The Nurse's Secret Son

by Amy Andrews

  Several fire engines arrived, adding to the colourful strobing of lights. Sophie heard the guttural growl of a motor starting up in the background, followed by the crunching of metal as the jaws of life sliced through the frame of a vehicle as if it were a tin can. It wouldn’t be long now until the girl was released from her squashed car.

  Three ambulances pulled up, shining their headlights across the carnage and into the night, the glass on the road sparkling like diamonds in the glare. Several paramedics descended upon them and Daniel gratefully handed their patients over.

  As the ambulances began to leave with the injured Sophie noticed a girl she hadn’t seen before wandering around aimlessly. She had some dried blood on her forehead and was muttering to herself. She had panda-like eyes where tears had mingled with her mascara, causing it to run.

  ‘Hi, I’m Sophie. Were you involved in the accident? How about you come over to the ambulance and we can check you out?’

  The girl, who looked about nineteen, stared at her blankly. She seemed dazed and Sophie was concerned that she might be concussed.

  ‘James. I can’t find James,’ she said, looking straight through Sophie.

  Sophie felt a prickle of alarm. ‘Was James in the car with you?’ she asked gently.

  ‘He was driving,’ she said absently.

  Sophie searched her memory. The name didn’t ring a bell from any of the people she had treated tonight, but she hadn’t seen them all. Maybe Daniel had treated him?

  She led the confused young woman over to Daniel, reaching into the back of the ambulance to grab a blanket and put it around her patient’s slim shoulders. The girl was shaking and was obviously shocked.

  ‘Daniel, did you treat anyone called James tonight?’

  ‘No,’ said Daniel, automatically checking out the girl, concern creasing his brow. ‘What’s your name?’ he asked as he shone a penlight into her eyes, relieved to find her pupils equal and reactive.

  ‘Donna,’ she said. ‘I’m fine, really, I had my seat belt on but James didn’t. I told him he should put it on…I told him.’

  Daniel flicked a glance at Sophie and she knew, without asking him, what he wanted. She located the scene controller and informed him they’d have to search the area for another potential patient.

  Sophie and Daniel joined in the search along with available fire crews and police. Torches in hand, they searched the overgrown nature strips either side of the highway, the beams of light probing the darkness.

  ‘Found him,’ a voice called, and Sophie and Daniel rushed to the ditch, where James had been thrown clear of his car.

  Daniel took one look at the young man and knew he was dead. His body was twisted at an awkward angle and his head skewed in the opposite direction. A sudden vision of Michael’s body lying on the road flashed into his mind, and Daniel blinked hard to erase it.

  Donna had managed to break through the crowd surrounding James’s body. She threw herself on the ground and knelt over the inert form. He appeared to be about the same age as her.

  ‘James, James!’ she yelled frantically, shaking his body. ‘Help him. Help him,’ she begged, looking at Daniel with wild, frightened eyes. ‘Why won’t he wake up? He won’t wake up.’ She intermittently shook his body and wrung her hands.

  A few of the searchers tried to pull her back but Daniel signalled to them to leave her. The girl grabbed Daniel’s hand and yanked him down beside her.

  ‘Fix him,’ she begged, pushing his hands onto the young man’s chest.

  Sophie sank to her knees beside Donna and put her arm around the girl’s shoulders.

  Daniel looked at Sophie wordlessly and she shrugged, knowing that the situation was futile but also knowing that Donna needed to see something being done.

  Daniel placed his fingers over the young man’s carotid pulse. Absent. He put his stethoscope in his ears and placed it on the dead man’s chest. Breathing—absent. Heartbeat—absent. He’d broken his neck and had probably died instantly.

  Starting any resuscitation measures now would be futile and probably not welcomed by this fit-looking young man who would, if by some miracle they were successful, spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair hooked up to a ventilator with major brain damage.

  He thought about how angry Michael had been that Daniel had resuscitated him at the scene of their accident, only to be left a paraplegic.

  ‘James,’ Donna sniffed, wiping her eyes, smearing her mascara further. ‘You can help him, can’t you?’ she pleaded, choking on her sobs as Daniel removed the stethoscope from his ears.

