Charlie nodded. ‘Elliot, we’re doing everything we can.’
Elliot knew that they were and put his hand softly to Nicole’s cheek.
He remembered reading somewhere that Britain had one of the worst child fatality statistics in Europe. It had shocked him, but it had been the kind of shock he’d quickly forgotten because it hadn’t been personal. It had just been an article. An article you shook your head sadly over, then turned the page.
But he couldn’t turn the page on this accident. This was Nicole. His daughter. His child.
A sob welled in his throat. He couldn’t lose her. OK, so he hadn’t wanted her at first, hadn’t wanted to be a father, hadn’t wanted any child of Donna’s, but if he lost her now…
Please, God, he prayed, don’t take her from me. Don’t let her die. She’s so young, so very young. She has all her life waiting to be lived. If anyone should die, let it be me. Let me be the one who dies, not my daughter. Dear God, I’ll never ask you for anything ever again if you’ll just let me keep her.
‘Have we got a result back yet on Nicole’s blood type?’ Charlie demanded, seeing Richard appear at the cubicle curtains.
He nodded. ‘It’s AB, and on its way now. I’ve got the chest, leg, and head X-rays here if you want to take a look at them.’
‘Elliot?’
Charlie was gazing enquiringly across at him but Elliot’s eyes were fixed on Richard as though he didn’t quite believe what he’d said.
‘AB?’ he repeated.
The junior doctor nodded again. ‘Do you want to take a look at the X-rays, Elliot?’
He didn’t answer. He simply turned back to the trolley, stared down at his daughter, then gently reached out and stroked her bloodstained hair.
‘Jane, I think maybe you should take him out,’ the SHO muttered. ‘Delayed reaction—I’ve seen it happen before.’
So had she. ‘I’ll take him to one of the waiting rooms—’
‘You’ll take me nowhere!’ Elliot suddenly exclaimed, swinging round to them. ‘Let’s take a look at these X-rays.’
Swiftly Richard snapped them up onto the board and hit the light to illuminate them.
Definite compound fractures of both tibias, Jane thought as she stared up at them, and it was three fractured ribs, not two. She could see the one which had punctured Nicole’s left lung but luckily the endotracheal tube was in the right place.
‘Head X-rays, Richard?’ Elliot demanded, a tremor clear in his voice.
The junior doctor removed the first set of X-rays and replaced them with those of Nicole’s skull.
‘Slight hairline fracture, right side above her ear,’ Charlie murmured, peering at the X-rays carefully. ‘Anyone see anything else?’
‘We’ll need a CAT scan to be certain there’s no other damage,’ Elliot exclaimed. ‘What’s her CBC?’
‘Twenty-five,’ Floella replied.
It was getting dangerously close to the level when there wouldn’t be enough blood to supply adequate oxygen to Nicole’s brain and yet they were constantly pumping in blood.
‘She’s bleeding in her stomach,’ Elliot said flatly.
‘Not necessarily—’
‘Cut the bull, Charlie,’ Elliot exclaimed. ‘She’s bleeding in her stomach. How’s her BP, pulse? Have you stabilised her enough for Theatre?’
Charlie glanced across at Floella.
‘Both BP and pulse are still a little low,’ she replied, ‘but I agree with Elliot. I think we should send her to Theatre.’
She didn’t add, Because I think we desperately need their skills, but they all thought it.
Swiftly Floella and Charlie wheeled Nicole out of the treatment room. Elliot and Jane followed them to the operating-theatre door, where one of the theatre staff firmly but kindly ushered them into a small waiting room. They heard the doors of the operating theatre clatter shut.
There was nothing to do now but wait. Wait and pray. Neither of them said very much—Elliot because he seemed to be lost in all his own private misery, and Jane because she didn’t want to intrude on it.
What could she say anyway? she wondered. He wouldn’t accept any of the platitudes they handed out daily to the relatives of the grievously ill patients they treated. He knew them all too well. Knew them for what they were. A desperate attempt to give hope when all too often there was none.
Oh, please, don’t let her die, Jane prayed. Take anything else from me—I’ll willingly give up anything else—but, please, let her be all right, because I don’t think either of us will survive if she dies.
