More Than Time

MILLS & BOON

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Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

IT WAS a typical April Fool’s Day joke, Lizzi thought disgustedly—and a sick joke at that.

Having caused havoc overnight, the unpredicted snow had now turned to slush, and a steady gentle rain was washing away the last traces. The white mantle that had fallen silently over the countryside on Sunday afternoon had had its fun. Now, on Monday morning, everyone was making their way to work, the mayhem forgotten.

As she turned into the hospital car park, Lizzi wondered what she would find on her ward as a result of the weather’s little games. No doubt orthopaedics would have come off worst, but there were bound to have been a fair smattering of internal injuries resulting from the inevitable car pile-ups. With a little frown she wondered how they would find room.

Her mind on her work, Lizzi turned sharply into a space and then gasped in disbelief as her obedient little car ignored her explicit directions and sailed gracefully into the side of the vehicle on her right.

As it ground to a halt, Lizzi sat stunned for a second and then wriggled out of the passenger side and walked reluctantly round to inspect the damage.

Ouch!’ she winced. Her front wing was scraped and the light cluster was cracked, but that wasn’t what was worrying her. It was what it had scraped itself on that made her heart miss a beat.

She walked round to the rear of the car and read the badges. ‘Daimler Double-Six. Damn. Wouldn’t you know?’ A further inspection revealed that under the layers of road dirt the car was the same dark forest green as her own, but, unlike hers, it was a mess inside and out, with crisp packets and apple cores scattered all over the back seat on the otherwise immaculate cream leather. Whoever owned it didn’t deserve to, she thought with a sniff, looking proudly at her well-kept Metro. She had bought it in August, and it was still in showroom condition—or it had been until a few minutes ago!

With a heavy sigh, she slid back into her car, worked her way across behind the wheel, and reversed carefully out of the space, slotting herself in again with rather more accuracy.

As she stepped out, her feet shot out from under her and she slithered awkwardly into a pile of slush. She muttered something distinctly unladylike under her breath.

Someone had obviously been here over the weekend and had recently cleared the snow off his or her vehicle, leaving it in a pile—the pile she had just happened to hit as she drove in.

Picking herself up, she brushed off her coat and, ignoring a twinge in her shoulder, reached inside the car for a notepad.

Then she looked for the staff permit on the windscreen.

Nothing.

Well, would you believe it? she thought. Seizing her pen, she wrote her telephone number, instructed the owner of the car to contact her that evening, and added a cryptic note to the effect that if the car had been in the visitors’ car park where it rightly belonged the accident wouldn’t have happened.

Shaking the crumbs out of an old sandwich bag, she slipped the note into it and tucked it under the Daimler’s windscreen wiper before locking her car and headed for the entrance.

She was too late now for a cup of coffee in the staff canteen, so she headed straight for her ward.

As she passed the entrance to the ward, she noticed almost absently that there were several new faces, and an obvious reshuffle of patients around the ward. She frowned. She liked her patients to get used to one station, keeping them there if possible at least for the duration of their convalescence, if not from immediately post-op. Too much change just confused them and slowed down their recovery, and that wasn’t to anyone’s advantage. She knew that the night sister agreed with her, so there must have been something fairly drastic going on to necessitate the changes.

She went into the staff cloakroom and hung up her coat, then rolled up her sleeves, straightening the white cuffs automatically. Glancing in the mirror, she frowned at the light mist of raindrops which clung to her blonde hair. A few fair strands had escaped and curled in damp tendrils round her neck, softening the severity of the look. She tucked them firmly back into the bun she wore at the nape of her neck, and pinned her lace cap on absently, her thoughts still on the patient reshuffle.

Her wide violet eyes troubled, her soft mouth set into a firm line, she strode briskly into the ward kitchen and came to an abrupt halt.

It seemed to be full of people, although on closer inspection there were only two. Still, they filled it. A tall man in theatre greens waved a coffee-pot at her and smiled wearily.

‘Hi. Coffee, Lizzi?’

‘Please, Oliver. I didn’t have time. What’s happened to you? You look as if you’ve been run over by a truck!’

