Their First Family Christmas

Almost to the minute...

There was a new burning sensation now, behind his eyes this time, and he recognised that feeling.

It had been only a couple of weeks ago. In the burning heat of an African summer, when one of his colleagues had started reminiscing about English winters. About Christmas...

He could have sworn that Ben was right beside him, giving him one of those none-too-gentle elbow nudges in his ribs. Saying the words that had been the last thing his brother had ever said to him.

‘See you tomorrow, bro. For once, you’re going to enjoy Christmas. Me and Sarah and Lily...we’re going to show you what Christmas is all about. Family...’

It hadn’t been the first time he’d found a private spot with the view of nothing but desert but it had been the first time in forever that he’d cried. Gut-wrenching sobs that had been torn from his soul. And that was why he recognised this painful stinging sensation at the back of his eyes.

It couldn’t happen now. Not in heavy traffic and with what looked like sleet getting thicker by the second. There was an exit lane ahead and he needed to change lanes and make sure he was well clear of any idiot who might decide to take the exit unexpectedly.

Like that dodgy-looking small truck that was crossing the line directly in front of him.

Tilting his body weight, after checking there was a gap in the lane beside him, Jack flipped on his indicator and glanced over his shoulder again to check the lane was still clear.

Where the hell had that car come from? And what did it think it was doing?

No-o-o...

* * *

Text messages had been frequent over the last hour, including one that accompanied an adorable photo of Lily, bundled up like a little Eskimo in her puffy, pink jacket, with tinsel in her dark curls, crouching down to put an enormous carrot beside a bucket of water. Emma could see the ropes of the swing hanging from the branch of the old oak tree in the garden in the background so she knew exactly where the bucket had been placed.

Exactly where she should have been, too.

Just as well she was too busy to dwell on the unexpected turn her evening had taken.

The waiting room was crowded but the curtained cubicles were all full right now. Every doctor had several patients to cover and Emma was trying to keep herself mobile so she could help wherever she was needed. She just had to decide on the priority as she looked at the list on the glass board.

It wouldn’t be the drunk in Curtain Eight who’d been punched in the nose and had a septal haematoma that needed draining. Or the teenager that had downed enough alcohol at a work Christmas party to collapse. Someone else could supervise the administration of activated charcoal there. Was it the young woman with epigastric pain in Curtain Four? The dislocated shoulder in Curtain Two that needed sedation and relocation? That was a task that needed quite a lot of physical strength sometimes so she might need to wait until Alistair had a free moment, and he was busy sorting pain relief for that nasty foot fracture that had come in a little while ago when an elderly man had fallen from the ladder he was using to hang twinkly lights in a garden tree.

The X-rays were up on the screen beside her and Emma couldn’t help leaning in for a closer look. A Lisfranc fracture and a fracture/dislocation of at least two other joints. This patient was going to need some urgent orthopaedic management as soon as pain relief was on board and a plaster back-slab applied. He’d need to be kept nil by mouth, too, in case a theatre slot became available.

The baby, Emma decided. The one with the rash that looked like a bad reaction to antibiotics. She’d just pop her head into the side room and check that something had been given to settle the miserable infant and calm its mother.

And she wouldn’t look at the clock on the way.

It was getting too close to that time.

The moment her world had started to fall apart this time last year. When those sliding doors had opened for two stretchers to be rolled in amongst a team of paramedics that all had the grim faces that advertised how bad this accident had been. With the policeman behind them carrying a baby in its car seat.

Not that she had had any idea of how bad this really was. Neither had Jack, who was standing in one of the resus rooms, having been summoned as the orthopaedic component of the major trauma team that had gathered to receive the victims of the MVA out on the M74.

The injuries had been so bad, he hadn’t even recognised his twin brother in those first minutes. It had been Emma who recognised Sarah on the second stretcher. Still conscious. Asking over and over whether Lily was all right and where was Ben?

She’d had to go into Resus One. Just as Stuart was shaking his head before he glanced up at the clock.

‘Time of death, twenty-two thirty-five...’

‘Jack?’ It had been so hard to get the words out. ‘Jack...? I think...I think this might be Ben...I’m so, so sorry...’

Later, she’d wondered if he’d already guessed but had been too shocked to process the information. You’d think that the kind of connection between twins would make it plausible but Jack and Ben had been opposite sides of the same coin, hadn’t they? Ben was the quiet one. The responsible one. The perfect husband and father material that Sarah couldn’t believe how lucky she’d been to find.

Jack might have mirrored his brother’s career in medicine and achieved even greater popularity and success but he was the wild one of the pair.

She’d been warned by Sarah to stay away from him.

Jack had been warned by Ben to stay away from her.

Not that their disobedience had mattered in the end, because any connection as far as Jack was concerned had evaporated in the instant she’d passed on that devastating news.

It was another thing she’d lost that night...

* * *

Emma sucked in a deep breath. The noises around her seem to be amplified for a moment as she dragged herself back to the present. People shouting. Babies crying. A shriek of pain. Phones ringing. An ambulance call coming through on the radio. Caroline should have gone home ages ago but she was still there, fielding the calls.

‘Go ahead, Rescue Seven. Reading you loud and clear. Over...’

‘We’re coming to you with a thirty-six-year-old male, result of a motorbike accident on the M74. Query chest injury. Multiple contusions. Query fracture left tib/fib. Vital signs as follows: GCS fifteen, heart rate one-twenty...’

Breathe, Emma told herself. Without thinking, she reached up to touch her hair, finding the inevitable tight curl that had sprung free from its clip and making sure it was trapped again. It was an action that always made her feel that little bit more in control.

This was just another accident. Not even a particularly serious one, by the sound of things, but she wasn’t going to take anything for granted.

‘I’ll be in Resus One,’ she told Caroline.

‘Want me to activate the trauma team?’

A GCS of fifteen meant that the victim was conscious and alert. Okay, he might have a chest injury but he was breathing well enough for the moment. Part of her job in charge of this department was to make sure she used potentially limited extra resources as wisely as possible.

‘Not yet. I’ll take a look at him first. How far away are they?’

‘About five minutes.’

Emma couldn’t help glancing up at the clock as she walked into Resus One and pulled on a disposable gown and some gloves.

Twenty-two thirty. It would probably be twenty-two thirty-five as they rolled the stretcher in.

Breathe, she reminded herself again, as she heard the whoosh of the ambulance bay doors.

Alistair came in and grabbed a gown, closely followed by a nurse. And then the stretcher arrived. Nothing could have prompted Emma to take a breath when she saw who was on the stretcher. The opposite happened as her body and brain both froze. There was just enough breath left to utter a single, horrified word.

‘Jack...?’

CHAPTER TWO (#u3aefdf64-8b7f-547a-bd0b-d5b84e29da68)