increase the pain instead of halving it. No, the loss of Liam was something she’d have to cope with on her own, hiding it under a guise of tight-lipped tranquillity. Liam, who had taken her love and tossed it aside without even realising what he’d done. Liam, whom she’d fallen in love with and whom she’d thought had fallen in love with her. But that was the problem with being cool and serene on the outside…it often sent out the wrong message. It made people believe that you were hard and indifferent to personal pain.
‘No commitments,’ he’d said from time to time during their six months together, his eyes smiling at her, always smiling. ‘We’re having a great time, aren’t we?’ And he’d laughed charmingly. He was the most charming man she’d ever met. She realised with hindsight that his charm meant nothing. It was unintentional and came as naturally to him as breathing. Easy come, easy go. He had probably no idea, not even now, that he’d hurt her almost more than she’d been able to bear.
‘You mustn’t take me seriously,’ he’d warned her. But she had. She’d taken him very seriously. And when, only two weeks ago, Rebecca had said once again, ‘You really should get married, Anna,’ she’d almost told her that she was seeing Liam and that maybe marriage was on the cards.
She was so glad that she hadn’t told either of her sisters about Liam. Knowing Rebecca and Jennifer, they would have booked the church and the reception and arranged between themselves which of their various children should be bridesmaids and pageboys! She thanked her stars she hadn’t mentioned him to them because only a few days later Liam had confessed to her that he was seeing someone else. The news had come as a tremendous shock.
‘But we weren’t serious, were we? We had a good laugh, didn’t we?’ he’d said. At least he’d had the decency to look embarrassed at his bad behaviour. ‘We can still be friends, can’t we?’
It had been at that point she’d been grateful for her cool exterior. With her heart pounding like mad, her stomach churning so much that she’d felt sick, she’d still been able to give him a half-smile as she’d said, ‘No, Liam. I’m afraid we can’t.’
* * *
Anna finished her lunch and left the canteen. With her mind still on Liam and the pain he had so carelessly inflicted on her, she made her way back to A and E. She was preoccupied with thoughts of her broken romance when she became aware of the sound of quickening footsteps behind her. She stepped to one side, thinking that somebody might want to get past in a hurry. Then a man said, ‘Anneka?’ Looking round, she saw that the man, a medic she presumed from his theatre blues, was talking to her.
‘Are you speaking to me?’ she asked.
She found herself looking into the brown eyes of a man she’d never seen before, though that was hardly surprising in a hospital the size of the Royal. He was tall and dark-haired, and good-looking. Even under his theatre garb she could see that his shoulders were wide and powerful, his body lean and tapering. His skin was slightly bronzed as if he’d just returned from a holiday abroad. But underneath the tan he looked pale…a very strange illusion, thought Anna. She’d seen it before in patients who were in shock. All the colour drained from their faces, but a little of the tan remained.
The man stood stock still, staring at her. He said nothing, just stared at her. She felt herself shiver under his gaze.
‘Are you all right?’ she asked. ‘You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘You just reminded me of someone else.’ He appeared embarrassed by his gaffe.
To smooth things over, she gave him a brief smile, saying, ‘My name’s Anna. I thought at first that you’d just got my name wrong. Is it someone called Anneka you’re looking for?’
The man half turned away, not rudely. ‘Sorry about that,’ he said, walking back down the corridor. ‘I’m supposed to be in Theatre. Sorry to have bothered you.’
Anna shrugged her shoulders and continued on her way.
* * *
The rest of the day was just as hectic as the morning had been.
A young boy who’d broken his arm in two places was X-rayed and his arm set in plaster. He was sent home with an ‘I Was Brave’ sticker on his shirt and a prescription for child analgesic. A pregnant woman with stomach pains and white with fear that she would lose her baby was examined, given tests and then admitted to a ward for observation. There were two drunks and a drug addict, a man with toothache and a middle-aged woman who’d injured herself during an epileptic fit. They were arriving in a steady trickle on foot, by car and by ambulance.
‘We’ve got a stabbing coming in now,’ said the sister in charge of the day team as she ran to the ambulance entrance.
A surgeon and an operating department assistant had been bleeped but they hadn’t yet arrived. Two radiographers, three nurses and Anna were waiting in one of the resuscitation wards.
When the patient arrived, his clothes covered in blood, he was raving and abusive but otherwise cooperative.
‘I’ll kill the bastards who did this,’ he shouted, his voice slurred with drink and pain. ‘I thought they were going to hit me with a bottle but they stabbed me instead. In the bloody back! The cowardly bastards!’
‘Roll him over,’ instructed Anna in order that the team could examine the injury. Above their heads the incident clock logged the seconds.
After an initial examination, the radiographers X-rayed him and a nurse monitored his blood pressure.
‘Here comes the surgery team,’ said the sister in charge. Anna looked round briefly and saw that the surgeon walking towards them and their blood-soaked patient was the man who’d come running after her in the corridor earlier that day, calling her ‘Anneka’.
‘Hello again,’ she said. ‘I’m Anna Craven, the duty registrar.’
‘Jack Harvey,’ he replied in acknowledgement, ‘the new casualty consultant.’ He smiled at her and nodded to the rest of the team.
Anna told him the patient’s history and said they were now waiting for the X-rays to come back. They arrived almost as she spoke and Anna and Jack studied them.
‘His chest cavity is filling with blood,’ said Jack. ‘His lungs will be getting squashed and he’ll have difficulty in breathing if we don’t drain it straight away.’
The team worked swiftly and efficiently, draining the patient’s chest and stemming the blood flow from the stab wound. It took them less than thirty minutes to stabilise his condition and get him out of immediate danger.
During the time they worked together, Anna noticed that Jack kept looking at her—not in a blatantly sexual way—but more out of curiosity. She couldn’t help noticing him either. He really was very good-looking. He reminded her in some ways of Liam— but whereas Liam had pale blue eyes, Jack’s were a warm brown.
When the surgeon and his operating assistant had left, taking the wounded patient with them, one of the nurses said to Anna, ‘He’s a bit of a dish, isn’t he?’
‘You mean our stab victim? A bit too heavy-jowled for me,’ said Anna, deliberately misunderstanding.
‘Not him! I mean Mr Handsome, the new casualty consultant.’
