Lily's Scandal

by Marion Lennox

  They’d been so lucky. Apparently the vat had only just started warming. The boys had climbed in through a high window, seen huge planks laid across to skim off impurities and dared each other to rollerblade across. The stupidity left Lily breathless. She’d heard the outline. One kid falling, clutching his mate as he fell, both grabbing the planking, which had come loose, tumbling their mates in after them.

  Lily turned the shower to soft pressure, skin temperature. She put Jason’s hands on the rails and produced scissors.

  ‘Just to my knickers,’ Jason whimpered.

  ‘There’s nothing I haven’t seen,’ Lily told him. ‘If you’ve burned anything personal, you’ll need it fixed.’

  Another whimper.

  ‘There’s nothing to this,’ she told him cheerfully. ‘These jeans are going to stink for ever so we might as well cut ‘em off. So … rollerblading over steaming tallow. Quite a trick. How long have you been blading?’

  ‘A … a year.’ The water was streaming over the kid; his clothes were falling away and so was the muck that was covering him.

  ‘You any good?’

  ‘Y-yeah.’

  ‘So of the four of you, who does the neatest tricks?’

  Luke was in the next cubicle. He was scissoring clothes from his own kid. Ross had been blustering when Luke had first seen him, whinging to his parents that it wasn’t his fault, that his ‘expletive’ mates had pressured him to do it, Craig had pushed him, his dad should sue.

  Under the water, with Luke scissoring off his clothes, he calmed down. His legs were scalded. They were only first-degree burns, though, Luke thought, little worse than sunburn. He’d sting for a week but there’d be little long-term damage.

  He’d been swearing as Luke had propelled him under the shower, but when Luke had attacked with scissors … the boy had shut up. ‘We need to check down south,’ Luke had told him. ‘Check everything’s still in working order. Steamed balls aren’t exactly healthy …’ Luke wasn’t reassuring him just yet. He liked him quiet, and, besides, with him quiet he could hear the conversation in the next cubicle.

  ‘I’ve been blading since I was twelve,’ Blue Eyes was saying.

  ‘Girls can’t blade.’ That was her kid—Jason.

  ‘You’re kidding me, right? I suspect you’ll need to come back in a week or so to make sure these scalds have healed. You bring your blades; I’ll organise time off and I’ll meet you in the hospital car park. Then we’ll see who can’t blade.’

  Luke blinked. An assignation …

  ‘What, you can blade fast?’ Jason had been shakily terrified but Blue Eyes had him distracted. He sounded scornful.

  ‘Fast?’ Blue Eyes chuckled, and it was a gorgeous chuckle. ‘I do more than fast. I do barrel rolls, grapevines, heel toes, flips, you name it. I’m no gumbie, kiddo.’

  ‘You’re kidding.’

  ‘Would I kid about something like blading? My skates were the most important thing in my life for a long, long time.’ Blue Eyes suddenly sounded serious. ‘It took my mind off other things and I loved it. I can’t say I ever bladed over tallow, though.’

  ‘I bet you could.’ There was suddenly belief—and admiration—in the kid’s voice and Luke found himself agreeing. If this slip of a girl could get Evie and Finn to don waterproofs and wash off tallow, she might be capable of a whole lot more.

  He wanted, quite badly, to explore the idea.

  Bad idea.

  She was an agency nurse. Her uniform told him that. She was one of the casual nurses employed to fill gaps at need in any hospital in the city.

  After tonight he might never see her again.

  But … she’d made an assignation with Jason in a week. That might mean the agency had positioned her here for more than a night.

  She had a great chuckle.

  No. Beware of chuckles. And blue eyes. And twinkles.

  He thought of Hannah.

  He always thought of Hannah. Of course he did. Her memory no longer evoked the searing pain it once had, but instead was a basic part of him, a knowledge that he’d messed with the most precious thing a man could be given. The emotions that went with the sort of involvement he was briefly considering with Blue Eyes were gone. They were left behind in a bleak cemetery with what was left of his wife and his little son.

  ‘Me balls …’ Ross whimpered. ‘They gunna be okay?’

