No. Not Triage. Cubicles. And I’ll work with you. Sit. Stay,’ he said, and she wondered a little hysterically if she was expected to wag her tail.
Damn.
How could David have done that? Broken up their marriage, torn the kids’ lives apart? It was just as well he wasn’t there, or he would have been torn apart—literally. Jack’s hands were itching.
He slapped the door out of the way and stalked into the central corridor just as Tom Whittaker came out of Resus. He frowned at Jack.
‘What flew up your skirt?’
‘David’s left Sally,’ he said in a terse undertone.
Tom’s face was shocked. ‘What? When? They were fine at the wedding—well, as fine as they’ve been for a few months.’
‘Exactly. I’m taking her out for a bit. She won’t go home, so I’ll take her back to the Corrigans’ and feed her and give her coffee, and then I want Angie to find her something busy and harmless to do.’
‘I’ll sort that out. I take it she wants this under wraps?’
He nodded. ‘I think so.’
Tom tilted his head on one side. ‘Do you two have—um…?’
‘History? Yes,’ he replied shortly. ‘And, no, the breakup was nothing to do with me. I don’t trash marriages.’
Tom nodded, clearly satisfied with his reply. ‘Take care of her. She’s special.’
‘I know.’
He took her back to Annie’s. Her legs were moving automatically, and once inside he pushed her gently down onto the sofa. Scruff, the elderly and affectionate lurcher the Corrigans had rescued from a homeless and equally elderly patient, climbed up beside her and snuggled into her side, and she fondled his ears and tried not to cry.
‘You’re not supposed to be on the new sofa,’ she told him, but he just thumped his tail and licked her.
‘I’ll get coffee,’ Jack said, and he disappeared into the kitchen and came back after a few minutes with a tray of goodies. Coffee, toast, marmalade, biscuits—lots of different sorts—and set the tray down in front of her.
She looked at it, at the array of biscuits, and started to laugh. ‘Are you feeding me up?’ she said, struggling for common sense, and he sat down on the other side of the dog and poured the coffee.
‘Absolutely. When did you last eat?’
She shrugged. ‘Can’t remember.’
‘Start with toast,’ he advised, and smeared a slice with lashings of butter and marmalade and shoved it into her hand. ‘Eat.’
So she ate. She ate two slices, and one of the stem ginger oat cookies, and she drank two mugs of coffee, and gradually the cold, numb feeling started to fade. She put her mug down and smiled at him tiredly. ‘Thanks,’ she murmured. ‘I needed that.’
‘My pleasure. I have to go back. Why don’t you stay here with the dog and have a sleep?’
‘I have to work,’ she protested, but he shook his head.
‘No, you don’t. Not today. Take today to think, to sleep, to sort your head out a little. The world won’t come to a halt because you aren’t running on the treadmill for a few hours, you know,’ he told her with a gentle, teasing smile, and she tried to smile back and failed. And, anyway, the thought was so tempting…
‘OK,’ she said reluctantly. ‘I’ll take an hour or so.’
She took five, curled asleep on her side, the dog snuggled against her tummy like a great shaggy teddy bear, and that was how Jack found her when he came back at four to check on her.
Sally pushed her hair out of her eyes and tried to sit up. Scruff licked her chin, ambled off the sofa and stretched, and then wagged his scraggly old tail at Jack.
‘You been looking after her, boy?’he said softly, and the tail waved again. He sat down where the dog had been, one hand on the back of the sofa, the other lifting a strand of hair she’d missed away from her face. He hadn’t meant to touch her, but somehow there seemed no place for distance now.
‘Sleep well?’
She sank back against the cushion and nodded, staring up at him blurrily. ‘What time is it?’ she murmured.
‘Four.’
Her eyes flew open wider, and she struggled into a sitting position, hooking her legs up under her and staring at him in consternation. ‘It can’t be four! David’s got a meeting—I have to fetch the boys!’
‘What time?’
‘Four-thirty—I wasn’t going to have the day off!’
