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‘Actually, I think I might rather like that.’
His voice was liquid and warm and, as her eyes met his, she saw something deep and dark flicker there, and a hundred alarm bells went off in her head.
No, Brontë, no, she told herself as her heart rate accelerated. Just a moment ago you wanted to hit him, and now he’s most definitely flirting with you, and any woman who responds to an invitation to flirt with Elijah Munroe has to be one sandwich short of a picnic.
‘Shouldn’t…’ She moistened her lips and started again. ‘Shouldn’t we be hitting the road? Our shift started at ten-thirty, and—’ she glanced desperately at her watch ‘—it’s already ten-forty.’
‘We can certainly go out,’ he agreed. ‘But, strange as it might seem, we don’t normally go looking for patients. Normally we wait for them to phone us, but if you want to go kerb crawling with me…’
Oh, hell, she thought, feeling a deep wash of colour stain her cheeks. Of course they had to wait for calls, she knew that, but did he have to keep on looking at her with those sun-kissed, Mediterranean-blue eyes of his? They flustered her, unsettled her, and the last thing she needed to feel in Elijah Munroe’s company was flustered so, when the radio on the dashboard crackled into life, she grabbed the receiver gratefully.
‘ED7 here,’ she declared, only to glance across at Eli, bewildered, when she heard a snicker of feminine laughter in reply. ‘What did I do wrong?’
‘This station is ED7,’ he said gently. ‘We’re A38, remember?’
Great start, Brontë, she thought, biting her lip. Really tremendous, professional start. Not.
‘Sorry,’ she muttered. ‘A38 here.’
‘Pregnant woman,’ the disembodied voice declared. ‘Laura Thomson, experiencing contractions every twenty minutes. Number 12, Queen Anne’s Gate.’
Brontë had the ambulance swinging out of the forecourt and onto the dark city street before the dispatcher had even finished the call.
‘Should I hit the siren?’ she asked, and Eli shook his head.
‘No need. We’ll be there in under five minutes despite the roads being frosty but, with contractions so close, I wonder why she’s waited so long to call us?’
Brontë wondered the same thing when they arrived at the house to discover the tearful mother-to-be’s contractions were coming considerably closer than every twenty minutes.
‘I’ve been trying to get hold of my husband,’ Laura Thomson explained. ‘He’s working nights at the supermarket to earn us some extra money, and this is our first baby, and he’s my birthing partner.’
‘I’m afraid he’s going to miss out on that unless he arrives in the next five minutes,’ Eli replied ruefully as the young woman doubled up with a sharp cry of pain. ‘In fact, I’d be happier if you were in Maternity right now.’
‘But my husband won’t know where I am,’ the young woman protested. ‘He’ll come home, and I won’t be here, and he’ll be so worried.’
Brontë could see the concern on Eli’s face, and she felt it, too. A quick examination had revealed Laura Thomson’s cervix to be well dilated and, if they didn’t go, there was a very strong possibility she was going to have her baby in the ambulance.
Quickly, she picked up a discarded envelope from the table, scrawled, ‘Gone to the Pentland Maternity’ on it, then placed the envelope on the mantelpiece.
‘He’ll see that, Laura,’ she declared, and the woman nodded, then doubled up again with another cry of pain.
‘Okay, no debate, no argument, we go now,’ Eli declared, and before Brontë, or Laura Thomson, had realised what he was going to do he had swept Laura up into his arms as though she weighed no more than a bag of flour. ‘Drive fast, Brontë,’ he added over his shoulder as he strode out the door, ‘drive very fast!’
She didn’t get the chance to. She had barely turned the corner at the bottom of Queen Anne’s Gate when Eli yelled for her to stop.
‘This baby isn’t waiting,’ he said after she’d parked, then raced round to the back of the ambulance and climbed in. ‘How much maternity experience do you have?’
‘Not much,’ Brontë admitted. ‘We didn’t tend to get mums-to-be arriving in A and E.’
‘Well, welcome to the stork club,’ he replied. ‘The baby’s head is already crowning, and the contractions are coming every minute.’
‘I want…my husband,’ Laura Thomson gasped. ‘I want him here immediately.’
‘Just concentrate on your breathing,’ Eli urged. ‘Believe me, you can do this on your own.’
‘I know,’ Laura exclaimed, turning bright red as she bore down again. ‘I just want him here so I can kill him because, believe me, if this is what giving birth is like, this baby is never going to have any brothers and sisters!’
