Kitabı oku: «Single Dad In Her Stocking / A Puppy And A Christmas Proposal», sayfa 5

‘Tell Miriam where I am,’ he called after his colleague. ‘Ask her to keep an eye on the children for me?’

And then they were outside and running towards the scene that lay just out of the hospital grounds, in the direction that Emma had taken only yesterday when she’d walked with Max to see his apartment. The same intersection where they’d waited for the traffic lights to change and she’d noticed the impressive overhead decorations of icicle lights. Any thought of pretty things to do with Christmas was totally incongruous at this moment, however. It looked as though a large truck had failed to notice the line of stationary cars waiting at a red light and had smashed into the end of the line, in a nose-to-tail concertina of at least three vehicles that suggested a great deal of speed had been involved. The truck had tipped sideways with the impact and there was another vehicle almost hidden beneath the body of the truck.

Emma had seen plenty of road traffic accidents over the years but nothing quite like this. There was a crowd gathering, with people trying to get into vehicles where doors had been crushed and couldn’t open. They must have come from the lines of traffic now building up in a traffic jam on all sides of the intersection because many of them looked deserted, with doors hanging open. There were flashing lights and sirens coming from all directions as emergency service vehicles rushed to the scene but, even over all that noise, Emma could hear the cries of frightened people. Her steps slowed as she got closer to the carnage and—although Max had been a step or two ahead of her the whole time they’d been running—he seemed to sense the distance between them increasing and he also slowed, turning back to catch her gaze.

‘You okay, Em?’

She nodded, sucking in a deep, deep breath. She knew she had the skills to tackle a scene like this but, for this moment, it was overwhelming. The temptation to hang back and allow Max to take the lead was strong but there was something equally strong and that was a hard-won determination to face up to the most difficult things life could throw at her and Emma wasn’t about to throw away any part of her confidence in being able to do that successfully.

Max was still holding her gaze and it felt as if he could sense that momentary doubt. As if he was having a similar one of his own, even, and wondering if he should take the lead.

‘We’re right beside the hospital,’ she said, turning her head now to survey the scene and assess the dangers and where they might be needed as a priority. ‘All we need to do at this point is to make sure they’re stable enough to get them inside. Basics. Airway, breathing, circulation. Look after the cervical spine. We’ve got lots of help. The firies will cut into the vehicles for us if it’s needed. The paramedics can direct the extrication and transfer.’

‘Here…’ A paramedic was coming towards them. ‘Put these on.’

‘These’ were fluorescent vests with the word ‘Doctor’ on the back on a reflective strip.

‘No…hang on…’ A female paramedic was pulling off her jacket, which she handed to Emma. ‘You’re going to freeze in scrubs. Put this on first.’

‘But what about you?’

‘I’ve got something else I can wear.’

‘Has anybody started triage?’ Max asked.

‘We’ve only just got here. That’s our MCI command vehicle arriving now, behind the fire truck.’

Emma knew that MCI stood for Mass Casualty Incident. She looked at the line of crushed vehicles. Should they start at the front and work back? One of the cars was sandwiched between one in front and one behind and it looked as though the damage in that case was worse than the others. But what about the vehicle beneath the overturned truck?

Max clearly wanted to start the work that urgently needed to be done here. Emma shoved her arms into the warm jacket.

‘Have you got triage labels?’

The paramedic who’d opened the ambulance bay doors of the Royal to let in the man with the injured child was beside Emma now. ‘I’ve got them,’ he said. ‘Can you come with me? We’ll do a first sweep and if you’re both with me, I can leave you to start treating any red labels and move on. We still don’t know what we’re dealing with in terms of numbers or severity of injuries.’

Emma had worked with the triage labelling system as well. A red label meant that the victim could only survive with immediate treatment. They might have an obstructed airway or rate of respiration that was far too slow or fast, a very rapid heart rate or an absent radial pulse indicating low blood pressure, potentially from severe blood loss.

The first car in the line had been shunted well into the intersection. There were bystanders clustered around the driver’s side of the car. The window was broken and Emma could see the deflated airbag hanging from the steering wheel.

