Her skin was creamy and translucent, her eyes a rich, dark blue, and her ebony hair was as glossy but shorter than it had been, now brushing her shoulders in tousled waves. She didn’t look a day older, but there was a new poise and confidence about her, a new drive and ambition. He’d heard how respected she was in the department, what a good doctor she had become. He was proud of her and her achievements, the way she had fast attained her specialist registrar status, but he also knew a moment of surprise that she now appeared the single-minded career woman. Annie had always been caring and warm, dedicated to her patients, but she had been carefree and impish too—quirky, with a zest for living, desperate to combine being a doctor with having fun…and a family of her own.
How much of that side of her remained? he wondered now, watching her unsmiling face, her shuttered expression, trying to banish the rush of mixed emotions that seeing her again had evoked in him. Not because he hadn’t expected it—she was why he was here, after all—but because of her response to him. Or her lack of one. Annie seemed not to care a damn about his sudden presence in Strathlochan.
‘I hope you enjoy your stay with us, Nathan,’ she murmured, her voice cool, more refined, yet still carrying a recognisable thread of her Yorkshire upbringing.
Scared his plans were going to hell in a handcart, he somehow managed a polite nod and kept his own voice composed. ‘Thank you.’ He needed to regroup, to reevaluate his mission here.
‘The fact that you are old friends makes my decision an easy one.’ Robert Mowbray’s words drew Nathan’s attention, and he turned to face the older man. ‘Annie, I want you to be Nathan’s support while he settles in here,’ the consultant continued, apparently unaware of the tension crackling around them. ‘I’ll make sure your shifts are scheduled together for the time being.’
Nathan heard Annie’s indrawn hiss of breath, and when he glanced at her he saw the momentary spark of horrified panic in her eyes. Maybe she wasn’t as calm and unaffected as she wanted him to think. Interesting.
‘Nathan’s reputation as a trauma doctor precedes him, and I worked alongside him yesterday so I know his skills first-hand. He won’t need babysitting, Annie, but the plan is for him to make up to specialist registrar grade while he’s here. We’ll do all we can to ensure that happens. Were it not for his time outside a hospital environment he would be well ahead of you on the career ladder.’
Nathan frowned. He would sooner Robert Mowbray kept any additional details to himself. Another glance at Annie revealed a spark of curiosity flickering in her eyes—one he had not expected to see. In all their time together they had been as physically intimate as it was possible to be, but she had never shown any deeper interest in his background, for which he had been relieved and thankful. The fact that Annie had never asked questions, that she’d been so open and had lived only for the moment, had been amongst the many things that had drawn him to her in the first place. She’d been different from anyone he had ever known, a refreshing change after his dour home-life laden with problems, disappointments and the heavy weight of unwanted responsibility.
He was jolted from his thoughts as a nurse bustled up to them. Matronly, with greying hair and smiling hazel eyes, Nathan remembered her name was Gail.
‘Excuse me interrupting, but we have two ambulances on the way in,’ she informed them. ‘There was a collision in town. It’s believed an elderly woman had a heart attack at the wheel. Her car mounted the pavement and hit a gentleman shopper. He is reported to have multiple leg fractures. Both were said to be serious but stable at the scene.’
Robert snapped to attention. ‘Right. Thank you, Gail. I’ll take the woman with heart problems. Annie, you and Nathan attend to the man with fractures. Gail, ask the on-call radiographer to come down, please. And we’ll need people from both Cardiology and Orthopaedics.’
As Gail hurried off to carry out her duties, Robert went into a resus bay to organise his team. Nathan followed Annie into another. Pulling on a lead apron with “Team Leader” written on the back, she briefed the staff who had gathered, each of whom were donning their own lead aprons as well as gloves and eye protection—standard safety devices used in the department.
‘Nathan will be designated Doctor 1 and Gus Doctor 2,’ she clarified, checking to see that the nurses were set and that the room was prepared for the patient’s arrival. ‘Holly will work with Nathan, Gail with Gus, and Carolyn will act as scribe and complete the Trauma Sheet. The anaesthetist is here, and a radiographer is on the way. Everyone ready?’
A chorus of agreement greeted her question as each member of staff set about their appointed tasks. Noting that junior doctor Gus Buchanan was seeing to the blood bottles and forms, Gail was preparing warm fluids, and Holly was phoning the lab and writing up details on the white board on the wall, Nathan headed out with Annie towards the outer doors of the casualty department, where they joined the wait for the ambulances with Robert and his head nurse.
The familiar charge of adrenalin hit him. He remained painfully aware of Annie’s presence, and her antipathy, but he had to try and force thoughts of her out of his mind for the moment. It wasn’t easy, however. She had haunted his every waking moment and his every dream at night for five long years—ever since the moment she had shattered his heart and his reason for being.
The silence, the loneliness, the darkness of his time without her had cut deep. He had loved her…truly, deeply, completely. She had brought fun and sunshine into his otherwise grey, joyless life. A life that had returned to being colourless and dull without her effervescent presence and the warmth of her love. The light had gone when she had left him and had never returned. Now with the other responsibilities that had burdened his life for so long in some kind of order, he had needed to find Annie again, to bring closure to a part of his life that felt unfinished.
Part of him had hoped he would see Annie and feel nothing—that the love would have gone and he would be set free, released from the prison he’d been in for five years. A prison in which he had been in solitary confinement and to which only Annie held the key to release him. Then perhaps he could put the past behind and move on with his life without Annie haunting him. But it wasn’t to be. The second he had seen her again he had known with a mix of excitement and despair that the love and desire was still there and the craving had not gone away. Being near her again was overwhelming his senses. Annie still held his emotions in a stranglehold.
It would be far better for him if he did feel nothing. Yet one look and he knew he still cared for her with everything in him. Despite what she had done, despite the hurt she had caused him running away as she had, he still wanted her, needed her, loved her. Which made his life horribly complicated and uncertain. Given her reception of him, the chance that they could reconcile the past, let alone re-establish any kind of relationship, was seeming less and less likely. Once again he was opening himself up to inevitable heartbreak and rejection, and he wasn’t sure he could survive that a second time.
The sound of sirens drew him from his troubled thoughts, and he watched the flashing blue lights of the two ambulances come closer as they moved up the hill through the lingering mist and turned in at the hospital entrance. As the first backed into the bay, Robert moved forward to hurry the elderly woman through to Resus.
When the back doors of the second ambulance opened moments later, Nathan and Annie helped the paramedics manoeuvre the stretcher out, ready to speed the badly injured patient inside. One of the paramedics was keeping pressure on an open wound in the man’s right thigh, temporarily stemming what Nathan could see was a bad bleed.
As Annie led the way to Resus, she looked at him, and he recognised in her the same charge of adrenalin and call to duty that sang in his own veins. Then her dark blue eyes narrowed briefly, and her voice was cool and professional.
‘Right, Nathan, let’s see how good a doctor you still are.’
‘Be careful issuing challenges, Annie,’ he murmured, keeping his voice low, so no one else could hear, seeing the surprise and alarm on her face as she hesitated.