One Night to Forever Family

by Meredith Webber

  Even enticing?

  Definitely exciting to many parts of her body.

  But she had to focus on work.

  The small boy was Jake Andrews, and as Sam entered the room, he was sleeping. To one side sat the dedicated nurse, while on the other side his mother slept, not in a comfortable chair but on a narrow hospital bed, as sterile as the room itself.

  While Andy examined their patient, Sam read through the notes, sighing again to herself when she realised what this child and his family had already been through. Superstitiously, she crossed her gloved fingers, hoping this time the treatment would succeed.

  ‘I don’t know that crossing gloved fingers works as well as un-gloved ones,’ Andy murmured to her a little later as they stripped off their protective gear and threw it into the various bins.

  She smiled and although her own body was asking what harm there’d be in a purely sexual relationship with him for a while, her brain was yelling to forget such folly. Andy hadn’t the slightest interest in her. In fact, given how he’d felt about Nick’s accident she was surprised that he seemed to tolerate her at all, let alone offer her a bed.

  Although, as he’d said to her that first afternoon, she was the widow of his best friend...

  And if that reminder filled her with a deep sadness, well, that was her problem.

  She left the changing room, but Andy was close behind her.

  ‘Our next arrival, Grant Williams, was riding his bicycle home from a mate’s last night and was knocked over by a hit-and-run driver. It took a while to stabilise him, both at the scene and in the ED.’

  ‘After which,’ Sam guessed, ‘he spent a good deal of time in Theatre getting put back together again.’

  He’d also been put into an induced coma, Sam discovered when they reached his room, where his two anxious parents sat.

  ‘Did someone speak to you about his condition?’ she asked quietly, although both parents looked too shell-shocked to have taken much in.

  ‘Broken pelvis, broken leg, fractured shoulder, cracked head,’ the father recited, and was about to continue when Sam intervened.

  ‘Did they tell you he’s been put into an induced coma so he’s deeply asleep, unconscious really, which will give his body, and particularly his brain, a little time to recover.’

  ‘Someone said something,’ the mother said quietly, and Sam smiled at her.

  ‘What it means is that he won’t regain consciousness until the specialists think he’s well enough to cope with it all. That won’t be for a few days, so although I know you want to be near him, you’re better off going home and getting some rest. One of you might like to come back a little later just to sit and talk quietly to him, smooth his skin. But when the specialists decide to bring him out of the coma, we’ll contact you so you can both be here, and you’ll be the first people he sees.’

  ‘What if we don’t want to go home? If we both want to stay with our boy?’

  The aggression in the man’s voice suggested he was already exhausted so Sam knew she’d have to tread very carefully.

  She was assembling her most persuasive arguments when she heard someone come into the room behind her and knew it was Andy.

  ‘Of course you may stay if you wish,’ he said, speaking directly to the father. ‘But it’s likely to be three or four days—perhaps longer—before the specialists decide to reverse the drug that’s helping his body and mind deal with what happened. When that decision is made, we’ll let you know so you can be here to reassure him he’s safe.’

  The father nodded and put his arm around his wife.

  ‘Maybe the doctor’s right, love,’ he said. ‘We’ll be no good to him if we’re exhausted, now, will we?’

  She gave a wan smile but stood up at his urging, and after the lightest of kisses on her son’s pale cheek left the room.

  Sam was wondering why it still was—in a world where women often outnumbered men as doctors—that a man’s explanation of a situation still held more weight. With other men, at least.

  Musing on this, she missed the first bit of Andy’s conversation.

  ‘So I’ve a three-day conference in Sydney from tomorrow, but the welcome stuff starts this evening.’

  She caught up as they followed the couple out the door. ‘I wouldn’t go if I felt you still needed me here, but you’ll be fine.’

  He walked away, paused, then turned to look at her, hesitating, before adding, ‘I’ll leave the car keys on the kitchen table—use it if you like.’

  Another glance her way. ‘And definitely use it if you’re called out at night. I’ll get a cab to the airport.’

  Although, when she considered them again, those two looks towards her had told her everything, as well as his abrupt departure to a conference in Sydney.

  He was ruling a line under what had happened between them the previous night, just as she had done earlier.

  But would three days be enough for her body to get with the programme?

  To stop fizzing with excitement at the sound of his voice and flaring with heat if he accidentally brushed up against her?

  It had been bad enough discovering she was physically attracted to Andy when they’d met again, but it was far worse now, when every square inch of her skin knew the feel of his skin against it and seemed determined not to forget that night.

  And yet...

  * * *

  Andy walked out through the front entrance to his apartment building, confident he’d find a cab cruising past. Confident, also, that he was doing the right thing—getting right away from the beguiling woman who was his best friend’s widow,

  He’d never been good with calendar dates so he hadn’t had a clue that it had been the torturous pain of loss that had driven Sam into his arms the previous night. She’d been so willing, so hot really, responding with a ferocity he’d been foolish enough to believe was because she felt as much attraction to him as he did to her.

