Secrets of a Career Girl

by Carol Marinelli

  He’d bought flowers for the first time in his unromantic life and they were waiting in her office, along with an invitation for dinner. Maybe they could just take it slowly, start at the beginning without those blasted needles hanging over them.

  Though he’d rather liked giving them!

  Play was resuming, Ethan thought with a smile.

  He heard the bell from Triage and Lisa stopped writing on the board and sped off with Ethan following. They got outside to find nurses trying to get an unconscious woman from the back seat of a car onto a trolley as her panicked husband shouted for them to hurry up. Security was nowhere to be seen.

  ‘What happened?’ Ethan asked the man.

  ‘I just came home from work and I couldn’t wake her...’ The man was barefoot and jumping up and down on the spot. As his wife was placed on the trolley Ethan tried to get some more information, but apart from a urine infection there was nothing wrong with her, the agitated husband said.

  ‘You’re going to have to move your car,’ Lisa told him as they started to move the patient inside, but he ignored her, instead running alongside his wife.

  ‘You need to move your car,’ Ethan said, because even if it sounded a minor detail, it wasn’t if there was an ambulance on its way in with another sick patient.

  ‘Just sort my wife out!’ the man roared at Ethan. ‘Stop worrying about the car.’ There was a minor scuffle; the man fronted up to Ethan, fear and adrenaline and panic igniting. Ethan blocked the man’s fist, but Ethan was angry too.

  ‘Man up!’ Ethan said. ‘You want me to stand here fighting, or do you want me to sort out your wife? Go and move your car.’

  He did so, but as they sped the woman through, the usually laid-back Ethan, who let things like that go, glared over at Lisa.

  ‘Where the hell was Security?’

  Lisa didn’t answer.

  ‘I want that reported.’

  ‘He’s just scared.’

  ‘Yeah, well, we’re all scared at times.’

  They were now at the doors to Resus and Ethan was dealing with the patient, who was responding to pain and her pupils were reacting. He could smell what was wrong—there was the familiar smell of ketones on her breath. Lisa was attaching her to monitors as Ethan quickly found a vein and took bloods. ‘Add a pregnancy test,’ Ethan said, because she was of childbearing age and a diabetic crisis could be dangerous for any foetus. By the time the husband returned from parking his car there was saline up and Lisa was giving the patient her first dose of insulin. His anger was fading, but still it churned.

  ‘Are you all right, Ethan?’ Lisa checked.

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘I’ll do an incident form after...’

  ‘Forget it.’ He gave a small smile that said he had overreacted.

  ‘Touched a nerve, did it?’ Lisa smiled back.

  ‘Must have,’ Ethan said.

  He thought of his own fear as he’d raced to get to his cousin, yet it wouldn’t have entered his head to front up to anyone, and he thought of Kate, who had done the right thing and not just left the car, even though she must so badly have wanted to. ‘I want to know where Security was, though,’ Ethan said, and then got back to the patient. The medics were on their way down but for now Ethan went in to speak with the husband.

  ‘I’ll come in with you,’ Lisa said.

  ‘No need,’ Ethan said.

  ‘I wasn’t offering.’ Lisa had worked there a very long time and gave him a smile that told him there was no way she was leaving the two of them in the same room.

  ‘Come on, then.’

  They walked in and the man was sitting in there, his head in his hands.

  ‘Mr Edmunds.’ Ethan looked at the patient sheet that had been handed to him.

  ‘Mark.’ He looked up. ‘Sorry about before.’

  Ethan would deal with that later. He was actually glad Lisa had insisted on coming in as there was still this strange surliness writhing inside Ethan and he looked down at the patient card again for a moment before talking.

  ‘Your wife, Anna, did you know she was diabetic?’

  Mark shook his head. ‘No...she’s been fine, well, tired, but like I said, she thought she had a urine infection.’

