Elsie patted Meg’s arm. ‘The bus will be fine. Now, my dear, why don’t you go and get that coffee? Surely they can manage without you for five minutes?’
They’d just have to, Meg decided. If she didn’t sort things out with Flynn once and for all she was going to explode. The only trouble was, now she’d taken the initiative and told a still fuming Jess she was taking a well-earned break Flynn was nowhere to be found.
She headed off to the staff room for a coffee she neither wanted nor needed, and the vision of Carla and Flynn sitting together on the obs ward talking quietly, the curtains drawn around Sonia’s bed, wasn’t exactly a sight for sore eyes.
‘How,’ Meg said in a crisp voice, rather reminiscent of Jess’s, ‘are you supposed to observe your patient, Carla, if the curtains are closed?’
Carla stood up abruptly, but Flynn just sat there, not even managing to look remotely guilty. ‘The social worker’s in with her. Flynn was just writing the referral. I thought I might give them a bit of privacy.’
‘Oh.’ Meg beat back a blush. ‘Did Sonia ask for her?’
‘Yep.’ Flynn signed off the piece of paper he was scribbling on. ‘She asked Carla to fetch me, we had a chat, and Sonia seemed pretty adamant. So I paged the social worker, who came more or less straight down. Did you need me for anything else?’ he asked Carla, scraping the chair as he stood up. Without waiting for an answer he turned to Meg. ‘Can I have a word, Meg, in private?’
‘Sure. I was just going on my coffee break.’
Meg had been all set to confront him, but standing in the deserted staff room she was somewhat taken back when Flynn closed the door and in no uncertain terms turned the tables, his angry voice unfamiliar. ‘What’s the problem Meg?’ Not leaving her time to answer he continued, obviously rattled. ‘What am I supposed to have done now?’
‘Meaning?’
‘Oh, don’t play games. You’ve been avoiding me all afternoon. We made love last night, for heaven’s sake. I left you in my bed this morning and everything was fine—more than fine. Something’s happened and I want to know what. What am I being hung for this time?’
Meg swallowed, hesitant to tell him, realising how petty her accusation would sound, how stupid she had been to doubt him. ‘Nothing. I’m just tired, I guess.’
‘So there isn’t anything upsetting you?’ His eyes were searching her face, his voice almost pleading for an answer.
Meg shook her head and smiled. ‘I was trying not to make things too obvious, I guess I must have gone too much the other way.’
‘So we’re fine?’ He put a hand up to her cheek and Meg held it there.
‘We’re more than fine.’
‘You’d tell me—if there was something worrying you, I mean?’
Meg nodded, and as he placed the gentlest of kisses on Meg’s lips she regretted doubting him.
‘Good. Look, I’m off at six. How about I go home and fix up some dinner?’
‘You mean ring for a takeaway?
‘A guy’s gotta eat.’
‘How about you go home and have a sleep and I pick up the takeaway?’
Flynn gave a low, pleased groan. ‘Keep going— don’t stop now. Bed, food, then you—sounds great.’
Meg laughed. ‘How about bed, me, then food?’
‘Better and better.’
The intercom summoning them both to resus was the only thing that stopped them kissing. Rushing around setting up for the cardiac arrest being brought in, they shared a tiny secret smile, and Meg thanked her lucky stars she hadn’t confronted him about Carla. She would talk to him tonight, sensibly and with a level head. Flynn had made it clear he would put up with anything except irrational jealousy.
* * *
The house was in darkness as Meg pulled up. A storm had broken and rain lashed her as she scooped up the takeaway. Locking up her car, she wished she had a key to Flynn’s home. Not for any proprietary status, just for the delicious thought of slipping in unnoticed, climbing into the warm bed where he slept and waking him in the most intimate of ways…
The doorbell would have to do for now, and as she rang it Meg fully expected a couple of soggy minutes’ wait in the pouring rain while Flynn orientated himself and staggered downstairs. She was somewhat taken back when the door opened almost immediately.
‘Were you asleep?’ Meg asked, stepping inside.
‘No.’ He took the bags from her and headed off towards the kitchen. ‘Just thinking.’
‘In the dark?’ It was only then Meg realised that he hadn’t kissed her hello, that he didn’t seem particularly thrilled to see her.
