The sound of laughter faded as Harriet dropped her gaze, cringing just a little. Had Blake forgotten about her and Pete? They’d been an item within a week of him joining the team.
Fortunately, the arrival of their bar snacks diverted everybody.
‘We don’t have much time,’ Blake warned, passing a basket of tiny spring rolls and samosas, along with their dipping sauces. ‘I need to be back in twenty minutes to set up for the meeting.’
* * *
As usual, it was Blake who was chairing the Specialist Disaster Response team meeting.
The room, not far from the theatre suite at Bondi Bayside, was often used for staff meetings or visiting speakers and it had the benefit of tiered seating and a screen for data projection. It was an easy venue for all the medics involved with the team who were available on any given evening but it was also open to interested people from the emergency services they worked closely with, like the fire service and ambulance.
Harriet and Jack chose seats together quite high in the room and Sam sat beside Harriet.
‘First order of new business,’ Blake said after welcoming the group, ‘is that we have a potential new member. I’d like to welcome Tim Schofield to the meeting.’
A man in the front row raised his hand and there was a polite round of handclapping.
‘Many of you know Tim as one of our best anaesthetists,’ Blake continued, ‘and he’s keen to come to our next training session to see if he’s up for the challenge of joining us. Please give him any encouragement because it would be a major asset to have him on board. It would give us a valuable resource for the kind of pre-hospital surgical trauma management that’s usually beyond our current scope, especially in an isolated environment.’
Blake was scanning the upper rows now and he smiled as he caught sight of Harriet.
‘Next bit of news concerns someone we all know and love,’ he said. ‘Welcome back, Harry. I know I’m not the only person here who’s delighted that you’re back up to speed.’
Harriet ducked her head, not having expected the attention. She felt Jack’s hand cover hers and give it a squeeze and, for an uncomfortable moment, she wondered if Blake was going to say something about her and Jack once this new round of applause died down.
The clapping was more enthusiastic this time, accompanied by a cheer or two, and every head turned to look up at Harriet.
Which was probably why nobody noticed the door at the front opening. Or that a latecomer was approaching Blake.
‘Sorry I’m late, mate,’ he said. ‘I’m still getting the team emails so I figured I’d still be welcome.’
Blake’s mouth opened and then shut.
Sam turned to look at Harriet, her eyes wide with what looked like shock, and, in the same instant, Harriet felt Jack’s hand go rigid over hers and then slide free.
‘Did you know?’ Sam whispered. ‘That Pete was back?’
‘Of course not,’ Harriet muttered.
Heads were turning again but the expressions on people’s faces were very different from those of a moment ago.
Her ex had just walked back into her life and everybody was curious about what her reaction might be.
Shock. That’s what it was.
She sat there, unable to move even her line of sight, which was unfortunate because that was filled by Pete, as he walked towards an empty seat in the front row.
He looked exactly the same as ever. Tall, blond, confident...
What was he doing back in Sydney?
Back at a team meeting?
The joy of having just been welcomed back herself had been hijacked. Had it only been less than an hour ago that she’d felt such a blast of confidence about her relationship with Jack? She could feel how tense he was now. As frozen as she was herself. What was he thinking—that she was comparing him to her previous partner and that he was coming up short?
Tilting her body slightly, she pressed her arm against Jack’s and, a heartbeat later, she felt him relax a little. Pete was sitting down now and all that she could see was the back of his head with its spiky, blond streaks. Blake had turned to pick up the remote control for the data projector.
‘Knowing that we were going to have Tim here, and that there are some of us who’ve been absent for a while, I thought that a good topic for our professional development this month was a bit of a revision of the purpose of this team.’
Harriet tried to focus. Blake had known that she was coming back but had he had any idea of Pete’s intention to return? Surely not, or he wouldn’t have joked about making a public announcement about her and Jack. He would have warned her. They all knew how devastating it had been when Pete had backed away from their relationship in the wake of her accident. When he’d moved out of her apartment. When he’d hooked up with someone new and finally left town.
She might be completely over Pete but echoes of the old feelings were still there. Anxiety. Fear. Rejection. Loneliness. Anger...
Baggage, that’s what it was. And she wasn’t the only person who was going to have to deal with it. Jack would have his own feelings about it all. Maybe he was thinking about the way his offer of support had been rejected back in those early days after the accident, when all she’d wanted had been for Pete to demonstrate that he’d really cared.
A slide had appeared on the big screen at the front of the room as the lights had dimmed a little. Blake’s voice was calm.
‘The World Health Organization defines a disaster as an event when “normal conditions of existence are disrupted and the level of suffering exceeds the capacity of the hazard-affected community to respond to it”.’ Blake clicked his laser pointer. ‘An MCI, or Multiple Casualty Incident, is more common and is defined as a situation that places a significant demand on medical resources and personnel.’
He glanced at Tim the anaesthetist. ‘Our Specialist Disaster Response team can—and does—respond to both disasters and MCIs, a recent example being the callout to that landslide that buried the ski village. There’s a fine line between disasters and MCIs and our objective is always the same. To get the best possible patient outcomes for the greatest number of victims.’
