Kitabı oku: «St Piran's: Tiny Miracle Twins», sayfa 2

‘OK, get me fired,’ she said. ‘If that’s what you want to do, then go ahead and do it.’

‘Of course that’s not what I want!’ he exclaimed, tossing his laptop onto the nearest seat. ‘What do you take me for?’

I don’t know, she thought as she gazed up into his cold, rigid face. I don’t know because I feel like I don’t know you any more, and I’m wondering now if I ever did.

‘Look, can we sit down?’ she said. ‘You standing there—looming over me like some spectre of doom—isn’t helping.’

With a muttered oath he sat down, and, after a moment’s hesitation she abandoned the kettle and took the seat opposite him.

‘You really were determined I wouldn’t find you, weren’t you?’ he said, his blue eyes fixed on her, daring her to contradict him. ‘Changing your surname, moving to a one-horse town in the back of beyond in Cornwall.’

‘Connor, it wasn’t like that—’

‘Wasn’t it? ‘ he interrupted, his voice dripping sarcasm. ‘So how—exactly—would you interpret it?’

‘I wanteds…’ Oh, but this was so hard to explain, and she wanted to explain, for him to understand. ‘I just wanted…’ Her voice broke slightly despite her best efforts to keep it level. ‘Some peace. All I wanted was some peace.’

‘And to get that you had to walk out on me?’ he said incredulously. ‘Walk out without a word?’

‘I left you a letter,’ she protested, and saw his lip curl with derision.

‘“I need to be on my own for a while,”’ he quoted. ‘“I need some space, some time to get myself together”. That’s hardly an “I’m leaving you, and I’m never coming back”, dear-John letter, is it? ‘

‘Connor—’

‘You applied for this job without telling me, didn’t you?’ he said. ‘You applied for it, and got it, and yet you never said a word to me about what you were planning to do.’

She swallowed hard. ‘Yes.’

‘So that’s why you only ever took three hundred pounds out of our joint bank account,’ he declared, fury deepening his voice. ‘You didn’t need any more money because you had this job to come to.’

‘Yes,’ she whispered.

‘Why, Brianna, why?’ he demanded, thrusting his fingers through his black hair, anger, hurt and bewilderment plain on his face. ‘I thought we were happy, I thought you loved me.’

‘Things…things haven’t been right between us for a long time, Connor,’ she replied, ‘you know they haven’t—’

‘That’s nonsense,’ he retorted, and she clasped her hands together tightly, desperately trying to find the words that would make him understand.

‘I was going under, Connor,’ she cried. ‘After what happened—you wouldn’t talk to me, you wouldn’t let me talk, and I knew—if I didn’t get away—I was going to slide further and further into the black pit I’d fallen into, and if I kept on fallings’ She took an uneven breath. ‘I was scared—so scared—that I would never be able to get myself out again.’

‘And me—what about me?’ he exclaimed, his blue eyes blazing. ‘Two years, Brianna, it’s been two years since you left and in all that time you never once lifted the phone to tell me you were OK, never once even sent me a scribbled postcard to say you were alive.’

‘I was going to write, to tell you where I was,’ she declared defensively, but had she really been going to? It wasn’t something she wanted to think about, far less face. It was enough of a shock to see him sitting there in front of her. ‘Connor—’

‘You left your phone behind, the house keys, the police wouldn’t help me—’

‘You went to the police?’ She gasped, her eyes large with dismay, and he threw her a look that made her shrink back into her seat.

‘What the hell did you expect me to do? Did you think I’d simply stay home in our flat, night after night, watching TV, thinking, Well, I expect Brianna will come back eventually? Of course I went to the police. I thoughts…’ He closed his eyes for a second, and when he spoke again his voice was rough. ‘I thought you might have done something…stupid, but they said as you’d left a note, and your parents knew you were safe, it wasn’t a police matter but a domestic one.’