It was almost two hours before the door to the waiting room opened and Elliot immediately sprang to his feet when he recognised the paediatric surgical consultant.
‘How…how is she?’ he said raggedly.
‘She’ll make it, Elliot.’ The consultant smiled. ‘Now that we’ve repaired the damage to her stomach she’s not leaking blood any more and her BP and pulse are going up. She’s not out of the woods yet by any means, but her heart’s strong, and she’s a tough little girl.’
‘There’s no sign of shock, no indication of—?’
‘Elliot, she’ll be fine. I would stake my professional reputation on it. And before you ask,’ the consultant continued, ‘we did a CAT scan as well, and there’s no sign of any brain damage.’
Elliot let out the breath he’d clearly been holding, then reached out and clasped the consultant’s hand. ‘Thank you. I know that’s a totally inadequate thing to say, but thank you.’
‘Hey, it’s part and parcel of the St Stephen’s service.’ He grinned. ‘We’ve transferred her to IC, so if you want to go up to see her one of my nurses will take you.’
Swiftly Jane and Elliot followed the nurse through the labyrinth of corridors towards Intensive Care, but when they reached the door, the nurse paused.
‘You’re going to see a lot of tubes and paraphernalia,’ she said gently. ‘It’s standard procedure in a case like this so, please, don’t get upset. And don’t expect her to recognise you. She’s been pretty heavily sedated.’
They both nodded, but even though Elliot was a special registrar, accustomed to dealing daily with life-threatening cases, Jane knew that nothing had prepared him for the sight of his daughter wired and tubed, breathing through a ventilator.
‘She’s so small, Jane,’ he said huskily. ‘So very small.’
‘And you heard what the consultant said,’ she replied firmly. ‘She’s strong, and she’s tough. She’ll make it.’
He didn’t answer, and she put her arm around his shoulders.
He looked awful, and she couldn’t blame him. She’d felt quite sick herself when the nurse had led them into the unit and she’d seen Nicole, but for Elliot it was different. This was his daughter. The child he hadn’t even known he’d had until a few weeks ago, and he’d grown to love her, to need her as much as she needed him.
‘Elliot, I know she looks horrendous, but most of the damage is superficial,’ she continued, willing him to believe her. ‘OK, so she’s sustained fractures, and it will take time for them and her stomach to heal, but they will heal.’
He didn’t reply. He simply continued to stare down at his daughter as though he wasn’t even seeing her. Shock, her professional mind diagnosed. It affected people in different ways. Some people couldn’t stop talking, others retreated into silence.
‘Elliot, she will be all right,’ she repeated, putting her other arm round him and holding him tightly. ‘Your daughter will be just fine.’
And this time he managed a crooked, lopsided smile. ‘Yes, I know. My…my daughter will be just fine.’
They stayed in Intensive Care for over an hour, even though both the cardiology specialist and the paediatric consultant urged them to go home, to get some sleep. But Elliot wouldn’t move, and no one had argued with him.
‘Are you coming home now?’ Jane asked after he’d checked yet again with IC’s night staff to make sure there was no change in Nicole’s condition.
‘I thought I might go down to A and E, thank Charlie and the rest of the team—’
‘Elliot, they won’t expect it,’ she protested, ‘and you’re just about dead on your feet.’
‘It won’t take me a minute—’
‘Then we’ll go together—’
‘No! I mean, you look completely shattered,’ he continued as she gazed at him in surprise. ‘I’ll get you a taxi, and I won’t be long, I promise.’
She debated arguing with him, then gave it up as a lost cause. ‘OK, but keep that promise—no sneaking back up again to IC. You heard what the nurses said. Nicole’s sleeping soundly, there are no complications, and what you need is sleep.’
He nodded but when he went down to A and E he didn’t go into the treatment room but went instead into his own office where a duplicate set of the case notes of all the patients who had been treated that day were stored.
Slowly he sat down at his desk, picked up Nicole’s file from the in-tray, and opened it.
