He would be so proud to do that.
And he wanted Georgia as his partner.
He hadn’t intended to say his next words but somehow he had to convey just how genuine his offer to help was. How deeply he was prepared to commit to being with both Georgia and her unborn child.
‘Marry me,’ he said.
CHAPTER EIGHT
SO...
Here he was...
Doing the craziest thing he’d ever done in his life.
Matteo Martini paused as he reached the top of the spiral staircase that led from the enormous helicopter hangar to the offices and staff quarters above.
The bright red overalls of his new uniform felt a little stiff and he rubbed the side of his neck where the coarse material was irritating his skin. A glance through the wall of glass beside him made him pause for a moment.
Edinburgh’s Emergency Response Centre was an impressive set-up. This hangar and the tarmac where the helicopters were parked were side by side with the land-based arm of the ambulance service. He could see the huge building that housed the control centre and quarters for the dozens of paramedics who worked here. There was an astonishing number of ambulances lined up outside the building and a row of the SUVs that were painted in the same colours, with beacons on the top. They had similar vehicles in Milan, where experienced paramedics could be sent as a first response or backup to ambulances.
He could see one of these cars heading out as the automatic gates slid open. As soon as it outside the gates, he could see that the driver activated the beacons and he could hear the faint wail of a siren.
Matteo took a very deep breath.
It could be Georgia. Luke had told him that she was currently employed in one of those cars.
He assumed that she didn’t know that he had taken this job on the helicopter team. Why would she? The land and air services might work closely together but these bases were separate entities. It might, in fact, prove difficult to see much of Georgia.
Especially given that she wouldn’t want to be seeing him.
Okay. Perhaps taking this new job in a strange city wasn’t the craziest thing he’d ever done.
That prize had to go to proposing marriage to a woman he’d only spent one night with. A woman who’d made it very clear that night, a couple of weeks ago, that she didn’t need a man to help her.
Didn’t want one.
And yet here he was. Making himself available. Putting himself on the line in a way that would have been incomprehensible for any other woman he’d ever met.
Why?
Because he hadn’t been able to talk himself out of it, that’s why. It just felt...right. He’d convinced himself that, if nothing else, this could be a good career move. He could get experience in things that were hard to come by in a huge city like Milan. Mountain rescues perhaps. Or working in difficult conditions, like deep snow. It would be an adventure.
The fact that it was the only first step he could think of on a journey that could lead to Georgia changing her mind about him was irrelevant.
It had to be. Matteo started moving again. Dougal had given him a comprehensive tour of this facility yesterday and he would be waiting to introduce him to the new team of his paramedic partner and their pilot. His first shift was about to begin.
The new pager clipped to his belt could sound at any moment.
Matteo felt his heart rate kick up a notch. This was one of the things he loved about this job. You never knew when something was going to happen. Or what challenges it could present.
He was ready.
For anything.
* * *
The crescendo beat of an approaching helicopter had never been so welcome.
Georgia known that something was wrong as soon as she’d arrived on scene and approached the huddle of people at the bottom of the hill in this mountain biking park on the outskirts of Edinburgh.
A ground-based ambulance crew was already here and, when she saw the look of relief on the young paramedics’ faces when they noticed her arrival, it was obvious that this situation was well out of any comfort zone.
At first glance, she couldn’t understand what was disturbing them so much. Automatically assessing the scene for safety and any clues about what kind of injury she might need to treat, Georgia had already noticed a bicycle with a very bent wheel amongst the undergrowth and the young boy who was lying on his side, apparently unconscious. A group of other pre-teen children were grouped well away, clutching the handlebars of their bikes, and there were adults with them who were wearing blue polo shirts with a logo that had a bike in mid-air as it cleared an obstacle. Was this a school trip to an adventure park perhaps?
More adults in the blue shirts and a couple in civvies were close to the injured boy and one of the paramedics was taking a blood pressure. That suggested that the child was still alive but the expressions on the faces she could see were telling a different story.
And the silence was unnerving.
There was no time to waste on friendly introductions to a junior crew she didn’t recognise. Georgia slipped her arms from the backpack with all her gear and dropped to a crouch, realising belatedly that the size of her belly made this impractical so she ended up on her knees beside her patient.
‘Fill me in,’ she directed quietly, her fingers already on the boy’s neck, feeling for a pulse.
‘This is Toby,’ one of the paramedics told her. She was holding the boy’s shoulders. Preventing him from being moved? ‘He’s eleven years old. He’s come off his bike at speed, going downhill.’
A head injury? Georgia glanced at the helmet the boy was still wearing. She couldn’t see any evidence of damage.
The pulse she could feel beneath her fingers was light and rapid. A little uneven, which was a concern.
Was he bleeding out from a severed artery?
Another searching glance didn’t show her any signs of blood loss and surely even the most junior crew would have external bleeding well under control by now.
‘He hit this tree. And...’
