CHAPTER TWO
GOOD grief!
Luke was still shaking his head in disbelief as he scrubbed up for Jackal’s emergency laparotomy ten minutes later.
Seeing Beth again after all these years was unbelievable enough. Seeing her doing that warrior princess act with the gang members had been…
The sexiest damn thing Luke had ever seen in his life.
He scrubbed beneath his nails hard enough to cause real pain.
Beth was the only woman who had ever made him seriously consider marriage.
And she was the only woman who had ever dumped him.
The hurt and the ensuing anger that had caused should have been rendered inconsequential by the blows life had meted out since then, so it was incredibly disturbing to find how easily the years could be peeled back.
One good look into those bright blue eyes and there he was again. Not measuring up. Just not being good enough, no matter how much love he had to offer.
What the hell was Beth doing in Hereford of all places?
Luke took his foot off the water control and reached for a sterile towel. She’d probably come here to give her kids a nice, healthy rural upbringing or something. Snapping on gloves, Luke turned abruptly to let the scrub nurse tie up his gown. That flash of something astonishingly like jealousy at the thought of the father of those children was ridiculous.
So she was still an attractive woman. So what?
So she had grown up a bit and become brave about confronting things she didn’t like. Again, so what?
Luke had more than enough to deal with in his life right now, without complicating things by renewing any kind of relationship with Beth. The last thing he needed was to try poking an old scarred area when the potential to find a tender spot was so clearly possible.
A deep breath was called for here. And rational thinking. This disturbance was probably just part of the surprise factor of seeing Beth again. All he needed to do was ride it through and there would be no shortage of distractions if that proved in any way difficult. It was a relief to use the one immediately available.
‘Let’s get this show on the road, shall we?’
With his hands held carefully crossed in front of his chest, Luke used his shoulder to push open the swing doors into Theatre.
At just after 3 a.m. on a Tuesday morning, Ocean View’s emergency department was stretched to slightly over its full capacity.
One of the high-tech resuscitation areas was still occupied by a seriously injured patient, the other one having just been vacated by the hit-and-run victim, who had gone up to Theatre 2 for the attention of an orthopaedic surgeon. All the beds in the cubicled area were also full and half of those patients were still waiting to have bones X-rayed or lacerations sutured. The treatment rooms were full and there were no spare seats in the waiting area either.
A few people with minor injuries were in Reception but most of them were simply there to offer solidarity to their mates, and they included some of the loudest and most unpleasant women Beth had ever encountered.
They were all unkempt, tattooed, pierced in multiple places and inebriated, and only too happy to demonstrate their contempt of any authority figures or lack of appreciation for any medical assistance. But the police presence was strong enough to ensure the safety of staff and the background noise of obscene language and shouting was so constant Beth could tune it out now.
It had already become automatic to seek the company of a police officer before approaching or treating a patient, and all the nurses remembered to wait until a member of one gang had left the X-ray department before escorting a member from the rival gang down the corridor.
Hopefully, the stab victim who was currently in Resus 1 would also be sent up to Theatre soon. When the doctors could be freed from attending the critically injured patients they should be able to deal with the minor injuries rapidly. They would be able to clear the department and then they could all have a well-deserved break.
Oddly enough, the chaos and unpleasantness of her current environment had been quite enjoyable over the last hour or so. Not the patients, of course, but their uniform lack of co-operation or appreciation had provided a bond of camaraderie amongst the staff members that had only increased under pressure.
And Beth was very firmly one of them. Thanks to that inadvertent episode of venting her tension, having stepped into the path of the converging gang members, Beth had not only been welcomed into the ranks of Ocean View’s emergency department staff, she was currently being used as a lynchpin.
Even though it had only taken a few seconds and could quite easily have been a huge mistake, the fact that Beth had taken control had become a kind of emotional bank in which snippets of humour or stamina were being deposited and could be withdrawn whenever someone needed the lift of a shared smile or a pat on the back.
‘I’m just so not in the mood for this’ had become the catch-phrase of the night and never failed to produce a smile.
Dennis, the local cop, had claimed Beth as one of their own with a hint of pride.
‘Keep your eyes open,’ he had told one of the Nelson police officers about to accompany Beth when she needed an escort to Radiology. ‘You might learn something from our Beth they never thought to teach you at police college.’
How ironic that Beth could feel so at home in a new place so quickly when she was still having serious doubts about the wisdom of having come here at all. She even knew her way around the storeroom now, having gone in there so often to fetch new supplies, and she was there again now, checking the fridge, as requested, to see how much O-negative blood they had on hand. Then she moved towards the shelves supporting boxes of dressings.
A number of extra-large gauze pads had been needed to staunch the arterial flow from the blood vessel severed by a knife wound in the car-park skirmish. And a fresh intubation pack was needed to restock Resus 2. Searching for the location of cuffed endotracheal tubes, Beth’s eye was caught by the sterilised, draped rolls of surgical gear.
The obstetric pack was probably useful, but how often would they have the need for a thoracotomy kit here? Beth had only ever seen someone’s chest opened in an emergency department once, and that had only been done because it had been in a big hospital and they’d had a cardiothoracic surgeon available for back-up.
Luke had had ambitions in cardiothoracic surgery so why on earth was he working here? And how could Beth hope to start a new life when there would be such constant reminders of the past?
If she didn’t stay at Ocean View, though, would she end up being back in some emergency department large enough for the triage staff to wear headsets and microphones? Beth’s sigh was heartfelt. She had really been looking forward to the change of working in a much smaller and potentially friendlier environment. And what on earth was she going to say to the nurse manager?
Sorry. This is a great place to work but I can’t possibly stay because the man I was passionately in love with years ago happens to be working here as well, and I’m not sure if I could handle seeing him every day.
How pathetic was that?
