Hot Docs On Call: One Night To Forever?
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‘Oh, I’m not complaining.’
She ordered coq au vin and he ordered steak béarnaise. Conversation was awkward at first, but then the food arrived.
‘This is delicious,’ Victoria said as she tasted her chicken. ‘I make it sometimes but mine doesn’t come close to this...’
‘Well, it wouldn’t, would it?’
She looked up. ‘Why not?’
‘You’re not a French chef, Victoria.’
And he made her smile because he stood up to her; he challenged her. ‘I could have been, had I put my mind to it—well, apart from the French bit.’
They chatted a little about the campaign to save the hospital and the fundraising ball and then she asked if he missed his old hospital in Scotland.
Dominic paused to think about it. He had been happy where he was, but working at Paddington’s he was stretching his skills and really starting to settle in and enjoy it. ‘More than I expected to,’ he admitted. ‘When I left Edinburgh, I wasn’t planning on making a career move as such, yet I have. It’s a great position and I doubt it would have opened up if there hadn’t been the threat of closure.’
‘A lot are leaving?’
Dominic nodded. ‘They’ve just recruited a new cardiologist but I know a lot of departments are being held together with locums.’
‘Was it hard to leave Edinburgh?’
‘Of course,’ Dominic said.
‘Do you still miss it?’
He didn’t really know the answer to that. Going back while on annual leave he had asked himself the same, but the fact was, he was enjoying work and had looked forward to returning to London.
He glanced over to Victoria, who had given up on her main and was waiting for his response. ‘In part.’
She was scared to ask which part?
There was so much she wanted to know.
But some conversations were best had over chocolate crepes and vanilla ice cream.
Lorna and Jamie was one of them.
The food was delicious, the topic not so, but they chewed their way through both.
‘Did you ever suspect there was something between them?’ she asked.
‘No, they only met the once...’
He swallowed and carried on.
‘Every couple of years I go for a stint of working in India. I first went when I was in medical school and a few of us have kept it going. The week before I was due to go we had a get-together, and Jamie, my brother, came along. Until then he and Lorna had never met. He’d been overseas and had just got back. Well, they got on really well...’
‘Clearly!’
She had spent too long chatting on the road to be shocked, Dominic guessed. And it was actually refreshing just to let it out in the open with someone who wasn’t shy or coy.
‘Apparently they met a few days later by chance.’
‘Do you believe that it was by chance?’
She was asking the same questions that Dominic had asked himself. ‘No.’
‘Does it matter?’ Victoria asked.
‘It did to me at the time, but no, not so much now.’
And instead of saying he didn’t want to speak about it, this lone wolf shared.
Once upon a time, he had discussed things with family. Not everything, of course—Dominic did not readily share his emotions—but for the most part, he and his family would generally talk. About this they could not. His parents wanted to move on and put it aside, to simply act as if it had never happened.
Victoria was the first person he had felt able to explain to about how it had all unfolded.
‘When I got back from India, Lorna was throwing up...’
‘Tell me about it.’ Victoria groaned.
‘Do you have morning sickness?’
She nodded. ‘It’s fading now.’
But they were not here to discuss their baby; they were there to find out about each other, and so she was quiet. But Dominic wanted to know how she had been faring.
‘Tell me.’
‘It’s pretty much gone now—I just get really tired. You’re keeping me up—I’m usually in bed by eight.’ She gave an eye roll. ‘And I’ve got night duty next week.’
He looked at her and there was a twist of guilt that he hadn’t been there for her, that Victoria was doing it all on her own.
‘Can you change your shifts?’
‘I don’t roll like that,’ Victoria said, and then changed the subject back to what had happened with him. ‘So Lorna had it bad?’
‘Yes.’ He nodded. ‘I told her that she was very probably pregnant and she said no, that she couldn’t be. I went and got a test and, of course, she was.’
‘Were you pleased?’
‘I don’t know,’ he admitted. ‘I think so, but it all felt a bit rushed...’
And together they smiled at the irony of their situation.
‘Lorna wanted to wait before we told our families.’
‘I’ll bet she did.’
‘I told Jamie though,’ Dominic said. ‘We were always that close.’
