the best equipment available really helps, but it would be worthless without the right staff. They’re the ones who make the department what it is, and they’re a great bunch of people.’
‘Of course,’ she agreed quietly.
Seb frowned. He couldn’t help noticing that there had been a definite lack of enthusiasm about her response. It appeared that his comment about the staff had struck a chord, although he wasn’t sure what chord that was. He was just about to ask her what was wrong when he thought better of it. There was no point asking questions when he might not appreciate the answers, was there? It was a relief when Jayne appeared to tell him that Ambulance Control was on the phone.
He quickly excused himself and went to the office, his heart sinking when the controller informed him that there’d been a massive explosion out at sea when the tanker had struck the gas rig. Despite everyone’s efforts to evacuate the crews from both the rig and the tanker, there were multiple casualties, the first of which were being flown straight to the hospital.
Seb hung up and checked his watch against the helicopter’s ETA. He had ten minutes to get things moving, ten minutes to get himself moving, too. Somehow he had to set aside this agony he felt about losing Libby and concentrate on what needed to be done.
He headed straight to Resus, knowing that the team would be in there. Nobody noticed him at first, then Gary spotted him and stopped talking and the others realised the time for action had arrived.
‘The first ’copter is on its way in,’ he said crisply. ‘Three men with serious burn injuries. ETA approximately nine minutes now. Marilyn will head up one team, Gary the second and I’ll take charge of the third.’
‘Do we know how many casualties we’re going to have to deal with yet?’ Gary asked anxiously.
‘No. But we’ll think in double figures and that way it will be easier to move up or down the scale,’ Seb replied, moving to the bed nearest to the doors. Cathy and Jayne would be working with him as usual, although if there was a chance that any of the casualties had come into contact with those chemicals, he would make sure Jayne was well away from the danger area. He didn’t intend to put her unborn child at risk.
‘If there’s any sign of chemical contamination, I want you out of here,’ he told her. ‘Understand?’
He sighed when he saw the relief on her face as she nodded. It had been remiss of him not to have made that clear to her before. He’d been too caught up in his own problems to worry about how his staff were feeling and it was an oversight he wouldn’t make again. Mistakes occurred when people were put under too much pressure so he had to forget about everything else and get on with the job.
The doors suddenly opened and he swung round, expecting to see the paramedics bringing in their first patient, but instead he saw Libby come in. All of a sudden he was overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of what was happening. Libby wanted to end their marriage. She no longer wanted to be his wife—she wanted a divorce. Maybe he was guilty of burying his head in the sand, but he had never expected it would come to this!
‘So what do you want me to do?’
She stopped in front of him and his heart suddenly lifted in sheer relief when he heard what she’d said. Was she actually offering to reconsider her decision to leave?
‘What would you like to do?’ he murmured huskily.
‘I don’t mind. Whatever’s the most useful, basically.’ She glanced round the room and shrugged. ‘I don’t mind acting as gofer. You’ll need someone to take blood samples to the lab for cross-matching, and fetch drugs—things like that. I’m happy to do it if it will help.’
‘Right, thanks. I’ll bear that in mind.’
Seb dredged up a smile but he could feel it inching its way out of his boots. He knew that all they were doing was putting off the inevitable. She wanted a divorce and all she had to do now was to tell him that.
The doors crashed open again and this time it was the paramedics with their first patient. Seb told them to bring the trolley over to him. It took just a few seconds to transfer the man onto the bed and a couple more to set things in motion. This was the easy bit, of course, doing the job he’d been trained to do. The hard bit would come later, after his work here was finished.
Pain lanced through him once again. Nothing he’d ever learned had prepared him for the agony of losing Libby.
Friday: 7 p.m.
‘I NEED another line putting in, stat! Libby…?’
‘Got it.’
Libby reached for a fresh cannula and ripped open the package. She swabbed the patient’s arm then swiftly inserted the needle into a vein. His whole system was closing down as shock from the injuries he’d suffered took its toll, but the needle slid into place at her first attempt. She smiled to herself. It was good to know that she hadn’t lost her touch in a crisis.
‘Thanks. Now squeeze that fluid through as fast as you can go. We’re going to lose him if we’re not careful.’
Seb barely glanced at her as he carried on removing a sliver of metal from the injured man’s throat, but she didn’t need mollycoddling. Far from delegating her to the role of helper, he had involved her at every stage and she had to admit that it felt good to be able to use her old skills again. She began rhythmically squeezing the bag of saline, knowing how important it was to get the life-giving fluid into the man’s system so that it would help to compensate for all the blood he was losing.
‘Damn!’ Seb cursed softly as the razor-sharp sliver of metal slid through the forceps he was using. She could see the frustration on his face when he looked up ‘There’s so much blood about that I can’t get a grip on it.’
She saw him take a deep breath before he returned to the task, and smiled to herself. She couldn’t count the number of times she’d seen that happen. Seb was incredibly tenacious when presented with a seemingly hopeless situation. He never gave up and would fight, tooth and nail, if he thought there was a chance of saving a patient’s life. If anyone could save this man’s life, it would be Seb.
‘Got it!’
He let out a little whoop as the lethal sliver came free. Cathy quickly swabbed the area before he set to work again—sewing up the severed artery with a skill that many surgeons would have envied. He’d had his choice of specialities after he’d qualified and could have gone into any number of disciplines, including surgery, but he’d always loved the pace and uncertainty of trauma care. Seb thrived on the unknown and the risky, whereas she preferred the familiar and the routine. It was another area in which they differed greatly.
Libby hurriedly pushed that thought to the back of her mind because she didn’t want to think about things like that at the moment. The bag of fluid had almost run through but before she could change it, Sarah, their haematologist, arrived with a supply of whole blood. Libby had to admit that she was impressed by the speed with which things moved in the unit—bloods were cross-matched seemingly in minutes, X-rays ready to be viewed in seconds. Compared to the last A and E department she’d worked in, it was another world and she could understand why Seb had been so enthusiastic when he’d been offered the post
