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CHAPTER SIX

JED DID CONCENTRATE on work.

Absolutely.

He did his best to ignore Jasmine, or at least to speak to her as little as possible at work, and he even just nodded to her when they occasionally crossed paths at the local shop, or he would simply run past her and Simon the odd evening they were on the beach.

He was a funny little lad. He loved to toddle on the beach and build sandcastles, but Jed noticed that despite her best efforts, Jasmine could not get him into the water.

Even if he tried not to notice, Jed saw a lot as he ran along the stretch of sand—Jasmine would hold the little boy on her hip and walk slowly into the water, but Simon would climb like a cat higher up her hip until Jasmine would give in to his sobs and take him back to the dry sand.

‘You get too tense.’ He gave in after a couple of weeks of seeing this ritual repeated. He could see what Jasmine was doing wrong and even if he ignored her at work, it seemed rude just to run past and not stop and talk now and then.

‘Sorry?’ She’d given up trying to take Simon into the water a few moments ago and now they were patting a sandcastle into shape. She looked up when Jed stood over her and Jasmine frowned at his comment, but in a curious way rather than a cross one.

He concentrated on her frown, not because she was resting back on her heels to look up at him, not because she was wearing shorts and a bikini top, he just focused on her frown. ‘When you try to get him to go into the water. I’ve seen you.’ He grinned. ‘You get tense even before you pick him up to take him in there.’

‘Thanks for the tip.’ Jasmine looked not at Jed but at Simon. ‘I really want him to love the water. I was hoping by the end of summer he’d at least be paddling, but he starts screaming as soon as I even get close.’

‘He’ll soon get used to it just as soon as you relax.’ And then realising he was sounding like an authority when he didn’t have kids of his own, he clarified things a little. ‘I used to be a lifeguard, so I’ve watched a lot of parents trying to get reluctant toddlers into the water.’

‘A lifeguard!’ Jasmine grinned. ‘You’re making me blush.’

She was funny. She wasn’t pushy or flirty, just funny.

‘That was a long time ago,’ Jed said.

‘A volunteer?’

‘Nope, professional. I was paid—it put me through medical school.’

‘So how should I be doing it?’

‘I’ll show you.’ He offered her his hand and pulled her up and they walked towards the water’s edge. ‘Just sit here.’

‘He won’t come.’

‘I bet he does if you ignore him.’

So they sat and chatted for ten minutes or so. Simon grew bored, playing with his sandcastle alone, while the grown-ups didn’t care that they were sitting in the water in shorts, getting wet with each shallow wave that came in.

Jed told her about his job, the one he’d had before medical school. ‘It was actually that which made me want to work in emergency medicine,’ Jed explained. ‘I know you shouldn’t enjoy a drowning …’

She smiled because she knew what he meant. There was a high that came from emergencies, just knowing that you knew what to do in a fraught situation.

Of course not all the time; sometimes it was just miserable all around, but she could see how the thrill of a successful resuscitation could soon plant the seeds for a career in Emergency.

‘So if I drown, will you rescue me?’

‘Sure,’ Jed said, and her blue eyes turned to his and they smiled for a very brief moment. Unthinking, absolutely not thinking, he said it. ‘Why? Is that a fantasy of yours?’

And he could have kicked himself, should have kicked himself, except she was just smiling and so too was he. Thankfully, starved of attention, Simon toddled towards them and squealed with delight at the feeling of water rushing past his feet.

‘Yay!’ Jasmine was delighted, taking his hands and pulling him in for a hug. ‘It worked.’

‘Glad to have helped.’ Jed stood, because now he was kicking himself, now he was starting to wonder what might have happened had Simon not chosen that moment to take to the water.

Actually, he wasn’t wondering.

Jed knew.

‘Better get on.’ He gave her a thin smile, ruffled Simon’s hair and off down the beach he went, leaving Jasmine sitting there.

Jed confused her.

Cold one minute and not warm but hot the next.