‘God, you do wonders for a man’s ego, Sister!’

Lizzi snorted. ‘I’m not here to do wonders for your ego, Mr Henderson. You have a wife for that.’

‘Mmm. I’ll have to remind her—if I ever get the time!’ He waved the coffee at the other man. ‘Ross?’

Her eyes swivelled towards the stranger. He was tall, taller even than Oliver, and well made, neither gangly nor heavy. His coffee-cup seemed tiny in the long, strong fingers. His forearms were dusted with dark hair, and in the V of his green theatre tunic she could see crisp black curls edging the hollow of his throat. His lean hips were propped against the worktop, his feet, still in anti-static boots, crossed at the ankle.

Weary though he undoubtedly was, he exuded a sort of natural energy, a healthy coiled strength that hinted at youth and vigour, but that was misleading. His most startling feature was the mass of soft, thick silver hair which looked casually tousled—as if a woman had just run her hands through it, Lizzi mused, surprised at the untypical and highly personal direction of her thoughts. As she watched, he thrust it back off his face with those lean, hard fingers, rumpling it even further.

Then he lifted his head and their eyes met, and Lizzi blinked. Warm, gentle grey-green eyes, eyes that seemed to see straight through her façade. She suddenly felt totally exposed—and very vulnerable.

‘Sorry, you two haven’t met, have you? Lizzi, this is Ross Hamilton, our new consultant. Ross, Lizzi Lovejoy, our own personal whirlwind.’

‘Sister Lovejoy.’ Ross extended a hand, and Lizzi found her own engulfed in its warmth and strength.

‘Welcome to the madhouse, Mr Hamilton.’

One side of his mouth lifted in a wry, lop-sided grin that made him look years younger. She realised with a shock that he was, in fact, much younger than she had at first supposed. It was his silver hair that aged him, that and tiredness.

And he was, she saw, quite exhausted. There were bags under his eyes, and shadows, and the lines bracketing his mouth were harshly etched, as if he had been overworking for weeks—or even years.

As she took all this in, he turned to Oliver and refused another cup of coffee.

‘I want to go to ITU and see a couple of patients, then I really ought to try and get respectable before my outpatients clinic’

He ran his hand over his jaw, rasping against the stubble and, coincidentally and unexpectedly, Lizzi’s nerve-endings.

‘OK. I’ll catch up with you at lunch,’ Oliver replied.

‘Uh-huh.’ His voice was soft, deep and husky with a Scots burr that was strangely attractive.

He crossed the tiny kitchen in a stride, and Lizzi watched, transfixed, as he reached her. Tall as she was, he was so close that she had to tip her head back to meet his eyes.

A smile flickered around his full, firm lips. ‘I’m sorry to run away, but I’ve been in Theatre all night. I’ll come and see you later.’

Lizzi felt a rush of confusion. Why should he want to see her? She felt threatened, strangely excited. Close up she could see the rough stubble on his jaw, and he looked utterly disreputable and totally fascinating. A surge of adrenalin brought a flush to her cheeks and a pulse to life in her throat. Her lips moved soundlessly.

His brows twitched together, and he seemed to have difficulty dragging his eyes away from her lips. Unconsciously, the tip of her tongue came out to moisten them, and his eyes flicked up and tangled with hers for an endless moment.

‘Yes, later,’ she managed, almost normally.

‘Good.’ Still he stood there, as if he was waiting for something. ‘Excuse me,’ he said, and then the smile which had been waiting sprang to life on his lips and touched his eyes with subtle humour. His big, strong hands came up and cupped her slender shoulders, and he moved her gently out of his way before brushing past.

Lizzi realised, belatedly, that she had been standing like a fool in the doorway, blocking his exit. She watched him walk away, his stride confident, unhurried, yet covering the ground at a good speed. So that was him, she thought, the much talked about James Kinross McKenzie Hamilton, BSc, MB, BCh, FRCS …

Oliver was watching her speculatively. ‘Coffee?’

‘Thank you,’ she murmured, and dragged her mind back into a professional gear. Ross was out of sight now.

She turned back to Oliver. ‘I take it you’ve been busy?’

