appeared at Abby’s side.
Luke. ‘I was just about to ask you the same question,’ he muttered under his breath.
‘I might be old, son, but there’s nothing wrong with my hearing.’
‘Well, do you always come to work looking like this?’ Luke gestured towards the fishing gear.
‘Son, I try not to come to work at all if I can help it. I’m retired.’
‘You’re retired?’ Luke’s voice rose in pitch.
Abby cleared her throat loudly before the conversation got out of hand. ‘Luke, I’d like you to meet Dr David Fairgreaves, our honorary obstetrician, and, David, I’d like you to meet Dr Luke Storm, he’s a cardiologist from Washington who brought the First Lady in.’
David’s brow furrowed in confusion. ‘Why the hell is a cardiologist bringing a pregnant lady to hospital?’
Abby smiled. In an instant she wasn’t the First Lady any more, she was simply an expectant mother, like any other. She loved that about David Fairgreaves—even though he’d been pursued by many dignitaries and celebrities for his services, he never wasted time on pomp and ceremony. His patients were just that, his patients.
Abby slid her arm around David Fairgreaves’s shoulders, ‘Her own obstetrician is currently having an MI—Luke is about to treat him.’
David stared at Luke for a moment before finally grunting, ‘Fine, then.’ He sat down and started reading the notes.
Luke stood frozen to the spot. ‘David Fairgreaves? The David Fairgreaves?’
Abby nodded in recognition of the man who was famous all over America for his ground-breaking work. He’d received numerous awards for pioneering the procedure to retrieve stem cells from the umbilical cord. Something that seemed almost commonplace now, but at the time had been a real revolutionary leap of faith. He’d done that while continuing to work as an obstetrician and was known as one of the best in America.
Luke groaned. ‘This is turning into a bad TV show. What on earth is David Fairgreaves doing here?’
‘You mean in this backwater place?’ She couldn’t help the sarcasm that crept into her voice. Then, seeing the expression on his face, Abby sneaked her hand around his waist and gave him a quick hug. Luke’s stress levels seemed to be going through the roof. The warmth of his body immediately poured through her skin. She raised her head up towards his and smiled. ‘Fishing.’
‘What?’ Luke looked totally bewildered.
She shrugged her shoulders. ‘He’s got a fishing boat in Pelican Cove, and now he’s retired he spends half the year here. We have an informal arrangement together that I can call him out for any obstetric emergencies and he loves it.’
Luke studied the man in the rumpled clothes sitting in the chair in front of him. ‘He looks about a hundred and ten,’ he whispered.
‘Well, he’s not quite that old,’ she whispered back, ‘and he’s as sharp as a tack so don’t annoy him.’
Luke looked as if he could spontaneously combust at any second. Abby pulled her arm from his waist and turned to face him, taking both his hands in hers.
‘Look on the bright side, Luke. If someone had asked you to pick any doctor in the world to deliver the President’s pre-term baby, who would you have picked?’
She watched as the significance of her words began to sink in. The deep wrinkles in Luke’s forehead began to soften. ‘I guess you’re right,’ he said.
‘You know I am.’ She lifted herself up on her tip toes and kissed the tip of his nose. ‘Now, go and deal with your MI. I’ll come and find you if there’s any problems.’
He nodded, still lost in thought, before taking a deep breath and pulling his hands from hers. ‘Okay,’ he murmured as he turned and started to head off down the corridor.
Abby watched for a second. Her lips felt as if they were on fire. A thousand little pins were prickling them, leaving them alive with sensation after touching his skin.
‘Dr Tyler?’
Abby started at the deep voice behind her.
‘Yes?’
‘I’m James Turner.’ He held out his hand towards her. ‘I’m in charge of the protective detail for the First Lady.’
Abby nodded silently. The craggy-faced man from earlier. He was a large, imposing fellow with a small scar that snaked across the bridge of his nose. Her mind exploded with a thousand possibilities as to how it had got there, before his intense gaze jerked her back into focus. ‘Sorry,’ she muttered. ‘What can I do for you, Mr Turner?’
‘This is your department?’ It didn’t sound like a question coming from his lips, more like a statement.
‘Yes, it is.’
‘Well, sorry, ma’am, but I need to close your emergency department down.’
‘What?’ Abby’s screech of disbelief echoed around the building. ‘You most certainly will not. I won’t let you. You don’t have the authority to do that…’
He silenced her by holding his hand up directly in front of her face.
‘I do have the authority. As of now, your department is closed. I also need access to all your personnel files.’
‘What?’ This was just going from bad to worse. He wanted to close her department and then spend the day looking at files?
‘I need to have access to everyone’s history. We need to run security checks on everyone in the building.’
‘You want to do what? No! You can’t do that!’
‘Yes, yes, I can. And I will.’ His broad hand had caught her arm to stop her gesticulating wildly. ‘Nothing is more important than the safety and security of the First Lady.’
Abby took a deep breath. ‘Look, Mr Turner, while I appreciate you have a job to do—so do I. This is a small community.’ She waved her arm around the department. ‘I know every single member of staff here. None of them are a risk to the First Lady’s safety or security. I can personally vouch for them all.’
‘That’s very nice, Dr Tyler.’ He shot her a white-toothed, crooked grin. ‘But it’s not going to cut it. We’ll run our own checks on everyone here.’ He glanced around the bustling department. ‘And we’re going to have to restrict the number of staff.’
Abby shook her head. ‘This is a community hospital, Mr Turner. We serve a widespread population that doesn’t have easy access to emergency facilities. If you close us down, the nearest emergency unit is 50 miles away. If there’s an accident at one of the nearby saw mills, or at the harbour, that travel time could cost the life of a patient. We also have links with a special-needs school near here—Parkside. We often have children brought in with breathing or feeding difficulties—taking them somewhere else would cause immense difficulties.’
She