  ‘They’re gunna be fine,’ he told the kid he was treating. ‘They’re a bit pink but they’ll live to father sons.’

  ‘I don’t want to father kids!’ The thought was obviously worse than hot tallow.

  ‘No,’ Luke said soothingly. ‘I guess you don’t, but one day you might. Meanwhile everything’s in working order for when you want them to do what they’re meant to do. For when your chance in life happens.’

  Ross and Jason were sent home. Robbie and Craig were admitted. They’d been in the centre of the vat. It had taken them longer to get out, which meant they had patches of second-degree burning. No full-thickness burns, though. Evie took them in charge, patching them up before admitting them. Luke somehow found himself doing the paperwork while Lily gave Ross and Jason’s parents instructions on how to deal with minor scalds.

  She then headed off to fill in a police report. Finn might have moved on, but Luke heard Blue Eyes asking questions, getting the boys to sign statements, and he knew because of her the open vats would be covered and there’d be no prosecutions of kids who were just being … kids.

  Lily was some nurse.

  She wasn’t your normal agency nurse. Most agency nurses were looking for a quiet life. They were mums with small kids who worked when they could find someone to care for their children. They were overseas nurses, funding the next adventure. They were older women who worked when grandkids and aching legs permitted, or they wanted funds for a few retirement treats.

  Lily, though, didn’t seem to fit any of these categories. She was in her late twenties, he decided, nicely mature. Competent. She had the air of a nurse who’d run her own ward, and who didn’t suffer fools gladly. And the way she’d talked to Jason … She didn’t sound like a young mum, wearily getting the job done.

  He badly needed to get to bed. He had a full list in the morning. He shouldn’t be awake now, but first … First he finished the paperwork and casually dropped by Admin. And while he did he just happened to retrieve the fact sheet that had been faxed through with the notification that Blue Eyes had been allocated to work at the Harbour.

  Blue Eyes.

  Lily Maureen Ellis. Twenty-six years old. Trained at Adelaide. Well trained. He flicked through her list of credentials and blinked—hey, she had plastics experience. She was trained to assist in plastic surgery.

  Plus the rest. Intensive care. Paediatrics. Midwifery. He knew the hospital she’d trained in. This woman must be good.

  According to the sheet, she’d left Adelaide two years back to run the bush nursing hospital at Lighthouse Cove. He knew Lighthouse Cove. It was a tiny, picturesque town less than an hour’s drive from Adelaide.

  Fishing, tourists, pubs and not a lot else.

  So what had driven Lily Maureen Ellis to pack up and leave Lighthouse Cove and put her name down as an agency nurse in Sydney?

  Maybe she was following a man.

  Maybe he needed to get some sleep.

  ‘Why the hell aren’t you in bed?’ It was Finn, scaring the daylights out of him—as normal. The Harbour’s Director of Surgery had the tread of a panther—and night sight. Word in the hospital was that there was nothing Finn didn’t know. He knew it before it happened.

  ‘Why aren’t you in bed?’ Luke managed back, mildly. ‘Have you been giving Evie more grief?’

  ‘I haven’t …’

  ‘Yeah, you have,’ he said evenly. ‘You’re tetchy, and you’re especially tetchy round Evie. What’s eating you?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Headaches? Sore arm?’

  ‘Why would I have headaches?’

&nb
sp; ‘Beats me,’ Luke said mildly. ‘But you keep rubbing your head and shoulder, and if anyone puts a foot wrong …’

  ‘Dr Lockheart had no business waking us up,’ Finn growled.

  ‘She had four potentially serious burns and one agency nurse. Cut her some slack.’

  ‘She drives me nuts,’ Finn said, taking the fact sheet. ‘So this is the girl handing out waterproofs.’

  ‘She’s got guts.’

  ‘I’m sick of guts,’ Finn said. ‘Give me a good pliable woman any day. So why are we reading her CV?’ He raised an eyebrow in sudden interest. ‘Well, well. It’s about time …’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Hannah’s been gone for four years now,’ Finn said, gentling. ‘A man can’t mourn for ever.’

  ‘Says the whole hospital,’ Luke said grimly. ‘It’s driving me nuts.’