The tiny hesitation in the paramedic’s voice came at the same instant that Georgia saw what the problem was.
It had looked as if the small branch that had snapped from the tree was just a part of the organic debris of this crash scene.
But only one end of the branch was visible.
The other end was hidden beneath a fold in the material of this young boy’s shirt. Very gently, Georgia moved the material and her heart sank.
Just how far had this stick penetrated? Were the irregular beats she had noticed due to its proximity to Toby’s heart?
This was beyond serious. It was critical.
The people all looking to her for guidance were probably reassured by how calmly she spoke. It was a skill honed over a long career of facing difficult situations. She might be on the verge of panicking but nobody would ever guess.
‘Can you get on the radio to Comms, please,’ she said to the first paramedic. ‘Request urgent helicopter backup and then organise a place for it to land.’ She turned to the second crew member. ‘I need padding so that we can stabilise this branch. Then I’ll need my IV roll out of my pack and I want you to get some ECG electrodes in place. Very carefully.’ She looked up at the bystanders. ‘Can I get someone to come and hold Toby’s shoulders, please? And someone else to keep a hand on his legs? We have to make sure we don’t move him yet, even an inch.’
By the time she heard the approach of the helicopter, Toby had IV fluids running, oxygen on, and a monitor that was recording his heart rhythm and blood pressure. Georgia had her hands on the doughnut-shaped padding that was around the base of the stick. She didn’t know how close it was to this boy’s heart but she could feel the movement of its beating and knew that even a small movement of the impaled object could prove fatal.
She was so focussed on what she was doing, she didn’t even look up until a flash of red filled her peripheral vision. The legs of one of the critical care paramedics from the helicopter crew. Her glance flicked up swiftly and—despite that skill of keeping a personal reaction hidden in the face of a difficult situation—it was a miracle that her hands remained rock steady when she saw the face beneath the helmet.
Matteo?
The flicker on his face told her that her shocked thought must have escaped in an audible gasp but he wasn’t about to waste a split second on any explanation.
‘Vital signs?’
‘Blood pressure and oxygen saturation have dropped in the last five minutes and the blood pressure’s widened. Respiratory rate increasing. He’s in sinus rhythm but I’m worried about an increasing number of ectopic beats. I’m querying a cardiac tamponade?’
Matteo was unhooking a stethoscope from around his neck.
‘I’m going to check his breathing and heart sounds. I’ll work around you. Don’t move.’
Of course she wasn’t going to move. Even if the ‘fight or flight’ part of Georgia’s brain had activated itself and was urging her to flee.
To get away from Matteo.
A man who had offered to marry her and help raise what he believed to be another man’s child.
She’d known that Italian men had the reputation of being passionate and impulsive but that had been the craziest thing she’d ever heard. That the offer had actually been as alluring as it was appalling was what had made it so dangerous. Fear had prompted the rush of words she had finally found to respond to him. To tell him that she didn’t want him, or any man, in her life. He’d finally got out of her car and left—as silently as he had that night after he’d left her bed. And that, she had been quite confident, was the end of it all.
But here he was.
And a traitorous part of her brain was registering something like...happiness?
No. It was probably simply relief that people even more qualified than she was were here to help manage this critical situation where a small boy’s life was at stake.
‘Thank goodness you’re here.’ A male bystander who might be Toby’s teacher was watching Matteo as he moved the disc of the stethoscope over the boy’s chest and he seemed to share Georgia’s relief. ‘You’ll know what to do.’
A flick of a glance from Matteo told Georgia that she’d been doing exactly the right thing to keep Toby safe until she had the backup she needed.
‘Can you pull it out?’ One of the female bystanders, perhaps a parent helper, sounded terrified. ‘It’s going to kill him, isn’t it?’
‘Pulling it out would be the worst thing to do,’ Georgia responded quietly. ‘It might even be saving his life at the moment.’
‘What?’ The man was incredulous now. ‘You’ve got to be kidding me.’
Matteo glanced up as he reached to open his pack. ‘If a foreign object has penetrated something important, like a major blood vessel, it can be the pressure of the object that’s stopping uncontrollable bleeding.’ He turned back to meet Georgia’s gaze.
‘I need you to keep the stick really still while I do as best as I can with an ultrasound. I need to know if this is a cardiac tamponade or a haemothorax. We’ll need to cope with either of those scenarios before we can move him.’
‘We’ll also need to shorten this before we can get him in the chopper.’ Matteo’s crew partner was examining the length of the branch. ‘I’ll check that we’ve got a saw on board.’
Matteo’s eased the small transducer of the portable ultrasound amongst the shreds of fabric where Georgia had already cut Toby’s clothing clear. He was very gentle as he edged around the gauze padding that Georgia was holding firmly in place around the entry point of the stick. His hands brushed hers and, at one point, the back of his hand pressed directly onto hers as he took a closer look at the image on the screen.
