Her Christmas Eve Diamond

by Scarlet Wilson

  ‘Which one do you think?’

  She caught his head in her hands and pulled his lips towards hers. This was what she’d been waiting for.

  His lips touched hers hungrily, parting quickly, his tongue pushing against hers. She wrapped her arms around his neck.

  This was it. Stars were going off in her head. If he didn’t keep doing this she would explode. Because everything about this felt right. And it was just a kiss—right? Where was the harm in that?

  ‘I’ve waited a whole month to kiss you,’ he whispered in her ear.

  ‘Then I’ve only got one thing to say—don’t stop.’

  CHAPTER FOUR

  2 November

  ‘WHAT are you doing here?’

  It was three o’clock in the morning, and the voice should have startled her, but it didn’t; it washed over her like warm treacle.

  She turned her head in the darkened room where she was checking a patient’s obs, an automatic smile appearing on her face. ‘I got called in at eleven o’clock. Two of the night-shift staff had to go home sick, and it was too late to call in any agency staff.’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘Sickness bug again. What are you doing here? I thought Franco was on call.’

  Brad rolled his tired eyes. ‘Snap. Sickness bug, Franco phoned me half an hour ago with his head stuck down a toilet.’

  Cassidy nodded. ‘Figures. This bug seems to hit people really quickly. Loads of the staff are down with it. Let’s just hope we manage to avoid it.’ She finished recording the obs in the patients chart and started walking towards the door. Brad’s arm rested lightly on her waist, and although she wanted to welcome the feel of his touch, it just didn’t seem right.

  ‘No touching at work,’ she whispered.

  His eyes swept up and down the dimly lit corridor. ‘Even when there’s no one about? Where’s the fun in that?’ His eyes were twinkling again, and it was doing untold damage to her flip-flopping stomach. She stopped walking and leaned against the wall.

  ‘It’s like this, Dr Donovan.’ She moved her arm in a circular motion. ‘I’m the master of all you can survey right now, and it wouldn’t do to be caught in a compromising position with one of the doctors. That would give the hospital gossips enough ammunition for the rest of the year.’ She looked down the corridor again, straightening herself up, her breasts brushing against his chest.

  ‘I may well be the only nurse on duty in this ward right now, but I’ve got a reputation to maintain.’ She tapped her finger on his chest. ‘No matter how much men of a dubious nature try to waylay me.’

  Brad kept his hands lightly resting on her waist. ‘Hmm, I’m liking three o’clock in the morning, Cassidy Rae. It sounds as if there might be a bit of a bad girl in there.’ He had that look in his eye again—the one he’d had when he’d finally stopped kissing her a few nights ago. The one that suggested a thousand other things they could be doing if they weren’t in the wrong place at the wrong time. ‘We really need to improve our timing.’

  He was grinning at her now. The tiny hairs on her arms were starting to stand on end. This man was infectious. Much more dangerous than any sickness bug currently sweeping the ward.

  She could feel the pressure rising in her chest. How easy would it be right now for them to kiss? And how much did she want to? But it went against all her principles for conduct and professional behaviour. So why did they currently feel as if they were flying out the window?

  No matter how she tried to prevent it, this man had got totally under her skin. She was falling for him hook, line and sinker. No matter how much her brain told her not to.

  She tried to break the tension between them. ‘What do you want, anyway? I didn’t page you. Shouldn’t you be in bed?’ The irony of the words hit her as soon as they left her mouth, her cheeks automatically flushing. Brad and bed. Two words that should never be together in a sentence. The images had haunted her dreams for the last few nights. And she had a very active imagination.

  His fingers tugged her just a little closer so he could whisper in her ear. ‘Bed is exactly where I’m planning on being. But not here. And not alone.’

  Cassidy felt her blush intensify. Was she going to deny what had been on her mind? She wasn’t normally shy around men. But something about Brad was different. Something was making her cautious.

  And she wasn’t sure what it was. She couldn’t quite put her finger on it yet. But as long as she had the slightest inclination what it was, she didn’t want to lose her heart to this guy. No matter how irresistible he was.

  ‘I’ve got two patients coming up. Two young guys who’ve—what is it you call it here?—been out on the lash?’

