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‘Yes, I’ve been here for two years,’ she muttered, ‘and now if you’ll excuse me…’
‘Oh, absolutely not,’ Connor declared, his voice ice-cold and implacable. ‘In fact, I insist you stay.’
Had he always been quite so tall, so intimidating? she wondered as she involuntarily took a step back. Of course he had. He couldn’t possibly have grown since she’d last seen him, and he’d always possessed an air of authority and power, and yet she felt transported back in time to the little country mouse she’d once been, and she hated feeling that way.
‘I’m afraid you really will have to excuse me,’ she said, putting as much defiance into her voice as she could muster. ‘I have babies to attend to, and I also need to talk to the mother of one of our patients. Her daughter has just undergone major surgery—’
‘From which we are hopeful she will make a full recovery,’ Mr Brooke interrupted. ‘Of course, the next few days will be critical, as I will explain to Mrs Renwick myself.’
Which is exactly what I don’t want you to do, Brianna thought unhappily. Of course, all operations carried risks, but not for nothing had the nursing staff in NICU nicknamed their consultant ‘Babbling’ Brooke. Brilliant surgeon though he might be, he would persist in constantly—and at great length—giving parents the worst-case scenario possible, terrifying them witless in the process. Megan would have handled Naomi Renwick so much better, but Megan wasn’t here.
‘It would be no trouble for me to talk to Mrs Renwick, Mr Brooke,’ she said desperately. ‘I could go now—’
‘Not running away from me, are you, Sister Flannigan?’ Connor said, and she bit her lip savagely.
Had she been the only one in the unit who had heard the unspoken word again in his comment? She hoped she was, she prayed she was.
‘Of course not,’ she replied. ‘I just…I know Mrs Renwick very well…I’m her daughter’s primary carer—’
‘And I’m her daughter’s surgeon, and head of this department, so I will speak to her,’ Mr Brooke interrupted with a finality that told Brianna there was no point in arguing. ‘Now, Connor, I’m sure our ward clerk will be only too happy to let you examine more of our files—’
‘Which I’m sure would be absolutely fascinating,’ Connor interrupted, ‘but I’m only going to be in St Piran’s for the next six weeks so what I’d like to do in NICU, over the next few days, is interview all of your staff individually. Form an idea from them of how they think they fit into this unit, what their duties are, gain the bigger picture, if you like.’
Six weeks? Brianna thought, glancing from Connor to Mr Brooke with ill-disguised horror. Connor was going to be in the hospital for six weeks? Even if he only spent a few days in NICU, it was going to be a few days too many and Mr Brooke clearly thought the same.
‘I really don’t see why there’s any need for you to interview my staff when I can give you the bigger picture immediately,’ he said. ‘Sick babies come in here, my nursing staff and I attempt to make them better. End of story.’ Brianna could have kissed the consultant, but Connor merely smiled the smile of a man who had no intention of having his intentions thwarted.
‘I still want to speak to your staff,’ he insisted evenly. ‘My interviews will take no longer than half an hour, and after that I will simply be a silent observer. In fact, I doubt you’ll even notice I’m here.’
I’ll notice, Brianna thought, desperately praying their consultant would feel the same but, to her dismay, he had clearly become bored with the conversation and simply shrugged.
‘Fine—whatever,’ he said. ‘Just don’t get in my way, or the way of my staff. So, who do you want to interview first?’
Connor made a show of glancing over the assembled nurses, but Brianna knew who he was going to choose, just as she knew Connor knew it, too.
‘I’m sure Sister Flannigan and I will find a lot to talk about,’ he declared with a smile that didn’t even remotely suggest it would ever reach his eyes. ‘Mr Brooke, do you have an office or room I could use as a base while I’m here at the hospital?’
He wanted to use NICU as his base? Even when he was assessing other departments he would keep returning to NICU as his base? No, Brianna thought desperately, dear heavens, no.
‘I’ll get Maintenance to clear out the nurse unit manager’s office for you,’ the consultant replied vaguely. ‘It’s not in use at the moment, but there are confidential files in it that will have to be secured, so in the meantime you could use the nurses’ staffroom if you want.’
Connor nodded.
‘Sounds good to me,’ he said.
It didn’t sound good to Brianna, and neither did the way Connor shadowed her all the way out of the ward and down the corridor as though he was convinced she might bolt. And she would have bolted, she thought, if she hadn’t known that a pair of five-foot-two-inch legs could never have outrun the six-foot-one-inch legs of the man at her side.
