by Amy Andrews
She nodded slowly and it felt as if she understood. Then she lowered her mouth and kissed him, sweet and slow and full of something deep and earnest he couldn’t quite put his finger on. A kiss that seemed to say sorry and thank you and...goodbye?
She pulled away, her tawny gaze heated, her mouth wet from his and he wanted to crush her to him so there wouldn’t be a goodbye.
‘You don’t ever think of going back?’ she asked, her voice husky.
‘No.’ His hand slid to her ass and he squeezed. ‘I’m feeling remarkably good about being home, actually.’
‘Oh, yeah?’ She smiled. ‘That doesn’t sound very rolling stone of you.’
He shrugged. ‘What can I say? You’re a good influence. I think I’m feeling more settled in my old age.’
‘Really?’ There was an odd little hitch to her voice, but then his fingers were trailing down the slope of her buttocks.
‘I might celebrate with a new tattoo, actually.’
She slid her knee forward over his thighs and his fingers slid into the slick heat between her legs. ‘Oh?’ she said, her eyes fluttering closed as he explored.
‘A big axe.’ He grinned, his gaze roaming her face, enjoying her bliss. ‘Embedded right in the centre of my chest.’
Her eyes opened and he tapped the area near his heart as his thumb grazed the hard little nub between her legs. She leaned in, kissed the spot, then slid her leg all the way over his hips and straddled him.
* * *
Trinity woke with a start, disorientated, a few hours later. Something had disturbed her but she didn’t know what.
‘Mummy!’
Oscar. Crying. Distressed.
‘Oscar?’
She was lying with Reid spooned behind her and she had to push his arm out of the way to leap from the bed.
‘What’s wrong?’ Reid asked, his voice sleepy and confused.
But she wasn’t thinking about Reid. ‘I’m coming,’ she called out, her heart beating rapidly as the all-too-familiar sense of dread flooded her system. Conscious of being naked, she groped for her discarded dress and threw it over her head, zipping it up as she hurried out of the door.
Her heart rate almost doubled when Oscar wasn’t in his room. ‘Oscar!’
‘I’m here, Mummy,’ came a plaintive little voice from the direction of her bedroom.
She flew next door to find Oscar standing beside her bed. ‘Oscar!’
‘Where were you, Mummy?’ he asked as she swept him up in her arms and hugged him to her fiercely.
‘What’s wrong,’ she said, disregarding his question as unimportant right at this moment.
‘I don’t feel very well.’
Trinity squeezed her eyes shut at his typical understatement. His forehead was burning up and the rest of his body burned beneath the thin cotton of his pyjamas.
She could hear and feel the rattle of his breathing through his chest and the faint end note of a wheeze.
She sat with him on the bed. ‘Is it hard to breathe?’
‘A little bit,’ he confirmed, lying slack in her arms as a weak, moist cough emphasised his condition.
Reid suddenly appeared in the doorway, pretty much as he’d been when she’d first gone to his room. Trousers, top button undone, shirt flapping open. ‘Is he okay?’ he asked, flipping on the light and advancing into the room.
Trinity shut her eyes against the sudden insult to her pupils. ‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘He’s not. I’m going to have to take him to the hospital.’
He crouched before them, placing a hand on Oscar’s back. ‘He doesn’t sound very good and he’s definitely got a temp. Does he have any recession?’
She wished she didn’t know what Reid was talking about but unfortunately she was all too familiar with medical terminology. Trinity didn’t have to look to know that the intercostal spaces between Oscar’s ribs would be prominent. That his accessory muscles of respiration would be sucking in, working overtime. They’d need to take his shirt off to confirm but she didn’t want to faff around.
‘I would bet my life on it.’
‘I can get my stethoscope and have a listen?’
Trinity shook her head. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust his doctoring skills, it just seemed pointless and time wasting when action was what she needed. ‘I know how this goes, Reid. He can go from a sniffle to being ventilated in a matter of hours. I just want to get him to hospital.’
‘Okay.’
She was grateful he didn’t try to override her or tell her to calm down, that she was panicking for no reason as she’d heard too often in the past from people—some of them medical—who just didn’t understand.
His faith in her ability to know her own son and his condition, his faith in her motherly instincts, almost undid her. If she hadn’t loved him before now, she would have in this moment. But she could not indulge in flights of fancy about the two of them or the threatening tears.
She was going to need to be extra tough for the days ahead.
He stood. ‘I’ll drive.’
Trinity blinked at the offer and for one brief moment allowed herself the fantasy of having Reid—the man she loved—by her side throughout the ordeal she knew was about to unfold. Someone to lean on.
But...
It could be a long haul and it wasn’t practical for Reid, who had a job and his grandfather to worry about. She’d been living a fantasy here with him and she needed to get back to the real world.
‘You can’t. There’s Eddie,’ she said, standing as well.
He shrugged. ‘He sleeps like a rock and doesn’t usually wake till after six. It’s just after two. I’ll leave a note but I can stay with you guys for a bit and be back here by then.’