  ‘James is dead. I’m very sorry. He’s broken his neck.’ Daniel’s voice was gentle as he covered her hand that gripped his arm. It was a horrible thing to have to tell her in less than ideal surroundings.

  ‘No, no.’ She shook her head violently from side to side, looking from Daniel to Sophie and back to Daniel again. ‘No. You have to fix him. You have to make him wake up. I didn’t get to tell him I loved him. You have to make him wake up!’ She was sobbing hysterically now, and shaking Daniel’s arm.

  ‘I’m sorry, there’s nothing I can do,’ he said quietly.

  Her face crumpled and she let out a cry of such agony that it raised goose-bumps on Daniel’s arms. She threw herself at her boyfriend’s body, her head against his chest, her hands clutching his shoulders.

  ‘No, James. No,’ she sobbed. ‘I love you. I love you. Can you hear me? Don’t leave me. I love you.’

  Daniel and Sophie sat with the girl as she wept, and the small crowd of people surrounding them peeled away, knowing there was nothing further they could do. The scene controller, in his fluorescent yellow vest, approached.

  ‘Your patient?’ he asked Daniel.

  ‘Negative,’ Daniel said softly, and the man nodded and backed away.

  An over-zealous official brought a sheet to place over the body, but Daniel waved him away. Donna was still holding onto James. The girl needed time to grieve, she would let him go when she was ready.

  The girl’s cries were chilling. She kept touching her boyfriend’s face as if the sheer depth of her love alone could bring him back. She kept asking, ‘Why? Why didn’t I tell you?’

  Sophie blinked back tears as the young woman’s grief chilled her to the core. She looked away, the intensity of Donna’s grief almost too painful to witness.

  She surveyed the carnage of the three-car pile-up strewn all over the highway. Twisted car bodies, stray pieces of luggage, personal items and broken glass littered the road surface. A multitude of flashing lights strobed into the night like glitter balls at a gruesome discotheque.

  Two young people lay dead from a lethal mix of alcohol and no seat belts. Ten others had been very lucky to escape major injury. What a waste of life.

  They stayed with the girl until she had cried herself out, neither of them wanting to leave her in such an overwrought state. She eventually let go of James’s body and allowed Sophie to take her to a waiting ambulance.

  Sophie caught a glimpse of the utterly defeated young woman before the back doors slammed and they took her to St Jude’s for observation. She looked small and forlorn, her panda eyes all but gone now—a million tears having washed the mascara away altogether.

  Sophie knew what Donna was going through. Knew how the suddenness of death sucked your breath away, how your mind reeled and you couldn’t take in the awful truth. How, just when you thought you’d finished crying and there could not possibly be any more tears left, they came again. And again.

  Sophie leant against her car now there was nothing for her to do, and waited for Daniel to finish talking to the accident investigation squad. She had already given her statement. The road was obviously going to be blocked for hours as nothing could be moved until the investigation was complete.

  After what had happened at the beach house she should just get in her car and go. Take the detour the police had set up and drive home to Arabella. But she couldn’t. As mad as she was at Daniel, at the momen
t part of her knew that James’s death had to have been hard for him.

  Sure, he’d been the consummate professional tonight but something like that was just too close to home. There must have been some memories stirred for him.

  ‘You OK?’ he asked half an hour later as he approached her. He remembered her quietness after the Sunvalley house fire and how she had been affected by the rawness of his job. Well, this had been pretty raw, too.

  ‘Sure,’ she said. ‘What about you?’

  ‘What about me?’ He smiled.

  ‘I thought the whole James thing might be a little confronting for you.’

  ‘Ah,’ he said. She was astute. She was leaning against her car for support and he copied her pose, standing beside her, their arms brushing lightly.

  They didn’t speak for a while. The incident at the beach house had taken a back seat. Their minds were full of the carnage they had witnessed and the people they had treated and the two young people who weren’t going home tonight, or any night.

  And another car accident four years ago that had dramatically altered the course of their lives for ever.

