for his familiar figure. Looking for his sturdy frame, his short, neat brown hair and his gentle hazel eyes.
A girl of about eight or nine was pulled from the back of the first ambulance. There was no sign of Todd. The girl’s eyes were closed and she had a firm cervical collar around her neck.
‘Carrie, this child needs a neuro consult, possible head injury. Jim Edwards is on his way down but can you monitor her until he arrives?’ Brenda relayed the paramedics’ summary of the girl’s condition.
‘Sure.’ Carrie had worked at the Children’s since graduating from nursing. She was one of the most experienced emergency nurses and there wasn’t much she hadn’t had to deal with before. She crossed straight to the first stretcher.
The doors of the second ambulance swung open and Maia saw Todd climb out. She headed for her fiancé, closely followed by Brenda. Despite the fact that he’d just come from what she imagined was a complicated and messy motor-vehicle accident with multiple casualties, Todd looked as immaculate as ever. He was fastidiously neat and somehow his uniform had remained clean and still had perfect creases in the trouser legs. In contrast Maia could sense that her thick dark hair was already escaping from the bun she’d fixed it in. She couldn’t count how many times people had uttered the phrase ‘opposites attract’ when they’d been talking about her and Todd.
He pulled a stretcher from the back of the truck. A young boy was sitting up on it. He was alert and seemed quite fascinated by the whole experience. He was dressed in his school uniform, shorts and a T-shirt, and Maia could see that his left knee was swollen. The paramedics had rolled up a towel and stuffed it under his knee to support it.
‘Adam has undiagnosed knee pain,’ Todd told them. ‘And he’s unable to weight bear. Vitals all with normal limits.’
‘Henry.’ Brenda nodded as she called Henry over to join them. ‘Ortho injuries; can you take this one?’ she said as she pointed to Adam. ‘Maia, you go with him.’
She wondered if that was a coincidence or if Henry had requested to work with her. Don’t flatter yourself, she remonstrated as Todd handed her a little green whistle-shaped inhaler.
‘He’s had the Penthrox inhaler on the way here,’ he said.
Maia nodded and tucked the pain-reliever alongside Adam, then put her hands on the stretcher, ready to wheel it away. Before she had moved Todd reached over and gave her shoulder a gentle squeeze. ‘I’ll see you later,’ he said.
Maia saw Henry watching. His eyes moved from Todd’s hand to Todd and then to her face. Maia blushed under his scrutiny. She almost felt like she shouldn’t have let Todd touch her. Not that she could have stopped him, nor was she sure why she would have wanted to, but his familiar gesture made her feel awkward and uncomfortable under Henry’s gaze. His expression was unreadable but he gave the stretcher a push, starting it moving towards the entrance, and Todd’s hand dropped from Maia’s shoulder with the movement. Henry wasn’t watching her now, he was focused on manoeuvring the stretcher, but Maia knew his movement had been deliberate. She said nothing as she and Henry wheeled the stretcher away and Todd turned back to his other patient, to the girl with the broken collarbone.
‘Hey there, mate, what’s your name?’ Henry had always had a good bedside manner and everyone, young and old, loved him. He had an easy charm. People were starstruck by his arresting looks initially but he always won them over with his personality to match.
She needed to be careful. Before he’d left she’d had him on a pedestal; she couldn’t let that happen again. But, listening to him chat to their young patient, she could tell he hadn’t changed.
‘Adam Evans.’
‘Nice to meet you, Adam. I’m Henry and this is Maia,’ he said. ‘You’ve hurt your knee, have you?’
Adam nodded.
‘We’ll get you comfortable in here and have a look at it. Have you been in hospital before?’
‘No,’ he said. Maia grabbed a blank patient file from the triage desk as they wheeled the stretcher past.
‘Seen it on telly?’
He nodded again as they pushed his bed into a cubicle and Maia pulled the curtain around to give them some privacy.
Maia helped Henry transfer Adam to a hospital bed before she wheeled the stretcher into the corridor. She knew one of the ambulance crew would collect it before they left the hospital but she didn’t want them to have to interrupt, especially if it was Todd. She wasn’t ready to deal with two sets of inquisitive eyes.
‘Maia will attach a few leads to you,’ Henry told Adam as he washed his hands before pulling on a pair of disposable surgical gloves. ‘She’ll check your pulse and a few things like that but I reckon that’ll all be pretty normal, seeing as you’re talking to me.’
They had worked together at the Queen Liz when Henry had been doing his fellowship. They’d worked well together then and slotted back into an easy rhythm now. It didn’t feel like three years since they’d worked side by side.
Maia took a hospital ID bracelet out of the file and wrote Adam’s details on it before fastening it around his wrist. Next she snapped gloves onto her hands, connected Adam to the monitors and recorded his observations—blood pressure, oxygen sats and pulse rate.
‘Do you know what day it is, Adam?’ Henry asked as he shone a penlight torch into Adam’s eyes and checked his pupils.
‘Tuesday.’
‘Do you remember what happened?’
‘I was standing up in the bus when the driver swerved and I went flying, and my knee slammed into the side of one of the seats. It hit that metal bar that made up the seat frame. My brother was on the bus too. Do you know if he’s okay? His name is Bailey.’ Tears welled in Adam’s eyes and Maia could tell he was trying to be brave. She could imagine how she would have felt if she’d been in his situation at the same age.
‘Let’s get you sorted and then we’ll find out about Bailey,’ she told him. She wouldn’t tell him that she was sure Bailey was fine; she couldn’t promise that when she had no idea of the situation. Promising to investigate was the best she could do.
‘All right, Adam, I need to have a look at your knee, but first I want you to tell me about your pain. Can you give it a score out of ten? Where zero is no pain and ten is unbearable.’
‘Maybe a six?’
‘I need to have a feel of your knee but you can hold Maia’s hand if you like and squeeze it tight if your knee gets too sore and you want me to stop. I reckon holding Maia’s hand might help.’ Adam blushed and looked away and Maia almost felt sorry for him until she realised that Henry had started palpating the knee joint and had successfully distracted Adam so that he’d been able to start palpating without Adam even noticing. Obviously he hadn’t struck anything painful yet but as a technique Maia was impressed.
The pain-relieving inhaler was lying where Maia had left it, on the bed. She picked it up and offered it to him. ‘You can use this if you like?’
But Adam shook his head. ‘I’ll be okay,’ he said, still putting on a brave face.
‘Good choice, Adam. I’d choose to hold a pretty