  The intensity of the experience had stunned him, to the extent that his body felt as if she’d imprinted herself on his skin.

  Cursing quietly under his breath, he threw his overnight bag into the taxi, pleased he had the diversion of a trip to Sydney, although Antarctica might have been a better option. But a couple of days away from the distraction that was Sam would help him get his life back on track—get things into perspective again...

  Possibly!

  He shook his head, so lost in his memories of the passion they’d shared he barely heard the cabbie’s conversation.

  Something about football, perhaps?

  * * *

  Left to her own devices, Sam visited the rest of her patients, discussing each of them with the dedicated nurse on duty with the child.

  Whoever had trained these nurses in the fairly new hospital had done an excellent job because all the ones she saw today—and had seen earlier—were really invested in their patients, showing empathy as well as caring.

  It was a special job, nursing in a PICU, and although the majority of nurses who chose to work there were empathetic, she’d known a few who just did their job—and did it well—but stayed detached from the child and his or her family.

  And she was thinking about this, why? she wondered when she sat down at her desk to write up some notes and check the medication orders.

  She knew the answer.

  Thinking about anything was better than thinking about the previous night—and the way she’d behaved.

  Like a wanton hussy, her old secondary school teacher would have said. Throwing yourself into that man’s arms...

  But that man was Andy, and although she’d seen less of him after her marriage she’d always been impressed by his dedication to his work—impressed by him as a genuinely nice person.

  In fact, it had been his decision to leave the hurly-burly of the Emergency Department that Nick had love
d so much to work in Intensive Care and then Paediatric ICU that had influenced her own decision.

  Though just why she was thinking of Andy on the anniversary of Nick’s death, she wasn’t sure. She pressed her hand against her flat stomach and forced her mind back to work.

  * * *

  A call from the nurse with the oncology patient killed any wayward thoughts and she went back to his room, gloved and gowned, and managed the mask herself this time before quietly opening the door.

  Jake lay pale and wan on the bed, but a nasty rash was appearing on his torso.

  ‘Have you called his oncologist?’ Sam asked, and the nurse nodded.

  ‘It’s most likely a reaction to one of the drugs he’s on to suppress his immune system so his body doesn’t reject the new stem cells, but I’ll take some blood to test for infection.’

  Sam was watching the monitor as she spoke, seeking any variation in the patterns of his heart rate or his blood oxygen level, listening to his chest, feeling the slightly raised nature of the rash.

  She used a port in his left arm to extract some blood and labelled the three phials she’d taken while the nurse organised for someone to collect them from the changing room to get them to the laboratory as quickly as possible.

  ‘Fluid overload,’ Sam muttered to herself, and checked the drip to see how much fluid had gone into him since the last check, then his catheter bag to ensure he was getting rid of fluid.

  Graft versus host disease was the most common complication and the rash could be a symptom of that. It was mostly seen within the first three months after a transplant but could occur up to three years afterwards.

  She’d written up the information of all she’d done, including the tests she’d ordered, when the oncologist appeared and took the chart from her.

  He was a silver-haired man with a tanned skin and a charming smile, and he spoke to young Jake like a family friend, reassuring the boy that they’d sort things out.

  ‘What did you request with the bloods?’ he asked Sam, turning away from the chart.

  ‘Infection, low platelets, and any sign of organ failure,’ she said, and he nodded.

  ‘The results will be copied to me, and I’ll be right back if they show anything. In the meantime, we might use a little more supplemental oxygen, and I’d suggest a simple mix of bicarbonate of soda and water on the rash to help ease the irritation.’

  Sam smiled at him. ‘It was my mother’s panacea for all ills and certainly helped me survive chicken pox.’

  The oncologist gave a theatrical shiver. ‘Don’t even think of things like that. The poor lad has enough possible complications without introducing childhood diseases. I’m thinking he might need another blood transfusion, but we’ll wait for the test results. Then, of course, there’s a possibility the stem cells didn’t take, and he’ll need more of them.’

  Sam looked at the frail figure lying on the bed and prayed that the rash was nothing more than a reaction to one of the drugs coursing through his body in the drip fluid.

  The nurse was already speaking to someone to arrange the soothing liquid and Sam would have left to see other patients, but she caught sight of Jake’s mother gowning up in the anteroom, and waited to speak to her, to update her on what was going on.

  For parents of children who were up to the stage of trialling bone-marrow transplants to save their child’s life, the hospital processes were well known. They’d had to cope with the highs and lows of the previous treatments and procedures and the hope and despair that came with each one.

  For Jake’s mother, this was just one more bridge to cross, her faith in finding a cure for him never wavering.

  Could she have handled that as well as most of the parents she saw did? Sam wondered.

  If her child had lived...

  She shut the memory down, but not before tears had pricked her eyes.

  Three years today. It was stupid to even think about it!

  But at least Andy hadn’t been around to see her momentary weakness...

