His Longed-For Baby

It didn’t take long for Jake to confirm that he too would get to the hospital as soon as he could. If the estimates for the number of casualties were right, this was going to be a day in hell.

He reached for his clothes, sparing a longing thought for the luxury of a long hot shower. Unfortunately, there was going to be no time for that, and certainly no time for that serious discussion he’d been going to have with Maggie.

‘Did you walk or drive last night?’ she asked suddenly.

‘Walked,’ he called back as he scrabbled around in the bathroom, trying to find his other shoe. Thank goodness he would be able to change out of his wrinkled clothes as soon as he reached the hospital. A night on a damp bathroom floor hadn’t done them any favours. ‘Liam insisted he was going to buy me a drink.’

‘And you never drive after you’ve had alcohol,’ she finished for him, something they’d long ago discovered they both believed in. ‘Drat! I forgot that. I was hoping you could give me a lift, for speed.’

‘We’ll just have to run to save time,’ he said distractedly, wondering how his second shoe had ended up by the fridge. He was certain he’d been wearing both of them when he’d walked into the bathroom last night, and he definitely hadn’t bothered walking around her flat with a shoe in his hand since then. He’d had far more interesting things to—

That was enough!

The night was well and truly over now, all bar the post-mortem. There was no point in tormenting himself with full-colour replays when he was going to need every scrap of concentration to help his patients.

‘Ready to go?’ he called, checking that he’d put his pager back in his pocket just as Maggie emerged from the bathroom fully clothed and obviously set for action.

At the last moment Maggie suddenly worried that it might not be a good idea for people to see her arriving for work with Jake. The last thing she needed was to give the hospital grapevine something else to get their teeth into. At least Jake could blame the state of his clothes on the downpour outside.

In the event, the whole department was already working to such a pitch that the only notice anyone took of the two of them was to set them to work the moment they arrived.

‘Thank God you’re both here!’ Senior Sister Lina Mackey said when she caught sight of them. ‘Can you go to Resus Two? We’ve already got three beds going in One and another ambulance due any second with a tension pneumothorax on board.’

‘Can you give us thirty seconds to change into scrubs?’ Jake asked, his long legs already taking him towards the locker room at a rapid clip.

If she’d had her way, Maggie thought as she pulled the faded green cotton top over her head and tightened the baggy drawstring waist on the matching trousers, she wouldn’t have been working in the same room as Jake. She’d barely had time to draw breath since she’d woken up this morning and it didn’t look as if it was going to get any better. Even so, working in the close proximity that such a multiple trauma scenario demanded wouldn’t give her the space to put her thoughts and feelings into order.

What on earth had possessed her last night? She’d never been so brazen in her life. Even now, remembering the way she’d given up on taking his coffee-soaked clothes off his body and had dragged him fully clothed to join her in the shower cubicle made her whole body grow hot.

And this definitely wasn’t the time or the place for such thoughts, not when their patients were going to be fighting for their very lives.

The fact that she and Jake had spent the night together mustn’t be allowed to interfere with the way the two of them worked together.

Both of them reached Resus Two before their first patient, but only just.

Swiftly, she grabbed two disposable plastic aprons and thrust one in his direction before pulling hers over her head and wrapping the ties around her waist. She reached for the box of small disposable gloves, her hand colliding with Jake’s as he reached across her for the larger size.

‘Sorry,’ she muttered, horrified to feel a sudden wash of heat surge into her cheeks. For heaven’s sake! What was the matter with her? They’d been brushing against each other over and over again for the last two years without a problem. Was she going to blush every time now?

Concentrate! she reminded herself, grateful to find the paramedic’s report far more urgent than her own petty worries.

‘ABCs were relatively normal when we reached him,’ the young woman reported briskly, referring to the notes on her clipboard. ‘But he’d been trapped in his seat by the steering-wheel when the whole front of his vehicle collapsed towards him. While he was being cut out of the vehicle we put him on oxygen and got an IV in, but as soon as we removed him he started to crash.’

‘Hypovolaemic shock,’ Maggie heard Jake mutter as she stepped aside while the patient was transferred with the backboard and cervical collar still in place. The young man was certainly showing all the classic signs of severe blood loss.

‘Also increasing difficulty in breathing,’ the paramedic continued seamlessly. ‘There was no sign of a penetrating wound into the chest, so I went with the probability that his lung had been pierced by a broken rib.’

The needle protruding from the midaxillary line of the fourth intercostal space looked surreal under the stark white lighting, especially with a flaccid condom taped to it as a makeshift flutter valve.

