There were pony rides happening at Pets’ Day as part of the activities that were on offer during the relaxed picnic and barbecue lunch. A lot of parents must have taken time off work, Mitch realised, because many children had both parents there, along with siblings who were still too young for school. There was an overwhelmingly family feel to the day and while this was the Mitchell family’s first Pets’ Day, it still felt very different thanks to having Jenna with them. And he wasn’t the only one noticing the difference, it seemed. Mitch was aware of the curious glances coming their way from people who knew him in the community.
He knew they were referred to as ‘the Mitchell men’. Three males from three different generations that had forged an unusual family unit after tragedy and people cared about them. He couldn’t blame people for being curious, either—this was the first time he’d ever been seen with a female companion in public. He could only hope that Jenna wasn’t aware of the interest she was generating, which she might interpret as a level of pressure she would rather avoid.
She certainly seemed to still be enjoying herself. Mia’s mother, Hanna, had joined them to sit on the grass on the playing field and she was talking to Jenna about her daughter’s asthma.
‘The ambulance people were wonderful when they came that first time when she was only ten months old. I was so worried about her.’
‘I know. It’s such a scary thing when you know your baby’s having trouble breathing.’
‘They thought it was an infection then. Bronchiolitis?’
‘It’s the first diagnosis I would have considered myself in a baby.’
‘Then they said it was reactive airways disease, but the last attack was so bad she ended up in intensive care and they did a lot of tests and said it’s definitely asthma so now we have all the inhalers and spacers and an action plan and even a nebuliser at home.’
‘She doesn’t look like she’s having trouble with all the different animals around her today.’ Mitch joined the conversation. ‘She and Ollie are having great fun.’ He was smiling as he lifted his phone to try and capture the moment in a photograph.
The children were giggling as they rolled around, pulling up handfuls of grass to throw at each other. They both had grubby hands, grass in their hair and smears of tomato sauce on their faces. Jet was taking advantage of the lack of supervision and was crawling over the grass on his stomach to snatch up the half-eaten sausages rolled in bread.
The adults exchanged glances and smiles. No one was about to growl at them for getting messy or forgetting promises not to let the dog eat too much food. This was one of those moments in life. One of the small things that made life as good as it could be. Throwing grass. Laughter. Being with friends and family.
On impulse, Mitch shifted his focus and caught a photo of Jenna watching the children with a smile as big as Mia’s on her face. In this moment she didn’t look as if she was tormented by past memories at all. She looked like she was loving this. No one who was watching her right now would ever imagine the pain and grief in her past. Maybe she’d even forgotten it herself in the joy of this moment? No one would think she was afraid of loving anyone like that again, either.
And...maybe...if she got used to it bit by bit, she might forget that herself?
Because that feeling—the one that gave him that knot deep inside and squeezed his heart like a vice—had come back and he couldn’t simply dismiss it by distracting himself this time. Especially not when he lowered his phone camera to find Jenna turning towards him, with that gorgeous smile still tilting her lips.
His gaze snagged on those lips and another sensation joined the mix he was aware of as he remembered the softness and taste of Jenna’s mouth and what it was like to hold this woman in his arms.
That was all he wanted to do now. To hold her.
To say I think I’m falling in love with you, Jenna...
Just as well he couldn’t do either of those things here because Jenna would run a mile. He’d be breaking their agreement—the one where they’d both been honest in saying that they didn’t want a future with each other that had even the hint of a partnership like marriage. Jenna never wanted to be a mother to someone else’s child and Mitch would never risk Ollie’s happiness by including anybody in his family that didn’t love his son as much as he did.
All he could do was to return Jenna’s smile. To be relieved that a bell rang in that moment, signalling the end of the lunch break and that it was time to prepare for the Pets’ fancy dress competition and to be thankful that it hadn’t been a huge drama for Jenna to join a family occasion.
Because that was what it felt like.
Family...