‘Hell on wheels. That snow really screwed things up. I’ve been here since five o’clock yesterday afternoon, and Ross rang in at six to find out if we needed help.’

Lizzi took the coffee from him and stirred it thoughtfully. ‘That was good of him.’

Oliver nodded. ‘He’s a damn fine surgeon. We were lucky to get him. He’s been going flat out all night, and he’s only just finished moving in to his new house. I gather he’d been to Scotland over the weekend and just got back down yesterday afternoon before the snow started. He said he’d been running in his new car rather faster than was advisable!’

Lizzi frowned. She didn’t want to be reminded about cars just then. ‘So, what’s new on the ward?’

They gravitated back to her office, deep in conversation, and Lizzi found the night sister and the nurses on the early shift gathered for report.

‘Morning, all,’ she said cheerfully, and quickly pulled up a chair. ‘Sorry to keep you waiting; Mr Henderson was just filling me in on the new admissions.’

The night sister, Jean Hobbs, flicked open the Kardex, and went systematically through the patients. The additional information on the three new ones caught Lizzi’s attention.

The first, Roger Widlake, was a man in his forties who had suffered severe internal injuries, including a ruptured spleen, punctured lung and ruptured liver following an RTA. ‘No doubt he’ll drive more carefully in future if he lives long enough,’ Jean Hobbs commented.

‘Why isn’t he in ITU?’ Lizzi asked, horrified.

‘No room,’ Oliver put in. ‘They’re run off their feet. He’s in a side-ward—Hamilton operated on him. He’ll be back down later; he wants to talk to you about his care.’

So that was why he was coming back. Lizzi felt a little surge of disappointment. ‘How stable is he?’

The night sister shrugged. ‘Difficult to say. He’s only been down from Recovery for two hours. We’ll have to watch him like a hawk.’

Lizzi nodded. She would put Sarah, her best staff nurse, on to special him for the morning at least.

The next patient was a woman with similar but less severe problems. Jennifer Adams had sustained a ruptured bowel and a messy abdominal tear when her steering-wheel had snapped and penetrated her abdominal wall.

She was, Lizzi thought, extremely lucky to have got off as lightly as she had.

Oliver joined in again. ‘There was a minor abrasion on her left ureter, and her left ovary was also slightly bruised. Apart from that she’s fine, and came through surgery very well. She’s had two units of whole blood but she’s on saline now. Her worst problem will be scarring, I suspect. I’ve done my best, but she’ll probably need plastic surgery later.’

Lizzi nodded. She had seen these sorts of injuries before.

The third patient to catch her attention was a young man of twenty, Michael Holden, who had been thrown clear of his car and then run over by another vehicle, causing a whole range of internal injuries.

‘He should definitely be in ITU!’ Lizzi protested, mentally assigning herself the task of specialling him.

‘He will be,’ the sister replied. ‘They’ll take him as soon as they can clear a bed. They’ve got a head-injuries patient they’re hoping to transfer to Addenbrookes, and a spinal injuries case for Stoke Mande ville as soon as he’s stable enough. That should clear two beds. I would think they’ll take him then. Of course, if the bloody fool had been wearing a seatbelt——’ Jean Hobbs looked up and smiled. ‘That’s it, then. Over to you!’ She flipped the Kardex shut, stood up and stretched. ‘You’re welcome, let me tell you!’

Lizzi smiled grimly. The week had really got off to a flying start, she thought with disgust.

She sent Sarah Godwin off to relieve the night nurse with Roger Widlake, put her other staff nurse Lucy Hallett in charge of the ward and headed off with Oliver to see Jennifer Adams and Michael Holden.

Jennifer was feeling very sorry for herself and Oliver wrote her up for more powerful pain relief before leaving her and taking Lizzi into Michael Holden’s room.

His breathing was very light and harsh, and his face was pale and clammy—the bits that weren’t bruised and cut, at least.

‘How is he?’ Oliver asked the staff nurse sitting at the head of the bed.

‘His respiration’s very irregular, and he seems to be in pain. His pupils are still uneven and unresponsive, and he doesn’t react when you talk to him, but he’s very restless. We had to tie his hands down because he kept going for the drip.’

