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Marina nodded. ‘I feel awful, leaving early when we’ve still got a full waiting-room.’
‘You were in at eight, and you haven’t stopped since you’ve been in. So leaving at five isn’t exactly leaving early, is it? And we all know where you’re going to be, anyway, if we need you.’
Yes. Picking up Phoebe, then going upstairs to the maternity department and spending a while at her elder sister’s bedside.
Eve smiled at her. ‘How’s Rosie doing?’
‘Getting there. She’s feeling well enough to moan about being stuck in here and wanting to be at home with Neil and Phoebe.’
‘That’s a good sign. And the baby’s doing OK?’
‘Doing fine.’ Marina bit her lip. ‘Though I think we’ll all be a lot happier when he or she’s here safely.’
‘Rosie’s in good hands. You know as well as I do, Theo Petrakis is the best.’ Eve patted her shoulder. ‘Now, scoot.’
‘Five minutes and I’ll be back.’
‘Make it fifteen,’ Eve said.
Marina had no intention of taking that long, not when they were so busy. But she went through to the staff kitchen, made herself a mug of coffee and added enough cold water so that she could drink it quickly.
‘Is the kettle still hot?’ a voice behind her asked, and she nearly dropped her mug.
Max.
Longing surged through her, but she stifled it. Fast. ‘Yes, Dr Fenton.’ She forced herself to sound cool, calm and professional; the last thing she wanted was for him to realise that his voice was enough to turn her to a gibbering mess inside.
If there was an atmosphere between them people would start asking questions. Marina really didn’t want to be the hot topic on the hospital grapevine. So, much as she hated it, she forced herself to make small talk. ‘I didn’t know you were going to be working here,’ she said.
‘I had an interview two weeks ago,’ Max replied, making himself a coffee and topping it up with cold water, the same way Marina had.
Two weeks ago: that explained it. Life had been so crazy since Rosie had been admitted to the maternity ward with pre-eclampsia sixteen days before that Marina really hadn’t paid much attention to what was going on at work. She just did her shift, visited her sister before and after every shift and helped her brother-in-law Neil to look after Phoebe, Rosie and his two-year-old daughter.
‘I didn’t realise you were here, either,’ Max added. ‘You weren’t here when I had a tour of the department.’
‘I was probably off duty.’ Not that he needed to know what she’d been doing. He hadn’t kept in touch with her family at all; as far as she was concerned, he wasn’t part of her family any longer, and she didn’t owe him any explanations.
‘How long have you been working here?’
‘Nearly a year.’ She glanced at him, and was gratified to see a slight flicker in his eyes. Good: so he did remember what had happened a year ago. He’d taken long enough to sign the divorce papers. Her solicitor had had to send them to him three times because he hadn’t bothered replying; the ending of their marriage had clearly been as low a priority in his life as their marriage itself.
But at last she was free. She’d gone back to using her maiden name. At the London Victoria, they’d only ever known her as Marina Petrelli—and that was the way she wanted it to stay.
‘It’s a good place to work,’ she said.
He raised an eyebrow. ‘Is it going to be a problem, my working here?’
Trust Max to cut to the chase.
Yes, it was a problem. She’d much rather they didn’t have to work together. But she couldn’t change the situation, only make the best of it. ‘I think,’ she said carefully, ‘We’re both professional enough to put our patients first.’
‘Good.’
There was a long, long pause. Marina couldn’t think of a single thing to say.
Actually, that wasn’t true. There was a lot she wanted to say. Answers she wanted to demand. But the emergency-department kitchen wasn’t the right place to say any of it.
If anyone had said to her five years ago that she’d find it difficult to talk to Max, she would’ve laughed in disbelief. They’d never stopped talking, right from the start. And Max had fitted right in to her noisy, talkative family. The Petrellis had adored him as much as she had.
Until their marriage had gone so badly wrong. Then she and Max had stopped talking completely.
Marry in haste, repent at leisure: how horribly true that saying had turned out to be.
‘Well, I’d better get back,’ she said, rinsing out her mug and trying to avoid eye contact.
‘Me, too.’
Oh, no. Please don’t let him suggest walking back to the department together She wasn’t ready for this. But, to her relief, Max was still finishing his coffee, which meant she could escape.
‘Bye, then,’ she said brightly, and left the room.
How on earth had they come to this point? Max wondered. They were awkward, embarrassed strangers who could barely make small talk in a staff kitchen.
Though he knew exactly how they’d got here: through pain and hurt that they’d both been too young to deal with at the time. Marina had walked out and gone home to her parents for the comfort he hadn’t been able to give her. And he’d responded by going off to work for Doctors Without Borders, where he’d known he’d be too busy to think about the wreck of their marriage.