‘I’m sorry,’ she murmured. ‘I didn’t realise—I never imagined you’d go to the police—’

‘Can you imagine how that made me feel?’ he said, his lips curving into a bitter travesty of a smile. ‘When the police told me your parents knew where you were, but I didn’t? I went back to Ireland, to your parents’ farm in Killarney, thinking you might have gone there, and, when I discovered you hadn’t, I begged them to give me your address, even your phone number, so I could at least hear your voice, know you truly were safe, but they wouldn’t give me either. They said you’d made them promise not to tell me anything, that you would contact me when you were ready.’

‘I’m sorry, so sorry,’ she repeated, willing him to believe her. ‘I didn’t…’ She shook her head blindly. ‘I wasn’t thinking clearly, not then. I just…’

‘Had to get away from me,’ he finished for her bitterly, and she bit her lip hard.

‘Connor, listen to me—’

‘Every time I heard on the news that a body had been found in some secluded spot I feared it was you,’ he continued as though she hadn’t spoken. ‘Every time someone was pulled out of the Thames I thought, Please, don’t let it be Brianna, but, as time went on, God help me, I sometimes…’ He took a breath. ‘Sometimes I hoped it was you because at least then the waiting would be over. All I needed…all I wanted^was to know you really were safe, and yet you denied me even that, Brianna.’

‘I would have called you, I would have talked to you,’ she said, her voice trembling, ‘but I knew talking to you wouldn’t help, that you wouldn’t listen.’

‘How can you say that?’ he demanded angrily. ‘Of course I would have talked, of course I would have listened!’

‘You didn’t before when I needed you to,’ she said before she could stop herself. ‘All you ever did was cut me off, change the subject, or you’d ask me…’ She swallowed convulsively, hearing the tears in her voice, and she didn’t want to cry…she so didn’t want to cry. ‘You kept asking me what was wrong, and I thought I’d go mad if you asked me that one more time because it was so obvious to me that everything was always going to be wrong, that it was never going to be right.’

‘You’re not making any sense—’

‘Because you’re not listening, just like you always don’t,’ she flared. ‘Whenever I try to talk to you, you never ever listen.’

‘Well, I want to talk now,’ he countered. ‘To talk properly with no lies, deception or half-truths, only honesty.’

She knew he was right, but talking honestly meant resurrecting everything that had happened, meant having to face it again. She hadn’t forgotten, she never would, but over the past two years she’d managed to come to a kind of acceptance, and to talk about it now…She didn’t think her heart could take that, and she shook her head.

‘Connor, this isn’t the time, or the place.’

‘Then when, Brianna?’ he exclaimed, and there was such a lacerating fury in his blue eyes that she winced. ‘When will be the time, or the place?’

She wanted to say, Never—nowhere. She wanted even more to say she wished he had never come, had never found her, but she didn’t have the courage.

‘I don’t know,’ she said wretchedly. ‘I don’t—’

She bit off the rest of what she had been about to say. The door of the nurses’ staffroom had opened, and Megan’s head had appeared hesitantly round it.

‘I’m really sorry,’ the paediatric specialist registrar began, glancing from Brianna to Connor, then back again, ‘but I’m afraid Brianna is needed in the unit.’

Brianna was hurrying towards Megan before she had even finished speaking, but when she reached the door she heard Connor clear his throat.

‘We have to talk, Brianna, and talk soon,’ he said.

She thought she nodded, but she couldn’t be sure. All she knew was she had to get away from him, and she was halfway down the corridor before Megan caught up with her.

‘Brianna—’

‘Is it Amy Renwick? Is she back from Recovery, and there’s a problem, or—?’

‘Actually, I’m afraid I lied, and you’re not needed in the unit at all,’ Megan interrupted, looking shamefaced. ‘It’s just…I was passing the nurses’ staffroom and I heard the auditor yelling at you. I wasn’t eavesdropping, honestly I wasn’t,’ she continued as Brianna stared at her in alarm. ‘It’s just the walls in this place are so thin, and you sounded…Well, you sounded really upset, and in need of rescue.’

‘I did—I was,’ Brianna said with a small smile.

