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Victoria had decided as she’d walked through the corridors of Riverside that she didn’t want her baby to be born here. There was nothing wrong with the hospital—she often brought patients here—but it felt bland to Victoria, and her father worked here too.

She felt closer to a building than her own parents. It was sad but true, and that was why she asked the favour.

‘They only take complicated cases,’ Professor Christie said.

‘Not always,’ Victoria refuted. And she didn’t point out that she’d been born there and that members of staff tended to choose, where possible, to have their child there, but she would not be fobbed off.

‘It’s closing.’

‘Not necessarily,’ Victoria said. ‘And if it does close before the baby comes along, then I’ll be referred elsewhere, but I’d really like to have my antenatal care there.’

As an adult she had never asked her father for anything, not one single thing. ‘Can you get me in there?’

‘I’ll see what I can do.’

‘Now,’ Victoria said, because she knew this conversation would be forgotten the second she walked out of the door. ‘I want to be seen before I tell work.’

And so, more to get rid of the inconvenience, her father made some calls and finally she was booked in to Paddington’s maternity unit.

‘You need an ultrasound before he sees you,’ Professor Christie said, and he went through the details, telling her she had an appointment for tomorrow and that the referral form would be at Reception. Finally, he asked her to reconsider. ‘I really suggest you have a long hard think about going ahead with this, Victoria.’

That hurt.

On so many levels it hurt.

Victoria knew he had never wanted her. She was certain that had her mother not left first, then he would have gone.

As she got to the door Victoria turned and could see that she was forgotten already—her father was straight back to work, though she still stood there.

Dominic was right—her father was cold to the bone.

‘I can see why she left you,’ Victoria said. ‘My mother, I mean.’

Professor Christie looked up from his notes and he stared at his daughter for a long moment and then, just before resuming writing his notes, he, as always, had the last word.

‘She left you too.’

His words shadowed and clung to her right through into the next day.

‘You’re quiet,’ Glen observed as she was driven towards the children’s hospital with Glen, for once not in an ambulance.

Glen had offered to come with her for her ultrasound appointment. Victoria had declined, though she was touched that her colleague had given her a lift. She had felt very sick on the underground but that was fading.

Glen knew that she was pregnant.

Of course he did.

He had no idea, though, who the father was.

They worked together, and when Victoria had started to turn as green as her overalls at the smallest thing, he had asked if everything was okay.

Victoria had said she was fine.

Then, a couple of days ago, he had asked outright.

‘Hayley had terrible morning sickness, with Ryan,’ Glen had told her.

It had been hard to deny a pregnancy when you were sitting holding a kidney dish in the back of an ambulance.

‘You have to tell work,’ Glen said.

‘I know.’ Victoria closed her eyes.

It was starting to be real.

For the last couple of weeks she had been in denial, but now she was facing up to things and telling work was something she knew she had to do.

She had this week to get through and then a weekend of nights before she went on two weeks’ annual leave and she had decided that she would tell them at the end of her nights.

And now they sat in his car as Glen offered some further advice that she certainly didn’t need.

‘You have to tell the guy he’s going to be a father.’

‘Thanks, Glen,’ she snapped.

‘Listen to me, Victoria—’

‘No.’ She turned and looked at him. ‘I accepted a lift, not a lecture.’ And though she told Glen to stay back she knew he was right and that Dominic needed to be told.

When he came back from his leave she would tell him.

If he came back.

He might have decided that he missed home.

Victoria really didn’t know him at all.

They had gone straight back to being strangers.

There was no flirting and certainly there had been no reference to what had taken place.

He was still moody and she was her usual confident self.

Really, if it hadn’t been for the fact that she was pregnant, by now Victoria would be wondering if it had even taken place.

That night still felt like a dream.

Albeit her favourite one.

‘Are you sure you don’t want me to come with you?’ Glen checked, but Victoria snorted at the suggestion of needing someone to hold her hand.

‘For an ultrasound?’

‘Hayley gets nervous whenever she has one...’ Glen started, referring to his wife, as he always did.

‘I’m not Hayley,’ Victoria pointed out as she often did. ‘I’ll be fine on my own.’

She would be better on her own, in fact.

It was what she was used to after all.

Victoria walked through the familiar corridors of Paddington’s and turned for the Imaging Department. There she handed over her referral slip to the receptionist.

‘We’re running a bit behind,’ the receptionist explained.

‘That’s no problem,’ Victoria said, even though she was desperate to go to the loo.

She had been told to have a lot to drink prior to the ultrasound so that they might get the best view of the baby.

Still, she had expected to have to wait and had plenty to do.

Apart from a baby, something else had been created that night.

Victoria was on the social committee and had decided to use her position there to start a campaign to save the hospital from the merger.

