They had been once, she remembered. There had been a time when she couldn’t have imagined her life without him, and then, little by little, things had changed, and two years ago…
‘I’m sorry, Connor,’ she murmured, ‘so sorry.’
‘Sorry you left, or sorry I found you?’
His eyes were fixed on her, and the awful truth was she couldn’t give him an answer, not without hurting him, and she backed away from him, afraid he would realise it.
‘The car,’ she said haltingly. ‘I have to…I need to move my car.’
She was gone before he could stop her and, when the ward door clattered shut behind her, Connor clenched his fists until his knuckles showed white.
She hadn’t answered him. He’d asked her a simple, easy-to-answer question, and yet she hadn’t answered him, and he needed—wanted—answers.
Dammit, she owed him that at least, he thought furiously. When he’d first seen her yesterday, his initial reaction had been to thank God she was safe, his Brianna was safe, but then anger had consumed him. A blazing, blinding, irrational anger that she could be standing in front of him looking better than he’d seen her look in a long time, had been living happily in Cornwall for the last two years, when he’d been to hell and back, fearing the worst. And she’d disappear out of his life again in an instant given half a chance. He’d seen it in her dark brown eyes, in the way she looked at him.
Well, she wasn’t going to walk away from him a second time, he decided. This time he wanted answers, proper answers, and not some nonsense about him never talking to her, never listening, and he headed for the ward door to follow her.
‘I’m really very sorry about this, Sister Flannigan,’ Sid, the hospital handyman, said uncomfortably after she’d moved her car out of the consultants’ bay and into the nurses’ part of the car park. ‘To be honest, I don’t think there should be any divisions in the car park, but some consultants…’ He shook his head. ‘It’s a status thing for them, you see.’
‘It’s all right, Sid, truly it is,’ Brianna said quickly. ‘I don’t know where my brain was this morning…’ Well, she did know—it was on Connor, she’d been thinking about Connor, and how she didn’t want to meet him again, but she wasn’t about to share that even with someone as nice as their handyman. ‘So could you please tell whoever it was who complained that it won’t happen again?’
The middle-aged handyman didn’t look any happier. In fact, she could hear him muttering under his breath, ‘Officious twit…that’s what he is,’ as he walked away, and she smiled, but, as she closed her car door, her smile vanished.
It would be so easy to simply get back into her car, and drive away. No one would miss her for a while, and if she kept on driving, and driving, she might eventually reach a place where Connor would never find her. She could start again, change her name again, and—
‘Don’t, Brianna,’ a feminine voice said gently. ‘I know what you’re thinking, and it won’t solve anything.’
‘It might,’ Brianna muttered, as she turned to see Jess watching her.
‘Megan told me about Connor being your husband. She wouldn’t normally break a confidence—you know she wouldn’t,’ the counsellor added quickly as Brianna stared at her in alarm, ‘but she’s worried about you.’
‘I know, but…’ Brianna shook her head. ‘Jess, have you ever wanted to run away? To just run away, leave everything behind, and start all over?’
‘I did—I have,’ the counsellor replied. ‘When the staff at the hospital I worked in before I came to St Piran’s found out about me having HIV…a lot of them cut me dead, crossed the street to avoid me—’
‘Oh, Jess!’
‘And I couldn’t bear it so I ran, and then…’ She sighed, a low, sad sigh. ‘Well, you know what happened. That reporter from the Penhally Gazette broadcast my condition all over his newspaper, and I wanted to run again, but I knew if I did, I would be leaving behind the people, the hospital I felt I’d become such a part of.’
‘And Gio,’ Brianna murmured. ‘You would have been leaving him behind, too.’
‘I had no guarantees he would stand by me when he found out the truth, Brianna. He could have walked away and, if he had, then I…’ Jess managed a watery smile. ‘I would just have to have lived with it.’
Brianna stared down at the car keys in her hand.
‘I don’t know if I’m as strong as you are.’
‘I think you are,’ Jess said softly, ‘but it’s your choice, Brianna. You can stay and confront your fear, or you can run, but if you do run don’t forget that whatever you’re scared of won’t go away. It will always be there, like a dark shadow hanging over you.’
Her friend was right, she knew she was. Running wasn’t the answer, but to stay and try to get Connor to talk to her, to really talk…
‘Jess…’ she began, only to look sharply round with a frown. ‘Did you hear that?’
‘Hear what?’ Jess said in confusion. ‘I can hear the traffic, the birds in the trees—’
‘It’s a baby. A baby in distress, and it’s close by.’ Jess stared at her as though she was suddenly having grave doubts about her mental stability but, having worked with babies for most of her adult life, Brianna could recognise a baby’s cry from five hundred paces, and this baby was in trouble. Big trouble.
‘Maybe it’s a cat,’ Jess observed, following Brianna as she headed back to the consultants’ part of the car park. ‘Cats and kittens often make a sound like a baby.’
But it wasn’t a kitten or a cat. It was a baby who hadn’t been there when Brianna had moved her car just a few minutes ago. A baby lying wrapped in a white shawl beside Jess’s husband’s glossy Aston Martin. A baby whose face was blue, and who was breathing in tiny, rasping gasps.
‘Oh, my God! ‘ Jess exclaimed, as Brianna swiftly lifted the tiny bundle into her arms and cradled its head against her breast. ‘Who on earth would leave a baby here?’
‘It doesn’t matter who,’ Brianna replied. ‘This baby needs attention, and it needs it now.’
She was off and running before Jess could reply. Running so single-mindedly she didn’t see the tall figure walking towards her until she almost collided with him.
‘Brianna, we need to…’ Connor looked down, then up at her incredulously. ‘That’s a baby.’
‘Ten out of ten for observation,’ she replied, ‘and now can you please get out of my way because it needs help.’
NICU was the obvious place to go, she realised as she ran on with Jess and Connor following her, but she didn’t know if the bundle in her arms would make it that far, so she sighed with relief when she saw Josh walking across the entrance foyer of the hospital.
‘Hello, gorgeous, where’s the fire?’ He grinned as she raced towards him.
‘No fire,’ she replied breathlessly. ‘It’s a newborn, I found it in the car park, and it’s floppy, blue and breathing oddly.’
All Josh’s amusement disappeared in a second.
‘Jess, can you page Mr Brooke and tell him to come down to A and E immediately? And, if you can’t get him,’ he added as the counsellor turned to go, ‘page Megan. Brianna—you and the baby—A and E—now.’
‘My guess is respiratory distress syndrome,’ Brianna said as she hurried into A and E and placed the baby on one of the examination tables. ‘See how his skin and muscles are being pulled