Single Dad in Her Stocking

by Alison Roberts

  Where Alice lay sleeping in her cot?

  His head turned to where the baby monitor handset was sitting beside his laptop. Emma had followed the direction of his gaze and he heard the sigh as she let her breath go. The reminder of the close proximity of three children was creating enough of a problem even theoretically. The small voice they both heard at the kitchen door a second later made it even more of a reality.

  ‘Uncle Max?’

  He turned swiftly. ‘What is it, Ben?’

  ‘I woke up.’

  ‘I can see that, mate.’ Max shut the lid of his laptop before Ben could see that he’d been surfing the toy department of Derby’s. ‘Did you have a bad dream?’

  ‘Pirate’s run away.’

  ‘No, he hasn’t.’ Emma was smiling reassuringly at Ben. ‘Your grandpa just took him outside for a little walk. He’ll be back any minute.’

  Her gaze snagged Max’s and it was another reminder of how difficult it was going to be to find time to be alone in the near future, if ever. It wasn’t as if Emma was even going to be here for very long, either. Was he crazy to think that getting to know this amazing woman on a more intimate level was possible, let alone a sensible idea? It felt like Emma was thinking along the same lines. It also felt like she was reaching the same conclusions.

  That it was no more crazy than this set of totally unexpected circumstances they had found themselves in, temporarily living together in this old house with orphaned children, their grandfather and his dog and with a Christmas celebration to orchestrate when they’d both been avoiding doing something like that for many years. That they were both single adults and, if they wanted to, they could choose to indulge in a sexual attraction that wasn’t going to hurt anybody else. And that the attraction between them wasn’t about to vanish any time soon and perhaps they both needed to find out if it could live up to its promise of being one of those experiences that you might only find once in a lifetime.

  Not that they were about to get the chance to find that out right now. Max needed to get Ben settled back into his bed but, as he led his nephew out of the kitchen, the front door of the house opened and his father and Pirate came inside. He felt Ben’s hand clutch his fingers more tightly but the brave little boy straightened as he stood beside Max, as if he was getting ready to be growled at again by his grandfather.

  Emma had come out of the kitchen as well so, for a moment, they all stood there holding their breath. It was Pirate who broke the tension, trotting towards Ben with his tail wagging. Ben let go of his uncle’s hand and dropped to cuddle the small white dog.

  ‘I think Pirate wants to go back to bed,’ James said into the silence that followed. ‘Shall I come and tuck you both in?’

  This silence was even more tense and Max let his breath out in a silent but very relieved sigh as, after staring at his grandfather for a long moment, Ben nodded solemnly and started walking towards him. He had almost reached him when there was a loud thumping on the door behind James.

  ‘What the—?’ James opened the door. ‘Jenny...?’

  ‘Oh, Dr Cunningham—I’m so sorry to disturb you at this time of night but I saw you walking past. It’s Terry. I think he really is having a heart attack this time...’

  Both Max and Emma were moving towards the distressed woman. Emma reached for her coat on the rack near the door. ‘I’ll come,’ she told Jenny. ‘Have you called an ambulance?’

  ‘Yes, but it’s really snowing hard now and I’m not sure if they’ll get through.’

  Max didn’t bother finding his coat. ‘I’ll get our first-aid pack from the clinic,’ he told Emma. ‘And the defibrillator. I’ll meet you there in a minute.’

  He turned back to find that his father was holding Ben’s hand. ‘Don’t worry,’ he told Max. ‘I’ve got this. You go with Emma. I’ll look after the children.’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘Yes. Take your phone. I’ll call if I need you. Go...’

  * * *

  Max must have run very fast, both to collect the equipment and then get down the long driveway, up the road and into the neighbouring property so quickly. Emma had only had minutes to start assessing Terry.

  ‘The pain came on about twenty minutes ago,’ she told Max. ‘Central chest pain, radiating to his left arm. Ten out of ten, with vomiting and profuse sweating. Unrelieved by his spray. Radial pulse palpable but faint.’

