She’d already heard rumours on the hospital grapevine that some of the more predatory nurses in the hospital were willing to put up with the existence of the two babies hanging on to life in the premature baby unit if it meant that had a chance of getting their claws into one of the most attractive single men on the staff. She certainly didn’t need to have her own name added to the list, not if she was going to keep herself out of the public gaze.
She was so busy wondering if she was going to be able to see Gideon without others noticing she was there that Nadia completely forgot to look where she was going and almost cannoned into a man who was coming out of the department.
It was the vicious way he was berating his young female companion that first sent the rush of horror raising her hackles. The brief terrified glance she dared to throw in his direction was enough to bring her out in a cold sweat as she swiftly turned her face away from him and hunched the shoulder closest to him to hide as much of her jaw as she could.
It was Laszlo! Here in her hospital! The words were shrieking inside her head so loudly that she was amazed everyone couldn’t hear them, too.
CHAPTER SIX
HOW had Laszlo found her? What was he doing in England? Had he used his drugs connections to track her down or had it just been sheer bad luck that had sent him here at the precise moment she was entering A and E?
Most importantly, had she been quick enough to turn her head or had he seen her…recognised her in spite of her efforts to disguise herself?
Her heart was beating so hard and so fast that she thought she was going to be sick. How she’d managed to hold on to the little plastic box containing the treat she’d made for Gideon, she had no idea. Her hands were shaking so much that she was barely able to make them grip the smooth surfaces.
‘Nadia! What a nice surprise!’ Gideon said right beside her and she was so grateful for the obvious pleasure in his voice that she nearly collapsed into his arms.
‘G-Gideon…’ Even she could hear the way her teeth were chattering too much to say his name properly.
‘Hey…what’s the matter?’ he asked, even as he wrapped a warmly supportive arm around her shoulders and began to guide her along the corridor. ‘You didn’t witness another accident, did you?’
‘N-no.’ She shook her head jerkily, torn between hiding her face in the broad shoulder just inches away from her and looking back to make sure that Laszlo wasn’t standing on the other side of A and E Reception, trying to get a better look at her.
‘Are you sick, then? In pain?’
The memories of the misery that man had put her through were enough to make her feel sick for the rest of her life, but she knew that wasn’t what Gideon meant.
‘Nadia, say something, please. You’re frightening me,’ he said, and his concern for her was so clear that she was finally able to make herself speak.
‘I—I’m not ill,’ she reassured him, even as she tried to find the right words to explain away the fact that she must look as if she’d nearly come face to face with her worst nightmare. ‘I just…I just had a bit of a shock…nearly bumped into some I once knew…someone I’d rather not see.’
Those green eyes were far too intelligent as they flicked over her face and when she saw that smiling mouth tighten into a grim line she knew that he had understood far more than she’d wanted him to know.
‘It was the man who hurt you,’ he said flatly, and she knew there was no point in denying it. After all, he was right, up to a point.
‘Yes,’ she whispered miserably, already mourning the consequences of that brief accidental encounter. If Laszlo had seen her…recognised her…then there was no way that she could stay here…no way she could take the risk that he might grab her one day when she was on her way to work and—
‘Do you want me to call the police?’ Gideon’s voice broke into her tangled thoughts and sent them scattering to the four winds. ‘You know that if he’s stalking you, you could take out a restraining order or something.’
‘No! No police!’ she exclaimed urgently. They wouldn’t be able to help, no one would be able to help if Laszlo found her.
‘Are you sure, sweetheart?’ His hands on her shoulders were warm and comforting and finally managed to dispel the worst of the trembling…until the endearment he’d used suddenly registered.
Oh, it was just so unfair, she lamented silently, even as that one precious word lit a tiny spark in the dark corner of her soul. The very first time that someone had called her something so beautiful, and it had to be on the day that all the ugliest parts of her life had come back to haunt her.
She’d actually begun to wonder if she dared to let herself hope for a normal life…to imagine that Gideon would be the one man to whom she could spill all the terrible memories and he wouldn’t turn away from her in horror.
Now she would never know because, much as she wanted to stay where she could see Gideon every day…at least until Amy and Adam were strong enough to leave the unit…she didn’t dare to risk it. There was no way that she could ever go back to the life she had known with Laszlo.
‘Do you want to wait here until I finish my shift?’ Gideon asked. ‘With any luck, I shouldn’t be more than half an hour. Then I could see you home.’
Mention of the time drew her eyes to the clock on the wall and her eyes widened in horror.
‘I’m going to be late!’ she exclaimed. ‘I need to get up to the unit or there’ll be no one to take care of Amy and Adam.’
‘Are you sure you’re up to it?’ he demanded with a frown, examining her face intently. ‘Wouldn’t you rather call in sick and go home until you get over your shock?’
Would she rather risk walking home when there was a chance that Laszlo might be loitering somewhere outside, just waiting to follow her, or would she prefer to go up to the security and safety of the unit where only staff and parents who knew the security code could gain entrance? There was no question where she’d rather be.