  Cassidy laughed and nodded at his phrasing. He really was trying to embrace the Scottish words and phrases around him. She raised her eyebrows, ‘Or you could call them blootered.’

  Brad shook his head. ‘I think you all deliberately wait until I’m around and start using all these words to confuse me.’ He looked out the window into the night at the pouring rain. ‘One of the other nurses down in

  A and E called the two young guys drookit and mauchit. I have no idea what she was talking about.’

  Cassidy laughed even harder. ‘Look outside, that will give you a clue. Drookit is absolutely soaking. Mauchit means really dirty. I take it the guys were found lying on the street?’

  Brad nodded. ‘I’m getting the hang of this, though. It’s...’ he lifted his fingers in the air ‘...going like a fair down there.’

  She laughed. ‘See—you’re learning. Bet you hadn’t heard that expression before you came to Scotland.’ Her brow wrinkled. ‘Hang on, where is it going like a fair? In A and E?’

  ‘The short-stay ward is full already. That’s why you’re getting these two. They’ll need Glasgow coma scale obs done. Are you okay with that?’

  Cassidy smiled. ‘Of course I am. We’re used to getting some minor head injuries on the ward on a Saturday night.’ She walked over to the filing cabinet and pulled out the printed sheets, attaching them to two clipboards for the bottom of the beds. She turned to face him. ‘You know a group of doctors at one of the local hospitals invented this over thirty years ago.’ She waved the chart at him. ‘Now it’s used the whole world over. One of the doctors is still there. He’s a professor now.’

  Brad raised his eyebrows. ‘Aren’t you just the little fund of information at three in the morning?’ He looked around again. ‘Haven’t you got some help? I’m not happy about you being here alone with two drunks. There’s no telling how they’ll react when they finally come round.’

  Cassidy pointed to a figure coming down the corridor. ‘Claire, the nursing auxiliary, is on duty with me. She was just away for a break. And if I need help from another staff nurse, I can call through to next door.’

  She turned her head as she heard the lift doors opening and the first of the trolleys being pulled towards the ward. ‘Here they come.’ She scooted into the nearby six-bedded ward and pulled the curtains around one of the beds.

  Five minutes later a very young, very drunk man was positioned in the bed, wearing a pair of hospital-issue granddad pyjamas. Cassidy wrinkled her nose at the vapours emanating from him. ‘Phew! He smells like a brewery. I could get anaesthetised by these fumes.’ She spent a few moments checking his blood pressure and pulse, checking his limb movements and trying to elicit a verbal and motor response from him. Finally she drew her pen torch from her pocket and checked his pupil reactions.

  She shook her head as she marked the observations on the chart. ‘At least his pupils are equal and reactive. He’s reacting to pain, but apart from that he’s completely out of it.’ She checked the notes from A and E. ‘Any idea of a next of kin?’

  Brad shook his head. ‘Neither of the guys had wallets on them. This one had a student card in his pocket but that was it.’

 
He raised his head as the rattle of the second trolley sounded simultaneously to his pager going off. He glanced downwards at the number. ‘It’s A and E again. Are you sure you’re okay?’

  Claire had joined her at the side of the bed. ‘We’ll be fine, but just remember, there are no beds left up here.’

  Brad nodded. ‘I’ll try to come back up later,’ he said as he walked down the corridor towards the lift.

  * * *

  Cassidy spent the next hour doing neurological observations on the two patients every fifteen minutes. Both of them started to respond a little better, even if it was belligerently. It was four o’clock in the morning now—that horrible time of night for the night shift where the need to sleep seemed to smack them straight in the head. Her eyes were beginning to droop even as she walked the length of the corridor to check on her patients. Sitting down right now would be lethal—she had to keep on the move to stay awake.

  A monitor started pinging in one of the nearby rooms. ‘I’ll get it,’ she shouted to Claire. ‘The leads have probably detached again.’

  She walked into the room of Mr Fletcher, a man in his sixties admitted with angina. Every time he’d turned over in his sleep tonight, one of the leads attached to his chest had moved out of place.