  ‘So have an affair.’ He motioned to the CV. ‘Excellent idea. Get them off your back. Get a life.’

  ‘Hannah didn’t get a life.’

  ‘It wasn’t your fault.’

  ‘So whose fault was it?’ he demanded, explosively. ‘Fourteen weeks and I didn’t even know she was pregnant.’

  ‘You were working seventy hours a week and fronting for exams. Hannah knew the pressures. She was also a nurse and she knew her way around her body. To lock herself in her bedroom and suffer in silence at fourteen weeks pregnant … She was fed up that you were caught up in Theatre. It still smacks of playing the martyr.’

  ‘Don’t.’

  ‘Speak ill of the dead? I say it like it is. If one stupid act of martyrdom stops you from getting on with your life …’

  ‘I don’t see you getting on with your life.’

  Finn stiffened. Finn was his boss, Luke conceded, but their relationship went deeper. He knew as much of Finn’s background as anyone did. Finn had a brother who’d been killed in combat. He’d been wounded himself. There’d been a messy relationship with his brother’s wife, then a series of forget-the-moment flings.

  Was he about to throw those in his boss’s face? Maybe not. Not at two in the morning, when they were both sleep deprived—and when a cute little blonde nurse had suddenly appeared in the background behind Finn. Waiting for an opportunity to break in.

  ‘Don’t make this about me,’ Finn snapped. ‘Meanwhile, you …’ Finn waved the folder. ‘An agency nurse, ripe for the picking. That’s what you need. A casual affair and then move on.’

  The blue eyes widened.

  Luke stifled a groan.

  ‘Excuse me, doctors,’ the Agency-Ripe-For-The-Picking nurse said, in a carefully neutral voice. ‘The paging system doesn’t appear to be working down here. Dr Lockheart has asked me to find you, Dr Williams. Not you, Mr Kennedy. Dr Lockheart’s words were, “Keep that man out of my department at all costs”. But a child’s been admitted with facial injuries from dog bites. Dr Lockheart says to tell you, Dr Williams, that this is serious and could you please come now.’

  CHAPTER TWO

  JESSIE BLANDON was headed for Theatre—if he made it that far.

  He was four years old. He’d woken in the middle of the night, needing his mother, the bathroom, something. He’d stumbled through the living room. His mother’s boyfriend’s Rottweiler had been on the couch.

  As far as Lily could see, he’d lost half his face. Or not completely lost; it was hanging by a flap. How he’d not bled to death, she didn’t know.

  Lily didn’t have time to think about what she’d just overheard. She flew back to Emergency with Luke.

  ‘Tell me,’ he snapped as they strode down the corridor at a pace practised by most emergency medics. Never run in a hospital. Walk—exceedingly fast.

  She outlined what she’d seen and Luke’s face grew grim.

  ‘Dogs and kids,’ he muttered. ‘No matter how trustworthy … Hell.’

  It was hell. Lily had seen the mother and her boyfriend as the ambulance had wheeled the little boy in. They looked shattered. This would be a great goofy dog, she guessed, normally quiet, startled from sleep into doing what dogs were bred to do. Attack and defend.

  How good was this man beside her?

  She was about to find out.

  She’d not dealt with a case like this at Lighthouse Cove. For the last two years, in her tiny hospital, any serious case had been transferred to Adelaide. Still, she had the training to back her up. Those long years, travelling back and forth from Lighthouse Cove to Adelaide Central, struggling to do her training yet still support her mother, they’d been hard but they’d provided her with skills, so that when Luke Williams said, ‘You’ve done plastics, you trained with Professor Blythe? You’ll work with us on this?’ she could nod.

  But she wasn’t nodding with confidence that they’d save the little boy. He was desperately injured. She was only confident that she could back up this man’s skills.

  If he had the skills.

  He did.

  To say she was impressed with Luke William’s professionalism was an understatement. This was a life-and-death emergency. Every minute they wasted meant this little boy had a smaller chance at life, yet Luke exuded calm from the moment he saw him.

