‘But I need to stay inside and wait for the doctor. He’ll be here any minute, I hope, and I don’t want to miss him when he arrives because after my meeting with him you and I can go to the hotel and have a nice nap.’
‘Pleeease can I play in the snow?’
Juliet felt the sleeve of her blouse being tugged by two tiny hands, still gloved, and Bea’s eyes were wide with anticipation and excitement. Juliet looked out to the fenced area near the entrance doors. There was a park bench, see-saw and a small slide and the playground was secured with a child safety gate. It was clearly a designated area for children to play on a sunny day but it wasn’t a sunny day. It was freezing cold, overcast and the ground was covered with snow, which she knew was the draw card for Bea but a cause for concern for Juliet. Although she didn’t want to impose a fear of almost everything onto her daughter, she couldn’t help but worry.
After a moment she took a deep breath; she had made her decision. ‘All right, you can play outside but only if we button up your coat again, put on your hat and keep your gloves on...and only for five minutes. And I mean five minutes—you’ll catch a terrible cold if you stay out any longer.’
‘Yeth! Yippee! Thank you, Mummy.’
With trepidation, Juliet buttoned up her daughter’s heavy overcoat, pulled a knitted cap from her bag and popped it over Bea’s mass of honey-blonde curls, pulling it down over her ears, and then slipped on her own coat again before walking the little girl outside into the wintry weather. She was still worried about leaving Bea for even five minutes, but common sense told her it would be safe. It was ten o’clock in the morning not the middle of the night and it was no longer snowing.
Her father’s words rushed back into her head, ‘You can’t keep Bea in bubble wrap. Let her have some fun sometimes or she’ll grow up scared of taking chances. Who knows what she can do in life if she’s allowed to really live it? She might even become a surgeon like her mother...and grandfather.’
Although Juliet loved her work, she wasn’t convinced medicine was the life she wanted for her daughter. Part of her wondered if the lack of a social life due to the years of heavy study load, and then the long shifts at the hospital as an intern, then as a resident didn’t assist Bea’s father to deceive her. She was far from streetwise about men. She’d had friends but never a love interest until she met him and he’d swept her off her feet and into his bed. Making her believe their night together was the beginning of something more. She wanted Bea to be wiser and not naive about the opposite sex.
But that was many years away and this was a playground. But it was still making Juliet very nervous.
She paused at the playground gate and looked down at her daughter, trying unsuccessfully to mask her concern.
‘Mummy, I’ll be good, I promith.’
Juliet realised she was being silly. It was only a children’s playground and one she could see from inside and so too could all of the staff in the hospital foyer and the tea room. Juliet needed to meet with the now quite late Dr Warren. There might be a message from him any minute. She also wanted to meet the quadruplets’ mother as soon as possible to discuss her treatment plan. Bending down and looking Bea in the eyes, she said, ‘Mummy has to talk with the nice lady at the desk inside. I’ll be back in five minutes. You know my rule—don’t talk to strangers.’
Bea nodded. ‘Okay.’
With that Juliet closed the childproof gate with Bea inside the playground wearing an ear-to-ear smile, already making small snowballs with her tiny gloved hands. Juliet tugged again on the gate to check it was closed properly before she headed back inside. She doubted she would leave Bea for five minutes, estimating it would only take two to check again on Dr Warren’s whereabouts and see if there had been an update on his ETA. And she would be watching her the entire time through the large glass windows.
* * *
Charlie Warren pulled into the Royal Cheltenham hospital astride his black motorcycle. Both he and the bike were geared for riding in the harsh winter conditions of the southern English countryside. The sound of the powerful engine reverberated across the grounds as he cruised into the sheltered area of the car park. Charlie climbed from the huge bike that would have dwarfed most men, but, at six feet one, his muscular frame dressed in his leather riding gear stood tall against the bike. He removed his snow-splattered black helmet and heavy riding gloves and ran his still-warm fingers through his short but shaggy blond hair. It was cold riding to work every day, even brutal his colleagues would tell him some days in the middle of winter, but Charlie wouldn’t consider for a moment taking a car. He couldn’t; he didn’t own one. Not any more and not ever again. He hadn’t driven a car of any description in the two years since the crash.
