Hot Docs On Call Collection

CHAPTER NINE

IT WAS QUITE a lot to be going on with!

Victoria had never had this feeling while getting ready for a date.

As soon as her shift was over she raced out of the station and was then chased out by Glen because she’d forgotten to take her flowers.

From there Victoria made a mad dash to the shops where, shame on her, she bought some fresh linen for the bed.

In her defence, Victoria reasoned, she had been meaning to buy some for ages and it was on sale.

Yet, she was pushing it for time and there was one reason only that she was making sure that her bedroom was looking its best!

Yes, she hadn’t felt like this in for ever. In fact, it was the first time she had been truly excited to welcome someone into her home.

There was anticipation and a flutter of lovely nerves as she made up the bed, put her flowers into a vase and carried them through to the lounge. She put them on the window ledge and then headed back to the bedroom to choose what to wear. She chose her underwear carefully and then made a dash for the shower.

Dominic pulled up at the flat and, when he buzzed and was let in, she was still in her dressing gown with wet hair.

‘Sorry, we got another call-out just as we were heading back to the station...’

Which was true, but she omitted to mention the mad dash to pretty up her flat.

‘It’s fine.’

‘I shan’t be long,’ Victoria said.

Her flat was tiny and really very lovely despite its very good view of trains.

It was, Dominic decided as he stood in the lounge, far more straightforward and homelier looking than its owner. There was a two-seater couch and a large chair, which was clearly her favourite, because there was a large ottoman and a pile of magazines beside it; the small shelf was crammed with paramedic procedure manuals.

It was neat but not as fastidiously so as he might have expected; it was very much a working girl’s flat.

There was a gorgeous arrangement of flowers in the window and Victoria smiled to herself when she returned to the lounge to find him surreptitiously trying to read the card.

‘They’re from Lewis’s parents,’ she told him. ‘The neck injury from Westbourne Grove.’

‘Good.’

‘I don’t have a secret admirer.’

‘No, you have a blatant one,’ he said. ‘You look beautiful.’

He made her feel just that.

Whether in boots and baggy green overalls with a messy bun, or dressed up, which tonight she was, he had always made her feel beautiful. This evening she had on a velvety, aubergine-coloured dress and black heels, and her hair was worn loose and down.

‘Where are we going?’ Victoria asked.

Bed, he wanted to say.

Bed, she hoped he would say.

Yet, there was so much that needed to be sorted first and it would possibly be easier to do that with a table between them.

‘There’s a nice French restaurant that I’ve heard about but have never been inclined to try,’ Dominic said.

‘That sounds lovely.’

Everything sounded lovely with his rich accent. He could have said they were going out for fish and chips and she’d have smiled.

She was putting in her diamond studs and she smiled as she saw him watching.

‘They got us into this mess.’

‘It’s not a mess, Victoria. It’s a baby and it will sort.’

But it still felt like a mess to her as she was so jumbled in her head. She wanted his kiss and his touch and to be just a couple going out to dinner, or deciding to hell with it and ringing for pizza later in bed. Yet they were so back to front, and he hadn’t wanted to go out with her until he’d known she was pregnant.

It was a hurt that she knew, if they got closer, would only grow along with the baby.

Yes, there was an awful lot to sort out.

‘Come on,’ he said.

The restaurant was gorgeous and intimate and they were led to a lovely secluded table; it was so small that their knees touched, though neither minded that.

The menu was gorgeous and Victoria groaned when she saw all the lovely cheeses and raw egg sauces that she’d been told to avoid.

‘When I’m not pregnant I’m coming here again and having everything on here that I can’t have now!’

‘Bad choice?’ Dominic asked because he hadn’t really given the menu a thought beforehand.

‘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.