His Runaway Nurse Read online

  Not wanting to want them…

  Flashing lights interrupted her fantasy, turning the moonlit night into a carnival. She heard Flynn sigh, felt his arm squeeze her shoulders, then he kissed her on the temple and turned away.

  ‘I’ll come with you. Maybe I can help,’ she offered, hurrying beside him as he strode back into the hospital, turning left towards A and E, arriving there as the ambulance bearers opened the rear door of their vehicle.

  ‘It’s Mrs Warren. She was lifting a pot of boiling stock and it slopped over and spilled all down her leg,’ Julie told Flynn, as he drew close enough to see the patient he’d released only two days earlier moaning in pain on the trolley.

  Guilt that he’d given in to Mrs Warren’s pleas to let her out of hospital a few days early hit him like a fist in the belly. Had it been festival fever that had caused him to make such a rash decision?

  ‘Oh, Flynn, my hip,’ Mrs Warren wailed, grabbing Flynn’s hand and holding it tightly in both of hers. ‘Tell me I haven’t hurt my hip.’

  One glance had shown him the extent of her burns, down both thighs and the lower right leg, yet she was worried about her hip?

  ‘Did you fall, that you’re worried about it?’ he asked her, still studying the burns, visible through the plastic wrap the ambos had applied.

  ‘I kind of bumped myself,’ she said, refusing to relinquish Flynn’s hand, so he had to walk beside the trolley as it was wheeled in to A and E. ‘I don’t care about the burns but I need my hip to be all right. I couldn’t go through all that again.’

  ‘It’s not likely you’ll have hurt it—remember your new hip joint is far stronger than the old one was,’ he reminded her, knowing she needed the reassurance, although the burns were in the forefront of his mind.

  Hot liquid—scalds—usually caused deep partial or full-thickness burns, depending on the temperature of the liquid and the length of time the skin was exposed to it. The fact that Mrs Warren was more concerned about her hip than the burns suggested they were at least deep-partial, generally less painful in the first instance than superficial burns.

  Majella was standing at the entrance to the cubicle where he’d examined her earlier, the door open to allow them easy access.

  ‘I’m good with burns,’ she said, and though Flynn wondered about the ethics of allowing her to stay—after all, he only had her word that she had training of some kind—the way she spoke told him she could be useful.

  ‘We started a drip, irrigated the wounds with saline, covered them with plastic film and brought her straight here,’ Julie reported, handing the nurse who’d appeared Mrs Warren’s papers, and getting a signature on the ambulance service’s copy.

  ‘Do you want me to call someone in?’ the A and E nurse asked Flynn. ‘I’m officially on duty in here tonight but you wanted me to stay near Sam and his family—especially with the new baby—so what do you think?’

  ‘Majella’s had experience with burns,’ he said, only realising he’d made the decision to accept her help when he heard his own words. ‘You can go back to Sam and the family—but stay unobtrusive.’

  The nurse grinned at him.

  ‘They’re in the family room—of course I’ll be unobtrusive.’

  She disappeared and Flynn turned to his new assistant.

  ‘Oxygen first?’ she asked, lifting a mask and sliding it into place when he nodded.

  ‘Then full obs—you do pulse and temp, I’ll do the BP.’

  ‘We’ll sort out the burn, Mrs Warren,’ he continued, ‘then X-ray that hip to make sure it’s still where it should be.’

  Mrs Warren nodded, her eyelids drooping as if the ordeal had made her very tired.

  ‘Stay with us, love,’ Majella urged her. ‘We need to ask you where it hurts, things like that, and after we’re all done with questions, you can sleep.’

  ‘Pulse is ninety-seven,’ she said more quietly to Flynn.

  ‘Could be mild hypoxia—her respiration rate is up as well. The oxygen should stabilise her fairly quickly.’

  He was pumping up the blood-pressure cuff as he spoke, and the frown on his face as he watched the pressure register on the meter suggested it, too, was elevated.

  ‘I’m going to run the fluid into you a little faster,’ he told Mrs Warren. ‘And as soon as we’ve examined your legs, I can give you a little more pain relief.’

