And she had thrown herself at him. Her brain might be fuzzy but it wasn’t fuzzy enough for her to forget that it had been she who had dragged Jonah down on top of her when he’d lowered her onto her bed. She who had pulled off her shirt and trousers despite his best efforts to prevent her, and she who had kept repeating, ‘Make love to me, Jonah. I want you to make love to me,’ before she’d passed out.
Oh, God.
On the Richter scale of embarrassment it was worse than coming out of the loo not realising you’d tucked your skirt into your knickers. Worse even than asking the man you’d been dating for a while whether your relationship had moved into commitment and realising from the stunned look on his face that it hadn’t.
How was she ever going to be able to face him? For two years they’d been such good friends. They’d laughed together, commiserated with each other, and once she’d even cried on his shoulder after a really bad day, but now…In the space of twenty-four hours she’d not only been dumped by her fiancé she’d also made a complete and utter fool of herself with the one man who had always been there for her in the good times and the bad.
A tear rolled down her cheek and she brushed it away angrily. She’d got herself into this mess, and somehow she had to get herself out of it.
‘I was drunk, Jonah, and didn’t know what I was doing,’ she said out loud, then shook her head, wincing as she did so.
That was insulting. So insulting.
‘Brian had dumped me, and I needed to feel wanted, and I knew you wouldn’t hurt me, so I…’
Worse, that was worse. Neither his pride nor their friendship would survive that amount of honesty.
Somehow she had to come up with a convincing explanation for her behaviour, but what?
Right, Nell thought, taking a deep breath as the elevator doors opened onto the fourth floor of the Belfield Infirmary. It’s plan A. You don’t refer to last night and Jonah will think you don’t remember it, and because he’s a gentleman he won’t remind you. End of story.
It sounded good. Sort of. At least it was better than plan B.
‘Hey, what happened to you last night?’ Fiona called as Nell tried to sneak past her office. ‘One minute you were in the function suite with Liz and me, and the next you were gone.’
‘I was feeling a bit rough so I decided to go home,’ Nell muttered, and Fiona frowned at her.
‘You still don’t look very great,’ she observed, ‘but it was a terrific party, wasn’t it?’
‘The best.’ Nell lied, feeling the dentist’s drill inside her head beginning to intensify. ‘Is…is Jonah in?’
‘Arrived about half an hour ago. Full of beans, too.’
Full of beans.
Did that mean he was laughing at her, laughing at what she’d done? No, of course Jonah wouldn’t laugh. He wasn’t the type. Or at least she didn’t think he was.
‘He left a message for you,’ Fiona continued. ‘Said he’d like a word some time today.’
That didn’t sound good.
‘Did he say what he wanted to talk about?’ Nell asked, determinedly casual, and Fiona shook her head.
‘Maybe he’s still worried about Tommy Moffat.’
That sounded better. Well, not better for little Tommy, but definitely better for her.
‘Jonah’s in Intensive at the moment if you want to see him before you start your shift,’ Fiona continued helpfully, and Nell managed a weak smile.
She didn’t want to see Jonah. She wanted a couple of mugs of black, unsweetened coffee before she went anywhere near the specialist registrar or the unit, but she’d no sooner reached her office than Bea appeared.
‘One newbie admitted at three o’clock,’ the ward sister said, holding out the night staff’s notes to her. ‘Katie Kelly, ten and a half weeks premature, mum and dad’s names are Tricia and Rob.’
‘Anything else?’ Nell asked, gazing longingly at the jar of coffee on her desk and knowing she had as much chance of grabbing a cup as she had of suddenly changing into a five foot nothing, size six film star.
‘Tommy Moffat. Jonah said his BP was all over the place last night.’
Nell’s hand faltered as she reached for her uniform. ‘Jonah was in the unit last night?’
‘He said he had nothing better to do so he thought he’d pop in.’
Oh, ouch, there was only so much honesty a woman wanted to hear, even if it came secondhand.
‘Increase the frequency of Tommy’s obs,’ Nell said with difficulty. ‘If his BP keeps on fluctuating, let me know immediately.’
Bea nodded. ‘Are we still transferring Chloe Wilson and Winston Turner from Special to Transitional today?’
‘Both have been breathing without their ventilators for the past month, and they’re also feeding well with no reflux action so—’
‘They’re almost ready to go home.’ Bea smiled. ‘Don’t you just love being able to tell parents that? It’s what makes working in the NICU so worthwhile.’
It was. Nell knew that some nurses, and quite a few doctors, found the unit unnerving but she had always loved her work. The challenge of keeping the tiny preemies alive, the relief when they started to grow, the joy when they finally left the unit to go home with their parents. Of course, it wasn’ t always like that. There were dark days, grim days, when one of their tiny charges lost their hold on life, but she had never wanted to work anywhere else.
Except today, she realised, after she’d changed into her uniform and Bea led the way into the intensive care section of the unit and she saw Jonah deep in conversation with Callum Nicolson’s mother.
‘Viv’s a bit upset because she still hasn’t been able to express any milk to feed her son,’ Bea murmured as they saw Jonah put his arm around Mrs Nicolson and give her a hug, ‘but he’s good in these situations, isn’t he?’
He was. A lot of doctors possessed the necessary skills to make them proficient neonatologists, but to be a really good one you needed to be able to put yourself into other people’s shoes, to empathise with them, and Jonah could do that with his eyes shut. He was also unexpectedly good at fending off the advances of drunken women, but Nell didn’t want to think about that right now.
‘Is that Rob and Tricia Kelly?’ she asked, seeing a couple she didn’t know standing awkwardly by one of the incubators.
Bea nodded. ‘Jonah’s explained we’re going to have to take it one day at a time, but I think they’re still a bit shell-shocked.’
Nell would have been shell-shocked, too, if one minute she and her husband had been happily asleep in bed and the next she’d gone into labour ten and a half weeks prematurely.
‘This place—it’s a bit overwhelming, isn’t it?’ Rob said, when Nell walked over to the couple to introduce herself
‘There’s nothing to be frightened of, truly, there isn’t,’ Nell said. ‘Your daughter’s really just in a kind of mini-greenhouse, which will keep her warm and cosy until she’s well enough to cope with the outside world.’
‘But all those wires, all those tubes,’ Tricia said, twisting her dressing-gown belt round in her fingers, her voice uneven. ‘It looks so painful.’
‘Katie needs help with her breathing and feeding, Tricia,’ Nell said gently. ‘We also need to keep an eye on her heart rate and