‘I think you should make a formal complaint,’ Megan declared angrily. ‘It’s one thing to inspect a unit, to ask the staff questions about how it’s run, but harassing someone…’ She shook her head. ‘That’s completely out of order.’

‘Megan, I don’t want to make a complaint,’ Brianna replied. ‘My interview is over, done with, so let’s just leave it, OK?’

‘Not on your life,’ the paediatric registrar insisted. ‘If this Connor whatever his name is—’

‘Monahan. His name’s Connor Monahan.’

‘Thinks he can ride roughshod over the nursing staff, upset them, then he can think again. I can understand why you might be reluctant to make a complaint, but I’m not. I’m more than willing to march up to Admin right now, and tell them they’d better warn him to back off or they’ll have the nurses’ union on their doorstep.’

Megan would do it, too, Brianna thought, seeing the fury in her friend’s face, and it was the last thing she wanted. It was hard enough for her to deal with Connor’s reappearance in her life without having the staff in Admin gossiping about it after they’d been told all the facts, and she would have to tell them all the facts.

‘Megan, it’s got nothing to do with the nursing staff, or the unit,’ she said unhappily. ‘It’s me. It’s to do with me. You see, Connor Monahan and I…We know one another.’

Her friend gazed at her blankly for a second, then a look of horrified realisation appeared on her face.

‘Oh, lord, he’s not an ex-boyfriend of yours, is he?’ she exclaimed. ‘Oh, Brianna, I’m so sorry, what a nightmare for you.’

‘A nightmare, for sure.’ Brianna nodded. ‘But you see…’ She took a deep breath. ‘The trouble is, Connor isn’t an ex-boyfriend. He…he’s my husband.’

CHAPTER TWO

‘BUT Mr Brooke said yesterday—after Amy’s operation—that she might need another operation,’ Naomi Renwick said, her eyes dark with fear. ‘He said he wouldn’t know for the next seventy-two hours whether he’d successfully removed all of the infection, so you’d be keeping a very careful eye on her.’

‘Which I would be doing whether Amy had been operated on or not,’ Brianna replied, wishing the ever-pessimistic consultant to the darkest reaches of hell. ‘Naomi, your daughter is doing very well. We have no reason to think she will require another operation—’

‘But if she does…She’s so little, Sister, so very little, and if she needs another operation…’

‘We’ll deal with it just as we’ve dealt with all the other problems Amy has faced since she was born a month ago. Naomi, listen to me,’ Brianna continued, as Amy’s mother made to interrupt. ‘I can’t give you any guarantees—no one can, but, please, please, don’t go looking for bridges to cross. Amy’s temperature’s normal, her colour’s good. In fact,’ she added, ‘just look at her.’

Naomi Renwick gazed down into the incubator where her daughter was vigorously kicking her little legs despite the fine line of sutures across her stomach, and her lips curved into a shaky smile.

‘She’s beautiful, isn’t she?’ she said, and Brianna nodded.

‘She is, and right now she’s in the best possible place, getting the best possible care, so hold onto that, OK?’

Brianna hoped Naomi Renwick would, but she wished even more, as she turned to discover Connor standing behind her, that her husband would dog some other nurse’s footsteps, if only for a little while.

Twenty-four hours, she thought as she began walking down the ward, all too conscious he was following her. Just twenty-four hours ago her life might not exactly have been perfect, but at least she hadn’t felt permanently besieged. Now she felt cornered, under attack, and it wasn’t just by his presence, or his continual questions about the unit. It was the way he managed to somehow incorporate so many barbed comments into what he was saying that was wearing her down, little by little, bit by bit.

‘How many incubators does the NICU at Plymouth have?’ he asked, and she came to a weary halt.

‘Twelve,’ she replied, ‘which is double our capacity, but their hospital covers a far greater area and population than St Piran’s, so it’s bound to be bigger.’

‘I also notice from your ward clerk’s files that every baby has a primary carer,’ he continued. ‘That doesn’t seem to be a very efficient system in terms of time or personnel.’

