Chapter 2
The next day, in her other role as a registered nurse at St Auburn’s, Nat had finished her stint in Outpatients, where she’d been sent for a few hours to cover sick leave, and was heading back to her usual home – the accident and emergency department – to quickly check in before she went for a late lunch.
Which meant her stomach was protesting – loudly.
Hell, she could almost taste the hot meat pie from the staff dining room she’d been thinking about for the last hour and a half.
Add to that being awake half the night thinking very inappropriate thoughts about Julian’s father and his rather enticing mouth and she was hungry and irritable.
She’d known she was going to dream about that mouth.
‘Oh, good, you’re back.’ Imogen Reddy, the nurse in charge, practically leaped on her as she stepped back into the department.
‘I need another experienced hand. It’s Looney Tunes here.
Code One just arrived in Resus. Seventy-two-year-old male, suspected MI.
Can you get in and give the new registrar a hand?
Delia’s there but she was due off half an hour ago and hasn’t even had time for a break. Can you take over and send her home?’
Nat looked around at the bedlam. Just another crazy day at St Auburn’s Accident and Emergency.
And they wondered why she kept knocking back a full-time position.
Nat’s stomach growled a warning at her but she knew there was no way she could let a seven-month pregnant colleague do overtime on an empty stomach.
She smiled at her boss. ‘Resus. Sure thing.’
Nat stopped just outside the resus cubicle and pulled a pair of medium gloves out of a dispenser attached to the wall. She snapped them on, took a deep breath, flicked back the curtain and entered the fray.
‘Okay, Delia. You’re off,’ she said, smiling at her colleague, who happened to be the first person she saw amidst the chaos. ‘Go home, put your feet up and feed the foetus.’
Delia’s shoulders sagged and she gave Nat a grateful smile. ‘Are you sure?’ She turned and addressed the doctor. ‘Are you okay if I go, Alessandro? You’re getting a much better deal. Nat here is Super-Nurse.’
Alessandro?
Nat swung around to find Alessandro Lombardi, all big and brooding, behind her. So… not a surgeon then…
The bustle, the sounds of the oxygen and the monitors around her faded out as she stared into those coalpit-black eyes.
They were alert, radiating intelligence, but if anything, he looked more tired than he had yesterday.
He stared back just as images from last night’s dreams rather unhelpfully bombarded her brain.
Well… fuck! He was the new registrar?
Working part-time generally kept Nat out of the loop with medical staff comings and goings, which was, she belatedly realised, a mistake. Had she known she was going to see the damn man at work every day she’d have been better prepared.
His gaze flicked to Delia. ‘Of course.’
Then he turned back to the patient and Nat felt thoroughly dismissed. Had she had time she might have been miffed but her patient caught her attention. ‘Super-Nurse, hey?’ he croaked behind his oxygen mask.
Nat dragged her gaze from the back of Alessandro’s head to assess the patient. He was sweaty and grey with massive ST changes on his monitor. Multiple ectopic beats were worrying and, as she watched, a short run of ventricular tachycardia interrupted his rhythm.
His heart muscle was dying.
He was also in pain despite the morphine that she noted had already been administered, but despite all that, there was still a twinkle in his bright eyes. He was obviously one of those stoic old men who didn’t believe in complaining too much.
‘Yes, sir.’ She reached for his hand and gave it a squeeze. ‘That’s me. To the rescue.’
The patient gave a weak chuckle. ‘Ernie,’ he puffed out. ‘Looks like I’m in safe hands.’
Nat glanced at Alessandro. She hoped so. She hoped he was better at doctoring than he was at communicating. At fathering. ‘The very best.’
‘What’s the ETA on the CCU docs?’ Alessandro asked, his gaze fixed on the monitor.
‘Couple of minutes,’ came from somewhere behind.
There was a tension to the man’s frame that spoke more than any words and Nat could see why.
Ernie’s ECG was showing the evolution of a massive inferior myocardial infarction.
A glance at his chart told her they were administering the right drugs to halt the progress of the heart attack but these patients were notoriously unstable, and with age against Ernie, Nat understood Alessandro’s tension.
A quick flick of his dark gaze in her direction and she saw his concern. Alessandro was clearly not liking the way this was heading. And, with good reason, as it turned out. Not two minutes later, Ernie’s monitor alarm split through the activity around the bed and he lost consciousness.
