‘Head injuries don’t lead to strokes,’ he told her, and was pretty sure it was true, but as ever his thinking ability had been undermined by her presence, or by the effect her presence had on the rest of him.
‘I don’t care what head injuries lead to,’ she yelled at him. ‘The point is, you shouldn’t be here. I’ve phoned Carl and he’s coming to drive you home. And in case you want to argue, I’ve told him to bring Rob for extra muscle.’
Furious with her attitude, he was about to tell her he could look after himself and certainly didn’t need her brothers to ferry him around when he realised that her choice of chauffeurs undoubtedly meant he was to be driven home to her place, not his gloomy townhouse with his irritating neighbour.
His anger disappeared as quickly as it had flared, and he smiled at the still scowling Peterson.
‘You’ll spoil me with all this attention,’ he said, and enjoyed watching her fury change to uncertainty, then her eyes narrow as she tried to work out if he had an ulterior motive in agreeing.
Which he did, of course, and it had a lot to do with where he intended sleeping that night.
‘Thank you,’ he added, to make her feel even worse, then, because he didn’t like to see her frowning, even with uncertainty, he stood up and walked around the desk, taking her in his arms and holding her close while he looked down into her eyes.
‘I mean that, Amelia,’ he murmured, enjoying the way the unfamiliar name rolled off his tongue. ‘Thank you for everything.’
Then he confirmed the words with a kiss, soon losing himself in her sweetness yet again, so when she pushed away with a breathless ‘That’s me they’re paging’ it took him a minute or two to get his bearings.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
AMELIA hurried to answer the call, but her mind was in turmoil. When she’d learned Mac was still at work, concern for him had made her forget their estrangement of the night before and all she’d thought about had been getting him home. Knowing her brothers were working on a building not far from the hospital, and, as the men in charge of the project, they were sure to still be on site, she’d rung Carl and arranged for him to collect Mac from the hospital.
Then, when she’d charged into his office to tell him this and had seen his pale, tired face, all the love she felt for him had welled up and spilled into anger, making her yell when she should have offered comfort. But when that first relieving anger had been spent, she’d noticed what he held in his hands. A photo! And even from the other side of the desk, she’d known damn well it was of Jessica.
Despair so deep it made her guts ache had seized hold of her, and she’d been battling tears when Mac had come around the desk and taken her in his arms. Then he’d kissed her with such sweetness she was sure her heart would break.
Feeble-willed where he was concerned, she’d even kissed him back, and it was lucky she’d been paged, or who knew what might have happened…
All this tumbled through Amelia’s mind as she made her way to the emergency entrance. Someone, she couldn’t have said who, filled her in—an ambulance arriving with three teenagers, all suffering knife wounds.
Her patient was a teenage girl, bleeding freely but also cursing so fluently whenever her mask was removed that Amelia guessed she wasn’t seriously injured.
As the doctor, an intern known to one and all as Rabbit, examined the girl, Amelia began to clean away the blood, coming mainly from a long slash down one arm.
‘Wrap that until we can suture it,’ Rabbit said. ‘I need to check there are no other deep wounds that need more immediate attention.’ He was inserting a catheter to take blood then give the patient fluid to replace what she was losing.
Amelia put fresh dressings on the arm, noting but not commenting on the ridged scars indicative of drug abuse, then explained to the girl that the doctor would need to examine her.
‘It’s easier if I undress you and put you in a hospital gown,’ she finished, and copped a mouthful of abuse and a warning not to touch her clothes.
‘He stuck me in the arm, nowhere else,’ she said with a few colourful expletives thrown in.
Amelia would have liked to have believed her, but it seemed the blood stain on the girl’s tiny, tight skirt was growing bigger.
‘What about here?’ she asked, pressing her gloved hand very gently on the stain.
The girl let out a yell and would have leapt off the bed if Rabbit hadn’t been holding her arm.