  He turned again to Majella.

  ‘What’s your estimation of the wound area?’

  She smiled at him.

  ‘Think I don’t know the Rule of Nines, huh?’ she teased, the accompanying smile making him forget for an instant where they were.

  ‘Leg’s are nine per cent each, front and back and half the right leg is affected so I’d say five, and the left leg only partially burned, I’d say three—total eight, which isn’t too bad.’

  Flynn who was peeling off the plastic wrap nodded his agreement.

  ‘Thickness?’ he asked, and Majella came closer, peering over his shoulder at the burns.

  ‘Skin pale and shiny,’ she observed. ‘Some blisters already developing, which means there’s capillary destruction and fluid escaping to cause them. Could be some nerve damage as well, which is why they’re not as painful as superficial burns.’

  He nodded his agreement of her assessment, then spoke to Mrs Warren.

  ‘I’m going to touch you in a couple of places and want you to tell me if the touch is blunt or sharp.’

  He used his gloved finger to press down on some of the pale, avascular areas of the burn on the right leg, and was pleased when Mrs Warren’s response was correct. He used the blunt end of a scalpel to press for sharp and again she could tell, but when he repeated the exercise on her left leg, which seemed less severely affected, she became confused, finally admitting she couldn’t tell.

  The skin above the burn on the left side was tight and shiny red, the redness suggesting superficiality. But now Flynn had to wonder.

  ‘There are more blisters on her left leg,’ Majella said, picking up on his uncertainty. ‘Will you aspirate the fluid?’

  ‘Have you done that in practice or just read about it?’ he asked her, wondering just how far her training went.

  ‘We try to do it always. I think I mentioned I spent time in Asia after that big earthquake there. We set up a field hospital and burn wounds were the most common thing we treated, not from fires after the earthquake but from cooking or heating fires. The theory we follow is that open wounds lose far more fluid than closed ones and are more susceptible to infection, so taking the roof off the blister is bad for two reasons. But then you get blisters which, by their very weight, create a bigger wound, so we go with getting rid of the fluid and leaving the skin intact.’

  ‘Me, too,’ Flynn said, although part of his mind had picked up the least important bit of the conversation. Majella in Asia! In their youth, he’d been the one who’d wanted to travel—to see the world. All Majella had ever hankered for had been a home of her own.

  Which was what she’d found in that small cave, a secret place—a home.

  Yet she’d had a home…

  Disquiet he couldn’t pinpoint filtered through Flynn’s mind and although he concentrated on Mrs Warren, part of his brain probed through memories of the past—little cameos of his youth, Majella’s youth.

  Work.

  ‘You want to do that leg?’ he asked his new assistant. Majella looked at him in horror.

  ‘Right now? Before you’ve given Mrs Warren some pain relief?’

  ‘Almost right now,’ he said. ‘The opioid I slipped into the drip earlier should be working in a minute. Can you see the instruments you’ll need?’

  Was he testing her? Majella wondered, then she realised she couldn’t blame him if he was. What did he know of her training or experience? She found a tray and set out what she’d need on it, sterile pads, saline to rinse away the aspirate, and a syringe with a wide-bore needle. Saw Flynn nod and felt a sense of excitement as she realised they we
re working as a team.

  ‘I’m going to take some of the fluid from the blisters on your legs,’ she told Mrs Warren. ‘I’ll be as quick as I can, so Flynn can take you into X-Ray and check your hip.’

  But working under Flynn’s steady gaze made her fingers tremble and she was annoyed with herself for not doing the job as efficiently as she’d have liked, although Flynn’s ‘Well done’ seemed genuine, his praise bringing delight in a way no official commendation had ever done.

  With the blisters flattened into grey areas of damaged skin, and the wounds once again covered to prevent infection, they wheeled Mrs Warren through to X-Ray.

  ‘Do you always do your own portering at night?’ Majella asked him.