  They were classic symptoms of a heart attack and nothing like the pain he had presented with after his muscle strain the other day. He also had other symptoms that made it far less likely to be anything muscular. Max opened pouches on the defibrillator pack and began unrolling wires and snapping electrodes onto their ends.

  ‘There’s an IV roll in the pack,’ he told Emma. ‘And a small oxygen tank in the side pocket.’

  ‘Onto it.’ Emma put a reassuring hand on Terry’s shoulder. ‘Max is going to do what I did the other day and put the electrodes on your chest so we can see what’s going on with your heart. I’m going to give you some oxygen and put a small cannula in a vein on your arm so that we can give you something for the pain. We’re going to give you some fluid through that line as well, to help your blood pressure. Is that all okay with you?’

  Terry nodded. He was looking terrified. So was his wife.

  ‘Do whatever you need to,’ Jenny whispered. ‘Please...’

  Emma opened the IV roll and found everything she needed to put an IV line in. There was a separate pouch that contained drugs in both ampoules and packets. She popped a tablet from its foil strip.

  ‘I’ll get you to chew this up for me first,’ she told Terry. ‘It’s an aspirin tablet. Jenny, maybe you could get a sip of water to help it go down?’

  Jenny looked relieved to be given a helpful task. Emma focused on gaining access to a vein on the back of Terry’s hand with a needle and then sliding the plastic cannula into place and taping it down securely. Max was working around her, sticking electrodes to Terry’s shoulders and each side of his abdomen and then in a pattern across his chest and around his heart. They were working together, as smoothly as they had the day they had been treating the victims of that multi-car pile-up outside the Royal, but it felt different now. The professional trust they already had was coloured by a far more personal connection. Not that either of them would have been giving that kiss a moment’s head space but it was there, somewhere in the background, and it had brought them a whole lot closer.

  ‘Are you allergic to any medications?’ Emma asked.

  ‘No...’ Terry’s voice was slightly muffled behind the oxygen mask that was now in place.

  ‘Is the pain still ten out of ten?’

  Terry closed his eyes as he nodded. Jenny was hunched over the back of the chair her husband was slumped in, one hand pressed against her mouth, the other stroking Terry’s head.

  ‘I’m going to give you some morphine,’ Emma told him. ‘As well as something else to stop you feeling sick. You should notice a difference in the pain very soon.’

  ‘And I need you to keep as still as possible, Terry,’ Max said. ‘I’m going to take a recording of your heart now.’

  He looked up to catch Emma’s gaze as the graph paper began to spill out of the monitor. He knew she had seen the big picture of what was going on already on the screen and that Terry was, indeed, having a heart attack.

  ‘ST elevation leads two, three and aVF,’ Max confirmed as he showed Emma the printout. ‘T wave changes starting.’

  ‘Inferior infarct,’ Emma agreed quietly. Heart attacks in this region had a better prognosis than other regions but it was still time critical to get Terry to hospital for the definitive treatment that would reopen his coronary arteries.

  ‘I’ll ring the hospital,’ Max offered. ‘They can get the catheter lab team on standby for angioplasty.’

  ‘Can you find out how far away the amb
ulance is?’ Emma asked. ‘And do they have transmission ability so we can send the twelve-lead ECG through first?’

  Max nodded. ‘Yes, and yes.’

  Emma turned back to their patient. ‘How’s the pain now, Terry?’

  ‘Better.’

  ‘On the scale of zero to ten?’

  ‘Maybe five.’

  ‘That’s great. I’m going to take your blood pressure and a few other measurements now. Try and relax. We’re going to get you to hospital very soon.’

  ‘So he is really having a heart attack this time?’

  ‘It looks like it, Jenny. But try not to worry too much, okay? The treatment of angioplasty will stop the damage that’s happening. You did exactly the right thing in calling the ambulance and then coming to find us so quickly, which meant we could start the treatment faster.’

  ‘Ambulance is only a few minutes away,’ Max reported as Emma wrote down the set of vital signs she had just taken. ‘Apparently the road’s not too bad with the snow yet and the call’s gone out to the cath lab. They’re expecting Terry in Emergency as well.’

