his fiancée had fallen in love with his brother, after he had abandoned her for the umpteenth time. It was one more reason to feel guilty, another reason why he needed to make amends for what he had done. If he had paid more attention to what had been going on around him, Stephanie and Duncan might not have died.
It was gone four in the morning when Charlie Maguire suffered a second heart attack. Heather grabbed the crash trolley and raced to his bed. Marion had already started CPR and she looked up when Heather appeared.
‘Plug that in then phone the switchboard and ask them to page Mike. We need him back here, stat!’
‘Will do.’
Heather flew to the phone and dialled the switchboard. ‘It’s Heather from Paeds,’ she said as soon as the operator answered. ‘Can you page Dr Mike Bridges, please? We need him here urgently.’
She hung up after the operator confirmed her request. Some of the other children had woken up now, disturbed by all the commotion, so she made her way around the ward, doing her best to settle them down. Marion and the other nurse on duty that night, Abby Connor, were working on Charlie, but it was a relief when the registrar arrived. He headed straight to the boy’s bed, looking very grim when Marion explained what had happened.
‘We’ll shock him and see if that works. I’ll need some adrenaline—can someone sort that out for me, please?’
‘I’ll do it,’ Heather offered immediately.
Mike told her the dosage while Marion gave her the keys to the drugs trolley. When she got back, the team had defibrillated Charlie’s heart once and were about to perform the procedure a second time because there was still no output. Heather found herself willing the child to respond as the paddles were once again placed on his chest.
‘Clear!’ Mike rapped out.
Everyone held their breath as another charge of electricity shot through the boy’s body, but there was still nothing on the monitor apart from a flat green line. Mike turned to her and she could see the worry on his face as he took the drugs from her.
‘Get onto Archie. Tell him what’s happened and that it’s not looking good.’
‘Of course,’ Heather agreed, hiding her surprise because in her experience it wasn’t usual to phone a consultant during the night.
She hurried to the phone again and found Archie’s number listed with all the others. She keyed it in and waited anxiously for him to pick up. If anyone could help Charlie, it was Archie—he would know what to do in any crisis.
She bit her lip because she really shouldn’t be thinking along such lines. It would be only too easy to see Archie as her saviour as well and that wouldn’t do. She cleared her throat when a sleepy male voice mumbled hello.
‘I’m sorry to bother you, Mr Carew, but Mike Bridges asked me to phone you. Charlie Maguire has had a second myocardial infarction and we’re having problems stabilising him.’
‘How long ago did it happen?’ he demanded, instantly alert. Heather had a quick mental flash of him dragging himself up out of bed and just as quickly dismissed it. She couldn’t afford to get sidetracked.
‘Roughly five minutes.’
‘Right. I’m on my way. Tell Dr Bridges to continue CPR until I get there.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Heather replied, responding automatically to the authority in his voice.
‘Thank you, Heather,’ he said quietly before the line went dead.
Heather’s hand was trembling as she gently replaced the receiver on its rest. Although she hadn’t introduced herself, Archie must have recognised her voice and it gave her a funny feeling inside to realise that. As she went to relay his message to the others, Heather found herself smiling before she realised how stupid she was being to set any store by it. Archie was only going to feature in her life for as long she worked here. He certainly wasn’t going to play any part in her future.
‘Is everyone agreed, then?’
Archie looked at the group assembled around Charlie Maguire’s bed and saw the same expressions on their faces that must have been on his own. Despite all their efforts, they’d been unable to resuscitate the boy and his death had upset them all.
‘Time of death 5:13,’ he said when they all nodded. ‘Thank you for everything you did. I’m only sorry it didn’t work out in the end.’
He pushed the curtain aside, feeling despondency weighing down on him as he made his way to the office. Losing a child was always a heartbreaking experience but it had become even more difficult since Duncan and Stephanie had died. It was hard to accept that so many lives should be cut short far too soon.
Heather was in the office; she looked up when he went in and he saw her expression change when he shook his head. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said, her voice catching, and Archie had to swallow when he felt a lump come to his throat. He could tell that she’d truly meant what she’d said and that it hadn’t been just a polite expression of regret. It touched him deeply, far more deeply than it should have done, in fact.
‘We all are,’ he said shortly, because breaking down wasn’t an option. ‘Have the parents arrived yet?’
‘Yes. They’re in the relatives’ room.’ She was all business once more and Archie was suddenly sorry that he had been so short with her.
‘Right. I’ll have a word with them, then.’ He turned to the door, stopped, walked another step, then swung round. ‘Look, I didn’t mean to snap at you, but it always hits me hard whenever we lose a child.’
He gave her a tight smile, wondering why he felt that he had to explain himself. He wouldn’t have done so under normal circumstances, yet for some reason he didn’t want Heather to get the wrong idea. ‘I can’t afford to get too emotional when I need to speak to Charlie’s family.’
‘I understand.’ Her eyes filled with compassion as she looked at him. ‘I don’t think it’s possible to do this job unless you care, but it’s hard, isn’t it, when something like this happens? It makes you remember the people you have lost, too.’
‘It does,’ he said quietly, then left before he was tempted to say anything else. It seemed his suspicions had been correct. However, he knew that asking Heather whom she had lost would be a mistake at the moment. It would only lead to him telling her about Duncan and he didn’t think he could cope with that right now.
He made his way to the relatives’ room and spoke to the boy’s parents. It was every bit as bad as he had expected and he was emotionally wrung out after he finished. He made sure the parents knew that they could sit with Charlie for as long as they wanted to, then asked Marion to escort them to a side room. Charlie would be taken there from the ward so the family could have some privacy. Sorting out such details was all part and parcel of his job, but it was so much more than mere routine and he would never be able to treat it as such. Mind you, he wouldn’t have to after he returned to Scotland. Maybe that was the plus side of giving up his job?
He tried to put a positive spin on the thought but he was all out of optimism. The cloud of gloom that had been hanging over him seemed to intensify as he went back to the ward and had a word with Mike, who was equally despondent. Archie assured him that he had done everything he could, but
