Feisty Firefighters Bundle

by Jill Shalvis

  Their patient was lying on the floor near the back corner of the restaurant, a cushion under her head and two more under her feet. An anxious-looking man was holding her hand and a slim, well-dressed blonde woman had her hand on the other wrist.

  ‘Hi,’ she said. ‘I’m Kathryn Mercer. I’m a nurse.’

  ‘Hi.’ Tim’s smile was fleeting. ‘I’m Tim and this is Laura.’

  Laura didn’t acknowledge the introduction. The patient looked shocked. She was pale, sweaty and barely conscious. Thankful that she had grabbed one of the high-concentration oxygen masks from the floor, Laura jammed the tubing onto the cylinder outlet. ‘What’s her name?’

  ‘Jillian,’ the man beside her answered.

  ‘Jillian, can you hear me? Open your eyes for me.’

  The only response was an incoherent groan.

  ‘No radial pulse,’ Tim reported. ‘Airway’s clear.’

  Laura started connecting up the leads for the life pack. A very shiny pair of black shoes appeared behind her elbow and her gaze flicked up for a second, expecting to see the restaurant manager moving in to watch proceedings. The pair of immaculate, pin-striped grey trousers belonged to a stranger, however.

  ‘Come on, Kathryn. It’s time we left. There’s no need for you to be involved here any longer.’

  Tim looked up swiftly from where he was wrapping the blood-pressure cuff around Jillian’s arm. He ignored the man in the nice suit. ‘How long has she been like this?’

  ‘Only a couple of minutes. She seemed to come right after I got her to lie down and put her feet up. Then she insisted on sitting up and started to look shocked very quickly. Her radial pulse was palpable until her GCS dropped.’

  Laura was sticking on electrodes. She heard what seemed to be an exasperated sigh as the shiny shoes disappeared. She paused for just a moment to rub a knuckle on her patient’s breastbone. ‘Jillian? Open your eyes.’

  The response to the painful stimulus was another groan and an uncoordinated attempt to push Laura’s hand away, but Jillian’s eyes remained closed.

  ‘I’d put the GCS at 7,’ Laura said to Tim. She looked up at the other people, her gaze taking in both the nurse, who looked to be about her own age, and Jillian’s husband, who was well into his sixties. ‘Any medical history?’ she queried. ‘Does she have a heart condition? Diabetes?’

  ‘She’s got high blood pressure,’ her husband responded. ‘Has done for years. She’s not having a stroke, is she? Oh, God!’ He covered his face with his hands and they could all hear a sob.

  The restaurant manager was almost wringing his hands with anxiety and Laura caught his eye. ‘Could you take care of Jillian’s husband for the moment? It’ll be a few minutes before we’re ready to leave.’

  The manager looked relieved to have a task. He put his arm around the man’s heaving shoulders. ‘Come with me, sir. Let’s get you sitting down just for a minute. Jillian’s in the best hands possible right now.’

  ‘It didn’t look like a stroke.’ Kathryn shook her head. ‘She was quite alert earlier and she didn’t complain of a headache. I didn’t notice any speech difficulties or obvious neurological deficit.’

  Tim released the valve on the sphygmomanometer and the air rushed out of the cuff with a hiss. ‘BP’s 70 over 40,’ he reported grimly. ‘What’s her rhythm like?’

  ‘Sinus,’ Laura said. ‘Seventy beats per minute.’ Oddly normal, in other words.

  ‘I’ll get an IV in.’ Tim reached into the kit for supplies and Laura picked up a penlight torch and lifted Jillian’s eyelids.

  ‘Pupils are equal but both dilated and sluggish.’

  ‘Kathryn.’ The clipped word from somewhere behind Laura was a command for attention, but the blonde woman had her gaze fixed on Tim.

  ‘Is there anything else I can do to help?’

  ‘You’re a nurse, you said?’

  ‘Yes. I used to work in Emergency, though it’s been a while. I’m just a general practice nurse now. Part time.’

  ‘Could you do a blood sugar for us maybe? That is, if…’ Tim’s raised eyebrow was intended to question the advisability of her staying to help.

  ‘That’s fine.’ Kathryn raised her head only for a moment. ‘Just give me a minute or two, Sean. Please?’

  ‘I’ll get a second IV in,’ Laura decided. ‘She needs fluids, stat. What are you using, a 14 gauge?’

  ‘Yeah. The wider the bore the better right now.’