CHAPTER EIGHT
‘HE’S BRADYCARDIC.’ JENNA had had her fingers on the man’s wrist even as she greeted the patient they’d been called to see. Her glance up at Mitch was brief. ‘Let’s get some leads on for an ECG.’ She turned back to the man, who was slumped on a bench seat in the waiting area of this barber’s shop. ‘How are you feeling, Bruce? Apart from the chest pain?’
‘A bit dizzy. And...like I might be going to be sick.’
The barber stepped back swiftly. ‘I’ll find a bowl,’ he said.
‘Thanks.’ Jenna looked up at the onlookers, a couple of whom were still wearing capes that suggested their haircuts and shaves had been interrupted. ‘Could one of you please go outside so you can flag down the ambulance that’s coming as well?’
‘Blood pressure eighty over fifty,’ Mitch told her as the reading came up on the life pack. He was rapidly sticking electrodes on Bruce’s chest, pulling his unbuttoned shirt aside to attach the final leads that circled the left side of his chest to end under the armpit line.
The blood pressure was far too low. Jenna reached for the IV kit. ‘I’m going to put a small line in your arm,’ she told her patient. ‘Just in case we need to give you some fluids and medication. Is that okay with you?’
‘Sure...if you think I need it... Am I having a heart attack or something?’
‘That’s what we want to find out.’
‘Hang in there, Bruce,’ an onlooker said. ‘You’ll be all right.’
‘Heaven help the rest of us if he isn’t.’ The barber was back, holding a stainless-steel bowl. ‘He’s the healthiest bloke here by a mile. He even ran the London Marathon last year.’
‘I did.’ Bruce leaned his head back on the seat cushion. ‘Feels like a million years ago right now.’
‘Do you have any medical conditions we should know about?’ Jenna asked. ‘Like your blood pressure or anything to do with your heart?’
‘Don’t like doctors,’ Bruce said. ‘Haven’t been for a year or two.’
‘Are you allergic to any medication that you know of?’
‘No. Don’t like pills, either. Haven’t even taken an aspirin that I can remember in recent times.’
Mitch was printing out a piece of paper from the life pack and Jenna bent her head to see what might be revealed by the twelve lead ECG documenting the electrical activity of Bruce’s heart.
She expected to see the wide spacing between beats due to the slow rate. She wasn’t surprised to see that Mitch’s finger was touching the squares that were abnormal in rapid succession, his voice no more than a murmur.
‘Look at that PR interval,’ he said.
‘Mmm. First degree heart block.’
‘And here...and here...’ He touched the capital W and M shapes showing in the chest leads. ‘Left bundle branch block. I wonder if it’s new or old?’
Jenna was wondering too. As a new development it could indicate that Bruce was, indeed, suffering a heart attack and it could be a serious one. ‘I’ll get that IV line in. Could you draw up some atropine?’
‘Sure. I’ll set up an adrenaline infusion, too, shall I?’
‘Please.’ Jenna’s fleeting glance was the only appreci
ation she had time to show. How good was it to be working with someone who knew more than she did about how to deal with a situation that could potentially turn to custard at any moment? Someone that she trusted probably more than any crew member she’d ever worked with in the past.
How good was it that it was Friday? Her day—and at least part of her evening—with Mitch? Not that this was the time to allow even a momentary thought about what she knew that would include but her body knew and, somehow, it gave her even more energy and focus for the task at hand. Having Mitch with her out on the road always had this effect—as if it only took his presence to turn up the volume on anything in her life. Work, sharing a meal, conversation...making love...
Today, like most days with Mitch as her crew partner, was flying past and cardiac call-outs seemed to be the theme for this shift. They’d already been to a chest pain with an apparently non-cardiac cause and an episode of angina that wasn’t responsive to the elderly woman’s normal medication so she had been taken to hospital for further tests. A drug overdose on the back seat of a bus had kept them busy for long enough to create a large traffic jam on a busy road and put them in the right area of the city to be the rapid response for the urgent call from this barber’s shop.