  Ethan nodded. ‘One of the signs is passing urine a lot but we’re checking for any infection.’ He explained things as simply as he could to the very confused and very scared man—that his wife had type one diabetes and she was in ketoacidosis—her glucose was far too high and would be slowly brought down. But it affected everything and she would be very closely watched, and while she was very sick, he expected her to soon be well.

  ‘She’ll still be diabetic?’

  ‘Yes.’ Ethan nodded. ‘But she’ll be taught to manage it and this will hopefully be the worst it ever is.’ Ethan took a breath. ‘Is there any chance that your wife might be pregnant?’

  ‘We’re trying.’

  ‘Okay,’ Ethan said.

  ‘Would it damage the baby?’

  ‘Let’s just wait for results and then we’ll see what we’re dealing with. Do you want to come in and see your wife?’

  Mark nodded and then said it again. ‘I am sorry about earlier.’

  ‘And I accept your apology,’ Ethan said. ‘But there is no place for that sort of carry-on here.’

  ‘I was just—’

  ‘Not an excuse,’ Ethan broke in. ‘There were two women there and your fist wasn’t looking where it was going. We’ve got doctors here who are barely five foot...’

  Yes, there was his problem—everything went back to Penny.

  But, hell, Ethan thought, it could have been Penny on duty and she could have been pregnant, and he stood up and walked out and took a deep breath.

  ‘Where was Security?’ Ethan asked Lisa.

  ‘Over in the car park,’ Lisa said. ‘Someone was trying to break into a car. They can’t be everywhere, Ethan.’

  He knew that, but he wanted them everywhere, wanted two burly guards and an Alsatian walking alongside Penny at all times.

  Maybe he was a caveman after all.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  YES, SHE HAD always rotated her clothes, mixing and matching her outfits with precision, changing them with the seasons. Not anymore. Today she had chosen a floral dress that buttoned at the front. Instead of low, flat heels, she wore sandals, and because she hadn’t been meticulous with her factor thirty, Penny’s legs were sun-kissed and she wore her hair loose.

  She smiled as she walked into work and Ethan, tired after his night shift, chatting to the medics, noticed the glow in her and had a feeling her decision had been made and that there were embryos about to be taken out of storage in the very near future.

  ‘Morning, Vanessa,’ Penny said as she walked past.

  ‘Er, morning, Penny.’

  ‘Hi, Lisa.’

  ‘Penny.’

  Penny swallowed. ‘Lisa, can I have a word with you, please?’

  It was the hardest word and Lisa gave her a smile as they moved into an empty cubicle, and Penny said it. ‘I’ve been going through some things and I should never have brought it to work. It was just...’ And she did what Jasmine had advised all along and what Penny had thought she would never do—let Lisa know what had been going on.

  ‘Well, you can’t really leave your hormones at home.’ Lisa smiled. ‘You could have said.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I am discreet.’

  ‘I know that too,’ Penny said. ‘I’ll have a word with Vanessa and apologise. Anyone else?’ And then Penny gave a guilty smile. ‘Should I just call a staff meeting?’

  Yes, it really was the hardest, hardest word because sometimes when you had to say it, it meant that you’d really hurt someone.


  ‘I’m so sorry, Vanessa.’ Penny saw the red cheeks and the flash of tears in her colleague’s eyes and it wasn’t actually the blood pressure she hadn’t written down or the delays in medication that were the problem. There was another morning Penny hadn’t properly apologised for, and though she didn’t want to play the sympathy card, Penny did want Vanessa to know that her outburst hadn’t been aimed at her.

  Penny took her into an interview room.

  ‘You were right to come and get me that morning and let me know what was happening. I know you’d never leave a patient and that Raj was there. I wasn’t angry at you—I was just upset. When you came to find me I’d just got my period,’ Penny said. ‘I’d been trying for a baby and I thought I was finally pregnant.’ And, no, she didn’t tell her that for twenty-four hours she had been pregnant, neither did she say anything about the IVF, but it was enough for Vanessa to put her arms around her. Penny gave a little self-conscious wriggle, but then found out that it was nice sometimes to have a friend and be held.

