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‘If we haven’t found those dream people by the time we’re...oh...say, thirty-five...let’s marry each other.’
‘Why would you want to marry me?’
‘I might be desperate by then.’
‘Cheers, mate.’
‘Oh, come on...it was a joke.’
‘Your idea of getting married is a joke.’
‘No... I’m serious. Let’s make a pact. If we’re both still single when we’re thirty-five, we’ll marry each other. Okay?’
She’d drained her glass of champagne, pushed her hair out of her eyes and given him a curiously intent stare. And then she’d done it. Agreed to the pact.
‘Okay. You’re on.’
‘So it’s a pact? Signed and sealed?’
‘It’s a pact. But now I need to go to sleep.’
Ancient memories but good ones.
Yes. It was extraordinarily good to see Kate again. Best of all, he had discovered that she lived close enough to his new home town that they would be able to see each other whenever they both had some free time.
Unless she had a boyfriend, of course. Thanks to Matteo’s conversation with Georgia last night, he now knew that Kate wasn’t married and that she was sharing a house with Georgia, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t someone else in the picture. Why wouldn’t there be? Kate was gorgeous, with that impressive intelligence shining from those bright, blue eyes. And he liked that her hair was a bit longer these days. The blonde bob almost touched her shoulders and had a bit of a swing to it.
Not that it would be a problem if she had a significant other in her life. It could mean that Luke’s circle of friends was about to expand, in fact. Maybe they could even double date. He and Matteo had had a lot of fun doing that in Milan. Nothing serious, mind you. Matteo might be dead keen to settle down and start a family of his own with the woman of his dreams but Luke had abandoned any such fairy-tale long ago. At about the same moment he’d learned that his marriage was a complete sham. As he’d remarked so bitterly to Kate, he had no intention of ever losing his head—or his heart—over a woman again.
Still...he wasn’t getting any younger. It would be a shame to miss out completely and spend the rest of his life caring for other people’s children...
* * *
The noise coming from the other side of the door was enough to make Kate and Georgia share a startled glance.
A party? At this time of the day?
Georgia pounded on the door. ‘Ambulance,’ she yelled.
There was no response, so she opened the door. They walked straight into a living room and there were at least half a dozen people, talking loudly enough to hear each other over the music. A bottle of vodka was being passed around and glasses clinked together. Nobody took the least bit of notice of the newcomers.
‘Hello...’ An earlier coin toss had decided that Kate was taking the lead role in this first scenario and she approached the nearest person. ‘Did someone call for an ambulance?’
‘Not me,’ the young man replied. ‘Hey...’ He put his arm around a young woman. ‘Let’s dance...’
Kate blinked. This was nothing like she had expected. Where were the officials that would be judging their performance? Where was someone who looked remotely like a patient?
Georgia’s eyes narrowed as she caught Kate’s glance and she raised her voice loudly enough to be heard by everyone.
‘Oi...’
The vodka carrier lowered the bottle. Heads turned in surprise.
‘Someone called an ambulance,’ Georgia said sternly. ‘Who was it?’
‘Oh...’ There was a man sitting in the corner of the room, leaning on the wall. ‘That was me. My girlfriend is upstairs. She’s lying down because she has a bad stomach ache.’
‘Anything else we should know?’
‘No. I don’t think so.’ The man raised a glass as he smiled at them. ‘Oh, she is pregnant. Is that important?’
Turning swiftly, they raced up a narrow set of stairs to find themselves in a bedroom and here it was. The scenario...
Two judges with clipboards were standing by. A young woman was sitting on a bed and she was holding a manikin of a newborn infant wrapped in a T-shirt.
‘Check mum and get her history,’ Kate told Georgia. ‘I’ll check the baby.’
The young mother didn’t want to let go of her baby.
‘How long ago was the baby born?’
‘Only a minute...maybe two...’
‘Have you heard it cry?’
‘No. No... Please don’t take my baby away...’
‘It’s okay,’ Georgia told her. ‘We just want to help you. Kate’s a baby doctor.’
