One Night to Forever Family Read online

And just what were you thinking? Andy asked himself. Inviting her to stay like that?

  Especially as just seeing her again had stirred up so much consternation in his gut.

  Even in baggy scrubs and her wet hair bunched somehow on the top of her head, she was still one of the most attractive women he’d ever met.

  But she’d ended up with Nick—and, as far as Nick was concerned, she’d belonged to him. But could a woman as strong-willed and determined as Sam ever belong to anyone? Nick had certainly thought so, and somehow she’d made their marriage work. Though, knowing Nick, that wouldn’t have been easy...

  Why was he thinking of the past when it was the immediate future he needed to solve?

  It could be weeks before she found a place, months even, because the summer holiday season was approaching fast and accommodation owners made more money with short-term holiday rentals at this time of the year.

  So why the hell had he suggested she stay with him, even for a couple of nights?

  Exhaustion was the answer. He’d been operating the department without a first-class number two for nearly six months, the previous incumbent having left in a huff for not getting the top job. Others had filled in, of course, but none of them had wanted to take on too much responsibility for a job they’d never get.

  But he’d asked her now and he had to live with her answer. Maybe she’d feel just as uncomfortable about the arrangement as he did and would find somewhere else really quickly.

  But there was no time for conjecture, Sam was already on her feet, pushing back her chair, the far too big scrubs sliding down her legs to reveal a startling pair of lacy purple panties.

  Scarlet with embarrassment, she grabbed the trousers and pulled them up, glaring at him as she muttered, ‘There was very little choice of underwear at Bangkok airport!’

  ‘Great colour!’ he said, mainly to see her blush deepen. ‘Pity you can’t wear them on the outside like a superhero.’

  She looked seriously at him and he guessed she was wondering how things would be between them, working together in the PICU.

  ‘I’m no superhero,’ she said quietly. ‘But I’ve learned a lot and can do my job.’

  And having put him right back in his place, she offered a small smile before adding, ‘But right now I need a bit of string or something to hold up these trousers.’

  She marched ahead of him out of the canteen, one hand holding the errant scrub trousers tightly to her waist.

  He followed close behind her, his head still asking why the hell he’d done this—chosen her for the job when he’d known it would mean the pair of them working closely together.

  Yes, she’d been the best candidate and he had no doubt she’d be superb, but that strong niggle of attraction—he’d always hesitated to call it more—he’d felt from the first moment he and Nick had laid eyes on her, in the staff’s favourite bar across the road from their old hospital, had never really gone away.

  He flinched with embarrassment as he remembered that night. He and Nick had done Rock, Paper, Scissors to see who’d ask her out and the rest, as the saying went, was history. Sam and Nick had been married within three months, and he’d managed to distance himself from the happy couple as much as possible. Nick had been his friend from childhood—no way could he be lusting after Nick’s wife...

  ‘Something to keep my trousers up,’ that same woman reminded him, bringing him out of the past and back to the present—and to the decision that as Nick’s widow Sam was even more unattainable.

  ‘There’ll be a bungy cord in the janitors’ room—everyone needs bungy cords.’

  He ducked in front of her to lead the way, but as he passed, he couldn’t help wondering how she was feeling about this. She’d certainly been startled to see him, so obviously hadn’t had time to learn much about the new hospital or its PICU staffing.

  He opened a door on the right and rummaged around through miscellaneous junk, finally finding not a bungy cord but a ball of twine.

  ‘Put your hands out from your sides while I measure how much we’ll need,’ he said, stepping behind her and unrolling the twine, wrapping it around her waist—not easy when one hand still held tightly to the trousers—until his fingers met at the front.

  ‘Leave enough to tie a bow,’ she said, grabbing at the other side of the trousers before they slid down again. ‘I don’t want to be cutting myself out of it later.’

  He didn’t answer—couldn’t. This was Sam, right here in front of him, more or less in his arms...

  He’d denied this attraction, even to himself, for the three long years she and Nick had been married. He’d avoided her—avoided seeing her with Nick—and now she was here, and her closeness filled his senses. The smell of her seemed to invade his whole body.

  It was hard to deny his attraction now, when she was so close.

  So why the hell had he asked her to stay with him?

  And why had she agreed? Especially given how much he must have hurt her with his accusation as she had lain in hospital...

  Or had she agreed?

  Not in as many words.

  She just hadn’t outright refused.

  There’d surely be a hotel available—could he find her one?

  Or would that look churlish?

  Yep!

  And it wasn’t as if he’d asked her to live with him, He’d just offered her a bed until she found something else.

  Soon, he hoped...

  He pulled back, away from her, the twine ball clutched in his hands. He had to get a life, find a diversion, take out a woman, any woman—anything to keep Sam out of his system.

  He found a knife and cut the length, then handed it to her to tie it around her own waist, easing further away from her, his mind churning with the knowledge that she still had such an effect on him.

  * * *

  Sam tied the twine around her waist then turned the top of the trousers over it so the tunic hung neatly over them—more or less. Fiddling, fiddling, giving herself time to get over the startling discovery that Andy’s arms around her—innocent as the movement had been—had brought heat to her cheeks and sent shivers down her spine.