And now they had to work together. He’d seen on her face that, yes, it was a problem for her. It was a problem for him, too. But they’d better deal with it—and fast—because he sure as hell didn’t want to be the subject of the hospital grapevine. He’d been there before and he wasn’t in any hurry to repeat the experience: people whispering and stopping conversations dead as soon as they saw him walk in, the pitying glances.
If he’d known that she worked here, he wouldn’t have taken the job.
Then again, this had been too good an opportunity to turn down: a position as senior registrar in a busy London emergency-department. Added to his experience abroad, it would stand him in good stead for future promotion, for the consultant’s post that was the focus of his life right now.
Luckily the rest of his afternoon was too rushed to let Max think about Marina. There were several victims of road-traffic accidents who needed checking over—including one with broken ribs and a pneumothorax that needed very careful attention. Even so, he was aware that Marina left the department a good half-hour before he did.
Then, as he walked out through the double doors, he heard a voice he recognised, saying cheerfully, ‘Right, Miss Beautiful. Let’s go and meet Daddy.’
Daddy?
Max couldn’t help looking, and immediately wished he hadn’t. Because at the far end of the corridor Marina was carrying a toddler: a little girl who had the same dark hair, dark eyes and sweet smile as Marina herself.
Marina had a daughter.
For a moment, Max couldn’t breathe; it felt as if someone had just sucker-punched him in the stomach and all the air had been driven out of his lungs. The little girl looked as if she was around two years old—which meant that Marina hadn’t even waited for their divorce to be finalised before she’d moved on to another relationship and had a baby with her new partner.
Yet she still used her maiden name in the department. Maybe she hadn’t yet remarried. Or maybe she’d decided to keep her maiden name for work.
Whatever.
It was none of his business any more.
All the same, it shook him. Especially when a man came walking down the corridor towards them, kissed Marina lightly on the mouth and scooped the child from her arms.
‘Daddy!’ the little girl said, beaming as the man kissed her and lifted her onto his shoulders.
Marina tucked her arm through his and they walked off together, chatting easily. Looking exactly like the close, loving family they obviously were.
Exactly like the close, loving family he and Marina had planned to have.
Max swallowed the bile that had risen in his throat. Now he understood why Marina had left her shift dead on time. She’d had to pick up her daughter from the hospital nursery before meeting her partner.
What made the whole thing so much worse was that, if circumstances had been very slightly different, Max would’ve been the one meeting Marina with a bright, lively pre-school child, and maybe a baby with chubby hands and a wide, wide smile. He would’ve been the one they smiled at, the one they greeted with a kiss.
He swore under his breath. He’d promised himself that he was over it, that he could cope with working in England again. But seeing that little tableau made it feel as if someone had cracked his heart wide open and stomped on it.
Marina had a child. With someone else.
He’d thought that he’d reached the depths of pain. Now he knew there was more—and it felt as if he were drowning. Someone else had the life he’d planned, the life he’d wanted: Marina, their baby, a fulfilling job.
Why the hell hadn’t he tried harder to make it work?
Because he’d been an idiot.
Because he’d been hurting too much at the time to work out what he’d needed to do—what they had needed to do—as a couple.
And now it was too late. Way, way too late.
There was only one way of getting this out of his system. So, instead of making himself a sandwich when he got home, Max grabbed his gym gear and headed out again. What he needed was a workout that would leave him too damn tired to think. He’d sleep on it, let his subconscious come up with a way of dealing with the fact that Marina Petrelli was back in his life—and she was very firmly off-limits.
Chapter Two
THE roster fairy definitely wasn’t on his side, Max thought the next morning as he walked into Resus and saw his team.
To think he’d been so cool and calm yesterday, asking Marina if it would be a problem for her, working in the same department. He’d been so sure that he could handle the situation.
Though, that had been before he’d seen her with her daughter.
And he was shocked by how much that thought still hurt, like a bruise that went right through his soul.
‘Good morning, Dr Fenton,’ Marina said.
She sounded bright and breezy, as if nothing was wrong—although he’d noticed that her smile didn’t quite reach her eyes, and she was using his formal title rather than his first name. OK; he’d take the lead from her. Bright, breezy and surface-friendly it was—even though he felt like punching something. He forced himself to unclench the fists in his pockets. ‘Good morning, Dr Petrelli.’
‘We’ve just had a shout,’ she told him. ‘RTC, elderly female passenger, ETA six minutes.’
‘Any details?’
‘Query fracture and internal injuries. They’ve put a line in and she’s on a spinal board.’
Max met the ambulance crew at the door and quickly went through the handover, and the team swung into action to treat Mrs Jennings. Clearly they were used to working together and, whatever the problems between himself and Marina, she obviously took her job seriously, and she hadn’t been exaggerating when she’d said that she could push the personal stuff into the background and put her patient first. Max quickly discovered that over the last four years Marina had become a fine doctor, confident and capable, and whenever he was about to give her some instructions he found she was already doing it, having second-guessed him.