‘Lower right quadrant of the abdomen,’ Amelia told the doctor, and as Rabbit shifted so he could lift the short skirt to examine the wound, all hell broke loose.
It was the angry roar that alerted Amelia to trouble, but not soon enough. A knife blade sliced through the curtain, then a leather-clad colossus followed it.
‘You hurt my girl—I heard her cry!’
Even with shaggy hair concealing nearly all his face, the pinpoint pupils of his eyes were still visible. The knife-wielder was drugged out of his mind.
He reached out and hauled the young girl off the gurney, ignoring her cries as the catheter was wrenched from her arm and the oxygen mask tangled in her hair.
‘Who hurt you?’ he demanded, shaking her so violently her head jerked back and forth. Amelia saw the girl’s lips move as she tried to answer, then she slumped into a merciful faint.
The action took the giant by surprise and she slipped to the ground, leaving him staring bemusedly at her.
Amelia rushed to her side and with Rabbit’s help lifted her back on the gurney. Beyond the torn curtain she knew security people would be gathering and soon the big man would be led away, but all her attention was on the young woman and her condition.
‘There’ll be internal bleeding—she’s better off in Theatre right away,’ Rabbit muttered at Amelia as he lifted the girl’s skirt and saw the bruised blue edges of the knife wound in the girl’s lower abdomen. Amelia was replacing the oxygen mask, while Rabbit found another vein, when the security men appeared.
The big man, who had appeared stunned into immobility, came immediately back to life, grabbing Amelia, who was closest, and holding her against his chest, the deadly, long-handled knife held against her throat.
The three security men stopped moving, though one of them spoke calmly to the man, asking him to release the nurse, explaining she was needed to help the patient.
‘She was all right when she came in here—bit of blood in her arm, that’s all,’ he said.
Amelia, clasped against him, felt curiously detached, as if it was all happening to someone else. Though the rank smell of the man was real enough.
‘I want her better and I want her back now,’ he growled.
‘She’s badly injured—bleeding from a knife wound in her…’ Rabbit hesitated, no doubt wondering how to explain, then settled on, ‘Stomach.’
‘That bastard did that to her! I got him, I know I did. They put him in the ambulance with her.’ The string of expletives came out in a howl of rage and pain. ‘Where is he? Let me at him!’
He dragged Amelia backwards through the curtains and she caught a glimpse of both her brothers backed up against a wall, held back, no doubt, by the security man in front of them. But nowhere among the faces could she see Mac, though Rick Stewart, senior doctor on duty on the night shift this week, was standing at the end of the row of cubicles, his face white with strain.
‘The man you want is in this cubicle,’ he called to the man. ‘Let the nurse go and the security men will let you in to see him.’
‘You can’t trap me like that,’ the man roared. ‘Open up those curtains—let me see the bastard.’
Amelia held her breath. There was no way any doctor would let this madman near a patient, yet Rick had moved towards the curtains—was pulling them open. And there was certainly someone on the gurney, though with the oxygen mask covering his face, and a blood-stained sheet over most of his body, the person was unrecognisable.
Or was he?
‘Let the nurse go,’ Rick repeated, and Am
elia felt the knife move away from her neck, although the man’s left arm kept her clamped against his body. Something in the way he moved gave her a clearer view of dark hair and long-lashed eyelids, and recognition slammed through her.
‘Mac!’ she screamed despairingly, knowing the man with the knife intended to kill him.
‘Here she is!’ the intruder cried, and, turning, flung her against the two security men. She felt something jab into her side, saw the patient on the gurney move as if to escape the huge man’s rage, then, just as she lost consciousness, she cried out again for Mac—certain the knife-wielding madman was about to kill him.
Her body ached all over and her bewildered mind wondered if she might be sick, or if maybe this was how pregnancy felt.
‘Amelia? Bug? Little Bug, can you hear me?’
Mac’s voice was calling from a long way off. Was the darkness in which she struggled a tunnel of some kind, and he was down the other end?