‘Well, you clearly needed it,’ he said matter-of-factly. ‘It’ll get better. Give it a few more days and you’ll get everything in perspective.’
She made a rude noise and pushed him out of the way, getting to her feet and then swaying. ‘Oh—head rush,’ she mumbled, and he caught her against his chest and steadied her, relishing her softness and wishing he had the right to hold her like this all the time, but he didn’t. She stood there for a few seconds, then straightened up and stepped back, avoiding his eyes. Good thing, too. God knows what she would have seen.
‘I have to go.’
‘I’ll give you a lift. Where’s your car?’
‘In the car park on the other side of the hospital.’
‘Come on, then.’
He’d lied.
A few more days didn’t give her any perspective. It gave her a huge pain inside where the numbness had been, an aching void that threatened to fill with failure and misery, and she didn’t know how she’d cope at the weekend, when the boys went to stay with David and Wendy.
What those days did, though, was help her realise that it was nothing to do with David. She didn’t miss him—he’d been such a small part of her life for so long now that she hardly noticed the difference, and the idea of jealousy didn’t even cross her mind. Wendy was welcome to him—she was even glad for them. It was the boys she was worried about, and the boys she missed when they were with David.
It was the little things that were beginning to dawn on her—things like birthdays and Christmases and school plays—how would they decide which parent was involved, or would it all be frightfully civilised?
It was too much to take in and deal with, so she’d tried to lose herself in work, starting the next day, unwilling to take any time off, and her colleagues had said nothing but had let her know in all sorts of little ways how much they cared.
And it drove her crazy.
She wanted to get on with it, to ignore her home life and pretend it didn’t exist, but she couldn’t because the boys needed her. It was the school holidays, of course, and under normal circumstances they’d be at holiday club, but the circumstances were far from normal, so she engineered her rota and freed up Thursday and Friday so she could spend them with the boys, volunteering for the night shift on Friday evening and the day shift on Sunday. Anything rather than sit alone in the house until the boys came back on Sunday night.
And then she found out Jack was working late on Friday, after she’d already said she’d do the shift, and she wondered whose side God was on, because it certainly wasn’t hers. The last thing she needed was to be working with him throughout a long night when she was already emotionally exhausted.
Still, it was only till ten or so, midnight at the latest. Then someone else would take over, and she’d be able to relax.
CHAPTER FOUR
THEY ended up working together in Resus.
Side by side. Hip to hip. Hand to hand.
Their patient was a young man who’d been on his way from a pub to a club when he’d been jumped on and kicked repeatedly by a gang of youths.
‘He’s got a flail chest,’ Sally said, cutting away his clothes, and Jack swivelled his eyes to watch the broken section of ribcage collapsing in when his chest lifted, and bulging out when it fell.
‘Damn. Get him on 100 per cent oxygen and try and wedge something against it to stop it. He’s having enough problems without that.’
‘Neurological?’
Jack’s eyes flicked back to his patient’s face. ‘I think his right pupil’s slightly larger. Any second now it’s going
to flare—oh, hell. Why am I always right? It’s gone.’
‘Just the one?’
He nodded shortly. ‘Damn. Somebody book him an urgent CT scan, please! I reckon he’s got a nasty bleed or his brain’s swelling so fast it’s herniating. And we’d better book chest as well while we’re at it, because he’s mashed this side of his ribs and he’s got to be bleeding in there. Sal, I’m going to intubate him. I don’t want him getting cerebral anoxia and if we hyperventilate it’ll lower the arterial PCO2 and might help minimise his cerebral oedema. And I want a full set of head, chest and spinal films while we wait for the scan.’
They worked furiously, putting him on CPAP so that the pressure would keep his oxygen saturation high to try and minimise the damage, and as soon as a slot was free he was wheeled down to the scanner, a chest drain in place. The neurologist was working with them by this time, and at a little after two the patient went to Theatre to have a huge clot removed from his brain.
What happened next would be in the lap of the gods, but they’d done all they could. On autopilot, Sally sorted out Resus, fell into a chair in the staffroom and closed her eyes, exhausted. She didn’t know where Jack had gone—home, probably, since he had only been covering the evening, she thought—but then she heard footsteps, and someone fiddling with mugs, and the chair beside her creaked.