The results of all the tests Charlie had ordered were there. The X-rays, the CBC, the blood tests. Each and every one of them was neatly typed now in black and white, and he stared at the words and figures, hoping he might have misheard Richard Connery, but knowing now that he hadn’t.
Nicole’s blood type was AB. His own was O, and Donna’s had been A.
No matter how many times he might reread the notes, hoping that the evidence before him would somehow miraculously change, there was no way it was going to change. Nicole wasn’t his daughter. There was no way on earth that the lovely little girl lying upstairs in Intensive Care could possibly be his.
CHAPTER NINE
‘CHARLIE, are you trying to tell me you’ve somehow managed to lose a patient?’ Jane demanded.
‘Not lost, exactly, no.’ The SHO grinned ruefully. ‘More sort of temporarily mislaid.’
Jane shook her head. ‘I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to be a lot more specific than that. This patient you’ve temporarily mislaid…’
‘I sent her off to the toilets over an hour ago to provide me with a urine sample, and I’ve just realised I haven’t seen her since. Look, I’ve been really snowed under, OK?’ he continued as Jane’s eyebrows rose. ‘There was that bloke with angina, the toddler who’d swallowed a battery—’
‘OK, OK. What did she look like?’
‘Huge—damn near 120 kilos—and suffering from what I very strongly suspect is a bad case of indigestion.’
‘I remember.’ She nodded. ‘Have you looked in the ladies’ loos to check if she’s still in there?’
‘Jane, I can hardly simply walk into the ladies’ toilets—’
‘Why not?’ she protested. ‘Good grief, Charlie, considering you’ve probably seen more of most women’s private anatomies than their own husbands, I’d have thought going into one of their toilets would be a doddle.’
‘But that’s different,’ he murmured uncomfortably. ‘Look, couldn’t you or one of the other nurses check it out for me?’
And she laughed, and shook her head, but she did.
‘Goodness only knows how long the poor woman would have been stuck in that cubicle if Charlie hadn’t asked me about her,’ she told Elliot some time later. ‘I feel so sorry for her. Jammed between the door and the toilet, far too embarrassed to call for help. She was absolutely mortified.’
‘I’ll bet,’ he replied, his lips twitching. ‘And it must have been even worse when you had to call out Maintenance to take the door off its hinges to get her out.’
‘Elliot, it’s not funny,’ Jane chastised, desperately trying to suppress her own instincts to laugh. ‘I doubt if she’ll ever darken our doors again.’
‘Not that particular door for sure,’ he observed, his blue eyes dancing. ‘According to Maintenance, it’s only fit for firewood now.’
She bit down hard on her lip but it didn’t help and a peal of laughter came from her.
He laughed, too, and a wave of love and tenderness welled up inside her when she saw it. It was so good to see him laugh. There’d been precious little laughter in his face during these last few weeks.
When Nicole had first been injured Elliot had haunted the IC unit, barely taking time to eat, far less sleep, and even now that she’d been transferred into the children’s medical ward he still hadn’t relaxed. He still looked as though he carried the worries of the world on his shoulders.
It was inevitable, of course. With Nicole improving daily, and no necessity to worry about her health any more, some form of reaction was bound to kick in. The realisation of how close he’d come to losing his daughter. The knowledge he now possessed of just how very fragile life was, and how easy it could be to lose someone you loved, especially a young, innocent child.
‘Nicole was grumbling like mad when I dropped by to visit her this morning,’ Jane commented, trying to keep the mood light. ‘Apparently, she’s decided hospitals are boring.’
He smiled. ‘That’s a good sign. Once a patient begins to find the hospital boring, it’s a sure sign they’re on the mend.’
‘I know, but the trouble is, she really does think hospitals are boring,’ Jane said, chuckling,’ so I’m afraid it doesn’t look as though she’s going to be following in her father’s footsteps when it comes to choosing a career.’
The smile faded from his eyes. ‘She might. She might well follow exactly in her father’s footsteps.’
There was a sadness about his face, a wistfulness she didn’t understand, and gently she put her hand on his arm.
‘Elliot, you do know that Nicole is going to be all right, don’t you? Everybody’s really pleased with her—the surgical reg, the medical reg, orthopaedics. She’s made wonderful progress since her accident—’
‘I know.’