‘Would you like some tea, coffee? ‘ she said, walking quickly over to the kettle as soon as they entered the staffroom, desperate to delay the inevitable for as long as possible. ‘There’s some herbal tea here, too, though I can’t vouch for it being drinkable, and hot chocolate—’
‘So, is it still Brianna Flannigan,’ he interrupted, ‘or did you change your Christian name as well as your surname?’
She stared at the cork board which one of the nurses had affixed to the wall above the kettle and cups. Postcards from far-away places were pinned to it, along with old birthday cards and congratulation cards, and there was also a whole array of cartoons that should have been funny but she had never felt less like laughing.
‘I…I kept my Christian name,’ she muttered, mechanically switching on the kettle and spooning some coffee into a cup, though she didn’t really want anything. ‘Flannigan was my mother’s maiden name.’
‘But not yours,’ he said. ‘You do realise I could get you fired for working at this hospital under a false name?’
He could, she knew he could, but suddenly she didn’t care. Suddenly she felt cornered, and defeated, and wearily she turned to face him.
‘OK, get me fired,’ she said. ‘If that’s what you want to do, then go ahead and do it.’
‘Of course that’s not what I want!’ he exclaimed, tossing his laptop onto the nearest seat. ‘What do you take me for?’
I don’t know, she thought as she gazed up into his cold, rigid face. I don’t know because I feel like I don’t know you any more, and I’m wondering now if I ever did.
‘Look, can we sit down?’ she said. ‘You standing there—looming over me like some spectre of doom—isn’t helping.’
With a muttered oath he sat down, and, after a moment’s hesitation she abandoned the kettle and took the seat opposite him.
‘You really were determined I wouldn’t find you, weren’t you?’ he said, his blue eyes fixed on her, daring her to contradict him. ‘Changing your surname, moving to a one-horse town in the back of beyond in Cornwall.’
‘Connor, it wasn’t like that—’
‘Wasn’t it? ‘ he interrupted, his voice dripping sarcasm. ‘So how—exactly—would you interpret it?’
‘I wanteds…’ Oh, but this was so hard to explain, and she wanted to explain, for him to understand. ‘I just wanted…’ Her voice broke slightly despite her best efforts to keep it level. ‘Some peace. All I wanted was some peace.’
‘And to get that you had to walk out on me?’ he said incredulously. ‘Walk out without a word?’
‘I left you a letter,’ she protested, and saw his lip curl with derision.
‘“I need to be on my own for a while,”’ he quoted. ‘“I need some space, some time to get myself together”. That’s hardly an “I’m leaving you, and I’m never coming back”, dear-John letter, is it? ‘
‘Connor—’
‘You applied for this job without telling me, didn’t you?’ he said. ‘You applied for it, and got it, and yet you never said a word to me about what you were planning to do.’
She swallowed hard. ‘Yes.’
‘So that’s why you only ever took three hundred pounds out of our joint bank account,’ he declared, fury deepening his voice. ‘You didn’t need any more money because you had this job to come to.’
‘Yes,’ she whispered.
‘Why, Brianna, why?’ he demanded, thrusting his fingers through his black hair, anger, hurt and bewilderment plain on his face. ‘I thought we were happy, I thought you loved me.’
‘Things…things haven’t been right between us for a long time, Connor,’ she replied, ‘you know they haven’t—’
‘That’s nonsense,’ he retorted, and she clasped her hands together tightly, desperately trying to find the words that would make him understand.
‘I was going under, Connor,’ she cried. ‘After what happened—you wouldn’t talk to me, you wouldn’t let me talk, and I knew—if I didn’t get away—I was going to slide further and further into the black pit I’d fallen into, and if I kept on fallings’ She took an uneven breath. ‘I was scared—so scared—that I would never be able to get myself out again.’
‘And me—what about me?’ he exclaimed, his blue eyes blazing. ‘Two years, Brianna, it’s been two years since you left and in all that time you never once lifted the phone to tell me you were OK, never once even sent me a scribbled postcard to say you were alive.’
‘I was going to write, to tell you where I was,’ she declared defensively, but had she really been going to? It wasn’t something she wanted to think about, far less face. It was enough of a shock to see him sitting there in front of her. ‘Connor—’
‘You left your phone behind, the house keys, the police wouldn’t help me—’
‘You went to the police?’ She gasped, her eyes large with dismay, and he threw her a look that made her shrink back into her seat.
