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She desperately wanted to lean on Jack but she couldn’t bring herself to ask him for the hug she so badly needed.
And then he looked at her and she knew he felt the same way. ‘I hate Bonfire Night.’
His voice was hoarse and for the first time Bryony caught a glimpse of the strain he must have been under.
She gave a little frown. ‘We forget about you, Jack,’ she said softly, stepping up to him and looking at him with concern in her eyes. ‘You always seem so strong—so much the one in charge. Everyone else is panicking and flapping and you’re so calm. It’s easy to forget that you can be affected by things, too.’
‘Hey.’ He gave a sexy grin that belied the strain in his eyes. ‘I’m Mr Tough.’
She smiled. ‘Well, would Mr Tough like a cup of coffee?’
‘As I’m not driving, I’d rather finish the wine,’ he admitted ruefully, reaching for his glass. ‘Do you mind me staying?’
‘Of course not,’ she said blithely, wondering why her heart was thumping so hard. Jack had stayed in her cottage on numerous occasions. Why did this time feel different?
‘I’ll get you some stuff ready,’ she said formally, and he reached out and grabbed her arm.
‘Don’t bother. I don’t wear anything in bed anyway.’
Bryony swallowed hard, trying to dispel the mental image of Jack naked in her spare room.
For a woman who was not supposed to be thinking about Jack Rothwell, she was failing dismally.
‘Jack …’
‘What I really need is a hug.’ Without waiting for a response, he hauled her against him and she went into his arms, feeling the softness of his jumper covering the hard muscle of his chest and the strength of his arms as he held her. He gave a groan and tightened his hold, burying his face in her hair.
Bryony could hardly breathe. She felt the steady thud of his heart against her flushed cheek, felt her whole body tingle in response to the feel of his body against hers. He felt strong and safe and deliciously male.
They stood like that for a moment and she closed her eyes, wishing that it could last for ever. Wishing that it could lead to something more.
And then gradually his grip on her loosened and his hands slid slowly up her arms. His strong fingers curled into her shoulders and he looked down at her, his blue eyes suddenly intent on her face.
A warmth spread slowly through her pelvis and her whole body melted with longing.
She felt his fingers tighten, saw something flicker in his eyes and then his head lowered towards hers.
He was going to kiss her.
Finally, after so many years of dreaming about exactly that, Jack was going to kiss her.
Dizzy with excitement, Bryony stared up at him, breathless with anticipation.
And then suddenly his hands fell away from her shoulders and he stepped back, his handsome face blank of expression.
‘We should probably get some sleep, Blondie.’ His tone was light and he glanced at the clock on the wall. ‘It’s getting late.’
Bryony tried to smile but it was a poor effort. She felt swamped with a disappointment so powerful that it was almost a physical pain. She’d been so sure that he was going to kiss her.
But why would Jack kiss her?
She gritted her teeth, furious with herself. She was doing it again. Fantasising about Jack.
So much for her campaign to date other men. So far she’d been on one date that had been an utter disaster and she was still noticing Jack.
She had less than two months to find Lizzie a daddy, or at least someone who looked as though he had potential. It was time she made more effort.
She needed to kiss someone and see if that helped.
She needed to stop comparing everyone with Jack.
There must be another man who looked good in jeans. There must be another man who always knew exactly what to do when everyone around them was panicking. There must be another man who would make her knees wobble every time he walked into a room.
And she was going to find him.
CHAPTER FIVE
THE rest of November flew past and Annie’s condition gradually improved.
‘The burns are almost all round her skirt area,’ Jack told Bryony one day as they snatched a quick cup of coffee during a late shift. ‘I talked to the consultant last night. She’s going to need extensive skin grafts.’
‘Poor mite.’ Bryony pulled a face at the thought of the number of hospital stays Annie was going to have to endure. ‘It’s going to be so hard for her.’
Jack nodded. ‘But at least she’s alive. And Lizzie seems to have bounced back amazingly well.’
‘Yes.’ Bryony smiled. ‘I was worried about that but she’s doing fine. We’re visiting Annie a lot, which helps, and Lizzie has made it her mission to act as the link between Annie and the school. She’s been taking her all sorts of books and things to do and generally keeping her in touch with the gossip.’
‘She’s a great girl.’ Jack drained his coffee and sat back in his chair with a yawn, long legs stretched out in front of him. ‘So, Blondie. December the first tomorrow.’
Bryony stared gloomily into her coffee. ‘Don’t remind me. I now have less than a month to sort out Lizzie’s Christmas present, and I’m fast coming to the conclusion that it’s an impossible task.’
Jack looked at her quizzically, a strange light in his eyes. ‘So, is the romance with David Armstrong not working?’
Romance?
Bryony looked at him. ‘We’ve been on two dates. The first one we barely had time to talk because you kept calling—not that it was your fault that Lizzie was demanding that night,’ she added hastily, hoping that he didn’t think that she was complaining, ‘and the second date was disturbed because you called him back to the hospital to see a child. And that wasn’t your fault either.’
Jack looked at her, his expression inscrutable. ‘And he hasn’t asked you out since?’
‘Well, funnily enough, he rang me this morning,’ Bryony confided, ‘and he’s taking me to dinner at The Peacock on Saturday. Neither of us is on call and Lizzie is sleeping at my mother’s so this time there should be absolutely no interruptions.’
And this time she was going to kiss him.
She’d made up her mind that she was going to kiss him.
She was utterly convinced that kissing another man would cure her obsession with Jack.