  ‘Jenny? Could you go and pack a bag for Terry? Just his pyjamas and toothbrush and things he might need for a day or two in hospital?’

  Again, Jenny seemed grateful for something useful she could do and she had accomplished her task by the time the paramedics arrived with a dusting of snow on their shoulders and a cheerful ambience that was immediately reassuring.

  ‘How lucky are you to have doctors living next door?’ they said to Terry. ‘Looks like they’ve done all the hard work for us too. We just need to put you on our comfy stretcher, change you over to our monitor and oxygen and we’ll be at the hospital in no time at all.’

  ‘Can I come with him?’ Jenny asked anxiously.

  ‘Of course you can, love.’

  ‘I can come as well.’ Emma picked up her coat from where it had been thrown over the back of a couch.

  ‘No need, Doc. You’ve done everything already and all we need to do is keep a close eye on Terry here until we get him into the Royal.’

  They both knew that the only real danger was that Terry could go into a cardiac arrest en route but it seemed unlikely given how stable his cardiac rhythm was looking despite the changes happening with the heart attack and they were going to get Terry into the safety of the emergency department as soon as possible. They were already rolling the stretcher towards the door. These paramedics were just as capable as Emma of dealing with a cardiac arrest and, if she went in with the ambulance, how would she get home again?

  Max was winding up the wires for the defibrillator. ‘You go with Terry,’ he told Jenny. ‘We’ll tidy up the mess we’ve made and then lock up. I’ll leave the key in the usual place, yes?’

  ‘Oh...thank you, Max. I can’t tell you how grateful we are... You and your dad... Well, we’re just blessed to have you in Upper Barnsley, that’s what...’

  ‘I’ll call the hospital in a bit to find out what’s happening.’ Max had paused in his task to smile at Jenny. ‘He’s going to exactly where he needs to be,’ he said gently. ‘Try not to worry.’

  Emma went with Jenny to see her climb into the front passenger seat of the ambulance, which had its lights flashing in the drift of snowflakes as it drove away. She went back inside to help Max tidy up, picking up packaging from the IV supplies and the plastic squares that had come off the ECG electrodes. He was rolling up the IV kit and slotting it back into place in the first-aid pack.

  It was only then that Emma realised they were alone again for the first time since they had shared that astonishing kiss.

  Since Max had pretty much admitted that he’d always fancied her. Since she had told him pretty much the same thing.

  The silence was suddenly a little awkward.

  ‘It’s really snowing out there,’ Emma finally said. ‘I might have to put chains on my car to get into work in the morning.’

  ‘They’ll clear the roads fast.’ Max zipped up the pocket that held the small oxygen tank in the kit.

  ‘Should I have gone in with Terry, do you think?’

  ‘He didn’t need you.’ Max’s tone was reassuring. ‘I know those paramedics and they’re great. He’ll be safely in the cath lab within an hour and I reckon he’s going to be fine. It might muck up their Christmas plans but Terry will probably end up being a lot healthier than he’s been for a long time.’ He stood up. ‘Besides... I need you.’ He offered her the ghost of a wink. ‘There’s too much gear to carry.’

  Emma’s heart skipped a beat but her mouth was suddenly too dry to supply the obvious comment that he had managed to carry everything here by himself not so long ago. The look he was giving her was intense enough to make her quite sure that Max was not referring to any help with returning the clinic’s gear. No... That look had made it feel as if Max was thinking about that kiss again. About what it might be like to do it again. To take it wherever it might lead—and they both knew exactly where that was. They were also about to head to a part of that huge house that was well away from the children and any threat of interruption. If Emma wanted to reinstate her resolution not to distract Max from his new responsibilities as a father figure by making herself available, this was quite probably her last chance.

  But would it be such a bad thing if they both gave in to the simmering attraction that was on the point of boiling over? It wasn’t as if it was going to change anything. In less than a couple of weeks, Emma could be almost anywhere in the world taking up a new locum position. She might never see Max again. How weird was this, that she was talking herself into being with a man she had steered well clear of years ago because he lived his life thinking along those same lines—that it was perfectly acceptable to give in to physical desire with no intention of it ever being anything more than that?