A small muscle twitched near the corner of Eli’s mouth.
‘Okay, when your son or daughter is born, you have my full permission to kill your husband,’ he replied, carefully using his hand to control the rate of escape of the baby’s head, ‘but right now work with the contractions, don’t try to fight against them.’
‘That’s…easy…for you to say,’ Laura said with difficulty. ‘And…I…can…tell…you…this. If there is such a thing as reincarnation…’ She gritted her teeth and groaned. ‘Next time I’m coming back as a man!’
‘You and me both, Laura,’ Brontë declared, seeing Eli slip the baby’s umbilical cord over its head, then gently ease one of its shoulders free, ‘but if you could just give one more push I think your son or daughter will be here.’
Laura screwed up her face, turned almost scarlet again and, with a cry that was halfway between a groan and a scream, she bore down hard, and with a slide and a rush the baby shot out into Eli’s hands.
‘Is it all right?’ Laura asked, panic plain in her voice as she tried to lever herself upright. ‘Is my baby all right?’
‘You have a beautiful baby girl, Laura,’ Eli replied, wincing slightly as the baby let out a deafening wail. ‘With a singularly good pair of lungs. Are there two arteries present in the cord?’ he added under his breath, and Brontë nodded as she clamped it.
‘What about the placenta?’ she murmured back.
‘Hospital. Let’s get them both to the hospital,’ he replied, wrapping the baby in one of the ambulance’s blankets. ‘Giving birth in the back of an ambulance isn’t ideal, and I’ll be a lot happier when both mum and baby are in Maternity.’
Brontë couldn’t have agreed more and, by the time they had delivered Laura and her daughter to Maternity, the young mother seemed to have completely forgotten her pledge to kill her husband if her beaming smile when he arrived, looking distinctly harassed, was anything to go by.
‘That’s one we won tonight,’ Eli observed when he and Brontë had returned to the ambulance.
She smiled, and nodded, but his good humour didn’t last. Not when they then had several call-outs for patients who could quite easily have gone to their GPs in the morning instead of calling 999. She knew what Eli was thinking as she watched his face grow grimmer and grimmer. That as a government assessor she must be noting down all of these nonemergency calls, would be putting them in her report as proof positive that ED7’s services could be cut and, though part of her wanted to reassure him, she knew she couldn’t. Assessing, and criticising, was supposed to be what she was here for, but she felt for him, and the depth of her sympathy surprised her.
‘Coffee,’ Eli announced tightly when he and Brontë strode through the A and E waiting room of the Pentland Infirmary after they’d delivered a city banker who confessed in the ambulance to having twisted his ankle two weeks before, but had been ‘too busy’ to go to his GP. ‘I need a coffee, and I need it now.’
‘Sounds good to me,’ Brontë agreed, but, as she began walking towards the hospital canteen, she suddenly realised Eli was heading towards the hospital exit. ‘I thought you said you wanted a coffee?’ she protested when she caught up with him.
‘Not here,’ he said. ‘The coffee they serve here would rot your stomach. Tony’s serves the best coffee in Edinburgh, and it’s where all the ambulance crews go.’
‘But—’
‘Look, just drive, will you?’ he exclaimed. ‘Buccleuch Street, top of The Meadows, you can’t miss it.’
Just drive, will you. Well, that was well and truly putting her in her place, she thought angrily, and for a second she debated pointing out that she was a government assessor, not a taxi driver, but she didn’t. Instead, she silently drove to Buccleuch Street, but, when she pulled the ambulance up outside a small building with a blinking neon sign which proclaimed it to be Tony’s Twenty-four Hours Café, she kept the engine running.
‘Eli, what if we get a call?’ she said as he jumped down from the cab.
‘Hit the horn, and I’ll come running. Black coffee, café au lait, latte or cappuccino?’
‘Cappuccino, no sugar, lots of chocolate sprinkles, but—’
‘Do you want anything to eat?’ Eli interrupted.
‘No, but—’
‘You’ll be sorry later,’ he continued. ‘Tony’s makes the best take-away snacks, and meals, in Edinburgh.’
He probably did, she thought, as Eli disappeared into the café. Just as she was equally certain Eli would instantly come running if she had to hit the horn, but did he have to make life so difficult for himself? Of course he was legally entitled to a break, and he could take it wherever he chose, but biting her head off was not a smart move. One word from her and he could be out of a job.