Two years and three days to be exact. The anniversary was only a few days earlier, and, he assumed, was the reason the nightmares had returned. He knew he would never forget the date. It was the day the life he loved had ended.
After that, little brought him joy outside his work.
He had nothing to look forward to each night he rode away from the hospital. So he didn’t stay away from Teddy’s for too long.
* * *
Juliet watched Bea giggling as she climbed carefully up each rung of the tiny ladder on the slide. Her gloved hands gripped on tightly, her tiny feet, snug inside her laced-up leather boots, struggled a little not to slide, but she still smiled a toothy grin at her mother. Juliet loved seeing her daughter so happy and she smiled back but her smile was strained. Worry was building by the minute as she watched her only daughter take each slippery step, but her father’s words resonated in her head, forcing her to stay put. Reminding her not to run to her daughter or call out, Climb back down...it’s dangerous.
No, on this trip she would heed his instructions and let her daughter have a bit of fun after all and the slide was only a few feet tall.
What could possibly go wrong?
Bea looked down at each rung then back to her mother. Juliet could see that Bea thought she was such a big girl and seeing that reinforced that her father did know best. Juliet had to let Bea try new things. She had to unwrap the cotton wool that she had lovingly placed around her daughter...but only just a little.
Juliet gave a little sigh and resigned herself to her four-year-old’s growing independence and her desire to encourage it but her fear at the same time. She wondered how she would cope when she turned sixteen and asked to get her driver’s permit. Mentally she shook herself. That’s twelve years away...you have time to prepare for it.
With any luck Dr Warren would arrive before then, she sniggered to herself.
At that moment, a smiling Bea lifted her right hand and waved at her mother. But Juliet didn’t have time to smile back as she watched in horror as Bea lost her concentration and then her footing. She gasped out loud as her daughter’s tiny hands lost their grip too. Helplessly Juliet watched from inside the building as Bea fell backwards to the ground.
CHAPTER THREE
CHARLIE SAW THE small child fall from the playground equipment. He was only too aware that while there was a thick blanket of freshly fallen snow in some places, in other areas there was only a thin covering. The shade the trees gave in summer when they were covered in lush green leaves was lovely but the branches had acted as natural canopies preventing the snow from building up to a level that would have broken her fall. He felt a knot in the pit of his stomach at seeing the child lying motionless on the ground and he rushed across the car park.
While it wasn’t an overly tall slide, the child, he could see, was very tiny. As he drew closer he could see there was no one with her. Why would anyone leave a child out in the freezing weather unattended? He looked around and there was no one in sight. No one running to help. Fuelled by concern for the child and anger at the parent or parents, he raced to the gate.
‘How damned irresponsible
,’ he muttered under his breath and shook his head. But his words were driven by something deeper. His dreams of being a father had ended the day his wife died and that made it even harder to see that this child had been left alone. If he were the father he would protect his child at any cost and he would never have left one so tiny out in the cold. Alone.
He undid the safety latch with a sense of urgency as he heard soft moans coming from the child he could then see was a little girl, lying still on her side. She was conscious. He quickly crossed to her and knelt down. ‘You’ll be okay, honey. I’m a doctor at this hospital. I just want to see if you’ve been hurt.’ He kept his words to a minimum as he could see just how young she was.
‘Where’th Mummy? I want Mummy.’ Bea’s eyes suddenly widened and began to fill with tears.
‘We’ll try and find Mummy,’ he said as he wondered the very same question.
Where the hell was the little girl’s mother? And her father?
As he began to check her vital signs he guessed she was between three and four years of age. ‘Where does it hurt?’
‘My arm hurths,’ she said, abruptly sitting upright with tears running down her ruddy cheeks.
Charlie was surprised but relieved to see her level of mobility and suspected her tears were fuelled by fear and pain in equal amounts. ‘Anywhere else?’
