‘OK, Rose.’ Bella was straight back into the cubicle, aware of Heath walking in behind her. ‘What happened after you heard him cry?’
‘I went in to him. He was shaking, having a fit or something, and I called the ambulance.’ She swung her eyes to Heath in a silent plea for help. ‘I don’t know what she’s trying to get at, but I’m telling you the truth.’
‘That’s all we want, Rose,’ Bella answered calmly, ignoring Heath’s uncomfortable stance and pushing on regardless. ‘Because if you’re missing anything out then now really is the time to tell us.’
‘I’m telling you the truth,’ Rose said.
‘Enough, Bella,’ Heath broke in, shooting her a warning look before addressing the shaking mother. ‘Rose, our concern is that Darcy doesn’t quite fit the picture of a febrile convulsion. Now, ideally I’d like to send him for an urgent CT scan, but at the moment his symptoms don’t warrant it and there are patients apparently sicker than Darcy waiting. But if he does have a head injury, if something’s happened that you’re not telling us, we could move things along faster. It’s imperative that you tell us everything. Every detail’s important no matter how small it might seem to you. We’re just trying to get a clear picture here of what exactly happened this morning.’
‘I’ve told you,’ Rose sobbed. ‘I’ve told you everything that’s happened.’
‘Not quite,’ Bella said softly, but her voice was firm, her sharp eyes scanning the woman’s face, watching the color mount in her cheeks as Bella spoke on, voicing the first thing that had sprung to her mind when the woman had entered the room. ‘You haven’t told us when you got a chance to put your lipstick on, Rose. You haven’t told us when during all this unfolding drama you had the time to put on some blusher.’
There was no joy in being proved right as Rose visibly crumpled, no surge of triumph as Bella’s instincts were proved correct. Staring at the baby lying in the cot, Bella would have been more than happy to have got it all wrong.
‘What happened, Rose?’ Bella said, but more gently now. ‘For Darcy’s sake we really need to know.’
‘He’s been crying and miserable for two days with this cold,’ Rose sobbed. ‘Keith was exhausted. He gets up at five, he needs his sleep. He just lost it, only for a moment, though…’
She could see Heath’s knuckles turn white as he held on to the cot side, his face set in stone as Rose spoke on.
‘He just shook him, only for a moment.’
‘When?’
‘Two, three a.m. I’m not sure, he didn’t hit him or anything. Darcy wasn’t even crying.’
‘And then what?’ Bella pushed as Heath headed for the phone.
‘He went to sleep. I watched him all night. I decided once Keith went to work I’d get Darcy bathed and dressed and take him to my GP to get him checked out, but he started shaking…’
‘We can take him straight round.’ Heath came over. ‘CT will take him now. I’m going to go with him. Could you set up some equipment for me in case I need to intubate?’ He was pulling up anticonvulsant drugs in case he might need them, things moving more quickly now that the diagnosis had undoubtedly shifted.
‘He’ll be OK?’ Rose begged.
‘I don’t know,’ Heath admitted. ‘Shaking babies can cause serious damage. Their heads are large in comparison to their bodies, they’ve got little neck control, and a number of injuries could have occurred, but you did the right thing, telling us.’
‘She did nothing right,’ Bella snarled a couple of hours later, choking back tears as Heath came into the staffroom. She was gulping a coffee so hot it scalded her throat. ‘She lied through her teeth to save herself.’
‘What if she hadn’t been?’ Heath answered equally brutally. ‘You were way out of line in there.’
‘I got her to tell the truth.’
‘There are channels,’ Heath barked. ‘Procedures…’
‘Oh, and you always stick by them?’ Bella hurled, emotions bubbling now. ‘If I hadn’t spoken the way I did we’d still be waiting for DOCS to arrive, we’d still be sitting on our hands, tied by red tape and getting nowhere.’
‘I don’t understand you, Bella,’ Heath rasped. ‘One minute you’re warm and loving and full of empathy and the next…’ His jaw clenched as he bit back spiteful words. His voice was measured when finally he continued, ‘As much as we don’t condone what Rose did, she isn’t the guilty one here. It was her boyfriend who did this…’
‘While she sat back and watched.’