‘What the hell did you expect me to do? Did you think I’d simply stay home in our flat, night after night, watching TV, thinking, Well, I expect Brianna will come back eventually? Of course I went to the police. I thoughts…’ He closed his eyes for a second, and when he spoke again his voice was rough. ‘I thought you might have done something…stupid, but they said as you’d left a note, and your parents knew you were safe, it wasn’t a police matter but a domestic one.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she murmured. ‘I didn’t realise—I never imagined you’d go to the police—’
‘Can you imagine how that made me feel?’ he said, his lips curving into a bitter travesty of a smile. ‘When the police told me your parents knew where you were, but I didn’t? I went back to Ireland, to your parents’ farm in Killarney, thinking you might have gone there, and, when I discovered you hadn’t, I begged them to give me your address, even your phone number, so I could at least hear your voice, know you truly were safe, but they wouldn’t give me either. They said you’d made them promise not to tell me anything, that you would contact me when you were ready.’
‘I’m sorry, so sorry,’ she repeated, willing him to believe her. ‘I didn’t…’ She shook her head blindly. ‘I wasn’t thinking clearly, not then. I just…’
‘Had to get away from me,’ he finished for her bitterly, and she bit her lip hard.
‘Connor, listen to me—’
‘Every time I heard on the news that a body had been found in some secluded spot I feared it was you,’ he continued as though she hadn’t spoken. ‘Every time someone was pulled out of the Thames I thought, Please, don’t let it be Brianna, but, as time went on, God help me, I sometimes…’ He took a breath. ‘Sometimes I hoped it was you because at least then the waiting would be over. All I needed…all I wanted^was to know you really were safe, and yet you denied me even that, Brianna.’
‘I would have called you, I would have talked to you,’ she said, her voice trembling, ‘but I knew talking to you wouldn’t help, that you wouldn’t listen.’
‘How can you say that?’ he demanded angrily. ‘Of course I would have talked, of course I would have listened!’
‘You didn’t before when I needed you to,’ she said before she could stop herself. ‘All you ever did was cut me off, change the subject, or you’d ask me…’ She swallowed convulsively, hearing the tears in her voice, and she didn’t want to cry…she so didn’t want to cry. ‘You kept asking me what was wrong, and I thought I’d go mad if you asked me that one more time because it was so obvious to me that everything was always going to be wrong, that it was never going to be right.’
‘You’re not making any sense—’
‘Because you’re not listening, just like you always don’t,’ she flared. ‘Whenever I try to talk to you, you never ever listen.’
‘Well, I want to talk now,’ he countered. ‘To talk properly with no lies, deception or half-truths, only honesty.’
She knew he was right, but talking honestly meant resurrecting everything that had happened, meant having to face it again. She hadn’t forgotten, she never would, but over the past two years she’d managed to come to a kind of acceptance, and to talk about it now…She didn’t think her heart could take that, and she shook her head.
‘Connor, this isn’t the time, or the place.’
‘Then when, Brianna?’ he exclaimed, and there was such a lacerating fury in his blue eyes that she winced. ‘When will be the time, or the place?’
She wanted to say, Never—nowhere. She wanted even more to say she wished he had never come, had never found her, but she didn’t have the courage.
‘I don’t know,’ she said wretchedly. ‘I don’t—’
She bit off the rest of what she had been about to say. The door of the nurses’ staffroom had opened, and Megan’s head had appeared hesitantly round it.
‘I’m really sorry,’ the paediatric specialist registrar began, glancing from Brianna to Connor, then back again, ‘but I’m afraid Brianna is needed in the unit.’
Brianna was hurrying towards Megan before she had even finished speaking, but when she reached the door she heard Connor clear his throat.
‘We have to talk, Brianna, and talk soon,’ he said.
She thought she nodded, but she couldn’t be sure. All she knew was she had to get away from him, and she was halfway down the corridor before Megan caught up with her.
‘Brianna—’
‘Is it Amy Renwick? Is she back from Recovery, and there’s a problem, or—?’
‘Actually, I’m afraid I lied, and you’re not needed in the unit at all,’ Megan interrupted, looking shamefaced. ‘It’s just…I was passing the nurses’ staffroom and I heard the auditor yelling at you. I wasn’t eavesdropping, honestly I wasn’t,’ she continued as Brianna stared at her in alarm. ‘It’s just the walls in this place are so thin, and you sounded…Well, you sounded really upset, and in need of rescue.’