  Kathryn had opened the BGL kit. She held one of the woman’s fingers, used the lancet to elicit a drop of blood and then deftly collected the tiny sample on the end of the Glucocard. The meter beeped as it started its calculation.

  ‘You’ve done that before.’ Tim glanced up as he secured a luer plug to the IV cannula he’d just inserted.

  ‘It’s one of the few invasive procedures I get to do these days.’ The blonde woman’s smile was wry. ‘I envy you guys.’ The meter beeped again and she picked it up. ‘BGL’s in normal range. It’s 5.6.’

  ‘Good. Thanks for that.’

  Laura was slipping her cannula into place on Jillian’s other arm. ‘Could you draw up an extra flush for me, please, Tim?’

  ‘I could do that,’ Kathryn offered eagerly.

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake.’ The irritated snap came from Kathryn’s well-dressed partner. ‘I’ve had about enough, Kathryn. Our dinner has already been ruined and now you’re making a spectacle of yourself, crawling around on the floor. I’m leaving.’ He proved his intention by turning and walking away. ‘If you want to stay and play doctors and nurses that’s fine, but you’ll have to find your own way home.’

  Kathryn bit her lip, hesitated fractionally but then scrambled to her feet. ‘OK, Sean. I’m coming.’ Hurriedly, she reached down to grab an empty syringe packet and a pen. She scribbled down a telephone number.

  ‘Could you…? I mean, would you mind ringing me, please?’ she asked Tim. ‘To let me know how she gets on?’

  ‘Sure.’

  Kathryn turned but walked only a step or two before turning back. ‘What do you think it is?’ she asked quietly. ‘An MI?’

  Tim shook his head. ‘She’s presented with acute abdo pain, rapid deterioration to shock and she’s hypotensive but hasn’t developed a rise in her heart rate. My pick is a dissecting or ruptured aortic aneurysm.’

  ‘I think you’re right,’ Laura said seconds later as Kathryn vanished through the front door of the restaurant. ‘There’s no palpable femoral pulse on the left side.’

  ‘BP’s coming up.’ Tim pulled the stethoscope from his ears. ‘Let’s see if we need to get some morphine on board and then we’d better load and go.’

  An hour later, Laura was again restocking the resuscitation kit. She removed empty packaging and a full sharps container so she could see what was missing. ‘Amazing how much of a mess we can make, dealing with a medical emergency.’

  ‘Great job, though, wasn’t it?’ Tim sounded happy. ‘And we were right. It was a dissecting aneurysm. I’ll wait till she comes out of Theatre and then ring Kathryn to tell her about it.’

  ‘She’s been lucky,’ Laura said. ‘If she hadn’t been so close to a hospital she would have been in serious trouble.’

  Tim didn’t appear to be listening. He was hunting in his pockets. ‘You didn’t throw that package away, did you? The one with her phone number?’ He tried his shirt pocket and sighed with relief. ‘No, here it is.’

  Laura bit her lip. She had never seen Tim look rattled about something so minor. ‘So you’re going to call her, then?’

  ‘Are you kidding? The woman of my dreams just gave me her phone number and asked me to call her.’

  ‘But, Tim…’ Laura frowned. ‘She wasn’t exactly alone.’

  ‘I don’t think she liked her dinner date any more than anyone else did. What a jerk, complaining about having his meal interrupted because Kathryn’s trying to help someone who’s seriously sick.’

  ‘But…’ Laura cleared her throat. ‘She
was wearing a wedding ring, Tim. So was he.’

  ‘Was she?’ Animation died from Tim’s face. ‘How on earth did you have time to notice that?’

  Laura shrugged. Maybe her subconscious was tuned to noticing things pertaining to weddings at present. Like the silver and white theme in the restaurant. And the plain gold bands on other people’s fingers. After all, her dream of Jason putting one on her own finger was a great deal closer than it had been a month ago. Tim turned away with a sigh.

  ‘Why am I not surprised?’ he muttered. He screwed up the packaging and dropped it onto the little pile Laura had collected. ‘Even if she wasn’t married, she probably wouldn’t have been interested. I hope you realise how lucky you are, Laura.’

  ‘Oh, I do, don’t worry,’ Laura murmured. She felt sorry for Tim but his turn would come one of these days. He was a lovely guy and he deserved the same kind of happiness she had found. One that would last a lifetime.