‘Look at that. You can see that the ventricle wall is functioning. There’s no blood loss with the contractions that’s going into the pericardium.’
Georgia skirted the awareness of the touch of his skin against her own. Except that it was actually helping her own concentration on this emergency. Making her feel as if she wasn’t alone in trying to save this young life. That, together, the chance of success had somehow more than doubled.
‘So it’s a haemothorax?’
‘Haemopneumothorax, probably. Same effect. I can see that air movement has decreased on this side even in the time it took to do the ultrasound.’
‘Are you going to do a needle decompression?’
‘Yes. I’d rather put in a drain but getting him to Theatre is the priority. It’s only ten minutes’ flying time and a needle decompression should be enough.’
For the next few minutes, Georgia watched both members of the helicopter crew working but she could do nothing to help except keep her position and keep this stick as stable as possible, especially when Matteo’s partner, Shane, was carefully sawing the branch to leave a length that would be manageable as they transported him.
Matteo was working remarkably swiftly. As soon as he noted that Toby was not unconscious enough to be feeling no pain from the vibration of the stick as it was carefully sawn through, he drew up drugs and administered them into the IV line Georgia had already established. When the needle inserted between the small ribs failed to release enough pressure to improve breathing, he and Shame worked as a team to perform the surgical procedure to insert a proper drain and remove some of the blood that was preventing a lung from functioning.
It was impressive.
And then they were ready for the delicate task of moving their young patient to the stretcher and into the helicopter.
‘Can you come with us?’ Matteo asked Georgia. ‘I know we can trust you to keep that stick stable.’
She still hadn’t let go of the padding around this object and she didn’t want to until she knew that Toby was safe.
‘We can get your vehicle back to base,’ one of the original paramedics on scene said.
Georgia nodded. But the next few seconds were anxious ones. She had to get up off her knees as they lifted the stretcher without moving her hands and changing the pressure that was keeping the stick steady. Normally that wouldn’t have been a problem but she had a huge belly that was affecting her balance now and couldn’t know whether it was going to be a problem.
Matteo’s sharp glance as she began to move told her that he was thinking along the same lines. He jerked his head at one of the ambulance crew to take his place at the head of the stretcher to lift it and he stepped behind Georgia, putting his hands under her arms to grip her body and help her to her feet.
The strength in those hands and arms was astonishing.
It was entirely inappropriate to even notice that they were in contact with more than her ribs but her body overrode her focus for just a heartbeat. Later—probably in the middle of the night—it would remind her that her breasts remembered that fleeting touch. And that would remind her of so much more...
It was just as well that there were too many other things to focus on right now. It was Georgia’s job to keep the foreign object stable as the others worked around her. To keep her gaze on the monitor at all times and warn of any changes to vital signs like heart rhythm, oxygen saturation and blood pressure.
And part of her was savouring every moment of this adrenaline-filled mission. Her peripheral vision showed the mountain park scene fall away beneath them as the helicopter took off, and Georgia knew this might be the last challenge like this that she would have for a very long time. She knew her baby bump could have interfered with her doing her job if Matteo and Shane hadn’t been there.
She’d held onto her front-line job for as long as she could but it really was time to step down and spend the next few months in an environment that was safer for everybody. The
patients, herself and her babies.
And, maybe, that would also keep her well away from Matteo’s orbit. That was something else that would be haunting her later tonight when she had the head space to revisit the shock of his reappearance in her life.
Georgia had no idea how she was going to cope with it.
Or even if she could.
* * *
Well...that had been a memorable first day on a new job.
He’d been right that this position was going to give him new experiences and enhance his skills.
Matteo paced the floor in Luke’s small apartment in central Edinburgh, heading for the fridge in the hope of finding a cold beer.
That job this morning, with the young boy impaled by the branch, had been exciting. Challenging. That they’d got him to the hospital and into Theatre with no major deterioration in his condition had been a triumph. He would contact the intensive care unit tomorrow and ask for an update. Have a chat with the specialist in charge of his case, hopefully.
Because having an update to share would give him an excuse to make contact with Georgia?
No. That wasn’t his motivation. He needed to know how his patient was doing. Whether he’d done everything he should have done on scene.
The fact that he would have a reason to get in touch with Georgia to pass on the information was simply a bonus.
But Matteo sighed as he twisted the top off the small bottle.
He was facing a bigger battle than he’d expected.
That look of shock on her face in the instant when she’d recognised him today.
Horror, almost... Or perhaps even fear?
What was that about?
How could you find a connection with someone that was this powerful and then not want to explore it further?
How could you make love with someone like that and not be desperate to try it again? To see if it really was the most extraordinary experience in your life?
Unless she hadn’t felt the same way.
No. Matteo didn’t believe that. The lines of physical communication had been the clearest he’d ever experienced. It hadn’t made any difference that they came from different countries. They had been speaking exactly the same language that night.
Twin Surprise for the Italian Doc Page 10