You do know how to tempt fate, don’t you?’ she said with what she hoped was her usual cynicism, struggling for a normal tone that didn’t betray her shock. Not for the world did she want Nick to know he still had any effect on her—and especially not that effect! She turned to him as Ryan walked away.
‘I don’t have long,’ she said crisply. ‘I’m briefing some new nurses in a few minutes, but I can give you a quick whizz round and show you the basics. The rest you’ll pick up as you go along.’
‘I’m sure you’ll put me straight if I don’t,’ he murmured, his voice tinged with irony, and she had a flicker of guilt. It was stupid to fall out with him over nothing. Whatever lay behind them, they still had to work together in the near future, and there was no point in them getting off on the wrong foot. And Ryan’s remark about her temper hadn’t helped at all.
‘I’m not really the dragon he made me out to be,’ she told him, embarrassed by Ryan’s summing up of her character.
‘I’m sure you’re not,’ he said mildly.
She sneaked a sideways glance at him, but his face was bland and innocent of any expression. Huh! He always had been a hell of a poker player. She wondered if he’d known she was here. He hadn’t seemed surprised to see her—or maybe she just didn’t have the effect on him that he had on her. Even so, after all this time and after what they’d been to each other, she would have expected some reaction.
She took him round the department, introducing him to people, showing him the layout, while her mind whirled.
Coincidence, or not? Most people tended to stick to one particular part of the country for their specialist training, because it made for a less disrupted social life. It wasn’t always possible, of course, and sometimes people were forced to move away for a rotation.
The last time she’d known his whereabouts, he’d been in Manchester, well away from Suffolk, so maybe disruption wasn’t something that worried him, or maybe he’d moved on long ago.
Whatever, even if he’d been training within their region for some time, that covered umpteen hospitals scattered all across East Anglia. However, only so many had an A and E department of any size or note, so it was almost inevitable they’d end up together at some point. He would hardly have to engineer it. It could quite easily have been coincidence.
What she didn’t know, of course, and couldn’t find out—short of asking him, which was totally out of the question—was whether he had deliberately chosen a rotation here at the Audley Memorial, or if it was an accident of fate. Absolutely the last thing she intended to do was sound even slightly interested in his personal life or his reason for doing anything—but she would like to know …
Anyway, in her heart she knew the answer. After their acrimonious and bitter parting, and most especially after he’d failed to answer her plea when she’d needed him—really, really needed him—there was no way that he’d have come looking for her.
Which left coincidence.
All she had to decide now was whether she could survive it.
‘Sally, RTA coming in, several casualties, more to follow,’ her young staff nurse, Meg, said as she hurried up to them. ‘I’ve warned the front desk and they’re clearing Resus.’
Thanks. You might dig Ryan out of his office—he’s trying to do paperwork. He’ll probably welcome you with open arms. And put those new girls with someone doing something routine, could you? I don’t want to frighten them both off on their first morning.’ Nick, on the other hand, was a different proposition altogether. She turned to him and gave him a grim smile. ‘OK, then. Let’s see how the boy wonder shaped up, shall we?’
His answering smile was equally grim. ‘Why do I get the feeling I’m on trial here?’ he murmured, and, dropping a casual hand on her shoulder, he turned her round and headed back towards Resus.
She could hear sirens in the distance, and she hurried to prepare everything in readiness for the influx. Patients were shuffled, reassured and soothed, equipment was checked, Ambulance Control quizzed again as to the exact number and severity of their casualties.
Through it all she could feel the imprint of his palm—could still feel it, hours later, when all the blood and mayhem had subsided and they were back to the usual level of pandemonium that passed for normality in the department.
Well, Nick thought, as introductions to a job went, this one couldn’t have been much tougher. They’d been working side by side, and if he hadn’t known better he would have thought Sally had been keeping an eye on him.
Checking him out, no less, making sure he was up to speed.
Damn cheek! His mouth tipped into the faintest grin. It had its upside, though. He’d spent the morning hip to hip and shoulder to shoulder with her, locked together in the battle to save their patients.
He hadn’t had time to think about what he’d been doing and whether she’d approve of it. He’d just gone into autopilot, working flat out to save first one, then another of the casualties. He’d had to rely on her, and she’d been there, keeping pace with him every step of the way.
She’d been amazing to work with—fast, efficient, precise—a real treasure. She would have been a brilliant doctor, and she was plenty clever enough, but as she’d told him all those years ago, it wasn’t what she wanted to do.
She wanted to nurse, and she was still doing it, although she was far enough up the ladder now to be in a nurse manager’s post, instead of remaining on the shop floor so to speak, in amongst it.
It was where she belonged, of course, working in a highly skilled and specialised post where her undoubted talents were exploited to the full.
And they have been today, heaven knows, Nick thought. He pictured again the frightened young mother they’d had to stabilise, and Sally’s gentle reassurance as he’d explored the full extent of her injuries. She’d kept the woman calm, focused her mind on the positive and all the time she’d been working beside him, assisting him and keeping him updated with the woman’s status.
And now it was lunchtime, his stomach told him, and if there was a God at all he’d get a few minutes off and time to talk Sally into a cup of coffee and a sandwich. After all, as Ryan had said, they had a lot of catching up to do.
There was no God, of course, or if there was He was having lunch Himself. There was nothing drastic, just a steady stream of casualties ranging from the life-threatened to the frankly malingering, and it was ages before he saw her again.
She accosted him as he went from the work station back towards a cubicle with an X-ray result.
‘Have you had a break recently?’ she said almost accusingly.
He shook his head, wondering if that was an unpardonable sin in her strictly run department or if she was about to proposition him. ‘No, I haven’t had time.’
‘Nor have I,’ she confessed. ‘Grab a moment and come into the staffroom when you’ve dealt with that—is it straightforward?’
A proposition? Maybe there was a God after all. He nodded again. ‘Yes—a query fracture that isn’t. It just needs Tubigrip and advice.’
‘Right. I’ll make you a coffee
