Their First Family Christmas Read online

Most of the anger was directed elsewhere, however, and it came from a place of fear.

  Everybody knew she was Lily’s mother in every way it was possible to be a mother, other than having given birth to her precious little girl. But legally she was no more than a godparent. No formal adoption process had ever been initiated. How could it have been when her legal guardian had simply vanished?

  Would she have enough grounds to fight if Jack really had come back to claim Lily?

  Relocating a shoulder was the perfect task for Emma right now. With her patient well sedated, it needed careful positioning and then an intense physical effort to pull the arm hard enough to create the space for the ball of the joint to slip back into its socket. She had been going to ask Pete to do it but instead she had him stabilise the patient’s body while she did it.

  There was always satisfaction in hearing the joint click back into place but this time what was even better was the release of that angry tension that had settled in Emma’s belly like a stone. By the time she headed back to the computer to check the rest of Jack’s images, she was feeling a great deal calmer.

  For a moment, though, the images on the screen were blurry.

  She was back in time again. Sitting beside the bed of someone she loved so dearly and they had both known that they had very little time.

  ‘Promise me, Em. Promise me that you’ll take care of her.’

  Sarah’s breathing had been becoming rapidly more laboured and there had been nothing they could do.

  ‘Jack would be a disaster. He’s irresponsible... He’s never even wanted a family...’

  ‘I promise...’

  How hard had it been to hold back her tears?

  ‘Cross your heart and hope to die?’

  The old childhood vow. The one that could never be broken.

  Not that Emma had been able to repeat the words. She had only been able to nod. And smile. And squeeze Sarah’s hand so hard it would have hurt if she hadn’t already been beyond feeling pain...

  It took a huge effort to shake off the distressing flashback. To focus on the images in front of her. Amazingly, Jack hadn’t broken any bones, probably thanks to the well-padded leather gear with its built-in body armour. All that was needed was treatment of the soft-tissue injuries and observation for long enough to be sure that there was no head injury being missed.

  Taking a deep breath, Emma went back to Jack’s room. The radiographers had gone and the nurse who had stayed with Jack was peering wide-eyed around the door as stretchers surrounded by police officers as well as paramedics came through the ambulance bay doors. That the patients on the stretchers were in red and white Santa suits only made the spectacle even more riveting. Alistair and the small team he had gathered were waiting in front of the other resuscitation area.

  ‘You go,’ Emma told the nurse. ‘They’ll need extra hands. And call me if I’m needed.’

  ‘What’s going on out there?’ Jack had a pillow under his head now but he was trying to prop himself further up on the elbow of his uninjured arm. ‘Sounds like something major.’

  Emma stepped closer. The fear—and the anger—had resurfaced on seeing Jack’s face. It made no difference how much she loved this man. She would fight to the death if she had to, to protect what was most important.

  ‘I won’t let you do it,’ she said quietly. ‘Not this time.’

  Jack looked bewildered. ‘Do what?’

  Emma swallowed hard. ‘I won’t let you take Lily away from me.’

  CHAPTER THREE

  YOU’D HAVE TO know Emma well to see the fear beneath the fury of the words she had just bitten out.

  Jack knew Emma very well.

  He could see the fear and he hated himself for having been the person who’d caused it. He had to put this right. Fast.

  ‘I wouldn’t do that,’ he said quietly. ‘Do you really think that’s why I’ve come back?’

  The shake of her head was sharp enough for another curl to escape its clip. Emma took a step closer to the bed. Because the wide door of this area was ajar, the noises of the department were still there, but they were no more than a background buzz. It wouldn’t matter how quietly Emma spoke, he would still be able to hear every word because that was all that mattered in this moment.

  ‘How would I know?’

  Jack could hear the edge of tears roughening her words and could see the way she was fighting for control by the ragged breath she sucked in. He could also see that she had something else to say, so he remained silent.

  He watched the way Emma composed herself. A long, hard blink and a swallow that looked painful by the jerky movement of the muscles in her neck. When she opened her eyes again, she was staring down at her hands—as if it was too hard to meet his gaze.

  ‘I’ve been waiting, Jack,’ she said softly. ‘For nearly a year, I’ve been waiting for you to come back. I’ve shut my ears to everything people have said and held on to the belief that one day, it would happen.’ Her head shake was slower this time and she must have felt the tickle of the errant curl because her hand went up to smooth it away from her face. ‘I’ve been hoping—every day—that this might be the day I’d hear something...’

  Making Emma scared had made Jack feel like a bastard but this was worse. Much worse.

  She’d been thinking of him every day? Hoping he would do the right thing and come back?

  What had other people been saying? That he was gone for good and maybe that was for the best?

  Maybe it would have been better if he hadn’t come back...

  ‘And today, of all days...’ Emma’s voice was little more than a whisper. ‘When the memories were ambushing me around every corner. You come back with no warning and...and you come back looking like you might be nearly dead?’

  Her bottom lip wobbled and it was too much.

  She cared about him, didn’t she?

  Really cared...