  First and foremost he made sure Jessie was feeling no pain. He had an anesthetist there in moments and Jessie was placed swiftly into an induced coma. He assessed what needed to be done. He gave curt, incisive directions with not a word wasted. He even found a moment to talk to the couple outside.

  ‘Things are grim,’ he told them. ‘There’s no way I can assure you your little boy will be okay. I don’t know. No one knows. But he’s in the best of hands, and we’ll do everything we humanly can to save him. Meanwhile, I want you to ring a reliable friend and ask them to bring in Jessie’s favourite things, a bear maybe, his blanket from his bed? Reassuring stuff. The paramedics will have informed the police. Tell your friend not to go near the house until he’s sure the police have the dog under control.’

  ‘The dog’s a pussy cat,’ the man said, brokenly.

  ‘No,’ Luke said grimly. ‘He’s a dog. And your son …’ He closed his eyes for a fraction of a moment and when he opened them Lily saw something behind his eyes that looked like pain. ‘Jessie,’ he said. ‘It’s up to us now to see if we can save your Jessie.’

  She’d come on duty tonight as an unknown nurse, expecting to be treated as very junior. In fact, she’d kind of wanted to be junior. Anonymous. Working steadily in the background, a tiny cog in a big wheel, disappearing as soon as she was off duty, coming on duty tomorrow on another ward, knowing no one, no one knowing her. Bliss.

  What she hadn’t expected was to be part of a close-knit, highly skilled team, working desperately to save one little life.

  That weird conversation she’d overheard in Admin was put aside. For some reason Luke had been checking her credentials. Whether the conversation between Finn and Luke should have the pair of them up before the medical board for sexual discrimination was immaterial right now. What was important was that Luke knew she was up to the job in hand and he let the rest of the team know it. The hospital was desperately short-staffed, so she was no doormat, standing in the background. She was scrub nurse, working with every ounce of her knowledge and skill.

  They all were.

  The child’s face had been torn from chin to forehead. A vast flap of skin and flesh was hanging from his cheek. Among the blood and mess, they could see bone.

  His eye socket, his nose, the side of his mouth … Unspeakable damage …

  But the flesh hadn’t been ripped away entirely. If Luke had the skills he might … he must …

  The alternative was unthinkable. If the flap couldn’t be replaced, this little boy would be facing years of grafts, even a face transplant. A life of immuno-suppressant drugs. If he lived.

  The alternative was that Luke sorted this mangled mess and teased it all back into place. That he keep the flap alive, re-establish blood supply, leave nerves undamaged …
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br />   A miracle?

  No. Pure skill.

  Her initial impressions of the man were that he was … okay, a womaniser. He’d been laughing with her. Eyeing her appreciatively. Talking with the director of surgery about her in that way …

  Now every speck of concentration was on what he was doing. Jessie’s face was an intricate jigsaw puzzle that had to be fitted together before the blood supply was compromised. Every tiny torn piece had to be sorted, cleaned, put into careful, cautious position.

  The nursing team of the hospital might have been hit by gastro but there was no hint of understaffing now. This was priority one, a child’s life. Luke was assisted by a surgical registrar, a paediatric anaesthetist, two scrub nurses and two junior nurses. All were totally focused.

  And in their hands was a little boy called Jessie. Redheaded. Freckled on the tiny part of his face that wasn’t damaged. He was intubated, heavily anaesthetised. He’d been lucky he hadn’t drowned in his own blood.

  Every person in the room was totally tuned to what they were doing. This was the most important job in the world, saving a child’s life … piece by piece …

  Lily thought briefly of a case she’d worked on three years back. A professor in Adelaide, trying to save a man’s lips. Problems with drainage afterwards. Like Luke, the professor’s total attention had been caught in what he was doing, but afterwards he’d talked through what might have helped.

  She turned to the closest junior nurse.

  ‘Slip out and find Dr Lockheart,’ she said. ‘Tell her we may need medical leeches. Tell her priority one.’

  ‘I don’t have authority …’ the girl said, casting a worried glance at Luke, but Luke’s attention was all on what he was doing. He might not have the head space to think beyond his current actions, Lily thought.

  The anaesthetist, the registrar, the senior scrub nurse were totally focused as well.