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she didn’t want to risk seeing him, so instead Jasmine just kept restocking the drugs they had used and the needles and wrappers and tiny little ET tubes and trying, and failing, to find a replacement flask of paediatric sodium bicarbonate that had been used in the resuscitation. Then she heard Penny’s voice …

      ‘The guidelines now say not to co-sleep.’

      And it wasn’t because it was Penny that the words riled Jasmine so much, or was it?

      No.

      It was just the wrong words at the wrong time.

      ‘Guidelines?’ Jasmine had heard enough, could not stand to hear Penny’s cool analysis, and swung around. ‘Where are the guidelines at three in the morning when you haven’t slept all night and your new baby’s screaming? Where are the guidelines when—?’

      ‘You need to calm down, Nurse,’ Penny warned.

      That just infuriated Jasmine even more. ‘It’s been a long night. I don’t feel particularly calm,’ Jasmine retorted. ‘Those parents have to live with this, have to live with not adhering to the guidelines, when they were simply doing what parents have done for centuries.’

      Jasmine marched off to the IV room and swiped her ID card to get in, anger fizzing inside her, not just towards her sister but towards the world that was now minus that beautiful baby, and for all the pain and the grief the parents would face. Would she have said that if Penny hadn’t been her sister?

      The fact was, she would have said it, and probably a whole lot more.

      Yes, Penny was right.

      And the guidelines were right too.

      But it was just so unfair.

      She still couldn’t find the paediatric sodium bicarbonate solution and rummaged through the racks because it had to be there, or maybe she should ring the children’s ward and ask if they had some till pharmacy was delivered.

      Then she heard the door swipe and Jed came in.

      He was good like that, often setting up his drips and things himself. ‘Are you okay?’

      ‘Great!’ she said through gritted teeth.

      ‘I know that Penny comes across as unfeeling,’ Jed said, ‘but we all deal with this sort of thing in different ways.’

      ‘I know we do.’ Jasmine climbed up onto a stool, trying to find the IV flask. She so did not need the grief speech right now, did not need the debrief that was supposed to solve everything, that made things manageable, did not really want the world to be put into perspective just yet.

      ‘She was just going through the thought process,’ Jed continued.

      ‘I get it.’

      He could hear her angrily moving things, hear the upset in her voice, and maybe he should get Lisa to speak to her, except Lisa was busy with the parents right now and Greg was checking drugs and handing over to the day staff. Still, the staff looked out for each other in cases like this, and so that was what Jed did.

      Or tried to.

      ‘Jasmine, why don’t you go and get a coffee and …?’ He decided against suggesting that it might calm her down.

      ‘I’m just finishing stocking up and then I’m going home.’

      ‘Not yet. Look—’ he was very patient and practical ‘—you’re clearly upset.’

      ‘Please.’ Jasmine put up her hand. ‘I really don’t need to hear it.’

      ‘I think you do,’ Jed said.

      ‘From whom?’

      ‘Excuse me?’ He clearly had no idea what she was alluding to, but there was a bubble of anger that was dangerously close to popping now, not just for this morning’s terrible events but for the weeks of confusion, for the man who could be nice one minute and cool and distant the next, and she wanted to know which one she was dealing with.

      ‘Am I being lectured to by Dr Devlin, or am I being spoken to by Jed?’

      ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about. You’re distressed.’ He knew exactly what she was talking about, knew exactly what she meant, yet of course he could not tell her that. Jed also knew he was handling this terribly, that fifteen minutes sitting in the staffroom being debriefed by him wasn’t going to help either of them.

      ‘I’m not distressed.’

      ‘Perhaps not, but I think it would be very silly to leave like this. It would be extremely irresponsible to get into a car and drive home right now, so I’m suggesting that you go to the staffroom and sit down for fifteen minutes.’ She stood there furious as she was being told what to do, not asked, she knew that.

      ‘Fine.’ She gave a terse smile. ‘I will have a coffee and then I’ll go home, but first I have to put this back on the crash trolley and order some more from pharmacy.’

      ‘Do that, and then I’ll be around shortly to talk to you.’ Jed said, ‘Look, I know it’s hard, especially with one so young. It affects all of us in different ways. I know that I’m upset …’

      She didn’t say it, but the roll of her eyes as he spoke told him he couldn’t possibly know, couldn’t possibly understand how she felt.

      ‘Oh, I get it,’ Jed said. ‘I can’t be upset, I don’t really get it, do I? Because I don’t have a child, I couldn’t possibly be as devastated as you.’ His voice was rising, his own well-restrained anger at this morning’s events starting to build. ‘I’m just the machine that walks in and tells the parents that their baby’s dead. What the hell would I know?’

      ‘I didn’t mean that.’ She knew then that she was being selfish in her upset, but grief was a selfish place and one not easy to share.

      ‘Oh, but I think you did,’ Jed said. ‘I think you meant exactly that.’

      And he was right, she had, except that wasn’t fair on either of them, because she had cried many times over a lost baby, it just felt different somehow when you had one at home. There was a mixture of guilt and pain tempered with shameful relief that it hadn’t happened to her, because, yes, she’d taken Simon into bed with her, despite what the guidelines might say, and it wasn’t fair on anyone.

      It simply wasn’t fair.

      Jasmine had no idea how the next part happened. Later she would be tempted to ring Security and ask if she could review the security footage in treatment room two between seven twenty and seven twenty-five, because she’d finally located the sodium bicarbonate and stepped down from the stool and stood facing him, ready to row, both of them ready to argue their point, and the next moment she was being kissed to within an inch of her life.

      Or was it the other way around?

      She had no way of knowing who had initiated it, all she was certain of was that neither tried to stop it.

      It was an angry, out-of-control kiss.

      His chin was rough and dragged on her skin, and his tongue was fierce and probing. He tasted of a mixture of peppermint and coffee and she probably tasted of instant tomato soup or salty tears, but it was like no other kiss she had known.

      It was violent.

      She heard the clatter of a trolley that moved as they did.

      It was a kiss that came with no warning and rapidly escalated.

      It was a kiss that was completely out of bounds and out of hand.

      She was pressed into the wall and Jed was pressing into her; his hands were everywhere and so too were hers; she could feel his erection pressing into her. More than that she too was pushing herself up against him, her hands just as urgent as his, pulling his face into hers, and never had she lost control so quickly, never had she been more unaware of her surroundings because only the crackle of the intercom

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