‘Sharp scratch,’ she warned Bruce. She slid the cannula into his vein, blocked the end of it while she screwed a Luer plug into place and then put the clear, sticky covering over the line to protect it, turning to look over her shoulder at the screen of the life pack. Mitch was filling a syringe from an ampoule but he was also watching the screen.
‘PR interval’s stretching,’ he said quietly. ‘We’re losing the P wave in the T wave.’ He taped the ampoule to the syringe barrel and handed it to Jenna. ‘Atropine, zero point six milligrams.’
But Bruce’s abnormal rhythm wasn’t responsive to the first drug. Or to the adrenaline they tried next as an infusion. His rate, in fact, was dropping.
‘Rate’s in the twenties.’ Mitch was supporting Bruce as his level of consciousness dropped to the point where they needed to move him onto the floor. ‘Shall we pace him?’
Jenna nodded. Even if the ambulance arrived in the next few seconds, it would be unsafe to transport Bruce to the hospital when his heart rate was now too slow to be life sustaining. External pacing, by delivering electric shocks to stimulate the heart, could be effective but painful. About to ask Mitch to draw up a powerful analgesic, Jenna’s heart sank as an alarm on the life pack suddenly sounded.
‘He’s in VF.’ Mitch pushed the button that would charge the defibrillator and the increasing pitch of the new sound was added to the alarm still bleeping.
Bruce’s heart was in the process of stopping completely. This had suddenly become a cardiac arrest and the change in the tension of this call-out was all the more dramatic as the ambulance crew arrived, two paramedics and an observer who looked young enough to be a medical student. Due to the medical hierarchy, Mitch automatically had the position of leading this resuscitation but it didn’t feel like that to Jenna. They had become so tightly welded as a team over the many weeks they had been doing these shifts together that they could virtually read each other’s minds and have equipment ready or drugs drawn up so that the protocol became a seamless performance.
‘Stand clear...’
‘Clear.’ Jenna wriggled back on her knees. She needed to, anyway, to reach the airway kit that was going to be needed to intubate.
‘Shocking...’
She could hear the gasp from Bruce’s barber shop friends behind her. Some crews would try and clear an area of spectators when something was happening that might not end well but Jenna’s opinion was that if they weren’t children, they weren’t in the way, and they wanted to be there, witnessing that everything possible was being done for someone could make the experience less traumatic.
And it was one of those all too rare occasions when it looked as if the audience was going to witness a successful resuscitation because, with just the first shock of the defibrillator, there seemed to be a rhythm appearing on the screen as the interference from the shock faded. Mitch held up his hand to stop the paramedic about to start chest compressions.
‘Wait. Let it settle...’
Yes. They could all see the spikes of a normal, sinus rhythm. Still too slow but enough to keep blood circulating and keep Bruce alive. They definitely needed to get him to hospital as soon as possible, however, and he was going to need very careful monitoring and medication dosages.
Minutes later, they had Bruce on a stretcher and Jenna was happy he was stable enough to move.
‘Dr Mitchell and I will come in with you,’ she told the ambulance crew. ‘Can one of you bring my vehicle, please?’
‘I can do that as soon as we’re loaded.’ One of the paramedics stepped forward to take the keys. He turned to the observer. ‘You can come with me. You don’t want a crowd in the back of the truck if things need to happen fast.’
Jenna nodded in answer to the unspoken query from the other paramedic. ‘Yes, we can load. Mitch, can you stay with him? I need to make a call and find the closest hospital with available, emergency PCI facilities.’
‘Is he going to be okay?’ The barber wasn’t the only person looking pale here now.
‘We’re going to take the best possible care of him,’ Jenna assured them all. ‘And we’ll be taking him to a hospital that can treat him for whatever’s going on.’
The hospital with the ability to deal urgently with a life-threatening blockage of coronary arteries was a little out of Jenna’s usual patch for her rapid response vehicle but the longer drive towards Central London gave them enough time to stabilise Bruce’s condition and he was regaining consciousness as they handed over to the cardiology team waiting for them. A short time later, as the team prepared to rush him into the catheter laboratory to diagnose and treat any blockages in his coronary arteries, he was awake enough to recognise Jenna and Mitch.