  And if she didn’t, Emma might never know if what she was imagining was true. That Max Cunningham could give her a night that she would remember for the rest of her life.

  ‘I’ll take the kit,’ she said, turning away because if she kept eye contact with Max it might make her so nervous she would change her mind. ‘It looks lighter than the defibrillator.’

  * * *

  They walked past the front door of the main part of the house.

  ‘Looks like it’s all quiet on the western front,’ Max said.

  It was a bit of a relief for Emma to find something new to talk about. They had already exhausted how thickly the snow was falling and whether Terry might already be out of the emergency department at the Royal and on his way to the catheter laboratory.

  ‘I thought the clinic rooms were in the west wing. And they’re around the corner.’

  ‘True. But it wouldn’t sound right saying it looks like it’s all quiet on the southern front, would it?’

  They turned the corner of the house. There were downstairs lights still on so it was easy enough to see where they were going. Emma could also see snow gathering on the ivy that scrambled over the old stones and even a curl of smoke coming from one of the many chimneys.

  ‘It’s a gorgeous house,’ she said aloud. ‘What a magic place to have grown up in.’

  ‘It was,’ Max agreed. ‘But it was never the same after Mum died. I was glad to get away when I went to med school, to tell the truth. There were sad shadows everywhere and I don’t think any of us knew how to shine a light to get rid of them. Andy got the closest. He set out to create a family of his own. To celebrate Christmas again.’ Max shook his head as he opened the door of Upper Barnsley’s general practice. ‘That gave us a whole new level of sad stuff, what with the failure of his marriage and then his death and now three kids who are going to grow up without any parents.’

  ‘They’ve got you.’ Emma put the first-aid pack down in a corner of the waiting room. ‘And I think they’ve got their grandpa now, as well. Did you see the way he was holding hands
with Ben when we left the house? The way Pirate was right beside them? He’s given them a bond, that little dog.’

  ‘I think you might be right.’ Max put the defibrillator back where it belonged on the bench. ‘I hope so, anyway. I was old enough to help take care of Andy when Mum died but these kids really need him and that might well be enough to bring him out of his shell. He’s been hiding for far too long.’

  Emma opened her mouth. She had been about to say that James wasn’t the only one who’d been hiding. That maybe Max himself needed to learn to trust in love again—enough to be able to commit to making that love a significant part of his life. That loving his nieces and nephew would be a very good place to start.

  But that was something he needed to discover for himself, wasn’t it?

  ‘It’s not easy,’ she said, instead. ‘Letting anybody into your heart when you know how hard it is to lose a person you care about that much. I think your mum must have been a wonderful person. She certainly loved Christmas. I can’t believe how many decorations we’ve put out today.’

  ‘You know what?’ Max was smiling at Emma. ‘I love seeing them out again. There are happy memories to be found now and they’re even stronger than the sad ones. We kept the smallest decorations that we could find and put them on that little tree that Ben was carrying with him when he arrived. I put it in their bedroom.’

  Emma’s smile was meant to be encouraging but she knew it was wobbling a bit. ‘That was a sweet thing to do. That tree was special.’

  ‘I want to remember what Christmas used to be like when I was a kid,’ Max added. ‘I want Ben and Tilly to feel like that too. And Alice, when she’s old enough. I want to get that blue bike for Ben and have it waiting under the Christmas tree for him so that he comes down and just knows that the magic is real. That Father Christmas is real and got his letter—the way I did when I got my first bike.’

  Emma’s smile felt even more wobbly, now. Maybe Max was already well on the way to opening his heart again. It was quite possible that he didn’t trust the idea of marriage after his father was so devastated by his wife’s death and then his brother by his broken marriage, but if he changed his mind he wouldn’t have any trouble finding someone who would want to love him back. Someone who could end up being a mother to those three children and give him the kind of family he’d once had himself? He deserved that.