‘Sally, you’ve been killing time for the past hour. You have to eat, you may as well do it now.’
‘Has it occurred to you that maybe I don’t want to eat with you?’ she snapped, and then regretted it when she saw the flicker of reproach in his eyes. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said with a sigh, too honest to lie to him, too kind to hurt him so casually. ‘OK, I’ll have lunch with you, just this once.’
‘Such generosity,’ he murmured drily, just to make her feel even worse!
They collected the sandwiches from his locker and filled fresh mugs with coffee, then headed out into the warm, humid August day. She led him round the corner of the building to a quiet, shady spot under the trees on the edge of a little garden. There was a bench there, and by a miracle there was nobody sitting on it.
‘Perfect,’ Nick said with a grin, and settled down, opening packets and offering them to her. ‘Prawn salad and mayo, egg mayo or BLT?’
All her favourites. She sighed softly. ‘Thank you,’ she murmured, taking a prawn salad to start with and avoiding the knowing glint in his eye.
‘So, tell me,’ he said without preamble. ‘What have you been up to for the past seven years?’
Getting over you, she thought, but that one was definitely staying private.
‘Work, mostly. I’ve been here three years now, two as a junior sister, one as a G grade.’
‘Still enjoying it?’
She nodded slowly, thoughtfully. ‘Yes. It’s tough—it’s a difficult job, A and E. You see too much.’
‘Tell me about it,’ he said drily. ‘I don’t know why I went for it, except that it appealed to my sense of drama. I’m still an adrenaline junky, and I like making snap decisions and staying on my toes. It seemed to answer all the relevant criteria better than any other branch of medicine.’
That sounded like Nick. She remembered the dangerous sports he’d indulged in, the way he’d always driven just that tiny bit too fast for absolute safety—the times they’d failed to use contraception because they’d been somewhere unprepared and playing Russian roulette had appealed to him.
Except, of course, it hadn’t been him who’d lost—
‘Egg mayo?’
‘Please,’ Sally said, dragging her mind back to the present and safer territory. He held the packet out to her, and she eased the sandwich out, her fingers brushing his as she did so.
Heat shot up her arm, and she all but snatched the sandwich away and scooted further into the corner of the bench, taking her coffee with her and busying herself with eating and drinking for a minute to give her feelings time to subside.
Her body had other ideas, though. It remembered his touch, the caress of his hands, the feel of his body on hers. She closed her eyes, stifling a tiny moan of need.
No, she told herself firmly. He’s bad news for you. You won’t get over him again, it’ll kill you. Just keep your distance.
‘You look tired,’ he said softly, and there was a thread of tender concern in his voice that nearly reduced her to tears.
‘I am tired,’ she confessed, swallowing the lump in her throat. She glanced at her watch and stood up. ‘We need to go back. They don’t know where we are, and I don’t trust this quiet spell. All hell’s going to break loose any minute, I just know it.’
Right on cue a siren sounded, and an ambulance swept out towards the gate, followed by another and another.
‘Looks like trouble brewing,’ Nick murmured. Scooping up the last of the sandwiches and wrappers, he dropped them in a bin and fell in beside her as she hurried round the corner, mugs in hand. The sirens were fading as they went through the doors, and the staff nurse in the triage room stuck her head out.
Thank God you’re back, they were about to page you. There’s been a pile-up on the bypass near the Yarmouth Road roundabout—ten cars or something. At least fifteen casualties coming in, the police say, some serious. The worst are trapped and they want a medical team on the spot. Ryan wants you two to go.’
‘OK,’ she said, her blood pumping, her thoughts whirling. She ran down the corridor past Resus to the store, where Ryan was checking the emergency bag.
‘Ah, you’re here, good—right, Sally, take this lot. You’ll need more fluids as well—there’s another bag there. Don’t think there’s anything hazardous involved, it seems to be just cars, but apparently there was a diesel spill, so take care and keep out of it if you can. You’ll need yellow coats—here, Nick, take this one.’
He handed him a coat with DOCTOR emblazoned across the back, and Sally grabbed her own off the back of the door.
‘Do we have an exact location?’ she asked, rapidly filling the other bag with fluids.
‘East of the roundabout. Just head that way, I don’t think you can miss it, by all accounts. We’ll contact you with more specific directions when we get them.’ Ryan chucked Nick the keys of his car, and they ran out, jumped into it and headed out of the car park.
‘You’ll have to tell me where to go,’ he said, cutting through the traffic with the siren wailing and the green light flashing on the roof.
She resisted the urge to make a smart remark, and directed him the quickest way out of the town and onto the bypass. Within five minutes Ambulance Control had contacted them with more specific directions, and ten minutes later, her heart in her mouth, Sally saw the first signs of the accident in the tailback ahead.
‘Siren again, I think,’ Nick said, and shot her a grim smile. ‘It’s a pity that the only time I ever get to do this, I’m too busy thinking about what we might find to enjoy the power trip.’
The traffic seemed to melt away in front of them, cars squeezing up onto the verges and pulling over to let them through, and then they were there in the thick of it, surrounded by flashing lights and screams and sobs and shouted commands. People were wandering around aimlessly, obviously in shock, and some of them were bleeding from head wounds.
‘OK, let’s see what the problems are,’ Nick said, hoisting the heavier of the bags into his arms and running towards the ambulance teams.
‘What have you got for us?’ he asked, shrugging into his coat, and the man in charge directed them towards the centre of the carnage.
‘We can handle the walking wounded for now,’ he said, ‘but we’ve got a couple of entrapments that need your help. That blue Fiesta is the worst, I believe, and the red BMW is the other one.’
Sally looked the way he was pointing, and saw a car just like hers with the nose tucked under the side of a lorry. The roof was crushed in, and she gave a little shudder. It was a little close to home.
They walked quickly over there. A paramedic was half in, half out of the back window of the car, contorted into an impossible position, and while Sally tried not to shudder at the state of the car, Nick squatted down and spoke to him.
‘I think this lady’s got a tension pneumothorax, but I’m too big to do anything about it,’ he said over his shoulder. There’s no room to move. Hang on, I’ll come out.’
He squirmed out backwards, and looked assessingly at them both. ‘You could get in,’ he said to Sally, and she nodded, suppressing her feelings.
‘OK. What do you want me to do, Nick?’
‘Check her for signs of pneumothorax or cardiac tamponade,’ he said. ‘Has she got oxygen?’
The paramedic nodded. ‘Yes. She’s in pain, but I didn’t want to give her anything that would lower her blood pressure. The steering-wheel’s rammed into her chest. She’s bound to have internal injuries.’
‘Where