‘What was he like when you told him?’
‘He said congratulations, but not much else.’ Dominic shrugged. ‘He’s always been a lot more the party type than I am. I thought his lukewarm reaction was because he didn’t really see becoming a father as anything to get excited over.’
‘So you found out at the ultrasound?’ Victoria asked, bemused. ‘Wouldn’t she have known you might work it out there?’ It seemed very cruel to have said nothing.
‘In fairness to her, Lorna had a bit of spotting so we went to the hospital, and of course they did an ultrasound. For early pregnancy the dating is very accurate. I guessed she’d be nine weeks, but she was six.’
‘So you realised then and there?’ Victoria asked, understanding a bit better why he had been so opposed at first to attending her ultrasound.
‘I did,’ Dominic said. ‘I asked the doctor to repeat the dates. I honestly thought at first that she must have them wrong, but of course she hadn’t.’
‘What did you do?’
‘We had company at the time,’ Dominic answered, referring to the doctor who had been present. ‘So I said nothing. Lorna kept looking away when I tried to catch her eye. The doctor said that everything was fine with the baby and when she left we had a talk. Lorna admitted that while I was away she’d met someone. She said she’d been trying to work her way up to telling me, but then when she’d found out she was pregnant, she just didn’t know how to, and she wasn’t sure, at that stage, whose baby it was.’
‘Did she tell you then who the father was?’
‘When pressed.’
‘Did you suspect?’ Victoria asked.
‘Not even for a moment,’ Dominic said. ‘Even when she said that it was Jamie, I was trying to think who we knew by that name. That it must be a colleague or a friend. Even when she said, “Jamie,” I didn’t straight away think of him. How stupid is that?’
‘Not stupid,’ Victoria said.
It showed the depth of the breach of trust.
‘What did you do?’
‘I told her she could take a taxi and I wished her the best—not very politely though. Then I went and met with Jamie. I’d like to say I did the macho thing and we had a fight, but...’ He shook his head. ‘My brother had a car accident when he was ten. I was there when he nearly died. I just couldn’t bring myself...’
And Victoria could see the conflict on his face; she thought of all the bloody, testosterone-fuelled fights she’d seen in her line of work and admired that he’d held back.
‘Jamie was crying and carrying on like an overgrown bairn. He said that he loved her, that as soon as they saw the other, they both knew and neither knew what to do.’
And she closed her eyes for a moment, because it wasn’t such a torrid tryst after all. It was really rather sad.
‘Do you still love her?’
‘No.’
Did she believe him? Victoria didn’t know.
Did it matter?
Yes.
It did to her. But though bold in her questions about his brother, Victoria wasn’t so bold with her heart.
‘I said that I’d leave it to him to tell our parents.’ Dominic gave a resigned shrug. ‘I basically walked out on my life.’
‘You’ve been back though?’ Victoria checked.
‘No.’
‘But you’ve just been in Scotland.’
‘I didn’t see my family though.’
And that unnerved her.
It truly did.
That he had walked out on his life, and that even all these months later, they were still estranged.
‘What about your parents?’ she asked.
‘We’ve spoken on the phone but they just want it to be put to one side. They don’t want to discuss it. They just want it forgotten and for things to go back to the way they were.’
‘So what were you doing in Scotland?’
‘Thinking.’
And so, too, was Victoria.
All she could see was a man who had walked away. ‘Weren’t you the one who told me to fight for what’s important?’
‘I’m doing so,’ Dominic responded. ‘It doesn’t have to be with fists.’
‘I’m not talking about physically fighting, but they’re your family.’
‘And I’m doing my best to sort it out, but I’m not a person who just rushes in. I believe that if you say all is forgiven, then you need to mean it. I can’t say I’m there yet.’
As Victoria went quiet Dominic called for the bill.
Yet it wasn’t just a lull in the conversation, or that the restaurant was near to closing—her silence ran deeper.
As they drove home all she could think of was her mother, turning her back on her own family. Oh, she knew Dominic had far better reasons, but to have completely walked away from everyone he loved, for Victoria it was deeply unsettling.
All the hope of a lovely evening had been left back at the restaurant and Victoria now just wanted to be alone.