‘Tea?’
She cracked an eye open, took the mug from him and sighed with relief.
‘Thanks. Couldn’t be bothered to make it.’
‘I know the feeling. What are you doing here tonight, by the way?’
She shut the eye again. ‘Working.’
‘Or avoiding the house?’
She opened both eyes and fixed him with a look. ‘I have to learn to cope with it, I know, but just for now I’m happier here. And in any case, I spent yesterday and today with the boys.’
‘You could always have the night off. I can’t believe you’re that strapped for cash.’
She glared at him. ‘That’s nothing to do with it. I can’t just dump my commitment to the department. It’s bad enough juggling shifts—and anyway, when I work is none of your business. Don’t nag me, Jack.’
‘I wouldn’t dream of it. I seem to remember doing the same thing myself in the past—working myself to a standstill, trying to forget.’
Forget what? He didn’t say, and she couldn’t ask, because she couldn’t speak. Ben’s face swam in front of her, hurt and confused and uncertain, and she couldn’t deal with it. She shut her eyes again and turned her attention back to her tea. She didn’t need to see to drink, and if her eyes were shut there was just the vaguest chance of her keeping the tears firmly trapped where they belonged.
‘Ah, Sal,’ he said softly, taking her cup from her hands, and then her head was tucked into the angle of his shoulder, snuggled against his chin, and his big, strong arms were round her, and she could feel his even, steady breathing and the solid beat of his heart comfortingly just beneath her ear.
She felt the tears dribble down her cheeks. ‘They’re just so confused,’ she said miserably. ‘They don’t understand what went wrong. They hardly know him now. It’s been months since they’ve seen much of him—apart from our holiday, and he was hardly with us then in spirit. Looking back on it, I don’t know how I didn’t realise! And every night he had to check in with the office and talk on the phone for hours. I must be so naïve.’
‘No. You trusted him. You should be able to do that with your partner.’
She thought about that for a moment, then tilted her head and looked up at him. ‘Could you trust Clare?’
He gave a bitter little laugh. ‘Not as far as I could throw her.’
She straightened up so she could look at him properly, but his face was unreadable. ‘Really? Are you sure you aren’t judging her by your own standards? Maybe she feels she can’t trust you because when she came to tell you she was pregnant she found you with me.’
Naked, but she wasn’t saying that bit out loud. She didn’t have to. It was a scene she was sure neither of them would forget in a lifetime.
‘We’d finished,’ he said firmly. ‘I wasn’t cheating on her, Sal. I wouldn’t have done that to either of you. And I had no idea that she was pregnant. Besides which—’
‘Oh, great, you’re together. We’ve had a call for a team to go to an RTA—there’s an entrapment and possible arm amputation and the orthos are all tied up and the rapid response team’s already out. How’s your field surgery?’
Sally was already on her feet, following Jack out of the door as she scrubbed the tears from her cheeks. She heard him tell Tom, ‘Peachy. It’s what I do best.’
‘Good. Go do it, then. Sally will tell you what to take. Your transport’s outside, waiting for you.’
She was already grabbing the bags filled with emergency surgical kit, there was an anaesthetist running down the corridor towards them. They headed for the doors, shoving their arms into hi-vis coats as they went, so there was no more time to talk, no time to ask what he’d been going to say.
‘Got any more details?’ the anaesthetist asked as they piled into the car.
Jack laughed. ‘Not a thing. Hope you know where you’re going,’ he said to the driver.
‘Absolutely. Hang onto your hats.’
The blue lights came on and they streaked out of the hospital grounds and through the outskirts of the town, picking up the busy trunk-road in minutes. The roads were quiet by trunk-road standards, but as they approached the accident they could see flashing blue lights up ahead and everything was at a standstill.
There was a narrow passage through between the cars, and the driver wove through it, siren blipping every few seconds to warn the occupants of the stationary cars. Sometimes people opened their doors to try and get a look and didn’t think to check their mirrors, and, judging by the look of it, they’d got enough to do already without collecting casualties along the way.