‘I had a light on,’ Flynn replied in a heavy voice. She couldn’t read his expression in the darkness, but there was nothing relaxed about the atmosphere. Flicking on the hall light, he gestured upstairs. ‘Come on—I’ll show you.’
It was exactly as they had decided—bed then dinner—but Meg knew she wasn’t heading upstairs to be ravished, and with a sinking feeling followed him.
‘See.’ He pushed open the bedroom door and walked in behind her. The room was in darkness, the only light coming from the flashing answer-machine—a tiny red light, indicating trouble. Walking over, he played the message, and Meg stood there not moving as she listened to Carla’s voice for the second time.
‘Seven thirty-two,’ Flynn repeated, his voice imitating the electronic American accent that concluded the message. ‘Which no doubt means you were lying in bed listening to it?’
Meg nodded.
‘And, unless your pet goldfish died and you wanted to spare me the grief, I’d pretty much put money on it that this message was what was upsetting you when you came to work. You were going on about Carla when you found out about Lucy. All that rubbish about us not being too obvious was a lie.’
Again Meg nodded, standing there frozen as he sat on the edge of the bed, resting his head in his hands with a sigh. Even in the darkness he looked beautiful.
‘I can’t do this, Meg.’ He looked up and a flash of lightning illuminated his face, casting shadows on his high chiselled cheekbones, the darkness of his unshaven jaw, his eyes dark pools of pain.
She took the two steps necessary to cross the room, but the void between them was much wider than that. Putting her hand out, she touched his bare shoulder, felt the slump of his usually taut muscles, sensed the despair in him. ‘Flynn, don’t.’ She felt like crying but held it back. She needed to be rational, calm now. Her insecurity had already done enough damage.
‘I can’t walk around on eggshells.’
‘You won’t have to,’ Meg pleaded. ‘I was just upset. Carla’s got a thing about you…’
‘That doesn’t mean I’ve got a ‘‘thing’’ about her.’ He brushed her hand off his shoulder, and the pain of his dismissal was as unbearable as the anger in his voice.
‘Flynn, she rang you at seven-thirty in the morning and asked you out for a meal…’
‘I’ve explained—she’s a family friend.’
‘Who’s nineteen and gorgeous, with a king-size crush on you.’
Flynn shook his head angrily.
‘She has,’ Meg insisted, but Flynn wasn’t shaking his head at her statement, more at her absolute refusal to see the problem.
‘So?’ Leaping to his feet, he stood there, angry and confrontational. ‘She rang me, Meg, she asked me for a meal—not the other way around.’ Again he shook his head, a weary sigh coming from his parted lips. ‘She’s nineteen, for heaven’s sake, I’m thirty-four.’
‘Hardly a hanging offence,’ Meg quipped, her intentions to stay calm evaporating as she leapt to her own defence. ‘Your words, Flynn, not mine. Is Carla the reason you wanted to keep quiet about us at work?’
Flynn nodded, but there wasn’t a trace of guilt on his face. ‘I wanted to talk to you about it, see how I was going to handle it. I know her parents well, and I’m going to have to see her long after her crush has ended. I just wanted to give her the out with her dignity intact.’
‘Oh, ve
ry noble.’
Flynn snorted. ‘The most stupid part of it is I was hoping you’d understand—give me some insight as to how I was going to deal with it. Seems I was wrong on all counts.’
‘I would have understood, Flynn. If only you’d told me.’
‘That’s the crux of it, Meg. What do you expect me to do? Sit with you over the dining room table and run through my life story, just in case something pops up that might be misinterpreted? I can’t even get a glass of water without you thinking I’m about to do a bunk.’
‘That was a mistake; it happened once.’
‘The trouble with you, Meg,’ Flynn said slowly, ignoring what she had said, ‘is that you’re so sure you’re going to get hurt. So sure that if you open up and actually let the world in it will end in tears.’
‘Looks like I’m right,’ she said as a salty unwelcome tear splashed down her cheek. Flynn seemed to wince when he saw the tear, his hand reaching up for a second, then pulling away. Instead he ran the frustrated hand over his face.
