She seemed to be coping. She had a tourniquet around their patient’s arm and was swabbing the skin on his arm.
‘You’ll feel a sharp scratch,’ she warned. ‘There. All done.’ The cannula slid home into the vein and Summer released the tourniquet and reached for the connection so that she could hook up the bag of IV fluid she had ready.
And then she looked up and caught Zac’s steady gaze as he did his best to communicate silently.
I understand, he tried to tell her. I’m here for you. I’ll do whatever it takes to help.
She could do this. She could cope.
She had to.
It had almost done her in, though, that first instant she’d seen their patient’s face. Of course she had recognised him—despite the differences that fifteen years had etched onto his face. For one horrible moment, she had frozen—assaulted by a flashback of the grief she’d had to deal with all those years ago when he’d chosen to walk out of her life.
The only way to deal with it had been to blank out those memories. The visceral knowledge that this was her only living relative. He had to become simply another patient. A man with hypovolaemic shock who was in urgent need of fluid replacement. All she had to think about was putting a large bore cannula into his arm and to get fluids running. Probably two IV lines—except that it was equally important to find out whether the loss of blood was actually as controlled as the first aiders had led them to believe.
‘I don’t like the staining on that pressure bandage,’ she told Zac. ‘It could be soaking up volume.’
Zac nodded. ‘Have a look at what’s going on.’ He was still crouching beside her father’s head. ‘Jon? You still with us, mate? Open your eyes…’
‘Hurts,’ Jon groaned. ‘My leg…’
‘I’m going to give you something for the pain.’
Summer used shears to cut away the bandage. The ripped flesh on Jon’s thigh was horrific. She could see the gleam of exposed bone in one patch and…yes…there was a small spurt of an arterial bleed still going on. She clamped her gloved fingers over the vessel and pressed hard.
Jon groaned and then swore vehemently. Summer had to close her eyes for a heartbeat as the cry of pain ripped its way through the emotional wall she had erected.
This was just another patient. Jon. Not Dad. Sometimes you had to cause pain to save a life. It didn’t make it harder because he was her father. He wasn’t her father any more. He hadn’t been for fifteen years…
She opened her eyes as she sucked in a new breath, to find Zac looking up from where he was filling a syringe from an ampoule. He was giving her that look again. The one that told her he had somehow made the connection the moment he’d heard their patient’s name and that he knew exactly how hard this was. How much he wanted to make it easier for her.
He knew nothing about her history and yet he was prepared to take her side and protect her from someone who had the potential to be some kind of threat. Funny how she could still be so focused on what she had to do but be aware of how much she loved this man. How easy it would be to put her emotional safety in his hands for ever.
‘The femoral artery’s been nicked,’ she said. ‘I’m putting some pressure on it.’
‘We might need to clamp it. I’ll get some pain relief on board first.’
Yes. Knock him out, Summer thought. The pain of what she was doing had roused him. Any second now and he was going to look to see what was happening and…
‘Summer?’ The word was shocked. Disbelieving. Jon pulled at the oxygen mask on his face as if he wanted to make his speech more audible. ‘Is that…you?’
‘Keep your mask on, mate.’ A lifeguard crouching at his head pushed the mask back into place.
The guard holding the bag of IV fluid aloft crouched to catch his arm. ‘Keep your arm still, Jon. You don’t want the line to come out.’
During the flurry of activity, Zac injected the pain relief and Jon relaxed, his arms dropping and his eyes closing. A flash of eye contact told her that Zac was relieved that things hadn’t got any more difficult but it did nothing to interrupt his focus on what they had to do as soon as possible—to get this bleeding under control so that pouring fluids in to maintain blood pressure wasn’t a futile exercise.
Forceps were a good enough temporary measure to close the artery. Sterile dressings covered the wound. It took only a few minutes to have their patient packaged onto the stretcher and stable enough to fly.
‘Any family or close friends here?’ Zac asked.
Summer deliberately avoided making eye contact with anybody. How many people had heard him say her name? The name that was embroidered on her overalls for anybody to check. A name that was unusual enough to be an accusation if someone knew that Jon had had a daughter in a previous life. It was normal to find out whether there was anyone who might want to travel with a patient who was seriously injured, anyway. These could be the last moments they had together.
‘Me.’ The skinny kid who’d been standing there, silently gripping the damaged surfboard, spoke up. ‘I’m Dylan. He’s my dad.’
She didn’t manage to avoid Zac’s glance this time. He was hiding it well but he was shocked. Did he think she’d known she had a half-brother? Oh, man… he couldn’t be as shocked as she was. A half-brother?
She tried to shove the thought aside. This was her father’s new family. It didn’t have to have anything to do with her, other than as a professional. They couldn’t just take a boy who didn’t look any older than about ten or eleven with them. He would need to travel with an adult.
‘Where’s your mum?’ The words came out more fiercely than she would have chosen.
‘Haven’t got one.’
‘She died,’ someone said quietly, close to Summer’s shoulder. ‘Couple of years back.’
‘There’s just me and my dad.’