  Ethan watched them walking out of the interview room, smiling and chatting, and he excused himself and walked over.

  ‘Morning, Penny.’

  ‘Morning.’

  ‘Nice break?’

  ‘Very.’

  ‘What did you get up to?’

  ‘Not much.’ How lovely it was to say that.

  ‘Glad to be back?’

  ‘Not yet.’ Penny took a deep breath. ‘I’m sorry I’ve been such a cow to work with.’ Even though he knew why, she still felt she ought to say it here in the workplace and not just to Ethan. ‘I should have recorded my apology before I came back to work. You’re the third and I haven’t even got halfway down the corridor.’

  ‘Maybe you could ask the receptionist to play it over the loudspeaker?’ Ethan grinned.

  She walked off to her office and turned and flashed that smile but he didn’t follow at first.

  He just stood there thinking, because he knew how he felt now, and he checked with himself for a moment and the answer was still the same so he headed to her office to tell her.

  ‘I would have loved your baby.’ Ethan stood at the door and whether it was the wrong or right thing to say, he told her what he now knew.

  ‘Ethan...’

  ‘I’m not just saying that.’ He wasn’t and he told her why. ‘I know you’re going to go for it again,’ Ethan said, ‘I could see it when you walked in. I’ll tell you this, if you were pregnant now, if it had worked out for you, well, I might have taken a while to come around but I would have, because it wouldn’t change the way I feel. It’s just taken a bit of a time for me to understand that.’

  ‘I’m not going for it again.’ She saw him frown. ‘This is Tranquil Penny.’

  ‘Oh.’ He came over and took her in his arms and introduced himself. ‘Pleased to meet you.’ Then he frowned. ‘What do you mean, you’re not going to try again?’

  ‘I can’t have children.’ She’d practised saying it, not just to Ethan but at other times in her future. ‘I know I might want to try again someday, but now I just want a break from it—I want lots of sex for sex’s sake, preferably with you.’ She reached into her bag and took out a packet of pills and waved them. ‘It’s probably overkill—left to their own devices my ovaries squeeze out two, maybe three eggs a year—but I’m taking the pressure off.’

  She gave him a smile. ‘Yes, please, to dinner.’ He kissed her and he had never been so pleased to kiss a woman, just relieved to find her mouth and what had been missing in every other mouth he had kissed.

  Here it was, the love he hadn’t been looking for.

  ‘I’m going home to sleep,’ Ethan said.

  ‘Not yet,’ Penny grumbled.

  ‘I am, and then I’m going to set my alarm so I’ve time to tidy up in case I end up bringing my date back.’ He gave her a smile. ‘You’ve never seen my home.’

  Penny blushed. Yes, there was a lot to get to know and lots of fun to be had before a guy like Ethan might settle down. And it might never happen, but she wanted him in a way she never had. There was a love inside Penny so much bigger than this kiss. A love that crowded out so many other things, and she just had to hold on to her feelings a bit, not terrify him with them by jumping in too soon.

  ‘Or maybe...’ Ethan said, and he undid a couple of buttons and had a peek and she was in coral, his favourite ‘...we could skip the restaurant and eat at my place?’

  ‘What’s for dinner, Ethan?’

  They had the tiniest of histories, but it was enough to make the other smile.

  ‘That all depends on what you pick up at the supermarket on your way home from work,’ Ethan said.

  And he glimpsed then a future and there would be no remote-control flinging because they would look out for each other, argue and tease each other, and then kiss and make up and not let things fester.

  ‘Do you want to go to the football on Sunday?’

  ‘No!’ Penny pulled a face; she could think of nothing worse, but then it clicked. ‘Are you going with Justin?’

  ‘It will be our second week,’ Ethan said.

  ‘Gina agreed?’

  ‘More than that. Afterwards I’m taking him to my aunt and uncle’s and he’s staying the night, and then in the morning I’ll go and collect him and take him back to his mum’s. We’ll be doing that a couple of times a month and it’s working out well.’