‘I’ll be better if I can keep busy,’ she said as she struggled out of the squashy chair one-handed, only then realising that she was still holding that small plastic box. ‘I brought this for you,’ she added awkwardly, silently wishing that she’d never succumbed to the temptation to make the treat for him. If she hadn’t made the flapjacks, she’d never have been coming through the door to A and E and would never have come anywhere near Laszlo.
‘For me?’ He took the box gingerly, clearly intrigued.
She found herself holding her breath as he peeled the lid back and peered inside.
‘Flapjacks!’ he exclaimed with a smile of delight that sent a burst of pure joy through her that almost made the unexpected consequences of the gift worthwhile.
He hung his nose over the box and breathed in deeply, drawing in the scents of oats and butter and honey with an expression of boyish bliss before breaking off a bit of one and popping it into his mouth.
Once more her imagination projected Gideon’s expression of uninhibited pleasure onto the face of the child that Adam would become, and with each new picture that formed in her head, the ache of knowing that she would never be there to see the event in person deepened.
‘Perfect…’ he breathed, then, with a look of regret, sealed the lid back down over the golden-brown squares and held it out to her. ‘If you insist on going up to work, will you take this up to the unit with you?’ He angled a thumb over his shoulder towards his colleagues in A and E. ‘That lot will scoff the lot if I leave them down here, but if you promise to look after them, I promise to share them with you when I finish my shift.’
Nadia knew there was no point in spending any more time with him than she had to, but the knowledge that she would be leaving soon, and that once she was gone she would never see him again, made her greedy for every last moment in his company.
‘How do you know you can trust me not to “scoff” them without you?’ she challenged, then blinked at the fact that it actually sounded as if she was flirting with him. She
hadn’t even realised that she knew how to do that because she’d never done it before.
And it had felt good, she realised as she flew up the stairs towards the unit, the excited little bubbles in her bloodstream seeming to lend wings to her feet. And the part that had felt particularly special had been the gleam in Gideon’s eyes when he’d threatened dire consequences if she ate his flapjacks, and she hadn’t even thought about cowering away from him in fear that he would really attack her.
That had been a real revelation. The fact that already she felt as if she knew the man he was enough to know that he wasn’t the sort to raise his hand against a woman. The fact that already she knew that she could trust him to treat her with respect and gentleness.
And then her heart bled with the knowledge that it was a waste of time dreaming foolish dreams that this trust might one day be able to undo the deeper damage that had been done to her at Laszlo’s hands. She knew that any such dreams would die when she left Gideon because there would never be anyone she could learn to trust the way she was beginning to count on him.
Anyway, for the short time she had left, she needed to focus all her concentration on Amy and Adam; do her best to make sure they were as safe and healthy as possible for the person who would replace her as their carer. And if that thought felt as if it was pulling her heart out by the roots, well, she would just have to live with it because she really didn’t have any other options.
‘Hey, beautiful babies, how are you doing today?’ she crooned as she reached in to stroke a gentle finger over each tiny fist, marvelling at the perfection of each minute fingernail when both babies stretched their hands wide in response to her touch.
‘I hope you had a restful night,’ she continued as she carefully checked the connections on each monitor and the patency of each line going in and coming out of their little bodies. It wouldn’t do to let any of them become blocked—that could do serious damage to their systems.
One of the monitors issued a staccato warning and she wagged a finger at Amy. ‘You’re not interfering with your brother’s wires again, are you?’ she said as she checked them again, frowning when everything seemed to be fine.
Another glance at the screen full of displays told her that this time it was one of Amy’s sensors that had triggered the alarm.
‘Hey, pretty girl, what’s the matter with you, then?’ she asked as she put gentle fingers on the baby’s forehead, testing the truth of the figures that insisted that her temperature was rising. ‘You’re a little bit warm, aren’t you, darling?’ she murmured as she made preparations to take a set of samples. ‘We need to get these off to the labs as soon as possible to find out what’s going on.’
‘What is going on?’ Gideon demanded, and nearly sent her into orbit. She’d been so totally concentrated on what she was doing for Amy that she hadn’t even heard the door of the unit opening, let alone tracked the sound of his feet as he’d walked towards her.
‘The monitors say that Amy’s running a temperature,’ she told him, hoping she sounded calmer than she felt. Not only was she worried about what was wrong with his little daughter but the freshly showered man standing so close to her was seriously compromising her own pulse rate and blood pressure.
His face was newly shaven and his damp hair still bore the traces of where he’d impatiently run his fingers through it, and it took a real effort for her to keep her mind on what she was saying when all she could think about was reaching up to tidy the thick strands falling over his forehead.
‘I’ve just taken a set of samples to send up to the lab,’ she said when she managed to drag her eyes back to the row of vials.
‘I’ll take them for you—I’m already taking a set up for Rani,’ offered Julia, the young woman who’d only joined the unit that week, and when Nadia saw the hungry expression in her new colleague’s eyes as she ran them over Gideon’s body she was startled by the feeling of possessiveness that made her want to push the younger woman away.
Mine, she wanted to declare, even though she knew she had no right to, and suddenly realised that for the first time in her life she was experiencing jealousy over knowing that Julia would still be there to smile up at him when she was gone.
