Their First Family Christmas

by Alison Roberts

  She hadn’t expected the effect that hearing his voice again would have. She had to swallow past the lump that appeared suddenly in her throat and felt like a rock.

  ‘Sinus tachycardia,’ Alistair said. ‘Blood pressure’s one-thirty on eighty.’

  Probably higher than normal for Jack.

  ‘What’s your pain score?’ she queried. The paramedics had already given him some morphine but maybe it hadn’t been enough. She didn’t need to give Jack the usual range of zero to ten to pick from, with zero being no pain and ten the worst ever. He knew.

  ‘About five, I guess. Maybe six.’

  ‘Let’s top up the morphine,’ she directed Alistair, as she hooked her stethoscope into her ears. ‘I’m going to have a listen to your chest,’ she told Jack.

  His chest was bare. The leather jacket had been unzipped and the black T-shirt beneath had been cut. His skin was far more tanned than Emma had ever seen but that whorl of dark hair was exactly the same. And she knew exactly what it would feel like against the silk of his skin, if it had been her fingers rather than the disc of her stethoscope she was pressing against it.

  Oh, help... Maybe she should stand back and let Alistair take over here? Or call in part of the trauma team? They were probably going to need at least an orthopaedic consult but that should probably wait until the necessary X-rays and other tests had been done.

  Alistair was drawing up the morphine. He held the ampoule so that Emma could do the drug check. Her nod was brisk. Happy with Jack’s breath sounds, she wanted to start a neurological check. The potential head injury was high on her list of concerns.

  ‘You know where you are, Jack?’

  One side of his mouth curled into that ironic smile she remembered so well.

  ‘Oh, yeah... Unless the Eastern got shifted recently?’

  ‘And can you tell me what date it is today?’

  The smile vanished and Emma knew, with what felt like a kick in her gut, that the pain in his eyes had nothing to do with his injuries. It was a standard question but how insensitive was it, given these particular circumstances?

  ‘It’s Christmas Eve,’ Jack said softly. ‘I’m...I’m sorry, Red.’

  The old nickname, bestowed in honour of her wild, auburn hair, was almost her undoing.

  Nobody else called her ‘Red’. Never had, never would...

  Not even Sarah. She used to make Emma laugh when they were kids by calling her the ‘Ginger Ninja’ and there was nobody else in her life that would dream of doing that.

  This time, the lump had jagged edges and there was no way of stopping the sting that got to the back of her eyes.

  ‘I’m sure you didn’t do this on purpose.’ Her voice sounded odd, coming from around the edges of that lump. ‘I’m sorry, too.’ She gathered some strength she didn’t know she had. ‘But don’t worry—we’re going to look after you.’

  The nurse had finished cutting the leather of his bike pants and was working on the sleeves of his jacket. She had to pause while Alistair flushed the IV line, after injecting the painkiller.

  ‘I’ll draw some bloods,’ Alistair said. ‘Including an ETOH level?’

  ‘I haven’t been drinking.’ Jack’s words sounded a little slurred but his face had relaxed a bit, suggesting that his pain level—which Emma suspected he had under-reported—was dropping, so it was quite likely the morphine was making him sleepy.

  Alistair’s look said it all. The slurred words were no surprise. This was Jack Reynolds, wasn’t it?

  A flash of anger caught Emma unawares. Okay, Jack had left here under a huge cloud but there’d been a reason for that, hadn’t there? A reason big enough to make it, if not forgivable, at least enough to offer the benefit of doubt now.

  The nurse cutting away clothing had caught the look and her eyebrows rose.

  ‘This is Mr Reynolds,’ Alistair told her. ‘He used to work here. He was one of our orthopaedic surgeons.’

  ‘Oh...’ The young nurse looked impressed. ‘I’m so sorry, Mr Reynolds...about having to cut your leathers. I know how expensive they are.’

  ‘It really doesn’t matter,’ Jack muttered. ‘And call me Jack. I’m not at work at the moment.’