  Prolonged abstinence—that’s all it was! In the three years since Nick’s death she’d had only one relationship and although occasional sex had been involved in it, it had been more comfort than physical fulfilment that she’d wanted.

  But Andy?

  She’d met him and Nick together, and although it had been Nick who’d asked her out then courted her into a whirlwind marriage, she’d always liked Andy, had felt a kind of kinship with him. There’d always been something steady and reliable about Andy, though she’d seen less of him after her marriage.

  Now he marched away after handing her the twine, and she had to hurry to catch up with him, falling in almost beside him, just a half-step back.

  Deference to the boss, or fear that being closer might disturb her in some way?

  Nonsense. It was simply because of the past that she was feeling uneasy...

  He used a card to access what was obviously a staff elevator and punched the number for the fourth floor.

  ‘You’ll get one of these with your information pack,’ he told her, ‘and sometime today you’ll need to have a photo taken to put on your ID—it only takes a few minutes.’

  End of conversation, the elevator doors opened and they stepped into a corridor, Andy turning left and pushing through pneumatic doors.

  They’d barely entered when a nurse appeared.

  ‘Andy, they need someone down in the ED, eighteen-month-old with a temp of thirty-nine C, listless, flushed, unresponsive.’

  ‘Come with me,’ Andy said to Sam as he turned on his heel and headed back to the elevator.

  ‘These two elevators are staff only. Well, they’re used for moving patients as well, but the hospital is fairly
new and the design is really brilliant, which makes working here a dream.’

  He paused, then added, ‘How often have you stood in an elevator and known there are at least three people in it who’d like to ask you a question about a patient?’

  ‘And often did,’ she added as she nodded her agreement.

  This was good, this was work. She could not only handle working with Andy but she would enjoy it, aware that he was extremely good at what he did.

  If she locked the past away where it belonged, treated Andy like any other colleague, and just concentrated on work...

  He led the way into the ED, which was strangely quiet early in the morning, and a nurse hailed him as he walked in.

  ‘We’ve put her in an isolation room—she’s pink but that could just be the fever,’ she explained.

  ‘Or measles,’ Andy ground out savagely.

  He walked into the room and leant over the child, Sam slipping around to the other side of the bed, the small girl on it staring blankly at the ceiling. Her eyes were red, her nose oozing mucus, and flat red spots covered her forehead and were appearing as they watched, down her face and neck and onto her torso.

  Speaking quietly to the child, Andy eased her mouth open and peered inside, finding tell-tale signs of measles in there as well.

  ‘We need to check with her parents if she’s been vaccinated, although somehow I doubt it as the measles vaccine provides almost one hundred percent protection.

  ‘What checks have you done so far?’ he asked the nurse.

  ‘We’ve removed her clothes and sponged her down, given her twenty milligrams of paracetamol, tried to get some water into her but she’s so unresponsive I was afraid she’d choke.’

  Andy nodded.

  ‘We’ll admit her, take her up to PICU and isolate her up there. We can use IV fluids and add ibuprofen six hourly via her drip.’ He paused, drew a deep breath, then said, ‘I’d better talk to the parents. Who brought her in?’

  ‘The father, but he had to leave. Both parents are lawyers apparently, but I have a phone number for him.’

  Sam followed, trying to thrust images of the sick child from her mind, wondering just how this had happened in this day and age of preventative measures. But as Andy used the card for the elevator, another thought struck her.

  ‘You’ve just come off duty, haven’t you? Why are you following up on this infant?’

  ‘You’ve never worked a few hours after your shift ended?’ he asked, and she shrugged because, of course, she, and probably thousands of other doctors, had.

  ‘Thought not,’ he said. ‘But I’ve not just come off night shift—it’s one of the few perks of the job that I don’t do night shifts. I came in earlier and then again at about four to see a child on the ward who was having breathing problems.’

  He smiled, and although it was a tired smile, it affected her, deep inside, in a way she certainly didn’t want to think about.

  Andy had been Nick’s friend, and for all the irritations she might have felt in her marriage, the difficulties and disappointments, she still felt loyalty to Nick’s memory, and somehow being attracted to his best friend was surely the ultimate disloyalty...

  And, anyway, it was just a smile!

  Andy had always had a nice smile.

  They left the elevator, and Andy led her to the main monitoring desk, pointing out the way all the rooms could be monitored at once and introducing her to Karen, who was the head nurse on duty that morning.

  She watched as his eyes scanned the monitors, and knew he’d been taking a mental note of every patient, even leaning over the desk and picking up a paper file to check on something he’d seen.

  He explained the new admission to Karen, adding, ‘Keep trying the number they have for the father in case the ED didn’t get hold of him. Let him know where we are at and how to find us.’

  A short discussion on their other patients, then Andy turned away, leading Sam along a corridor and returning to the conversation they’d been having.

  ‘Actually, it was my last shift on call, and I’d worked my schedule so I could be here for your orientation before heading off this afternoon for a rest and to try to get my biorhythms back into sync.’