‘I can’t live like that, Meg. I can’t be constantly looking over my shoulder, wondering what I’ve said or done to upset you. Things like this don’t go away. The deeper we get, the worse it’s going to be. It’s better this way.’
‘You’re probably right.’ The calm dignity in her voice surprised even Meg. ‘But I think you’re being a bit harsh, blaming this all on me.’ Walking over to the dressing table, Meg picked up a photo of Lucy. ‘Before you say it, no, I’m not jealous of her. And something tells me, Flynn, that you were looking for an excuse to end it. Maybe you’re not as over Lucy as you make out.’ She placed the picture on the bed beside him; it didn’t make a sound as she rested it on the thick duvet. He turned and looked at it for a moment, before sitting back down and staring ahead.
‘I know I’m not trusting, Flynn. A year and a half of deceit put paid to that. But I’m working on it. I know I can be jealous, and doubting, but if you really loved me, if you really wanted to, you would understand. We got together too soon. You might not admit it, but we’re both on the rebound—we’ve both been hurt. I’m not comparing my grief and pain to yours— we both know you’d win hands-down.’
‘It’s not a competition,’ Flynn said, his voice a raw whisper.
‘I know,’ Meg admitted. ‘And I’m pretty sure you love me, Flynn. I think you even meant it when you spoke about marriage.’
She watched as he screwed his eyes closed. ‘I did mean it, but…’
That horrible three-letter word ended all her dreams, and Meg knew there and then she had lost him. ‘Here’s the ‘‘but’’, Flynn: it was just all too good too soon, and neither of us were really ready. I can see that now.’
‘This isn’t about Lucy,’ he insisted, but the certainty had gone from his voice. ‘I’m over her.’
‘So you keep saying. You can shuffle her pictures about, move her things and pretend that you’ve dealt with it, but it can never be that easy, Flynn. Something tells me that you’re just as scared and just as mistrusting as me. The only difference is that I don’t hide it as well. So, either we be honest with each other and admit our weaknesses and try to work through them, or we walk away. Is that what you want, Flynn?’
Almost imperceptibly his eyes darted to the photograph, then back to Meg’s. ‘This isn’t about Lucy,’ he repeated.
‘I take it that means you’re choosing the latter?’
His slow nod was the final nail in the coffin, and, making for the door, Meg stifled the sob that was welling in her throat, holding onto the door handle when his voice called out to her.
‘What are you going to do?’
Hesitantly she turned. He was still sitting there, and Meg fought an irresistible urge to rush over and wrap her arms around him, to cry with him as they held each other, and kiss away the pain they both felt.
‘Get on with living. I’ve got a bit of catching up to do.’
‘You’ll be all right?’ Trust Flynn to ask, to break her heart and then check to see that she would be okay.
‘That’s not your concern.’ But even as she said it Meg knew the bitterness in her voice wouldn’t help either of them. ‘I’ll be fine,’ she said gently, her face softening, her voice a touch unsteady but her words heartfelt. She even managed a tremulous smile. ‘Swollen eyelids and a cracked nose tomorrow, no doubt, but you can’t begrudge me that!’
Flynn tried to smile back. ‘I’m sure I’ll look the same.’
CHAPTER NINE
BUT he didn’t.
It was as if their brief affair had never happened. Not a trace of a blush, not a shadow of pain marred his perfect features. If Meg had been worrying about how she was going to face him, then it had been unnecessary. He set the tone the very next day—jokey, pleasant and utterly normal.
Somehow she limped through seeing Flynn at work. Somehow Meg got up each day, showered and put on her make-up. Hell, on a good day she even managed to share a joke with him—about work, of course. Their private lives were off limits, and neither of them ever crossed that line. And, though she searched for a chink in his armour, the tiniest sign that the demise of their relationship had caused him even a millionth of her own agony, not once did she see it.
Well, what had she expected? Meg asked herself. He had got over the death of his much-loved wife; how could a brief fling with a colleague even begin to compare with that?
But it had been so much more than a brief fling for Meg, so very much more. And, despite her best attempts to put it behind her, to build a bridge and somehow get over it, as Flynn forged ahead in his career, as his colleagues warmed to his affable character, as the department lifted under his knowledgeable leadership, the gulf between them widened. Meg, never the most outgoing in the department, never the most popular, struggled through each day, the pain she witnessed in the name of duty only adding to her grief. And she knew that it was only a matter of time before the winds of change forced a resolution.