Trinity hated how much she wanted that. How the prospect of him staying with her filled her with yearning. ‘But if he—’
‘It’s fine, Trinity,’ he cut in gently, his hand squeezing her forearm. ‘Let’s just get the little dude to the hospital, okay?’
Trinity swallowed the lump in her throat and nodded.
* * *
They were walking into the hospital twenty minutes later, a lethargic Oscar bundled in Trinity’s arms. She instantly felt better—safer—the cartoon murals decorating the walls and the staff wearing brightly coloured scrubs as familiar to her as her own breathing.
The triage nurse knew them on sight. ‘Oh, dear, what have we got here, Master Oscar?’ she said, her smile bright but her eyes knowing as they flicked from mother to son. ‘Thought your frequent flyer days were done.’
‘So did I.’ Trinity grimaced.
‘We might pop him straight into the resus cube,’ she said, not bothering with the usual triage procedure. Her voice was casually calm but Trinity could read between the lines.
Oscar had crashed in this emergency department too many times for anyone to take any risks.
Trinity nodded, grateful for the assurance, but it didn’t stop the worry and fear gnawing at her. Or the despair. After six months of being well she’d desperately hoped that they’d turned a corner with his health so this episode was gutting.
‘He’s in good hands,’ Reid murmured as they followed the nurse.
She nodded, not trusting her voice as an entire catalogue of emotions swamped her. She was in good hands with him. The warmth of his palm in the small of her back was infinitely assuring and she had to fight the urge to lean against him.
Trinity laid Oscar on the gurney in the resus cube. He didn’t protest, just looked at her with resigned, knowing eyes that broke her heart even more than his frightened eyes did. There were kids crying all around them, being combative, clinging to their mothers and protesting interventions. Not Oscar.
In the centre of the activity that had sprung up around him, he
lay quiet and accepting. Which was worrying on a whole other level. Trinity fretted that he was becoming exhausted, which could escalate things rapidly.
Reid, standing behind her, squeezed Trinity’s shoulder as they undid Oscar’s pyjama shirt to stick ECG dots to his chest. His intercostal recession was pronounced, as was his sternal and tracheal recession, the garish white line of his sternotomy scar horrifyingly mobile with each suck of his chest.
There was oxygen then and chest X-rays, intravenous therapy and medications. A whole battery of blood tests. Oscar barely flinched when they stabbed him to insert the IV, and sticking a suction catheter down his nose to get a naso-pharyngeal sample raised only a feeble cry.
Doctors came and went. The blood tests were okay. The chest X-ray wasn’t too bad. He was holding his own. So many faces she knew. Reassurances given that she trusted, that meant something. But the rapid beeping noise from the monitor formed a terrible backbeat to her concern. She knew a lot of his tachycardia was due to his temperature but it always frightened her to see it belting along at one hundred and sixty beats per minute.
As if surely his heart was going to explode under the pressure or just...stop.
The helplessness was the worst as she stood by the gurney, his little hand furled in hers, alternating between anxiety and hope. Knowing that these doctors and nurses had him, that they were experienced, that they were good at this, that they were fighting for him was immensely reassuring. Then thoughts of how bad this could get crept up on her and she was plunged into despair.
But every time it happened, when the hopelessness seemed overwhelming, Reid’s hand would slide onto her shoulder, as if he knew she needed it at that precise moment, and it kept her going.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
THEY WERE SETTLED in the high dependency unit within two hours. The loud hiss of the high-flow nasal cannula delivering warmed, moist oxygen formed a truly garish white noise in the isolation room, but it was soothing to Trinity’s frazzled nerves. As was the now slower, more steady blip of the monitor. Oscar’s temp was coming down and his vital signs were less scary.
He was asleep, looking very small and very pale in the big bed, ECG wires, IV tubing and oxygen tubing all criss-crossing his body. He didn’t have a shirt on and it was heartening to see that his recession had markedly improved.
The ICU doctor had just been. She was hoping that the high-flow oxygen would be enough to get Oscar over the hump. So was Trinity. Normally, though, his condition would continue to deteriorate and medical interventions would escalate.
But, as always, it was going to be an hour-by-hour thing.
Despite the lack of promises, Trinity felt infinitely better than she had when Oscar’s cry had dragged her out of sexually sated slumber.
Was that only a few hours ago?
‘I might head off for a bit,’ Reid announced as the doctor left. The sun was poking yellow fingers through the partially open blinds. ‘I’ll clear my day and get back here when I can.’
Trinity frowned. ‘It’s okay, Reid.’ She shook her head. He couldn’t just clear his day. He had his patients to see. His grandfather to take care of. His own responsibilities.
‘You don’t have to.’
He smiled. ‘I want to.’
‘Is this because...?’ Trinity was conscious of the nurse in the room. ‘You don’t have to feel obligated to me because of...what happened earlier.’
Heat rose in her cheeks. She shouldn’t be embarrassed considering what she’d done to his body. But there’d been such an abrupt ending to their...tryst, she wasn’t sure where they stood.
‘Trinity.’ His voice was low as his hands smoothed up her arms and he held her gently by the shoulders. ‘I want to.’