‘Not everything can be measured in terms of time management, or personnel distribution,’ she said acidly. ‘Especially the care of very vulnerable babies.’

‘I see,’ he said, but she doubted whether he did as she watched him type something into his state-of-the-art phone, which could probably have made him a cup of coffee if he’d asked it to.

Figures, statistics had always been his passion, not people, and he didn’t seem to have changed.

‘Connor—’

‘Does this unit normally have quite so many unused incubators? ‘ he asked, gesturing towards the two empty ones at the end of the ward.

‘There’s no such thing as “normal” in NICU,’ she protested. ‘We’ve had occasions when only three of our incubators have been in use, times when we were at full capacity, and last Christmas we were so busy we had to send babies to Plymouth because we just couldn’t accommodate them. It was tough for everyone, especially the families.’

‘It would be.’ He nodded. ‘Christmas being the time when most families like to be together.’

And you’ve missed two with me. He didn’t say those words—he didn’t need to—but she heard them loud and clear.

‘Things don’t always work out the way we planned,’ she muttered, ‘and babies can’t be expected to arrive exactly when you want them to.’

‘Not babies, no. Grown-ups, on the other hand,’ he added, his eyes catching and holding hers, ‘have a choice.’

And you chose to walk away from me. That was what he was really saying, and she swallowed painfully.

‘Connor, please,’ she said with difficulty. ‘This is a good unit, an efficient unit. Please don’t make this personal.’

His eyebrows rose. ‘You think that’s what I’m doing?’

‘I know it is,’ she cried. ‘Look, I can understand you being angry—’

‘I’m sorry to interrupt,’ Rita interrupted, looking anything but as she joined them, ‘but I’m afraid we’ve had a complaint about your car, Sister Flannigan.’

‘A complaint?’ Brianna echoed in confusion, and Rita smiled.

A smile that was every bit as false as the sympathetic sigh with which she followed it.

‘You’ve parked it in the consultants’ side of the car park today instead of the nurses’. Easily done, of course, when you’re stressed—’

‘I’m not stressed—’

‘Of course you are, my dear,’ Rita declared, her face all solicitous concern, but her eyes, Brianna noticed, were speculative, calculating. ‘How can you possibly not be when you’re doing two jobs?’

‘Sister Flannigan has two jobs?’ Connor frowned, and Rita nodded.

‘Our nurse unit manager returned to Spain a few months back, and, as Admin haven’t yet appointed his replacement, Sister Flannigan has had to temporarily step into the breach, which is probably why we’re not as efficient as we should be.’

‘I can’t say I’ve noticed any inefficiency on Sister Flannigan’s part,’ Connor replied, attempting to walk on, but Rita was not about to be rebuffed.

‘Oh, please don’t think I’m suggesting Sister Flannigan is inefficient—’

Yeah, right, Rita, Brianna thought angrily, and this is clearly payback time because I chewed your head off yesterday.

‘But when you’re as much of a perfectionist as I am,’ the ward clerk continued, all honeyed sweetness, ‘I do like everything to be just so.’

‘Which makes me wonder why you’re still standing here,’ Connor declared, ‘and not back in your office, dotting some i’s and crossing some t’s.’

The ward clerk’s mouth opened and closed soundlessly for a second, then she clamped her lips together tightly.

‘Well, no one can ever accuse me of remaining where I’m not wanted,’ she said, before stomping away, and Brianna sighed.

‘Which, unfortunately, isn’t true.’ She glanced up at Connor hesitantly. ‘Thanks for saying what you did, for backing me up.’

For a moment he said nothing, then his lips twisted into something like a smile. ‘I thought I always did. I thought we were a team.’

They had been once, she remembered. There had been a time when she couldn’t have imagined her life without him, and then, little by little, things had changed, and two years ago…

‘I’m sorry, Connor,’ she murmured, ‘so sorry.’

‘Sorry you left, or sorry I found you?’

His eyes were fixed on her, and the awful truth was she couldn’t give him an answer, not without hurting him, and she backed away from him, afraid he would realise it.

‘The car,’ she said haltingly. ‘I have to…I need to move my car.’