‘Thanks for a nice night.’
She didn’t ask him up and it did not end in a kiss.
Victoria looked at him and all she could see was a man who had abandoned everything he had professed to love.
And so she ended things with her usual lack of flare.
‘I’ll see you at work.’
‘Victoria—’
‘Let’s just keep it at that,’ Victoria said, and when he reached for her arms, she pulled away. ‘Please, Dominic, stay back. I want to focus on the pregnancy and I just don’t have space right now for anything else.’
That was the longest speech she had ever given to a man when she broke off things, but she knew it wasn’t really enough.
Still, he did not push for more explanation and she was grateful for that. A kiss, or attempts at persuasion, would only further confuse her.
Victoria let herself into her flat and the gorgeous scent of freesias greeted her.
She undressed and got into the cold, new sheets and just lay there.
He had loved Lorna, she was sure of that—they had been living together, having a baby together.
Victoria ached for that glimpse of him—she truly did—but knew it was not hers to see.
They were being forced together by default.
She knew he was an honourable man and might want to do the right thing, or at the very least give it a go.
And of course Dominic had said that he no longer loved Lorna, but what if he still did?
What if that was the real reason for leaving Edinburgh so completely?
Victoria had been honest when she’d told Dominic that she didn’t know how to make relationships work.
How on earth could this one?
He had only asked her out in the first place because she was pregnant.
What if Lorna decided she had changed her mind? Victoria pondered.
Or what if Victoria gave them a go and then it was Dominic who decided things weren’t working out?
Victoria could not stand to fall for him only to be hurt further down the line when later he left.
And he would.
Victoria had nothing in her life to indicate otherwise.
It was safer to face parenthood alone.
She trusted only in herself.
CHAPTER TEN
SHE WAS HER usual confident self at work and did not try to avoid him.
In fact, Victoria met his eyes when she handed over patients and didn’t dash off.
Perhaps she actually wanted to be a single parent, Dominic pondered.
Some women did.
He knew that Victoria was incredibly independent and she had told him that she didn’t really do well with relationships.
Yet, he wanted a chance for them, and more and more he was getting used to the idea of being a father.
Not in the rush-out-and-buy-the-books way this time.
He was starting to feel the fear.
He saw her leave the department and Dominic followed her out. He knew they would be making up the vehicle and sure enough there were Victoria and Glen.
She was sitting in the back drinking tea poured from a silver flask; it was the only hint that she might be avoiding him, because in months gone by she and Glen would have come into the department to grab a drink.
‘How are you?’ he asked.
‘Fine.’ She gave him a smile and Glen made some noise about calling his wife and left them to it.
‘When are you on nights?’ Dominic asked.
‘We start tomorrow.’
‘How do you think you’ll go?’
‘I’ll be fine.’
‘Well, if you need anything, I’m on call over the weekend, so just—’
‘I shan’t need anything, Dominic.’
‘You do need to tell work,’ he said.
Yes, the fear was real and he could not stand the thought of her out on the streets at night over the weekend.
‘I know what I need to do.’
She tried to end the conversation but Dominic persisted.
‘What happened the other night?’ Dominic asked. He had been over and over it, and the night that had started with such promise had failed for reasons that he could not grasp.
‘Nothing happened.’
Exactly.
‘Just because I’m not talking to my family at the moment, it doesn’t mean—’
‘Dominic,’ Victoria interrupted him. ‘What happens between you and your family is your concern. I don’t want to get involved with all the ins and outs. I’ve got enough going on in my own life. Aside from the pregnancy, the campaign for Paddington’s is getting bigger by the day.’ She gave a shrug.
‘What about us?’
‘There’s no us,’ she said, and she made herself look right at him as she did so. ‘Dominic, you only asked me out when you knew I was pregnant...’ He opened his mouth to speak but she overrode him. ‘If I’d wanted anything more than that night, then I think I’m assertive enough that I’d have asked you for a date, but I didn’t. We’re adults—we’ll work things out closer to the baby’s due date.’
And still she made herself look at him, though it was almost her undoing because she wanted to lean on him; she wanted him to tell her again that it wasn’t a mess.