  ‘Own portering, own X-rays, sometimes own nursing as well,’ he said, sounding annoyed about the situation but accepting of it. ‘Staff cuts are everywhere, and though we have plenty of beds and great equipment, we can’t do a lot of more complicated medicine because we can’t afford the staff. Mrs Warren had to go into Bendigo for her hip replacement, although she did come back here to recuperate. We’ve good physio services from two physios who job-share, each of them working five-day fortnights, and a visiting occupational therapist once a fortnight. She gives our staff exercises for patients to do and sees people here as outpatients.’

  She helped him settle Mrs Warren into position beneath the machine, marvelling at his firm but gentle touch, his teasing care and evident concern. Once satisfied his patient was positioned properly but comfortable, he retreated behind the glassed screen, motioning for Majella to come with him.

  He took two films then they shifted Mrs Warren to a different position so he could take another two. Flynn left to put them in the developer while Majella chatted to the now sleepy woman, trying to keep her mind off possible damage to her new hip joint.

  ‘The hip’s fine,’ Flynn announced, coming back out with films which he put up in a light box so Mrs Warren would not only hear but see that all was well.

  She’d probably seen so many X-rays of her hip she could read them herself, Majella realised.

  ‘Now we’ll settle you into bed,’ Flynn told her, taking up the role of both porter and nurse once again, but when they reached a corridor that Majella hadn’t been down before, a nurse came out to help them. Flynn and Majella helped her transfer Mrs Warren to a bed, then reattach her to her drip and oxygen.

  ‘Did you drive up?’ Flynn asked, guiding Majella out of the room while the nurse changed her patient into a nightgown.

  It took Majella a moment to remember that she had. She smiled at him.

  ‘I’d forgotten that,’ she said. ‘I’d have felt a right goose if I’d let you drive me back to the cabin then realised I’d left my own car at the hospital.’

  ‘I don’t think either of us were thinking straight at the time,’ he said, and the look in his eyes as he spoke made her remember all the feelings the kiss had generated.

  Could a look do that?

  ‘I’d better go,’ she said quickly, needing to get away from him so she could cool down and think rationally about all this. ‘You’re going home yourself?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘There are plenty of empty beds. I’ll nap up here—I want to keep an eye on Mrs Warren. There’s a danger with pain relief for burns victims so I can only give her small doses at regular intervals. Nitrous oxide is actually the best because it can be self-administered, but as she’s a little hypoxic I can’t give her that. Just small doses of opioid as she needs them.’

  Majella lifted a hand and touched his shoulder.

  ‘Try to get some sleep. It’s been a long day.’

  He smiled at her, the movement of his lips emphasising the lines age and tiredness had drawn in his face, although, if anything they made him more handsome.

  ‘I will,’ he promised, then he bent his head and kissed her on the lips. ‘You too!’

  Majella walked away, the tiredness she’d seen in Flynn’s face now dogging her own footsteps. But she couldn’t let a little tiredness fog her brain. She had to think, to consider where things now stood.

  To consider the complication that was Flynn…

  CHAPTER SIX

  SMALL towns! Majella thought, as she, Helen and Sophie fought to keep the crowd around their stall happy. But although everyone who stopped there bought something—well, they really needed an excuse to stop and chat—she knew they were there for only one reason—to see the child they’d once seen in church all grown up.

  ‘You rescued those little boys—that was brave,’ one woman said, her restless hands pointing to first a soap and then a jar of salve. ‘Of course, I knew your grandfather quite well. Yes, one of those green tubes, too. Will you be coming back to stay?’

  ‘Are you OK?’ Sophie whispered to her, as Majella turned to the back of the stall to bag the woman’s purchases and sort out some change.

  ‘I’m fine and we’re making a fortune. At this rate we’ll sell out today and we can all go home tomorrow.’

  She’d spoken unthinkingly, or perhaps thinking of her own escape, so Sophie’s wail, ‘And miss the ball?’ brought her back down to earth.

  ‘Of course not,’ she promised, knowing Sophie had a new dress bought especially for this occasion—the farewell ball on the final evening of the festival—and quite possibly for the young man whose mother practised ayurvedic medicine in another of the stalls.