It seemed to take for ever for the results to come back and the news was bad.
‘NEC?’ Gideon repeated, his face grey with shock when Josh gave him the news.
Nadia felt sick at such a diagnosis.
Necrotising enterocolitis was one of the more serious conditions that such premature babies were prone to, with whole sections of their intestines succumbing to raging inflammation before the tissues became necrotic and died. The treatment for even moderate attacks could involve extensive invasive surgery, affected lengths of intestines being cut away to prevent it spreading any further.
Some babies didn’t survive, and the thought that this might be Amy’s fate, perfect little Amy who already had so much character and determination…
Nadia gazed down at the little girl while Josh and Gideon spoke about scans and MRI to determine the extent of the problem, and was struck that something just didn’t seem right about the situation. Unfortunately, in the course of her career she’d nursed other babies with NEC and had grown accustomed to watching the rapid progression from the first, almost innocuous rise in temperature to the point where intervention or death became inevitable.
In Amy’s case, something just didn’t ring true.
On the other side of the room, for example, Rani’s temperature was far higher and she looked far more like a candidate for NEC than Amy did, but as far as she knew, Rani’s tests had all come back negative.
She gasped as a sudden thought struck her, but when Gideon and Josh both turned to her with questioning looks, she almost didn’t dare voice her idea. After all, she was only the nurse, albeit a specialist in the care of premature babies, while both of them were doctors and Josh, in particular, was the unit’s consultant.
‘What is it?’ Gideon said urgently, obviously ready to grasp at anything if it would help Amy.
‘Would it be possible to run another set of tests—as a precaution?’ she suggested tentatively. ‘They could go to the lab while you’re doing the scan and MRI and the results should all come in together if you get them put to the front of the queue.’
‘What are you thinking?’ Gideon asked, and her heart swelled when she realised that he hadn’t questioned her right to make suggestions for a second.
‘Take the samples.’ Josh, too, seemed willing to trust her instincts, after a long silent look at the little girl lying so helpless in the cot with her brother. ‘I’ll do the paperwork and follow it up with a phone call to hurry things along.’
Nadia hated having to let Amy leave the department without her, but she couldn’t leave Adam to anyone else’s care just to stand there helplessly while his sister was scrutinised by one high-tech machine after another. Anyway, she had her hands full trying to calm the little boy who began to cry almost as soon as the department door closed behind his sister.
‘Hey, Nadia,’ called Julia from across the room. ‘Could you come here for a minute and show me what I’ve done wrong with these monitors? They just seem to keep going off for no reason.’
‘I’ll be back in a minute, precious,’ Nadia murmured to Adam, but he was wailing so angrily that she doubted that he heard her.
‘Sorry to be a nuisance but I was so busy looking at Dr Gorgeous that I might have crossed some wires or something,’ Julia said as she stepped back to allow Nadia access to the cot and the bank of displays. ‘I know Rani isn’t very well,’ she chattered on as Nadia ran a careful eye over every sensor and lead. ‘I seem to be running backwards and forwards to the lab every five minutes with samples for testing…But now the temperature monitor keeps going off and—’
‘Page Mr Weatherby,’ Nadia interrupted urgently as she sped across the room to grab a trolley specially kitted out with all the equipment needed to keep monitors functioning during a trip from
one department to another.
‘What?’ Julia said gormlessly. ‘Why?’
‘You need to tell him that he’s got the wrong baby,’ Nadia said as she swiftly disconnected everything connecting Rani to the department monitors and oxygen supply and reconnected them to the portable system.
Julia was still standing there with her mouth open when Nadia glanced in her direction, and she gave up any hope that the young woman was going to be of any use, reaching for the phone that would connect her to the staffroom just along the corridor.
‘Jenny!’ she said gratefully when she recognised her voice, knowing that the staff nurse was a far better bet in an emergency than man-obsessed Julia. ‘I need you in the nursery, quickly. Can you come in here and keep an eye on Adam for me? I need to get Rani up to MRI.’
‘Hey, you can’t just grab a baby and use it as an excuse to dash off after a doctor,’ Julia objected, but Nadia simply ignored her, her hands moving in a blur to get everything ready as soon as possible.
‘What’s up?’ Jenny demanded, pulling disposable gloves on as she entered the nursery.
‘Can you phone up to MRI and tell them I’m on my way with Rani?’ she directed as she took the brake off Rani’s cot and began to push it towards the door. ‘Then try to calm Adam down so he doesn’t make himself sick.’
That was one of the drawbacks when their patients finally had the ventilator tubes taken out of their mouths, she mused, desperately trying not to think that she might be making a monumental fool of herself. For as long as they were in position, their charges were unable to use their vocal cords, and it almost seemed as if they were making up for lost time once they were able to.
‘Nadia. What happened?’ Josh demanded as he met her at the door to the room housing the massive bulk of the MRI.
‘I think there’s been a mix-up,’ she gasped, winded from her rapid journey. ‘I think some of the samples were confused and it’s Rani who has NEC.’
A Family for His Tiny Twins Page 8