Did he? Did he really know? Somehow she didn’t think he did, and she tried again. ‘Elliot, if there’s something worrying you, something about Nicole—’
‘Of course there’s not,’ he interrupted quickly. ‘What on earth gave you that crazy idea?’
And perhaps she would have agreed with him—acknowledged that it was a crazy idea—if she hadn’t seen, just for the merest second, a flicker of complete panic appear in his eyes.
But what in the world could Elliot possibly be so worried about? she wondered in confusion as a paramedic appeared with a young girl in a wheelchair, followed by what had to be the girl’s white-faced parents. It didn’t make any sense. It didn’t make any sense at all.
‘Her name’s Louise,’ the paramedic declared, guiding the wheelchair into cubicle 4. ‘Eleven years old with what looks to be a fractured right arm and a very bad gash to her face. She was getting off a bus outside her home when she was knocked down by a car.’
‘And it’s the first time I’ve ever let her go anywhere on her own,’ the girl’s mother said tearfully. ‘She wanted to go into town, you see, to buy one of those CD things for her birthday. She badgered and badgered me to let her go, and I thought she’d be all right—’
‘Kelly, could you take Louise’s parents through to one of our private waiting rooms, please?’ Elliot interrupted smoothly, beckoning to the student nurse.
‘And we made sure she went to all the road safety lessons, Doctor,’ the girl’s father continued, clutching his wife’s hand as though it were a lifeline. ‘We’re not like some parents, letting her roam the streets to all hours. In fact—’
‘Waiting room 2, please, Kelly,’ Elliot said, and with obvious reluctance Louise’s parents allowed the student nurse to usher them away.
‘They panic a lot—my mum and dad,’ Louise said, pulling a face the minute they were gone.
Elliot smiled. ‘It goes with the job. How do you feel?’
‘Sore,’ she admitted as Jane carefully cut away her blouse. ‘Sore and really, really stupid. I know I should have been watching out for traffic but I wanted to get home to try out my new CD player, and now it’s wrecked—trashed. The car went right over it.’
‘Better it than you,’ Elliot observed, gazing critically at Louise’s arm, which was not only very badly swollen but bent at an odd angle. Gently he lifted her hand and felt for her pulse. ‘Can you move your fingers for me, please? Good…good. Now, can you feel that?’ he added, lightly brushing her hand with his fingers.
‘It tickles.’ She chuckled.
He was relieved that it did. Her arm might be fractured, but at least the tendons that supplied function to her hand weren’t damaged in any way, neither were the blood vessels nor nerves.
‘I’m afraid it looks as though you’ve definitely fractured your arm,’ Elliot declared when he’d finished his examination. ‘We’ll send you along to X-Ray to confirm it—’
‘You mean I’m going to have to wear one of those plaster cast things?’ the girl protested, only to groan as Elliot nodded. ‘But they’re gross.’
‘Perhaps, but think of all the autographs and rude comments you can have written on it.’ Jane smiled.
The girl brightened immediately. ‘It’ll drive my teachers nuts—and my mum and dad. Great.’
‘Are you going to suture yourself?’ Jane continued, glancing across at Elliot. ‘Or would you like me to page Plastics?’
He lifted the girl’s chin into the light and surveyed her face with a frown. ‘Get Plastics. I’ve seen what can happen to wounds like this when all the dirt embedded in them isn’t removed, and they’re much more skilled than I am at dealing with facial cuts.’
‘You mean I’m going to be scarred?’ Louise exclaimed, tears suddenly welling in her eyes.
‘Of course you’re not,’ Elliot assured her. ‘You’re going to be fine—just fine. And now I’m going to leave you in Sister Halden’s capable hands while I go and put your parents’ minds at rest.’
‘Tell them I’m OK, will you?’ the girl called after him. ‘If you don’t they’ll ground me until I’m thirty!’
Fifty more like, Elliot thought with an inward smile when he went into the waiting room and Louise’s parents rose in unison, fear plain on their faces.
‘You’re absolutely positive there’s nothing else wrong with her?’ Louise’s mother queried when Elliot explained the situation.
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