‘Let me carry him,’ he said. ‘Joshie?’
Josh held up his arms at once. His nostrils were flaring with every attempt at a breath, and as they made their way back along the beach, Nick could barely hear him wheezing. He’d forgotten how terrifying that was. The wheezing was bad enough, but when Josh’s lungs were too constricted to give off any whistles or rales at all, it was even scarier.
‘Don’t…hold me…so tight.’
‘I’m trying not to.’ His hold was as loose as he could make it, low around Josh’s hips and well away from the muscles he needed for breathing, but Josh reacted against anything that felt like further constriction.
And Nick was almost running now. Miranda had spoken some rapid phrases into her mobile, which, thank heaven, had still been in range. ‘They’ll be ready for us,’ she told him. ‘The hotel is sending a buggy up, but we might get there first.’
She kept up with him, the buggy didn’t appear in time, and they reached the medical centre after several minutes of thigh- burning effort. As they came up the ramp, Nick had a second fleeting thought that he should phone Anna to tell her what was happening.
Should he? Or would it be better for her not to know until the crisis was over? More importantly, would it be better for Josh? He had a flash of rebellious certainty that Josh’s first serious asthma attack without Anna wailing and wringing her hands over him would actually do all three of them good.
And yet he knew Anna wouldn’t thank him for keeping her in the dark. This was her son…
A moment later the immediacy of Josh’s attack took over and the question was pushed from his mind.
The doctor and nurse working the twelve-hour overnight shift tonight were people neither Miranda nor Nick had yet met, although he had a vague awareness that they’d been at the beach bonfire the other night. The doctor introduced herself as Janey Stafford, and the nurse was Marcia someone. Her last name fled from Nick’s head as soon as he heard it and he didn’t take his eyes off Josh long enough to look at her badge.
He felt his usual temptation to pull rank, the way his father would have done: ‘I am a first-class passenger…I have paid a premium for this service…I am the sole proprietor of this company.’ Those blustering phrases had been a regular feature throughout Nick’s childhood, until he was sixteen, and it had killed his father when he’d been unable to use them any more.
Literally killed him, Nick sometimes thought.
His own repertoire of bluster would have been slightly different, although it amounted to the same thing.
I am a senior surgeon…I have been published in eight different medical journals in the past two years alone…I probably out-earn you by a six-figure margin.
But he never said any of those things. He swallowed them back no matter how much they burned to spill out, even in a situation like this when his heart was beating too fast and his own breathing was almost as shallow as Josh’s, because in his experience that kind of bullying backfired and you always paid.
‘Just get him oxygen and a nebuliser and get him breathing.’ He wasn’t ordering, he was begging.
Neither doctor nor nurse stalled. ‘Yep, into a bed, little guy,’ Dr Stafford said. ‘Let’s fix you up nice and fast.’
She whipped out a stethoscope, but Miranda said, ‘Can I? Do you mind? He’s my patient at home. I had a listen on the beach, I’ll know if there’s been any change.’
‘Of course. I’ll take a back seat.’
‘You know what I’ll need for him.’ She already had her own stethoscope in her hand. ‘Can we take him through to a bed right now?’
‘Yes. Take one of the last two on the left. We have paediatric equipment on hand by those beds.’
Nick forced himself to stay out of their way, to be Josh’s father instead of a doctor, even though every instinct inside him said it wasn’t enough. ‘Feeling safer now that you’re here?’ he asked him quietly.
Josh nodded, but it was token. ‘Want water.’ The words were feeble, barely counting as speech. Nick wouldn’t have known what he was saying if he hadn’t already guessed that his son’s mouth must be painfully bitter and dry.
‘Can we get him some water? He wants to rinse his mouth again.’
He could barely manage to get it in his mouth, and spat it out at once in favour of his struggle for breath. He was tiring fast, working those accessory muscles harder, wearing them out to little effect.
Josh thought of hospitals as good places—places that helped him to breathe again—but the struggle for air was so immediate and the body’s panicked response so primal and physical, he wouldn’t relax on the strength of a promise. He needed the reality, the oxygen going into his lungs, the medication opening those constricted airways.
He’d begun to look blue around the mouth.
‘You’re OK, Josh. You’re fine.’
Where were some better words? Josh wasn’t fine, he was already approaching exhaustion, drowsy and confused, eyes closed, all effort poured into the struggle for air, showing all the signs of a critical attack. He mouthed something vague that Nick couldn’t make out.
Not Monday? Not Mummy?
What had he said? How much did he wish that Mummy was here? Mummy with her soft, familiar body and her warm voice, instead of this Dad person Josh hadn’t spent enough time with, who had laid down the law over dinner and dessert, who’d tried to shove the spacer into his mouth when he hadn’t wanted it, and who was much better at digging sand tunnels than at giving hugs.
Lord, he should call Anna, he knew he should, but he hated the idea.
‘You’re going to be fine,’ he repeated, making the promise to himself as much as to his son.