And, no, being rescued by a sexy lifeguard wasn’t one of her fantasies, but a sexy Jed?

Well …

She blew out a breath. There was something happening between them, something like she had never known before. Except all he did was confuse her—because the next time she saw him at work he went back to ignoring her.

As well as confusing, Jed was also wrong about her getting right back into the swing of things at work. The department was busy and even a couple weeks later she still felt like the new girl at times. Even worse, her mum was less than pleased when Lisa asked, at short notice, if Jasmine could do two weeks of nights. She had staff sick and had already moved Vanessa onto the roster to do nights. Jasmine understood the need for her to cover, but she wasn’t sure her mum would be quite so understanding.

‘I’m really sorry about this,’ Jasmine said to her mum as she dropped Simon off.

‘It’s fine.’ Louise had that rather pained, martyred look that tripped all of Jasmine’s guilt switches. ‘I’ve juggled a few clients’ appointments to early evening for this week so I’ll need you to be back here at five.’

‘Sure.’

‘But, Jasmine,’ Louise said, ‘how are you going to keep on doing this? I’m going away soon and if they can change your roster at five minutes’ notice and expect you to comply, how are you going to manage?’

‘I’ve a meeting with a babysitter at the weekend,’ Jasmine told her mum. ‘She’s coming over and I’ll see how she gets on with Simon.’

‘How much is a babysitter going to cost?’ Louise asked, and Jasmine chose not to answer, but really something would have to give.

Paying the crèche was bad enough, but by the time she’d paid a babysitter to pick Simon up for her late shifts and stints on nights, well, it was more complicated than Jasmine had the time to allocate it right now.

‘How are things with Penny at work?’ Louise asked.

‘It seems okay.’ Jasmine shrugged. ‘She’s just been on nights herself so I haven’t seen much of her, and when I do she’s no more horrible to me than she is to everybody else.’

‘And no one’s worked out that you’re sisters?’

‘How could they?’ Jasmine said. ‘Penny hasn’t said anything and no one is going to hear it from me.’

‘Well, make sure that they don’t,’ Louise warned. ‘Penny doesn’t need any stress right now. She’s worked up enough as it is with this promotion coming up. Maybe once that’s over with she’ll come around to the idea a bit more.’

‘I’d better get going.’ Jasmine gave Simon a cuddle and held him just an extra bit tight.

‘Are you okay?’ Louise checked.

‘I’m fine,’ Jasmine said, but as she got to the car she remembered why she was feeling more than a little out of sorts. And, no, she hadn’t shared it with her mum and certainly she wouldn’t be ringing up Penny for a chat to sort out her feelings.

There on the driver’s seat was her newly opened post and even though she’d been waiting for it, even though she wanted it, it felt strange to find out in such a banal way that she was now officially divorced.

Yes, she’d been looking forward to the glorious day, only the reality of it gave her no reason to smile.

Her marriage had been the biggest mistake of her life.

The one good thing to come out of it was Simon.

The only good thing, Jasmine thought, stuffing the papers into her glove box, and, not for the first time she felt angry.

She’d been duped so badly.

Completely lied to from the start.

Yes, she loved Simon with all her heart, but this was never the way she’d intended to raise a child. With a catalogue of crèches and babysitters and scraping to make ends meet and a father who, despite so many promises, when the truth had been exposed, when his smooth veneer had been cracked and the real Lloyd had surfaced, rather than facing himself had resumed the lie his life was and had turned his back and simply didn’t want to know his own son.

‘Are you okay?’ Vanessa checked later as they headed out of the locker rooms.

‘I’m fine,’ Jasmine said, but hearing the tension in her own voice and realising she’d been slamming about a bit in the locker room, she conceded, ‘My divorce just came through.’

‘Yay!’ said Vanessa, and it was a new friend she turned to rather than her family. ‘You should be out celebrating instead of working.’

‘I will,’ Jasmine said. ‘Just not yet.’