And you’re going to say that one word? a little voice whispered in the back of her head, and she blew out a huff of impatience. Of course she wouldn’t. She’d felt as frustrated as he had by some of the calls, and from what she’d seen he possessed excellent medical skills. He just also very clearly detested bureaucracy and, to him, she was the living embodiment of that bureaucracy. If only he would meet her halfway. If only he would accept she was finding this as difficult as he was. And if only he hadn’t brought a hamburger back along with their two coffees, she thought with dismay when Eli opened the ambulance door and the pungent aroma of fried onions filled the air.
‘You’re not actually going to eat that, are you?’ she said, wrinkling her nose as he got into the passenger seat, and the smell of onions became even stronger.
‘You have something against hamburgers?’ he replied, taking a bite out of his and swallowing with clear relish.
‘Not at the proper time,’ she declared, ‘but at half past three in the morning…?’
‘Well, the way I figure it,’ he observed, ‘if we worked a nine-to-five job like regular people, this would be lunchtime.’
‘Right,’ she said without conviction. She took a sip of her coffee, then another. ‘Actually, this is very good.’
‘Told you Tony’s made the best coffee in Edinburgh,’ he said, stretching out his long legs and leaning his head back against the headrest. ‘And nothing beats a good dose of caffeine on a night when you seem to have picked up so many patients who aren’t even code greens.’
She shot him a sideways glance. All too clearly she remembered the instructions she had been given. Don’t ever become personally involved with a station you have been sent out to assess. Remain coldly objective, and clinical, at all times.
Oh, blow the instructions, she decided.
‘Look, Eli, I can completely understand your frustration with some of the people we’ve picked up tonight,’ she declared, ‘but the trouble is, though the vast majority of the population realise, and accept, they should only call 999 in an emergency, there’s a very small number who seem to think if they arrive in A and E by ambulance they’ll be seen a lot faster even if there’s nothing very much wrong with them.’
‘Yeah, well, one visit to A and E would soon disabuse them of that,’ he replied. ‘In my day, if there was any indication that a patient was simply trying to queue jump, we made them wait even longer.’
‘You used to work in A and E?’ she said, considerably surprised.
Eli finished the last of his hamburger, crumpled the paper which had been surrounding it into a ball and dropped it into the glove compartment.
‘Ten years at the Southern General in Glasgow for my sins. I was charge nurse until I packed it in.’
‘Why?’ she asked curiously. ‘Why did you give it up?’
He took a large gulp of his coffee, and shrugged.
‘Too much paperwork, too much time spent chasing big-shot consultants who couldn’t be bothered to come down to A and E to see a patient.’ He glanced across at her, his blue eyes dark in the street lamp’s glow. ‘I hear you were a charge nurse in A and E at the Waverley before you became a number cruncher. What made you give it up?’
‘Much the same reasons,’ she said evasively, and his gaze became appraising.
‘Nope. There was something else.’
She shifted uncomfortably in her seat. He was right, there was, but she had no intention of confirming it. Her private life was her own.
‘Would you settle for, it’s none of your business?’ she said.
‘Not fair,’ he protested. ‘I gave you a straight answer.’
‘No one ever tell you life isn’t fair?’ she countered, wishing he would just drop the subject. ‘Look, my reasons are my own, okay?’
He gazed at her over the rim of his polystyrene coffee cup.
‘I’ll find out,’ he observed. ‘I always do.’
‘Omnipotent now, are you?’ she said, not bothering to hide her irritation, and he grinned.
‘Nah. Just good at wheedling stuff out of people. In fact…’
‘In fact, what?’ she asked as he came to a sudden halt and stared at her as though he wasn’t actually seeing her, but something a million miles away. ‘Eli—’
‘Of course!’ he exclaimed, slapping the heel of his hand against his forehead with triumph. ‘Now I remember why your name sounded so familiar. Wendy Littleton, sister in Obs and Gynae at the Pentland. She and I dated a couple of years back, and she shared a flat with someone called Brontë. Don’t tell me it was you?’
She sighed inwardly. She supposed she could try to deny it, but how many Brontës were there likely to be in Edinburgh, and what did it matter anyway?
‘Yes, that was me,’ she said with resignation.
‘Talk about a small world,’ he declared. ‘Wendy Littleton. Gorgeous black hair, and big brown eyes, as I recall.’
‘Actually, her hair was brown, and her eyes were blue,’ Brontë replied drily.
‘Oh. Right,’ he muttered. ‘But you and I never actually met, though, did we?’
Should she be nice, or should she make him squirm? No contest, she decided.