‘Thank you,’ he said to them, his voice shaky. ‘I think I owe you guys one...’
Walking to find where the vehicle had been parked to one side of the ambulance bay, Jenna smiled at Mitch.
‘That doesn’t happen often, does it?’
‘Someone waking up after a cardiac arrest and saying “Thanks”?’ Mitch grinned. ‘No, it doesn’t happen often. That was a great job.’
‘Be even better if it’s the one we can finish the shift on but I don’t like our chances. It’s going to take a while to get back to station from here, which means plenty of opportunities to be needed somewhere.’
‘I’ll have to come back this way later, too, so I hope we don’t run late. Dad and Ollie are at the zoo.’
‘Oh... I’d completely forgotten you told me about that school trip coming up.’ Jenna climbed into the driver’s seat. ‘Good grief...we’ve been so busy today I hadn’t even asked how the family is. It’s been ages since Pets’ Day.’
‘I don’t expect you to remember everything in my family diary,’ Mitch said. ‘They came in on the train but I’ve arranged to pick them up. We’ll have dinner in town and then I’ll take them home.’
So they wouldn’t have the couple of hours of private time together that had so quickly become the highlight of Jenna’s weeks. That the disappointment was so sharp should be a warning, Jenna thought. Was she getting too dependent on Mitch’s friendship? That hadn’t been a part of the plan. She would never intentionally become dependent on anything or anyone again. Because that meant trouble if it disappeared and she’d had enough of coping with that kind of adjustment in her life already. So she squashed the disappointment.
She had no claims on Mitch’s time. If he was available to be with her, that was great. If he wasn’t, that was no big deal and, after all, he was spending his whole day with her. Come to think of it, that had to be a big deal for Mitch, being with her rather than his son.
‘You’re missing
a school trip with Ollie?’ Her tone revealed her astonishment. ‘To come out on the road with me?’
‘Well...apart from how much I love my Fridays with you, there was a limit of how many parent helpers could go. Dad won Rock, Paper, Scissors, so he got the day at the zoo. Actually, I would have let him have the treat, anyway. He deserves it—he does so much for me and Ollie.’ Mitch reached for his seatbelt. ‘He always has. My life would have fallen apart completely after Tegan died if he hadn’t been there for me.’
‘He’s a lovely man, your dad. I really liked him.’
‘He really liked you, too,’ Mitch said. ‘So did Ollie. They’re both still talking about how excited you got when Jet won the fancy dress competition and Ollie’s been asking when he’s going to see you again.’
‘Has he?’ Jenna’s heart gave an odd little squeeze at the idea of Ollie remembering her, let alone asking to see her again. Being with Ollie, along with so many other children, on Pets’ Day had had its moments of challenge but, overall, it had felt like a positive step in a new direction. Knowing that she had become someone that Ollie was talking about when she wasn’t there was disconcerting, however, and Jenna wasn’t sure if that squeezing sensation was pleasant or not. It felt like it could go either way if it got any stronger so it might be a good idea to change the subject.
‘Was your mother around as well?’ she queried.
‘No. She died when I was fourteen so it was just me and Dad after that.’ Mitch let his breath out in a sigh. ‘They say history doesn’t repeat itself but it kind of felt like that when I went back home with my motherless baby and it was me and Dad running the show.’
‘You were lucky to have the support. My family—and Stefan’s—were thin on the ground and living too far away.’
‘I’ll bet you coped brilliantly,’ Mitch told her.
‘I had good friends.’ Jenna nodded. She caught his gaze. ‘Friends are gold, aren’t they?’ Maybe she wanted to reassure him that it wasn’t a big deal that they couldn’t be together this evening. That this was a friendship that wasn’t held together only by a sexual connection. ‘Especially the ones who step up in the bad times,’ she added, remembering her close friends that had been there for her when Stefan—and then Eli—had died. ‘The ones who are there for you, no matter what.’
Stolen Nights with the Single Dad Page 11