‘Come on, Peterson, you can do better than this! You’re in Recovery after surgery and they won’t let you out of here until you respond to a voice.’
Ah, that was more like Mac—calling her Peterson, giving orders.
She grasped the hand that was holding hers, hoping it would drag her out of the darkness, and felt a warm pressure in return.
Another hand stroked her forehead, and Mac’s voice was coming closer, pleading, cajoling, insisting she respond.
‘Mac? You’re alive.’
‘Of course I’m alive. Someone has to stick around to take care of you,’ he growled, and she realised he must be very tired because his voice sounded ragged and hoarse. Then she remembered he’d been ill and shouldn’t be getting tired.
‘You should be home in bed,’ she told him, and hoped he understood because the words sounded very jumbled to her. ‘It’s so dark it must be late.’
‘Open your eyes and look at me,’ he said. ‘It’s not so dark, Amelia.’
It was so strange to hear Mac calling her Amelia, she did open her eyes—or at least she tried, but her eyelids weighed about a ton and she rather thought her eyelashes might be stuck together.
‘For me, Little Bug—just open them for me?’
He sounded so gently persuasive she tried again, and this time Mac’s face swam into focus.
Mac’s exhausted face!
She tried to scold him but it was too hard to make the words, so instead she held his hands and went to sleep.
Her mother was beside her next time she woke, and the anxiety in the brown eyes made Amelia look around.
‘I’m in hospital?’ she said, trying to sit up then deciding it hurt too much and staying prone. ‘Why? What happened? Was it the same accident when Mac was hurt? How can we both be in hospital? Who will look after him?’
But even as she asked the questions, memory came flooding back.
‘The man with the knife. My side hurt. Did he stab me?’
Her mother nodded, tears brimming in her eyes.
‘Yes, darling, quite badly. I don’t know all the technical terms, but apparently the knife perforated your intestine and also cut a blood vessel. You lost a lot of blood, and they had to operate to fix things up inside you.’
Her mother wasn’t crying because she’d been hurt, Amelia realised. Something else bad had happened. Her hand crept to her abdomen and she pressed it there.
‘The baby?’
More tears streaked down her mother’s face as she confirmed Amelia’s worst fears with a single nod.
‘I’m sorry, darling. The surgeons think it was the blood you lost that caused the miscarriage. There was no damage to your body—to that part of your body. You can have other babies.’
But not Mac’s babies, Amelia thought, and felt dampness on her cheeks as the agony in her broken heart spilled over.
She must have slept for when she woke her mother was gone and a nurse she didn’t know was fussing over her.
‘Your family has all been in—boy, are those brothers of yours good-looking—but you keep sleeping through their visits. And we’re all under orders from that ogre downstairs in A and E to contact him the moment you wake up. He sat by your bed all through the first night and only Doug Blake telling him he’d drop dead if he didn’t rest stopped him staying last night.’
‘Last night? What time is it? And how long have I been here?’
‘Two days here—and a night in Theatre and Recovery so today’s the third day since it happened.’
Amelia tried to work out where the days had gone, and what, if anything, she remembered of them.
‘My mother was here?’
The nurse nodded.
‘Yesterday morning—well, she’s been here more than that, but you woke up and talked to her yesterday.’
Treacherous tears threatened to escape again when Amelia recalled, in all too vivid detail, her mother’s visit, but she fought them back. Apparently, she’d escaped into the nether world of sleep to blot the pain from her mind, but she couldn’t stay asleep for ever. She had to face not only the fact that she’d lost the baby but that she’d lost Mac as well.
All too easily she recalled the look on his face when she’d barged into his office to tell him to go home and had found him holding the picture of Jessica. The look of longing in his eyes had been unmistakable.
Well, now he was free to return to his beautiful blonde.
‘I’m sure they need nurses in Siberia,’ Amelia muttered to herself, though she doubted even there would be far enough away for her to forget Mac—forget the way he held her in his arms, stroked his fingers through her hair, called her Little Bug…
She drew in a deep breath and told herself she had to start as she meant to go on. The nurse had disappeared and was probably phoning Mac right now. Providing there was no emergency downstairs, he’d be on his way up before she knew it.