And then he pulled her in for a hug. She resisted for about two seconds before melting into him, grateful for his broad chest and solid warmth. Grateful that he’d been with her and she hadn’t felt so alone. Grateful for his silent support and understanding.
‘Thank you,’ she said, her voice muffled in his pecs. ‘For being here.’
‘I’ll always be here for you, Trinity.’
Trinity looked at him. She didn’t know what that meant. Or the meaning of his deep, searching gaze. And she didn’t want to speculate in case her heart took over and came to the wrong conclusion.
She glanced away from the intensity of his eyes to her son. ‘He seems to be doing better now, right?’ She sought Reid’s gaze again, needing him to be Dr Hamilton now, to hear his medical opinion.
‘Yes.’ He nodded. ‘He does. But how are you doing?’ he asked softly.
How she was doing seemed so frivolous compared to the battle Oscar was facing and Trinity wanted to dismiss it out of hand as she always did in these situations, but his gaze was still so damn intense, demanding she think about herself for a moment.
‘I’ll...be okay,’ she said even if the adrenaline that had been keeping her going the last few hours had left her shaky and strung out.
‘You have to take care of you, Trinity. You’re no good to Oscar if you’re exhausted.’
How many times had she heard that from well-meaning doctors and nurses these past five years? Too many times to count. But to hear it from Reid, the man she loved, who was here to support her... To even have a support person for a change, to know that someone other than paid strangers cared, touched her deeply.
Tears pricked the backs of her eyes and she blinked them away. ‘I know,’ she said. Because she did know, but she also knew that it was a pointless discussion. Her biological drive would always put the welfare of her child first.
The look he gave her told her he knew it too. ‘Okay. I’ll be back later. Text me if...’ His gaze flicked briefly to Oscar then back to her. ‘Keep me up to date.’
Trinity nodded, knowing he’d been about to say, If Oscar deteriorates and appreciating that he hadn’t. And then, much to her surprise, he dropped a light kiss on her mouth before he turned away and left the room.
As if they were in some kind of a relationship, not on the tail end of what had been, essentially, a roll in the hay.
In a daze, Trinity sat by Oscar’s bed, her lips tingling from Reid’s kiss. The colourful squiggles of the monitor blurred before her eyes as she tried to stop herself from hoping a relationship with Reid was possible.
* * *
It was ten at night when Reid strode past the nurses at the central work station, giving them a smile as he headed for Oscar’s room. This was his second time back since he’d left this morning.
The first thing he’d done once he’d let himself in the house was ring work and organise cover for the next few days. There were some appointments that had needed rejigging but it had all been sorted.
Trinity had looked so stricken last night. So worried and anxious. He’d been as concerned for her as he had been for Oscar and it was important to him to be there for Trinity. He doubted she’d ever had support during any of Oscar’s hospitalisations and he was determined she wasn’t going to go through this episode alone.
She—and Oscar—had come to mean a whole lot more to him than some kind of charity case. He liked her. Hell, after last night, he hoped she liked him too. In the kind of way that involved seeing more of each other.
Still...that wasn’t important right now. Oscar getting better was all that mattered.
Reid had brought his grandfather to see Oscar for three hours in the middle of the day. Oscar had pretty much slept all the way through the visit but it had seemed to cheer Trinity up. She’d looked dog-tired with big dark circles under her eyes but Oscar had been holding his own. He was still on the high flow and while they hadn’t been able to wean any of the oxygen, it hadn’t been increased either.
The results had come in on his naso-pharyngeal aspirate. It was RSV, a common respiratory virus that most people
could easily shake but could be devastating to kids like Oscar still suffering the effects of premature lungs. Unfortunately it couldn’t be treated with antibiotics, just time and supportive respiratory therapy.
The news hadn’t been comforting to Trinity. Apparently Oscar had had it several times before and had been ventilated each time.
Reid could hear the noise of Oscar’s high-flow oxygen even before he reached the room. A nurse, sitting at the computer in the room, glanced up at him as he stopped in the open doorway. He glanced at Trinity. Oscar’s nearest hand was folded in hers but her head was on the bed and she was sound asleep, her long, low ponytail falling down her back.
The nurse slipped off her stool and headed towards him with a smile.
‘How is he?’ Reid asked, keeping his voice low, as she drew level.
‘We’ve managed to wean the oxygen a titch,’ she murmured.
Relief flooded Reid at the news. Used to operating in high-stress environments, he hadn’t realised how worried he’d been. Oscar’s reliance on such high levels of oxygen was concerning. Being able to wean it was a positive step forward.
‘How’s she?’
‘I’ve tried to get her to go and have a proper sleep,’ the nurse said with a sigh. ‘There are some great pull-out couches in the parents’ lounge but she won’t leave him.’
Reid nodded. He didn’t doubt it for a moment. ‘Okay, thanks.’
The nurse left and he advanced into the room, standing close to the bed, looking down at Trinity. Her face was turned towards Oscar and spotlighted in a pool of light from overhead. The black circles had increased to smudges and the wedge of her cheek looked gaunt and pale.
She looked absolutely exhausted. His belly clenched at the sight and his heart turned over. A rush of love swamped his chest.