Her gaze skimmed up the long, powerful lines of his body and she felt a little shiver run through her. He’d always had a huge physical impact on her from the first moment they’d met. Tall and dark with the kind of leanly hewn good looks that appealed to so many women, Seb had been her first and her only lover. That he’d had other relationships before he’d met her had never bothered her. It had been enough to know that she had been the one he’d wanted and chosen to marry.
Now everything had changed and it was too much to expect that a man as attractive and virile as her husband would have been content to live the life of a monk these past months. Had he been seeing Cathy, or someone else? Maybe it wasn’t her business any more, but she was only human. She couldn’t help wanting to know the answer.
Seb could feel the shock waves spreading through his entire body. Seeing Libby standing there had knocked him for six. He’d physically had to restrain himself when what he’d wanted to do had been to sweep her into his arms and kiss her until every doubt that had plagued him since their last meeting had been erased for good. It was only the thought of why she’d driven all the way up here to see him that had stopped him. Had she come to ask him for a divorce? He didn’t want to believe it—hell, he couldn’t bear to believe it!—yet he knew in his heart it was true. As far as Libby was concerned, their marriage was over.
Pain sliced through him, but before he could say anything to her the main doors burst open and a man ran into the unit.
‘It’s my wife…She’s outside in the car…Please, you have to help her!’
‘I’ll be right there.’ Seb hurriedly set aside his own feelings as he turned to Cathy. ‘Find Marilyn and tell her that I need her in Resus, stat. I’ll take the patient straight there so you and Jayne get everything ready.’
‘Will do,’ the nurse assured him.
Seb didn’t waste any time as he hurried outside. There was a car parked all askew in front of the door and he could see a young woman lying on the back seat. ‘What happened to her?’ he asked as the driver opened the car door.
‘I don’t know!’ The driver was frantic with worry as he climbed into the car and attempted to lift his wife out. She screamed in agony when he moved her and Seb quickly put a restraining hand on his arm.
‘Let me take a look at her first.’ He waited while the man scrambled back out of the car then bent down to speak to the young woman. Her eyes were glazed with pain and she was clutching her stomach.
‘My name is Seb Bridges and I’m the consultant in charge of the trauma unit. Can you tell me when this all started?’
‘I’m not sure…An hour ago…maybe more…’ She broke off and groaned. ‘It hurts!’
Seb glanced round, intending to tell her husband to go back inside and ask one of the porters to fetch out a trolley. He did a double-take when he discovered that Libby had followed him outside and was standing behind him.
‘Do you need a trolley?’ she asked, anticipating his request.
‘Please.’ He swiftly battened down his emotions. It really wasn’t the right moment to think about all the other times when she had seemingly read his mind. ‘Get one of the porters to bring it out here. I’ll need him to help me move her. There’s no way she can walk in this state.’
‘Of course.’
She hurried away as he crouched down beside the car again. He gently eased the woman’s hands away from her abdomen, but she cried out in pain when he tried to examine her and he paused.
‘I know it hurts but I need to find out what’s going on in there. Just yell if the pain gets too much for you. I have very strong nerves so don’t worry about scaring me.’
She seemed reassured by his tone and allowed him to continue, moaning softly as he carried out a rudimentary examination. The abdominal wall was rock hard to his touch, the underlying muscles obviously in spasm. The pain seemed to be worse in the lower abdomen; the patient certainly complained loudest when he probed that area. However, before he could ask her any questions which might have helped with his diagnosis, Libby arrived with a porter and the trolley he’d requested.
Seb backed out of the car and turned to the patient’s husband. ‘We need to get your wife onto that trolley but it’s not going to be easy for her. She’s in a great deal of pain and it will hurt her even more when we try to move her.’
The young man blanched. ‘I’ve never heard Alison cry like that before. She’s quite tough, really, and never makes a fuss.’
‘Which just proves how uncomfortable she is at the moment,’ Libby said gently, stepping forward.
She laid her hand on the young man’s arm and Seb felt a little flicker of resentment run through him when he saw her smile warmly at him. It had been a long time since she’d smiled at him that way, he thought before he realised how churlishly he was behaving.
‘Make sure she knows you’re here for her,’ Libby continued, blissfully unaware of any undercurrents. ‘Talk to her while we move her and hold her hand…anything that might help to reassure her. She’s in pain and she’s scared and she needs you to be strong for her.’
‘I’ll try.’
The young man seemed far more resolute as he bent down and spoke to his wife. The fact that he was no longer so panic-stricken obviously had an effect on her, too, because she immediately started to calm down. Seb told the porter to go round to the other side of the car so they could begin the process of lifting her out, but he couldn’t help thinking how typical it was that Libby had managed to calm the situation down so effectively.
She’d always been good at finding the right words to reassure people. He had learned a lot from her when they had worked together, in fact. He’d had a tendency to rush because he’d wanted to get the job done, but she had taught him to be patient and spend an extra few minutes settling a patient down.
It had been the same in their private life: Libby had been the calm one, the one who had kept things ticking over, whereas he’d always been rushing around, trying to do ten jobs at once. He had always believed that they complemented each other in that respect, that her calmness was the perfect foil for his impatience. But was that really true? Or was it more a case of them being complete opposites who approached life from different directions and had very little in common?