Oliver nodded and studied the chart for a moment, then the heart monitor. ‘It’ll be a miracle if he makes it. He’s a mess. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such massive internal injuries except in a post mortem.’

‘I’m surprised he hasn’t broken anything apart from a few ribs,’ Lizzi commented.

‘He probably has. The radiographer’s coming up to X-ray him again. There was so much blood mass obscuring the plates it was difficult to see, but his pelvis is a definite candidate. The orthopods will come and see him later if he hangs on long enough. I reckon the head of his left femur cracked the acetabulum as he landed, but we’ll see. He could also have a slight skull fracture.’ He glanced at his watch and gave a short, tired sigh. ‘I must get on. Will you be all right?’

Lizzi gave him a wry grin. ‘I’ll do my best. What about Roger Widlake?’

‘Ross will be down to talk to you about him before long, I expect. See you later.’

Lizzi scanned the charts, smiled at the nurse and told her she could go. ‘I’ll special him,’ she said. ‘Could you ask Lucy Hallett to come and see me in a minute?’

But it was Ross and not Lucy who opened the door a few minutes later. He walked over to Lizzi and stood close to her as he studied the chart.

‘How’s he doing?’

Lizzi shrugged. ‘Not well.’

Ross shook his head. ‘I doubt if he’ll make it. He’s so badly shocked, and he was under the anaesthetic for hours. Oliver and I were working on him together.’

Lifting up the edge of the bedclothes, Ross frowned at the drainage bag from the catheter.

‘His kidney’s been bleeding a bit.’

‘Kidney? Just one?’

‘We had to remove the left one. It was shot to bits.’

They watched dismally as a steady trickle of blood ran into the bag.

‘Damn.’

‘Will you have to open him up again?’

Ross shrugged. ‘Maybe.’ He opened up the drip a little so that the whole blood ran faster, and checked his blood-pressure. ‘Pressure’s OK. I think we’ll just watch him closely. It may stop on its own. The last thing he needs is another anaesthetic. He’s got so much alcohol in his system that he really can’t take it. His system is depressed enough.’

‘He was drunk?’

‘As a skunk. The police are waiting to talk to him.’

As the old familiar rage swept over her, Lizzi lost all compassion. ‘Why the hell was he driving?’

‘Good question. He caused the accident, apparently. Ploughed into Jennifer Adams—it’s her husband in ITU with the head injuries, by the way—and then spun off and caught Roger Widlake and his wife broadside. She’s fortunately only slightly injured.’

‘Bastard,’ Lizzi whispered, it would serve him right if he died!’

Ross blinked. That’s a little harsh, isn’t it?’

‘It’s no more than he deserves!’ Lizzi said bitterly.

Just then there was a dramatic drop in blood-pressure, and the heart monitor registered a flat trace.

‘Here we go again,’ Ross said with a sigh, and rolled the man carefully on to his back, tipped back his head and breathed into his mouth while Lizzi automatically slid a board under his chest, then, locating his sternum, he crossed his hands and pumped steadily.

‘Get an airway in, Lizzi.’

Lizzi hit the alarm button, ripped open a Brook’s airway and inserted it carefully into the man’s mouth, forcing her professional side to take over from the unprecedented surge of emotion. Suddenly the room was full of people. Someone took over the air bag, attaching it to the airway and squeezing it steadily in the gaps between Ross’s rhythmic cardiac massage.

‘Do you want the defibrillator?’ someone asked.

‘No, he’s gone into asystole. He’s just given up—he may have a ruptured aneurism. We’ll have to keep him going if we can. If it isn’t that, he may pick up again.’ Ross snapped out instructions which had already been anticipated by the well-trained team. The atropine, calcium and adrenalin were already drawn up, and were injected into the giving set in the patient’s arm, as soon as they had been checked.

There was no response, and adrenalin injected directly into the heart was equally ineffective. The trace remained persistently, stubbornly flat.

After several more fruitless minutes, Ross straightened up with a sigh. There’s nothing more we can do. It must be his aorta—the PM will tell us. All right, thank you everybody.’

