LITMIR.BIZ

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A quick swipe with the paper towels and Emma was ready to turn around. ‘How’s it going, Caroline?’

      ‘Not good, I’m sorry. I can’t find anyone to come in. Alistair’s going to stay on, though, and I can probably find an extra registrar from somewhere. We’ve cancelled our drinks. Nobody’s really in the mood anymore...’

      ‘I’ll stay,’ Emma told her.

      ‘But—’

      ‘There’s no way I’m going home until I hear how Stuart’s doing and by then Lily will be fast asleep, so I may as well stay until the morning crew gets here.’

      ‘Are you sure?’

      ‘I’m sure. I just need to ring Mum and let her know what’s happening.’

      She was getting good at these white lies, wasn’t she? Emma wasn’t at all sure about this. It would mean she would still be in the department late this evening and how hard was it going to be not to remember every agonising detail about last year?

      But she didn’t have a choice.

      Any more than she had had a year ago, when she’d given that solemn promise to Sarah.

      She’d coped since then. And she would cope now.

      Because that was how things had to be.

      * * *

      Man, it was cold...

      Despite the full leather gear and a state-of-the-art helmet, Jack Reynolds was beginning to feel like he was frozen to the seat of the powerful motorbike beneath him.

      It was time he took a break but he was so close now. In less than an hour he’d be hitting the outskirts of Glasgow and then he could find his motel and thaw out with a long, hot shower.

      And tomorrow, he’d do something he’d sworn he’d never do.

      He would celebrate Christmas.

      Well...maybe celebrate wasn’t exactly the right word. This journey was more like the world’s biggest apology.

      He just happened to have a brightly wrapped gift in the pannier of his bike that the sales assistant in Hamleys—London’s best toy shop—had assured him would be perfect for an eighteen-month-old child. The little girl he hadn’t seen in nearly a year.

      His goddaughter.

      And his niece...

      A wave of the sensation that had grown from a flicker, that had been all too easy to bury months ago, to its current unpleasant burn generated a warmth that Jack would rather not be feeling right now, despite the chill of the wind seeping into his bones.

      An unfamiliar feeling that he could only identify as shame.

      Who knew that grief could mess with your head enough to turn you into someone you couldn’t even recognise?

      How painful was it to start realising how much that could have hurt others?

      At least Lily was too young to have been affected by it, but what on earth was he going to say to Emma to try and start mending bridges?

      He’d been unbelievably selfish, hadn’t he?

      It had been all about him. He’d lost his twin brother, Ben, in that dreadful accident and it had felt as if more than half of himself had died that night.

      But Emma had lost Sarah, who’d been her best friend forever, and they’d been as close as sisters. Closer than most sisters, probably. What had given him the right to think his loss had been greater?

      The traffic was building up as the M74 into Glasgow bypassed the township of Uddingston. Somewhere in the darkness to the left the river Clyde was shadowing his route into the city he’d never really expected to see again. He’d turned his back on everything there—and everyone—when he’d walked out all those months ago.

      The rain spattering his visor felt different now. There was a sludgy edge to it that was making visibility worse than it had been and the lights of the vehicles around him were blurred and fragmented. Signposts warned of the major road changes ahead where the M73 joined the M74.

      That was where it had happened, wasn’t it?

      Where Ben and Sarah had had the accident that had claimed their lives exactly a year ago today?

      Almost to the minute...

      There was a new burning sensation now, behind his eyes this time, and he recognised that feeling.

      It had been only a couple of weeks ago. In the burning heat of an African summer, when one of his colleagues had started reminiscing about English winters. About Christmas...

      He could have sworn that Ben was right beside him, giving him one of those none-too-gentle elbow nudges in his ribs. Saying the words that had been the last thing his brother had ever said to him.

      ‘See you tomorrow, bro. For once, you’re going to enjoy Christmas. Me and Sarah and Lily...we’re going to show you what Christmas is all about. Family...’

      It hadn’t been the first time he’d found a private spot with the view of nothing but desert but it had been the first time in forever that he’d cried. Gut-wrenching sobs that had been torn from his soul. And that was why he recognised this painful stinging sensation at the back of his eyes.

      It couldn’t happen now. Not in heavy traffic and with what looked like sleet getting thicker by the second. There was an exit lane ahead and he needed to change lanes and make sure he was well clear of any idiot who might decide to take the exit unexpectedly.

      Like that dodgy-looking small truck that was crossing the line directly in front of him.

      Tilting his body weight, after checking there was a gap in the lane beside him, Jack flipped on his indicator and glanced over his shoulder again to check the lane was still clear.

      Where the hell had that car come from? And what did it think it was doing?

      No-o-o...

      * * *

      Text messages had been frequent over the last hour, including one that accompanied an adorable photo of Lily, bundled up like a little Eskimo in her puffy, pink jacket, with tinsel in her dark curls, crouching down to put an enormous carrot beside a bucket of water. Emma could see the ropes of the swing hanging from the branch of the old oak tree in the garden in the background so she knew exactly where the bucket had been placed.

      Exactly where she should have been, too.

      Just as well she was too busy to dwell on the unexpected turn her evening had taken.

      The waiting room was crowded but the curtained cubicles were all full right now. Every doctor had several patients to cover and Emma was trying to keep herself mobile so she could help wherever she was needed. She just had to decide on the priority as she looked at the list on the glass board.

      It wouldn’t be the drunk in Curtain Eight who’d been punched in the nose and had a septal haematoma that needed draining. Or the teenager that had downed enough alcohol at a work Christmas party to collapse. Someone else could supervise the administration of activated charcoal there. Was it the young woman with epigastric pain in Curtain Four? The dislocated shoulder in Curtain Two that needed sedation and relocation? That was a task that needed quite a lot of physical strength sometimes so she might need to wait until Alistair had a free moment, and he was busy sorting pain relief for that nasty foot fracture that had come in a little while ago when an elderly man had fallen from the ladder he was using to hang twinkly lights in a garden tree.

      The X-rays were up on the screen beside her and Emma couldn’t help leaning in for a closer look. A Lisfranc fracture and a fracture/dislocation of at least two other joints. This patient was going to need some urgent orthopaedic management as soon as pain relief was on board and a plaster back-slab applied. He’d need to be kept nil by mouth, too, in case a theatre slot became available.

      The baby,

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