  * * *

  Andy boarded the plane for the short flight to Sydney with a strange sense of relief. Sam had drawn a line under what had happened the previous evening, which was, he was almost certainly sure, a good thing.

  So why was he feeling a nagging sense of...

  What?

  Regret?

  Not exactly...

  No, he wouldn’t think about it—particularly not how she’d felt in his arms, or the heat of her body as he’d slid into her—her cries of passion as she’d clung to him in that final release.

  Get your head straight, Andy.

  This was Sam! She’d needed comfort, and he’d been there to give it to her.

  A tightening of his stomach muscles suggested that he was damned glad he had been there. Heaven forbid, she might have gone off with anyone!

  Not, he told himself sternly, that it would have been any of his business if she had. He’d known she was grieving for Rosa, the child who’d died. That was only natural, all of them felt an unnecessary loss like that very deeply, but on top of the date of her own loss...

  No, he couldn’t begin to imagine what her feelings had been, and furthermore it was time to stop this pointless speculation and concentrate on the reason he was on the plane.

  Not to escape Sam but to hear one of the US’s top PICU physicians speak about making the experience for families more comfortable.

  He prided himself on how well they did it at his hospital. He’d been consulted about it as it was being built, and, having spent so much time in hospital with his patient, smiling sister, he knew just how uncomfortable places they could be, and he’d had a raft of ideas to offer the designers. And you could always learn something from other hospitals, even if it was what not to do.

  But his focus was obviously shot to pieces for surely one of the first among any ‘not to do’ lists of his own was take your best friend’s widow to bed!

  Even if she’d been so willing, so excited, in turn both tender and torturous and loving, so totally irresistible he’d lost himself in her, lost all inhibitions, and had responded with a passion he knew he’d never experienced before.

  He was jolted out of his heated memories as the plane landed in Sydney, and he shut the memories away.

  He was here to learn, to pick up ideas to take back to his hospital that hopefully would produce better outcomes for his patients and their families.

  His and Sam’s patients—and that was definitely the last time he would think about her.

  Today...

  * * *

  It was weird returning to Andy’s apartment without him being there.

  Weird and definitely unsettling!

  There’d been a small, discreet ‘Manager’ sign on the door on the ground-floor apartment, opposite the café, and she’d thought it wouldn’t hurt to ask about an apartment—maybe there’d be a one-bedroomed, which was all she’d need.

  She knocked on the door, which was opened almost immediately by a youngish man with a slightly unkempt look about him who was clutching a puffy black garbage bag in one hand.

  ‘Sorry, just on my way to the bins. I can’t put this down without spilling the lot, so would you like to wait, or maybe walk with me?’

  ‘I’m happy to do either, but all I really wanted to ask was whether you had an apartment for rent. Just for me.’

  She found she’d fallen in beside him as she spoke, so kept walking.

  ‘One bedroom?’ he asked.

  ‘Well, that’s all I’d really need.’

  She’d sleep on the couch if her mother came, but, given her mother’s life, it wasn’t all that probable.

  ‘Yeah, there’s one available,’ he said, leading her down a concrete stairwell into the basement garage. ‘But we’re coming up to the Christmas holidays when all the empty apartments double in
price. I’m only the manager for about forty different owners—most of them absentee owners—and some of them only rent out over Christmas, because that pays the bills on the place and they can use it themselves any time over the rest of the year.’

  ‘So I’d be paying double normal price?’

  ‘From next weekend when the season starts, yes,’ he said, rather gloomily.

  Intrigued, Sam asked, ‘You don’t like the holiday season?’

  He shook his head. ‘I don’t dislike it,’ he said, ‘but it’s just so much extra work, and the young people I employ for the season as cleaners also want to have fun so they’re not exactly reliable.’

  They’d reached the bins, corralled behind a high wooden fence, and he lifted the lid of one to dump the bag, before turning to a nearby tap to wash his hands.

  ‘I do have a couple of rooms in my place I let out as B and Bs, only the second B is a chit for the café across the hall. They each have an en suite bathroom and a small open kitchen-cum-sitting area with a hotplate and a microwave and TV and such. If that’d suit you?’

  ‘I think that would be more than enough for me,’ Sam told him, and was about to shake his hand on the deal when she thought of Andy. Would he think her ungrateful?

  Even rude?

  ‘Can I let you know later?’ she asked the manager as they emerged into the foyer once again.

  ‘Sure, I’m Rod, by the way.’

  Sam took his hand and shook it.

  ‘Sam,’ she said, and smiled at him.

  * * *

  ‘But you’d be living with a stranger—a man you don’t even know,’ Andy protested when she put the idea to him on his return on Saturday afternoon.

  ‘I’m renting a room,’ Sam corrected him. ‘That’s not exactly living with someone!’

  ‘You could do that here,’ he argued. ‘Heaven knows, I don’t need it, but you could pay rent if it would make you feel better.’ He paused. ‘It’s because of what happened, isn’t it?’ he said, as grumpy as she’d ever heard the usually upbeat Andy.