‘You know, I’m glad things didn’t go further last night.’ Heath stared at her with sheer disbelief on his face. ‘Because I’m starting to realize that there’s a hard side to you, Bella, that I don’t think I like very much.’
‘She lied,’ Bella insisted, but the phone ringing halted her tirade. ‘If that’s DOCS, tell them the baby’s up on Intensive Care with a detached retina and a bleed in his brain. If Rose had only told the truth when she got here…’
Picking up the phone, his face was grim. He listened to the message before covering the receiver and holding it out to her.
‘Speaking of the truth…’ He shot a thinly disguised look of loathing. ‘It’s your fiancé’s parents on the phone for you.’
‘Heath, please,’ Bella started, but the shutters were already down, and handing her the phone he walked out without a single word.
‘Think it through.’
That was what Detective Miller had said and that was what she did. Somehow surviving the shift, watching like a hawk colleagues who were fast becoming friends, sharing in the dramas and quiet moments of Emergency and feeling like the worst woman in the world.
She had to tell him.
That was all Bella knew, the only thought that kept her going as she somehow ploughed through the day. Not everything, of course, but at least about Danny, tell him how somewhere along the way she’d lost that little piece inside that was a prerequisite in nursing.
‘Can we talk?’ Beth asked hours later, when her shift should have been long since over and the back-up in the waiting room had long since gone.
‘I don’t think there’s much to say, do you?’ Heath clipped, sitting at the empty nurses’ station staring at the patient folder in front of him, even though it was blank. ‘If there’s something on your mind, Bella, shouldn’t it be your fiancé you’re talking to?’
‘I talk to him nearly every day.’ There was a wobble in her voice that had him turning, watching as this proud chameleon woman took a tiny step down from the distant pedestal that, despite her apparent openness, she somehow always managed to cling to. ‘The trouble is, he doesn’t hear me.’
‘That’s not my problem, Bella,’ Heath responded, balling his fist to stop him reaching out, his words coming out way too harsh through his clenched jaw. ‘You should be saying this to him, not me.’
‘I can’t,’ Bella admitted, watching as he shook his head in exasperation. ‘I can’t because Danny’s in a nursing home. He’s been there for four years and no matter how I try I can’t quite bring myself to say that I can’t do this any more.’ Heath’s devastated expression, the utter sympathy blazing in his eyes wasn’t helping. ‘And you were completely right with what you said before—there is a hard side to me that probably doesn’t belong in an emergency room because I can’t stand by and beat around the bush, treat someone with kid gloves just because protocol demands it.’
‘There have to be rules, Bella,’ Heath said, but far more gently now. ‘If we’d accused her and been wrong, what sort of damage could we have done?’
‘What about the damage they’ve done?’ Bella responded, her voice quiet but thick with emotion. ‘I know better than anyone the long-term devastation a serious head injury causes, and I couldn’t just sit back and watch that baby get worse while we waited for DOCS to arrive. If Danny had been treated promptly when he first arrived in Emergency there’s no doubt in my mind that he’d be walking around today instead of sitting in a geriatric nursing home bec
ause there’s nowhere else to put him.’
‘Was he brought here?’ Heath asked, and Bella shook her head.
‘He came to my hospital…’ And she couldn’t do it any more, couldn’t stand and relive the agony with the sickening smell of antiseptic in the air, the overhead Tannoy crackling overhead, the sounds and smells too brutal right now, too reminiscent of the worst day of her life.
‘I can’t do this,’ she gasped, shaking off his hand as he reached out to her, choking back tears that had never really been shed. ‘I should just go home…’
‘I’ll take you home,’ Heath said firmly. ‘I’m supposed to be finished anyway.’
‘No.’ She shook her head because even though it was what she wanted, even though the chance to open up to someone, to reveal, to share was something she needed so badly right now, she still had to lie. Couldn’t take the man she wanted to be with now into a home filled with photos, her uniform, an answering-machine bleeping with urgent messages, piles of security tape, the blazing evidence of a part of her he didn’t even know existed. But she needed Heath, needed him like she’d never needed anyone before. ‘I don’t want to go there.’