David was a good-looking guy. She knew that lots of the nurses lusted after him secretly. He must know how to kiss.
And it was going to happen on Saturday. She was going to invite him in for coffee and she was going to kiss him.
The next day was incredibly busy.
‘It’s the roads,’ Sean said wearily as they snatched a five-minute coffee-break in the middle of a long and intensive shift. ‘They’re so icy and people drive too fast. I predict a nasty pile-up before the end of the evening.’
His prediction proved correct.
At seven o’clock the ambulance hotline rang. Bryony answered it and when she finally put the phone down both Sean and Jack were watching her expectantly.
‘Are you clairvoyant?’ She looked at Sean who shrugged.
‘Black ice. It was inevitable. What are the details?’
‘Twenty-two-year-old female, conscious but shocked and complaining of chest pains.’
She’d barely finished repeating what Ambulance Control had told her when the doors slammed open and the paramedics hurried in with the trolley.
‘Straight into Resus,’ Jack ordered and they transferred the woman onto the trolley as smoothly as possible. While the rest of the team moved quickly into action he questioned the paramedics about the accident.
‘It was a side impact,’ the paramedic told him. ‘She was driving and the other vehicle went straight into her side. Her passenger walked away virtually unharmed. He’s giving her details to Reception now.’
Jack nodded and turned his attention back to the young woman, a frown on his face. ‘She has a neck haematoma. I want a chest X-ray, fast,’ he murmured, and looked at Bryony. ‘Have you got a line in?’
She nodded. ‘One.’
‘Put in another one,’ he ordered, ‘but hold the fluid. And cross-match ten units of blood.’
Bryony’s eyes widened. ‘Why?’
‘Just a feeling. Nicky, I want a BP from both arms,’ he said, gesturing to the staff to stand back while the radiographer took the chest film.
‘Her blood pressure is different in each arm,’ Nicky said quickly, and Jack nodded.
‘I thought it might be. She’s only slightly hypotensive so I want minimal fluid replacement for now.’
Bryony looked at him, waiting for a blonde joke or one of his usual quips that would ease the tension, but this time his eyes were fixed on the patient.
‘Fast-bleep the surgeons,’ he ordered, ‘and let’s take a look at that chest X-ray.’
They walked across to look at the chest X-ray and Bryony looked at him, able to talk now that they were away from the patient. ‘Why did you cross-match so much blood?’
‘Because I think she’s ruptured her aorta.’
Bryony’s eyes widened. ‘But a ruptured aorta has a 90 per cent mortality rate. She’d be dead.’
He squinted at the X-ray. ‘Unless the bleed is contained by the aortic adventitia. Then she’d be alive. But at risk of haemorrhage.’
Bryony stared at the X-ray, too, and Jack lifted an eyebrow.
‘OK, Blondie—impress me. What do you see?’
‘The mediastinum is widened.’
‘And is that significant?’
Bryony chewed her lip and delved into her brain. ‘On its own, possibly not,’ she said, remembering something she’d read, ‘but taken with other factors …’
‘Such as?’
Bryony looked again, determined not to miss anything. ‘The trachea is deviated to the right. The aortic outline is blurred and the aortic knuckle is obliterated.’
‘What else?’
‘It’s cloudy.’ She peered closer at the X-ray. ‘I haven’t seen that before. Is it a haemothorax?’
‘Full marks.’ He gave her a lazy smile but his eyes glittered with admiration. ‘She has a right-sided haemothorax caused by a traumatic rupture of the thoracic aorta, which is currently contained. In this case we can see it clearly on the X-ray, but not always.’
Bryony looked at him and felt her heart thud harder. The patient was lucky to be alive. ‘So what happens now?’
‘She needs urgent surgical repair. In the meantime, we need to give fluid cautiously, otherwise the adventitia could rupture and she’ll have a fatal haemorrhage.’
‘So presumably we also need to give her good pain relief so that her blood pressure doesn’t go up?’
His eyes rested on her shiny blonde hair and he shook his head solemnly. ‘Amazing.’
She poked her tongue out discreetly and he gave her a sexy smile that made her knees wobble.
Fortunately, at that moment the surgeons walked into the room and provided a distraction. They all conferred, agreeing to take the woman to Theatre right away for surgical repair.
‘So what exactly do they do?’ Bryony asked Jack after the woman had been safely handed over to the surgeons and they were left to deal with the debris in Resus.
‘Depends.’ He ripped off his gloves and dropped them into the bin. ‘They’ll attempt a surgical repair.’
‘And if they can’t repair it?’
‘Then they’ll do a vascular graft.’
Bryony helped Nicky to clean the trolley. ‘But what made you suspect an aortic rupture? I always thought patients died at the scene of the accident.’
‘Well, if they’re alive it basically suggests a partial injury,’ he told her. ‘It’s often hard to diagnose on X-ray. A widened mediastinum doesn’t necessarily indicate an abnormality. But in her case there were other classic chest X-ray signs and she had clinical signs too. The neck haematoma, asymmetric BP and chest pain.’
‘And if the X-ray hadn’t been clear?’
‘I would have talked to the consultant radiologist and we would have done a multi-slice CT scan. It’s worth finding out as much as you can about the details of the accident. The paramedic told us her car had been hit on the driver’s side. A significant number of blunt traumatic aortic ruptures are caused by side impact.’
Bryony stared at him in fascination. ‘What’s the pathology?’
‘Basically a sudden deceleration such as a fall from a height or an RTA allows the mobile parts of the aorta to keep moving. It usually tears where the aorta is tethered to the pulmonary vein—’
