fell asleep standing under the shower, the fierce pummelling of the water jets on the back of his neck and across his shoulders almost as blissful as a massage.
Not that he’d had the time or inclination for massages recently. In fact, not since the last time Sara had taken pity on him in the very early days of their fledgling relationship.
‘Don’t go there!’ he groaned aloud, but that did nothing to stop the images playing through his head.
It had been a rough shift, not unlike the last twelve hours, and he’d made the mistake of sitting down at the table in the staffroom rather than going straight home. The next thing he’d known had been Sara’s voice in his ear, calling his name and waking him to the realisation that he could barely move his neck for the crick in it.
‘Can I see if I can get rid of that stiffness for you?’ she’d offered, and for a moment he hadn’t been certain which stiffness she’d been talking about. Waking up with her soft voice and the warmth of her breath in his ear had matched perfectly with the dream he’d been having, and both had had a predictable effect on his body.
Her fingers on his neck and shoulders, alternately stroking then firmly kneading only helped his neck and shoulders. His other reaction he’d had to keep to himself until he’d returned to his bachelor digs with images of persuading Sara to join him there as soon as possible playing in his head.
Had there been a hormonal overload in his system at the time, because it had been just days later that he’d met Zara and been completely bowled over by her blatant interest in him … so different to Sara’s more reserved manner and so flattering to the male ego.
The steam followed him out of the shower as he padded through to the wardrobe with nothing more than a towel wrapped around the back of his neck.
He was operating on auto pilot now, knowing that he needed clean clothes and to put something in his stomach and knowing that his duty was to support his in-laws while they waited impatiently for the scant five minutes in each hour that they were allowed to spend at their daughter’s bedside. It was so wearing to sit with them knowing that they were pinning their hopes on finding a dramatic improvement each time they went in.
He was already running on his reserves and knew he needed to sleep, and sleep soon, but somehow … somehow he couldn’t think about sleeping while Zara’s condition was unresolved and especially while Sara was valiantly sitting with her parents, waiting for better news. She had worked just the same killer hours as he had and had then suffered the trauma of being run over.
The clean shirt made him feel a bit less ragged and he was just reaching for some bread to toast to fill the gaping hole where his stomach should be when his pager shrilled.
‘Daniel Lomax,’ he said, his heart in his mouth by the time the phone was answered in ICU and he was switched through to the consultant’s office. He wasn’t on duty but had told the ICU staff he was taking his pager home with him if they needed to contact him.
‘Daniel, I thought you’d like to know that we’ve had another set of results back from the lab and—’
‘I’m on my way, sir,’ Dan interrupted, when he heard the strange note in the consultant’s voice. Suddenly he knew that something was wrong, and a surge of adrenaline instantly banished his exhaustion. ‘I’ll be there in about eight minutes,’ he promised, already halfway out of the door as he ended the conversation.
By the time he reached the street he’d fought his way into his jacket and had his keys and phone safely in his pocket. The rain was still lashing down and for a moment he considered going round the back of the flats for his car, then shook his head. The flat had been chosen because of its proximity to the hospital but the security system protecting the cars from opportunist thieves would take longer to get through than if he ran. Nothing was going to interfere with getting to ICU as quickly as possible.
He was soaked to the skin and so wound up that he was shaking by the time he made it up the last flight of stairs.
‘What’s happened?’ he gasped as he reached the interview room, one of the nurses having pointed the way as soon as she’d seen him.
‘It’s good news!’ Audrey exclaimed with tears in her eyes. ‘They’ve found out that Zara hadn’t taken an overdose of barbiturates after all. I told you she wouldn’t. She’s not into all that drugs nonsense.’
‘Not barbiturates?’ Dan said with a frown, turning towards Mr Shah. ‘But the bottle was on the bed beside her when I found her. I don’t understand.’
‘It’s possible that it was some sort of …’ he hesitated a second and threw a glance in Audrey and Frank’s direction. ‘A decoy of some sort, to make you think she’d taken something else.’
‘Well, it worked,’ Dan said flatly, hating the thought that even in something as serious as an overdose of drugs Zara was playing stupid games. ‘So what had she taken?’
‘The lab results say that the majority of the tablets were paracetamol but there was definitely some phenobarbitone, too.’
‘See!’ Audrey exulted, obviously completely oblivious to the serious expression on the man’s face. ‘It was nothing more than some over-the-counter tablets. We’ll soon have her home again, good as new.’
‘We knew in A and E that there was something wrong when her stomach was pumped,’ Dan said, remembering his shock when he’d seen just how many tablets there’d been. It had looked like handfuls of them still largely undissolved, to say nothing of the ones that must have already dissolved and entered her system. ‘The label on the bottle meant it should have been capsules but they were bringing up plain white tablets.’
‘Well, it looks as if she thought she was taking just enough phenobarbitone to send her to sleep, and miscalculated. She’s still comatose.’
And that wasn’t the worst of it, Dan knew with a sinking feeling, already working out for himself what Mr Shah was going to tell them next.
‘She was given activated charcoal when she was brought into A and E after her stomach was pumped,’ he recalled with a feeling of dread.
‘Unfortunately, not long after the IV was set up, she had an adverse reaction to the antidote we were giving her,’ the consultant said, obviously trying to keep things simple for Frank and Audrey. ‘We’ve given her antihistamine to dampen the reaction but, because she’s had the charcoal, methionine won’t be an effective alternative.’
To say nothing of the fact that she was still unconscious and would be unable to swallow the methionine tablets, Dan added silently. He’d been horribly right in what he’d feared. ‘That means you’re going to have to start the same IV again at the lowest possible infusion rate so you don’t trigger the reaction for a second time.’ And that meant it would take that much longer before the drug in her body was rendered harmless—time in which it could be doing untold damage to her liver and kidneys, especially to someone who was borderline for malnourishment, the way so many fashion models were.
‘So, how long will it be before she wakes up?’ prompted Audrey eagerly. ‘How long before we can bring our little girl home?’
The consultant sent Dan a wry look, sharing the knowledge that here was yet another set of parents who were only hearing what they wanted to hear.
‘We’re giving her medication to mop
