realise how exclusive Pastorale is; how hard it was to organise a reservation at such short notice so I could stage the romantic—?’ He stopped himself suddenly, almost as if he’d said more than he’d intended, then continued, sounding angrier than ever. ‘And you’re standing there saying you’re not in the mood?’

‘Excuse me.’ It was Daniel’s turn to interrupt and Jenny almost giggled when the unexpectedness of it left Colin with his mouth agape.

It was tempting to allow the strong silent man at her back to take over for her, but she’d never been one to back down from a battle that was important to her, and this one definitely qualified.

‘Colin, there’s no point in trying to browbeat me into going for a meal with you, because it isn’t going to happen,’ she said firmly.

‘Well, I’d have been able to get hold of you to arrange it properly earlier on today if your phone had been working,’ he began again, but this time she interrupted him herself.

‘There is absolutely nothing wrong with my phone,’ she declared. ‘I’ve already told you that I won’t go out with you, several times, in fact. So I’ve had my phone programmed to refuse any of your calls. Now, if you’ll excuse me, there’s an enormous plate of tagliatelli carbonara with my name on it and I’m starving. Goodnight, Colin.’

Her knees felt rather wobbly as she forced herself to stride briskly past the man, but the matching echo of Daniel’s feet following close behind fanned the spark of defiance that kept her chin in the air and bolstered the confidence that her nemesis would never know how uncertain she’d been that she could cope with such an uncomfortable confrontation.

‘So there’s an enormous plate of carbonara with your name on it, is there?’ Daniel mused as he lengthened his stride to catch up with her as they set off across the vast car park to the other side of the hospital grounds. ‘I’m not certain that I’ve got enough ingredients for that. Perhaps we should detour to do a bit of shopping, just to be sure.’

Jenny had no idea why his teasing should suddenly make her feel like crying and laughing aloud at the same time, but it took a real effort not to do either … or both.

‘No shopping,’ she decreed imperiously, warmed beyond words that she had such a friend and overwhelmingly grateful for his ready sense of humour. ‘I need food now!’

A leisurely hour later they were both coming to the end of plates full of perfectly cooked tagliatelli smothered in the most delicious creamy sauce, and Daniel’s light-hearted banter had temporarily managed to push their concerns about their patients to the back of their minds. It had also all but banished the memory of that unfortunate scene at the entrance to the hospital’s main Reception. In fact, she was feeling so relaxed that that she wasn’t sure she was going to be able to summon up the energy to walk to her own flat, and there was a real danger that she would fall asleep where she sat if she stayed much longer.

Regretfully, she began to fish under the table for the shoes she’d kicked off soon after she’d arrived, trying to find the words to thank him, not only for the delicious meal but also for standing by her while she faced Colin down, yet still allowing her to deal with the situation herself.

She was just drawing a breath to bring the evening to a close when his mobile phone began to vibrate its way across the centre of the table.

‘Carterton.’ His brisk response told her she wasn’t going to have to eavesdrop on a one-sided private call and the resigned expression that came over his face was enough to tell her that Sheelagh Griffin’s baby had lost his fight.

‘Poor woman,’ she whispered, her heart heavy for the couple who would have to start the whole IVF process all over again if they were ever to have the family they wanted.

Before Daniel could comment his phone was ringing again, but this time the shocked way his eyes widened told her the news he was getting was totally unexpected and it wasn’t good.

Listening in on a call that largely consisted of one-word questions was both frustrating and frightening, especially when she saw the regret fill his face.

‘What?’ she demanded as soon as the call ended. ‘What’s happened? Oh, no! Is it Aliyah? How bad is it?’

He raked his fingers through his thick dark hair and swore ripely, something she very rarely heard him do.

‘It’s not Aliyah,’ he said but before she could let the relief flood through her he added, ‘it’s her husband. He coded in ICU and it took five tries to get him back.’

Jenny felt close to tears when she remembered what a lovely caring man Faz was and how concerned about Aliyah and their baby. ‘How long was his heart stopped? Do they know why?’

‘They’ve taken him back to theatre. There’s blood building up in the pericardium that’s stopping the heart from working properly. It nearly stopped it permanently.’

‘Surely they would have checked for other sources of bleeding when they were retrieving the bone fragments from the broken ribs and sorting out the collapsed lung?’

Daniel’s expression was wry because they both knew that such things could be missed when a patient presented with so many life-threatening injuries at once, especially if the damage was small enough to make any bleed insignificant amongst all the other gore.

Sadly, she realised that their almost idyllic evening was over—the outside world back with a vengeance—and suddenly her exhaustion made everything more than she could bear—the situation with Colin and their embarrassing confrontation, the worry that Aliyah might be losing her longed-for babies, Sheelagh Griffin’s accident right at the hospital’s gates and the loss of both of her precious babies. Now this! The horrible events still seemed to be piling up.

With barely a second’s warning her breath caught in her throat and her eyes burned as they filled with tears.