Harriet had heard all about that disaster callout to the landslide from both Sam and Kate, who’d still been her neighbour at the time. More than she’d wanted to hear, in fact, because she’d still been in the mindset of having lost the most important things in her life. Her job, her place on the team. Pete...
The days before she’d reconnected with Jack. Before he’d helped her regain everything that she’d lost. She leaned into him again, and this time his hand slid back to catch hers and her breath escaped in a small, relieved sigh. It was going to be all right. Wasn’t it? Every relationship got tested at some point and this situation looked like it was setting itself up to be their test.
She just had to convince Jack that Pete was part of the past. He was unimportant and he couldn’t threaten what they had.
* * *
‘Are you sure you’re okay?’
‘Of course.’ Harriet was kneeling in front of the coffee table in her living room. She’d spread out the handouts Blake had provided at the end of the meeting, along with sample triage tags. She seemed to be comparing the algorithms for two of the major international triage protocols. ‘START is easier to remember,’ she said. ‘Simple Triage and Rapid Treatment. SALT is a bit more complicated, isn’t it? Sort and Assess, Lifesaving interventions and Treatment-slash-Transport.’
‘They reckon it helps the problem of over-triaging.’ Jack sank onto the couch behind Harriet. ‘And giving people a higher priority than they should get.’ He didn’t want to discuss triaging patients. There was a far more important aspect of tonight’s meeting that they needed to talk about as far as he was concerned.
‘I had a word with Pete when the meeting broke up,’ he said carefully. ‘He’s moved
back to Sydney, to his old job with the fire service. He wants to be put back on the active roster for the SDR.’
He saw the way Harriet’s shoulders moved as she shrugged. ‘I guess it’s up to Blake whether that happens.’
‘Blake asked me how I thought you’d feel about it. He’s not the most popular person in these parts, you know. After the way he treated you.’
‘It’s history, Jack. I don’t care what he does.’ Harriet scooped up the coloured tags and turned to hand them to Jack. ‘Can you test me on these? I want to make sure I remember this stuff.’
How could she simply dismiss the fact that Pete Thompson had come back as if it meant nothing? Did she not want to talk about it because she knew he wouldn’t like what she had to say?
He stared at the tags in his hand as he tried to collect his thoughts and then chose the red one.
‘Priority One.’ Harriet nodded. ‘Immediate attention needed. In the global sorting on arrival at a scene, they’re the ones who don’t walk or wave when asked to move. They don’t move at all.’
She wasn’t looking at the handout. Harriet knew this stuff.
‘Individual assessment?’
‘They’re breathing, after any lifesaving interventions that are needed, like opening the airway, controlling major haemorrhage and chest decompression.’
‘And what else?’
‘Level of consciousness—do they obey commands or make purposeful movements?’ Harriet was checking off points on her fingers. ‘Do they have a peripheral pulse? Major haemorrhage is controlled and they’re not in severe respiratory distress.’
‘And if any of those things are negative?’
Harriet’s face was grim. ‘You have to decide whether they’re likely to survive given the current resources. If they are, they keep the red tag. If not, they get a black tag which is “expectant” or no priority.’
Jack nodded. The black tag meant a person was either dead or expected to be dead soon.
Harriet was looking expectant right now, waiting for him to test her knowledge on the yellow tags for delayed treatment or the green ones for people with minor injuries that only needed eventual treatment, but Jack didn’t want to play this game any more. The knot in his gut was getting tighter.
He dropped the cards. ‘You don’t need to do this, Harry. You know it. Talk to me instead.’
‘What about?’
‘You know what we need to talk about. Pete.’
Her face looked pale, making those gorgeous hazel eyes look huge. ‘You don’t have to worry about Pete,’ she said quietly. ‘Yes, it was a shock to see him again like that but it’s over, Jack. It was over a long time ago.’ She offered him a tentative smile. ‘That relationship gets a black tag.’
Harriet was on her knees now, close enough to raise her face for a kiss, and Jack didn’t hesitate to lower his head and oblige.
But it felt different somehow. This wasn’t a kiss that was about to ignite the kind of passion they had both become accustomed to. He could actually feel a tiny tremble in her lips that told him she was a lot more emotional than she was prepared to admit. She wasn’t being entirely honest with him, was she?
He wasn’t convinced about the black tag idea for Harriet’s relationship with Pete either. She had avoided talking to her ex tonight, other than giving him a cool nod. She hadn’t seen the way his gaze had followed her around the room as she’d caught up with other team members and introduced herself to Tim. Maybe she didn’t know yet that Pete had decided to come back to Sydney because his relationship with Sharleen had ended. What if lifesaving interventions were attempted, on his part, and the item that had been Harriet and Pete was given a red tag instead? The possibility of survival?
Old insecurities weren’t that deeply buried yet. He’d always known he couldn’t compete with what Pete had to offer. Not when it came to something like charisma. And Harriet had never told him that she loved him. Not with words, anyway.
Harriet was still looking up at him as their kiss ended. ‘You going to stay tonight?’
