The Italian Surgeon Claims His Bride

But there was no need, because they heard the sound of the front door and a moment later Louise pushed the stroller into the kitchen. A stroller that contained a wailing baby.

‘She’s just a bit tired,’ Louise said defensively, as Maria rushed to pick up and comfort her grandaughter.

‘Dio mio! She’s cooking!’

‘It got cold. She needed her jacket on.’

‘Jenna?’ The plea from Maria was almost desperate but Jenna was already in action, her instincts sounding a loud alarm.

She took Ella from Maria, quickly removing her outer clothing, but it did little to cool her and she was too distressed to swallow the liquid paracetamol Shirley fetched under Jenna’s direction. What worried Jenna more, however, 58 was the rate and depth at which the child was breathing.

Trying to calm her down had to be the first priority. Jenna cradled Ella in her arms, letting the small head snuggle into her shoulder. She rocked her and made soothing sounds.

‘It’s OK, sweetie…Everything’s OK…’

Maria stood nearby, twisting her hands, her forehead creased with worry. Shirley stared at Louise between helping Jenna by fetching the medication and supplying a damp facecloth, but Louise was ignoring everybody. She helped herself to coffee and then sat down at the table.

Ella’s exhausted sobbing finally ebbed and it was then that Jenna could assess what she had instinctively feared. The baby was in quite severe respiratory distress. Tiny nostrils were flaring and the muscles around her ribs retracting with the effort to breath. It was taking longer for her to breathe out than in and Jenna could now hear a faint wheeze. And the rate was high. Far too high.

‘We need to take Ella to hospital,’ she announced.

Maria went pale and crossed herself. Louise lifted her head sharply.

‘Don’t be ridiculous! She’s just got a bit of a sniffle and she’s tired. I’m sorry we didn’t get back earlier but I met…Gerald, the man I had dinner with last week and he asked me to have lunch and…well, I could hardly refuse, could I?’

Shirley gave a soft I-told-you-so sort of snort but nobody bothered answering Louise.

‘Could someone bring a car around?’ Jenna asked. ‘I don’t want to put Ella down until I have to. Getting upset again is only going to aggravate the trouble she’s having with her breathing.’

‘She can’t breathe? Oh…’ Maria was hovering like a mother hen.

‘What’s wrong with her?’ Louise demanded.

‘I think she may have bronchiolitis.’

‘But she seemed so much better this morning,’ Maria almost wailed. ‘I don’t understand!’

‘It often presents as a mild viral illness and the symptoms were well controlled with the paracetamol. If it had just been a cold, she wouldn’t have deteriorated like this.’

‘You should have known it was more than a cold. You’re a nurse, aren’t you?’ Louise was getting to her feet. ‘I hope you’re not suggesting this is my fault.’

‘What’s important right now is that we get Ella to hospital so she can be monitored properly and treated if this gets any worse.’

‘I’ll get the car,’ John offered.

‘I’m coming, too,’ Maria said firmly.

‘So am I,’ Louise snapped.

Maria paused with dramatic suddenness in her route to the door. She waved her arms in the air. ‘Wait! I must ring Paolo and let him know we’re coming.’

Jenna blinked. Of course Paul should know his daughter was about to turn up in the emergency department, but what would he think if he received an alarmed call from his mother—probably in voluble Italian? Keeping everybody calm was part of her job in order to prevent the atmosphere around Ella becoming overly tense.

‘Maybe Shirley could do that,’ she suggested. ‘That way we won’t be held up.’ She caught the housekeeper’s gaze. ‘Just let him know I’m a bit worried so we’re coming in to get Ella properly checked.’

‘Sure.’ Shirley nodded. ‘I guess they’ll let me leave a message if he’s busy in the operating theatre or something.’

This wasn’t the way Jenna would have wanted any of them to see more of Paul Romano. She should have been more careful what she wished for.

Both grandmothers had been asked to wait in the relatives’waiting area and Ella was sitting on Jenna’s knee in an emergency department cubicle. This was due solely to the fact that if anyone tried to remove her from Jenna’s arms she immediately began to cry. With her nanny, she was calm enough to allow oxygen tubing to be held in the vicinity of her face in an attempt to bring up the level of oxygen circulating in Ella’s blood.

‘What’s the saturation now?’

‘Ninety per cent.’ The paediatric registrar summoned to examine Ella flinched visibly at the unexpected, crisp query coming from behind his back. Paul had finally appeared, still dressed in his theatre scrubs and clearly impatient to find out what was going on.

Jenna was thankful she had her arms full of Ella and something she could at least pretend to be completely focussed on. She was also thankful for the conversation now going on between the consultant and the registrar, however, because it gave her a legitimate excuse to steal frequent glances at Paul.

She had never seen him looking like that.

She had never seen anyone looking like that.

The suggestion of weariness and, undoubtedly, anxiety for his daughter had given the surgeon an even more sombre professionalism. Or was it because they were now on his working turf?

Jenna was struck anew by this man’s apparent aloofness to his child. He was acting like any other doctor might in discussing a patient. Apart from his customary flick of Ella’s curls in greeting, Paul had made no attempt to comfort his sick daughter. No cuddles. No soothing words.

Was Jenna dreaming in thinking she could establish a loving connection if there was so little to build on?

The aloof, professional demeanour was at complete odds with his appearance. Too many hours under a theatre cap would have flattened those black curls. Had Paul run distracted fingers through his hair to make it look so tousled and unruly?

And the scrub suit was baggy. A deep V-neck revealed dark curls on his chest and his bare arms also had a covering of fine, very dark hair.

Jenna felt almost embarrassed. It felt like catching her employer on the way out of the shower with just a towel wrapped around his waist. Much worse than a casual chat in the kitchen of his own home. Worse even than idle curiosity about what he might wear to bed. She could feel herself flushing, as though at any moment Paul would look over to see her thoughts in a bubble over her head.

How ridiculous! As if she hadn’t seen surgeons around hospitals or in wards, still wearing theatre clothing.

But she had never been involved in their private lives, had she? Jenna felt uncomfortable. Like she was stepping over a boundary of some kind. Only she didn’t know what the boundaries were.

‘You’ll have to admit her, then,’ Paul was saying.

‘Yes.’

‘Provisional diagnosis?’

‘Bronchiolitis. Probably RSV. We’ll try a viral nasal wash to identify the causative pathogen but it won’t make any difference to treatment at this stage.’

‘Which is?’

‘We’ll give oxygen to keep the sats above ninety-two per cent. IV or nasogastric fluids at seventy five per cent maintenance and we’ll keep a careful watch on her and transfer her to the paediatric ICU if she deteriorates.’