‘How about that coffee at mine, then?’ Heath asked softly, but in his own teasing way he still had to have the last word. ‘You could have done all this yesterday, Bella.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
INCREDIBLY shy, Bella walked into Heath’s home, and even though the furnishings were supremely male—dark leather couches, a massive plasma screen TV and enough stereo equipment to land a Boeing 747—the place was incredibly clean and tidy.
‘Good-looking and tidy.’ Bella smiled, attempting to break the awkward silence, neither of them so assured now away from the safety of the hospital.
‘Only because I’m never here.’ Heath shrugged. ‘Though come this time next week, the place will look as if a bomb’s hit it.’ He gestured to a collection of photos on top of a very ordered bookcase and Bella wandered over, picking up a heavy wooden frame and staring down into the green eyes of two gorgeous blond children, gappy smiles grinning back at her.
‘These are very nice skeletons to have in your wardrobe,’ Bella said, more than happy not to talk about herself for a while. ‘How old are they?’
‘Max is seven, and Lily’s six, or at least that’s what her birth certificate says. I swear she’s more knowing than most adults.’
‘It must have hurt,’ Bella said, replacing the photo carefully and seeing the pain in his face when he nodded slowly.
‘I was devastated,’ Heath openly admitted. ‘It felt at the time as if I was losing everything, so I came out fighting, did the stupid macho thing and got some hot-shot solicitor, told her she’d have to fight for every cent, demanded that I have full custody. I was a complete bastard actually, not just to Jackie but to everyone around me, hell-bent on making everyone as miserable as I was.’
‘So what happened?’
‘I finally grew up! And do you know the stupid part of it all was that once I calmed down I actually realized that Jackie had been right to leave, that we hadn’t really been happy, that the hours I put in at work weren’t all completely merited. She’s so much happier now, and the kids are great.’
‘And you see them a lot?’
‘All the time.’ Heath grinned. ‘Every other weekend plus a day or two during the other week—more than I did when I was married, actually.’
‘And how are things with you and Jackie?’
‘Getting there!’ Heath rolled his eyes and even managed to make her laugh a little bit as he pulled a face. ‘We’re working hard on being friends.’
Selecting a bottle from the wine rack, Bella sat nervously on the edge of the massive sofa, glad of the tiny reprieve his back gave her as he uncorked a bottle of red, listening to the thick glugging sound as he poured two glasses, then handing one to her as he sat down beside her.
‘You weren’t on duty?’ Heath asked, resuming the conversation where they’d left it at work.
‘Unfortunately, no. I was at my flat, waiting for him to come over. We were going to go out for dinner, he was going to ask me to marry him…’ Her hands were fidgeting in her lap. Heath’s closed around them and she clung on gratefully. ‘I wasn’t supposed to know, of course, but he’d asked my dad, who’d told my mum, who—’
‘Had to tell you?’ Heath said gently, and Bella nodded.
‘So there I was, dressed up to the nines, waiting for him to come over. Apparently he’d got the ring and had stopped at a bar to show his friend. He only had one drink, but he bought a bottle of champagne, I think it must have been for us to have later. Anyway, there I was, waiting for him to come over, when I got this phone call.’ Tears were falling and she didn’t even bother to wipe them, just clutched his hands and tried to summon the strength to carry on.
‘The hospital?’ Heath pushed gently.
‘Danny,’ Bella corrected. ‘He was in the waiting room. He told me he’d been bashed, that he was waiting to be seen and that the staff thought he was drunk, but he’d only had one. He stank of alcohol because his attacker cracked his skull with a full champagne bottle, but I didn’t know that!’ Closing her eyes, she willed her voice calm, could feel the hysteria creeping in as she relived her awful tale. ‘His voice was all slurred, he sounded terrible, he said he had this headache and that no one was listening to him. He was getting hysterical, shouting and crying into the phone and asking me what to do.’
‘So what did you do?’
