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So maybe the real Holly was the scary one.
Maybe Holly had turned into her mother, the most formidable woman David had ever met.
‘Our Holls is pretty amazing, isn’t she?’ Siobhan said wryly.
‘Just remind me never to get on her bad side,’ David replied.
Though he didn’t think she could do anything else to him. She’d already put him through the mangle and hung him out to dry.
When David had finished treating his share of the drunken brawlers, he headed for the rest room. He needed coffee. Now.
Holly was already there, curled up with a cup of coffee and a chocolate brownie.
Food. He needed food. ‘Where did you get that?’ he asked, eyeing the brownie. He just hoped the shop was still open, wherever it was. And still had something like that left.
He was disappointed. ‘Zoe from Paeds left it for me. I’m one of her testers for new recipes.’
‘Oh.’
He wasn’t going to ask her for a bite. Even though he was starving.
But it must have shown on her face because she rolled her eyes. ‘All right, all right, I’ll split it with you.’ She broke the cake in two and handed one half to him, with just the hint of a smile.
‘Thank you.’ His head was reeling. This was Scary Holly, the one who’d made the drunken louts behave like lambs. How could she be Nice Holly, who shared her goodies? Especially, he thought when he took his first bite, something as scrummy as this, which any normal person definitely wouldn’t have wanted to share?
‘Enjoyed your first week here?’ she asked.
‘Yes.’ Once he’d got over the shock of seeing her again. But she was being friendly enough to him. He could handle this, treat her as a colleague. Ignore the tingle at the base of his spine every time he looked at her mouth. ‘This shift pattern takes some getting used to, though.’
‘Give it six months, then the human resources bods will come up with another clever idea for us to try.’
‘Such cynicism in one so young,’ he teased.
He’d obviously hit a raw nerve, because her face changed. Became shuttered and cool.
What had he said?
He backtracked, fast. ‘I was impressed with the way you handled that lot out there.’
She shrugged. ‘You get used to it. Most Friday and Saturday nights we get the same sort of thing. It’s just a matter of defusing the situation before things get out of hand. Give them a choice so they don’t feel they’re going to lose face, and they’ll usually shut up.’
‘They could have hit you.’
‘Security were on their way.’
‘You still took a risk.’ A stupid risk, and it made him want to protect her—despite the fact she’d already proved she was tough, not the sweet and gentle middle-class girl he’d known years ago. She didn’t even have that posh accent any more.
‘There’s a little trick that a registrar taught me when I was still a house officer.’ She withdrew the epidural syringe from her pocket. ‘You’re drunk and you’re hurt and the doctor tells you this is what she’s going to have to use for your tetanus booster, because when you’re drunk you need more medication—though if you wait your turn without a fuss she’ll assume you’re sober and use a smaller syringe. Are you going to hit her or are you going to shut up and sit down?’
‘That’s an epidural kit, without the needle.’ David stared at her. ‘And it’s not true about vaccinations. You didn’t.’
‘It was a white lie.’ She grinned. ‘And it worked, didn’t it?’ She finished her coffee. ‘I’d better get back and see how we’re doing out there.’
David gulped his coffee as he watched her leave the room. That smile. It would be so, so easy to forget what had happened between them. To fall for Holly again. She was brave and funny—and beautiful. She’d been pretty as a teenager, but she’d lost that plump ripeness. Thinner, older, with that gamin haircut showing off her incredible bone structure, Holly Jones was beautiful.
But he wasn’t going to let her break his heart a second time.
CHAPTER THREE (#u43aa7374-bf7c-536f-8c6a-1d04a08f2c51)
SATURDAY night was even busier than Friday had been, so Holly barely had a chance to talk to David during the shift. Just when she was going to take a break, Rick, one of the paramedics, brought in a young man.
‘His name’s Gary—I couldn’t get a second name out of his mates. Collapsed in the middle of a nightclub. His mates say it’s drink.’