That it would sort itself out.
She was scared how deep her feelings were for him and was terrified to let Dominic close.
‘Have you rescheduled the ultrasound?’ he asked.
Victoria nodded. ‘It’s on Monday at ten. I’ll ask them to cc you in on the images.’
‘Victoria,’ Glen called her. ‘We’ve got a collapsed infant...’
She tipped her drink into the bush and replaced the lid. ‘See you.’
It was a call-out to a baby who was unresponsive and the location was a hotel.
Glen drove them right up to the entrance and they loaded their equipment onto the stretcher. A member of staff greeted them and told them what was happening as she showed them up to the hotel room.
‘The father called down to Reception and said to get an ambulance straight away and that the baby was very sick,’ she explained. ‘That’s all I really know.’
They took the lift and Victoria looked at Glen, who was very quiet, as had become usual for him when it was children or babies.
The woman who had guided them up knocked on the door and, as she opened it with a swipe card, Victoria stepped in. For the first time in her career, she faltered. A gentleman greeted them in a panicked voice.
‘What the hell took so long?’
For an instant she had thought that the man was Dominic.
And in that instant, she told herself that Dominic was way too much on her mind if she was starting to think that complete strangers were him.
This man was younger. It was the accent that had sideswiped her.
And also, Victoria knew, Dominic didn’t panic, which this man was clearly doing.
It was all just for an instant, so small that even Glen did not notice her pause.
Just a tiny slice of time, but it was enough for Victoria to realise that this was Dominic’s brother.
And so this must be Lorna.
Dominic’s ex.
A tearful Lorna was kneeling on the floor beside the bed and bending over her son.
‘Why were you so long...?’ Jamie persisted.
‘Jamie,’ Lorna shouted to him to stop. ‘He’s turned grey! At the hospital we were told he was fine,’ Lorna said. ‘But I knew though that something was wrong.’
Something was very wrong.
A very small baby was lying on the bed on his back with his limbs flaccid by his side. He wore only a nappy and Victoria could see even before she reached the bed that he was grunting and struggling to breathe.
‘Come on, William,’ his father cried. He was frantic. ‘Come on, son!’
As Glen checked the baby’s vitals, Victoria administered oxygen to the infant via a bag and mask. He was breathing, but it was with effort, and so she bagged him a few times, pushing oxygen into his little lungs to assist the little one with his breathing.
As Glen attached him to the cardiac monitor she could see from the trace and hear from the beeps that his heart was beating far too fast.
‘We came down to London to bring him to Paddington’s,’ Jamie explained. ‘My brother is a doctor there.’
And this was no coincidence, Victoria was starting to realise—they had come here to seek help for their baby.
‘I know your brother,’ Victoria said, and looked up briefly from the struggling infant. ‘In fact,’ she said to Jamie, though she was too busy to look at him, ‘I thought that you were him for a second.’
She felt it better to say she knew Dominic now, rather than to say nothing. There was no time for small talk though; Victoria just felt it was better that she stated it up-front.
The baby had responded to the oxygen and was beginning to pick up; now his little hands were making fists and he was starting to kick at the air.
He went to cry and that was the best moment to bag him—Victoria actually saw him pink up before her eyes. In the background, she could hear them explain a little more of what had happened.
‘I was feeding him and he just went all floppy,’ Lorna explained.
‘He’s on the breast?’ Victoria checked.
‘For the most part.’ Lorna nodded. ‘He had formula yesterday while we were travelling. Sometimes he feeds well, other times it’s a struggle, so I’ve been mixing them up.’
Little William had started to cry in earnest now and was looking a lot better than when they had first arrived.
Victoria and Glen discussed their options for a couple of moments. Inserting an IV would distress him and calling for backup wasn’t required yet. Though stable now, he needed to be at the hospital if he deteriorated again, so the decision was made to transfer him as a babe in arms, the priority being to keep him from getting distressed.
They worked swiftly but calmly.
‘He’ll be more settled if he’s held by you,’ Victoria explained. As Glen watched the baby, Victoria helped Lorna onto the stretcher. Little William was placed in her arms and the monitor was laid by her legs, and soon they were in the ambulance and on their way to the Castle.