The boy had blue eyes. And they were dark with distress—making him look a lot older than he probably was. A lot older than any kid should have to look. Summer had lost her mother. She knew what that was like but she couldn’t afford to start feeling sorry for the kid. If she let him touch her heart, it might open the door to everything associated with her father and that was a world of hurt she thought she’d left well in the past.
But how could she not feel the connection? This kid even looked like her. Short and skinny, with bleached blond hair that was probably still full of sea water, which was why it was sticking up all over the place in the kind of spikes that Summer favoured for a hairstyle.
The unexpected mix of something so personal with what should have been a purely professional situation was impossible to deal with. Thank goodness Zac seemed to know exactly the right way to deal with it. He had his hand on a skinny shoulder.
‘Want to come with us, then? We’ll look after you, buddy.’
A single nod. The surfboard was handed over, with some reverence, to one of the lifeguards. The news crew, who’d been filming from a respectable distance, began to move closer. People would get interviewed. Close-up shots of that surfboard would probably be all over the Internet in no time. There could be more reporters waiting at the hospital and they’d be eager to get some sound bites from one of the crew.
Maybe Monty could deal with that. Or Graham, back at the base. All Summer wanted to do was get this job over with and find some way of getting her head around it all. But what was she going to do about the boy? She had a responsibility, whether she wanted it or not, and dealing with that was inevitably going to open a can of worms that Zac would want to talk about. That he had the right to know about, even?
A short time later, Dylan was strapped into the front seat of the helicopter beside Monty, and Zac and Summer were in the back with their patient. They were lifting off from the beach. They were in an environment totally familiar to Summer and heading back to the world she knew and loved.
But it didn’t feel the same any more.
It was being shaken and it was impossible to know just how much dama
ge might be happening.
Even Zac seemed different. Was it her imagination or was he treating Jon with even more care than usual? She didn’t need reminding to keep a constant watch on his blood pressure and oxygen saturation. Surely he didn’t need to keep asking about pain levels?
‘It’s down to three out of ten,’ she finally snapped. ‘And we’re only a few minutes away from hospital. He doesn’t need any more pain relief.’
Zac’s expression was sympathetic but it felt like a reprimand. He was trying to do the best for everyone involved here but this was a decision their patient should be allowed to make. Was he providing an example of not letting anything personal interfere with something professional? ‘How bad is it, Jon?’
‘Better than before.’ It was clearly an effort for him to open his eyes. ‘Summer?’
It was easy to pretend to be absorbed in the measurements she was recording. To pretend she hadn’t heard him call her name.
‘Where’s my boy?’ Jon asked then. ‘Who’s looking after Dylan?’
‘He’s up front,’ Zac told him. ‘Coming to the hospital with us.’
‘But who’s going to look after him? He’s just a kid…’
‘Don’t worry about it,’ Zac said. ‘I’ll make sure he’s taken good care of.’
What? Summer’s frown was fierce. This felt wrong. This wasn’t what he’d promised in that look. The one that had told her he was on her side and would protect her. He was treating Jon Pearson as if he was his girlfriend’s father and not just a potential threat to her emotional well-being. As if this unknown and unwelcome half-sibling was part of her family.
And what did that say about Zac? That he’d think it was forgivable to cheat on your wife for pretty much an entire marriage? That it was okay to pack a bag and simply walk out when you decided that your daughter was old enough to be considered an adult?
‘You’re grown up now, chicken. It shouldn’t matter that me and your mum aren’t going to live together any longer. I won’t be far away. I’ll always be your dad.’
She’d only just turned sixteen, for heaven’s sake. She’d been nowhere near old enough to handle her mother’s emotional disintegration.
And it sure as hell had mattered.
‘You’re a cheat. A lying cheat. I can’t believe you’d do this to Mum. To me. I hate you…I never want to see you again…’
She had seen him again, though, hadn’t she? At her mother’s funeral, less than a year later. Not that she’d gone anywhere near him. What could she have said?
This was your fault. It might not look like it to anyone else but, as far as I’m concerned, it was murder…
Murder by drowning in the dank blackness of the cloud that had been left behind in their lives.
The echo of her mother’s voice was even more disturbing. Concentrating on recording a new set of figures wasn’t enough to chase it away.
Blood pressure was ninety over sixty. Improving. At least it was recordable now.
You can never trust a man…No matter how much you love them—it’s never enough…
Oxygen saturation was ninety-three per cent. Not enough but it had also improved from what it had been. There was enough blood—albeit pretty diluted now—to be keeping Jon alive.
‘He’s going to need blood.’ Had Zac guessed her train of thought? ‘Do you happen to know his group? Might speed things up.’
‘He’s O positive.’
‘Really? Me, too.’
The coincidence was hardly impressive. ‘So am I. It is the most common group, you know. Thirty-eight per cent of people are O positive.’
Her tone sounded off, even to her own ears. Cold, even. She turned to stare at the cardiac monitor.
He was in sinus rhythm so his heart was coping. The heart rate was too fast at a hundred and twenty but that was only to be expected with the low levels of circulating oxygen.
Looking up at the monitor made it inevitable that her glance would slide sideways at Zac but he’d looked away when she’d been making the comment about blood groups and seemed to be focused on checking the dressings over Jon’s leg wound.