His heart sank because it seemed the more likely explanation. He and Libby didn’t complement each other—they opposed one another. Was it any wonder in those circumstances that she had given up on their marriage?
CHAPTER THREE
Friday: 5 p.m.
‘THANK you, Dr Bridges. I’ll take over from here.’
Libby moved aside as Cathy Watts came hurrying over and took her place beside the trolley. It was obvious that the charge nurse expected her to leave Resus, but for some reason she felt loath to do so. She glanced at Seb, who was standing by the bed, and sighed. Surely she wasn’t jealous at the thought of the other woman being there to assist him while she’d been dismissed as surplus to requirements?
‘On my count, everyone,’ Seb said. ‘One…two…three.’ The young woman was swiftly transferred onto the bed and the team sprang into action. It was obviously a well-rehearsed routine because nobody needed to be told what to do. While Seb was delicately probing the patient’s abdomen, Cathy was attaching her to various monitor leads. Another nurse—Jayne, according to her name badge—had begun to remove the woman’s clothing, and the specialist registrar, Marilyn Maddocks, was taking a blood sample.
Libby had to admit that she was impressed by the ease with which they slotted into their allotted roles, although she wasn’t surprised. Seb had always demanded the very highest standards from his staff because it was what he demanded from himself.
‘Do you have any pain anywhere else, Alison?’
Seb’s voice was clear and deep as he asked the patient various questions, and Libby shivered. She had always loved the sound of his voice. It had been the first thing that had attracted her to him, in fact. She’d been in the students’ union at the time,
attempting to buy herself a glass of wine and failing miserably. The place had been packed that night and making herself heard above the din had been a major task. But then Seb had appeared and asked her what she’d wanted and, lo and behold, a glass had materialised in front of her as though by magic.
He had picked it up and led her over to a table—typically, he’d been able to find an empty one even in that crush—and then he had proceeded to charm her. By the end of the night she’d been more than halfway in love with him and by the end of the month they had moved in together. They had lived together all through med school and even though she had found the course extremely hard going at times, she had got through it because Seb had been there to help and encourage her.
She sighed. At one time she’d believed that he would always be there for her but it hadn’t worked out that way. Now she had accepted that divorce was the only answer. Once they made their separation legal, they would be free to get on with their lives, although she wasn’t foolish enough to think that it would be easy for either of them. Their relationship had been very special and there were bound to be regrets on both sides. However, painful though it might be, she knew they couldn’t carry on living the way they’d been doing for the past year. No, it would be better to end their marriage than endure any more heartache.
Seb frowned as he listened to what the patient was saying. ‘So where exactly was this other pain, then?’
‘In my shoulder…just here…’ Alison’s hand fluttered weakly as she touched the tip of her right shoulder, and he nodded.
‘I see,’ he said quietly, not wanting her to know how significant that snippet of information might turn out to be. He glanced over at Libby, wondering if she was adding up the clues as he was doing, and felt his heart jolt painfully when he saw the sadness on her face. She looked so unhappy that he longed to comfort her, but how could he when he had a patient who needed his help?
‘Have you experienced any vaginal bleeding?’ he continued, doing his best to appear calmly in control, although his insides felt as though they were on a merry-go-round. Even if he lived to be a hundred, he doubted if he would ever fully recover from the shock of seeing Libby standing in the waiting room.
‘I’m having a period at the moment,’ Alison muttered, obviously embarrassed at having to talk about something so personal.
‘So there’s no possibility that you might be pregnant?’ he persisted. ‘You haven’t missed a period recently?’
‘Well, I didn’t have one last month, but I’d just stopped taking the Pill and my GP warned me that my periods could be a bit erratic at first,’ Alison explained, blushing furiously.
‘Did you do a home pregnancy test?’ Seb asked, checking the monitor readings. Although Alison’s pulse, BP and heart rate were still within acceptable limits, there had been a slight deterioration in her condition so he decided not to waste any more time.
‘Tell Ben I’m going to need a transvaginal ultrasound done, will you?’ he told Cathy quietly, then turned back to the young woman as she answered his question.
‘No, I didn’t do a test. I didn’t think there was any need to do one because of what my GP had said.’ Alison was starting to look really scared now. ‘Do you think I’m having a miscarriage, Doctor?’
‘It’s possibly a little more complicated than that,’ Seb said gently. He nodded when Marilyn murmured that she would get onto the obstetric’s registrar. Obviously, she’d latched onto his train of thought so he could save his explanations for the patient. Moving to the head of the bed again, he did all he could to sound reassuring but he could tell how terrified the young woman was.
‘It’s possible that you’ve had an ectopic pregnancy, Alison. What that means is that instead of the embryo developing inside your womb, it started to develop somewhere else. The most common place is in one of the Fallopian tubes but we’ll have a better idea after you’ve had an ultrasound scan.’
‘But what’s going to happen if the baby’s growing in the wrong place? Will you be able to put it back where it’s supposed to be?’