‘She’s awake,’ someone told them. ‘She says her neck hurts and she doesn’t want to try moving.’

She was conscious, breathing and talking so this driver wasn’t going to get a red label indicating the need for urgent intervention to save a life. A potential neck injury could still be serious but it could wait.

‘Tell her to keep as still as possible,’ the paramedic instructed. ‘Someone will be with her very soon.’

They moved swiftly to the next vehicle. The paramedic was using his radio to relay information to the person who was taking charge of the scene and would use the available resources of people and equipment according to information coming in and any changes during the operation. Police officers were on scene now, as well, moving bystanders out of the way and trying to clear the blocked traffic.

There were two people inside the second vehicle, both conscious.

‘It’s my leg,’ the front seat passenger groaned. ‘I think it’s broken.’

The driver was only semi-conscious. ‘Where am I?’ she mumbled. ‘What’s happened?’

More paramedics had arrived on scene and were immediately dispatched to manage these patients.

It was the third car in the line that was the most seriously damaged, apart from the one beneath the truck, and it was rapidly, sadly clear that there was nothing they could do for this woman. Her black triage label was a sombre confirmation that the rescue teams were not needed.

‘Maybe if we’d got here a bit faster?’ Emma said.

But Max shook his head. ‘Unsurvivable injuries. I suspect the force from behind and the weight of obstruction in front was enough to just snap her neck.’

A fire crew was close and had a tarpaulin to put over the car containing the fatality.

‘Truck driver seems uninjured,’ they told Emma and Max. ‘Got himself out of the cab. The cops are having a word with him.’

‘I’ll go and check him out.’ The paramedic’s tone was carefully neutral. It was obvious that the truck driver was responsible for this horrific crash that had killed at least one person but they couldn’t make judgements about the driver involved. It was possible that it was a medical event or mechanical failure that had caused him to hit a line of stationary vehicles at high speed.

The fire crew was also making decisions about how to get to the car trapped beneath the truck and Emma heard someone talking about stabilising the truck until they could get the machinery they needed to lift it clear. Looking at how crushed the car was, with its roof almost down past the level of the steering wheel, she fully expected that the driver would be another fatality. She bent to try and look through the front window on the passenger’s side.

‘Careful, there, Doc,’ one of the fire officers shouted. ‘We’re not sure how stable it is.’

The call was enough to have Max by her side instantly and it felt as though he was there to try and protect her. He was certainly ready to assist. Or did he want to take over?

‘What can you see?’

‘Facial injuries. I can’t see any chest wall movement…’ Emma had her bottom lip caught between her teeth as she scanned the driver’s body as best she could. The seat had been flattened by the roof being crushed so he was lying almost flat, still wearing his seat belt. She couldn’t see any major bleeding other than the injury to his face but… ‘Oh…’ Emma felt her heart skip a beat. ‘I can see chest wall movement. He’s breathing. Or trying to…’

Max had his head right beside hers now, as he tried to get a visual assessment of the crash victim. He was so close she could feel the warmth of his skin and, like the way he’d looked at her when they’d first arrived on this scene, it seemed that just being close to him was empowering Emma with more confidence than she’d ever known she had.

She turned to the fire crew. ‘I have to get in here,’ she said. ‘It’s urgent.’

‘We’re still assessing how stable this truck is. We can’t start cutting the car up for access until we’ve got jacks in place or lifted the chassis clear.’

‘There’s no time for that.’ Emma shook her head. ‘Can you break this back window? I reckon I could get in there.’

‘There’s hardly any space in there.’ The paramedic had come back. ‘There’s no way we could get a spinal board in and get him out.’

Both the paramedic and Max were tall, broad-shouldered men. They wouldn’t even be able to get through a window space. But Emma could—if she was brave enough. Again, as she had when first arriving on this scene, she had a moment of wondering if she might be about to tackle something that might defeat her. And, again, she found herself catching Max’s gaze. This time, it felt different. He wasn’t considering taking over because he couldn’t do what Emma could attempt, thanks to her size. This time, it felt as if he was offering her encouragement. Bolstering her confidence by letting her know that he believed she could do this. And it felt…great. It was exactly what she needed to vanquish any beat of fear.