  A couple of days might be a lifetime for some kind of insect but it was the blink of an eye for Laura Green. And when she answered the late-evening knock on the front door of Jason’s house in Crighton Terrace, she knew instantly that she was in trouble.

  If she had collated everything she knew about Jason Halliday and invented a prototype for what he would consider to be the perfect woman, the embodiment of that ideal was currently standing on his doorstep. She didn’t need to introduce herself, but that didn’t stop those perfectly painted pink lips from opening. Laura had a wild urge to slam the door shut in her face. Instead, she simply waited for the inevitable.

  ‘Hi, I’m Shelley Bates.’ Laura found herself stepping back in response to the visitor’s forward movement rather than any desire to issue an invitation. ‘Is Jason home?’

  The nerve of the woman! She actually brushed past Laura as though she were some kind of maid and then walked confidently up the hallway to enter the living room. Laura saw the colour leach from Jason’s face as she followed Shelley. He glanced at Laura and the pain of betrayal seemed to be directed at her. It wasn’t fair!

  ‘She just waltzed in, Jase. I couldn’t stop her.’

  Shelley dropped a carry bag, which was large enough to appear ominous, beside the couch. Large blue eyes were regarding Jason. ‘I’m sorry to drop in without any warning,’ she said, ‘but I couldn’t bear to be away from Meggie a moment longer.’

  Jason’s jaw sagged. ‘Who are you trying to kid?’ he said incredulously. ‘You dumped your baby on a doorstep and took off. Well, you can just take off again now as far as we’re concerned. We don’t want you here.’

  Laura hadn’t realised she was holding her breath until she felt it seeping out now. ‘That’s right,’ she said coolly. ‘Jason is more than capable of caring for his daughter.’

  ‘So you do accept that she’s yours?’ Shelley smiled for the first time and Laura stared at the perfect teeth in the perfect face. ‘I’m so pleased, Jason. I wasn’t sure that you would.’

  ‘So that was why you decided to dump her?’ Jason hadn’t returned the smile. His face was set grimly and the hold on the baby in his arms had tightened enough to make Megan squeak softly in surprise.

  ‘Yes,’ Shelley said surprisingly. ‘I knew if I turned up with the baby you would have no problem in ignoring both of us. Denying fatherhood and simply sending us packing. I knew my only chance was to make sure you had the opportunity to get to know and accept your daughter.’

  Only chance for what? Laura stood beside Jason, stony-faced.

  ‘And now? I suppose you think you can just take her away as easily as you brought her.’ Jason cleared his throat. ‘You might have bitten off a bit more than you can chew, Shelley.’

  ‘I have no intention of taking her away from you.’ Shelley walked towards where they were standing. Oscar raised his head from where it was resting on Jason’s knee and growled softly. ‘She looks very happy.’ Shelley peered over the edges of the blanket and her blue eyes became very bright. ‘Hello, darling,’ she crooned. ‘Mummy’s missed you so much.’

  Laura felt a faint wave of nausea. Surely Jason could see how fake this woman was? He didn’t appear to have thawed yet.

  ‘What do you intend to do, then, Shelley?’

  Go back to England, Laura wanted to suggest tartly. Get the hell out of our lives and stay out.

  ‘I just want to talk, Jason. We’ve got a lot to talk about, haven’t we?’

  ‘I suppose so.’ The agreement was grudging. ‘I guess you’d better sit down.’

  Shelley didn’t move. She looked directly at Laura for the first time since entering the house. ‘It really is a private matter.’

  ‘I don’t have any secrets from Laura,’ Jason responded. ‘And she’s as involved in all this as any of us.’

  ‘Really?’ Shelley’s glance was almost amused. As competition, Laura had just been summarily dismissed.

  Seething inwardly, Laura sat on an armchair. Shelley sat on the couch but Jason remained standing, the baby in his arms, the dog pressed firmly against his leg.

  Laura watched the longest, most elegant legs she had ever seen cross themselves and display a significant amount more thigh. No matter how toned or thin she herself became, she would never possess legs like that without some kind of transplant. Then Shelley reached up to flick long blonde hair over one shoulder and the movement raised her short top enough to reveal a flat belly with a glinting jewel in her navel. A glance at Jason revealed his gaze was riveted to the woman on the couch and Laura felt something cold and hard form inside her.

  He was attracted to Shelley. What man wouldn’t be? And Shelley Bates had a card Laura could never play. She was Megan’s birth mother. She could take Jason’s now beloved child away from him…or she could use her to pull Jason back into her life.