‘The wrong thing,’ Bella gulped. ‘I should have rung the hospital, told them it was my boyfriend, told them that he had to be seen straight away, but instead I jumped in the car. I thought I could sort it out when I got there, I thought that maybe they were right, maybe he had been drinking.’
‘Bella you couldn’t have known. This isn’t your fault.’
‘I know that,’ Bella gulped. ‘Deep down I know that, but they should have known, they should have seen the state he was in, at least done a decent set of obs and observed him. I couldn’t find him when I got there and they thought at first he’d walked out, but he was in the toilet, Heath, lying in the toilet cubicle, not even breathing when they found him.’
‘Oh, Bella.’ He didn’t even try to stay objective or impartial, didn’t even try to keep the appalling regret out of his voice.
‘You know how you called it on Andrew?’ Her teeth were chattering, barely able to get the words out. ‘Knew that getting him back wasn’t going to help anyone at all? Well, Danny didn’t even get that. By then they knew they’d seriously messed up, so they panicked, worked on him for a long time when they should have just stopped, just kept going and going till somehow they got him back.’
‘Hell.’ Heath shook his head. ‘What a mess. It must have been hell.’
‘It still is hell!’ Angry eyes stared back at him. ‘Hell for everyone involved. The staff involved, Danny’s parents, me, but most of all for Danny. Danny was the most fun-loving, fittest guy I’ve ever known. He loved surfing, played lots of footy, you could barely contain him indoors. He was always dressed in shorts and a T-shirt.’ She shook her head hopelessly. ‘I’d never seen him in a suit until I arrived at the hospital, he’d gone and bought one so he’d look smart when he proposed to me. He’d even had his hair cut—I was always nagging him about it. But if you see him now, Heath, he’s just an empty shell, and his parents are still dragging it through the courts, still hoping he’s going to come round. And it just won’t end, it just won’t ever end.’
‘Do you still see him?’
‘Nearly every day,’ Bella said. ‘How do I stop? How do I say that I can’t do this any more, that I want to go on with my life, when every time I miss a visit his parents ring, every time I take a step forward, try to move on, they remind me we were engaged.’
‘About to be engaged,’ Heath corrected, but Bella gave an exhausted shrug.
‘We would have been engaged,’ Bella said with complete certainty. ‘We’d have bee
n married now and probably had a couple of kids. Part of me knows I have to move on, but part of me says that surely it’s wrong…’
‘What would Danny want for you?’ Heath tried, and when she didn’t respond he tried a different tack. ‘If it had happened to you, what would you want Danny to do?’ But Bella just let out a weary, mirthless laugh.
‘I’ve tried that one, Heath, and maybe I’m just plain selfish, but the last thing I’d want is to be forgotten, the last thing I’d want is to be sitting trapped in a nursing home while everyone else got on with their life. I just don’t know what to do, I just can’t see any way out.’
‘It doesn’t have to be black and white, Bella. Just because you move on with your life, it doesn’t mean you have to cut Danny out completely.’
‘You don’t understand.’
‘Oh, yes, I do, Bella. You’re scared of the confrontation, scared of admitting it to Danny’s parents when you’re not even sure you’re ready to admit it yourself that it’s time to start living your life again. And maybe they won’t understand, maybe they’ll never come around because at the end of the day he’s their son, but it doesn’t mean you have to compromise yourself, you can still do what’s right for you. You can still see Danny, still go in, but instead of every day maybe make it once a week or once a month. You can still be there for him, but it doesn’t have to mean it’s at the exclusion of everyone else. You are allowed to have other relationships, Bella.’
‘Perhaps.’ She gave a hopeless shrug. ‘But tell me, Heath, what sort of guy would put up with all that? What sort of man would put up with his girlfriend going in to visit her ex-fiancé once a week?’
‘This one,’ Heath said firmly. ‘If you can put up with my ex-wife, I can put up with your ex-fiancé.’ He saw her wince at the final word, shake her head at the impossibility of it all.
‘It’s too soon to be talking like this.’ Pulling her hands away, she angrily wiped her cheeks. ‘This is all just going way too fast. We’ve only known each other a few days.’
Undercover at City Hospital Page 8