‘But you don’t think so?’
‘Nope.’ Rick ran through the usual handover, noting Gary’s pulse, breathing rate and his GCS, or Glasgow coma scale, level, which told Holly how the patient was reacting to stimulation. ‘He’s been drifting in and out of consciousness on the way here. His mates are waiting outside. Want me to send one of them in to see if you can prise anything out of them?’
‘Please.’ Holly smiled at him. ‘Thanks, Rick.’
‘Any time, sugar.’
She turned to her patient. ‘Hello, Gary. My name’s Holly. Do you know where you are?’
The young man looked confused. ‘Dunno. Head hurts.’
‘You’re in London City General. I’m just going to check you over, OK?’
His pulse was way too fast. She shone a torch into his eyes and discovered that his pupils were dilated. He was sweating and a quick examination showed her that he had increased muscle tone. So he must have taken amphetamines of some sort. ‘Gary? What did you take tonight?’
‘Nothing.’ Gary leaned over the side of the bed and was promptly sick.
Before Holly could reach for a kidney dish to catch the vomit, a hand had already pushed one under Gary’s chin. ‘Here you go, mate.’
She winked at Rick. ‘Just in time. Thanks.’
‘Pleasure. I’ve brought Gary’s friend in to have a word with you.’
‘I’m Holly Jones, the registrar,’ she said. The young man looked so nervous that she didn’t ask him his name in case it made him bolt. It was more important to find out more about her patient. ‘Can you tell me a bit more about Gary?’
‘He just collapsed.’
Holly nodded. ‘Has he taken anything?’
‘No. Just drink.’
She raised an eyebrow. ‘Look, I’m not here to lecture you. I’m not going to grass you up to the police or anything like that. I just need to know what he’s taken so I can treat him properly.’ She spread her hands. ‘I’ve seen enough drunks in my time here to know when someone’s drunk. Gary doesn’t smell of booze. What did he take?’
‘He hasn’t taken nothing.’
‘It looks like amphetamines to me. Ecstasy?’
The young man looked at her for a moment, then sighed, as if knowing that he was beaten. ‘No. He couldn’t get no disco biscuits. He bought some Eve.’
Eve, or MDEA, was a type of amphetamine similar to Ecstasy. ‘Thanks,’ Holly said. ‘Do you have any idea how long ago he took it?’
‘Forty minutes—something like that, I guess.’
‘Great.’ She smiled reassuringly at him. ‘Now I know just what to give your mate to get his body back to normal.’
‘He is going to be OK, isn’t he?’
‘It’s too early to say, I’m afraid—though you did the right thing by calling the ambulance. If you want to wait in the relatives’ room, I can come and see you later to let you know how he’s getting on.’
‘Right.’ The young man bit his lip. ‘He’s been doing it for a while. E, I mean. And Eve. I thought he knew what he was doing. But this bloke offered him some cheap. I never saw him before. Must have been dodgy.’
‘It happens.’ And the friends and family were left to pick up the pieces. Holly knew that only too well—both as a doctor and as a relative.
‘You’re really not going to have a go about how drugs are bad for you?’
She shrugged. ‘Not my place. And you’re old enough to know that for yourself.’
‘Yeah.’ He smiled wryly back at her.
‘There’s a coffee-machine in the corridor outside the relatives’ room, if you need it. There’s a vending machine for chocolate, too.’
‘Cheers.’
Holly turned back to her patient. Since he’d taken the drugs less than an hour ago, activated charcoal would help to reduce the amount his body absorbed.
‘Gary, I’m going to give you something to help your body get rid of the drugs still in your stomach. And I’m going to take a blood sample to see how you’re doing.’
She took the sample, capped it and called to the staff nurse working on her team. ‘Miche, can you get the bloods sorted, please? Usual stuff—full blood count, Us and Es, creatinine, glucose and arterial blood gases. And if you could give me a hand with some activated charcoal?’