They met each week over at the Frog and Peach and there was a meeting being held tonight.

It was proving difficult to get things rolling though.

Most people seemed to think it was a foregone conclusion that Paddington’s would close. Apart from the odd small write-up in the press, the campaign was not getting any real attention and Victoria was at a bit of a loss as to what to suggest next.

Rosie, a paediatric nurse, along with Robyn, who was Head of Surgery, were both a huge support and Victoria was hoping to catch up with them before the meeting kicked off.

Victoria sent a group text, reminding everyone of the meeting, and then she answered a few emails, but though she was passionate about doing all she could to save the hospital from closure, she could not give it her full attention right now.

She was nervous.

Oh, Victoria would never let on to Glen that she was, but she had butterflies fluttering in her chest. She was seated next to a heavily pregnant woman who, from the conversation taking place, was accompanied by her mother.

When Victoria was less than a year old, her mother had decided that motherhood and marriage were not for her and had walked out; Victoria hadn’t seen her since.

Not once.

Growing up, she had asked about her, of course. She had craved information, but there had never been much. Her father refused to speak of his first wife and, apart from a couple of photos that Victoria kept to this day in a drawer in her bedside table, she knew very little about her, other than that she had worked at Paddington’s.

As Victoria had got older, and she could more readily see her father’s very difficult behaviour, Victoria had decided her mother had walked away because she was depressed. A few years ago, Victoria had decided that no mother could walk away like that and have nothing to do with her child.

And so she had to be dead!

It had been a shock and black disappointment to find out that no, her mother was alive and well.

Thriving, in fact, Victoria discovered when she found her on social media.

She lived in Italy with her second husband.

And was a proud mother of two grown-up sons.

Victoria didn’t merit a mention.

She had contacted her but there had been no response.

That had been the final hurt and Victoria had decided she would never allow herself to hurt over her mother again.

Yet she was, and today, especially so.

Sitting in the ultrasound department, she was jealous of the stranger that sat beside her.

With her mother by her side.

She tried to focus on an email she was writing on her phone, rather than them. Hearing the doors swish open Victoria moved her legs to let a trolley carrying a patient past.

The child was crying and Victoria looked at him. She was just trying to guess what was wrong with him when she looked up into the eyes of Dominic walking alongside the trolley.

Usually they ignored each other, or spoke only about their patients. Eye contact was pretty much avoided, but today his met hers and she saw that he frowned.

And well he might.

She was sitting in a children’s hospital ultrasound waiting room after all!

It hadn’t once entered Victoria’s head that it might be a problem to see him here today. It wasn’t just that she’d thought he was on holiday, more the fact that Victoria was so used to Paddington’s, so completely used to being here, that it simply hadn’t entered her head that it might be an issue for her to see him.

Yet it had become one.

He couldn’t come over—the child on the trolley was very ill—but he turned his head and gave her a questioning look as he walked past.

Victoria didn’t quite know what to do.

Dominic was speaking with a nurse and they were about to be shown through to one of the imaging rooms; Victoria wondered if she should go down to Emergency after her ultrasound and speak with him then.

As he steered the trolley he turned and looked at her again but thankfully her phone buzzed and she could legitimately look away.

And, as she did, all thoughts of babies and fathers and ultrasounds rapidly faded.

Major Incident Alert

All available staff are to report to the station.

Sometimes there were mock-ups of major incidents and you were still supposed to attend, so that staff response times could be evaluated. Telephone lines and operators could not be clogged up with calls to check if this was real or not.

And something told Victoria that this was.

She looked up at the television on the wall but there were no breaking news stories yet.

Her phone bleeped again with another urgent alert and Victoria knew that the ultrasound would just have to wait.

Victoria was a terribly practical person and so the first thing she did was go to the ladies’ room.

One problem solved.

As she came out, emergency chimes were starting to ring out as Paddington Children’s Hospital’s own major incident response was set into action.

‘Victoria Christie,’ she gave her name again to the receptionist. ‘I’m a paramedic. I have to go.’

The receptionist nodded. She herself was already moving into action. If it was indeed a major incident then all non-urgent cases would have to be cancelled, and the department cleared for whatever it was that might be brought in.

‘I’ll call and reschedule,’ Victoria said, and as she went to run off Glen called and said he would meet her at the front.

This was real, Victoria knew, for someone must have rushed to relieve Dominic from his patient because he was running out of the ultrasound department too.

‘Do you know what’s happening?’ she said as he caught up with her.

‘No.’

She was very fit but so, too, was he and he passed her.

By the time she reached Accident and Emergency, Dominic was wearing a hard hat and she realised that he was being sent out.