  She turned back to the counter to give her customer her package and change, then moved on to the next one, another person more excited by the gossip that Majella Goldsworth had returned to Parragulla than the rescue of the boys or Helen’s wonderful products.

  Used to being just a number in the army, she found the attention trying, while the most frequently asked question—should she do up a list of FAQs and answers on a poster and hang it in front of the stall?—about whether she would return to live in Parragulla, was one she couldn’t answer.

  She’d been so excited when she’d seen the house advertised for auction. It had come at a time when she’d decided she had to make a home of her own. Somewhere! The ad had been like a sign—a confirmation that going back to Parragulla was the right move along the path to independence. She’d thought long and hard about it, wondering if she was making too much of a coincidence, but in the end the decision to return had felt right. The idea of turning the house into a happy, joy-filled home and cleansing it of the shadows of the past had begun to burn inside her.

  But now she knew the house was beyond her reach, and what with Flynn and lost boys and kisses and Mrs Warren’s burns, she hadn’t had time to think about alternative futures.

  ‘Man!’ Gracie cried out, in such delighted tones Majella turned towards the playpen.

  The little girl was standing up, pointing at an approaching figure.

  A figure so familiar the embers of attraction lit last night flared back to life in Majella’s body.

  ‘Flynn!’ she murmured, but he hadn’t noticed her, all his attention on the small girl who called to him.

  ‘Man!’ Grace was shouting now and holding up her hands towards Flynn.

  ‘Little flirt!’ Helen said fondly, but the child’s behaviour was disturbing to Majella, and not only because of Grace’s lack of discrimination in choosing which man to smile at.

  Majella had always known her daughter would need some stable male influences in her life as she was growing up, but hadn’t thought a three-year-old would differentiate between the sexes, simply being happy to have people who loved her inhabiting her small world.

  To Majella’s surprise, Flynn had responded to the upraised arms, and her daughter now rested on his arm, while her soft baby lips whispered secrets in his ear and her chubby baby hands clutched his head.

  Pain she didn’t understand shafted through Majella’s body and she closed her eyes, but the image of the man and child seemed burnt onto her retinas and refused to go away.

  ‘Not that pink soap, the yellow one,’ a customer said,
and Majella turned her mind back to selling soap, although with Grace in Flynn’s arms some of her attention was on him.

  She concluded the sale of yellow soap, smiling politely but not terribly sincerely.

  ‘Six cakes of lemon myrtle soap, please.’

  Now all of her attention was on him, and on Grace who was pointing to the man she’d snavelled as if introducing him to her mother!

  ‘Shades of things to come,’ Helen whispered in Majella’s ear, and Majella spun towards her friend.

  ‘What do you mean?’ she demanded, so abruptly Helen took a step back.

  ‘Teenage years,’ Helen said mildly. ‘Bringing the boyfriend home to meet Mum!’

  ‘Oh!’

  Feeling stupid, Majella packed the six cakes of soap into a paper bag, then handed them to Flynn, holding out her arms for her daughter at the same time.

  ‘Don’t you trust me with her?’ he asked, jiggling Grace up and down on his arm so the child squealed with delight.

  ‘I wouldn’t trust you with any woman still breathing,’ Helen answered for Majella. ‘Not with that smile.’

  The teasing statement made Majella look at him again, seeing what Helen saw—a tall, rangy, very good-looking guy with sleepy blues eyes and a sinfully sexy smile.

  What on earth had she been thinking, kissing him last night?

  Apart from the emotional tumult it had caused her, men who looked like Flynn would always have a woman in their lives.

  And he still held her child.

  ‘I’m going to talk to someone about windmills and wind power. Maybe Grace would like a change of scenery.’

  It was a challenge—will you trust your child to me?—and Majella knew it. What she couldn’t understand was why he’d want to lug a child along with him when he was off to do man things with windmills.

  ‘They have miniatures set up in front of a fan, demonstrating the way they work and how much power they generate. Grace might like them.’

  Grace would love them, but that didn’t lessen the uneasiness that sat heavily in Majella’s chest.

  ‘So is this Flynn?’ Sophie joined them, breaking a silence that was becoming very strained.