‘You tell Aunty Penny that she should listen to me and have some fun before she’s ankle deep in nappies and exhausted from lack of sleep.’ Jasmine smiled at her son and then turned to her sister. ‘Just one last wild fling before you get pregnant!’
‘I’ve never had a wild fling in my life and I’m certainly not about to start now. You’ve never had IVF, have you?’ Penny’s voice was wry. ‘Believe me, Ethan Lewis and sex and wild flings are the very last thing on my mind right now.’ Penny did suddenly laugh, though. ‘Could you imagine if I did and then twelve weeks later announced that I’m pregnant?’
‘Oh, I would just love to see that.’ Jasmine was laughing too at the thought of the confirmed bachelor Ethan Lewis thinking for a moment that he was about to become a father. ‘It would kill him!’
‘WHERE THE HELL is X-ray?’ Penny snapped at Jasmine the next afternoon, just as she would to anyone—they weren’t sisters here and no feelings were spared.
They were struggling to stabilise a patient in congestive heart failure who wasn’t responding to the usual treatment regimes. John Douglas had presented to the department struggling to breathe, his heart beating dangerously fast and his lungs overloaded with fluid. It was a common emergency that Penny was more than used to dealing with, but what was compounding the problem was that John was also a renal patient and undergoing regular dialysis at a major city hospital so Penny was trying to sort out the far higher drug doses that were needed in his case.
‘I’m just going to lean you forward, John,’ Penny said, and listened again to her patient’s chest. The oxygen saturation machine was bleeping its alarm. Vanessa, another nurse, returned with John’s blood-gas results and it was confirmed to Penny that things were really grim. She had already paged the medics to come down urgently and was now considering putting out a crash call, because even though he hadn’t gone into cardiac arrest he was very close.
‘Give him another forty milligrams,’ Penny called out to Jasmine, though she wasn’t cross when Jasmine hesitated. ‘He’s a renal patient,’ Penny explained, ‘so he’ll need massive doses of diuretics.’
Still, Penny was concerned about the amount of medication she was having to give and was carefully checking the drug guide, wishing the medics would hurry up and get there. She had just decided to put out a crash call when Ethan approached.
‘Problem?’ Ethan asked, and Penny quickly brought him up to speed.
‘He’s not responding,’ Penny said. ‘And neither are the medics to their fast page. I’m going to call the crash team.’
‘Hold off for just a moment.’ Ethan scanned the drug sheet to see what had been given. He had just come from working a rotation in the major renal unit in a city hospital, so he was familiar with the drug doses required in a case like this and he quickly examined the patient. ‘He needs a large bolus.’
Ethan saw Penny’s face go bright red as he took over the patient’s care. ‘Penny, where I worked before …’ He didn’t really have time to explain things and he wasn’t about to compromise patient care by pandering to Penny’s fragile ego—she was spitting with rage, Ethan could see it. In fact, he was tempted to lick his finger and put it onto her flaming cheek just so that he could hear the hiss.
‘Go ahead,’ came Penny’s curt response, and she thrust the patient notes into his hands and walked off quickly.
‘Have we ordered a portable chest X-ray?’ he asked Jasmine.
‘It’s supposed to be on its way,’ Jasmine answered.
‘You’re going to be okay, sir.’ Ethan listened to his chest and considered calling the crash team himself.
He could see Jasmine was blushing too at her sister’s little outburst and was sorely tempted to ask Jasmine just what the hell her sister’s problem was, though of course Ethan knew. Well, he wasn’t just going to stand back, and if Penny didn’t like it, she’d better start getting used to it. Penny Masters was an absolute … Ethan kept the word in his head as he saw the fluid start to gush into the catheter bag. The patient’s oxygen saturations started to rise slowly. He was just ordering some more morphine when the radiographer arrived for the chest X-ray, along with a much calmer-looking Penny.
‘Thanks for that,’ she said, completely unable to look him in the eye. She had fled to her office, which had a small sink in it, and splashed her face with cold water and run her wrists under the tap. Penny would never have left the patient had Ethan not been there, but she had never had a hot flash so severe. She knew that Ethan was less than impressed, especially when, without a further word, he stalked off.
‘Are you okay?’ Jasmine checked as they waited outside while the patient was being X-rayed, Vanessa staying in with him.
‘Of course I’m not.’ Rarely for Penny, she was close to tears. ‘He thought I was cross at him for making suggestions and that I just walked off in a temper.’
He’d thought exactly that, Jasmine knew. She had seen the roll of his tongue in his cheek and the less than impressed rise of Ethan’s brows. ‘Penny, if people just knew—’
‘What?’ Penny interrupted. ‘Do you really think that I’m going to explain to him that I just had a hot flash?’
Penny was mortified—absolutely and completely mortified. The down-regulation medication to stop her own cycle was in full effect, and she had a splitting headache as well, another of the side effects. The headache she could deal with, but for a woman who was usually so able to keep things in check, the rip of heat that had seared through her face and the rapid flutter of her heart in her chest had felt appalling. She had hardly been able to breathe in there but she had absolutely no intention of telling Ethan Lewis why. ‘Do you really think that Neanderthal would be understanding?’
‘Neanderthal?’ Jasmine grinned in delight at her sister’s choice of word.
‘Just leave it,’ Penny snapped.
Ethan didn’t leave it, though.
Before heading for home, he passed her office, where Penny sat busily writing up her notes. She was sitting very straight, like some schoolmarm, Ethan thought as he knocked a couple of times on her open door.
In fact, it was rather like walking into the headmistress’s office as those cold blue eyes lifted to his and gave him a very stern stare.
‘What time are you on till?’ Ethan asked.
‘Midnight,’ Penny answered—she knew that he hadn’t just popped in for a chat.
‘How is Mr Douglas doing now?’
‘He’s a lot better, but the medics are still stabilising him and then he’ll be transferred so he can have his dialysis.’ She wished he would just leave; she really didn’t want to discuss what had taken place. ‘Thank you for your help with him.’
‘It didn’t feel very welcome.’ Ethan waited a moment, but Penny said nothing, just turned her attention back to her notes and, no, he would not just leave it. ‘What the hell happened back there, Penny?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘I think that you do,’ came Ethan’s swift retort. ‘If there is an issue then it’s time that we discussed it.’
‘There is no issue.’
Ethan begged to differ. She was the most difficult woman that he had ever met and he’d met a lot of women! Yes, she was a fantastic doctor. Ethan had no qualms there, and in fact he was quietly surprised, having seen her work, that she hadn’t been given the consultant’s position. He could well understand how angry