‘I can get in,’ she told them. ‘I need to secure his airway. I can work in a tight space. You could pass me in the gear I need.’ She had to try and save this man. He’d been simply sitting in his car, stopped at a red traffic light, and his world had just been overturned in a split second and it just…well, it wasn’t fair…

The chief fire officer looked undecided but Emma held his gaze to give him the silent message if he wasn’t going to help her, she was going to try by herself.

He finally nodded. ‘Okay. Stand back and I’ll get the window out.’

He should go back to his emergency department, Max thought. It wasn’t just that he’d left all the children in the care of a staff member. He was automatically focusing on how the department was going to cope with a sudden influx of trauma patients. He knew that his staff would be managing the first of these patients from the crash scene perfectly well, but the more seriously injured, like the semi-conscious driver of the second vehicle, might be stretching immediate resources and they needed to plan for someone who could need major resuscitation—if they could get him into the department alive. Or maybe it should be Emma who went back to manage the department, seeing as she was officially doing his job today.

But right now she was wriggling herself through an empty window space of a crashed car and somehow contorting her body so that she could touch and assess the unconscious driver. She was inside a partially crushed car and there was a heavy truck still lying across the vehicle. It looked difficult and bloody dangerous and…and there was no way Max was going to leave until he knew that Emma was okay. He couldn’t believe the courage she’d shown even crawling into that vehicle. The fact that she now sounded calm and in control of the situation was, well…it was seriously impressive.

‘He’s got multiple fractures in his face and his airway’s obstructed.’ Emma put down the bag mask she had been trying to use to assist the man’s breathing. ‘There’s no way I’m going to be able to do an orotracheal or nasotracheal intubation. How far away are we from being able to get him out?’

Max signalled one of the fire officers and repeated Emma’s query.

‘We’re getting some jacks in place. It should be safe enough to cut the side out of the car in about ten minutes.’

Emma had heard the response. ‘Too long,’ she said. She was almost lying down beside her patient in the narrow space left in the crushed car but she twisted her head to look directly at Max.

‘Surgical cricothyroidotomy?’ she suggested.

‘It’s what I’d do in ED.’ He nodded. ‘But have you got enough space in there?’

‘It’ll have to be enough,’ Emma said. ‘His pulse is dropping. We’re going to lose him if I don’t do something right now. I need some fresh gloves, a number ten or eleven scalpel, a bougie and a size six endotracheal tube, please.’

It was Max who handed everything that Emma required in through the empty window space, reaching in so that he could place things in her hands without her having to try and move. With her new gloves on, he watched her find her landmarks on the man’s neck, stabilising the larynx with one hand and then locating the space between the thyroid and cricoid cartilages. He was ready to hand her the scalpel as soon as she was ready to make her first incision.

‘I’m through the cricoid membrane,’ she said, seconds later. ‘I’m going to make the horizontal incisions now.’

Max knew this was where things could get messy and enough blood could not only obscure the field but undermine the confidence of anyone who might not be very familiar with this emergency procedure. He knew that Emma was going to be working purely by feel from now on and when there was movement of the crushed vehicle from what the firies were doing to stabilise the truck above them, he held his breath to see whether that might give Emma enough of a fright to interfere with what was the critical moment of her attempt to save this man’s life.

It didn’t seem to rattle her at all. She slid the bougie guide into the hole she’d made in his neck, slipped the endotracheal tube over the top of the bougie and managed to make it look easy to secure the tube, despite the awkwardness of the space she was working in and gloved hands that were slippery with blood.

‘Can you see where the bag mask is?’ she asked Max.

‘It’s right behind you.’

‘I can’t reach…’

‘I’ve got it.’ Max leaned further into the car and picked it up. He pulled off the plastic face mask and the paramedic beside him had the attachment needed so that Emma could clip it to the endotracheal tube.

‘Equal chest movement,’ she said a moment later. ‘Can we get some oxygen on? I’d like to get an IV in, as well.’