‘I did—I was,’ Brianna said with a small smile.
‘I think you should make a formal complaint,’ Megan declared angrily. ‘It’s one thing to inspect a unit, to ask the staff questions about how it’s run, but harassing someone…’ She shook her head. ‘That’s completely out of order.’
‘Megan, I don’t want to make a complaint,’ Brianna replied. ‘My interview is over, done with, so let’s just leave it, OK?’
‘Not on your life,’ the paediatric registrar insisted. ‘If this Connor whatever his name is—’
‘Monahan. His name’s Connor Monahan.’
‘Thinks he can ride roughshod over the nursing staff, upset them, then he can think again. I can understand why you might be reluctant to make a complaint, but I’m not. I’m more than willing to march up to Admin right now, and tell them they’d better warn him to back off or they’ll have the nurses’ union on their doorstep.’
Megan would do it, too, Brianna thought, seeing the fury in her friend’s face, and it was the last thing she wanted. It was hard enough for her to deal with Connor’s reappearance in her life without having the staff in Admin gossiping about it after they’d been told all the facts, and she would have to tell them all the facts.
‘Megan, it’s got nothing to do with the nursing staff, or the unit,’ she said unhappily. ‘It’s me. It’s to do with me. You see, Connor Monahan and I…We know one another.’
Her friend gazed at her blankly for a second, then a look of horrified realisation appeared on her face.
‘Oh, lord, he’s not an ex-boyfriend of yours, is he?’ she exclaimed. ‘Oh, Brianna, I’m so sorry, what a nightmare for you.’
‘A nightmare, for sure.’ Brianna nodded. ‘But you see…’ She took a deep breath. ‘The trouble is, Connor isn’t an ex-boyfriend. He…he’s my husband.’
CHAPTER TWO
‘BUT Mr Brooke said yesterday—after Amy’s operation—that she might need another operation,’ Naomi Renwick said, her eyes dark with fear. ‘He said he wouldn’t know for the next seventy-two hours whether he’d successfully removed all of the infection, so you’d be keeping a very careful eye on her.’
‘Which I would be doing whether Amy had been operated on or not,’ Brianna replied, wishing the ever-pessimistic consultant to the darkest reaches of hell. ‘Naomi, your daughter is doing very well. We have no reason to think she will require another operation—’
‘But if she does…She’s so little, Sister, so very little, and if she needs another operation…’
‘We’ll deal with it just as we’ve dealt with all the other problems Amy has faced since she was born a month ago. Naomi, listen to me,’ Brianna continued, as Amy’s mother made to interrupt. ‘I can’t give you any guarantees—no one can, but, please, please, don’t go looking for bridges to cross. Amy’s temperature’s normal, her colour’s good. In fact,’ she added, ‘just look at her.’
Naomi Renwick gazed down into the incubator where her daughter was vigorously kicking her little legs despite the fine line of sutures across her stomach, and her lips curved into a shaky smile.
‘She’s beautiful, isn’t she?’ she said, and Brianna nodded.
‘She is, and right now she’s in the best possible place, getting the best possible care, so hold onto that, OK?’
Brianna hoped Naomi Renwick would, but she wished even more, as she turned to discover Connor standing behind her, that her husband would dog some other nurse’s footsteps, if only for a little while.
Twenty-four hours, she thought as she began walking down the ward, all too conscious he was following her. Just twenty-four hours ago her life might not exactly have been perfect, but at least she hadn’t felt permanently besieged. Now she felt cornered, under attack, and it wasn’t just by his presence, or his continual questions about the unit. It was the way he managed to somehow incorporate so many barbed comments into what he was saying that was wearing her down, little by little, bit by bit.
‘How many incubators does the NICU at Plymouth have?’ he asked, and she came to a weary halt.
‘Twelve,’ she replied, ‘which is double our capacity, but their hospital covers a far greater area and population than St Piran’s, so it’s bound to be bigger.’
‘I also notice from your ward clerk’s files that every baby has a primary carer,’ he continued. ‘That doesn’t seem to be a very efficient system in terms of time or personnel.’
‘Not everything can be measured in terms of time management, or personnel distribution,’ she said acidly. ‘Especially the care of very vulnerable babies.’
‘I see,’ he said, but she doubted whether he did as she watched him type something into his state-of-the-art phone, which could probably have made him a cup of coffee if he’d asked it to.
Figures, statistics had always been his passion, not people, and he didn’t seem to have changed.