Miranda and Janey had the nebuliser ready, but it wasn’t yet hooked up. According to the pulse oximeter clipped to Josh’s finger, his blood oxygen level was hovering at eighty- eight per cent, when anything below the high nineties started to raise concerns, and below ninety indicated a critical attack. His heart rate was markedly fast. They had to get an improvement in his condition soon.
Nick cracked.
‘Listen, Dr Stafford.’ His voice was harsh enough to hurt his own throat. ‘I’m not sure if you know this, but I’m a surgeon—plastic and reconstructive—at Royal Victoria Hospital. I work with some of the best people in the damned country.’
He saw Miranda’s quick, covert glance in his direction but couldn’t read it. Right now, he didn’t care what she thought, didn’t care about the lingering, unresolved anger against his father, or anything else. He just wanted some power and control in this situation, and to find a belief that his presence was good for Josh.
‘I bailed you lot out today,’ he went on, ‘with some work on a patient’s face that no one here could have done as neatly or as fast. I expect the best treatment in the world for my son, and I’ll know immediately if I’m not getting it. That’s not a threat, but you can bet your life it’s a promise! Get him breathing again. Just do it.’
Damn, damn…
Why did I do that?
‘We’re doing it, Dr Devlin,’ Janey said calmly. ‘Josh, you know how this works, don’t you, sweetheart? Just breathe as normally and steadily as you can.’
But he was too far gone to respond. The breathing had to come from his body’s reflexes at this point. Miranda was watching him, assessing his response. What was she thinking?
‘I’m going to put in a drip right now,’ she said. ‘He may not tolerate corticosteroids orally, althoug
h we’ll try.’
‘Aminophylline?’ Nick asked.
‘Not yet. Antibiotics pretty soon, though, as a precaution, because of that ash in his lungs.’
‘What else?’
‘Nebulised salbutamol, IV salbutamol and adrenaline if he needs it.’
‘Why wait on the aminophylline?’
‘Because his heart didn’t like it last time, so we’ll avoid it if we can.’
‘He’s reached this point before?’
‘Worse, actually.’
‘Anna never told me…’
‘You were away at a conference.’
‘Don’t make me the bad guy, Miranda.’
‘I’m not.’ She turned away from him, to the tray of IV equipment Janey had brought.
The strength ebbed from Nick’s legs without warning, hard on the heels of the realisation that he was arguing about past events in his marriage with a woman he, yes, loved…just say it, Nick, even if it doesn’t make sense, don’t mess around with complexities tonight, you love her—still—always…while his son was fighting for his life.
He sat beside Josh’s bed and took his little hand. ‘Dad’s here, Joshie.’ He spoke calmly, pinning himself to hope and trust—the trust he had to have, as a doctor, in the power of medicine, the trust he had to have in his own ability not to mess this up. ‘Dr Carlisle is going to get you breathing again.’
The words felt too pointless so he stopped saying them, and just sat there thinking, I love you, I love you, I love you, over and over as if Josh could feel his thoughts through their joined hands.
And Miranda, too? Did she know, without words, how he felt?
She swabbed alcohol over the back of Josh’s hand and looked for a vein, but her first attempt with the needle failed and Josh winced and whimpered a tiny, breathless whimper, while Miranda herself made a sound of distress. She tightened a strap across his upper arm and swabbed the crook of his elbow instead. ‘This looks better. We’ll get it.’
And this time the needle went in at her first try. Deftly, she slid the cannula along the vein, taped it in place, attached the plastic tubing, and the medication began to run in through the port, joining the saline dripping from the bag suspended on a stand nearby. The neat, quiet way she worked nourished something inside him.
No fuss.
In the context of Josh’s health, Nick was so sick of fuss.
He took Miranda aside as soon as she had a moment to spare. ‘Tell me about his heart, that other time.’
‘It was already beating too fast, and the aminophylline made it beat faster.’
‘That’s the explanation you’d give to a layman, not to another doctor!’
‘Nick, this isn’t something I want you to worry about now. But all right…’ She reeled off a more technical answer, laced with figures and abbreviations. ‘Did that help?’
‘Hell knows,’ he admitted honestly. ‘If…if none of this works, Miranda…’
‘It will work,’ she said crisply. ‘We’re treating it as critical and, based on past attacks, he’ll respond. Please, don’t make Anna’s mistake and let him see how worried you are.’
‘You’re right,’ he muttered. ‘Hell, you’re right.’ The sense of powerlessness gripped him again and all he could do was sit there and wait and hope.
It was such a long night.
Nick sat beside Josh for six straight hours, watching his son’s numbers slowly improve—blessedly without the need for the next level of medication. Once the clock’s hour hand hit midnight, he began to doze a little, only to snap awake again every few minutes with his attention instantly riveted to his son or the monitors.
Josh’s heart rate slowed, his blood oxygen level went up, that painful, exhausting effort of the accessory chest muscles eased and his son’s sleep changed from near-coma to something much more nourishing and natural. Josh was totally exhausted. He wouldn’t wake up any time soon.