She couldn’t shake that echo of her mother’s voice. How could she when her father was lying there only inches away from her?
She loved Zac. More than she would have ever believed it was possible to love someone. And she trusted him completely.
Despite evidence to the contrary? How easily had she taken his word and shut those poisonous whispers from Kate out of her life?
The way her mother had always refused to believe rumours of her father’s infidelity?
Her thoughts shouldn’t be straying like this in the middle of a job. She was being unprofessional. She’d never felt like this. Well—maybe just a little—that first day she’d been on the job with Zac and she’d had to make an effort to separate the personal and professional, but that paled in comparison to the wash of mixed emotions she couldn’t control right now. A mix of the present and past that was turning into a confused jumble.
Shaking things unbearably. Damaging things.
Nothing was going to be quite the same after this. Including how she felt about Zac?
Maybe that was the worst thing about it.
They were coming in to land on the roof of Auckland General. There would be a resus team waiting for them in Emergency. They could hand their patient over and if it had been any normal job that would be the end of it.
But Summer knew that, this time, it might only be the beginning of something else.
Something that had the potential to ruin her life all over again?
How on earth was she going to cope?
And then they were out of the helicopter and there was a flurry of activity as they got everybody out and ready to move. Summer gathered up the paperwork so she was a step behind as the stretcher started to roll. A nurse had taken charge of Dylan. For a moment, Summer stared at the entourage and it was hard to make her feet move to start following them.
But somehow Zac was right beside her. His side pressed against hers.
‘It’s okay,’ he told her. ‘We can deal with this. All of it.’
It was a good thing they had to move fast to catch up with their patient and take the lift down to the emergency department. A good thing that there were so many other people around because otherwise Summer might have burst into tears.
She had no idea exactly how they were going to deal with any of this but she desperately wanted to believe Zac.
There was the most enormous relief in the idea that, this time, she wasn’t going to have to do this alone.
They could deal with this.
Together.
CHAPTER EIGHT
ZAC STOOD WITH Dylan in the corner of the resuscitation room, his arm around the boy’s shoulders, as the team made their initial assessment of his father. Summer stood on the boy’s other side. Not touching him but still close.
He could only imagine the mixed feelings she must be experiencing but she was standing her ground. Being protective of a scared ten-year-old kid who she happened to be related to. It made Zac feel enormously proud of her.
‘Do a type and cross match,’ Rob told one of the nurses. ‘He’s going to need a transfusion.’
‘He’s O positive,’ Zac said.
‘Thanks, mate, but we’ll still have to check.’ Rob’s glance took in how close Zac and Summer were standing to Dylan but, if he was surprised, he gave no sign of it, with the same kind of professionalism that had stopped any of the team commenting that their patient’s name was the same as Summer’s. ‘Bitten by a shark, huh? Your dad’s going to have a great story to tell, isn’t he?’
‘Is he…is he going to be okay?’
‘We’re going to give him some more blood and make sure he’s stable and then he’ll be going up to the operating theatre so they can see what they can do. Try not to worry too much, okay?’ Rob’s smile was reassuring but he turned away swiftly. ‘Has someone got hold of Orthopaedics yet? And where
’s the neurosurgical registrar? And Summer…?’
‘Yes?’ Summer responded to the tilt of the ED consultant’s head. He wanted a private word. Was he going to warn her that Dylan might need to be prepared for the worst? That he might lose his father?
That she might lose her father again—permanently, this time?
It shouldn’t make any difference but it did. There was new grief to be found. A grief mixed with regret and…and something that felt like…shame?
‘We need to intubate,’ Rob told her quietly. ‘It’s better if you take the lad somewhere else. Is he…is there some connection I should know about?’
Summer’s heart was thumping. This was the moment when she had to decide how far she was going to go in opening a part of her life that had previously been out of bounds.
‘Jon Pearson is my father,’ she said aloud. ‘And Dylan’s my half-brother. I…I didn’t know he existed before today, though.’
‘Hmm…’ Rob’s look was searching. ‘You okay?’
Summer’s gaze shifted to where Zac was still standing with his arm around Dylan’s shoulders. Skinny shoulders that were hunched in misery and fear.
‘I think I will be,’ she said quietly.
‘I’ll get Mandy to set up one of the relatives’ rooms for you. She can take care of him if you need a break for any reason. If there’s any way we can help, just say.’
Dylan wasn’t happy about being taken somewhere else.
‘I want to stay with my dad.’ There was hostility in the glare being delivered as she and Zac ushered him out of the resus room. ‘I don’t want to go anywhere with you. You’re Summer. I know all about you. You were mean to Dad.’
Summer’s jaw dropped. She had been mean?
‘Um…I didn’t know about you.’
‘You would have if you’d talked to Dad. Like he’d always wanted you to.’
Summer tried to push away memories of things she wasn’t proud of. Like the look on her father’s face when she’d turned her back on him at the funeral and walked away. The letters she had ripped up. The parcels she’d had returned to their sender. Yes…there was definitely shame to be found in the kaleidoscope of emotions this day was creating.
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