‘What were his vital signs once his lung reinflated?’ Jake demanded as the radiographer positioned the first X-ray cassette under their patient’s neck.

‘Pulse and breathing both a little rapid, but fear of asphyxia will do that to anyone,’ the paramedic added wryly as she handed over the notes that would form part of the patient’s case history and collected her equipment. ‘My vehicle should be restocked and ready to roll by now. No doubt I’ll be seeing you again soon. It’s a mess out there.’

‘Can somebody find out if there’s space in Theatre?’ Jake asked urgently, not needing to look up from what he was doing to know that his request would receive immediate attention with a rapid phone call. ‘Maggie, get over here quick and get another line in. He needs more blood. It must be more than his lung. If there’s no room in Theatre we might have to open his chest down here.’

Almost as if he’d given the cue, several sets of monitoring equipment started sounding out their various warnings even as Maggie started manually pumping another unit of blood.

‘He’s crashing again!’ she exclaimed, reading the display charting pulse and blood pressure. ‘Where’s the anaesthetist?’ She handed over her task to the nearest pair of willing hands and grabbed the sealed tray thrust towards her. Even as she ripped off the protective cover to reveal the set of sterile equipment, the door swung open to admit the hurrying anaesthetist.

It was like a well-oiled machine. Each of the members of the team performed their part of the job, with items of equipment appearing almost before Jake could ask. With the speed of experience, the chest and upper abdomen were swiftly swabbed to minimise the risk of infection, and after a brief pause for the anaesthetist to nod that the patient was ready Jake was applying the scalpel in a midline incision.

Maggie had suction ready for the moment he opened up the body cavity, but she was horrified by the amount of blood filling the visual field.

‘Has the heart been pierced, or is it the aorta?’ she asked, her words almost hidden by the continuing sound of suction as she tried to clear enough away for Jake to see what had happened.

‘Aorta,’ he said succinctly, reaching into the cavity to find out exactly how extensive the damage was. ‘Not too bad,’ he conceded after a moment. ‘Puncture rather than dissection.’

‘But bad enough that we’re having trouble maintaining enough pressure to keep him alive,’ the anaesthetist butted in tersely.

‘In other words, get on with it?’ Jake challenged without looking away from his task, but Maggie could still see the familiar gleam of determination in his eyes that appeared every time he knew he had a fight on his hands.

Knowing that time was of the essence if the young man was to survive, she could only look on in admiration at the speed with which Jake effected a workable repair, concentrating on stabilising their patient so that he would survive the trip up to Theatre.

‘Pressure’s better!’ the anaesthetist reported. ‘Not great, but better.’

In the background, Maggie heard the phone ring.

‘That was Liam Blake,’ a female voice called a moment later. ‘There’s a table free in Theatre, if you’re ready for it.’

Maggie felt a swift jolt at the unexpected mention of her ex-fiancé’s name and a wash of heat over her cheeks at the sudden silence that told her that the rest of her colleagues had suddenly remembered that neither she nor Liam should have been at the hospital. This should have been their wedding day.

‘Is he good enough to go?’ Jake asked, deferring to the overriding expertise of the man at the head of the table. ‘I’d rather not mess about with him any more down here if I can help it, especially with a cardiothoracic surgeon available.’

‘A.s.a.p.!’ the anaesthetist said with feeling as he systematically disconnected the various leads connecting their patient to the main life-support and monitoring systems, immediately reconnecting them to the portable system that would maintain him until he reached Theatre.

Even as the doors were closing behind him, they were pushed open by the next trolley, with a second following closely behind.

‘There isn’t going to be time to breathe today,’ muttered one of the nurses as she dodged around the paramedic directing the transfer of their next patient, frantically clearing the detritus from the previous one.

‘Maggie,’ Lina Mackey called from the doorway, beckoning her over with a flustered expression on her usually calm face.

‘Problem?’ Maggie asked, puzzled to find herself drawn out into the corridor.

‘I’m so sorry!’ the woman exclaimed, almost wringing her hands. ‘I’d completely forgotten that you’re getting married today or I’d never have called you in. You should be getting ready for the ceremony…having your hair done or something.’

‘It’s not a problem,’ Maggie soothed, half of her attention on the sudden burst of staccato instructions that told her Jake had another problem patient on his hands. Everything inside her wanted to return to the room to do her part in taking care of the patients. She didn’t have the time or the inclination to explain the shambles of her private life when there were more important things to do.

‘But…what about your wedding?’ Lina demanded. ‘This could go on for hours. You could be stuck here—’