‘No. It’th jutht my arm. Where’th Mummy?’ Her chin was quivering and the tears were flowing freely.
Charlie reassured her again they would find her mother as he continued his medical assessment. As she awkwardly tried to climb to her feet, it was obvious to Charlie that she had only injured her arm so he scooped her up ready to take her to the emergency department. Neither a stretcher nor a paramedic team was needed and he wanted to get her out of the bitter cold air immediately and into the warmth of the hospital where she could be thoroughly assessed.
‘Put my daughter down now!’ Juliet’s loud voice carried from the gate to where Charlie was standing.
Charlie’s eyes narrowed on her. ‘I’m a doctor, so please open the gate for me and step aside. This child’s been hurt,’ he told her as he approached with Bea still firmly in the grip of his strong arms. ‘I’m taking her to have an X-ray.’
Juliet hurriedly opened the gate. ‘She’s my daughter. I can take her,’ she said, reaching out for Bea, but Charlie ignored her request and moved swiftly, and in silence, in the direction of the emergency entrance with Juliet running alongside him.
‘I said, I can carry her.’
‘I heard you but I have her, so let’s keep unnecessary movement to a minimum.’
Juliet nodded. It was logical but she still wished her injured daughter were in her arms, not those of the tall, leather-clad stranger who was supposedly a doctor. ‘I saw her fall but I couldn’t get to her in time.’
Charlie’s eyebrow rose slightly. ‘That’s of no consequence now. I saw her. I’ll get her seen immediately in A&E and then you can perhaps explain why she was left unattended out in this weather at such a young age.’
‘Excuse me?’ Juliet began in a tone that didn’t mask her surprise at his accusatory attitude. While she thought it was unfair and unjust it also hit a raw nerve. ‘I wasn’t far away—’
‘Far enough, it would seem, for me to get to her first,’ Charlie cut in with no emotion in his voice. As the three of them entered the warmth of the emergency department, the feeling between them was as icy as the snow outside. ‘I need her name and age.’
‘Beatrice, but we call her Bea, and she’s four years and two months.’ Juliet answered but her voice was brimming with emotion. Overwhelming concern about Bea and equally overwhelming anger towards the man who was carrying her child. How dared he be so quick to judge her?
‘Four-year-old girl by the name of Bea, suspected green stick fracture of the forearm,’ he announced brusquely to the nursing staff as he took long, powerful strides inside with Juliet following quickly on his heels. Charlie carried Bea into one of the emergency cubicles and laid her gently on the examination bed. With the curtains still open, he continued. ‘We need an X-ray stat to confirm radius or ulna fracture but either way, if I’m correct, we’ll be prepping for a cast. And bring me some oral analgesia.’
‘Ibuprofen, acetaminophen or codeine?’ the nurse asked.
‘One hundred milligrams of suspension ibuprofen,’ Charlie replied, then, as it was a teaching hospital and he was aware that three final-year medical students had moved closer to observe, he continued. ‘Generally paediatric fracture patients have significantly greater reduction in pain with ibuprofen than those in either the acetaminophen group or the codeine group and they suffer less negative side effects.’
‘What’th happening, Mummy?’
‘The doctor,’ she began before she shot an angry glare over her shoulder in Charlie’s direction. She was impressed with his knowledge but not his attitude towards her. ‘Sweetie, the doctor thinks you may have broken your arm when you fell from the playground slide so he’ll take a picture of your arm with a special machine.’
‘Will it hurt?’
‘The machine won’t hurt you at all but they will have to very gently lift your arm to take off your coat and then take a picture. So the doctor will give you some medicine so it doesn’t hurt.’
The nurse returned with the ibuprofen and Charlie asked Bea to swallow the liquid.
‘Please do as the doctor asks because it will make the pain go away,’ Juliet told her daughter with a smile that belied how worried she was. ‘Don’t worry, Bea, I’ll be with you every minute. I’m not leaving your side.’