Hard cases were being loaded into the ambulance that would bring him to the scene and Karen was bringing out the precious O-negative blood that was kept in Accident and Emergency for days such as this.

The ambulance station wasn’t far from the hospital but Glen, having received the same text as Victoria, had come to collect her.

As she got into the car Glen told her the little that he knew.

‘There’s a fire at Westbourne Grove,’ he said, pulling off as soon as the door closed while Victoria put on her seatbelt. ‘It sounds bad.’

Victoria said nothing—she never showed her true feelings, even in the most testing of times—but her heart started to beat fast.

Westbourne Grove was a primary school, and today was a weekday...

‘Apparently there are children trapped in the building,’ Glen said grimly.

CHAPTER FIVE

EVERY MOMENT MATTERED.

Victoria was well trained to respond to major incidents, and as soon as they were out of the car they ran to get changed.

The station was busy with many vehicles already out at the fire and off-duty staff arriving to provide backup and relief.

She went to the female changing room and took off her jeans and silky rust-coloured top that she had been wearing and then pulled on her overalls and boots. In the main station area she then collected her communication radio and ran out to the Rapid Response vehicle, which Glen was just boarding.

They hit a wall of traffic as soon as they left the station.

Already ambulances, perhaps the first vehicles at the scene, were making their way back to Paddington’s with sirens blaring.

It felt as if it was taking for ever to get there.

They had their lights and sirens on but the streets of London were gridlocked. Drivers were moving their vehicles and mounting the kerbs in a bid to try and let the emergency services through.

As well as ambulances there were fire engines, police cars and emergency response workers on motorbikes heading there too, and there was the sound of many sirens as finally they approached the school.

They could hear the chatter over the airwaves. Children were being dragged out and there were reports of firefighters going back in over and over again in an effort to reach the ones that were trapped. Most had been evacuated and, as per protocol, were lined up on the playground, far from the burning building. The numbers had to be checked and constantly updated but panicked parents were also starting to arrive on the scene and the police were having trouble keeping some of them back as they desperately wanted to see for themselves if their own child had made it out.

‘Your children don’t go to Westbourne Grove?’ Victoria checked.

‘No,’ Glen said. And then he added, ‘Thank God!’

The stretch of silence between those words felt like the loudest part of his response and, Victoria knew, Glen was picturing just that—his children trapped in a fire.

A couple of months ago, when they had been called out to a particularly nasty motor vehicle accident, Glen had started relating everything back to his own family. He took it all so personally, and it was getting worse.

Victoria had, on several occasions, warned Glen that he would soon be on stress leave if he carried on like this and had suggested that he speak to someone.

Glen insisted that he was fine and that everyone had their Achilles’ heel, and then he had turned it into a joke. ‘Except for you, Victoria.’

That had given her pause, for while Glen’s stress levels worried her, Victoria knew that she went the other way and stuffed down her feelings so that no one, not even her trusted colleague, could guess what went on inside her head.

Perhaps Glen was right and his responses were more normal, Victoria had reasoned, for there was a part of her that was perhaps a little jealous.

Not just of Glen and his ability to show emotion, but that he was part of a loving family and thought about them all the time, just as they all thought of him. Throughout the day Hayley would call and at night before the children went to bed, if able to, Glen would find the time to call and say goodnight.

‘Let’s just hope they’re all out,’ Victoria said as they got their first good look at the scene.

There was smoke billowing into the air, thick and black, as they were waved through the cordons. Some parents were being physically held back, not understanding the chaos they would create if let past.

They were guided to park behind the fire engines and they carried out their stretcher and equipment.

On a playground there were firefighters breathing in oxygen, and lines of children stood crying on a nearby playing field, clearly shocked and scared.

But they were alive and safe.

Some of the more seriously injured children were being treated on the playing field and it was then that she saw Dominic and two paramedics working on a child and draping the little body in saline sheets.

There were constant headcounts of the children taking place by the teachers but, Victoria and Glen were told, it was estimated that there were still two children in the building.

As the burnt child was being moved onto the stretcher a call went up for them to urgently move.

‘Stay back.’ A fire officer was pushing back the emergency personnel. ‘One of the internal structures is about to collapse.’

They were told that the next casualty, be it child, staff member or firefighter, would be for Victoria and Glen to treat and that for now all they could do was watch and wait.

There was the violent sound of an explosion followed by a deadly silence. And Dominic, who was loading one of the burn victims into an ambulance, turned and looked at the building.

There weren’t just children in there; there were firefighters too.

Dominic dealt with trauma daily.

He was trained to the hilt for this and, seeing the child into safe hands, he moved fast to get back to the changing situation.

But as he ran towards the line of emergency personnel, he saw a firefighter emerge, and then, too far to do anything to halt her, he watched as Victoria started to run.