He wanted to. But what if their lovemaking was tainted by bottled-up insecurities or emotions, like that kiss had just been, and it only made things worse? Jack needed to get his head around this. And he needed for Harriet not to look as if the shock waves hadn’t worn off yet. Not to be trembling under his lips. And, more than anything else, he needed honesty from her.
‘Are you sure?’ he asked softly. ‘That Pete’s not a problem for you? For us?’
‘I’m sure.’ Her response was immediate. Too quick? ‘Believe me—if I had a choice, I wouldn’t even want to see him again.’
* * *
He was there.
Standing outside the main doors of Bondi Bayside.
Clearly waiting for her.
‘Go away, Pete,’ Harriet snapped. ‘I don’t want to see you. I certainly don’t want to talk to you.’
‘I know. I get that.’ But he fell into step with her as she headed for the main gates. ‘I just want to say I’m sorry.’
Harriet ignored him and increased her pace. The sooner she got out of the hospital grounds the better. She didn’t want to be here. Didn’t want to be hearing his voice. Especially not with that note of sincerity in it.
Pete broke the silence as they reached the gates. ‘I can’t believe how well you’re walking, Harry. How great you’re looking. I was blown away to see that you were back on the team again. You’d never know that you almost lost your leg.’
That did it. She had become attractive to him again because she looked like she had nothing wrong with her any more? Because the trauma of the last, long months could simply be forgotten? Harriet stopped abruptly and rounded on him.
‘Yeah...well, I did almost lose my leg.’ Her voice was low and fierce. ‘I almost lost everything that mattered to me.’ Her breath came out in an angry huff. ‘And I’m talking about my job and the SDR team, here. Not you. You couldn’t even hang around long enough to find out if I was going to be okay.’
Pete took a step back, his face creased as if her words were painful.
‘I know. I was a complete bastard. And I’m sorry. That’s all I wanted to say. I freaked out, Harry. I couldn’t handle it. You know what I’m like with medical stuff. That’s why I became a firie and not a paramedic.’
Harriet blinked. Was he trying to compare himself to Jack? Had he heard already that she and Jack were together?
‘I do care about you, Harry,’ he added, his voice cracking. ‘I know I didn’t show it enough when we were together and I just want to make it up to you...’ Harriet shook her head sharply. She didn’t want to think about any of it. Didn’t want to hear the emotion in Pete’s voice that made him sound so genuine.
She turned away. ‘I don’t want to talk to you,’ she said. ‘Go home, Pete. Talk to Sharleen.’
She’d started walking but Pete’s voice followed her.
‘It’s over with Sharleen,’ he said, speaking fast. ‘That’s why I’m back. It was a terrible mistake and...and I was hoping that we could be friends, at least?’
Then he was right beside her again and this time he caught her arm and trying to shake it off didn’t work.
‘Please...?’ He had his hands on both her arms now and his voice had slowed. ‘I miss you, hon...’
He was smiling. Looking right into her eyes. Leaning down towards her in a way she remembered all too well. She knew he was going to try and kiss her and, to her horror, she almost let it happen. Because, for a heartbeat, it felt like she’d stepped back in time. That nothing had happened to change everything.
She jerked her head back, out of reach, just in time. ‘Let go of me,’ she snapped. ‘I’ve moved on, Pete. I’m with someone else.’
‘Who?’
He’d find out soon enough, wouldn’t he? ‘Not that it’s any of your business but it’s Ja
ck.’
‘Jack?’ Pete looked bewildered. ‘Jack Evans?’
‘Yes.’
‘But...but he’s just a kid. One of the lads...’ Pete’s breath came out in a huff of laughter. ‘You’re having me on, aren’t you?’
Harriet wrenched herself out of his grip.
‘Leave me alone. It’s over, Pete. It was over a very long time ago.’
‘No...’ He was shaking his head. ‘It’s not over... It’ll never last—you and him... He’ll find someone his own age...’
Harriet was already moving. Walking away from him so fast she was almost jogging. Trying to escape the kaleidoscope of emotions washing over her. That sincerity in Pete’s voice. That moment when he’d almost kissed her. The way he’d tapped into one of her own fears about her relationship with Jack.
She was moving so fast that by the time she crossed the intersection near her apartment block her leg was dragging enough to make her limp.
Her spirits were, too.
She was over Pete Thompson. So why did she feel so churned up now?
Did it mean she did still have feelings for him, even if she didn’t want to? She had been in love with him, once. He’d been the first person that she’d been willing to commit to spending the rest of her life with.
Did feelings like that ever go away completely? And if they did, did that mean she couldn’t trust the way she felt about Jack?
She was very close to tears by the time she fitted her key into her door. All she wanted right now was to hear Jack’s voice but he was working. Probably in the sky somewhere in the middle of saving someone’s life. Doing the medical stuff that freaked Pete out so much.
And how could she tell him what had just happened or how she was feeling, anyway? It wasn’t just that he was seeing Pete as some kind of threat.
Was it because she wasn’t yet really sure herself?
Not about whether she wanted to be with Pete or not. She was sure about that.
Rescued by Her Mr. Right Page 12