  Apart from the memory of his mother that had no more than a dreamlike quality now, there had only ever been one other person that had felt like that about him and, in a way, Ben’s death had given him freedom. There was nobody to worry about him. If he kept it that way, it would work both ways and he wouldn’t have to worry about anyone else. Or face the agony of having them torn from his life.

  But, for some unfathomable reason, Emma cared...

  And, like it or not, he cared about her, didn’t he? He wouldn’t be feeling this wretched if he didn’t.

  Jack stretched out his hand but he couldn’t quite reach hers. He left it there, hanging, in midair. For a moment, he was aware of an increased urgency in the sounds coming from outside the door—from the resuscitation area right next door to this one—but then he shut it out again. This was more important.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m really sorry, Red.’

  There was a long, long moment of utter stillness then. He knew Emma was looking at his hand—trying to decide whether she wanted to touch him in a capacity that had nothing to do with his medical care?

  He wanted that touch. It might be the only thing that could give him any hope that he could put any of this right. He leaned into his arm, stretching it a little bit further, and he turned his hand over, to offer his palm.

  ‘Careful...you’ll pull out your IV line.’

  But Emma had caught his hand and, after she’d stepped closer to take the tension off the narrow plastic tube, she didn’t let it go. Jack curled his fingers around hers, willing her to look up and meet his gaze.

  When she did, he almost wished she hadn’t. He was enveloped in something that felt like anguish.

  ‘Why did you come back today, Jack?’

  ‘Because...because it’s Christmas,’ he said, his voice catching on the last word.

  ‘But you hate Christmas...we all kn
ew how much you hate it... That was why Sarah and Ben were bringing Lily to Glasgow. They knew you’d never go to see them in London.’ Emma’s words were tumbling out. And her eyes were widening, as if she was realising something horrific for the first time.

  ‘You blame yourself, don’t you? For the accident...’

  Jack had to close his eyes for a heartbeat. To squeeze her hand sharply as a warning it was too soon to talk about that. He wasn’t ready. Maybe he would never be as ready as he’d thought he was.

  ‘It seemed like a good time to try and make peace,’ he managed.

  Peace with the colleagues he’d let down?

  Peace with Emma?

  Peace with Lily for when she was old enough to understand?

  Yes, on all counts, but if Jack was really honest, he needed to make peace with others in order to make peace with himself. That was why he’d come back.

  Christmas, and the dreadful anniversary it represented, had been the catalyst. How could he have been so selfish not to realise how hard this anniversary was going to be for the only other person who’d been so devastated by it? Okay, he hadn’t intended to turn up on a stretcher in the Eastern’s emergency department but he’d made things so much worse.

  For Emma—and for himself. He would never have chosen to be in here tonight. And he’d had no idea that Emma had been waiting for him to come back.

  Hoping every day that this would be the day?

  He didn’t know quite how to even start processing that yet because...

  Because there’d never been a promise of what they’d had being anything more than what it was—a bit of fun. Forbidden fun, at that...

  And because he had no intention of staying?

  He couldn’t let Emma know that. Not yet. Not until they’d had a chance to really talk—if he could bring himself to go so far back into that dark space.

  For now, the only thing that was important was to let Emma know just how sorry he was and there were no words that were available.

  So he tried to put his apology into the way he was holding her hand. To send a telepathic message through his fingertips, and in the slow stroke of his thumb across the back of her hand.

  And it seemed to be working. His gaze held hers and he could see the anguish fading, along with the horror that was tinged with an empathy he couldn’t accept yet. But he could accept the strength of a connection he could never have with any other living person. And he could feel something else in that turbulent mix of emotion.

  Hope, maybe? That not only peace might be possible but that he could find something solid in his life again? Something that could shape a future that he couldn’t yet define?

  ‘Emma...’

  She dropped his hand as if she’d been caught doing something inappropriate with a patient, her gaze snapping to the door where someone was calling her.

  ‘We need you. Tension pneumothorax next door and he’s crashing.’

  * * *

  There were two patients in the adjoining resuscitation area, a crowd of medical staff, two police officers and three hospital security guards. A crumpled red jacket with white borders lay close to a large puddle of blood. Alistair had bloodstains on his scrubs.

  ‘I’ve got an arterial bleed here that I can’t let go of...’

  Emma looked at the man on the other bed. His skin had a bluish tinge and he was gasping for breath, his level of consciousness clearly dropping.

  ‘Sats are dropping fast,’ Pete told her. ‘And blood pressure’s crashed. No breath sounds on the left side. I’ve tried a needle decompression with no improvement. We’re setting up for a chest tube.’

  ‘That can wait.’ Emma pulled on a pair of sterile gloves. ‘A simple thoracostomy is going to be faster. Have you done one before?’

  ‘No.’ Pete looked anxious. ‘I’ve never even seen one.’

  ‘Okay, watch this time.’

  While it would have been a good teaching opportunity for a junior doctor, this patient’s condition had deteriorated too far to make a slow procedure acceptable. Emma grabbed the swab sitting in a bowl of disinfectant solution on the top of the chest drain trolley and painted the side of the man’s chest.

