LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

pushed some hair off her face and realised her hand was shaking. The sound of a distant siren reached them and Vic had never heard a sweeter noise. Not that she thought Ryan was about to expire from blood loss, but he had lost a good amount of the red stuff and would definitely be anaemic. She wouldn’t be surprised if he required a transfusion.

      And had Lawson been much longer she might well have succumbed to the urge to do something drastic to prevent him from doing anything else so overwhelmingly stupid again.

      She put her hand under Ryan’s elbow and urged him up. ‘Come on. Walk. We’ll meet Lawson out the front. Keep your arm above your head.’

      ‘ Jeez, Vic, is your bedside manner always this good?’ Ryan grouched as he stumbled beside her.

      ‘No. I reserve this treatment for too-stupid-to-live teenagers.’

      Lawson pulled up at the Dunleavy residence, a place he’d been to hundreds of times since he’d taken up residence on the island. He killed the siren at the same time the trio reached the driveway and jumped down from the cab. Striding around the back, he opened the doors as Victoria and her brothers appeared at the rear.

      He took one look at a worried Joshua, an obviously chastised Ryan and a thunder-faced Victoria and made an executive decision. ‘Why don’t I look after Ryan in the back and you go and get cleaned up, put on your uniform and drive us in?’

      Vic was about to argue when she noticed Lawson’s eyes taking in her attire. Amidst the crisis she’d forgotten that she was in her pyjamas. Not that there was anything indecent about them—they certainly covered more than a lot of clothes did these days.

      Brief silky boxers with high scooped-up side seams and a shoestring-strapped grey singlet that didn’t quite meet the waistband of her shorts. But it was perhaps the blood that was most off putting.

      She gave Ryan one last big-sister glare. ‘Fine. I’ll be ten minutes.’

      Lawson tried really hard not to look as she walked away. She was his partner, for crying out loud. He’d seen her out of uniform hundreds of times. Hell—he’d seen her in a bikini! But he’d already noticed the way her bed-rumpled hair hung loosely around her face and the slight chest bounce as her unfettered breasts had jiggled against the taut fabric of her shirt. The desire to look a bit more was strangely compelling.

      So he failed miserably at the not looking and allowed himself a second or two to indulge in her unselfconscious swagger. The words bite me printed across the backside of her boxers swayed hypnotically in front of his eyes and for a second he imagined just that.

      ‘Er, hello, Lawson? Bleeding here.’

      Lawson startled and dragged his gaze away, horrified at where his mind had been. This was crazy. It was the abstinence. It had to be. Being a sole parent and a shift worker to boot wasn’t exactly conducive to dating.

      He forced himself to focus on the Dunleavy twins, noting the beginnings of red seepage on Ryan’s outer dressing. He helped Ryan into the back of the ambulance and laid him on the gurney using two pillows across the teenager’s chest to elevate the injured hand above heart level.

      He pulled the BP cuff from its receptacle on the wall and wrapped it around Ryan’s uninjured arm. Eighty on fifty. A little on the lowish side. ‘I might pop a drip in while we wait for Victoria.’

      Ryan lifted his head off the pillow and screwed up his face. ‘What? No way. I hate needles.’

      Lawson chuckled. How many times over the years had he tended to Victoria’s brother in the back of an ambulance? ‘Ryan, you just almost hacked off your finger. Do you think one little tiny needle can compare to that?’

      Ryan held his head up for a few more seconds, then let it drop back in surrender. ‘I guess not.’

      Lawson grinned. He reached into the nearby IV drawer and pulled out the things he was going to need. He glanced at Josh sitting in the back passenger seat looking pale, his knee bouncing, his fingers drumming against his thigh. ‘It’s okay, mate. He’ll be all right. Really.’

      Josh looked at Lawson intently and then nodded, his shoulders sagging, and the fidgeting stopped.

      ‘So, do I want to know how you managed to nearly amputate your finger?’ he asked as he swabbed the crook of Ryan’s elbow with alcohol. There was silence from both the boys and Lawson pressed his lips together to suppress the smile. ‘Hmm,’ he said, uncapping the needle and lining it up with the bulging vein staring at him. ‘That stupid, huh?’

      ‘Ow!’

      Lawson ignored Ryan’s protest as he slid the cannula straight into the vein and got an instant flashback. He taped it, flushed it and set up a drip to replace some of the volume Ryan had lost.

      ‘Vic’s pretty ticked,’ Ryan muttered.

      Lawson looked up at anxious Josh, then back at the more robust Ryan. ‘You probably scared the hell out of her.’

      ‘Will it really need surgery?’ Josh asked.

      ‘I haven’t seen it but if it’s as bad as Victoria says, and she does know her severed body parts, then yes.’

      As if she could hear her name, Vic appeared at the back doors. ‘Righto. Are we ready?’

      Lawson, pleased to see her in something neck to toe, her hair pulled back in its regulation ponytail, nodded. ‘You going to be okay to drive?’

      ‘Sure.’ She flicked a glance at Josh. ‘Buckle up,’ she said as she slammed first one door then the other.

      Lawson whistled. ‘She is really ticked.’ And smiled as both boys squirmed in their seats.

      Vic didn’t bother with the siren. She knew Ryan’s blood loss was controlled and being replaced and that, under Lawson’s care, Ryan was in the best of hands. She trusted her partner implicitly. Hell, the man was an Intensive Care Paramedic; she’d trust Lawson with her life. So there was no point driving like a crazy thing, endangering all their lives for something that wasn’t life-threatening.

      The trip took fifteen minutes and Ryan was seen immediately. Two hours later he was on a ward, prepped and ready to go to Theatre, when Bob strode into the room.

      ‘Ryan Dunleavy,’ he boomed. ‘What the hell were you thinking?’

      Vic, her hand entwined with her brother’s and her head on the bed, catching some shut eye, was immediately alert. Ryan, slightly woozy from morphine and looking like little-boy-lost in his white hospital gown, opened heavy lids. ‘Sorry, Dad.’

      His voice cracked and Vic felt it reach right inside her gut and twist. She squeezed his hand. It obviously had the same effect on her father, who strode across the short distance separating them and enveloped his son in a huge bear hug.

      ‘Bloody silly kid,’ he said, his gruff voice not fooling anyone.

      Bob reached out for Josh and put his arm around his other son’s shoulders. After a few moments he straightened and cleared his throat, placing a hand on her shoulder. Vic knew that her mother dying from a pulmonary embolism a few days after the twins had been born, in this very hospital, had for ever altered her father. As it had her.

      Her father’s heavy hand, his comforting squeeze, said it all. Neither needed words to express how confronting it was to have another member of their family lying pale and silent in a bed in this hospital.

      Bob placed a kiss on the top of his daughter’s head. ‘Lawson, take her home,’ he instructed.

      Vic looked behind her, surprised to see Lawson was still there. ‘It’s okay, Dad,’ she protested, looking up at her father. ‘I’ll stay.’

      ‘No.’ Bob shook his head. ‘You’re done in, Vic. You both are. I’m here now and HQ is sending a replacement to the island to cover me for the next few days. You’ve just come off three nights—you both need to sleep.’

      ‘Come

Скачать книгу