She was gone before he could stop her and, when the ward door clattered shut behind her, Connor clenched his fists until his knuckles showed white.

She hadn’t answered him. He’d asked her a simple, easy-to-answer question, and yet she hadn’t answered him, and he needed—wanted—answers.

Dammit, she owed him that at least, he thought furiously. When he’d first seen her yesterday, his initial reaction had been to thank God she was safe, his Brianna was safe, but then anger had consumed him. A blazing, blinding, irrational anger that she could be standing in front of him looking better than he’d seen her look in a long time, had been living happily in Cornwall for the last two years, when he’d been to hell and back, fearing the worst. And she’d disappear out of his life again in an instant given half a chance. He’d seen it in her dark brown eyes, in the way she looked at him.

Well, she wasn’t going to walk away from him a second time, he decided. This time he wanted answers, proper answers, and not some nonsense about him never talking to her, never listening, and he headed for the ward door to follow her.

‘I’m really very sorry about this, Sister Flannigan,’ Sid, the hospital handyman, said uncomfortably after she’d moved her car out of the consultants’ bay and into the nurses’ part of the car park. ‘To be honest, I don’t think there should be any divisions in the car park, but some consultants…’ He shook his head. ‘It’s a status thing for them, you see.’

‘It’s all right, Sid, truly it is,’ Brianna said quickly. ‘I don’t know where my brain was this morning…’ Well, she did know—it was on Connor, she’d been thinking about Connor, and how she didn’t want to meet him again, but she wasn’t about to share that even with someone as nice as their handyman. ‘So could you please tell whoever it was who complained that it won’t happen again?’

The middle-aged handyman didn’t look any happier. In fact, she could hear him muttering under his breath, ‘Officious twit…that’s what he is,’ as he walked away, and she smiled, but, as she closed her car door, her smile vanished.

It would be so easy to simply get back into her car, and drive away. No one would miss her for a while, and if she kept on driving, and driving, she might eventually reach a place where Connor would never find her. She could start again, change her name again, and—

‘Don’t, Brianna,’ a feminine voice said gently. ‘I know what you’re thinking, and it won’t solve anything.’

‘It might,’ Brianna muttered, as she turned to see Jess watching her.

‘Megan told me about Connor being your husband. She wouldn’t normally break a confidence—you know she wouldn’t,’ the counsellor added quickly as Brianna stared at her in alarm, ‘but she’s worried about you.’

‘I know, but…’ Brianna shook her head. ‘Jess, have you ever wanted to run away? To just run away, leave everything behind, and start all over?’

‘I did—I have,’ the counsellor replied. ‘When the staff at the hospital I worked in before I came to St Piran’s found out about me having HIV…a lot of them cut me dead, crossed the street to avoid me—’

‘Oh, Jess!’

‘And I couldn’t bear it so I ran, and then…’ She sighed, a low, sad sigh. ‘Well, you know what happened. That reporter from the Penhally Gazette broadcast my condition all over his newspaper, and I wanted to run again, but I knew if I did, I would be leaving behind the people, the hospital I felt I’d become such a part of.’

‘And Gio,’ Brianna murmured. ‘You would have been leaving him behind, too.’

‘I had no guarantees he would stand by me when he found out the truth, Brianna. He could have walked away and, if he had, then I…’ Jess managed a watery smile. ‘I would just have to have lived with it.’

Brianna stared down at the car keys in her hand.

‘I don’t know if I’m as strong as you are.’

‘I think you are,’ Jess said softly, ‘but it’s your choice, Brianna. You can stay and confront your fear, or you can run, but if you do run don’t forget that whatever you’re scared of won’t go away. It will always be there, like a dark shadow hanging over you.’

Her friend was right, she knew she was. Running wasn’t the answer, but to stay and try to get Connor to talk to her, to really talk…

‘Jess…’ she began, only to look sharply round with a frown. ‘Did you hear that?’

