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Nick said quickly, ‘Don’t try to talk. We’ll take care of you now.’

      Tom subsided, and Nick turned swiftly to Laura. ‘I’ll intubate. Let’s get him hooked up to oxygen quickly.’ Glancing at Jenny, he said, ‘We’ll give him glycerine trinitrate sublingually to expand the arteries, and set up an infusion of isosorbide dinitrate. You had better do an ECG, and keep an eye on his blood pressure.’

      ‘Will do.’

      Laura was already starting an intravenous line. Tom looked to be in a bad way, and she was afraid that if they didn’t work fast he would go into cardiac arrest. ‘Are we giving beta-blockers and morphine?’

      He nodded, working swiftly as he answered. ‘I’ll make arrangements for him to be admitted.’

      Laura taped the IV line in place, and for the next few minutes they worked as a team to resuscitate their consultant.

      ‘If he’s not pain-free in forty-eight hours, they’ll probably want to do coronary angiography. Given his condition over the last few months, I wouldn’t be surprised if he ends up having bypass surgery. It’s been a wonder to me that he’s coped for this long.’ His mouth tightened as he spoke, and Laura frowned.

      ‘What do you mean?’

      ‘I guessed this would happen one day,’ Nick said under his breath. ‘I’ve been telling him for a long time now that he should have opted for early retirement on health grounds, but he wouldn’t listen.’

      ‘Can you blame him for that? He’s worked hard all his life to get where he is, and no one would lightly throw it all away.’

      His mouth twisted. ‘That’s what your father said. They’re great friends, aren’t they, he and Tom? He went out of his way to defend his actions.’

      ‘Because he believed the medication was working.’

      Nick shook his head. ‘It’s clear that it wasn’t. I told Tom that he shouldn’t be treating patients while he was ill, but he always said that we work as a team and that there would be enough warning of an impending attack for him to be able to hand over to someone else.’

      Laura sent Tom a swift, anxious glance, but it was doubtful that their patient could hear what they were saying.

      ‘That’s true, though, isn’t it?’ she murmured. ‘He put himself at risk by carrying on, but not his patients.’

      ‘Like your father, you’ll believe what you want to believe.’

      Frowning, she looked up at Nick. Was he right? No matter what her reservations were about him, she had to respect him as a doctor. He was doing everything in his power to save Tom. He worked quickly and efficiently and he was very clear thinking. But, then, as he’d said, he’d seen this coming, hadn’t he?

      She said quietly, ‘What about fibrinolytics?’

      ‘That’s probably a good idea,’ he said in a low voice. ‘We’ll get the test results first, but there’s no history of ulcer or recent surgery so they’re probably advisable in this instance. We need to do whatever we can to unclog these arteries.’

      As soon as they had Tom stabilised, Nick arranged for him to be transferred to the cardiac unit. Laura watched Tom being wheeled away a little later, and hoped fervently that he would be all right.

      ‘At least we were on hand to treat him,’ Nick said. ‘If he had been on his own, I doubt whether he would have survived. As it is, he’s in the best place.’

      She had the feeling that he was trying to comfort her. ‘I know. I haven’t known him for very long but, even so, I get on very well with him. He’s so kind and thoughtful, and he always has time for other people. He was very good to me when I started here.’

      ‘He’s good to everyone. His problem has always been that he works too hard, and doesn’t pay enough attention to his own health. If he had done, he might have heeded some of the signs that things were going wrong. Perhaps now he will begin to listen.’

      Laura bit her lip. She felt as though she was losing a friend and ally. In the few months that she had known him, Tom had always been steadfast in his concern for his colleagues and his patients, and now he was the one who needed support. What had happened to him this morning was serious and life-threatening, and now he must be feeling vulnerable and frightened.

      ‘He’s in good hands. Our cardiac unit is one of the best in the country.’

      She nodded. ‘I know. We deal with these kinds of incidents all the time, and that should make it easier for us to cope, but Tom is one of our own. He’s not all that much older than my father. It sort of brings things home to you, and makes you think of how these things affect families.’

      ‘That’s true.’ He was silent for a moment, then said in a musing tone, ‘Talking of families, that was a nasty gash your brother had. Is he keen on DIY?’

      ‘Not especially, but it makes a change from sitting behind a desk all day. He likes to dabble in all sorts of things that involve keeping busy, like gardening, decorating, sport.’

      ‘What work does he do?’

      ‘He works in a bank. He enjoys what he does, but he says that having a desk job means he doesn’t get enough exercise.’

      ‘Then he wasn’t interested in following family tradition and going into medicine?’

      ‘No, not really.’

      ‘He’s very much like your father, physically. Has his lack of interest in medicine caused any friction? I know that David was particularly pleased when you decided to go to medical school.’

      ‘Perhaps he was, but all he really wants is for us to be happy, whatever we decide to do.’

      Nick looked at her curiously. ‘I still think it’s strange that you and your brother are so very different in appearance. I met your mother once, when she came to a function at the hospital, but you don’t seem to take after her either.’

      Laura gave a faint, wry smile. She had to give him full points for observation. ‘You’re perfectly right,’ she said softly. ‘The truth is, Matthew is their natural son, but I was adopted. It doesn’t matter to me, because I don’t really remember it being any other way. I love my father dearly, and I miss my mother more than words can say.’

      She lowered her head slightly, remembering her adoptive mother. ‘It was a great shock to all of us when she died.’

      Nick frowned. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.’

      She lifted her head and braced herself. ‘That’s all right, I’m fine. I’ve had more than a few years to get over the fact that she’s gone. It’s just that it was so unexpected. She was a good driver, but it was a foggy night and there were patches of ice on the road. That particular bend in the road was an accident black spot. At least now they’ve made it safer by putting warning signs up.’

      ‘She would have been proud to know that you passed your medical exams, and that you became a fully fledged doctor.’

      ‘Yes, I believe she would…even though I may still have a lot to learn.’ Remembering his comments on her junior status from a few days ago, she threw him a hooded glance, and perhaps her gibe hit home because his mouth twisted at the corners.

      He didn’t follow it up, though, because an emergency admission dragged them both back to work.

      The thought still rankled in her mind, though. Whenever she was on duty at the same time as Nick, she felt that he was keeping an eye on her, and she often wondered if he was expecting her to fall flat on her face. A and E was a challenging speciality, and she was doing her level best to master it. You never knew what to expect, but she wanted to do her utmost for her patients, and she knew that she would go on learning for quite some time. She just didn’t need Nick to remind her of that.

      When she went back home that evening,

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