  Cassidy flicked on the light, ready to silence the alarms on the monitor. But Mr Fletcher’s leads were intact. His skin was white and drawn, his lips blue and his body rigid on the bed. The monitor showed a rapid, flickering electrical line. Ventricular fibrillation. His heart wasn’t beating properly at all. Even though the monitor told her what she needed to know, she took a few seconds to check for a pulse and listen for breathing.

  ‘Claire!’ She pulled the red alarm on the wall, setting off the cardiac-arrest procedure as she released the brake on the bottom of the bed and pulled the bed out from the wall. She removed the headrest from the top of the bed and pulled out the pillows. Claire appeared at her side, pulling the cardiac-arrest trolley behind her. ‘I’ve put out the call.’ She was breathing heavily.

  Cassidy took a deep breath. Brad was the senior doctor carrying the arrest page tonight. If he was still down in A and E, it would take him at least five minutes to get up here. Glasgow City Hospital was an old, sprawling building, with bits added on over time. It hadn’t been designed with emergencies in mind, like some of the modern, newly built hospitals were. The anaesthetist would probably take five minutes to get here, too.

  It didn’t matter what the monitor said. Cassidy took a few seconds to do the old-fashioned assessment of the patient. Airway. Breathing. Circulation. No pulse. No breathing.

  ‘Start bagging,’ she instructed Claire, pointing her to the head of the bed and handing her an airway as she connected up the oxygen supply to the ambu-bag. She turned the dial on the defibrillator, slapping the pads on Mr Fletcher’s chest and giving it a few seconds to pick up and confirm his rhythm.

  ‘Stand clear,’ she shouted to Claire, waiting a few seconds to check she’d stood back then looking downwards to make sure she wasn’t touching the collapsed metal side rails. She pressed the button and Mr Fletcher’s back arched upwards as the jolt went through his body.

  Her adrenaline had kicked in now. She didn’t feel sleepy or tired any more. She was wide awake and on alert, watching the monitor closely for a few seconds to see if the shock had made any impact on his heart rhythm. Nothing. Still VF.

  The sound of feet thudded down the corridor as Brad appeared, closely followed by one of the anaesthetists. Brad’s eyes widened as he realised who the patient was. ‘VF,’ she said as they entered the room. ‘I’ve shocked him once at one hundred and twenty joules.’ Even though she had only been back on the ward for a month, she was on autopilot.

  ‘What happened?’ asked Brad. ‘He was pain free earlier and we had him scheduled for an angiogram tomorrow.’

  ‘Alarm sounded and I found him like this,’ she said. ‘He hadn’t complained of chest pain at all.’ She raised her knee on the bed and positioned her hands, starting the chest compressions. The anaesthetist took over from Claire and within a few seconds inserted an endotracheal tube. Cassidy continued the cycles of compressions as Brad pulled the pre-loaded syringes from the crash cart. After five cycles she stopped and their heads turned to the monitor again to check the rhythm.

  ‘I’m giving him some epinephrine,’ Brad said as he squirted it into the cannula in the back of Mr Fletcher’s hand. ‘Let’s shock him again.’ He lifted the defibrillator paddles. ‘Stand clear, everyone. Shocking at two hundred joules.’

  Everyone stood back as Mr Fletcher’s body arched again. Cassidy went to resume the compressions. They continued for the next ten minutes with cycles of compressions, drugs and shocking. Cassidy’s arms were starting to ache. It was amazing how quickly the strain of doing cardiac massage told on shoulders and arms.

  ‘Stop!’ shouted Brad. ‘We’ve got a rhythm.’ He waited a few seconds as he watched the green line on the monitor. ‘Sinus bradycardia.’

  He raised his eyes from the bed. ‘Cassidy, go and tell Coronary Care we’re transferring a patient to them.’

  She ran next door to the coronary care unit, and one of their staff members came back through with her, propping the doors open for easy transfer. They wheeled the bed through to the unit and hooked Mr Fletcher up to the monitors in the specially designed rooms. In a matter of a few moments, he was safely installed next door.

  Cassidy nodded at Brad as she left him there to continue Mr Fletcher’s care. Claire gathered up his belongings and took them next door while Cassidy quickly transferred him on the computer system.