  Emma caught her breath. Was he planning to be at work in the near future? Was that why he’d come back? But why would he choose today, of all days, to come back to Glasgow?

  But then again...why wouldn’t he?

  One of the junior doctors who had joined the team had taken off the dressing that covered Jack’s arm injury.

  ‘Can you wiggle your fingers for me, Jack?’

  Emma was still holding her breath. The scraped skin looked raw and painful but if he’d broken bones it could affect his future as a surgeon and that might destroy what had always been the most important thing in his life. Jack Reynolds might still be seen as a badly behaved maverick by some—Alistair, for instance—but nobody had ever had anything other than praise to offer about his work as the rising star of the orthopaedic surgical department. Ironically, he’d been heading towards specialist trauma work and had been the best available for injuries that had the potential to seriously affect someone’s quality of life. Like neck fractures or mangled hands.

  She released the breath in a sigh of relief as she saw the way Jack was able to move his hand. And he could make a fist and resist pressure without it causing undue pain in his arm so it was unlikely that any bones had been broken.

  He might not be so lucky with that lower leg injury that Alistair was assessing. The nasty haematoma on his calf could well be the result of an underlying fracture and it was causing some pain to try and move his foot.

  Neither of those injuries was in any way life-threatening, however. Emma was more concerned about the bruising on Jack’s ribs and whether he had a head injury. Despite the protection of a helmet, if he’d hit his head hard enough to lose consciousness, even briefly, he was very likely to have a concussion and possibly something worse, like a bleed, going on.

  ‘Take a deep breath for me, Jack. Is it painful?’ Emma put her hand over skin that was mottled with early bruising.

  ‘A bit.’

  ‘We’ll get some X-rays done soon. You might have broken a few ribs. Let me know if you get short of breath at all.’

  ‘I’m fine.’ Jack had closed his eyes again. ‘The department looked busy out there. You must have patients who are worse off than me.’

  Emma ignored the comment. And the look that Alistair flicked in her direction. He knew. Not about how close she’d been to Jack, of course—keeping that a secret had been part of the excitement—and he hadn’t actually been in the department this time last year but there would be very few people in this hospital who hadn’t heard every single detail about the heartbreaking tragedy she and Jack had been so much a part of. The aftermath had been the hot topic for gossip for weeks as well. And everybody knew how much Emma’s life had changed when she’d finally taken responsibility for Lily.

  Maybe Alistair thought she should step out. That she would prefer not to be caring for Jack after those traumatic weeks that had ended in a battle that everyone believed Jack had deserved to lose.

  She couldn’t let him—or anyone else—know just how far from the truth that was. Her next words came out a little more sternly than was probably warranted.

  ‘Don’t move your head. I’m undoing the collar so I can have a feel of your neck.’

  * * *

  Jack couldn’t see Emma because she was standing behind his head.

  But he could feel her.

  Not just the obvious touch of her fingers on his neck as she pressed her thumbs on each side of his spine, putting systematic, gentle pressure down the midline to check for the presence of tenderness before moving further from the midline to repeat the process.

  No. He coul
d feel her in a much more ethereal sense. He hadn’t known which hospital he was being transported to after the accident and he hadn’t been feeling that great when he’d arrived, but even with his eyes shut, he’d known that Emma was in the room.

  He had felt something of that aura of determination and genuine caring that made Emma Matthews stand out in any crowd of equally intelligent and successful medics.

  And then he’d opened his eyes and she looked exactly the same. Those bright hazel eyes. The matching freckles sprinkled over a button of a nose. Jack could even see the usual coils of that astonishing hair that had wormed their way out from beneath the prisons of their clips.

  It hit him like a brick. All that time he’d been away, he’d been so convinced that he didn’t miss her. That she was just another one of the stream of women that had shared his life—and his bed—for a limited time.

  But he had been missing her, hadn’t he? Every minute of every day. And all that accumulated emotion coalesced into one king punch that was far more painful than anything going on in his battered body at that moment. He’d had to press his lips together against the pain. Screw his eyes tightly shut so that he didn’t keep staring at her and making the pain worse.