  ‘See the jugular vein distension?’ she asked Pete, pointing at the man’s neck. ‘We haven’t got much time.’ The air and probably blood accumulating in the patient’s chest had made the lung collapse and would prevent the heart beating in a short space of time.

  Emma felt for landmarks with one hand, a scalpel in the other. ‘I’m looking for the fourth or fifth intercostal space in the mid-axillary line,’ she told Pete. ‘And now I’m going to make a five-centimetre incision—just through the skin.’

  The man was conscious enough to be groaning with pain.

  ‘Sorry, mate,’ Emma said. ‘It won’t be for much longer.’ This was a necessary evil to save his life and Emma had trained herself to get past how bad it made her feel to inflict pain in situations like this.

  She crouched to put herself at eye level with the incision. ‘I’m going to use the forceps to do a blunt dissection now. It’s safer to be looking at the same level.’

  Dropping the forceps back onto the trolley, Emma put her finger in the hole she’d made in their patient’s chest and worked it further in.

  ‘Be careful when you’re doing this,’ she told Pete. ‘You might come across fractured ribs that will be sharp. Look, you can see the blood and air that’s being released...’

  ‘Oxygen saturation is coming up,’ a nurse reported. ‘I’ll get another blood pressure.’

  ‘I can feel the lung expanding,’ Emma said.

  ‘Wow...’ Pete looked impressed. ‘That’s way faster than getting a tube in.’

  ‘We’ll still need to do that but it’s not urgent. When I let the soft tissue fall back over the wound like this, it acts as a flap valve. If he tensions again, you can release the pressure by putting your finger in again. Just make sure you’ve got a fresh pair of sterile gloves on. Now...what’s caused this? Blunt trauma or was he stabbed?’

  ‘He said he was stabbed but I haven’t found the entry wound yet.’

  ‘Have you checked his back?’

  ‘We were just about to when he crashed.’

  ‘Let’s do it now, then.’ Emma stepped back to let Pete take charge again, glancing across to the other bed. ‘How’re you doing there, Alistair? Need a hand?’

  ‘I think we’re good, thanks. I’ve got a clamp on this artery and I’m about to tie it off.’ He looked up at Emma, with a wry smile. ‘It must have been quite some fight. Not really in the Christmas spirit, is it?’

  She smiled back but then turned her attention to making sure Pete’s secondary survey was revealing all the information he would need to treat his patient. A part of her brain had caught on Alistair’s comment, however.

  Christmas spirit...

  Peace...

  Why had it never occurred to her before that Jack might have been blaming himself for that terrible accident? His hatred and avoidance of the festive season had been a joke. Sarah had been laughing about it when she’d rung Emma to share the exciting news that they would be bringing their baby up to Glasgow for the celebration.

  ‘There’s no way Jack would come to Christmas voluntarily so we’re bringing Christmas to him, whether he likes it or not. We’re going to show him just how good it can be when you’re with your family...’

  If Jack had gone to London to be with his brother’s brand-new family, they would never have been on the road that night.

  They would still be alive...

  There was no point in even thinking about those kind of ‘what ifs’. Emma had known that at the time.

  But now...

  Imagine adding that kind of guilt to the overwhelming grief that Jack had been going throug
h and then layering on the responsibility for a tiny person who had no other relatives in the world? On someone who had no experience of a committed relationship, let alone how to care for an infant.

  No wonder he’d freaked out and hadn’t been able to handle it.

  Had she done enough to help? Or had she made it worse, by channelling her own grief into an obsession to keep her promise to Sarah and look after Lily? Had she, in fact, pushed Jack into the combination of events that had culminated in his walking out?

  Not that there was any time to explore that train of thought.

  ‘There it is...’ Pete had found the small puncture wound on the man’s back, just under his ribs. ‘Doesn’t look like it could have caused that much trouble, does it?’

  ‘Surface wounds can be very deceptive.’ Emma felt like she was talking to herself as much as to a junior colleague. ‘It’s what’s going on underneath that matters. And sometimes you have to look hard to find it. Let’s get a scan organised to see what’s going on in there.’

  Her words seemed to hang in the air and take on a rather different meaning after she’d stopped speaking. She wouldn’t be the only one who needed to look a bit harder beneath the surface as far as Jack Reynolds was concerned. People were judging him again already and it wasn’t fair. They didn’t know the whole story.

  Maybe she didn’t know the whole story, either.

  * * *

  There was something different about Emma when she came back to his bedside but Jack couldn’t figure out what it was.

  Maybe it was because the light felt so bright when he opened his eyes that he needed to shade them with his hand.

  ‘That sounded full on next door. You must be a bit shattered.’

  ‘I’m okay. Pretty good considering I’ve been on duty since seven o’clock this morning.’

  ‘What?’ Jack was horrified. ‘You’re doing a double shift?’

  ‘It wasn’t intentional. Stuart Cameron was taking over from me but he came into work trying to ignore the fact that he was having a massive heart attack.’

  ‘Oh, no...’

  The look on Emma’s face told him that she was remembering the same thing he was—his last encounter with Stuart.