‘No?’
‘No.’
‘Hannah’s been gone for four years now,’ Finn said, gentling. ‘A man can’t mourn for ever.’
‘Says the whole hospital,’ Luke said grimly. ‘It’s driving me nuts.’
‘So have an affair.’ He motioned to the CV. ‘Excellent idea. Get them off your back. Get a life.’
‘Hannah didn’t get a life.’
‘It wasn’t your fault.’
‘So whose fault was it?’ he demanded, explosively. ‘Fourteen weeks and I didn’t even know she was pregnant.’
‘You were working seventy hours a week and fronting for exams. Hannah knew the pressures. She was also a nurse and she knew her way around her body. To lock herself in her bedroom and suffer in silence at fourteen weeks pregnant … She was fed up that you were caught up in Theatre. It still smacks of playing the martyr.’
‘Don’t.’
‘Speak ill of the dead? I say it like it is. If one stupid act of martyrdom stops you from getting on with your life …’
‘I don’t see you getting on with your life.’
Finn stiffened. Finn was his boss, Luke conceded, but their relationship went deeper. He knew as much of Finn’s background as anyone did. Finn had a brother who’d been killed in combat. He’d been wounded himself. There’d been a messy relationship with his brother’s wife, then a series of forget-the-moment flings.
Was he about to throw those in his boss’s face? Maybe not. Not at two in the morning, when they were both sleep deprived—and when a cute little blonde nurse had suddenly appeared in the background behind Finn. Waiting for an opportunity to break in.
‘Don’t make this about me,’ Finn snapped. ‘Meanwhile, you …’ Finn waved the folder. ‘An agency nurse, ripe for the picking. That’s what you need. A casual affair and then move on.’
The blue eyes widened.
Luke stifled a groan.
‘Excuse me, doctors,’ the Agency-Ripe-For-The-Picking nurse said, in a carefully neutral voice. ‘The paging system doesn’t appear to be working down here. Dr Lockheart has asked me to find you, Dr Williams. Not you, Mr Kennedy. Dr Lockheart’s words were, “Keep that man out of my department at all costs”. But a child’s been admitted with facial injuries from dog bites. Dr Lockheart says to tell you, Dr Williams, that this is serious and could you please come now.’
CHAPTER TWO
JESSIE BLANDON was headed for Theatre—if he made it that far.
He was four years old. He’d woken in the middle of the night, needing his mother, the bathroom, something. He’d stumbled through the living room. His mother’s boyfriend’s Rottweiler had been on the couch.
As far as Lily could see, he’d lost half his face. Or not completely lost; it was hanging by a flap. How he’d not bled to death, she didn’t know.
Lily didn’t have time to think about what she’d just overheard. She flew back to Emergency with Luke.
‘Tell me,’ he snapped as they strode down the corridor at a pace practised by most emergency medics. Never run in a hospital. Walk—exceedingly fast.
She outlined what she’d seen and Luke’s face grew grim.
‘Dogs and kids,’ he muttered. ‘No matter how trustworthy … Hell.’
It was hell. Lily had seen the mother and her boyfriend as the ambulance had wheeled the little boy in. They looked shattered. This would be a great goofy dog, she guessed, normally quiet, startled from sleep into doing what dogs were bred to do. Attack and defend.
How good was this man beside her?
She was about to find out.
She’d not dealt with a case like this at Lighthouse Cove. For the last two years, in her tiny hospital, any serious case had been transferred to Adelaide. Still, she had the training to back her up. Those long years, travelling back and forth from Lighthouse Cove to Adelaide Central, struggling to do her training yet still support her mother, they’d been hard but they’d provided her with skills, so that when Luke Williams said, ‘You’ve done plastics, you trained with Professor Blythe? You’ll work with us on this?’ she could nod.
But she wasn’t nodding with confidence that they’d save the little boy. He was desperately injured. She was only confident that she could back up this man’s skills.
If he had the skills.
He did.
To say she was impressed with Luke William’s professionalism was an understatement. This was a life-and-death emergency. Every minute they wasted meant this little boy had a smaller chance at life, yet Luke exuded calm from the moment he saw him.
First and foremost he made sure Jessie was feeling no pain. He had an anesthetist there in moments and Jessie was placed swiftly into an induced coma. He assessed what needed to be done. He gave curt, incisive directions with not a word wasted. He even found a moment to talk to the couple outside.
‘Things are grim,’ he told them. ‘There’s no way I can assure you your little boy will be okay. I don’t know. No one knows. But he’s in the best of hands, and we’ll do everything we humanly can to save him. Meanwhile, I want you to ring a reliable friend and ask them to bring in Jessie’s favourite things, a bear maybe, his blanket from his bed? Reassuring stuff. The paramedics will have informed the police. Tell your friend not to go near the house until he’s sure the police have the dog under control.’
‘The dog’s a pussy cat,’ the man said, brokenly.
‘No,’ Luke said grimly. ‘He’s a dog. And your son …’ He closed his eyes for a fraction of a moment and when he opened them Lily saw something behind his eyes that looked like pain. ‘Jessie,’ he said. ‘It’s up to us now to see if we can save your Jessie.’
She’d come on duty tonight as an unknown nurse, expecting to be treated as very junior. In fact, she’d kind of wanted to be junior. Anonymous. Working steadily in the background, a tiny cog in a big wheel, disappearing as soon as she was off duty, coming on duty tomorrow on another ward, knowing no one, no one knowing her. Bliss.
What she hadn’t expected was to be part of a close-knit, highly skilled team, working desperately to save one little life.
That weird conversation she’d overheard in Admin was put aside. For some reason Luke had been checking her credentials. Whether the conversation between Finn and Luke should have the pair of them up before the medical board for sexual discrimination was immaterial right now. What was important was that Luke knew she was up to the job in hand and he let the rest of the team know it. The hospital was desperately short-staffed, so she was no doormat, standing in the background. She was scrub nurse, working with every ounce of her knowledge and skill.
They all were.