  ‘I could have tried to resuscitate him,’ said Daniel into the now eerily quiet night air.

  ‘It was too late, Daniel. He’d broken his neck. Too much time had elapsed. You know you wouldn’t have got him back.’

  ‘I resuscitated Michael.’

  ‘It’s different, and you know it. You were right there, you were able to administer immediate first aid to Michael. James had been in that ditch for who knows how long. Besides, Michael’s spinal cord injury was much lower. We didn’t need a CAT scan or an MRI to tell us that. People’s heads don’t twist that far unless something’s snapped.’

  Daniel nodded. ‘I just kept seeing Michael’s face,’ he whispered. ‘Remembering that night.’

  ‘It wasn’t your fault, Daniel.’

  ‘Of course it was. I was driving.’

  ‘A man had a heart attack at the wheel on the opposite side of the road, veered across into your lane and smashed into you. It was a freak accident.’

  ‘Well, why do I still feel so guilty?’

  ‘I don’t know, Daniel. Why do you?’

  He was silent for a moment. ‘Because I was thinking about you, that’s why, when the other car veered. And I know it all happened very suddenly but maybe if I hadn’t been so preoccupied with you and how great you looked naked and how wonderful you smelt and how lucky I was to have you, then maybe I would have seen it coming sooner. Maybe I could have swerved or braked or done anything other than let it happen.’

  Sophie swallowed the lump in her throat. She heard the anguish and accusation in his voice. So it had been her fault? No. She wasn’t going to take that on. She couldn’t control who was thinking about her and when, and if Daniel really thought a split second would have made a difference to the outcome of their accident, he was crazy.

  ‘I was looking into James’s face tonight and Donna was begging me to do something, and all I could hear was Michael yelling at me how I should have let him die, and I just couldn’t put James through that.’

  Sophie remembered the anger and the bitterness that Michael had felt in that first month and how in the deepest part of his depression he had said those things to Daniel and had even begged her to help him end his life.

  She looked at the man she loved and felt his pain. ‘You did what anyone would have done, especially a paramedic. Especially a brother. Michael went on to have a full and happy and productive life. James would be a ventilator-dependent quadriplegic.’

  ‘I know…I know,’ he sighed, and turned on his side so he was facing her. ‘It just kind of sucks, though, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ she agreed, turning to face him also. ‘It does. But it doesn’t make it your fault. What happened with Michael was just coincidence. Two sets of strangers in the wrong place at the wrong time. There’s no rhyme or reason to it. It was bad luck. That’s all. And, yes, that sucks, too.’

  She rose on tiptoe to kiss him on the cheek. It was a platonic gesture because she couldn’t bear it that he still blamed himself for something that had been a tragic accident, and wanted to comfort him somehow.

  But she knew even before she reached his face that it would be his mouth she would kiss. Something compelled her and with the memory of their love-making so fresh it was an urge she couldn’t quell. She pressed her lips against his and then pulled back slightly. She felt reaction to the kiss slam into her and saw his nostrils flare and his eyes glaze.

  She kissed him again and felt her lips open to the demanding pressure of his. His arm came around her waist, drawing her against him, and Sophie felt her head bend further back as the heat from his mouth drugged her into submission. Her heartbeat pounded in her ears and she could feel her internal muscles stir to life again. Man! Could he kiss!

  With a supreme effort she broke away and they shared an unfathomable look, chests heaving.

  ‘I’m going home now,’ she said huskily. She opened the door and got in, and Daniel crouched beside her window. She pressed the button and the glass whirred down.

  ‘Drive carefully, Soph,’ he said quietly, his blue-eyed stare mesmerising. It wasn’t something he needed to say with the horror of the night still close. ‘And kiss Max for me.’

  She drove off, his last words reminding her of yet another reason why she loved him. Their son. Their beautiful Max.

  She sure didn’t make things easy for herself. She was in love with someone she shouldn’t be in love with. Someone whose emotional commitment to his brother was steeped in guilt so thick that it prevented him from feeling and loving freely.