‘Hear what?’ Jess said in confusion. ‘I can hear the traffic, the birds in the trees—’

‘It’s a baby. A baby in distress, and it’s close by.’ Jess stared at her as though she was suddenly having grave doubts about her mental stability but, having worked with babies for most of her adult life, Brianna could recognise a baby’s cry from five hundred paces, and this baby was in trouble. Big trouble.

‘Maybe it’s a cat,’ Jess observed, following Brianna as she headed back to the consultants’ part of the car park. ‘Cats and kittens often make a sound like a baby.’

But it wasn’t a kitten or a cat. It was a baby who hadn’t been there when Brianna had moved her car just a few minutes ago. A baby lying wrapped in a white shawl beside Jess’s husband’s glossy Aston Martin. A baby whose face was blue, and who was breathing in tiny, rasping gasps.

‘Oh, my God! ‘ Jess exclaimed, as Brianna swiftly lifted the tiny bundle into her arms and cradled its head against her breast. ‘Who on earth would leave a baby here?’

‘It doesn’t matter who,’ Brianna replied. ‘This baby needs attention, and it needs it now.’

She was off and running before Jess could reply. Running so single-mindedly she didn’t see the tall figure walking towards her until she almost collided with him.

‘Brianna, we need to…’ Connor looked down, then up at her incredulously. ‘That’s a baby.’

‘Ten out of ten for observation,’ she replied, ‘and now can you please get out of my way because it needs help.’

NICU was the obvious place to go, she realised as she ran on with Jess and Connor following her, but she didn’t know if the bundle in her arms would make it that far, so she sighed with relief when she saw Josh walking across the entrance foyer of the hospital.

‘Hello, gorgeous, where’s the fire?’ He grinned as she raced towards him.

‘No fire,’ she replied breathlessly. ‘It’s a newborn, I found it in the car park, and it’s floppy, blue and breathing oddly.’

All Josh’s amusement disappeared in a second.

‘Jess, can you page Mr Brooke and tell him to come down to A and E immediately? And, if you can’t get him,’ he added as the counsellor turned to go, ‘page Megan. Brianna—you and the baby—A and E—now.’

‘My guess is respiratory distress syndrome,’ Brianna said as she hurried into A and E and placed the baby on one of the examination tables. ‘See how his skin and muscles are being pulled in every time he takes a breath?’ she added, carefully unwrapping the shawl. ‘How tight his abdomen is?’

‘It’s a boy?’ Connor said, his voice sounding slightly constricted, and Josh frowned at him.

‘Who are you?’ he demanded. ‘The baby’s father?’

‘I’m Connor Monahan, the hospital auditor.’

‘Which doesn’t explain why you’re here, so I suggest you go and audit something. OK, I wants sats, a ventilator, an umbilical line and a cardio-respiratory monitor,’ Josh told his staff. ‘And a face mask—the tiniest we’ve got.’

‘BP low, heart rate too high,’ one of the A and E nurses declared. ‘This baby is going to go into shock if we’re not careful.’

‘Not on my watch, he won’t,’ Josh said grimly. ‘Where’s that umbilical line?’

‘Josh, can’t you hurry up and stabilise him?’ Brianna said, her eyes fixed anxiously on the baby boy. ‘He needs the resources we have in NICU.’

‘Agreed, my beautiful colleen,’ Josh replied as he began to insert the umbilical line, ‘but, as you know very well, stabilising can’t be rushed. Poor little mite,’ he continued as he checked the cardio-respiratory monitor. ‘He can’t be more than a couple of days old, which means his mother must need medical attention, too.’

‘Yes—yes—whatever,’ Brianna said quickly, ‘but hurry, Josh, please, hurry.’

‘This respiratory distress thing,’ Connor said, ‘can it be cured?’

Josh looked round at him with irritation.

‘Why the hell are you still here? Run out of departments to audit already?’

‘I asked a question, and I’d like an answer,’ Connor declared, his voice every bit as hard as Josh’s, and a small smile curved the A and E consultant’s lips.