‘He’s looking a lot better,’ Miranda said softly.
‘You’re still here?’ His voice creaked. ‘I thought you’d gone.’ He’d been aware of her presence and that of a couple of staff, as well as the regular observations and lines in Josh’s notes, some background conversation in low voices, responses to a patient call button because they had a couple of other patients in the four-bed room next door.
‘I was just grabbing some tea,’ she answered. ‘You’ve had nothing, Nick. Janey’s telling us both to go back to our cabins and get some sleep.’
‘You should.’
‘So should you. Have you phoned Anna?’
He swore.
No, he hadn’t.
‘She’ll think it was deliberate,’ he said.
‘And was it?’
‘Partly. Half. Yes. Yes, it was. She was supposed to phone me today. She didn’t, I don’t know why, and I thought about phoning her, I kept thinking about it, and thinking, No, not yet.’
‘It’s late. What do you want to do?’
He was too tired for anything other than naked honesty. ‘I want to be with you…’
‘Me…’ She tilted her head, folded her arms across her chest. The movement softened her shoulders and lifted her breasts and he felt a stirring of desire that jarred him in this context, even though at the same time it felt right.
‘Could we take a break?’ he said.
‘Oh, please, yes…’
‘My mobile’s in my cabin. She’ll have left messages.’
‘Right.’ Miranda gave a short, jerky nod and took a breath. ‘You’ll phone her now?’
‘Let me see what messages she’s left. She’d have wanted to fly up here tonight if I’d told her about this earlier.’ He thought for a moment, and added, ‘No, she’d never have made it in time, even if I’d called her from the beach. She’d have caught the first flight in the morning, though. I—I know at some level my not phoning—forgetting to and resisting it and putting it off—was deliberate. Freudian.’ Nick laughed cynically at his use of such a word.
‘Oh, Nick…’ Miranda whispered in a tight voice.
‘I wanted to see if it was better for Josh that way. If he panicked less. If he did better with me around. I didn’t want her rushing in and shutting me out. Oh, hell, why do I always tell you this stuff?’
He closed his eyes, appalled by his own mixed motivations, then felt Miranda’s hand soft and warm on his arm. ‘Let’s talk,’ she said quietly.
CHAPTER NINE
MIRANDA had a quiet word with Janey and Marcia, then she and Nick left the medical centre and took the cool, silent walk across to his cabin. He didn’t touch her, and she somehow knew he needed to deal with Anna’s probable phone messages first, before they talked or did anything else.
Did he still have feelings for her, or was her presence in so many of their conversations about something else?
And then maybe he wouldn’t want to talk, in the end. Maybe those walls would come back up and he’d push her away. She could see all the possible bad endings leading off into the night, but still she walked beside him because something in her heart—and in his?—didn’t allow her to do anything else.
He went straight for the mobile phone on the kitchen bench-top once they were inside. ‘Yes, she called. Several times.’ He read a text. ‘Wants me to phone as soon as I get this, no matter how late it is.’
‘Does she mean that? It’s nearly three in the morning.’
He shrugged. ‘I’d better take her at her word.’
�
��You’ll tell her about Josh’s attack?’
‘From any angle, it seems the right thing to do. I should have done it hours ago, as soon as we got to the medical centre. I shouldn’t have put it off. There’s no excuse. She’s his mother.’
But he was still fighting the idea, she thought. He certainly didn’t want to talk to her. His body was knotted tight as his thumb worked the numbers on the phone. He listened for a moment, then reported, ‘Switched off or out of range.’ He waited, then delivered a stilted message. ‘It’s Nick. Call back as soon as you can, any time. I got your messages.’
He flipped the phone shut and shoved it into his pocket, turning to Miranda as he did so. He had a helpless expression on his face that at once made her want to go up to him, kiss him, say all the right things—if she only knew what those were, if only she knew whether he wanted to hear them.
But she didn’t know, so she waited, and Nick spoke instead. ‘I’m wiped.’
‘So let’s sit.’
‘I want to go back to Josh soon.’
‘He’s sleeping. If he wakes up and wants you, Janey or Marcia will let you know straight away. Let me make you some hot chocolate or something. Do you have any?’
‘In the kitchen, on the bench,’ he said vaguely. ‘Josh would live on the stuff if he was allowed to.’
She nudged him in the direction of the couch and he laughed and told her, ‘I’m as helpless as a baby. You’ll have to undress me next.’
‘Well, I always like doing that…’
He laughed again, then added, ‘Holding yourself together is bloody tiring!’
‘So stop the holding.’
‘Yeah? How’s that done?’
‘Starts with the hot chocolate and a woman in your arms.’
‘Has to be the right woman.’
‘True.’
And the right woman is me…I think, I want…but there’s a long way to go yet…
She made two mugs of hot chocolate in the microwave and brought them over to the couch, where they sat and sipped in silence. She somehow knew it was better to wait for him, not to bother him with questions or words he might not want to hear tonight.
The Australian's Desire (Mills & Boon By Request) Page 47