  ‘That’s some commitment.’ Penny smiled at her commitment-phobe.

  ‘I’m getting good at them.’

  Yes, there was still a lot she didn’t know about Ethan, because as he stood there looking at her he was doing the maths. She was thirty-five and at a rate of two to three eggs a year there weren’t a whole lot of chances, but he was prepared to take them now. Ethan picked up the pill pack she was still holding and, just as Penny had with the needles to get what she wanted, he faced his fears over and over, twenty-eight times, in fact.

  He punched each pill into the sink, even the sugar-coated ones, and then turned on the tap and watched them swirl in the water. Then he broke out in a sweat because it was him now talking about making babies when he’d never thought he might.

  ‘I’ve got more at home.’

  ‘I want whatever happens,’ Ethan said. ‘And I don’t want to take away even one of your chances.’

  ‘And I don’t want to ruin this,’ Penny said. They were chasing the same dream from different directions, both terrified to miss or even to clash and blow them apart. Penny was standing at the silver lining of acceptance that there might never be babies, and Ethan was just starting to accept that there might be. ‘I don’t want you to find out you do want babies after all and then be disappointed.’

  And he was the most honest, sexiest, funniest man she had ever met, even as he voiced her unspoken fears. ‘And then go off with someone years younger...’

  ‘Ha, ha,’ Penny said, because they could talk about things, tell each other things and, yes, they could tease each other too. ‘Someone soft and curvy and cute.’

  ‘Did I really used to go for cute?’ Ethan smiled. And he looked at her and he knew where his heart was. ‘Actually,’ Ethan said as he faced another of his fears, ‘for one hot mess you’d make a very cute bride.’

  She blinked at him.

  ‘I want to see Menopausal Penny and I want you to see Midlife Crisis Ethan.’

  ‘So do I.’ She was kissing him again. ‘Going out in your sports car and joining a gym and things.’

  ‘And if there are no babies, we’ll be the mad aunt and uncle who spoil all their nieces and nephews but make their parents jealous as we go off on cruises and travel around the world. But,’ Ethan said, ‘if we’re really clucky, we’ll move to America and adopt little twin monkeys.’

  ‘And dress them in tutus.’ />
  ‘No,’ Ethan said, because it was his future they were planning too. ‘Not the boy one.’

  EPILOGUE

  ‘IT’S CALLED A spontaneous pregnancy,’ her GP explained as Penny sat there, stunned. ‘Some women do get pregnant naturally after IVF.’

  It would seem so.

  Penny honestly didn’t know how she felt.

  She’d imagined hearing she was pregnant so many times, but now that it was here, she actually didn’t know how to deal with the news.

  They had just returned from their honeymoon—Louise had given them the cruise bug and they had sailed around the Mediterranean, getting brown and being spoiled. Penny closed her eyes at the thought of the champagne and the things she had eaten, though now, when she thought about it, she hadn’t really indulged that much.

  ‘We nearly didn’t go,’ Penny admitted as she chatted to the doctor. She’d thought they’d have to call it off because Mr Dean had told them that they couldn’t both take annual leave at the same time.

  ‘We’re hardly going to go on separate honeymoons,’ Ethan had said—that was how they had announced their news—and given Ethan didn’t actually have any annual leave and would be taking it unpaid, they could afford a locum to cover him.

  ‘Be glad that you had your cruise.’ Her GP smiled. ‘Because you won’t be doing that sort of thing for a while.’

  And Penny was glad that they had, so glad, because they’d had nearly a year of just them and it had been amazing—dating for all of a week before Penny had put her house on the market and she and the cat had moved in with him, then just getting to know each other and learning how to laugh and to love.

  Penny drove home. She was supposed to be getting her hair done as it was her mother’s wedding in a few hours’ time, but instead she’d have to make do with heated rollers.

  She just had to see Ethan, had to find out how he would take the news.