‘VF,’ Nat announced as the green line on the screen developed into a series of frenetic squiggles. Her own heart rate spiked as a charge of adrenaline shot through her system like vodka on an empty stomach.
‘Commence CPR,’ Alessandro ordered. ‘I’ll intubate. Adrenaline please and get some defib pads in situ.’
Nat, being the closest, hiked the skirt of her uniform up her thighs as she climbed on to the narrow gurney. She planted her knees wide and balanced on the edge of the mattress – a feat she’d performed a little too often – as she started compressions.
Any ill will she may have been harbouring towards Dr Lombardi fizzled in an instant at the totally professional way he ran the code.
It was textbook. But that wasn’t doing him justice.
It was more than textbook. He didn’t see a seventy-two-year-old man and give up after a few minutes. He gave Ernie every chance.
It wasn’t until the down time reached thirty minutes that he finally called it.
Placing his hands on Nat’s, stilling their downward trajectory, he said, ‘Thank you.’ Then he looked at the clock. ‘Time of death fourteen twenty-five hours.’
Nat looked down at his hands. She could just see her own through the gloved fingers of his. She noticed for the first time his sleeves were rolled back to reveal the dark hair of his bronzed forearms and she absently thought how strong they looked.
She glanced at him and their eyes locked, a strange solidarity uniting them.
His gaze turned bleak, and she knew in this moment of finality and rapidly depleting adrenaline that he was as affected by Ernie’s death as she.
A beat passed, then another before he shuttered his eyes and removed his hands, extending one to help her off the gurney.
Dragging her gaze from him, Nat accepted it, easing back to the floor, her knees nearly buckling as she snatched her hand back, grabbing for the edge of the trolley to steady herself.
‘Are you okay?’ he asked as he watched her wobble slightly.
Nat rubbed her at her knees. ‘Fine.’
Except, staring down at Ernie, she knew she wasn’t.
Ernie was dead. It didn’t matter that she had known Ernie for less than an hour – he was still dead.
Gone. The twinkle in his eyes extinguished forever.
In fact, if anything, it was worse that she didn’t know him.
It was wrong that a person should die surrounded by strangers.
So, no, she wasn’t fine. She was, as always in these situations, overwhelmingly sad.
Nodding curtly, he said, ‘We need to talk to his family.’
It was an order, not a request, backed up by his cold onyx gaze, no trace of the humanity she’d glimpsed a moment ago. Had she imagined that? ‘Sure.’
Her tummy growled again and she bargained with it for another half an hour.
As he strode ahead of her, Nat hustled to keep up with the coolly efficient Italian, worrying about his ability to communicate such devastating news.
Sure, the view was good – ass-hugging trousers and a shirt that barely contained the broadness of his back – but none of that meant he was remotely equipped to talk to grieving relatives.
He was, after all, still grieving himself. Had Ernie’s death stirred the embers of Alessandro’s sorrow?
Nat didn’t think for a moment this was his first time giving this kind of news, but if he was as emotionally disconnected with this family as he was with his son, it could be disastrous for them.
As a nurse, she was used to being involved in these conversations but, too often, she’d been left to pick up the pieces after a doctor, ill equipped for this sort of situation, swept out of the room.
She contemplated saying something as she tried to keep up with his impossibly long stride but his terse this is none of your business from yesterday still rang in her ears and she didn’t want to annoy him before this heart-wrenching job.
Telling someone their loved one had died was always dreadful – Nat would rather clean bedpans than witness the devastating effects of those awful few words – but if Alessandro botched it, Ernie’s family were going to need someone with a little more compassion to sit with them afterwards and she couldn’t back away from that.
No matter how much she wanted to.
Much to her surprise, Alessandro was, again, totally confounding.
He spoke softly, his accent more apparent as he gently outlined what had happened and how they’d tried but, in the end, there had been nothing they could do to bring Ernie back.
The family cried and got angry and asked questions and Alessandro was calm and gentle and patient.
He was compassion personified.
And at the end, when Ernie’s wife tentatively put out her hand to bridge the short distance between Alessandro and herself and then thought better of it and withdrew it, it was he who reached out and took her hand.