revealing nothing more than a couple of pens and the locked diary that Zara had written in each night.
His second sweep shocked him to the core.
‘Barbiturates!’ he exclaimed when the empty bottle rolled into view and he caught sight of the name of the contents printed on the label. ‘Where did she get barbiturates from?’
There was an awful silence in the room, with only the soft sibilance of the oxygen to break it, all three of them gazing at the slender beauty with varying degrees of disbelief, incomprehension and pity. They all knew that the incidence of barbiturate overdose had dropped considerably with the introduction of newer, safer sleeping tablets, but if the label on the bottle was genuine, the dangerously addictive drugs were clearly still readily available in other parts of the world to globe-trotters such as models.
Although why Zara would feel the need to take …
‘We need to get her to hospital quickly, sir,’ the paramedic said briskly, as he selected several syringes. ‘Do you know your wife’s approximate weight so I can give her the first dose of sodium bicarbonate?’
Thank goodness he’d found the prescription bottle, he thought, realising wryly that he was probably one of very few husbands who would know almost to the ounce what his wife weighed, the result of Zara’s obsessive morning ritual had been a cause for alternating delight or despair for every single day of their marriage.
At least they now knew precisely which barbiturate she’d taken and that it was one that bicarbonate would promote more rapid urinary excretion—anything to get the drug out of her system before it could do any more damage. Zara was already deeply comatose and if he’d arrived home any later …
He shook his head, deliberately shutting that thought away as he followed every move that the two-man crew made with critical eyes. Not that he doubted their competence. From the moment they’d entered the flat they hadn’t made a false move.
His colleague had already piled everything else back into their packs and as soon as it was closed he straightened up. ‘I’ll get the stretcher,’ he announced and took off out of the flat.
‘Do you want to travel with her, sir, or—?’
‘I’ll follow you,’ Dan interrupted, and understood the look of relief that briefly crossed the man’s face. He didn’t know many paramedics who would be entirely comfortable about doing their job under the eagle eyes of an A and E doctor, especially when the patient was a member of that doctor’s family.
Apart from anything else, he and his colleague were probably wondering at the situation between Zara and himself that could have led her to make such a desperate gesture.
He sighed heavily with the realisation that there was no way this would remain a secret, no matter how strict the rules were over patient confidentiality.
‘The last thing any of us needs is speculation and gossip,’ he groaned under his breath as he followed the stretcher out of the flat and paused just long enough to make sure the front door had locked behind him. It was going to be hard enough to tell Zara’s family that she had made an attempt at taking her own life without the whole hospital speculating what went on behind closed doors.
If that was what it had been, he continued agonising as he followed the flashing lights through the busy traffic, the urgent scream of the siren an audible reminder that the outcome of the situation was far from certain.
Suicide? Zara? It still seemed impossible. Had she just intended to give him a scare? Had it only been the fact that he had been late that had made this such a serious situation, the extra hours giving the drugs so much more time to do their damage.
And if she … when she survived? He hastily altered the words inside his head, feeling a renewed stab of guilt that he could even contemplate the alternative.
Anyway, he thought heavily, as far as her health was concerned, no one could predict how well or how badly she would recover. Only time would tell how much permanent damage the drugs had done to her system.
The fact that she was his wife was another matter entirely. Zara wasn’t anywhere near as important a model as she pretended to be, but any speculation that it might somehow be his fault that she’d come so close to death could start a media feeding frenzy that would ruin all their lives, to say nothing of his career. The lower end of the tabloid market would have the whole situation blown out of all proportion the minute they heard that she’d taken an overdose, especially if they unearthed the fact that the two of them had resorted to a surrogate pregnancy.
He followed the flashing lights all the way to the emergency entrance, his brain rerunning everything that had been done to try to stabilise Zara’s condition. He was so preoccupied that he only just remembered in time to pull into the designated staff parking area rather than cluttering up the area around the emergency entrance.
As his feet pounded across the tarmac towards the emergency doors, the lights cast long shadows that made it seem as if the doors never got any closer, but finally they slid silently open in front of him.
‘Dan? What on earth are you doing back here?’ demanded his opposite number on the night shift, but he didn’t even slow his pace, his long strides taking him unerringly through to the resuscitation rooms at the other end of the department.
‘Dan! Come in,’ called the consultant already standing the other side of Zara’s ominously still body, his face creased in concern as he beckoned him into the room.
For a moment, as he shouldered his way through the doors, Dan was filled with dread. Had things got worse during the ambulance journey from his flat to the hospital? Zara’s condition had been so serious that he was hardly likely to look across the clinically stark room and find her sitting up and preening herself in front of any males in her audience, but if the bottle of barbiturates she’d taken had been in her body too long, it was all too likely that she might never come out of the coma.
As he stared across at her, she looked even more like a porcelain doll under the unforgiving fluorescent lights, with an almost waxy sheen to her skin.
He slumped back against the wall and watched in awful fascination as his superior did everything he would have done if she were one of his patients, from aspirating her stomach contents to remove any tablets still undigested, to trying to neutralise any drug-laden fluids with activated charcoal before they could be absorbed by her body.
This just couldn’t be happening, he thought, his helplessness making him feel sick to his stomach.
Zara had so much to live for, and before this he would have sworn that she was far too self-centred and conceited to ever think of suicide. Why on earth would she do something so … so …?
‘I’m sorry, Dan,’ the consultant apologised, and Dan knew that he was going to confirm his worst fears … life extinct.
Just the thought of those solemn words was enough to change the way he saw the woman who was his wife. Somehow her slenderness became mere gauntness without the aura of her vivacity, her expert make-up smudged into a caricature of its usual perfection and her shimmering blonde hair artificial and brassy.
He closed his eyes to try to block out the images, unable to look at her any more.
How was he going to break this latest news to her family? It had been bad enough when he’d been contemplating the best way to tell