‘Are you upset?’

‘Not upset,’ Jasmine said. ‘Just angry.’

‘Excuse me.’ They stepped aside as a rather grumpy Dr Devlin brushed passed.

‘Someone got out of the wrong side of bed,’ Vanessa said.

Jasmine didn’t get Jed.

She did not understand why he had changed so rapidly.

But he had.

From the nice guy she had met he was very brusque.

Very brusque.

Not just to her, but to everyone. Still, Jasmine could be brusque too when she had to be, and on a busy night in Emergency, sometimes that was exactly what you had to be.

‘You’ve done this before!’ Greg, the charge nurse, grinned as Jasmine shooed a group of inebriated teenagers down to the waiting room. They were worried about their friend who’d been stabbed but were starting to fight amongst themselves.

‘I used to be a bouncer at a night club.’ Jasmine winked at her patient, who was being examined by Jed.

Greg laughed and even the patient smiled.

Jed just carried right on ignoring her.

Which was understandable perhaps, given that they were incredibly busy.

But what wasn’t understandable to Jasmine was that he refused a piece of the massive hazelnut chocolate bar she opened at about one a.m., when everyone else fell on it.

Who doesn’t like chocolate? Jasmine thought as he drank water.

Maybe he was worried about his figure?

He stood outside the cubicle now, writing up the card. ‘Check his pedal pulses every fifteen minutes.’ He thrust her a card and she read his instructions.

‘What about analgesia?’ Jasmine checked.

‘I’ve written him up for pethidine.’

‘No.’ Jasmine glanced down at the card. ‘You haven’t.’

Jed took the card from her and rubbed his hand over his unshaven chin, and Jasmine tried to tell herself that he had his razor set that way, that he cultivated the unshaven, up-all-night, just-got-out-of-bed look, that this man’s looks were no accident.

Except he had been up all night.

Jed let out an irritated hiss as he read through the patient’s treatment card, as if she were the one who had made the simple mistake, and then wrote up the prescription in his messy scrawl.

‘Thank you!’ Jasmine smiled sweetly—just to annoy him.

She didn’t get a smile back.

Mind you, the place was too busy to worry about Jed’s bad mood and brooding good looks, which seemed to get more brooding with every hour that passed.

At six a.m., just as things were starting to calm down, just as they were starting to catch up and tidy the place for the day staff, Jasmine found out just how hard this job could be at times.

Found, just as she was starting to maybe get into the swing of things, that perhaps this wasn’t the place she really wanted to be after all.

They were alerted that a two-week-old paediatric arrest was on his way in but the ambulance had arrived before they had even put the emergency call out.

Jasmine took the hysterical parents into an interview room and tried to get any details as best she could as the overhead loudspeaker went off, urgently summoning the paediatric crash team to Emergency. It played loudly in the interview room also, each chime echoing the urgency, and there was the sound of footsteps running and doors slamming, adding to the parents’ fear.

‘The doctors are all with your baby,’ Jasmine said. ‘Let them do their work.’ Cathy, the new mum, still looked pregnant. She kept saying she had only had him two weeks and that this couldn’t be happening, that she’d taken him out of his crib and brought him back to bed, and when the alarm had gone off for her husband to go to work … And then the sobbing would start again.

She kept trying to push past Jasmine to get to her baby, but eventually she collapsed into a chair and sobbed with her husband that she just wanted to know what was going on.

‘As soon as there’s some news, someone will be in.’ There was a knock at the door and she saw a policeman and -woman standing there. Jasmine excused herself, went outside and closed the door so she could speak to them.

‘How are they?’ the policewoman asked.

‘Not great,’ Jasmine said. ‘A doctor hasn’t spoken to them yet.’

‘How are things looking for the baby?’

‘Not great either,’ Jasmine said. ‘I really don’t know much, though, I’ve just been in with the parents. I’m going to go and try to find out for them what’s happening.’ Though she was pretty sure she knew. One look at the tiny infant as he had arrived and her heart had sunk.

