ISLA TOOK A deep breath outside the staffroom door. Today was her second day at the emergency department of the London Victoria Hospital, and she was still finding her place in the team. She’d liked the colleagues she’d met yesterday, and hopefully today would go just as well—with new people who didn’t know her past and wouldn’t judge her. She pushed the door open, then smiled at the nurse who was checking the roster on the pinboard. ‘Morning, Lorraine.’
‘Morning, Isla. You’re on cubicles with Josie and Harry the Heartbreaker this morning,’ Lorraine said.
‘Harry the Heartbreaker?’ Isla asked.
Lorraine wrinkled her nose. ‘I guess that’s a bit of a mean nickname—Harry’s a good doctor and he’s great with patients. He listens to them and gives them a chance to talk.’
‘So he’s very charming, but he’s a bit careless with women?’ Isla knew the type. Only too well.
‘Harry dates a lot,’ Lorraine said. ‘He doesn’t lead his girlfriends on, exactly, but hardly anyone makes it past a third date with him.’
And lots of women saw him as a challenge and tried to be the exception to his rule, Isla guessed. ‘Uh-huh,’ she said. She certainly wouldn’t be one of them. After what had happened with Stewart, she had no intention of dating anyone ever again. She was better off on her own.
‘OK, so he’d be a nightmare to date,’ Lorraine said with a wry smile, ‘but he’s a good colleague. I’m sure you’ll get on well with him.’
So professionally their relationship would be just fine; but it would be safer to keep Harry the Heartbreaker at a distance on a personal level. Isla appreciated the heads-up. ‘Everyone else in the department has been lovely so far,’ she said, smiling back. ‘I’m sure it will be fine.’
Though she hadn’t been prepared for quite how gorgeous Harry the Heartbreaker was when she actually saw him. The expression ‘tall, dark and handsome’ didn’t even begin to do him justice. He would’ve been perfectly cast as one of the brooding heroes of a television costume drama, with dark curly hair that was a little too long and flopped over his forehead, dark eyes, a strong jaw and the most sensual mouth she’d ever seen. On horseback, wearing a white shirt, breeches and tailcoat, he’d be irresistible.
Harry the Heart-throb.
Harry the Heartbreaker, she reminded herself.
Luckily Josie had already triaged the first patient and was ready to assist Harry, which meant that Isla had enough time to compose herself and see the next patient on the list.
Harry was a colleague and that was all. Isla had no intention of getting involved with anyone again, no matter how gorgeous the man looked. Stewart had destroyed her trust completely, and that wasn’t something she’d be able to put behind her easily.
Harry finished writing up his notes and walked into the corridor to call the next patient through. He knew that Josie had gone to triage her next patient, so he’d be working with the newest member of the team, Isla McKenna. He’d been on leave yesterday when she’d started at the London Victoria and knew nothing about her, other than that she was a senior nurse.
He eyed the nurse in the corridor with interest. Even without the double giveaways of her name and her accent, he would’ve guessed that Isla McKenna was a Scot. She had that fine porcelain skin, a dusting of freckles across her nose, sharp blue eyes and, beneath her white nurse’s cap, dark red hair that he’d just bet looked amazing in the sunlight. Pure Celt. It was a long time since he’d found someone so instantly attractive. Not that he was going to act on it. For all he knew, she could already be involved with someone; the lack of a ring on her left hand meant nothing. ‘Isla McKenna, I presume?’ he asked.
She nodded.
‘Harry Gardiner. Nice to meet you. How are you settling in to the ward?’ he asked as they walked down to the cubicles together.
‘Fine, thanks. The team seems very nice.’
‘They’re a good bunch,’ he said. ‘So where were you before you moved here?’
‘Scotland,’ she said, her face suddenly shuttering.
Clearly she thought he was prying and she’d given him as vague an answer as she could without being openly rude. ‘Uh-huh,’ he said, lightly. ‘Just making polite conversation—as you would with any new colleague.’
She blushed, and her skin clashed spectacularly with her hair. ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to be rude,’ she muttered.
‘Then let’s pretend we’ve never spoken and start again.’ He held out his hand. ‘Harry Gardiner, special reg. Nice to meet you, and welcome to the London Victoria.’
‘Isla McKenna, sister. Thank you, and nice to meet you, too,’ she said.
Her handshake was firm, and Harry was surprised to discover that his skin actually tingled where it touched hers.
Not good.
He normally tried not to date colleagues within his own department. It made things less complicated if his date turned out to have greater expectations than he wanted to fulfil—which they usually did. And instant attraction to the newest member of their team definitely wasn’t a good idea.
‘So who’s next?’ he asked. Hopefully focussing on work would get his common sense back to where it should be—firmly in control of his libido.
‘Arthur Kemp, aged seventy-three, suspected stroke,’ Isla said, filling him in. ‘The paramedics did a FAST assessment—’ the Face Arm Speech Test was used in cases of suspected stroke to check whether the patient’s face seemed to fall on one side or if they could smile, whether they could hold both arms above their head, or if their speech was slurred ‘—and they gave him some aspirin on the way here. I’ve done an initial assessment.’
‘ROSIER?’ Harry asked. Recognition of Stroke in the Emergency Room was a standard protocol.
She nodded. ‘His score pretty much confirms it’s a stroke. I checked ABCD2 as well, and the good news is that his score is nil on the D—he’s not diabetic. His blood sugar is fine.’
Harry picked up immediately what she was telling him—there was only one section of the test with a nil score. ‘So the rest of it’s a full house?’
‘I’m afraid so,’ she said. ‘He’s over sixty, he has high blood pressure and residual weakness on his left side, and the incident happened over an hour ago now.’
‘Which puts him at higher risk of having a second stroke in the next two days,’ Harry said. ‘OK. Does he live on his own, or is he in any kind of residential care?’
‘He has a flat where there’s a warden on duty three days a week, and a care team comes in three times a day to sort out his meals and medication,’ Isla told him. ‘They’re the ones who called the ambulance for him this morning.’
‘So if he did have a second stroke and the warden wasn’t on duty or it happened between the care team’s visits, the chances are he wouldn’t be found for a few hours, or maybe not even overnight.’ Harry wrinkled his nose. ‘I’m really not happy with that. I think we need to admit him to the acute unit for the next