He pulled up and they were out, dragging the equipment with them and running towards the waving paramedic by one of the vehicles.
‘What have you got for us?’ Jack asked, taking charge.
‘Woman trapped by the arm. The fire crew are doing their best but she’s got a tension pneumothorax and maybe a tear in her aorta. Her BP’s dropping steadily and her sats are low.’ He reeled off the figures and the medication he’d given her, but then added, ‘She needs more pain relief. She’s complaining more about her chest than her arm, which worries me.’
Jack nodded. ‘That fits with the aorta. She needs to be out of there fast. Can we hustle them?’
The man shook his head. ‘I have done, they’re going flat out, but they can’t do it fast enough, it’s just not possible.’
And it wasn’t just the aorta that was a problem. There was the danger of crush syndrome if she was left too long and then released, and that could be fatal, too.
‘Name?’
‘Jennifer. Couldn’t catch the surname. We’ve taken her husband’s body out of the car to get access to her. Someone’s checking it for ID. He died instantly—we haven’t told her.’
Oh, lord. Sally squirmed into the car behind the woman and put a hand on her shoulder, acknowledging the paramedic holding her head still. ‘Jennifer, I’m Sally, and that’s Jack just coming in beside you. Hang on, my love, we’ll get you out as soon as we can.’
She reached up and pulled off her oxygen mask. ‘He’s dead, isn’t he? My husband. I saw him, but nobody will tell me. They keep changing the subject, but I need to know.’
Jack’s hand reached out and brushed the hair gently back from her face. ‘Yes, he is dead. I’m really sorry. Let’s get you out of here and we can talk about it more later. For now just put the mask back on, sweetheart, and let’s have a look at you.’
He did a rapid assessment, then told her what Sally had been expecting, that she would have to lose her left arm. It was trapped in the tangled wreckage of the door, crushed beyond recovery, the circulation to it was totally
destroyed and there was no way it was coming out in one piece.
And she knew it, too. She reached up her right hand and caught Jack’s sleeve as he retreated to let the anaesthetist in. ‘Jack? Ask them to find my wedding ring,’ she begged, and Sally saw his face tighten just for a second.
‘Sure. We’ll find it and keep it for you.’
‘Thank you. I couldn’t bear to lose it…’
Her eyelids drooped, and Sally called after him, ‘She’s going.’
‘OK. Right, let’s get this roof off if we can and get in there fast. Sally, can you come and scrub?’
‘Sure.’ She gave Jennifer’s shoulder a quick squeeze as Peter, the anaesthetist, crawled into the front beside their patient and assessed her airway.
‘I’ll get her under—can you hang on here for a sec while I intubate? I’ll need to do a jaw thrust because of the risk of neck injury and I’ll need help.’
So she was in there while the fire brigade were cutting through the pillars with the jaws of life, chomping through the metal as if it were nothing and lifting the roof away to give better access while she held the woman’s jaw forward for Peter and the paramedic held her head until they could slip a collar on her.
She scrubbed in the back of the ambulance, as well as possible, and gloved and gowned she scrambled back over the seats to help. Jack was already in there beside Peter, carefully shifting Jennifer to get better access to her arm.
‘She’s crashing,’ Peter warned, and Jack shook his head, abandoned finesse and did the quickest amputation Sally had ever seen. Not that she’d seen many, but it was fast and slick and the woman was out, the bleeding vessels were clamped off and she was away in the ambulance, with Jack and Peter working on her.
As the doors closed, Jack yelled, ‘Sal, get the ring!’
She turned back to the fireman who had the job of sorting out the chaos. ‘Can we get to her hand? I need to take it back to the hospital anyway but she was fretting about her wedding ring.’
‘Do our best. Give me a minute, I’ll have a look.’
And a minute later he emerged, a slightly bent and bloody gold ring in the palm of his hand. ‘This what you wanted? I’m afraid the hand isn’t coming out any time soon.’
His Very Own Wife and Child Page 5