He was pinker now and looked so much better, but Victoria would relay to the staff at Paddington’s just how very ill this baby had presented when they had first arrived.
‘I’ve been so worried,’ Lorna said. ‘I’ve been saying that there was something wrong with him for weeks and everyone said I was just being neurotic.’
‘You’re not neurotic,’ Victoria said.
Lorna started to cry, for, while it was nice to be believed, it was awful to have it confirmed that there was something very wrong with your child.
‘There’s been so much going on...’ Lorna said.
‘It’s okay, Lorna,’ Jamie said. ‘None of this is your fault.’ He looked over to Victoria. ‘There’s been a big family fallout. My wife’s been through a lot of late.’
So they had married.
Victoria kept a very close eye on the baby and listened to the couple trying to comfort each other while so very scared for their child.
‘Should we ring your parents?’ Jamie asked Lorna, and she nodded. ‘They’re in Greece,’ he added to Victoria.
‘Maybe we should wait and see what the doctors say?’ Lorna suggested.
Little William was a picture of contentment now, pink and warm in his mother’s arms, but Victoria’s eyes never left him except to glance up and see how far away they still were.
Paddington’s came into view, and when there was a very sick child in your care, it was such a sight to see.
That was why so many were fighting to save it.
There were many who knew from painful experience the value of this wonderful establishment.
Little William’s arrival was seamlessly dealt with, though the department was clearly very busy.
Victoria knew that even before she stepped inside because there were several ambulances in the foyer when they arrived.
It did not affect the care that William received.
Even though he was pink and crying, Victoria swiftly conveyed that this was rather more urgent than it appeared, more with her eyes than anything else, and the triage was rapid.
They were taken through to the resuscitation area and that was busy too. There must have been a vehicular incident just brought in because most of the bays were full and there was a sense of urgency all around. It was then that she saw him.
Dominic.
He was standing talking to Alistair North, a paediatric neurosurgeon, but he glanced over as Victoria came in.
And then she watched as he looked down to the stretcher and she saw his forehead furrow and his jaw tense at the sight of Lorna holding her small baby.
‘Dominic!’ Jamie’s voice was raw as he called out to his brother. ‘He’s not at all well.’
And she was right about him—Dominic wasn’t one to panic.
He said something to Alistair and then he came straight over.
‘William MacBride,’ Glen said. ‘He became unresponsive while his mother was feeding him...’ He relayed some more details as Victoria lifted the baby from his mother’s arms and placed William in an examination cot.
‘I was going to call you today,’ Jamie said to his older brother, ‘and ask you to take a look at him.’
‘You’re in the right place now.’ Dominic nodded. He called for assistance, but when there was none forthcoming, he knew that these next few moments were down to him and took command. ‘What’s been happening?’
‘He’s been struggling to feed and put on weight. The doctor didn’t seem too concerned and the nurse said that Lorna, well...’
‘She thinks that I’m overly anxious.’ Lorna spoke for herself.
‘How was the pregnancy?’ Dominic asked.
‘It went well.’ Lorna just sat on the stretcher, helpless and wringing her hands as her son was transferred from the ambulance’s monitor to the hospital’s. ‘It’s just been these past two weeks. We’ve been getting nowhere. Finally, I got an appointment to see a paediatrician, but it’s not for a couple more weeks. In the end Jamie suggested that we bring him down to be seen by you.’
Dominic nodded but did not comment on that—he was too busy taking care of the infant and, despite the pressure he must surely be under, he did not miss a beat. He was feeling the little boy’s scalp and checking his fontanelle, which Victoria knew from her own examination was sunken, a sign that he was dehydrated, and Dominic asked for more information.
‘So what happened today?’ Dominic asked as Victoria helped Lorna from the stretcher.
‘We were at the hotel.’
‘How long have you been there?’
‘We got there around midnight. The journey down was fine and he had a really good night. I was starting to think we were making a fuss to have come all this way. I was feeding him and saying the very same to Jamie when he started to make all these choking noises and he went floppy.’ She started to cry and Dominic nodded when Karen suggested that she find someone to take the parents to get a detailed history.