‘Everything okay?’ Lisa, early as always, was just coming on duty and she came straight over.

‘We’ve got a two-week-old who’s been brought in in full arrest,’ Jasmine explained. ‘I was just going to try and get an update for the parents.’

‘Okay.’ Lisa nodded. ‘You do that and I’ll stay with them.’

Jasmine wasn’t sure what was worse, sitting in with the hysterical, terrified parents or walking into Resus and hearing the silence as they paused the resuscitation for a moment to see if there was any response.

There was none.

Jed put his two fingers back onto the baby’s chest and started the massage again, but the paediatrician shook his head.

‘I’m calling it.’

It was six twenty-five and the paediatrician’s voice was assertive.

‘We’re not going to get him back.’

He was absolutely right—the parents had started the resuscitation and the paramedics had continued it for the last thirty-five futile minutes. Jasmine, who would normally have shed a tear at this point before bracing herself to face the family, just stood frozen.

Vanessa cried. Not loudly. She took some hand wipes from the dispenser and blew her nose and Jed took his fingers off the little infant and sort of held his nose between thumb and finger for a second.

It was a horrible place to be.

‘Are you okay?’ Greg looked over at Jasmine and she gave a short nod. She dared not cry, even a little, because if she started she thought she might not stop.

It was the first paediatric death she had dealt with since she’d had Simon and she was shocked at her own reaction. She just couldn’t stop looking at the tiny scrap of a thing and comparing him to her own child, and how the parents must be feeling. She jumped when she heard the sharp trill of a pager.

‘Sorry.’ The paediatrician looked down at his pager. ‘I’m needed urgently on NICU.’

‘Jed, can you …?’

Jed nodded as he accepted the grim task. ‘I’ll tell the parents.’

‘Thanks, and tell them that I’ll come back down and talk to them at length as soon as I can.’

‘Who’s been dealing with the parents?’ Jed asked when the paediatrician had gone.

‘Me,’ Jasmine said. ‘Lisa’s in there with them now. The police are here as well.’

‘I’ll speak first to the parents,’ Jed said. ‘Probably just keep it with Lisa. She’ll be dealing with them all day.’

Jasmine nodded. ‘They wanted a chaplain.’ She could hear the police walkie-talkies outside and her heart ached for the parents, not just for the terrible news but having to go over and over it, not only with family but with doctors and the police, and for all that was to come.

‘I’ll go and ring the chaplain,’ Greg said. ‘And I’d better write up the drugs now.’ He looked at the chaos. There were vials and wrappers everywhere, all the drawers on the trolley were open. They really had tried everything, but all to no avail.

‘I’ll sort out the baby,’ Vanessa said, and Jasmine, who had never shied away from anything before, was relieved that she wouldn’t have to deal with him.

‘I’ll restock,’ Jasmine said.

Which was as essential as the other two things, Jasmine told herself as she started to tidy up, because you never knew what was coming through the door. The day staff were arriving and things needed to be left in order.

Except Jasmine was hiding and deep down she knew it, had been so relieved when Jed had suggested keeping things with Lisa. She screwed her eyes closed as screams carried through the department. Jed must have broken the news.

She just wanted to go home to her own baby, could not stand to think of their grief.

‘Are you okay, Jasmine?’ Vanessa asked as she stocked her trolley to take into Resus, preparing to wash and dress the baby so that his parents could hold him.

‘I’ll get there.’ She just wanted the shift to be over, to ring her mum and check that Simon was okay, for the past hour not to have happened, because it wasn’t fair, it simply was not fair. But of course patients kept coming in with headaches and chest pains and toothaches and there was still the crash trolley to restock and plenty of work to do.

And now here was Penny, all crisp and ready for work.

‘Morning!’ She smiled and no one really returned it. ‘Bad night?’ she asked Jed, who, having told the parents and spoken to the police, was admitting another patient.