The Emergency Specialist. Barbara Hart

spleen, but we won’t know until we open him up. The sooner, the better.’

      ‘By the way, the patient is Dr Craven’s brother-in-law,’ Jack said, indicating Anna.

      The surgeon looked up in interest. ‘Do you happen to know his blood group?’

      ‘No, I’m sorry, I don’t,’ she replied. ‘We’ve been transfusing O-neg.’

      ‘OK, we’ll stick to the O-neg. Let’s take him up. We’ll try to repair it—but spleens are notoriously difficult to repair, even a surgeon of my skill,’ he said, giving Anna an arrogant wink.

      As the team wheeled the trolley towards the lift, a dreadful thought occurred to Anna. Had her sister been in the car with Ted? And if so, what had happened to her? She didn’t know why she hadn’t thought about it before, possibly because she’d been so engrossed in helping to save Ted’s life.

      ‘The patient who died in one of the other resuscitation rooms…the myocardial infarction,’ she said, hardly daring to ask, ‘was it a man or a woman?’

      ‘Don’t know,’ Jack said, removing his surgical gloves.

      ‘I need to know,’ said Anna. ‘I need to know if it was my sister because she might have been in the car with Ted.’

      Jack reacted immediately. ‘Will someone go and find out, please? As quickly as possible,’ he instructed.

      ‘I’ll go,’ said one of the nurses.

      ‘Thanks,’ said Anna, directing her gratitude towards Jack.

      The nurse who’d volunteered to find out about the heart-attack victim was gone for a few minutes before returning and telling Anna that the patient was male; at the same time Rebecca came bursting into A and E in a state bordering on hysteria.

      ‘What’s happened?’ she called out to the girl behind the triage desk. ‘What’s happened to my husband? The police have just been round to my house and said there’s been an accident and—’

      At that instant she saw Anna in her blood-splattered white coat holding Ted’s designer loafers and his distinctive blue shirt. She let out a cry of distress.