Fury ripped through him at her blatant flaunting of the rules, for it was not only Dominic that called out to her to get back.

But no, she and Glen were moving towards the firefighter and child.

With good reason though.

Victoria took safety very seriously.

They were still being told to stay back, as another explosion could often follow the first, but as practical as she was, Victoria was in the business of saving lives and she could see that this little life was ebbing fast.

The firefighter was struggling, and as Victoria approached he dropped to his knees. She could see that he, too, was injured and had given all he had to get the child out. Victoria knew help was close for him but for now she was more concerned with the child.

It was a little boy and he was bleeding profusely from a neck wound and, as he was laid on the playground, Victoria knew that time was of the essence or he would soon bleed to death. She applied pressure to the wound with her gloved fingers as Glen, who had also ignored the orders to stay back, opened a pack. He passed her some swabs but, though she tried, Victoria could not stop the bleeding. But then she found the spot and Victoria let out a long breath of relief that the bleeding had stopped.

She looked up and saw that Dominic was running over and as he approached he let rip.

‘What the hell are you guys doing running forward, when the order was to stay back?’

Victoria shot him a look that said she was a bit too busy to row right now. Dominic dropped down to his knees and his silence agreed to the same as he examined the child.

‘It’s venous blood,’ Victoria said, not moving her fingers. If it had been an artery he would have been dead before the firefighter could get him out but, even so, he was practically exsanguinated.

Glen put oxygen onto the child and Dominic inserted an IV and took blood for cross-matching. He pushed through some IV fluids while calling to Karen to run through the O-negative blood that the Mobile Emergency Unit had brought with them.

It was the most precious commodity in a major incident; O negative is the universal donor and can be given to all without cross-matching. It was used sparingly and Dominic was now grateful for a couple of earlier decisions he had made to withhold some of this most precious resource, believing those patients could wait till they got to the hospital.

This child could not wait.

‘We need to get him to Paddington’s,’ Dominic said. ‘Now.’

They were working on him on the playground and Victoria looked up to a colleague. ‘Can you bring the vehicle in closer?’

Just as she looked up, Victoria saw that another child was being carried out in the arms of a firefighter. The child had red hair. That was all she could make out—and that the child was limp in the firefighter’s arms. Another crew was available to take care of them and so her focus went back to her own patient.

A teacher came over and identified the child that they were working on as Lewis Evans. ‘His mother’s here. She’s frantic.’

‘Get the police to take her to the hospital,’ Dominic said. ‘I’ll speak with her there.’

Dominic could see the redheaded child receiving care from a Rapid Response team and a doctor, and his decision was made to leave the scene and escort this patient.

It was a very difficult manoeuvre into the vehicle. Even lifting little Lewis onto the stretcher caused Victoria to lose the pressure point for a few seconds.

It was enough to know that it could not happen again.

Through the streets the ambulance blue-lighted them towards the hospital. The police had the traffic under control now and streets had been closed off so that their return journey was thankfully far speedier.

Victoria’s arms ached as she knelt on the floor, and Dominic was calling ahead to Paddington’s and explaining he needed a theatre held and the head-and-neck surgeon to meet them in there, when she saw Lewis’s eyes flicker.

The blood and oxygen were starting to work.

‘Hey, Lewis, you need to stay very still,’ Victoria said. ‘You’re in an ambulance and we’re taking you to Paddington Children’s Hospital.’

Lewis didn’t answer but she spoke on as if he could hear her and her voice was calm and reassuring.

‘I’m Victoria,’ she told him. ‘You’re doing so well. I know you are scared and in pain but you’re going to be okay. I just need you to stay very still.’

And then she looked up and arched her neck and Dominic offered her some water.

She nodded.

He held her head steady and she took a drink and then Victoria saw the familiar building come into view but she could not relax just yet. Lewis had already lost an awful lot of blood, his heart was beating rapidly and his blood pressure was barely recordable.

‘Keep the pressure on,’ Dominic told Victoria, and he saw her slight eye roll—she was hardly going to let go!

The stretcher was very carefully lowered so that Victoria could keep the vital pressure sustained.

‘That’s it...’ Dominic said, and someone helped guide her out of the back. Victoria let out a sigh, not quite one of relief, but it was good to be on solid ground and have the patient at Paddington’s where he would at least stand a chance.

It was chaos outside the hospital, and security and the police were working together to keep the foyer clear for patient arrivals.

Some parents had headed straight to the hospital in a bid to find out more, as had some reporters. As well as that, there were some people who loved to have a good look at others’ misfortune.

It was a relief to step inside.

They didn’t turn for A&E, instead they moved swiftly through the corridors, guided by a team leader, and with relief, Victoria saw that an elevator had been held for them.