As they assessed their patient for hypovolaemic shock—Max wasn’t happy with her blood pressure or the capillary refill—they both noted the pattern of bruising across her abdomen, the lap-belt imprint. On examination, Mrs Jennings’ abdomen was tender. Not good.
‘I’m not happy with this,’ Max said quietly to Marina.
‘I’d need to see the X-ray to confirm it, but my guess is that the impact fractured her pelvis,’ Marina said, equally quietly.
He nodded. ‘There may be some splenic involvement as well, or even damage to other organs. We need a CT scan and an X-ray to see what’s going on.’
‘Agreed. Let’s get her stabilised first,’ Marina said.
Quietly, Max asked Stella, their senior nurse, to bleep the orthopaedic-surgery team and put Theatre on standby, and then he turned back to the patient. ‘Mrs Jennings, I’m going to put a mask over your face,’ he said, ‘to give you some oxygen, which will help you to breathe more easily. And I’m going to give you something to help with the pain, so it makes things a bit more comfortable for you while we take a look at your injuries. If you’re worried about anything, just lift your hand and we’ll take the mask off for a few moments so you can talk to us, OK?’
Mrs Jennings whispered her consent. Max fitted the oxygen mask over her face and gave her analgesia through the IV line that the paramedics had put in, while Marina inserted a second IV line and set up a drip. Marina took blood samples for rapid cross-matching, all the while talking to Mrs Jennings, reassuring her and assessing her. Max was impressed by Marina’s calm, kind manner. Although they were faced with a potentially life-threatening emergency—compound pelvic fractures, especially if there were abdominal injuries as well, were associated with a mortality rate of more than fifty per cent—Marina made sure that Mrs Jennings didn’t realise how worried they all were. She behaved as if this was a completely everyday occurrence, and nothing more worrying than a dislocated elbow, which meant that their patient relaxed rather than panicking—and in turn that made their investigations just that touch easier.
If it wasn’t for the personal stuff between them, working with her would have been a dream.
As it was, it was a living nightmare. Her voice echoed through his head: Let’s go and meet Daddy.
Daddy. Daddy.
It should’ve been him.
He shook himself. This wasn’t the time or the place. And there was nothing he could do to change the situation, so it was pointless ripping himself apart over it. He forced himself to stay in professional mode, and reviewed the X-rays with Marina against the lightbox. ‘Classic open-book fracture,’ he said.
‘That’s fixable. What worries me more is that her BP is still dropping.’
‘Which means she has internal injuries.’ He grimaced. ‘We don’t have time to wait for a CT scan, and even a DPL’s going to be risky.’ A diagnostic peritoneal lavage or DPL was a quick way of checking for internal haemorrhage when a scan would take too long. ‘We need to get her up to Theatre now. Fast-bleep the orthopods, please, Stella,’ he said to the nurse. ‘I’m sending Mrs Jennings up.’
He turned to Mrs Jennings. ‘The X-rays show that the accident broke your pelvis,’ Max explained gently, holding her hand and looking into her eyes. ‘I’m going to send you up to Theatre so the surgeons can fix it for you. We want to keep you as still as possible on the way, so we’re going to put sandbags either side of you to make sure you don’t move on the trolley.’
‘But don’t be afraid,’ Marina added. ‘It won’t be uncomfortable, and it’s pretty much routine-procedure for anyone who’s got a break right there. I’m going to come up to Theatre with you and introduce you to the surgical team.’ She took Mrs Jennings’ other hand. ‘And I’m not going to leave you until you’re happy that you know what’s going on. Is there anyone you’d like us to call for you while you’re with the surgeons?’
Mrs Jennings reached up with her free hand and lowered the mask. ‘My daughter,’ she whispered.
Marina made a note of her name and number. ‘I’ll call her myself as soon as you’re in Theatre,’ she promised.
‘And my friend,’ Mrs Jennings whispered. ‘The one who was driving me. Was she hurt in the accident?’
‘She hasn’t been brought in here,’ Marina said. ‘But I’ll talk to the ambulance crew and find out what happened and how she is. Then, when you’re out of Theatre, I’ll come and see you and let you know what’s going on. Now, let me put this mask back on you and make you more comfortable.’
When Marina returned from taking Mrs Jennings up to Theatre and phoning her daughter, Max was about to send her on a break, then the phone in Resus rang.
Stella answered it. ‘Marina, it’s the nursery,’ she said, handing the phone to Marina.
‘Marina Petrelli speaking.’
Even though Max tried hard not to listen in, he couldn’t help noticing that Marina went white.
‘What’s happened? Right. I see. Yes, of course.’ She replaced the receiver and blew out a breath. ‘Phoebe’s just thrown up everywhere. The nursery needs me to collect her and take her home, as in right now.’ She bit her lip. ‘Dr Fenton, I know I’m rostered in here with you today, and we’re short-staffed, but—’