Max could see the firies setting up their hydraulic cutting gear right beside him. As he looked at the officer in charge he received a nod in response.

‘They’re ready to start cutting,’ he told Emma. ‘Is he breathing well enough to wait a couple of minutes until we can get him out? The sooner we can get him into the department the better, yes?’

‘Of course.’ Emma had one hand on the man’s abdomen, feeling for his efforts at respiration. She had her other hand on his wrist, feeling for his pulse. ‘Okay…yes…let’s get him out of here.’

She stayed with her patient for as long as possible as the firies cut through twisted metal and lifted a door and the central pillar out of the way. Then she had to move and the paramedics took over, being the experts in getting the victim onto a spinal board and then out of the vehicle and onto the waiting stretcher. It took only a few minutes but, for that period of time, Max had Emma standing right beside him and he could sense her focus on what was happening for her patient and a tension that suggested that a successful outcome to this case was very, very important to her.

He was looking at her face as the badly injured man was finally lifted from the car and, as if sensing his gaze, she looked up at him and he could see what he had suspected in her eyes. Emma was determined to win this fight for life. She not only had a bucket of courage, this woman, but she loved her job as much as Max loved his and she truly cared about doing the absolute best she could for anyone under her care. It was a moment of connection that was as powerful as it was brief.

Their patient had been freed but needed more intervention and then a high level of monitoring even for the few minutes it would take to get him inside the hospital walls. The other victims of this incident had already been transported into the Royal’s emergency department and that was where Emma and Max both headed back to now. There was still a lot of work to be done and Max wanted to be working alongside Emma to make sure the department could handle everything that needed to be done for everybody involved.

It was then he realised that, during the tense minutes of assisting Emma in the amazing job she’d just done in saving a man’s life, he’d actually forgotten that he had other responsibilities as well. That there were three small children waiting for him, probably in the staffroom of his emergency department. He felt completely torn in that moment—in two very different directions—and it was overwhelming.

Had Emma sensed that it was almost too much? Was that why she chose to look up from her patient for a heartbeat and catch his gaze? There was a softness to her mouth that hinted at a smile and there was a confidence in her eyes that told him she thought they were winning. That they had a very good chance of winning this challenge they had just tackled together.

Max chose to take something more from that look as well. That he might well be facing the biggest challenge of his own life but he had a very good chance of winning that too. Especially if he could persuade Emma to hang around, even if was only for a short time. And then he remembered that was why he had dropped by the hospital in the first place—to try and persuade her not to find alternative accommodation.

He’d have to wait before he could find an appropriate moment to do that so he hoped the children were happy to stay for a bit longer. That would also give him time to think up an approach that Emma couldn’t refuse.

He could remind her of her promise to help Ben and Tilly make stars.

Or he could remind her of what she believed about Christmas. About the magic that could happen when a family came together to celebrate the bonds they had. The love. He could tell her what he believed—that they all needed Emma to make that happen.

CHAPTER FIVE

THIS FELT AS if it could be a mistake.

As if Emma was doing something that meant she was stepping over a line and it might be impossible to step back again even if she really needed to. But here she was, doing it. Driving back to Upper Barnsley. And it was Max Cunningham’s fault.

He had made it impossible for her not to return to the manor house after her shift had ended. He had stayed on at the Royal, allowing staff members to take care of his nieces and nephew, until they had stabilised all the victims of the major accident and their patients had been transferred either to Theatre under the care of surgical teams or admitted to various wards for further treatment.

And then he’d brought the children in from the staffroom or the relatives’ room or wherever someone had been caring for them and Ben had pinned Emma with that gaze that was far too serious for a six-year-old boy to have mastered.

‘Is it time for you to go home now, Emma?’ he’d asked.

‘I guess it is,’ she’d admitted, checking her watch. But just where it was that she would be heading as her temporary home was totally unknown. She hadn’t found a single moment today to go online and check for the availability of hotel rooms within a manageable distance.

‘Are we going to make stars?’ Tilly’s gaze was almost as sombre as her brother’s—as if she was still processing her new knowledge that life didn’t always deliver what it was supposed to. ‘I like stars and…and you said I could help.’