‘Yes, we’ve met,’ she replied. ‘Just the once, but I obviously didn’t make much of an impression. Neither did Wendy, come to think of it,’ she continued, ‘considering you dumped her.’
‘I didn’t dum—’
‘Dumped—walked out on—call it whatever you like,’ she declared. ‘The bottom line is she was so miserable after you left she emigrated to Australia. She actually got married a couple of months ago.’
‘Well, that’s good news,’ he said with clear relief but, having started, Brontë wasn’t about to stop.
‘Not for me, it wasn’t,’ she said. ‘Wendy’s father owned the flat we lived in so when she emigrated he sold it to give her some stake money which left me homeless.’
‘Oh.’
‘Yes, oh.’ She nodded. ‘Luckily, I managed to get a room in a flat with one of the Sisters in Men’s Surgical at the Pentland. Anna Browning. Name ring any bells?’
To her surprise a dark tide of colour crept up the back of his neck.
‘Yes,’ he said awkwardly. ‘Look, Brontë—’
‘Unfortunately, Anna went back to Wales after you dumped her,’ Brontë continued determinedly, ‘so I had to go flat hunting again. Which was how I met Sue Davey of Paediatrics. She was the one with the gorgeous black hair, and big brown eyes.’
‘Okay—all right—so you’ve roomed with some of my ex-girlfriends!’ Eli exclaimed with obvious annoyance. ‘Dating is hardly a crime, is it?’
No, but making women fall in love with you, and then leaving them, sure is, she wanted to retort, but before she got a chance to say anything their radio bleeped and Eli reached for the receiver.
‘A38,’ he all but barked.
‘Hey, Eli, don’t shoot the messenger,’ a female voice protested. ‘Code amber. Twenty-six-year-old female, Rose Gordon, apparently unable to walk or talk properly. Number 56, Bank Street. Her family’s with her.’
‘Possible CVA?’ Brontë said, quickly emptying the remains of her coffee into the gutter, and putting the ambulance in gear.
‘Maybe, maybe not,’ Eli declared, clearly still irritated. ‘While those symptoms would certainly suggest a stroke, it’s better not to go in with any preconceived idea because we could miss something. Luckily, her family are with her so hopefully we’ll be able to get more information.’
They did. Though Mr and Mrs Gordon were clearly very upset, they weren’t hysterical.
‘She’s never been like this before,’ Mrs Gordon said, looking quickly across at her husband for confirmation. ‘She can’t walk, or talk, and—’ a small sob escaped from her as she glanced back to her daughter who was slumped motionless in a seat ‘—she seems so confused. It’s almost as though she’s drunk, but Rose never drinks.’
‘Any underlying medical condition we should know about?’ Eli asked, kneeling down beside the young woman to take her pulse.
‘Rose is a type 1 diabetic,’ Mr Gordon replied, his face white and drawn, ‘but she tests herself regularly, never misses an insulin dose, so I don’t think it can be linked to that.’
Brontë exchanged glances with Eli. Actually, there was a very good chance it could be. Rose Gordon’s face was pale and clammy, her eyes unfocused, and when a type 1 diabetic’s sugar level became very low they could all too quickly develop hypoglycaemia which made them appear confused, and agitated, and unable to speak or stand properly.
‘Has she been working under a lot of pressure recently?’ Brontë asked as she handed Eli one of their medi-bags. ‘Changed her routine at all?’
Mrs Gordon shook her head. ‘She’s a schoolteacher—has been for the past four years—and the pressure’s just the same as it always was. As for her routine…I can’t think of anything she’s doing she hasn’t done before.’
‘She’s going to the gym now before she comes home,’ a small voice observed. ‘She said it was good for anger management.’
Eli and Brontë turned to see a young boy of about eight hovering by the door, his eyes wide and fearful, and Mrs Gordon reached out and put a comforting arm around his shoulders.
‘This is Rose’s brother, Tom,’ she said. ‘Rose will be all right, sweetheart. These nice people will make her all right.’
She sounded as though she was trying to convince herself as much as her young son, but Brontë’s mind was already working overtime and, judging by the speed with which she saw Eli take a blood sample from Rose Gordon, his was, too. Exercise could all too easily affect blood sugar. Particularly if the diabetic hadn’t eaten enough beforehand to ensure their blood sugar stayed high.
‘1.6 mmols,’ Eli murmured, handing the sample to Brontë, and she sucked in her breath sharply.