She lifted the phone beside the bed and dialled the nurses’ station. She might not have been a patient before, but she’d worked the wards long enough to know how the phone system worked.
‘This is Amelia Peterson. I just wanted to ask if you could restrict all visitors to my immediate family—that’s four brothers and my parents—and no one else.’
Her voice sounded so weak and wavery she doubted they’d argue, but even as she hung up she heard Mac’s voice outside.
‘Of course she doesn’t mean me,’ he declared. ‘We’re engaged, about to be married.’
A pause, which gave time for Amelia to get over the shock of that statement, then, ‘She was at work when it happened—how many nurses do you know wear their engagement rings to work? This is ridiculous, and anyway I’m senior to you and I’m going in.’
Amelia almost smiled as she imagined some poor nurse backing away from Mac’s temper, then the door opened and he was there.
‘Some stupid nurse tried to stop me seeing you,’ he told her, striding across the room and stopping by the bed, looking down at her with a frown that should have stopped the nurse arguing right from the start. ‘You’re still far too pale. What’s that surgeon giving you? Plasma, by the look of it—I wonder if it should be full blood.’
For a moment Amelia thought he’d march right out again, no doubt to give orders to the surgeon, but instead he checked her chart, studied her again, then slumped down in the chair beside the bed.
Amelia watched him warily. So far, he’d been ‘Mac the head of A and E’, treating her as he would any of his staff in her situation. There was no sign of Mac the lover, and though she knew she should be relieved, her heart grieved that she’d already lost him.
An eternity—that was possibly only seconds—later, he reached out and took her hand.
‘Your mother told you about the baby?’
Half-statement, half-question.
Amelia nodded.
‘I’m sorry, Peterson,’ he said, lifting her hand and pressing it against his cheek. ‘It was the sort of stupid accident that should never have happened, and for it to happen to you…’
>
His head lifted and she read the anguish in his eyes, and knew it was for the child he really had wanted.
The love she felt for him meant she had to offer comfort, even when her entire body was aching with the double loss.
‘It’ll be OK,’ she said softly. ‘And at least it leaves you free now, not tied to someone you don’t love because of the baby. You’ll have other children—you and Jessica.’
His hand gripped hers so hard she flinched, but even as he echoed the woman’s name his pager buzzed, and with a furious scowl he pulled it from his pocket, read the message, swore and stood up.
‘Jessica?’ he repeated. ‘The witch who lives next door to me? How on earth did you get it into your stupid head, Peterson, that I might ever, even in my wildest dreams, want anything to do with that rapacious woman?’
His voice had risen to a dull roar, bringing a nurse hurrying into the room.
‘No wonder you didn’t want him visiting,’ she said, and Mac turned his fury on her.
‘Did she say that? Say she didn’t want me visiting? Mention me by name?’
The nurse backed down, shaking her head but bravely remaining in the room. The pager buzzed again, and Mac stormed out, pausing in the doorway to turn back to Amelia.
‘I’ll be back,’ he said, sounding so threatening that if Amelia hadn’t known him she’d have booked herself out of hospital immediately.
As it was, she had plenty to think about. Mac’s reaction to Jessica’s name had been genuine.
But even if he didn’t love the blonde beauty, he didn’t love her, Amelia, either, and, loving him as she did, she didn’t think she could live with him and hide it.
He did come back, but not until evening when Rob and her father were visiting. Amelia listened to her father and brother’s conversation, but was aware of Mac’s impatience to be alone with her. He was practically twitching with it.
It was only so he could finish his argument, she knew, but her silly heart wanted to believe he was eager just to be with her.
In the end he cracked and, grasping an elbow each of her brother and her father, all but hoisted them out of the visitors’ chairs.
The Pregnancy Proposition Page 15