Kate moved the folds of the T-shirt to reveal the baby’s face. The cord was wrapped tightly around the baby’s neck.
‘The baby is blue,’ one of the judges said.
Kate scooped the manikin from the patient’s arms. She turned to find that Georgia had stopped her examination of the mother for the moment. She’d laid a towel on the floor and had the kit opened, with the paediatric resuscitation gear that Kate would need within easy reach. A suction bulb, a tiny bag mask unit and tubes in case intubation was necessary.
‘No significant haemorrhage from the mother,’ Georgia told her. ‘And she has a radial pulse.’
Kate nodded approvingly. ‘Thanks.’ If the mother had a radial pulse it indicated that her blood pressure was adequate and that meant they could both focus on saving the life of this baby.
She laid the baby on the towel and positioned its head to ensure the airway was clear.
‘Can I feel a pulse?’ Kate asked swiftly, her fingers now on the baby’s neck.
‘The pulse is thirty,’ the judge said.
‘Can I see or feel any movements of respiration?’ Kate already knew what the answer was likely to be. This infant hadn’t cried and its colour meant that it was receiving no more oxygen than the umbilical cord was hopefully still providing.
‘The baby is not breathing,’ the judge confirmed.
Kate gave five puffs of oxygen through the bag mask unit and then started CPR, which was needed even though there was a pulse to be felt. The heart rate was too slow and the baby wasn’t breathing on its own yet.
She handed the bag mask to Georgia, who had positioned herself at the baby’s head.
‘Three to one?’
Georgia nodded. With only two fingers on the baby’s chest, Kate kept her compressions gentle but swift. After every three compressions, she paused for a moment to allow Georgia to administer a puff of air. At the same time, she kept an eye on the mother, reassuring her that they were doing all they could and watching for any signs of a post-partum haemorrhage that they would need to manage.
Every thirty seconds, she checked what the baby’s heart rate was. It crept up to forty and then sixty.
‘The heart rate is now over eighty,’ the judge informed them after a few minutes.
‘Colour?’
‘Getting pink.’
‘Breathing?’
‘Yes, she’s breathing. She’s crying now.’ The judge was smiling. ‘Well done.’
Kate put the baby back into its mother’s arms and wrapped them both warmly. ‘Keep her against your skin,’ she said.
‘Is she going to be all right?’
‘She’s going to be fine.’ Kate smiled. ‘Congratulations. You have a beautiful baby daughter.’
The young woman was a very good actor. Kate could swear she had tears of relief in her eyes as she thanked her rescuers and cuddled her newborn. The whole scenario had felt so real that Kate found she was having an emotional response of her own. One that she had had many times in her career—the sheer wonder of a new life being brought into the world and...
And envy of the mother who got to hold it and know it was her own?
Good grief. The baby was plastic and the whole scenario, however brilliantly acted, was not real. While this competition set out to test and even improve the skills of the participants, it was nothing more than a game. Kate needed to step back and not become so involved with the stories or she would be too exhausted to be a good partner for Georgia by the time the night tasks came along.
‘That was awesome,’ Georgia said, as soon as they shut the front door behind them again. ‘You were awesome. I think we smashed that one.’
‘We certainly saved the baby. And the judges looked happy.’ Kate checked her watch and then opened the back hatch of the car. ‘We’ve only got ten minutes to locate our next task. We’d better get a move on.’
But Georgia had paused. She was waving. ‘Look—there’s Matteo and Luke in that car. They must be next.’
‘I wonder how long it’ll take before they figure out their patient isn’t downstairs.’ Kate felt a sudden urge to help Luke out. To give him a clue...
‘It’s no wonder it’s against the rules to talk about the scenarios until it’s all over.’ Georgia slung her kit into the back. ‘And I got the feeling that Matteo is as much a stickler for the rules as you are, Kate. You two would get on very well.’
‘I’m not here on a man hunt. What’s the matter? Don’t you like him?’