Ben still had her pinned. ‘You promised…’

Technically, Emma had offered rather than promised to show the children how to make stars but the semantics were irrelevant because she couldn’t let Ben and Tilly down.

Or Max…

If he’d brought these children in to see her as a form of emotional blackmail to get another night of her assistance with their care, he had certainly achieved his goal but that wasn’t what Emma was thinking about as her gaze touched, and then held, his.

To be honest, she wasn’t thinking of anything very coherent at all. It was more of a feeling. A warmth. They had worked together this afternoon. They had saved a life and the connection that gave them was more than simply professional. They had shared a goal and they’d needed each other in order to achieve it and they had succeeded and…trust between them had been born. It was that trust that was creating a warmth that started in Emma’s chest and unfurled and grew to reach right to the tips of her fingers and toes.

Or maybe the connection had already been there from years ago and had been rediscovered.

And maybe a new depth to that connection had been established between them yesterday when Emma had been present while Max was struggling to get his head around the enormous changes that had just overturned his world. She had helped because she was there and she couldn’t not help but then he’d asked her to stay. He’d said that he needed her…

Whatever it was, it was powerful. And it was touching something very deep in Emma’s heart. Not in the space that was still locked away because she didn’t quite recognise this new part of her heart. It felt like no-man’s land, halfway between caring so much that something could tear your heart apart when you lost it and caring only because you knew that it was temporary so the loss was already built in—the now very familiar space that her locum work had given her in her professional life and the avoidance of any long-term relationships had provided in her private life.

For a moment, Emma had to shake off a longing that came completely from left field—that she was over being in this space and ready to put roots down and create a life that wasn’t going to keep changing. As always, the best way to deal with a doubt like that was to think of a positive point to balance it and there was one that sprang to mind instantly. It almost felt as if she could allow herself to enjoy the sensations that came from unwrapping an old attraction that didn’t seem to have faded at all because this was as temporary as her new position being the stand-in HOD of the Royal’s emergency department. She knew that when this locum position ended she would walk out of the job and away from Max Cunningham and his now very complicated life would be none of her business. Perhaps she could even allow herself to enjoy the company of young children—away from her professional environment—which was something she knew she had instinctively kept herself away from.

It was all temporary. Keeping her word to show Ben and Tilly how to make stars committed her to no more than spending one more night at the manor house. She could find the time to search for a hotel room tomorrow.

Pulling her car to a halt beside Max’s, outside his family home, Emma sat still for a moment, watching Max get out of the driver’s seat and move to open the back door to lift his small passengers from their car seats. He paused for a heartbeat, however, and looked over the Christmas tree strapped to the roof of the vehicle to catch Emma’s gaze, his lips curling into a smile.

Emma’s breath came out in a sigh that held the edge of an unexpected sound.

Oh, yeah…that attraction hadn’t faded at all. It seemed to have matured into something that had rather a lot more bite to it and she recognised the tiny sound that had escaped with her breath for what it was—an expression of physical desire.

Lust, even…

It had been a weird thing to think about as he unclipped Tilly’s safety belt and lifted her from her car seat but there was no way that Max could have stopped the memory filling his head.

That time he’d kissed Emma Moretti under the mistletoe at the paediatric ward’s staff Christmas party. He hadn’t given it any more thought after it had happened because, no matter how soft her lips had been and how delicious the curves of her body were and how astonishingly powerful the urge to do a lot more than kiss Emma had been, it was never going to happen.

Emma was the earth mother type. The type who was destined to marry and have a family as soon as possible. A huge family, probably, seeing as she had adored children and babies so much and, because that was something Max wanted to avoid at all costs, it had been easy to dismiss the attraction that had both led to and been inflamed by that kiss.

Dismissing it hadn’t made it go away, though, had it? Judging by the kick in his gut that Max recognised all too easily as a reaction to a very healthy physical attraction, it was actually stronger than it had ever been.