‘No. I’m really sorry but that simply isn’t possible.’ Seb squeezed her hand when he saw tears ooze from her eyes. ‘It’s more than likely that the embryo is dead so it will be removed, along with any other damaged tissue.’
‘And that’s all that will happen?’ the girl said through her sobs.
‘A lot will depend on how much damage has been done. If the embryo has developed in one of your Fallopian tubes, the tube might have ruptured and the surgeon will have to decide if he can repair it.’ He squeezed her hand tighter. ‘If that isn’t possible then the tube will need to be removed as well.’
‘Oh!’
The girl broke into a storm of weeping. Seb sighed, wishing that he knew of a way to make this easier for her. He looked up when Libby suddenly appeared at his side.
‘Let me talk to her,’ she said simply.
Seb stepped aside, only half listening as Cathy came over to tell him that Ben was ready to do the scan. Libby was bending over the girl, stroking her hair and murmuring to her. Although Alison was still crying, whatever Libby was saying to her was obviously helping.
If only she would turn her talents to making their marriage better, he thought wistfully, then swung round because there was no point torturing himself with ‘if onlys’. What was done was done and he had to live with the consequences, even though he had no idea how he was going to do that. How did you manage to live without the person you loved most in the whole world?
Libby sighed sadly as she watched Alison being whisked away. Once an ectopic pregnancy was confirmed, the girl would be taken to the obs and gynae unit and prepared for surgery. She felt very sorry for her. It must be a terrible shock for a woman to discover that she was pregnant and that there was no hope of her baby surviving.
‘Thanks for that. I really appreciated it.’
She summoned a smile when Seb came over to her. ‘It was the least I could do.’
‘I’m still grateful, though. You’ve always had the gift of soothing people when they’re at their lowest ebb.’ He shrugged when she looked at him in surprise. ‘Not many folk have that talent, Libby, but you do.’
‘I…um…well, thank you.’ She stumbled over the words and had to make an effort to collect herself, but it was odd that Seb should have said that after what she’d been thinking about him. ‘We had a case similar to this during our first rotation on Casualty, if you remember,’ she said quickly, not wanting to go back down that route again.
‘Oh, I remember all right.’ He rolled his eyes. ‘A woman came in complaining of pains in her abdomen so we ran through everything we could think of—appendicitis, food poisoning, cystitis…’
‘Abdominal colic.’ She laughed. ‘We hadn’t a clue, had we?’
‘No, we hadn’t. We’d still be struggling if the senior reg hadn’t come along and demanded to know if she had a pain in her shoulder.’ Seb grinned. ‘We thought he’d completely lost the plot by asking a question like that, until he informed us that shoulder-tip pain is often a symptom of an ectopic pregnancy.’
‘We’d never even heard of it until then,’ Libby agreed. ‘He had to explain that it was caused by internal bleeding irritating the diaphragm when the patient breathes in and out.’
‘It was one lesson we never forgot, though, especially as we got a real rollicking from him afterwards. What did he call us?’
‘A pair of half-baked, incompetent morons who shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near a member of the public,’ she supplied helpfully, and he laughed.
‘That’s exactly what he said! How on earth did you remember after all this time?’
‘Because that day stuck in my mind for a number of reasons.’
As soon as the words left her mouth Libby wished she hadn’t said them, but it was too late by then. She could tell that Seb had remembered what else had happened that day, too. After their roasting, they had gone back to their flat and one thing had led to anothe
r. They’d ended up making love and afterwards, as they had lain in one another’s arms, Seb had asked her to marry him…
‘Right. I’d better go and brief the team so that everyone knows what to expect,’ he said brusquely, swinging round.
‘You mean about this major incident? What’s happened exactly?’ She shrugged when he paused, not wanting him to know how painful it was to recall happier times. There was no point looking back but it wasn’t easy to block out the memories when they were together. ‘I never got a chance to ask you before because we were interrupted. It must be pretty serious, though, if you’ve closed the whole unit.’
‘It is. There’s a tanker adrift and it’s on course to collide with one of the off-shore drilling rigs. We’ll be treating the bulk of the casualties so it’s going to get rather hectic around here.’
‘Good heavens! It really is a major incident.’
‘It’s certainly the biggest thing we’ve had to deal with since the unit opened.’ He glanced at his watch and sighed. ‘I’m sorry but I really need to get everything sorted out.’
‘Of course you do. Sorry. I didn’t mean to hold you up.’
‘You haven’t.’ There was a moment when she thought he was going to say something else but in the end he merely shrugged. ‘Why don’t you come with me? That way I can introduce you to the rest of the team before it gets too busy.’
‘Are you sure? I wouldn’t want to get in the way.’
‘You won’t,’ he said firmly, opening the door.
Libby wasn’t convinced but it would have wasted too much time if she’d argued the point with him. She sighed as she followed him out of Resus. It certainly hadn’t been the best time to turn up here. Seb had enough to contend with at the moment without her adding to the pressure. She just had to hold onto the thought that she was doing the right thing. For both of them.
CHAPTER FOUR
Friday: 6 p.m.
‘SORRY to keep you waiting, but we had a bit of an emergency.’
A Night to Remember Page 2
