From Heartache To Forever

He didn’t even think there was a word for what they were to each other, he just knew she was an indelible part of his life and always would be.

By the end of Saturday the place was transformed.

Once the paint was dry he’d pulled up the carpet in the sitting room, dining room and hall, and together they mopped and polished the wood block floor and stood back to admire it.

‘Wow. You were right, Beth, it is gorgeous. Stunning.’

‘I thought it would be. How about pots and pans and things, if you insist on moving in so quickly? And bedroom curtains, come to that.’

‘Oh, I’m sure Mum’s got some I can borrow. I don’t need much for the kitchen, and there’s a box in the pantry. There might be something in there worth salvaging.’

They went and had a look, and the answer was a maybe.

‘I’ll take the box home, sort through it and put anything worth having through my dishwasher and bring it back tomorrow, if you give me a key,’ she said, so he loaded it into her car, locked the house and went back to hers for the third and final night.

Not that he’d have a real bed until Monday, but as he’d said, a roof was more than he’d had at times, and he’d be fine—and maybe better than fine. He might even sleep if she wasn’t lying there in the next room, just on the other side of the wall…

‘Morning!’

Beth turned and met his eyes with a smile, her heart skipping a beat at the sound of his voice.

‘Morning. All ready for your first shift?’

‘Yes, absolutely. It’ll make a refreshing change from painting. That’s just mind-numbing.’

She felt her mouth twitch and bit her lip. ‘Be careful what you wish for. Did you get on OK yesterday? And did you sleep last night?’

He laughed softly and propped himself up against the central desk. ‘Like a log, but I’m looking forward to my new bed. I’m all done with sleeping bags.’

‘You could have stayed at mine again,’ she reminded him.

‘I know, but I didn’t want to outstay my welcome and I know you well enough to realise you wouldn’t tell me if I had. Thanks for the card and the house plant. The place looks almost civilised in a rather empty way.’

‘You’re welcome,’ she murmured. ‘I thought it needed cheering up a bit. I put the kitchen stuff in the pantry, too. It might come in handy. Here—your spare key. And talking of keys, has anyone given you a locker or anything?’

He slid the key into his pocket. ‘No, and I could do with some scrubs, if you could point me in the right direction?’

She nodded, and spent the next ten minutes sorting him out. ‘Right, is that everything you need?’

‘Pretty much. Thank you. I’d better go and find James.’

‘He’s in Resus.’

He nodded, and she went back to work and left him to find his feet, but it wasn’t long before they were in Resus together, working on a patient who’d been brought in after being knocked off his motorbike by a driver who hadn’t seen him.

His left leg had an open fracture and the paramedics has splinted it, but it didn’t look good and he was clearly in a lot of pain and his blood pressure was low.

‘Right, someone cut his clothes off so we can have a good look please,’ Ryan said swiftly. ‘Can I have the FAST scanner, and a gram of TXA in an infusion, and I want X-rays of the skull and that leg. Leave the collar and helmet on for now. Hi, I’m Ryan, and I’m a doctor. Can you tell me what happened, Jim?’

While he spoke to Jim and the radiographer took the X-rays, Beth set up the tranexamic acid infusion to slow the bleeding while Ryan’s gentle fingers checked the man’s ribs, abdomen and pelvis.

His leg was tinged blue below the fracture, and Beth checked the pulses in his foot.

‘No pedal pulse,’ she told Ryan, and he nodded.

‘OK. Jim, there’s a problem with the blood supply to your foot, so I’m going to have to pull your leg straight to sort that out. I’m sorry, it’s going to hurt for a moment but it should feel better afterwards. OK, are you ready, Beth? On three.’

He pulled it straight, checked the pulse and then left her to deal with splinting it while he went back to the abdomen, a frown on his face as he ran the ultrasound wand below the man’s ribs.

‘There’s a shadow. I think he might have an encapsulated bleed.’

‘Spleen?’

He shook his head. ‘No. Left kidney, maybe. There’s a lot of bruising on this side, so I suspect a blunt force injury. Give him another gram of TXA as a bolus and let’s get an X-ray of these ribs, and can we catheterise him, please, and check the urine for blood?’

She was already on it, and it proved his diagnosis right. The blood was obvious, and their patient was starting to deteriorate, so he was whisked away to Interventional Radiology for embolisation of the bleeding vessels before the orthopaedic surgeon could deal with his leg fracture.

They watched him go, and Ryan shook his head, a slightly bemused expression on his face as he stripped off his gloves and apron and headed for the sink.

‘It feels odd not to finish the job. I would have had to deal with both of those injuries in the field, but at least we got the pulse back to his foot and he hasn’t got a skull fracture, so it’s all good.’

‘You almost sound as if you wanted to do it all yourself,’ she said, but he laughed and shook his head.

‘No way. I’m happy to hand him over. I’ve had enough of juggling too many balls. They get dropped, and anyway, it’s nice to have time for coffee occasionally. And that’ll teach me to say the c word,’ he said, and she looked up and saw the next patient already being wheeled in.

It set the tone of the day, one case piling on top of another, but he worked fast and thoroughly, and it was a joy to her to be working alongside him again. It gave her a chance to study him, to remember all the little things she’d forgotten, like the way he frowned when he was concentrating, the way his brow cleared the second it was all under control, the quirk of a brow, the brief nod when he was happy with something.

‘Right, go for lunch, both of you,’ James said, and she realised it was after two. She’d been working alongside him since before eight, and they hadn’t stopped for breath.

‘Sandwich and a coffee?’ she suggested, and he nodded.

‘That would be great. I’m starving. Breakfast was a long, long time ago.’

But yet again it wasn’t to be. Another patient came through the doors, one of three from a nasty RTC, but Jenny, her line manager, came in and relieved her, so she went to the café and picked up lunch for both of them and he ate his in a snatched quiet moment a while later, washed down by the now tepid coffee she’d brought back for him.

‘I can see why I was needed,’ he said with a wry laugh.

‘Oh, you’re certainly needed. Still think it’s better than painting your house?’

His chuckle was dry and a little rueful. ‘It’s certainly more mentally challenging.’

‘Oh, well, you’ve only got another three hours to go. What time’s your furniture being delivered?’

‘I said not before six, and I can’t see me getting away before then so hopefully it’ll be eight or something. Whatever. They said they’d let me know. Right, I’d better go back and reassess my patient. I’ll see you later.’

Not much later, as it turned out.

He was in Resus with another emergency, gloved up and trying to assess a nasty scalp wound with an arterial bleed when his phone jiggled in his pocket.