‘Connor—’
‘Does this unit normally have quite so many unused incubators? ‘ he asked, gesturing towards the two empty ones at the end of the ward.
‘There’s no such thing as “normal” in NICU,’ she protested. ‘We’ve had occasions when only three of our incubators have been in use, times when we were at full capacity, and last Christmas we were so busy we had to send babies to Plymouth because we just couldn’t accommodate them. It was tough for everyone, especially the families.’
‘It would be.’ He nodded. ‘Christmas being the time when most families like to be together.’
And you’ve missed two with me. He didn’t say those words—he didn’t need to—but she heard them loud and clear.
‘Things don’t always work out the way we planned,’ she muttered, ‘and babies can’t be expected to arrive exactly when you want them to.’
‘Not babies, no. Grown-ups, on the other hand,’ he added, his eyes catching and holding hers, ‘have a choice.’
And you chose to walk away from me. That was what he was really saying, and she swallowed painfully.
‘Connor, please,’ she said with difficulty. ‘This is a good unit, an efficient unit. Please don’t make this personal.’
His eyebrows rose. ‘You think that’s what I’m doing?’
‘I know it is,’ she cried. ‘Look, I can understand you being angry—’
‘I’m sorry to interrupt,’ Rita interrupted, looking anything but as she joined them, ‘but I’m afraid we’ve had a complaint about your car, Sister Flannigan.’
‘A complaint?’ Brianna echoed in confusion, and Rita smiled.
A smile that was every bit as false as the sympathetic sigh with which she followed it.
‘You’ve parked it in the consultants’ side of the car park today instead of the nurses’. Easily done, of course, when you’re stressed—’
‘I’m not stressed—’
‘Of course you are, my dear,’ Rita declared, her face all solicitous concern, but her eyes, Brianna noticed, were speculative, calculating. ‘How can you possibly not be when you’re doing two jobs?’
‘Sister Flannigan has two jobs?’ Connor frowned, and Rita nodded.
‘Our nurse unit manager returned to Spain a few months back, and, as Admin haven’t yet appointed his replacement, Sister Flannigan has had to temporarily step into the breach, which is probably why we’re not as efficient as we should be.’
‘I can’t say I’ve noticed any inefficiency on Sister Flannigan’s part,’ Connor replied, attempting to walk on, but Rita was not about to be rebuffed.
‘Oh, please don’t think I’m suggesting Sister Flannigan is inefficient—’
Yeah, right, Rita, Brianna thought angrily, and this is clearly payback time because I chewed your head off yesterday.
‘But when you’re as much of a perfectionist as I am,’ the ward clerk continued, all honeyed sweetness, ‘I do like everything to be just so.’
‘Which makes me wonder why you’re still standing here,’ Connor declared, ‘and not back in your office, dotting some i’s and crossing some t’s.’
The ward clerk’s mouth opened and closed soundlessly for a second, then she clamped her lips together tightly.
‘Well, no one can ever accuse me of remaining where I’m not wanted,’ she said, before stomping away, and Brianna sighed.
‘Which, unfortunately, isn’t true.’ She glanced up at Connor hesitantly. ‘Thanks for saying what you did, for backing me up.’
For a moment he said nothing, then his lips twisted into something like a smile. ‘I thought I always did. I thought we were a team.’
They had been once, she remembered. There had been a time when she couldn’t have imagined her life without him, and then, little by little, things had changed, and two years ago…
‘I’m sorry, Connor,’ she murmured, ‘so sorry.’
‘Sorry you left, or sorry I found you?’
His eyes were fixed on her, and the awful truth was she couldn’t give him an answer, not without hurting him, and she backed away from him, afraid he would realise it.
‘The car,’ she said haltingly. ‘I have to…I need to move my car.’
She was gone before he could stop her and, when the ward door clattered shut behind her, Connor clenched his fists until his knuckles showed white.
She hadn’t answered him. He’d asked her a simple, easy-to-answer question, and yet she hadn’t answered him, and he needed—wanted—answers.
Dammit, she owed him that at least, he thought furiously. When he’d first seen her yesterday, his initial reaction had been to thank God she was safe, his Brianna was safe, but then anger had consumed him. A blazing, blinding, irrational anger that she could be standing in front of him looking better than he’d seen her look in a long time, had been living happily in Cornwall for the last two years, when he’d been to hell and back, fearing the worst. And she’d disappear out of his life again in an instant given half a chance. He’d seen it in her dark brown eyes, in the way she looked at him.