  And now she was touching him and it made him remember how clever those small hands were. How gentle Emma was.

  How the touch on his skin made it feel like he was being caressed by a whisper of a delicious, cool breeze on the hottest day ever. That coolness had been an illusion, though, hadn’t it? It could flick in a heartbeat to a heat that no other woman had ever evoked.

  Jack had to stifle a groan. The morphine was clearly scrambling his brain. He shouldn’t be thinking of something like that. It was over. Dead and buried. And he’d been the one to kill it.

  Emma must have heard the small sound. ‘What’s hurting?’ she asked. ‘What’s bothering you?’

  Oh...that was a question and a half. Would she actually want to know about the guilt over abandoning his brother’s child that had been hanging around his neck like an ever-increasing weight?

  The shame of the way he’d behaved in those dark days? The way he’d treated her?

  Even if she was prepared to listen to him, it would have to be a very private conversation and there were others around. He could feel the sting of the damaged skin on his arm being cleaned and redressed. Of his lower leg being unwrapped from its temporary splint. And he could hear the voices of new arrivals—the radiographers, probably—who would be preparing to operate the overhead X-ray machines.

  ‘Is it your neck? Was it here?’ Her fingers were pressing again on the last spot she’d touched at the bottom of his cervical spine.

  ‘No...my neck feels fine.’

  ‘Really?’ Emma’s face appeared as she moved to one side of the bed. So close to his own he could see those unusual golden flecks in the soft brown of her irises. ‘And you really haven’t been drinking?’

  That hurt. He might have been a complete bastard in those last weeks but he’d never been less than honest with her. With anyone, for that matter.

  He saw the flicker in her eyes. ‘Sorry...I just needed to be sure.’

  ‘Yeah...you always were very thorough, Dr Matthews. It’s a commendable attribute.’

  That earned a tilt of her lips that was almost a smile. ‘There’s a checklist for determining whether a cervical spine is stable, as you well know. You don’t seem to have any midline tenderness and there’s no evidence of intoxication. You seem to be reasonably alert and oriented to time and place.’

  Jack could feel his own lips curve. ‘Cheers. Under the circumstances, I’ll take reasonably alert as a good thing.’

  Emma unclipped her small pen torch from the top pocket of her scrubs tunic and flicked the light on. Jack kept his eyes open and stared straight ahead as she moved the beam to check his pupil sizes and reactions.

  ‘Equal and reactive,’ she said. ‘There’s only one other thing on the checklist. Do you remember what it is?’

  Clever. She was throwing in something completely different as another check on his neurological status.

  ‘Whether there are any painful, distracting injuries, like a long bone fracture.’

  ‘And is anything painful enough to qualify as a distraction?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Mmm... Okay, then, I reckon you pass.’ She looked away from him to someone he couldn’t see. ‘I’m happy to leave the collar off but I’d still like a cervical X-ray series, please. Along with chest, pelvis, left tib/fib and the left forearm.’

  ‘Do you want a lead apron?’ someone queried.

  Emma shook her head, looking down at Jack again. ‘I’m happy that your condition hasn’t deteriorated in any way. I’m going to duck out and get up to speed with what’s happening in the rest of the department until I get your X-rays up on the computer. I won’t be far away and someone will come and get me if I’m needed.’

  Jack nodded. He closed his eyes as he did so because he didn’t want Emma to see how much he would have preferred for her to stay here.

  He had no right to put any kind of pressure on her.

  About anything.

  * * *

  Alistair had beaten her to the patient board and he was frowning as he scanned the changes that the last ten minutes or so had produced.

  ‘We’ve got to clear some space,’ he said. ‘Waiting times are getting to an unacceptable level.’

  ‘I’ll see if we can get another registrar or two on board.’

