LITMIR.BIZ

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was so close now that the ambulance would be there in seconds.

      But was she qualified? As what?

      And there was no love lost between Ginny and Oscar.

      ‘You won’t murder him?’ he asked, and he was only half joking.

      ‘We’ve both taken the Hippocratic oath,’ Ginny murmured. ‘More’s the pity.’

      His eyebrows took a hike. ‘You’re a doctor?’

      ‘Only for now,’ she said, and her tone was a warning. ‘Only when I have to be, so don’t get any ideas about weekends off. Now go. Leave Oscar to me and I’ll do my best to keep him breathing.’

      A doctor?

      Fergus made his way swiftly back to Emergency, his mind racing.

      Suddenly he felt a whole lot better about what he was facing.

      He hadn’t thought this through. When Molly had died he’d simply taken the coward’s way out. He hadn’t been able to stay at his big teaching hospital any more. Everywhere he’d looked there had been memories. And people’s eyes… Every time they’d come toward him they’d clapped him on the shoulder or taken his hand and pressed it in gentle empathy. That last day had been unbearable. He’d been performing a simple catheter insertion and the nurse assisting had suddenly choked on a sob and left, leaving the patient sure that there was a disaster his medical team wasn’t telling him about—and leaving Fergus sure that he had to leave.

      Some of his workmates had been better, he acknowledged. They’d been matter-of-fact, trying not to talk about it—moving on. But the way they’d spoken to him had still been different. He couldn’t bear them not talking about it as much as he couldn’t bear them talking about it and in the end he hadn’t known which he’d hated more.

      ‘Have a break,’ his father told him. Jack Reynard was senior cardiologist at the hospital. His father had been caring, but from a distance, all the time Molly had been ill—and after she’d died he’d hardly been able to face Fergus. ‘Go lie on the beach for a month or two.’

      The thought of lying on any beach without Molly was unbearable but so was staying where he was. So he’d come here. It was only now, hearing the siren, thinking about how truly alone he was, that he wondered how qualified he was to take care of a rural community.

      But now he had back-up. Ginny. Whatever her story was.

      His strides lengthened. He could cope with whatever it was, he decided. As long as he had another doctor behind him.

      Was she nuts, telling him she was a doctor?

      Now was hardly the time for recriminations, Ginny decided. There was work to be done and it had to be done fast. The siren meant there was trouble coming and now she’d admitted she had medical training she knew she could be called on to help.

      Ginny adjusted Oscar’s drip, checked his obs and made him as comfortable as she could without trying to move him. It took two people to use the hydraulic lift, and there weren’t two people available. There might not be any people if this was a true emergency on its way here, she thought.

      She might be needed but she was concerned about leaving Oscar. The huge man was dead drunk and he could roll off the trolley. If she was called away….

      ‘OK, Viental, do something,’ she muttered.

      She propped him up on pillows so he was half-sitting. There was no moan as she hauled him up—she’d given the broken hip cursory credence and she gave it even less credence now. He was showing little sign of pain. He’d be safer sitting up if he were to vomit, and X-rays of a possible broken hip would have to wait.

      Then she stood back and looked at the bed. The bed had rails, ready to be raised at will. Oscar needed those rails to be safe.

      ‘Right, let’s get you organised,’ she muttered.

      The trolley was resting against the bed, but it couldn’t reach the wall at the bedhead because of the bedside table. She could do better than that.

      In seconds she was under the bed, grabbing the bedside table and hauling it under. She pushed the head of the trolley hard against the wall at the end of the room, then shoved the trolley sideways till it was against the wall. Which left a foot between bed and trolley.

      What was happening outside? Don’t ask, she told herself. Get Oscar safe first. She flipped the bed rails up and shoved the bed sideways, securing her patient with the wall on one side of him and the railed bed on the other.

      Oscar was now as safe as she could make him, apart from his breathing. But even there… What else could she do? His oxygen was up to maximum. His airway was clear.

      He needed supervision, but if there was a greater need and Fergus needed her as a doctor…

      ‘What happens if I want to get out?’ Oscar mumbled, but he was so close to sleep she could hardly hear him.

      ‘You’re welcome to try,’ she told him. ‘But I suspect you’re trapped. Just like I am.’

      ‘Ginny…’ It was a call from the corridor, urgent. Miriam’s face appeared round the door. ‘Fergus needs you,’ she snapped, and disappeared.

      ‘I need to go,’ she told Oscar. ‘Stay breathing. That’s an order.’

      ‘I need a doctor.’

      ‘You’ve had one,’ she told him. ‘Relax and let yourself go to sleep.’

      ‘Get lost,’ he snapped, and added another word for good measure.

      She turned away but she couldn’t help but grin. That last expletive had been strong and sure, reassuring her more than anything else that the man might very well survive.

      She was right back into medical mode now, almost as if she’d never been away. In truth, the adrenalin surge was there, as it always was in these situations. She’d missed it.

      Maybe she could work a little with Fergus.

      What sort of man was he?

      ‘Dangerous,’ she muttered as she pushed open the swing doors to Emergency, though she wasn’t sure why she thought it. But that was her overriding sensation. She’d looked up from the cattle grid as she’d tried to hold onto the lamb, and she’d been caught. Fergus was tall, big-boned and a bit…weathered? He had deep brown hair, crinkly, a little bit too long. It needed a comb. Maybe he raked it with his fingers, she thought inconsequentially. That was what it looked like. His lazy grey eyes held laughter and a certain innate gentleness. He wasn’t much older than she was.

      He seemed nice.

      Definitely dangerous, and she didn’t have time in her life for dangerous.

      She didn’t have any inclination to go down that road. Ever.

      CHAPTER THREE

      THAT was the last chance Ginny had time to think of the personal for hours.

      The moment she opened the doors to Emergency she could see why the ambulance boys hadn’t had time to radio in. A woman was lying on the trolley and one glance showed Ginny that they were in trouble. She seemed to be unconscious, limp and flaccid, with each breath shallow and rasping. She was in her late twenties or early thirties, Ginny guessed, simply dressed in faded jeans, white T-shirt and pink sandals. Long blonde hair lay limply around a pallid face and even from the door Ginny could tell that here was a woman who was fighting for her life.

      Or maybe here was a woman who’d come to the end.

      ‘Mummy…’

      Ginny glanced across to the main entrance to see a little girl being carried in. Four years old, maybe? She looked a waif of a child, tear-streaked and desperate. Her blonde hair, shoulder length, was tied back with a red ribbon with blue elephants on it, but the ribbon was grubby and the curls hadn’t been brushed

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