‘Are you quite sure you’re not the baby’s father? OK—OK,’ Josh continued as Brianna threw him an impatient look. ‘Yes, Mr Monahan, RDS can be cured. Premature, and very underweight, babies often don’t produce enough surfactant in their lungs to help them breathe, but we can give it to them artificially through a breathing tube.’

‘But only in NICU,’ Megan declared as she swept into A and E, pushing an incubator, ‘so can we have a little less chat and a lot more action?’

‘I’m simply answering Mr Monahan’s question, Megan,’ Josh answered mildly, but the paediatric specialist registrar was clearly not about to be placated.

‘A question we don’t have time for,’ she retorted.

‘Oh, I always have time for questions,’ he countered. ‘I don’t always give the right answers—’

‘Now, there’s a surprise—not,’ Megan replied, her voice cold. ‘Perhaps if you spent less time—’

‘Look, could the two of you park whatever problem you have with one another and concentrate on this baby?’ Brianna exclaimed, then flushed scarlet when she saw Megan’s hurt expression and Josh’s eyebrows shoot up. ‘I’m sorry—I shouldn’t have said that—I’m just…’

‘Worried.’ Josh nodded. ‘Understood. OK,’ he added as he carefully lifted the baby boy and placed him gently into the incubator, ‘this tiny tot is good to go.’

Brianna instantly began pushing the incubator out of A and E towards NICU but it didn’t make her feel any better. She’d hurt Megan, she knew she had, and it wasn’t as though she hadn’t known Megan and Josh had some sort of history so to say what she had.

‘Megan, I’m sorry,’ she murmured when they reached the unit and Chris began hooking the baby to their monitors. ‘What I said—’

‘Forget it,’ Megan interrupted tightly. ‘OK, I want an ultrasound scan, more X-rays and the ophthalmologist.’

‘Do you want me to check the sats again?’ Brianna said uncertainly. ‘Josh’s staff did them in A and E, but…’

‘Double-check them. Josh’s staff aren’t specialists, we are.’

‘He is going to be all right, isn’t he?’ Connor asked as he hovered beside them. ‘That doctor in A and E—the one who was flirting with Brianna—seemed to think he would be.’

‘The doctor’s name is Josh O’Hara, and he wasn’t flirting with me,’ Brianna said swiftly, seeing Megan’s head snap up. ‘He was just being pleasant.’

‘Was he indeed,’ Connor murmured dryly, and Brianna could have kicked him for the dark shadow that suddenly appeared in Megan’s eyes.

‘Look, Connor, why don’t you wait outside?’ she said abruptly. ‘All you’re doing is getting in the way.’

‘I’ll stay,’ he said firmly, and, when she turned back to the baby with a shrug, he took a shallow breath.

He couldn’t leave, and it wasn’t just because he was genuinely concerned about the baby Brianna had found. When she’d almost collided with him outside the hospital he’d been unable to believe what she’d been carrying. The little form so motionless, the shock of thick black hair…For a moment it was as though the last two years had never happened, and then he’d blinked, had seen Brianna’s blue uniform, and the two years had rolled back again, bringing with them all the old pain and heartbreak.

He’d told himself that all he wanted from her was answers. He’d told himself she deserved to be punished for what she’d put him through, but he’d seen the pain in her eyes when that A and E consultant had been examining the baby. She was still in her own private hell, just as he was, and lashing out at her wasn’t the solution, not if he wanted her back. And he did want her back, he realised, feeling his heart twist inside him as he saw her gently touch the little boy’s cheek, because without her…Without her he had nothing.

‘Shouldn’t the police be alerted?’ he said. ‘If this baby is only days old, won’t his mother need help, too?’

‘Good point,’ Megan declared. ‘Did you see anyone hanging about the car park, Brianna?’

‘To be honest, I wasn’t looking,’ she replied.

In fact, Brianna thought with dawning horror, if Jess hadn’t turned up when she had, she would probably have been halfway up the motorway by now, and God knows when this baby would have been found.

‘Damn,’ Megan muttered. ‘Chris, could you try paging Mr Brooke again, see if we can track him down?’