  Which was clearly what her intention was.

  ‘I’ve never forgotten you, Jason. It was the most wonderful holiday I’ve ever had and the night with you was the best part.’

  ‘You could have fooled me. You didn’t even bother to meet me at that pub the next night.’

  So, Jason had wanted it to be a little more than a one-night stand, had he? Megan made a distressed noise that fitted how Laura was feeling remarkably well. At least the baby’s discomfort could be eased, however.

  ‘I’ll fix her a bottle, shall I?’

  ‘I couldn’t,’ Shelley told Jason. ‘We’d taken a boat trip out to Slipper Island and the weather got rough. We had to stay overnight and when I went looking for you the next day, you had gone. I had no idea how to get hold of you.’ The sigh was heartfelt. ‘I tried again when I found out I was pregnant, of course, but all I knew was your name and that you were a fireman. You wouldn’t think New Zealand was a big enough country to make it difficult to find out where someone lives, would you?’

  ‘No,’ Jason said. Megan cried again, more loudly this time, and Laura simply got up and walked to the kitchen.

  ‘After Megan was born my b-brother decided he had to help.’

  What was that stammer about? Laura wondered sourly, as she stirred formula. Had she just managed to modify ‘boyfriend’ into something acceptable in time? It hadn’t been a ‘brother’ Mrs Mack had seen delivering the box to the station’s doorstep. And where was he now, anyway? She went back into the sitting room a few minutes later and silently handed the bottle to Jason.

  ‘Thanks.’ The smile Laura received was distracted, however. Jason’s attention was firmly directed to the woman on the couch. ‘Where have you been for the last month, Shelley?”

  ‘Just travelling,’ she responded sadly, watching as Jason sat down in the armchair and arranged the baby and bottle into satisfactory positions. ‘I was in Dunedin most of the time. My brother, Darryn, has a friend there who’s trying to find a job. I was just filling in time, thinking about you and Megan and wondering whether you would learn to love her if you were given the chance.’

  The longer the silence that fell ticked on, the more significant it seemed to become. F
inally, Jason cleared his throat.

  ‘Yeah…well, I guess it worked.’

  Shelley’s huge blue eyes radiated joy. ‘That’s wonderful. Now all we need to do is plan our future.’

  ‘Our future?’ Jason’s incredulity echoed the word that was sounding a strident alarm in Laura’s head.

  ‘We have a baby, Jason,’ Shelley told him softly. ‘The result of the love we shared.’

  ‘For one night,’ Jason reminded her. ‘It was sex, not love, Shelley.’

  ‘For you, maybe. I think it was more than that. I’ve never forgotten that night, and I’ve never forgotten you.’

  Laura could understand that, even if she still wasn’t at all convinced of this woman’s sincerity. If she’d only ever had a single night with Jason, it would be burned into her memory banks for ever as well.

  ‘I want my baby to have a father,’ Shelley whispered. ‘I want her to have her father.’

  ‘I have no intention of abandoning my daughter.’

  ‘But I want her to have a real father. Not someone on the other side of the world.’

  ‘I’m not planning to shift to Britain,’ Jason said firmly. ‘But Megan can stay here. I’m sure she’ll be allowed to stay in the country on a permanent basis once I’m legally registered as her father.’

  ‘But I wouldn’t be allowed to stay,’ Shelley said softly. ‘And my daughter is staying with me.’

  Stick had hit the nail right on the head, Laura realised. Shelley Bates was out to emigrate and Megan was the ace she hadn’t bothered to keep up her sleeve. If Jason wanted to keep Megan in his life, he was going to have to marry her mother. And that wouldn’t be too much of a hardship, would it?

  Shelley was obviously too clever to push the point right now. Instead, she stood up, walked towards Jason and held out her arms.

  ‘I think it’s time I got to hold my baby, isn’t it?’

  For a long second, time seemed to stop. Don’t give her Megan, Laura pleaded silently. If you hand her over then she’s already won. Then Shelley wiped away a tear that was trickling slowly down the side of her nose.

  ‘Please, Jason?’

  The lone tear had done the trick. Laura watched the conflict play across Jason’s face. Should he do what he wanted to do and hold onto his child or create further suffering for the woman who was, in all fairness, Megan’s mother? Slowly, grudgingly, he transferred his bundle.