hospital,’ she’d told his terrified brothers, and then she’d left. There was time for nothing else.
‘We’ll find Tom,’ she told Kit now, as he slumped against her. ‘But first we need to stop your hand bleeding. We can do this, Kit. Be brave. Isn’t it lucky I’m a doctor?’
The sight that met him as he emerged from the Emergency entrance was horrific. All he could see was blood. And one small boy.
For a moment he felt as if his legs might give way. Kit’s face, his hair, his T-shirt, were soaked with blood. The T-shirt was a treasured one, covered with meerkat cartoons. Tom couldn’t see a single meerkat now, though. All he could see was blood.
Kit.
‘Mate, you’re doctor first, stepdad second.’ It was Roscoe, placing a huge palm on his shoulder as they both headed for the car. ‘Right now, Kit needs a doctor.’
The words steadied him but only a little. He reached the car and hauled the door open.
Kit was leaning heavily against the driver. Had she hit him? A car accident? What…?
‘Lacerated hand.’ The woman’s voice cut across his nightmare, her voice as incisive, as firm as Roscoe’s. ‘From a broken window. No other injury, but severe blood loss. I suspect there’ll still be glass in there. His name’s Kit and he’s asking for Tom.’
‘Kit.’ His voice sounded as if it came from a long way away. Kit was struggling to look at him, struggling to focus. ‘T-Tom…’ he managed—and then his eyes rolled back and he lost consciousness.
Kit!
It was Roscoe who took over. For those first appalling seconds—and it must only have been seconds—Tom froze, but Roscoe’s voice boomed across the entrance, calling back into the Emergency ward behind. ‘Trolley,’ he boomed. ‘IV. Blood loss, people. Move.’
And then as Barry, their elderly hospital orderly, came scuttling out with the trolley, and Jenny, their second most senior nurse, appeared with the crash cart, Tom recovered enough to scoop Kit out of the car.
Somehow Tom’s years of training kicked in. Triage. Look past the obvious. Get the facts and get them fast.
The woman had been wedged between Kit and the driver’s door. She looked almost as gory as the child. Thirtyish. Jeans. Long shirt, bloodstained. A smear of blood on her face.
‘Are you hurt yourself?’ he managed.
‘No,’ she snapped, hauling herself out of the car. ‘Just the child.’
Jenny had the crash cart beside him. With this amount of blood loss, cardiac arrest was a terrifying possibility.
‘I’m a doctor,’ the woman said. ‘Rachel Tilding. Who’s senior here?’
She was asking because he wasn’t acting like a doctor. Roscoe, Barry, Jenny all looked in control. Not him.
He made a huge effort and hauled himself back into his professional self. Terror was still there but it was on the backburner, waiting to surface when there was time.
‘IV,’ he managed, laying Kit on the trolley. The little boy’s hand had been roughly put in a sling to hold it high.
A doctor…
What had she done to Kit?
‘It’s only his hand.’ She was out of the car now, moving swiftly around to the trolley. ‘He smashed my window with a cricket ball, then reached in to try and get it.’
Only his hand…but this amount of blood?
‘Straight to Theatre?’ Roscoe demanded.
‘Yes,’ she snapped back at Roscoe. ‘I’ll help if there’s no one else. I don’t know about parents. I didn’t have time to find out. Just this Tom…’
‘I’m Tom,’ he said heavily. ‘I’m his stepfather. He’s my responsibility.’
‘Stepfather…’ She glanced at him in stupefaction. ‘What sort of a…?’ And then she collected herself. ‘No matter. Kit needs a doctor, now.’
‘I’m a doctor. Tom Lavery.’
‘What the…you’re working as a doctor and employing that…that…’
She obviously couldn’t find a word to describe Christine. Neither could he. Maybe there wasn’t one, but he and Christine were obviously grouped together. Dr Tilding’s look said Tom’s position in the hierarchy of life on earth was somewhere below pond scum.
‘Never mind,’ she snapped. ‘You can give me all the excuses in the world after we’ve seen to Kit’s hand. Let’s get him to Theatre. Now.’
AND THEN THINGS reassembled themselves. Sort of. This was a small country hospital but it was geared for emergencies, and many emergencies involved rapid blood loss.
Kit had lost so much that cardiac arrest was still a real possibility. Treatment of his hand—apart from stemming the bleeding—had to wait until that threat was past.
And in Rachel he had a godsend. She was an angry godsend, judgemental and furious, but she was a doctor.
Maybe he could have coped alone—maybe—but he was acting on autopilot. A part of his brain seemed to have frozen. The sight of one little boy, unconscious, a child he’d learned to love, had knocked him sideways.
It was an insidious thing, this love. It had crept up and caught him unawares, and loving came with strings. He couldn’t care for these kids—and love them—without his heart being wrenched, over and over again.
It was lurching now, sickeningly, and after that one incredulous look, that one outburst of anger, Rachel had subtly taken control.
As he went to put in the IV line his hand shook, and she took the equipment from him. ‘Get the monitors working,’ she told him. ‘I’ll take over here.’
The cardiac monitors… He needed to set them up. He did, with speed. A shaking hand could manage pads and monitors.
‘Pain relief and anaesthetic,’ she said. ‘Do you have an anaesthetist?’
‘There’s only me,’ he told her.
‘Two of us, then,’ she said curtly. ‘Or one and a half if you’re emotionally involved. But I’m trusting you have a good nursing staff.’
‘The best,’ Roscoe growled, and she nodded acknowledgement. This was no time for false modesty and she obviously accepted it.
And then Kit’s eyes flickered open again, fighting