Georgia shrugged. ‘He’s cute but there are a lot of fish in this particular sea and today is not the day to be casting my net.’
Kate snorted. She knew Georgia quite well enough to know that she wasn’t the least bit serious about finding a casual sexual partner just for fun. This was just bravado, that was all. Was she trying to prove to the world that she was over the last disaster and more than ready to move on?
Pausing for a moment, before climbing into the driver’s seat, Kate turned her head to look at the car parked a little further up the road. She lifted her hand in greeting and, by the instant response as he raised his, she knew that Luke had been watching her.
A weird frisson of something she couldn’t identify rippled through her belly. Was it a little disturbing to have someone from her past suddenly appear in her life like this? As if Luke was some kind of ghost?
Or was it just nice to have reconnected with an old and very dear friend?
Yeah...that had to be it. Because the feeling was too pleasant to be a warning.
* * *
‘Look...they’re coming out of the house.’
Luke found himself hunkering down in his seat a little. It was pure coincidence that they were the next team for this particular scenario but, oddly, it felt like he was pushing himself back into Kate’s life or something. Stalking her, even? Was she as pleased to see him as he’d been to see her?
Maybe not. It had been Georgia who’d spotted them and waved. Kate had seemed intent on putting her gear back into the car and checking her watch. Of course she would be making sure she was going to be on time for the next task—that was so like Kate. Responsible and reliable. And she was taking this contest seriously, as she did everything she became involved with.
It looked as though she was going to get in the car and simply drive off, but then she paused and looked straight at him and there was a smile to go with her wave.
Luke let out a breath he hadn’t realised he’d been holding as he raised his hand in response. A sigh of something like relief as something clicked back into place. The connection of their friendship, perhaps, where he didn’t have to worry about how his actions might be interpreted. A place he could relax in and simply be himself.
‘Be nice to have an idea of what we’re heading into,’ he said. ‘They weren’t giving away any clues, were they?’
‘And neither should they,’ Matteo said sternly. ‘That would be dishonest.’
‘Not exactly.’ Matteo liked to have his English improved. ‘Dishonesty is when you fail to tell the truth. Breaking the rules of the competition to give someone else an advantage would be dishonourable rather than dishonest.’
‘Hmm...’ Matteo absorbed the correction. ‘They are both unacceptable.’
‘Too right they are,’ Luke agreed.
The first scenario was initially confusing but, as soon as they discovered that the party was a red herring, the two men worked well on their paediatric resuscitation. In the next task, they found a man who’d summoned an ambulance because of sudden back pain and nausea. Diagnosing a case of kidney stones was easy but there was a twist in the case because the man had an anaphylactic allergic reaction to the morphine they administered for pain relief.
The twist was unexpected but Matteo spotted the first symptoms within seconds and they both reacted swiftly, attaching a bag of fluids to the IV line already in place and drawing up and administering drugs to counteract the reaction. Then they had to answer questions from one of the judges about which of the available hospitals they would be transferring their patient to.
‘Hospital A,’ Luke told them. ‘They have an internal medicine department and an intensive care unit and they are the closest.’
‘And what is the most important information to pass on about your patient?’
‘That he has a previously undiscovered allergy to morphine. We will write it on his notes and make sure the information is received by everyone we speak to. We will also advise the patient that it would be a good idea to wear a medic alert bracelet from now on.’
‘That was good.’ Matteo slapped Luke on the back as they left the house. ‘I might not have thought of recommending the bracelet.’
‘I was too slow to spot the change in our patient’s condition. Well done, you.’
Matteo grinned at him. ‘We make a good team.’
‘We’ve got a break now, haven’t we? About an hour?’
‘We should use it to do the driving test.’
‘Okay.’ The driving test was something they could do at any point of the day. A gravelled area beside the river that ran through this village had been cordoned off. A line of orange road cones marked the test area. They could see an ambulance completing the test as they arrived, clouds of dust billowing as it snaked around the cones at high speed and then came to a sudden halt between the cones marking the end of the course.