‘Oh, Daniel,’ she wailed, then whirled towards his door, wanting nothing more than to escape before he saw them start to stream down her face.

‘Hey!’ He caught her arm as she fumbled with the lock on the front door and swung her gently around. ‘Are you going without your shoes?’

The concerned frown pleating his forehead was the final straw, releasing the first sob from the dammed-up agony in her throat, and when he pulled her into the sanctuary of his arms the floodgates burst.

‘Shh!’ Daniel soothed helplessly as he awkwardly patted her back, realising wryly that, for all his extensive education, he had no more idea of how to deal with a crying woman than any other man.

And the fact that a large part of his brain was taken up with registering just how perfect Jenny felt in his arms wasn’t something he had any control over, either.

She was such an energetic person with such a lively personality that it was all too easy to forget just how slender she was, especially when she was swathed in a shapeless uniform or several bulky layers of off-duty clothing—one of the down sides of spending her working days in a heated building.

Now that he had her wrapped in his arms he realised that she was more than a head shorter than he was, easily able to burrow herself into the angle under his chin as she clung to him.

The hand that started stroking her back traced the perfect curve of her spine from the silky hair at the base of her skull all the way down to the top of her jeans, and he was almost certain that, had he tried, he could have wrapped both hands completely around her waist, fingertip to fingertip.

And as for her legs, those deceptively long legs, one of which he was bracketing with his own as she leaned against him, sparking his imagination to fill with images of how they would feel without the layers of fabric separating them, how it would feel if they were both naked with those endless legs wrapped around his waist as he.

‘Oh, Daniel, I’m sorry,’ she whimpered against his throat and he had to swallow a groan as the puffs of moist warmth on his bare skin ratcheted his pulse still higher even as he tried to remind himself that he was supposed to be supporting and comforting her, not wasting his time imagining impossible scenarios in which.

‘There’s nothing to be sorry for,’ he growled, hoping she couldn’t hear the way his voice betrayed the effect she was having on him.

‘I sh-shouldn’t be falling apart all over you,’ she hiccupped. ‘It’s not fair to you to have to m-mop me up.’

‘You let me worry about that,’ he reassured her, even as he tried to push to the back of his brain all the other things he’d be willing to do for her. To her. With her. ‘Everyone needs a friend they can let the barriers down with, otherwise we’d all go crazy in a high-stress job like ours.’

He rested his cheek briefly on the crown of her head just long enough to draw in the fresh scent of the shampoo she’d used earlier mixed with the indefinable something that belonged to no one but his little Jennywren.

‘It never seems to get to you,’ she complained. ‘Even when you came back up to tell us about Sheelagh Griffin’s babies.’ The thought sent her off into renewed sobs and he realised that, as it didn’t look as if she was going to be fit to leave any time soon, it was time to make them both more comfortable.

She was weeping so hard that she was probably almost unaware that he’d half-led, half-carried her back into his living room. In fact, she only reacted when he lowered himself into the corner of his oversized settee and tried to settle her on his lap.

‘Daniel, no,’ she objected, floundering in her attempts at getting her feet on the floor. ‘You don’t have to do this. It’s not. You can’t want. I shouldn’t …’

‘Calm down, sweetheart,’ he said, thwarting her halfhearted efforts by drawing her closer to his chest. ‘It’s not a problem.’ Well, that was a blatant lie for a start, because having her squirming on his lap was quickly becoming a big problem, and if she squirmed much more, she would discover just how big.

‘It’s difficult to calm d-down,’ she sobbed against his throat. ‘All I can think of is those poor people and everything they’ve l-lost and … and …’

She turned her head to look up at him just as he angled his to press his face against hers and somehow, accidentally, fleetingly, their lips brushed.

He froze, unable to breathe, convinced that even his heart had stopped beating for several timeless seconds as he savoured the softness of her mouth against his for the first time.

‘Daniel?’ she whispered huskily, and while he was utterly amazed that she hadn’t immediately broken the contact between them, he was intimately aware that he could taste the salt of her tears.

The last thing he wanted was to draw back, afraid of what he would see in her eyes. Shock? Rejection? Or worse, disgust if she thought he was taking advantage of her emotional state?

In the end it was Jenny who moved just the few inches that would allow them to see each other’s expressions, and the wide-eyed wonder on her face as her gaze flicked from his eyes to his mouth and back again jolted his heart into double time.

‘Jenny?’ It sounded more like a growl than a question and he wasn’t really sure what he was trying to ask her, but to his everlasting relief she seemed to take it as an invitation.

‘Please,’ she whispered as she angled her head and leant forwards just far enough to stroke her lips over his … once … twice. ‘Please, Daniel,’ she said again as she wreathed her arms around his neck, this time pressing not only her lips against his but the whole of her body, too. ‘Please, Daniel. I need you,’ she begged breathlessly before she plunged them both headlong into the kind of kiss he’d been dreaming of ever since he’d met the tantalising woman … only better.