  Sophie despaired at what she could do to change it. She had a feeling that only Michael himself could release Daniel from his self-imposed feelings of obligation. And Michael was dead. It didn’t bode well.

  CHAPTER NINE

  SOPHIE went to work gratefully a few days later no closer to finding a resolution to the stalemate that existed between her and Daniel. Being at home, catching glimpses of him, sharing meals and finding Max in bed with him every morning made life difficult. Worse were the memories of happier times that screamed from every nook and cranny of Arabella.

  It was becoming apparent that she couldn’t go on like this. She couldn’t live under the same roof as him and love him and not go mad. He seemed hell-bent on sticking to his guns and pretending nothing had happened between them. Sophie knew staying would only make her unhappy in the long run.

  Her suggestion a couple of months ago that she move out was sounding better by the day. The Monday clan wouldn’t like it. Hell, neither would she. Max would hate it and probably her to boot. But she couldn’t continue to pretend like this. If Daniel wouldn’t let her love him, she had to get out.

  But first things first. There was this late shift to get through at St Jude’s and then tomorrow they were off to the beach house with the rest of the family and then the next day was Max’s birthday. She wasn’t going to spoil this happy occasion with her unwelcome news. There’d be time enough for that later.

  It was good to slip into her Sophie the nurse persona. The familiar aspects of her job had a soothing effect on her raging thoughts. Taking blood pressures and temperatures. Doing urine tests and hooking people up to monitors. Dressing wounds and cleaning up vomit. Drawing blood and inserting IVs. Things she had done a thousand times were strangely therapeutic tonight.

  It was a busy shift and Sophie was grateful that there was no time for personal introspection. Two broken arms, three abdo pains, a chest pain, a major nosebleed, a sore eye, a case of suspected meningitis and a gangrenous toe. Way too busy to think.

  ‘Sophie, can you come and take some blood on the lady in cube five, please? I’ve had two tries. Her veins are awful.’

  Sophie followed Karen into the cubicle. Mrs Schmidt lay on the trolley. Her granddaughter was sitting on a chair nearby.

  ‘Oh, Sister,’ Anna said, recognising Sophie immediately. �
�How’s your face? Nothing broken, I hope.’

  ‘No. It was fine,’ Sophie assured the younger woman. ‘I’m going to see if I can get some blood from your grandmother. She has difficult veins.’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Anna. ‘We always have trouble.’

  ‘Well, Sophie’s the best,’ Karen’s chirped. ‘If she can’t get it then there’s none there to get.’

  Sophie smiled at the younger nurse. It was a nice compliment. It was also true. Taking blood and putting in IVs were skills she had mastered.

  Mrs Schmidt lay docilely on the trolley, staring into space.

  ‘How was she when you tried?’ she asked Karen.

  ‘Quiet as a lamb.’

  Still, Sophie gloved up with some trepidation. The woman lying on the trolley was a far cry from the agitated patient who had come into the department a couple of months ago, but she didn’t really want a repeat performance.

  ‘She seems a lot calmer,’ commented Sophie to Anna.

  ‘Oh, yes. She’s much easier to handle now. The geriatric team said there wasn’t a whole lot they could do for her as her dementia was quite advanced, but they put her on some medication and it’s really helped. Coming here that night was a godsend, Sister. I was at the end of my tether.’

  ‘That’s excellent.’ Sophie smiled. ‘What brings you here today?’

  ‘Well, I was a bit worried that she’s over-medicated. She’s been very sleepy the last few days and is often hard to rouse. I rang the geriatric doctor and he advised me to come here and have some drug levels done.’

  Sophie nodded and snapped on the tourniquet. Karen held Mrs Schmidt’s arm and Anna stood on the other side, ready if the old lady let fly again.

  Sophie prodded the crook of her patient’s arm with her gloved fingers. Taking blood, particularly from difficult veins, with gloves on made the job even harder. The latex barrier really reduced the ability to ‘feel’ a vein.

  Concentration creased Sophie’s brow as she thought she felt one quite deep. There were several closer to the skin surface but Sophie could feel the knotting and guessed they were probably too sclerosed to be of any use.