‘Won’t you find it a lot of trouble?’ asked Anna, feeling slightly guilty. ‘All the catering and everything?’
‘We’ll help,’ said Jennifer quickly, anxious that her sister shouldn’t change her mind. ‘We’ll do all sorts of baking and cooking, won’t we, Anna?’
Anna’s heart sank at the thought of baking and cooking in her non-existent spare time. She needn’t have worried.
‘No problem,’ assured Rebecca. ‘We’ll get caterers.’
‘Should it be an evening or a lunch party?’ Anna asked.
‘Lunchtime,’ said Rebecca without even hesitating. ‘Dad will want his grandchildren there and I certainly couldn’t cope with five tired and over-excited children whining all evening. The children will also be jolly useful at a lunch party. They can hand round sausage rolls and crisps and generally make themselves useful.’
Jennifer nodded in agreement. ‘The twins would certainly enjoy that. Especially if your boys were here as well.’
Neil and Jennifer had five-year-old twin girls who hero-worshipped Ted and Rebecca’s three boys who were aged ten, eight and six.
‘Now, Anna,’ said Rebecca, not wanting her sister to feel left out of all this family talk, ‘tell us about this man you went out with yesterday. We want to know all about him. Is he a doctor like you?’
Anna’s stomach clenched. She knew that Rebecca wouldn’t have forgotten about her date the previous evening. It had just been a matter of when, not if, she’d mention it.
‘He’s a consultant at the Royal,’ she said. ‘He specialises in accident and emergency and that’s where we met.’
Two pairs of hazel eyes were turned on her like beams from a car’s headlights.
‘And?’ they asked together, expectantly.
‘We went out to a concert last night. That’s all there is to it.’ Anna took a gulp of the remains of her coffee. It was cold, but drinkable.
‘Anna Craven, you are infuriating,’ said Rebecca. ‘Jennifer and I talk about our husbands and our previous boyfriends and all sorts of interesting things like that! Why can’t you be the same as us?’
‘Because I’m not,’ said Anna, groaning inwardly.
‘This is the first man you’ve mentioned for months,’ said Jennifer. ‘Rebecca and I were only saying that you didn’t seem to have had a boyfriend for ages and ages. We decided it was because you work too hard.’
‘I did have a boyfriend until quite recently,’ she said, deciding to throw them a few stale morsels of gossip.
‘You never said!’ exclaimed Jennifer. ‘So who was he and what happened? Was he also a doctor?’
‘No, he wasn’t. He was a bastard.’
Their mouths fell open at her vehemence. ‘Language, Anna!’ said Rebecca in mock horror.
‘I went out with him for six months, he broke my heart and now it’s all over. That’s all I’m going to say. I’ll have another cup of coffee, please.’
The brief outline information about Anna’s former boyfriend appeared to satisfy her sisters’ curiosity. It was more than they normally got out of her. A look of triumph crossed their faces as Jennifer held the cup for Rebecca to pour Anna fresh coffee.
Before the meeting finished they opened up their diaries and fixed a date for the party—a Sunday lunchtime—which was, conveniently, their father’s actual birthday. As she left her sister’s house to drive home, Anna felt a little triumphant herself. By telling her sisters the ancient history of her relationship with Liam, she’d headed them off at the pass. They’d completely forgotten about the new man in her life— which was how Anna was beginning to think of Jack. The new man in her life!
She sighed contentedly as she drove home. Only a few more hours and she’d be seeing him again! Yesterday, as he’d dropped her home after the concert, he’d asked her out again. He’d kissed her and then walked her to her front door—where he’d kissed her again. As he’d held her body close, a languorous warmth had flooded through her. Then he’d gone, walking briskly back to his car and driving away the moment he’d seen her go safely through the door.
Anna had appreciated that he’d seemed to sense that she was unsure about inviting him in for a coffee or a nightcap. The fact that he hadn’t tried to push his luck, as some others might have done, made her appreciate him all the more. He was as sensitive as he was sexy and for Anna that was a winning combination. And he could kiss for Britain! Her lips were still tingling at the memory of those two blissful kisses. She tried to recall what it had been like kissing Liam but for the life of her she couldn’t remember! One thing was for sure—she was definitely over her former boyfriend, hence the way she was able to talk about him to her sisters.
* * *
The following day, Saturday, Anna wasn’t rostered to work and so she didn’t need to go in to the hospital— but she was on call. She’d arranged to go to the movies with Jack when her on-call hours had finished. She pottered about in the flat, doing all the household chores she never got time to do during her working week. She’d just put a load of sheets and towels into the washing machine when she got a call from the hospital.
‘Road traffic accident,’ said the duty nurse. ‘Three cars involved, eight passengers, three badly hurt. We need you here, Dr Craven.’
When she arrived at the A and E she was directed to Resus Two where an injured woman was being attended by a junior doctor and two nurses. The young doctor was relieved when Anna took over the patient. He gave the verbal history.
‘Middle-aged woman, multiple fractures to both femurs, massive blood loss. We’re transfusing her with O-neg—no time to do a blood match. Her breathing’s shallow, pulse weak.’
As Anna attended to her patient she asked, ‘What about the other casualties? I heard there were eight people in the crash, three of them badly injured.’
‘Dr Harvey is in Resus One with one of them—a man with a suspected ruptured spleen. The other patient was in Resus Three…had a fatal heart attack on the table. Of the five other people brought in, three children and two adults, most have only minor wounds and abrasions. They’re being seen to by the nurses and a junior doctor.’
When Anna and her team had stabilised the woman with the multiple leg injuries and sent her up to Theatre in the care of the orthopaedic registrar, she went into Resus One to see if she could be of assistance to Jack.
Jack turned round momentarily.
‘Hi, Anna. I could do with another pair of hands. Could you transfuse some O-neg and monitor fluids? We’ve sedated the patient because he was in tremendous pain. He had a large swelling on his abdomen. We suspect a ruptured spleen. I’m preparing him for emergency surgery because if it is a ruptured spleen we’ll have to send him to Theatre straight away. Theatre and the surgical team have been alerted. I think a surgeon is coming down to take a look.’
Anna got straight to work, hooking the bagged units onto the transfusion pole and finding a suitable point on the patient’s arm to insert the lead. She was concentrating so hard that it was only when she’d secured the line that she glanced up at the patient’s face. She gave a short gasp and continued staring at the lifeless body on the trolley. ‘I know him! He’s my brother-in-law, Ted Jarvis.’
Jack looked up in surprise. ‘Well, if you’d rather not be involved, being a relative, I’ll call for other assistance.’
Anna shook her head. ‘You need me—there’s nobody else available. The resus rooms are all busy.’
Mr Taylor, the surgeon, arrived and Jack apprised him of the situation. ‘We haven’t a moment to lose,’ he said. ‘We need to assess how bad