  ‘I thought biorhythms had been totally debunked,’ she said as the elevator doors slid open.

  ‘Not totally and anyway it always seems to me that it’s a better word to use because it’s more than the physical side of yourself—well, myself anyway—that has to sort itself out after being on call, but the emotional and intellectual sides as well. I don’t know about you, but I don’t think well after a change of shifts—not until the sleep thing is sorted.’

  ‘And the emotional side?’ Sam asked as she followed him along the corridor.

  ‘Oh, that’s been totally stuffed for years,’ he said. ‘Unless you’re involved with someone else who works ridiculous hours and often has to dash off at two in the morning for an emergency, a normal relationship is impossible.’

  ‘Is there such a thing as a normal relationship?’ she couldn’t resist asking, thinking of the trials and anxiety she’d often felt in her marriage to Nick. But they’d reached the room where the little girl was already up from the ED and was being intubated by a nurse in full sterile covering, while Andy was looking intently at the chart he’d collected from the door.

  * * *

  With ninety-nine percent of his attention on the child in front of him, that tiny one percent had been caught by something in Sam’s voice as she’d asked that question. The one about relationships...

  Had her and Nick’s marriage not been the one of connubial bliss he and everyone else had always thought it?

  Nick had certainly painted it that way.

  ‘We’ll need to find out about her family,’ he said, dragging that errant one percent back into place. ‘Siblings, parents and grandparents, children she might mix with in day care or kindy.’

  ‘I know most kindergartens won’t accept unimmunised children. I’m not certain whether family day care is covered by it,’ Sam told him, although he’d been speaking to the nurse.

  ‘Her family—or at least one of them—should be with her,’ the nurse muttered, but Andy ignored them both.

  ‘There’s a phone number for the father. When you speak to him just check out all you can about anyone she’s been in contact with. If she has siblings who haven’t been vaccinated, we need to get them in—or get them to their local doctor—for vaccination now. If she’s been with other children at risk, we need to find them and get them vaccinated too.’

  ‘Within seventy-two hours,’ Sam finished for him. ‘I could do that.’

  He frowned at her.

  ‘You’re here for orientation,’ he reminded her, a little too sharply because what he could only put down to lack of sleep was making him overly aware of Sam by his side. Reminding him he’d been foolish enough to ask her to stay with him at his apartment.

  He stepped aside and wrote up the protocols for the day, handed the chart to the nurse, saying, ‘I’d have liked to speak to a family member before admitting her, but I couldn’t leave her in the ED. We’ll have to explain that to someone later.’

  He left the room, Sam on his heels.

  ‘Why Intensive Care not the children’s ward?’ she asked, and he seized on the question to shake off the weirdness going on with this woman’s reappearance in his life. Dear God, he’d known she was coming—had been looking forward to working with her again, given the experience she’d gained—and stupidest of all, he’d thought that long-ago attraction would surely have burnt out...

  He banished the distracting thoughts, put them down to tiredness. This was work, a child’s life was at stake.

  ‘We can isolate her better here, watch for any signs of complication.’

  ‘Pneumonia, encephalitis?’

  ‘Ear infe
ctions,’ he added, shaking his own head as if that might dislodge the softness of her voice.

  Forcing his mind back to work, he led her towards the nurses’ station, situated in the centre of the ward where a team of five nurses monitored the live feeds from all the PICU beds while two clerical staff handled phones and paperwork.

  ‘This is Dr Sam Reilly,’ he said as several of them looked up. ‘She starts here tomorrow and I’m showing her around.’

  He waved Sam forward before adding, ‘No point in introducing you all now, she’ll meet you in time.’

  He turned to one of the clerical workers.

  ‘I’ve just admitted a three-year-old girl with measles and put her in Isolation Room Two. Could you chase up the electronic file from the ED and make sure the room’s online for monitoring?’

  ‘We use paper files that stay with the patient, as well as electronic,’ he said to Sam as he whisked away, aware she was just a step behind him—aware, too, that he should slow, they should walk together, as colleagues did.

  But although he’d been prepared for her arrival, even looked forward to seeing her again, having her on his team, the fact that her physical presence still perturbed him had thrown his mind into chaos.

  It was only temporary, this reaction. They hadn’t parted on the best of terms—no, they’d parted on the worst of terms, he’d hurt her badly—so this would pass.

  Soon, he hoped...

  He thought back to that day in shame, but he’d seen her there in the hospital bed, so pale she’d have disappeared against the white pillow case if the scattering of freckles across her nose and the tangled red hair hadn’t stood out so clearly.

  She’d been injured, but just the sight of her—the pain he’d read on her face—had knotted something in his gut, something that he’d tried to burn away with anger.

  And now?

  Now she was a colleague, and he had to think of her that way, because that was surely the only way she thought of him, She’d certainly never given the slightest indication that she was interested in him—in anyone but Nick, in fact...

  ‘Abby has encephalitis,’ he said, forcing his mind back to work as he led Sam into another room.