Awakening His Shy Vet

by Shelley Rivers

  If it was, he clearly understood. He held her gaze for no more than a heartbeat but she could see the relief in his own eyes and it was so genuine—and caring—that Stevie knew that this doctor was a person she could have the utmost respect for. That he was as trustworthy as her instincts had already decided. And that she liked him.

  A lot.

  ‘Let’s get some oxygen on,’ he said. ‘I’m just going to have another look and make sure there’s nothing else down there that I can see.’

  ‘What was it?’ Stevie looked at the sterile cloth on the trolley as she reached up to connect tubing to the overhead oxygen supply. ‘Oh...a grape?’

  ‘Yeah...’ Josh was shining the light of his laryngoscope down the child’s throat again. ‘The message that you have to cut grapes for littlies still hasn’t got out there well enough. I heard recently they’re the third most common cause of food-related choking deaths in children. I can’t see anything else down there.’ He removed the blade of the laryngoscope, unhooked his stethoscope from around his neck and frowned as he focused on the small girl’s face while fitting the earpieces. ‘Who is she, do you know?’

  Stevie shook her head. ‘I’m guessing she’s a sibling of one of our patients. She probably came in during visiting hours.’

  She held the mask, now with oxygen running, over the girl’s mouth and nose. Josh’s hand brushed her arm as he moved the disc of the stethoscope to listen to their patient’s chest. Stevie could feel the twitch of movement under the mask she was holding in place.

  ‘I think she’s waking up...’

  ‘Good...’

  Stevie knew why there was still a note of caution in Josh’s tone. The girl was breathing on her own but would she regain consciousness fully? Had she been without adequate oxygenation long enough for brain damage to have occurred?

  They both turned their heads as the door of the treatment room opened. It was the first time that Stevie had seen the paediatric ward’s nurse manager, Ruby, without a smile on her face.

  ‘What’s happening, Josh? What do you need?’

  ‘We’re under control, thanks, Ruby. I found this girl unconscious in the playroom—respiratory arrest due to a totally obstructed airway.’

  ‘Oh, dear Lord...’ Ruby closed her eyes in a long blink. ‘I was just helping with the hunt for Amelia here. Her baby brother has come in for observation and her mother was feeding him while the registrar did the admission. Dad went to the cafeteria to find a late lunch for them all and Mum assumed that Amelia had gone with him. It’s panic stations out there. I’ll have to let them know where she is.’

  Ruby moved far more swiftly back to the door than Stevie would have expected for a woman of her size and age and she’d no more than poked her head into the corridor to call out to someone than she was stepping aside to let other people into the room.

  A young man, who was holding a baby. And a terrified-looking young woman with a pale tear-streaked face.

  ‘Oh, my God...’ she sobbed. ‘Amelia...’

  The woman rushed towards the bed and, as she reached to touch her daughter, the little girl opened her eyes and burst into tears.

  ‘Mumma...’

  Stevie could feel the prickle of tears behind her own eyes. Happy tears, because the fact that Amelia was awake and speaking and knew who her mother was made it more than likely she had come through this life-threatening incident unscathed. It seemed the most natural thing in the world to look up and meet Josh’s gaze yet again and, this time, it felt like an acknowledgement of a bond. The two of them had been the only people to share that very real fear, the tension of the fight, the relief of a successful outcome and now the joy of the world righting itself at least in this moment of time. A whole story that had taken only a couple of minutes but would be one that Stevie was never going to forget.

  And, judging by the look in Dr Stanmore’s eyes, he wasn’t about to forget it, either.

  ‘It’s okay,’ he reassured the crying mother. ‘Amelia here choked on a grape but we were lucky enough to find her in time.’

  Amelia was in her mother’s arms now. ‘Oh, thank you, Doctor. I can’t thank you enough...you and...?’ She looked over her daughter’s head, her eyebrows raised.

  ‘Stephanie, isn’t it?’ Josh was smiling. ‘I need to thank you as well.’

  Oh, man...the warmth in those dark eyes was enough to be making something melt somewhere in the middle of Stevie’s chest.

  ‘I get called Stevie,’ she told him. She tried to return his smile but she had a horrible feeling that, in the emotional aftermath of a crisis averted, her lips might be too wobbly to cooperate so she broke the eye contact to turn back to Amelia and her mother. ‘I’m sure I’ll see you both again very soon.’ She stepped back, knowing that she was no longer needed in here and that she had a lot of duties to catch up on now.

  ‘We’ll need to keep Amelia with us for a little while,’ Josh added. ‘Ruby, could you sort an urgent consult with someone from ENT, please? It’s just a precaution,’ he told Amelia’s mother. ‘But I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s got a bit of a sore throat now.’

  ‘But what happened? What did you say she choked on?’

  Stevie held the door for Ruby and they both slipped out of the room while Josh filled the parents in on the details of the incident.

  ‘We’ll have to do a detailed report on this,’ Ruby told Stevie. ‘I need to get this consult organised right now but could you come and see me in the office before your shift finishes, please?’

  ‘Of course. I’ll be there as soon as I can. I’m running a bit behind with obs on my patients now, though.’

  ‘Emergencies tend to do that.’ But Ruby was smiling. ‘But well done, Stevie. I had a feeling the first day I met you that you were going to be an asset around here.’