No one was surprised. The staff filtered out of the room, and left Lizzi and Ross alone with the dead man.

‘Probably just as well,’ Lizzi said flatly as she removed the airway and switched off the monitor.

‘Aye. Maybe.’ Ross sounded gruff, and Lizzi shot him a look.

‘Don’t you agree?’

‘Depends on your reasons for wishing him dead. If it’s to spare him any further suffering, then yes. If it’s just because he was young and irresponsible, I think it’s a bit extreme.’

Lizzi blushed. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to over-react. I just—feel very strongly about drunk drivers.’

Ross straightened, and flashed her a weary grin. ‘Technically I agree with you, but I’d just spent several hours of my life struggling to save the young fool, and it’s hard to see it all thrown away. I like working miracles, and I don’t like to be cheated! But you’re right, the poor bloke’s better off dead. God knows what complications he would have had if he’d lived.’

Lizzi followed him out of the room. ‘What about relatives?’ she asked.

‘They hadn’t managed to contact any by the time they brought him down this morning, I don’t think.’

But they had. Lucy Hallett ducked her head out of the office door and smiled.

‘I’ve got Mr and Mrs Holden in here. They’re wondering about how Michael’s getting on.’

Ross and Lizzi exchanged glances, and he nodded.

Thanks, I’ll see to it. Perhaps you’d get him presentable?’ he murmured quietly to Lizzi.

Lucy frowned, and Lizzi shook her head slightly. Lucy’s mouth formed an ‘O’, and she came soundlessly out of the room as Ross went in and closed the door firmly behind him.

‘What happened?’

‘He arrested—probably as a result of a traumatic aneurism. Just as well. Mr Hamilton was about to have to take him down to Theatre to sort out his kidney again, because it was still bleeding. Did his parents realise how bad he was?’

Lucy gave a hollow little laugh. ‘I doubt it—I didn’t know, and they were getting their information from me. I was having difficulty holding them; they were almost determined to find him.’

Lizzi went back into Michael’s room and took down the drip, removed the catheter and tidied up the bed. No doubt his parents would want to see him now, and she did her best to disguise the damage. Just as she was about to leave the room, Ross appeared with Michael’s parents.

She left them to it. Telling relatives was a part of her job that she liked the least, and she wasn’t particularly good at it. She realised she was also feeling very angry with the dead man still, and probably wasn’t the best person to deal with his relatives anyway. Maybe it was cowardly of her, but she made her escape nevertheless and went to see how Sarah was doing with Roger Widlake.

He seemed to be holding his own much better than Michael had, and Lizzi went back to her office and contacted the mortuary technician, and then rang ITU to tell them that they now only needed one bed.

Shortly afterwards she saw Ross escorting the Holdens out, and she didn’t see him again until much later, by which time Roger Widlake was in ITU and her ward was her own again.

She was sitting in her office doing battle with the rota when he opened the door and popped his head round.

‘Can I come in?’

Of course.’ She straightened up and pushed the paperwork away from her. ‘What can I do for you?’

He grinned. ‘You could offer me a coffee and we could talk about Roger Widlake, in that order. I think I’m going to fall asleep otherwise!’

‘Mr Widlake’s been transferred to ITU,’ she told him.

‘Good. Then I’ll settle for the coffee!’

He dropped wearily into the chair opposite her desk and rubbed his hand over his face. He had shaved and changed into a suit, but he looked just as tired.

She smiled. ‘I’ll see what I can find. Have you had breakfast?’

He shook his head. ‘No. I’d missed the chance by the time I’d dealt with the Holdens.’

Lizzi felt guilty. ‘I’m sorry I left you to cope with that. I should have done it so you could go and rest for a while.’

He gave her a weary, lop-sided smile. ‘It doesn’t matter. I don’t suppose you would have enjoyed it either, even though you think he got his just deserts.’

‘I-’ Lizzi’s mouth opened and closed, and she floundered to a halt. Was she really that vindictive? Was her judgement really so clouded that she couldn’t deal with the relatives of a patient because she had tried him and found him guilty?