As she arrived for an early shift one day, the disarray in the unit for once didn’t match Meg’s emotions. Finally, after much soul-searching and the best part of a bottle of red with Kathy, Meg had made a decision—a big one. Now all she had to do was see it through.
‘What’s going on?’ Meg asked Heather, the Night Charge Nurse, who was busily setting up resus. A couple of the staff were pulling over trolleys to make up extra beds and the overhead tannoy was crackling into action, urgently summoning the trauma team to the department.
‘Multi-car pile-up on the Beach Road—two fatalities and five serious injuries. We’ve just sent our Mobile Accident Unit out to it.’
Meg rolled her eyes. ‘Where do you want me?’
The radio link to the ambulance buzzed then, and Heather rushed to get it. Meg didn’t wait for further instruction and started to run some Hartmann’s solution through a giving set, simultaneously connecting an ambu bag to an oxygen outlet as she did so. Five multi-traumas at one time was enough to stretch even the biggest of departments.
‘One’s being directly lifted to the Trauma Centre,’ Heather said as she returned. ‘But apparently there’s another pile-up on the Eastern Freeway, so everyone’s stretched. Looks like we could get the remaining four. The first is already on the way.’
‘We’ll cope,’ Meg said assuredly. ‘The day staff are all arriving now. Have you called Dr Campbell and Flynn?’
Heather nodded as she worked. ‘Dr Campbell’s on the way, but Flynn was already here with a query epiglottitis. He went out with the Mobile Accident Unit. I felt wrung out when we’d got the child safely intubated and airlifted to the Children’s Hospital, and now this! What a night.’
Meg gave a half-laugh. ‘It ain’t over yet, kid,’ she joked, but her heart wasn’t in it. Her mind was with Flynn. Out facing his demons. Stuck on the freeway with two fatalities and serious injuries. And the worst part of it, the hardest bit of all, was that it was no longer her place to be there for him. He had made that perfectly clear. ‘Looks like we’
re pretty much set up? What’s the ETA?’
‘Five minutes for the first,’ Heather glanced at her watch. ‘Which is up.’
‘I’ll go and meet the ambulance.’
She stood on the forecourt, watching as Security pulled cars over to clear the hospital entrance, aware of the curious looks of staff who had hung around to see what was arriving. Normally Meg loved this bit. The pit-of-the-stomach thrill of excitement as the sirens neared, the first glimpse of the flashing lights, the slight headiness at an impending drama, showing off a touch, knowing everyone was watching.
But not today.
Today her heart was too heavy and her mind too filled with what Flynn must be suffering to enjoy her work. As she pulled on the shiny silver handle of the ambulance door and saw the paramedics massaging the stilled heart, saw the bloodstained mangled wreck of a life, all she felt in that tiny silent second was sadness. Sadness for the people going to work, setting about their day, and ending up fighting for their lives. Sadness for the relatives who had to sit and drink machine coffee for hours, their world temporarily on hold as they rang around chasing people up, trying to be strong as they awaited their loved one’s fate. And sadness for the staff who dealt with it. The staff who, day in and day out, pulled on their uniforms just to pick up the mess of other people’s lives. Who bandied about expressions such as ‘avoiding burn-out’, or ‘peer support’, when they all knew it caught up with you in the end. You wouldn’t be human otherwise.
Climbing in the ambulance, she took over the cardiac massage from Ken, and for just a second they shared a knowing look.
Life was bloody awful sometimes.
But there wasn’t time for introspection, not when people’s lives depended on you. So Meg ran along with the stretcher, massaging the unlucky woman’s chest as they raced through to resus. They lifted her over on Dr Campbell’s count and she concentrated on the moment, fought hard to save the life of someone she’d never met, nor probably would again. As the other resus beds filled up with the victims, as other teams attended the wounded, Meg battled along with her team. Pushed through bag after bag of blood, drew up drugs, wrote down the hastily shouted obs, set up equipment and picked it back up off the floor when a doctor threw it across the room in frustration.
Emergency at Bayside Page 12