  Ruby’s praise was as welcome as the warmth of Josh Stanmore’s thanks had been and Stevie tackled the list of tasks associated with the four patients under her care on this shift with a growing confidence that her life was on a new track. A much, much better one than she’d been on for the last twelve years or so.

  If only...

  Between feeding and changing a baby whose mother had had to go home to her other children this afternoon, and taking a full set of observations, including an ECG on a four-year-old boy who had congenital heart disease currently complicated by a respiratory infection, Stevie snatched a moment to send a text.

  Hey, Mattie...you home yet? Hope you had a better day at school xx

  Thanks to one of the less pleasant duties of the day, getting a parent and a junior nurse to hold a wriggling, terrified toddler while Stevie got a blood sample, it was another half an hour before she noticed that her text had gone unanswered. It didn’t surprise her but it did increase the background level of tension, especially as it would be another couple of hours before she could get home and see for herself that the other half of her life—the personal and most important half—was at least getting closer to stepping on the same track as her professional one.

  She had a horrible feeling that it wasn’t...

  ‘Stevie...’

  She dropped the test tube she’d just finished labelling into a plastic bag and began pressing the seal together, turning at the sound of her name. This time she managed to find a smile for the paediatric consultant who was, by all accounts, not only the most important doctor but the most popular man in this hospital department.

  ‘Hi, Dr Stanmore. How’s Amelia?’

  ‘Call me Josh,’ he said, propping his elbow on the higher shelf in front of the reception desk. ‘And Amelia’s fine. She’s been cleared by ENT and gone home with her dad, who’s got instructions to bring her back if he has any worries about her coughing or with any change in her breathing or swallowing.’

  ‘Oh, that’s so good to hear.’ Stevie’s smile widened.

  ‘I just w
anted to thank you again.’ Josh was watching Stevie’s hands as she folded the lab test request to put into the pocket on the side of the plastic bag. ‘I couldn’t have dealt with that emergency without the kind of calm, experienced assistance you were able to provide.’

  The glow of pride was giving Stevie that melting sensation again and, as her gaze lifted to meet a pair of eyes that were dark enough to make it difficult to distinguish the pupil, she could feel something else contributing to that tingling in her gut. Attraction was the last thing she’d expected—or wanted—to ambush her like this but there was no mistaking that shaft of whatever it was a mixture of. Desire? Anticipation? Longing? Hope...?

  ‘So...’ Josh’s smile was a bit lopsided now and one eyebrow had moved closer to the tumble of rather charmingly unkempt hair that was almost as curly as her own. ‘I owe you a drink. What are you doing after work?’

  ‘Sorry?’ Stevie could feel her smile fading. That internal fizzing sensation was fading even faster.

  ‘After work? Can I buy you a drink?’ Josh’s smile had also disappeared and that raised eyebrow now made him look a little puzzled. ‘Doesn’t have to be a wine. How ’bout a coffee?’

  ‘You’re...asking me out? For a drink?’ Stevie spoke carefully. Slowly enunciating each syllable, which was the complete opposite of the way her brain was firing very rapid messages. Images of another attractive man. Another paediatric consultant, in fact. Echoes of a day that had changed her life for ever.

  ‘Come for a drink with me, after work. And I’m not going to take “no” as an answer...’

  ‘Just to say thanks for your help today.’ Josh took his elbow off the shelf and straightened up. ‘And to say welcome, of course. You’re our newest staff member, after all.’

  The new girl. Fresh meat...

  ‘I do hope you’re not hitting on me, Dr Stanmore.’ Stevie dropped the plastic bag into the out tray for urgent lab tests and took a step back. ‘I was just doing my job in helping you with that emergency and a simple “thank you” is more than enough.’ There were more echoes in the back of her head and what she could feel roiling in her gut now was nothing like the pleasurable tickle of attraction.

  ‘I’m your HOD. It’s my duty to make my new staff members feel as welcome as possible. You’re not going to say “no” to your boss on your first day at work, are you, Stephanie?’

  Stevie swallowed hard but the internal knot of something unpleasant, like anger, or possibly fear, was rapidly growing. She knew she shouldn’t say anything more than offering a polite refusal of his invitation but, when she opened her mouth, something very different came out.

  ‘Maybe in the old days it was generally accepted that a new nurse was fair game for every male in the vicinity.’ Her tone was clipped. Controlled. Bordering on icy. ‘I would hope we’ve all become a bit more enlightened these days when it comes to things like sexual harassment. Excuse me...’ Stevie turned her back on her boss. ‘I’ve got work to do.’

  She didn’t actually have to go into the supply room a little further down the corridor from the reception desk but it was the quickest way to escape the deathly silence behind her and the feeling of Josh Stanmore’s gaze fixed on the back of her head as if it was the bullseye of a target. Stevie shoved open the door, let it swing shut behind her and then buried her face in her hands.

  Oh... God... So much for her wonderful new start in life. She’d just ruined everything, hadn’t she?

  Copyright © 2021 by Alison Roberts

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  ISBN-13: 9781488074837

  Awakening His Shy Vet

  Copyright © 2021 by Shelley Rivers

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

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