  ‘We’ve got an ambulance arriving in the next few minutes,’ Caroline warned them. ‘And the police. Sounds like a turf war broke out between a couple of Santas selling hats or something.’ She tried to suppress a grin. ‘Could be serious. One of them got stabbed, by the sound of things.’

  ‘I’ll take it,’ Alistair said. ‘But do you want me to help with that dislocated shoulder in Curtain Two first? He’s been waiting a while.’

  ‘I’ll get one of the housemen. It’s only brute strength required.’ One of the junior doctors—a young Australian called Pete—was heading towards her, in fact, but Emma didn’t get the chance to speak first.

  ‘Can I get you to have a look at my patient when you’ve got a minute? Twenty-nine-year-old with epigastric pain but I don’t know if it warrants a scan.’ Pete was frowning. ‘There’s something about her I just can’t put my finger on.’

  It didn’t sound too urgent. ‘Can she wait for a bit? I need you to help me get a shoulder back in. Set up a sedation trolley in Curtain Two and I’ll be with you shortly.’ She paused beside one of the bank of computer screens available to call up patient records, check test results and review X-rays. The first digital image from the resuscitation room Jack was in had come through. A chest X-ray.

  Emma peered at the screen as she zoomed in and hovered over the area that was so bruised. There didn’t seem to be any broken ribs. This was good. Maybe she could stop worrying about the possibility of a pneumothorax and a sudden deterioration in Jack’s ability to breathe.

  Another worry resurfaced in the wake of that relief. Picking up the desk phone, she punched in an internal number.

  ‘CCU, Charge Nurse speaking.’

  ‘Hi, Steve. It’s Emma Matthews here, from ED. Any word on Stuart Cameron yet?’

  ‘They’re just finishing up in the cath lab. He’s had three stents put in. Apparently there was a hundred percent occlusion of his left main stem. ECG changes are resolving already, though, so he’s been incredibly lucky.’

  ‘Oh...thank goodness...’ The wave of relief was enough to make Emma’s legs feel wobbly.

  ‘We’re expecting him in here shortly. We’ve got the private suite ready.’

  Emma smiled. ‘Tell him I’ll be up to visit the moment I get a break.’

  ‘How’s it looking down there?�
�

  ‘Usual festive season chaos. A surprise around every corner.’

  Ending the call, Emma went to find Pete, who was waiting for her outside Curtain Two, alongside a pretty young nurse.

  ‘Really?’ Emma heard him say. ‘He turned up at work drunk? When he had a theatre list waiting?’

  ‘That’s not the worst of it,’ the nurse responded. ‘He was the legal guardian of his baby niece—her only living relative—and he just walked away...’

  ‘No way...’

  They had their backs to her so they hadn’t noticed Emma approaching. Maybe the nurse was carried away by having something that had captured an attractive new doctor’s attention so completely. She leaned in closer.

  ‘Nobody’s heard a peep from him since and that was nearly a year ago.’

  ‘So why has he come back now?’

  ‘Who knows? Maybe he’s come back to claim her finally.’

  Emma stopped in her tracks. She could feel the blood draining out of her head, leaving a nasty spinning sensation.

  She’d thought he might have come back to see Lily.

  To see her, even.

  Or even that he might have been planning to work here again.

  But to have come back to claim guardianship of the only living member of his family?

  It made sense.

  Sickening, terrifying sense, because it wouldn’t be the first time...

  She could actually hear those furious words. ‘She’s my brother’s child. Now she’s mine.’

  It also made her angry.

  ‘I hate to break up the party,’ she snapped, ‘but I’m sure you’ve both noticed how busy this department is at the moment. Let’s get on with doing the jobs we’re being paid to do, shall we?’

  The pair jumped apart, the nurse’s face reddening as she fled. Emma ignored Pete’s muttered apology. The anger was still there. They wouldn’t be the only people gossiping in corners tonight after the dramatic reappearance of Jack Reynolds and no doubt they’d be picking over her own part as one of the major players in what had been a series of events worthy of a soap opera’s plotline.