  She took a deep breath and heaved a sigh of relief. The adrenaline was still flooding through her system, her arms ached and her back was sore.

  Claire appeared with a cup of steaming tea, which she put on the desk in front of her. ‘Okay, Cassidy? I nearly jumped out of my skin when that alarm sounded. He’d been fine all night.’

  Cassidy nodded. ‘I hate it when that happens. Thank goodness he was attached to a cardiac monitor. I dread to think what would have happened if he hadn’t been.’

  A loud groan sounded from the room opposite the nurses’ station. Cassidy stood back up. ‘No rest for the wicked. That will be one of our head-injury patients.’

  Sure enough, one of the young men was starting to come round. Cassidy started checking his obs again, pulling her pen torch from her pocket to make sure his pupils were equal and reactive. His score had gradually started to improve as he could obey simple instructions and respond—albeit grudgingly. Hangovers didn’t seem to agree with him.

  She moved on to the patient next door, who still appeared to be sleeping it off. As she leaned over to check his pupils, his hand reached up and grabbed her tunic. ‘Get me some water,’ he growled, his breath reeking of alcohol and his eyes bloodshot.

  Cassidy reacted instantly, pushing him backwards with her hands to get out of his grasp. ‘Don’t you dare put a hand on me,’ she snarled.

  ‘Cass.’ The voice was instant, sounding behind her as Brad sidestepped around her, filling the gap between her and the patient.

  The sunny surfer boy with cheerful demeanour was lost. ‘Don’t you dare touch my staff.’ He was furious, leaning over the patient.

  The drunken young man slumped back against the pillows, all energy expended. ‘I need some water,’ he mumbled.

  Brad grabbed hold of Cassidy’s hand and pulled her beyond the curtains. He ran his fingers through his hair. ‘He still requires neuro obs, doesn’t he?’

  Cassidy nodded. ‘That’s the first time he’s woken up. His neuro obs are scheduled to continue for the next few hours.’

  Brad marched over to the phone and spoke for a few moments before putting it back down. ‘I don’t want you or Claire going in there on your own. Not while there’s a chance he’s still under the influence o
f alcohol and might behave inappropriately. Somebody from Security will be up in a few minutes and will stay for the rest of the shift.’

  He walked into the kitchen and picked up a plastic jug and cup, running the tap to fill them with water. ‘I’ll take him these. You sit down.’

  Cassidy didn’t like anyone telling her what to do, especially in her ward. But for some reason she was quite glad that Brad had been around. It wasn’t the first time a patient had manhandled her—and she was quite sure it wouldn’t be the last. But there was something about it happening in the dead of night, when there weren’t many other people around, that unsettled her.

  And as much as she wanted to fly the flag for independence and being able to handle everything on her own, she was quite glad one of the security staff was coming up to the ward.

  Brad appeared a moment later, walking behind her and putting his hands on her taut neck and shoulders. He automatically started kneading them with his warm hands. ‘You okay, Cass?’

  For a second she was still tense, wondering what Claire might think if she saw him touching her, but then relaxing at his touch. Her insides felt as tight as a coiled spring. What with the cardiac massage and the reaction of her patient, this was exactly what she needed. She leaned backwards a little into his touch.

  ‘Right there,’ she murmured as he hit a nerve. ‘How’s Mr Fletcher doing?’

  Brad’s voice was calm and soothing. ‘He’s in the right place. The staff in Coronary Care can monitor him more easily, his bradycardia stabilised with a little atropine and his blood pressure is good. We’ve contacted his family, and he’ll be first on the list in the morning. He’ll probably need a stent put in place to clear his blocked artery.’

  ‘That’s good. Mmm...keep going.’

  ‘Your muscles are like coiled springs. Is this because of what just happened?’

  She could hear the agitation in his voice.

  ‘I hate people who react like that. How dare they when all we’re trying to do is help them? He could have died out there, lying on the street with a head injury, getting battered by the elements. It makes my blood boil. If I hadn’t come in when I did...’ His voice tailed off then he leaned forward and wrapped his arms around her neck—just for a second—brushing a light kiss on her cheek.