‘My favourite,’ Michelle said wryly. ‘I’ll get these to the lab and then I’ll come back.’
The charcoal was messy but effective.
‘I’m not happy about his temperature—or his blood pressure,’ Holly muttered to Michelle a little later.
‘Or his ECG,’ Michelle said, looking at the display. ‘He’s still tachycardic.’
Before either of them could say another word, Gary started having a fit.
‘Oh, no. Can someone get me some chlormethiazole?’ she called. Although diazepam was usually used to control fits, chlormethiazole had the extra benefit of helping to lower a fever.
‘Hold his arm still for me. I’ll get it in,’ David said, appearing with a syringe.
‘Sure,’ Holly said, knowing that now wasn’t the time to be proud. She needed his hands as well as the contents of the syringe. When someone was having an epileptic fit, it was much easier if one person held the arm still while another did the injection. Michelle was holding Gary’s head, making sure he didn’t swallow his tongue. Holly held Gary’s arm still and David injected the chlormethiazole.
The fit stopped, and then Gary was sick again.
‘It’s OK,’ Holly soothed, wiping his face. How many times had a doctor given the same treatment to her brother, back in Liverpool? And how many more times would it have to happen before Dan realised what an idiot he was being?
Gary couldn’t be more than a year or two younger than her brother. For a moment her vision blurred and she saw Daniel’s face in front of her. Then she blinked. Hard. This wasn’t Dan. And her brother had been clean for months now. He might even have turned the corner.
And elephants were pink, with wings.
When Holly was sure that Gary was responding to his treatment, she almost staggered to the rest room for a break. She nearly walked out again when she saw David already sitting there. She really, really wasn’t in the mood for facing him right now.
‘Hey.’ Almost as if he’d guessed that she was about to back away, he held up a bar of chocolate. ‘I owe you half, I think. Seeing as you shared your brownie with me last night.’
Colleagues. Yes. She could handle that.
She grabbed a coffee and sank into the chair next to his. ‘Thanks,’ she said, taking the proffered squares.
‘Tough night?’ he asked.
‘Drug cases always get to me. I suppose it’s because of Dan,’ she said. ‘I always think it could be him.’
‘Why?’
She sighed. ‘He got in with a bad crowd at uni and went off the rails pretty spectacularly. He’s living with Mum and Dad right now, in a temporary truce—but every so often he does something stupid, Mum gets too heavy with him and I have to go back to broker peace between them again.’
‘Little Danny does drugs?’ Disbelief was written all over David’s face.
‘Dan’s not so little now,’ she said wryly. ‘He’s twenty-five—bigger than me. Bigger than you, actually.’ She shrugged. ‘Ah, well. Your mother was right. Our family’s stuck-up, and we’ve had our comeuppance for it. Both of the kids brought shame on the family.’
‘What do you mean?’ he asked.
As if he didn’t know. ‘Forget it,’ she said shortly.
‘Holly—’
‘Just forget it,’ she said, and walked out before she said something she’d regret.
Just what was going on in her head? She was impossible. Really, really impossible, David thought angrily. Holly might be a good doctor—and good at defusing awkward situations with patients—but her manner with him left a hell of a lot to be desired. Yes, they had a history, but she shouldn’t take out her guilt on him!
Maybe on Monday, after he’d had some sleep, he’d have a word with Sue and see if he could be moved to the other team.
‘Peter Kirby. Suspected multiple rib fractures,’ Rick said as he ran through the handover. ‘Query organ damage, too.’
Holly glanced at their patient and winced. ‘Someone’s given him a hell of a kicking. Funny, he doesn’t look the fighting type.’
‘Probably just in the wrong place at the wrong time,’ Rick said wryly. ‘Wouldn’t surprise me if it was gay-bashing.’
‘Hey. We’re not all homophobic,’ she said gently, touching his arm. ‘Do you know him?’
He rolled his eyes. ‘I don’t know every gay male in London.’
