The Fling That Changed Everything

Lia sat back on her heels this time, ready to move out of the way so that Sam could take over the compressions.

But this time the spike of the shock being delivered on the life-pack screen gave way to a blip of a normal beat. And then another and another.

‘He’s gagging,’ Ana said a moment later. ‘I’ll take the airway out.’

‘We’ll need a bed,’ Sam said. ‘And a few extra hands to move him.’

‘I’ll get Matt,’ Ana said, scrambling to her feet. ‘And anyone else I can find. Or do you need me here, Sam?’

Sam caught Lia’s gaze. ‘No...you go, Ana. We’re fine.’

The eye contact was only there for a moment but Lia felt like she’d passed some sort of test.

And she’d got good marks.

It was always a bonus to cheat death like this and have a successful resuscitation from a cardiac arrest but this felt even sweeter than usual. And the good marks went both ways. This success had been a team effort and Sam had shown himself to be a calm and competent leader.

‘We’ll get him into our intensive care unit,’ Sam said. ‘You may as well join us, Lia, and start your tour of the hospital with the pointy end.’

‘I’ll help you move him,’ Jack said. ‘And then maybe I should let them know that the outpatient clinic will be starting a bit late.’

‘Give Keanu a call. He can come in early and get things started.’ Sam was adjusting the wheel on the IV tubing to change the rate of fluids being delivered from the bag of saline he was holding up. His smile was wry. ‘It looks like it’s going to be another one of “those” days, all right...’

There was a gleam in his eye that suggested that those sorts of days were actually the ones he liked best and Lia found herself smiling back at him. She loved the adrenaline rush of dealing with emergencies, too. And the challenge of multi-tasking when it looked like there might be too much to handle but you knew the buzz of being able to cope was well worth the stress levels.

To be honest, smiling at Sam Taylor was no hardship. He looked so much better now that he’d discarded the formal white coat. His short-sleeved, open-necked shirt exposed tanned skin and he must have pushed his sun-streaked, floppy hair back from his forehead a few times during that intense scenario to have made it look so spiky and slightly disreputable.

And even with the wry twist to that smile, it was irresistible. What would he look like if he was really amused and those crinkles at the corners of his eyes deepened? What would his laugh sound like?

Lia suspected it would be a very contagious sound. Had her early impressions been unjustified? Maybe Sam was actually quite a nice guy. He was certainly a very good doctor and that was more than enough to chase away any doubts that she might not enjoy working here.

* * *

Extra sets of hands were arriving from all corners of the hospital and Sam had more than enough to do, coordinating the helpers to lift Keoni onto the bed and arrange the equipment carefully so it didn’t get disconnected. He put the life pack on the bed between their patient’s legs so he could keep an eye on the rhythm on the screen. The bed didn’t have an IV pole attached so someone had to carry the bag of fluid high enough to keep it running. It was logical to give that task to Jack, who was the tallest person there apart from himself.

Their patient was beginning to take breaths unaided but not at a fast enough rate so he needed someone who could move alongside the bed, holding the mask in place to deliver oxygen and to assist his breathing when needed by compressing the bag attached to the mask. At any other time Sam would have asked Ana to do that because she was the most experienced nurse when it came to any protocols to do with resuscitation or post-resuscitation care. But Lia had been doing that since Ana had gone to look for extra help and she’d proved herself to be more than competent. It would be rude to push her aside and he’d invited her to come to his intensive care unit anyway.

Besides...despite how focused he was on transferring a patient who was still critical and could potentially arrest again at any moment, there was a part of his mind that was aware of appreciating Lia being there.

It wasn’t due solely to the competence she’d displayed in handling an emergency situation and it certainly wasn’t because of some masculine instinct that simply enjoyed having an attractive female nearby. Maybe it was his better nature asserting itself and being prepared to give her a chance to prove his first impression wrong.

Or maybe it had something to do with that smile...

‘If I was at home, I’d be transporting to a facility that had a cath lab,’ Lia said as they manoeuvred the bed into the walkway. ‘Do you have the capacity to do angiography here?’

‘No,’ Ana told her. ‘We’ve got a lot of things that remote hospitals might dream of having, like a CT scanner, but a cath lab would be taking things a bit too far.’

‘So how do you treat your cardiac patients?’

‘We’ll take a twelve-lead ECG,’ Sam responded. ‘And a chest X-ray. We can check cardiac enzymes and we’ll administer thrombolysis if it’s indicated.’

The sound of a wolf-whistle made him blink but he ignored it.

‘As soon as we’ve got him stable enough, we’ll arrange a fixed-wing evacuation to a hospital on the mainland that can do angiography and angioplasty. Cardiac surgery, if that’s what’s needed.’

The wolf-whistle sounded again. Frowning, he looked up from the rhythm he was watching on the screen to see Lia reaching into the pocket of her cargo pants to pull out a mobile phone.

What the heck? Okay, she was still holding the patient’s mask in place with one hand but how inappropriate could you get? Had she even been listening to the response to her query?

She was actually texting as she stepped back to let the hospital staff position the bed and hook up the equipment they now had available. Any impression he’d had of Lia’s competence and professionalism was beginning to fade and maybe that was why he gave her the challenge of interpreting the ECG trace as soon as he’d put the chest leads on and printed it off.

He stepped close enough to hold the sheet of graph paper in front of her. ‘So what do you think?’

Lia jumped and her gaze jerked up from her phone but she still had it clutched in her hand as she turned her attention to the trace.

Her scanning was as rapid as his had been.

‘Hyperacute T waves, and there’s significant ST elevation in leads V3 to V5. Looks like a sizeable anterior infarction with lateral extension.’

He wanted to test her. ‘What about the bundle branch block?’

‘There is a left bundle branch block but the ST elevation is greater than you’d expect and we’ve got Q waves here...and here...’

He hadn’t noticed how delicate her fingers were before. Long and slim, with practical, unpainted nails and no rings. Her touch on the paper was light enough not to move it but he could feel the pressure transfer itself to his own fingertips.

‘And there’s some reciprocal changes in the inferior leads,’ Lia added. ‘It’s pretty conclusive.’

He should have been impressed. He might have even told her that except for the interruption of that damned wolf-whistle again.

Her cheeks went pink. ‘Oops, sorry. I meant to put that on silent.’

Sam glared at her. ‘Maybe you could save your personal messaging for out of work hours.’

‘I’ve got the bloods done.’ Ana had a handful of test tubes. ‘Some will have to go down to the lab but do you want me to do the benchtop cardiac biomarkers?’

‘I’ll do it.’ Sam turned away from Lia. ‘Set up the tenecteplase infusion, will you? And draw up some atropine. I’m not happy with his rate. It’s sinus but it’s too slow.’

A glance from the corner of his eye as he transferred some blood to the tiny, specialised tube that would slot into the sophisticated device he was now holding in his hand showed Sam that Lia was busy texting again. Maybe she already knew that they could measure things like troponin and creatinine kinase and myoglobin, which were all markers of whether someone was having a heart attack and how large it was, but surely she should be interested to know that she would have one of these units available in the helicopter she was about to start working in?

They hadn’t been cheap but, like a fair few other items here, they were important enough for Sam to have quietly provided them from his personal funds.

Not something he would want Lia—or others, for that matter—to know. Maybe it was better that she wasn’t showing any interest or asking awkward questions.

And at least she put her damned phone away when Jack’s pager sounded an alert.

‘Looks like we’ve got a call. Come on, Lia. I’ll show you how the radio system works.’

* * *