Unlocking The Italian Doc's Heart

Extract (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER ONE (#u7bf5d733-207c-54ff-bdfa-b0c2b5984b2e)

‘JENNA HARRIS—JUST the person I was looking for.’ Robert Jones, the head of paediatrics, walked over to Jenna with a man she’d never seen before. ‘Jenna, this is Lorenzo Conti, our new senior registrar. He’s rostered on to the Paediatric Assessment Unit with you today, so I wondered if you’d mind settling him in?’

‘Sure,’ Jenna said. She held out her hand to Lorenzo. ‘Welcome to the children’s department at Muswell Hill Memorial Hospital, Dr Conti.’

‘Thank you, Dr Harris,’ he said, smiling back. His handshake was firm without being over-pushy, Jenna noticed; she liked that. ‘Call me Renzo.’

His voice, with that slight Italian accent, was like melted chocolate. Add those expressive dark eyes, hair that flopped slightly over his forehead and that killer smile, and he’d have all the women in the hospital falling at his feet. And Jenna was horribly aware that her skin was tingling where he was touching her.

Oh, for pity’s sake. This was totally inappropriate. Lorenzo Conti was her new colleague. She’d only just met him and he might already be involved with someone. Even if he wasn’t, Jenna had promised herself that she was going to focus on her career and make up the ground she’d lost when she’d taken a year’s career break. Right now, she really wasn’t interested in starting a relationship with anyone; Danny’s refusal to support her decision and the ultimatum he’d given her had put her off the idea of sharing her life with anyone else. Ever.

Though she didn’t regret the choice she’d made. If she could go back to that moment, knowing what she did now, she’d still make exactly that same choice. The only thing she regretted was her poor judgement. How had she not seen Danny for what he was, earlier? How had she let herself be blinded by all that charm?

‘Renzo,’ she said, ignoring the fact she felt very slightly flustered. ‘I’m Jenna.’

‘Jenna,’ he said, inclining his head slightly.

She was pretty sure the temperature in the room hadn’t suddenly increased by five degrees, though it felt like it.

Oh, honestly. She needed to pull herself together. Now. Be professional, capable and polite, the way she’d normally be with a new member of the team. This pull of attraction towards Lorenzo Conti was something she’d just have to ignore, because it was going nowhere.

‘Shall we?’ She gestured to the door, and he released her hand.

‘In the PAU, we see children who’ve been referred to us by their family doctor or by the Emergency Department,’ she explained as she ushered him through to the assessment area.

‘We had a similar system when I worked at the London Victoria,’ he said.

‘So coming here to Muswell Hill is a promotion for you?’ she asked.

‘Something like that.’

Though that clearly wasn’t the whole story, because it was as if the shutters had just gone down behind his eyes. Whatever had just made him back away from her was none of her business. Time to back off. She smiled and said, ‘Let me introduce you to Laney, our triage nurse in the PAU this morning. Laney, this is Dr Conti, our new senior reg.’

‘Call me Renzo,’ he said, shaking Laney’s hand, and Jenna felt ever so slightly better that Laney seemed to be just as flustered by Lorenzo Conti as she’d been.

* * *

Their first case was a little girl who’d been eating an orange and stuffed a pip up her nose.

‘OK for me to take this one, Renzo?’ Jenna asked.

‘Sure.’

‘Mrs Peters, if you’d like to come this way, I’ll examine Callie,’ she said with a smile, and ushered the young woman and her daughter through to one of the cubicles.

Renzo could hear Jenna talking, all calm and reassuring with the mum; he liked her bedside manner very much. She was straightforward, explaining things easily in layman’s terms without frightening either the child or the parent, so she’d be good to work with. And he liked what he’d seen of the rest of the team so far. Making a fresh start here at Muswell Hill Memorial Hospital had definitely been a good idea.

‘We see lots of small children who’ve stuffed something they shouldn’t up their nose,’ Jenna said, ‘and I want to avoid putting Callie through a general anaesthetic and an operation if we can.’

Clearly she’d just looked up Callie’s nose with a penlight torch, because then Lorenzo heard her say, ‘I can see the pip very clearly, but because it’s hard and round I can’t put a crocodile clip up Callie’s nose to grab it. I can’t ask her to blow her nose, either, as she’s too little to be able to blow it with the force she’d need to get the pip out, so I’m going to need your help with this. Is that OK?’

‘Yes, of course. Just tell me what I need to do,’ Mrs Peters said.

‘I’m going to lay Callie down on the bed with her head on the pillow and block the nostril that hasn’t got the orange pip in it. Then I’m going to ask you to blow into her mouth, and it should make the pip pop straight out. It doesn’t always work, and I wouldn’t ever advise you to try doing this at home if she does this again,’ Jenna warned, ‘because it’s much safer to do it in hospital where we can act straight away if it doesn’t work. But if it does work, that means we don’t have to worry about an operation.’

There was a pause while Lorenzo assumed that Jenna was following through the actions she’d just described.

‘Yay, it’s out!’ Jenna said. ‘Well done for being so brave, Callie. And thank you, Mrs Peters.’

‘That pip’s got green bogeys on it,’ he heard a high-pitched voice say. ‘Yuck!’

Renzo didn’t hear the rest of the conversation as he was busy with his own first patient, but he was pretty sure it would involve a special sticker for her patient and a reassuring smile for the mum. Just as he would’ve done, had he been the doctor treating young Callie.

Professionally, on first impressions he liked Jenna a lot. But he wasn’t going to act on the pull of attraction he felt towards her. He’d learned the hard way not to risk his heart again. He’d lost too much, last time. His marriage, his daughter and his belief in love.

* * *

‘I need both of you for the next case,’ Laney said when Jenna and Lorenzo emerged from seeing their last patients. ‘Billy Jackson is three. He fell on the stairs an hour ago and cut his forehead.’

Badly enough to need stitches rather than glueing the cut together, Lorenzo assumed, or Laney wouldn’t have asked for them both to see the boy.

‘Let’s go and have a look at you and sort out that cut, Billy,’ Lorenzo said with a smile when they went out to see the little boy.

Billy looked anxious and shielded the cut with his hand. ‘I don’t want to. It hurts.’

‘I promise you we’ll try our best to stop it hurting,’ Lorenzo said, crouching down to the little boy’s level. ‘Do you like cars?’

Billy nodded solemnly and clutched his mother’s hand.

‘So do I. Tell you what, while I’m looking at your poorly head, do you want to look through all my pictures of cars and see which one is your favourite?’

Again, Billy nodded.

‘That’s great. I’m Dr Renzo, and this is Dr Jenna. And I promise we’re going to make your head feel much less sore.’ He took a pack of cards from his pocket and handed them to Billy, straightened up and looked at the little boy’s mum. ‘Are you OK, Mrs Jackson?’

She gave him a rueful smile. ‘Just about. There was an awful lot of blood. That’s why I brought him into the emergency department—and they sent us up to you.’

‘Head wounds always bleed a lot, and they always look much more scary than they really are,’ Lorenzo said, to reassure her.

‘Do you know how Billy banged his head?’ Jenna asked.

‘He tripped while he was going upstairs and he banged his head on one of the treads,’ Mrs Jackson said.

‘We see lots of children who’ve done exactly that,’ Jenna said reassuringly. ‘Was he unconscious at all after he banged his head, or has he seemed woozy since then or wanted to go to sleep?’