The normal range for a diabetic was between 4.5 and 12.0 mmols so this was dangerously low, and swiftly she handed him some glucagon.
‘What’s wrong—what’s the matter with Rose?’ Mrs Gordon asked, panic plain in her voice, as Eli searched for a vein in her daughter’s arm.
‘She’s hypoglycaemic,’ Brontë explained. ‘My guess is she’s forgotten to take a snack before going to the gym and all the energy she’s expended has really leached the sugar from her body. Don’t worry,’ she continued, seeing the concern on the woman’s face, ‘she’ll be fine. Give her fifteen minutes, and she’ll be as good as new.’
That the Gordons didn’t believe her was plain, but, within fifteen minutes, Rose was standing upright, albeit a little unsteadily, and able to apologise profusely to everyone. Eli gave her some sugar jelly to raise her blood sugar still further and, when Rose’s blood sugar reading reached 4.6 mmols, he asked Mrs Gordon to make her some pasta.
‘Rose needs carbohydrate,’ he explained. ‘What I’ve administered given her a quick boost, but what she needs now is something to give her slow-burning energy.’
Quickly, Mrs Gordon bustled away to the kitchen, and, after reassuring Rose’s father that Rose was unlikely to become hypoglycaemic again if she kept her food intake high before she took any exercise, Brontë followed Eli out to the ambulance with a smile.
‘It’s nice when you can get someone back to normal in such a short time, isn’t it?’ she said.
‘One of the pluses of the job, that’s for sure,’ Eli replied.
He didn’t look as though it was a plus. In fact, as the night wore on, he became more and more morose and, when they eventually returned to ED7, just as dawn was breaking over Edinburgh, Brontë decided enough was enough.
‘Look, Eli,’ she said after he had handed in his report and she walked with him across the ambulance forecourt towards the street, ‘I may be new to this job, but I worked in A and E for seven years. I know all about the people who could quite easily have gone to their GP instead of the hospital and, believe me, I’m not going to be marking either you, or ED7, down because so many of tonight’s calls weren’t even code greens.’
‘I’m not thinking about the people we picked up tonight,’ he said impatiently.
‘Then what’s with the moodiness?’ she demanded. ‘I know you don’t like number crunchers—’
‘It’s got nothing to do with your job,’ he interrupted. ‘It’s…’ He shook his head. ‘Personal.’
Personal? She stopped dead on the pavement outside the station, and gulped. He wanted to talk to her about something personal? She didn’t think she was ready for ‘personal,’ not when his deep blue eyes were fixed on her, making her feel warm and tingly all over, but he was waiting for her to answer so she nodded.
‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Spill it.’
‘What you were saying earlier about your flatmates…I think you should know I’m taking a break from dating.’
Of all the things she had been expecting him to say, that wasn’t it, and she stared at him, bewildered.
‘And you’re telling me this because…?’ she said in confusion, and for a moment he looked a little shamefaced, then a slightly crooked smile appeared on his lips.
‘I just thought you should know, in case you were concerned I might hit on you, or were hoping…well…you know.’
She straightened up to her full five feet.
‘I was hoping what?’ she said dangerously.
‘Oh, come on, Brontë,’ he declared, ‘it’s common knowledge I like women, and they like me.’
She opened her mouth, closed it again, then shook her head in outraged disbelief. ‘So you’re saying I…You think that I…Sheesh, when they were handing out modesty, you sure were right at the back of the queue, weren’t you?’
‘Brontë—’
‘Believe it or not, Mr Munroe,’ she continued furiously. ‘Whatever charms you supposedly possess leave me completely cold, and if you had attempted—as you so poetically phrased it—to hit on me, you would have required the immediate services of a dentist. You are not my type. You never were, never will be. And even if you were my type,’ she could not stop herself from adding, ‘I’m taking a break from dating myself.’
‘Why?’
Damn, but she’d said too much as she always did when she was angry, but she had no intention of revealing any more, and she swung her tote bag high on her shoulder, only narrowly missing his chin.
‘I,’ she said, her voice as cold as ice, ‘am going home to get some sleep, and you…As far as I’m concerned, you can go take a running jump off Arthur’s Seat as long as you’re back here this evening to do your job.’
‘Brontë, listen—’
She didn’t. She turned on her heel, and strode off down the street, because she knew if she didn’t she would hit him.
The nerve of the man. The sheer unmitigated gall. Implying she might be interested in him, suggesting she might have difficulty keeping her hands off him.