could make the driver out now. The woman seemed slight, fair-skinned, with brown curly hair tumbling to her shoulders. Leaning against her was a child.
A child with his arm raised, caught in some sort of sling. An arm which was bright crimson.
Kit!
Running in hospitals was forbidden. From training it was instilled into you. No matter the emergency, walking swiftly gets you there almost as fast, with far less likelihood of causing another emergency.
Stuff training. Dr Tom Lavery ran.
She’d collected this gorgeous little car three weeks ago and she still practically purred every time she looked at it. Two years of internship, living in hospital accommodation and being constantly tired, meant that she’d spent practically nothing of her two years’ wages. The condition of the scholarship which had funded her training meant she was now facing two years of ‘exile’ in the country. This car would be a gift to herself, she’d decided, to celebrate being a fully qualified doctor with her internship behind her. It’d also be something to remind her of the life she’d have when she could finally return to the city.
She’d driven it to Shallow Bay with a beam on her face a mile wide, blocking out the thought that she’d had to hire a man with a van to bring her possessions, as nothing bigger than a designer suitcase would fit in with her.
But now she wasn’t thinking of her car. She had a child in her passenger seat, a little boy so white she thought he was about to pass out. She’d put as much pressure as she dared on his arm, slinging it roughly upward before somehow managing to carry him to her car. Her cream leather was turning scarlet to match the paintwork. Any minute now Kit could throw up. Or, worse, lose consciousness.
Please, no. She loved this car but if she had the choice between vomit or coma…
‘Hold on, Kit,’ she muttered. The decision to get him to the hospital rather than calling for an ambulance had been instantaneous. He still had glass in his hand. The blood he’d lost was frightening and the hospital was so close…
‘I want Tom,’ he quavered.
Tom? His stepfather? That was the name the kids had used. And Christine? The overblown, overpainted woman had emerged from the house, taken one look and fled back inside, saying, ‘I’ll ring Tom.’ So much for practical help. Rachel had hauled off her own windcheater and used that as a pressure bandage and sling.
‘Tell Christine—and Tom—I’ve taken him to the hospital,’ she’d told his terrified brothers, and then she’d left. There was time for nothing else.
‘We’ll find Tom,’ she told Kit now, as he slumped against her. ‘But first we need to stop your hand bleeding. We can do this, Kit. Be brave. Isn’t it lucky I’m a doctor?’
The sight that met him as he emerged from the Emergency entrance was horrific. All he could see was blood. And one small boy.
For a moment he felt as if his legs might give way. Kit’s face, his hair, his T-shirt, were soaked with blood. The T-shirt was a treasured one, covered with meerkat cartoons. Tom couldn’t see a single meerkat now, though. All he could see was blood.
Kit.
‘Mate, you’re doctor first, stepdad second.’ It was Roscoe, placing a huge palm on his shoulder as they both headed for the car. ‘Right now, Kit needs a doctor.’
The words steadied him but only a little. He reached the car and hauled the door open.
Kit was leaning heavily against the driver. Had she hit him? A car accident? What…?
‘Lacerated hand.’ The woman’s voice cut across his nightmare, her voice as incisive, as firm as Roscoe’s. ‘From a broken window. No other injury, but severe blood loss. I suspect there’ll still be glass in there. His name’s Kit and he’s asking for Tom.’
‘Kit.’ His voice sounded as if it came from a long way away. Kit was struggling to look at him, struggling to focus. ‘T-Tom…’ he managed—and then his eyes rolled back and he lost consciousness.
Kit!
It was Roscoe who took over. For those first appalling seconds—and it must only have been seconds—Tom froze, but Roscoe’s voice boomed across the entrance, calling back into the Emergency ward behind. ‘Trolley,’ he boomed. ‘IV. Blood loss, people. Move.’
And then as Barry, their elderly hospital orderly, came scuttling out with the trolley, and Jenny, their second most senior nurse, appeared with the crash cart, Tom recovered enough to scoop Kit out of the car.
Somehow Tom’s years of training kicked in. Triage. Look past the obvious. Get the facts and get them fast.
The woman had been wedged between Kit and the driver’s door. She looked almost as gory as the child. Thirtyish. Jeans. Long shirt, bloodstained. A smear of blood on her face.
‘Are you hurt yourself?’ he managed.
‘No,’ she snapped, hauling herself out of the car. ‘Just the child.’
Jenny had the crash cart beside him. With this amount of blood loss, cardiac arrest was a terrifying possibility.
‘I’m a doctor,’ the woman said. ‘Rachel Tilding. Who’s senior here?’
She was asking because he wasn’t acting like a doctor. Roscoe, Barry, Jenny all looked in control. Not him.
He made a huge effort and hauled himself back into his professional self. Terror was still there but it was on the backburner, waiting to surface when there was time.
‘IV,’ he managed, laying Kit on the trolley. The little boy’s hand had been roughly put in a sling to hold it high.
A doctor…
What had she done to Kit?
‘It’s only his hand.’ She was out of the car now, moving swiftly around to the trolley. ‘He smashed my window with a cricket ball, then reached in to try and get it.’
Only his hand…but this amount of blood?
‘Straight to Theatre?’ Roscoe demanded.
‘Yes,’ she snapped back at Roscoe. ‘I’ll help if there’s no one else. I don’t know about parents. I didn’t have time to find out. Just this Tom…’
‘I’m Tom,’ he said heavily. ‘I’m his stepfather. He’s my responsibility.’
‘Stepfather…’ She glanced at him in stupefaction. ‘What sort of a…?’ And then she collected herself. ‘No matter. Kit needs a doctor, now.’
‘I’m a doctor. Tom Lavery.’
‘What the…you’re working as a doctor and employing that…that…’
