And now they had to work together. He’d seen on her face that, yes, it was a problem for her. It was a problem for him, too. But they’d better deal with it—and fast—because he sure as hell didn’t want to be the subject of the hospital grapevine. He’d been there before and he wasn’t in any hurry to repeat the experience: people whispering and stopping conversations dead as soon as they saw him walk in, the pitying glances.
If he’d known that she worked here, he wouldn’t have taken the job.
Then again, this had been too good an opportunity to turn down: a position as senior registrar in a busy London emergency-department. Added to his experience abroad, it would stand him in good stead for future promotion, for the consultant’s post that was the focus of his life right now.
Luckily the rest of his afternoon was too rushed to let Max think about Marina. There were several victims of road-traffic accidents who needed checking over—including one with broken ribs and a pneumothorax that needed very careful attention. Even so, he was aware that Marina left the department a good half-hour before he did.
Then, as he walked out through the double doors, he heard a voice he recognised, saying cheerfully, ‘Right, Miss Beautiful. Let’s go and meet Daddy.’
Daddy?
Max couldn’t help looking, and immediately wished he hadn’t. Because at the far end of the corridor Marina was carrying a toddler: a little girl who had the same dark hair, dark eyes and sweet smile as Marina herself.
Marina had a daughter.
For a moment, Max couldn’t breathe; it felt as if someone had just sucker-punched him in the stomach and all the air had been driven out of his lungs. The little girl looked as if she was around two years old—which meant that Marina hadn’t even waited for their divorce to be finalised before she’d moved on to another relationship and had a baby with her new partner.
Yet she still used her maiden name in the department. Maybe she hadn’t yet remarried. Or maybe she’d decided to keep her maiden name for work.
Whatever.
It was none of his business any more.
All the same, it shook him. Especially when a man came walking down the corridor towards them, kissed Marina lightly on the mouth and scooped the child from her arms.
‘Daddy!’ the little girl said, beaming as the man kissed her and lifted her onto his shoulders.
Marina tucked her arm through his and they walked off together, chatting easily. Looking exactly like the close, loving family they obviously were.
Exactly like the close, loving family he and Marina had planned to have.
Max swallowed the bile that had risen in his throat. Now he understood why Marina had left her shift dead on time. She’d had to pick up her daughter from the hospital nursery before meeting her partner.
What made the whole thing so much worse was that, if circumstances had been very slightly different, Max would’ve been the one meeting Marina with a bright, lively pre-school child, and maybe a baby with chubby hands and a wide, wide smile. He would’ve been the one they smiled at, the one they greeted with a kiss.
He swore under his breath. He’d promised himself that he was over it, that he could cope with working in England again. But seeing that little tableau made it feel as if someone had cracked his heart wide open and stomped on it.
Marina had a child. With someone else.
He’d thought that he’d reached the depths of pain. Now he knew there was more—and it felt as if he were drowning. Someone else had the life he’d planned, the life he’d wanted: Marina, their baby, a fulfilling job.
Why the hell hadn’t he tried harder to make it work?
Because he’d been an idiot.
Because he’d been hurting too much at the time to work out what he’d needed to do—what they had needed to do—as a couple.
And now it was too late. Way, way too late.
There was only one way of getting this out of his system. So, instead of making himself a sandwich when he got home, Max grabbed his gym gear and headed out again. What he needed was a workout that would leave him too damn tired to think. He’d sleep on it, let his subconscious come up with a way of dealing with the fact that Marina Petrelli was back in his life—and she was very firmly off-limits.
Chapter Two
THE roster fairy definitely wasn’t on his side, Max thought the next morning as he walked into Resus and saw his team.
To think he’d been so cool and calm yesterday, asking Marina if it would be a problem for her, working in the same department. He’d been so sure that he could handle the situation.
Though, that had been before he’d seen her with her daughter.
And he was shocked by how much that thought still hurt, like a bruise that went right through his soul.
‘Good morning, Dr Fenton,’ Marina said.
She sounded bright and breezy, as if nothing was wrong—although he’d noticed that her smile didn’t quite reach her eyes, and she was using his formal title rather than his first name. OK; he’d take the lead from her. Bright, breezy and surface-friendly it was—even though he felt like punching something. He forced himself to unclench the fists in his pockets. ‘Good morning, Dr Petrelli.’
‘We’ve just had a shout,’ she told him. ‘RTC, elderly female passenger, ETA six minutes.’
‘Any details?’
‘Query fracture and internal injuries. They’ve put a line in and she’s on a spinal board.’
Max met the ambulance crew at the door and quickly went through the handover, and the team swung into action to treat Mrs Jennings. Clearly they were used to working together and, whatever the problems between himself and Marina, she obviously took her job seriously, and she hadn’t been exaggerating when she’d said that she could push the personal stuff into the background and put her patient first. Max quickly discovered that over the last four years Marina had become a fine doctor, confident and capable, and whenever he was about to give her some instructions he found she was already doing it, having second-guessed him.
As they assessed their patient for hypovolaemic shock—Max wasn’t happy with her blood pressure or the capillary refill—they both noted the pattern of bruising across her abdomen, the lap-belt imprint. On examination, Mrs Jennings’ abdomen was tender. Not good.
‘I’m not happy with this,’ Max said quietly to Marina.
‘I’d need to see the X-ray to confirm it, but my guess is that the impact fractured her pelvis,’ Marina said, equally quietly.
He nodded. ‘There may be some splenic involvement as well, or even damage to other organs. We need a CT scan and an X-ray to see what’s going on.’
‘Agreed. Let’s get her stabilised first,’ Marina said.
Quietly, Max asked Stella, their senior nurse, to bleep the orthopaedic-surgery team and put Theatre on standby, and then he turned back to the patient. ‘Mrs Jennings, I’m going to put a mask over your face,’ he said, ‘to give you some oxygen, which will help you to breathe more easily. And I’m going to give you something to help with the pain, so it makes things a bit more comfortable for you while we take a look at your injuries. If you’re worried about anything, just lift your hand and we’ll take the mask off for a few moments so you can talk to us, OK?’
Mrs Jennings whispered her consent. Max fitted the oxygen mask over her face and gave her analgesia through the IV line that the paramedics had put in,