Was that because there were things about Emma that were familiar but other things that were so very different? She was just as gorgeous as she’d been ten years ago, even though she was less curvy and she had cut off those glorious long waves of her hair and she seemed…what was it, exactly? More contained, perhaps? Less ready to laugh or even smile. Yes, she was definitely different but that gave the attraction an edge of mystery that added surprisingly to its power.

Emma wasn’t the only one who was different, either. Who could have predicted that he’d be the one who’d end up with what seemed a huge family and the earth mother would still be alone?

He set Tilly down on her feet beside Ben, who immediately took hold of his sister’s hand, and then he unclipped the bucket seat that Alice was strapped into.

‘Okay, guys. Let’s go inside and say hullo to Grandpa and then I’ll bring the Christmas tree inside.’

But James Cunningham was nowhere to be seen. Neither was their housekeeper, Maggie, though she’d left a note in the kitchen with a list of food she had prepared for both the children and adults.

‘Dad’s probably in the clinic. Or on a house call. Or he might have taken Pirate for a walk.’

Or he might be avoiding spending time with his grandchildren because, like Max, he was still grappling with how to cope with his new responsibilities.

Alice had begun to cry as they’d come inside. Max had a brief but fierce yearning for the old days in the paediatric ward when he’d been working with Emma and how he had been able to hand a baby back to its mother or a nurse when it needed changing or feeding, but he wasn’t about to repeat his actions of the previous evening of shoving Alice into Emma’s arms.

Not when he had been quite aware of that flash of something like panic he’d seen in her eyes, even as her arms had gathered the baby close. Besides, he had to learn how to cope and this was as good a time as any. He pulled wipes and a clean nappy from the bag of supplies he had taken into town earlier and set about making Alice comfortable. It was a mission to deal with all those fiddly little fasteners on her stretchy suit and clean that tiny bottom when she was kicking her legs so energetically and by the time he carried the baby into the kitchen to get on with his next task of preparing a bottle of formula he found Emma sitting at the long table with an array of materials in front of her that included all the cardboard boxes she had gathered at the hospital before coming home.

She was cutting a shape from the cardboard as Max held Alice with one arm and used his free hand to measure scoops of formula into a bottle the way Maggie had shown him yesterday.

‘So this will be a big star,’ Emma told Ben and Tilly. ‘And I’ll make a shape for a small star, as well. You can trace around them on other pieces of cardboard and then I can help you cut them out.’

‘I can cut things out all by myself,’ Ben said.

‘Me too,’ said Tilly.

Emma’s nod was apologetic. ‘Of course you can,’ she said. ‘But I can help if you want me to. And when we’ve cut some out, I’ll show you how to cover them with the silver foil. And then we need to make a hole in one of the pointy bits.’

‘Why?’

‘So we can tie the stars to the tree. I’m sure we can find some string somewhere.’

Ben looked up at Max as he shook the bottle to dissolve the formula in the cooled boiled water. ‘Did you bring the tree inside, Uncle Max?’

‘Not yet, Ben. But I will, just as soon as I give Alice her dinner.’ He tested the temperature of the milk against his wrist and hoped that how confident he’d just sounded was justified. He still hadn’t managed to get Alice to accept a bottle from him yet. Last night he’d needed Emma to rescue him. Maggie had been on hand this morning and Miriam, along with other staff members, had been only too happy to take over when he’d taken the children into work.

Max was holding his breath as he took a seat at the far end of the kitchen table, tipped Alice back into the crook of his elbow and offered her the teat of the bottle as her hungry whimpers became more frantic. He saw the startled expression on her face as she looked up at this new person trying to feed her but she had already tasted the milk and hunger seemed to win the battle with any lack of trust. Her lips closed around the teat and her tiny hands came up to help Max hold the bottle as she began to suck.

He knew he was smiling as he looked up to see if Emma had witnessed this triumph. Max felt absurdly proud of himself. So much so, he actually had a bit of a lump in his throat. He could do this. He was doing it.

Emma had a rather oddly shaped cardboard star in her hands and she was showing the children how to wrap it in silver foil but she must have been watching Max’s efforts with Alice from the corner of her eye because she caught his gaze as the contented silence of the baby continued and her smile only made him feel even prouder.