‘That’d be a nice idea,’ Charlie put in, with sarcasm evident in his voice just enough for Juliet alone to know the intent of his remark but no one else. Without looking up, he signed the radiograph request the A&E nurse had given him.
Juliet took a deep breath and counted silently to three. It was not the time to tell him just what she thought of his snide remarks, particularly not in the presence of her daughter and the medical students. But that time would come once everyone was out of earshot. And he would hear in no uncertain terms just what he could do with his unwarranted opinion.
‘Can you please complete the paperwork?’ the nurse asked of Juliet. ‘We only need the signature of one parent.’
‘Bea only has one parent,’ Juliet said flatly before she accepted the clipboard from the nurse and hurriedly but accurately began to complete the details so she could expedite the process and allow Bea to have the X-ray. She wasn’t sure if the doctor had heard and she didn’t care as Bea’s parental status wasn’t his concern.
‘Dr Warren,’ another young nurse began as she neared the trio with a clipboard, ‘would you like me to call for the paediatric resident so you can return to the OBGYN clinic?’
‘No, I’m here now, I’ll finish what I’ve started.’
‘Of course,’ the nurse replied. ‘Then we can take the patient down as soon as the paperwork is completed.’
‘Dr Warren? Dr Charlie Warren?’ Juliet demanded as she fixed her eyes on Charlie for a moment. He was not the borderline elderly OBGYN she had pictured. Dr Charlie Warren, she surmised, was closer to his early thirties.
‘Yes. Why do you ask?’
Juliet didn’t answer immediately. Instead she ensured she had not missed any details on the admissions form before she signed and returned it to the nurse. It gave her a few moments to compose herself and reconcile that the man treating her daughter was the OBGYN who had stood her up for their meeting and the one who wanted to oppose her treatment plan for the quadruplets. He was already very much on the back foot but, with his obvious bad attitude, it did not augur well for them working together.
‘Well, Dr Warren, it appears that you owe me an apology since you’re the reason why my daughter is in here.’ Juliet wore a self-satisfied look, one she
felt she more than deserved to display.
‘I hardly think so. I just pulled into the car park when your daughter fell. We both know that I had nothing to do with her accident so let’s not waste time trying to shift blame. Leaving a child this young alone is something I am not sure I can fully understand...or want to.’
‘That’s where you’re wrong. You have everything to do with the accident because if you’d been on time for our meeting my daughter would not have stepped outside to play.’
‘Our meeting?’
‘Yes, our ten o’clock meeting,’ she began. ‘I’m Dr Juliet Turner. The in-utero surgeon who has flown halfway around the world and managed to be here on time for a meeting about your quad pregnancy patient, and, I might add, we travelled straight from the airport. My daughter needed to stretch her legs for a minute after such a long journey, so I allowed her to play in the fenced area that I assumed would not be open unless it was in fact child-safe while I enquired further about your arrival. If heavy snowfall changes the safety status of the area then it should be closed. You may like to speak to the hospital board about looking into that matter.’ Juliet had not taken a breath during the delivery. Adrenalin was pumping out the words. She was scared for Bea. And extremely angry with Charlie Warren.
‘Dr Turner? I had no idea...’
‘Clearly...and apparently no time management either.’
Charlie was momentarily speechless. Juliet felt momentarily vindicated.
She noticed a curious frown dress his brow. Then she also noticed, against her will, that his brow was very attractive, as was his entire face. She had been focusing on Bea and not noticed anything much about the man who had whisked her daughter unceremoniously into A&E. But now she noticed his chiselled jaw, deep blue eyes and soft, full mouth. In fact, each moment her eyes lingered on his face she realised he was in fact extremely handsome, even when he frowned. His powerful presence towered over her with long, lean legs and his leather riding gear accentuated his broad shoulders. She shook herself mentally. His manner was both judgmental and conceited. Alarm bells rang in her head. Why were her thoughts even teetering on noticing him past being her daughter’s emergency physician? He was just another arrogant man and one she was going to be forced to work with in some capacity.
White Christmas For The Single Mom (Christmas Miracles In Maternity #3) Page 3