Chapter 9
A couple of days later Nat was working triage when her friend Peyton walked through the doors, cradling her listless three-year-old daughter, McKenzie. The child was pale with mottled limbs.
Peyton had been through the wringer in the last few years. McKenzie, a twin, had been born at twenty-seven weeks. She and her twin sister, Daisy, had been very frail and while McKenzie had defied the odds, Daisy had died after a four-month uphill battle.
It had been a devastating time, compounded by her husband leaving shortly after and McKenzie’s chronic health issues. Peyton looked like she hadn’t slept in a lot of days, her brow furrowed. A far cry from the vibrant woman she’d known back in Perth.
Nat didn’t know how she kept going. Not only did she care for her high-needs daughter but she also had to work part time, as Arnie, her rat-fink ex, refused to pay for anything more than he absolutely had to.
‘Oh dear, she’s not looking well, is she?’ Nat murmured.
‘I think she’s got another chest infection.’
Nat heard the tremor in her friend’s voice and ushered her into the privacy of the small triage room. Peyton looked as if she was at breaking point and Nat knew her friend, who was running on pride alone, would hate to break down in front of an emergency room full of strangers.
Peyton sat in a chair, hugging McKenzie close.
She turned beseeching eyes on Nat. ‘She’s due to have her operation next week, Nat.
’ She rocked slightly, choking on a sob.
‘It took me eighteen months to get her off oxygen and two years to get her to ten kilos and we’ve had to postpone it three times. Not again, please not again.’
Nat gave Peyton’s shoulder a squeeze. ‘Hey, one step at a time, okay? Let’s get her seen to first, huh? I’ll just take her temp.’
Peyton looked at Nat as she placed the digital thermometer under an unprotesting McKenzie’s arm. She gave her friend a watery smile. ‘Sorry. Of course. It’s just I don’t know if I can take much more of this. Thank God for Mum and Dad, or I would have gone mad years ago.’
Peyton’s parents had been a terrific support after Arnie had abandoned their daughter. Nat smiled gently at her friend. ‘You’re doing fine, Peyton. Just fine.’
The thermometer beeped, confirming an alarmingly high temp. ‘When did you last give her something for her fever?’
‘Just before I got in the car,’ Peyton said.
Nat placed a stethoscope in her ears and listened to McKenzie’s chest. It sounded like a symphony orchestra led by a tone-deaf conductor inside her chest – wheezing, squeaking and crackling away.
She slipped a saturation probe on to McKenzie’s toe and the number only read 90 per cent.
Peyton looked at Nat and worried her bottom lip with her teeth.
‘Come on. Come through and I’ll get Alessandro to look at her.’
Peyton stood. ‘I hear he’s excellent.’
Nat nodded, avoiding her friend’s gaze. ‘The very best.’
Nat set Peyton up in a cubicle and placed a set of nasal prongs on McKenzie’s face.
The child, well used to the plastic in her nose and too sick to care, didn’t protest. Nat used a low-flow meter to set the oxygen at a trickle.
She smiled at Peyton, her heart going out to her utterly exhausted friend. ‘I’ll be right back.’
Nat found Alessandro in the cubicle they used for eye patients.
It was set up with a special microscope for high-powered viewing of the eye.
She’d triaged Bill Groper fifteen minutes ago after a workplace accident had seen boiling fat splashed into his eye.
Alessandro was leaning forward in his chair, his feet flat on the floor, his legs wide apart to accommodate the low table the microscope rested on.
He was staring into the eyepieces, examining his patient’s eyes.
Bill sat opposite, his chin on the plate, looking in from the other side.
She noticed immediately how the position emphasised the broad expanse of Alessandro’s back and how it tapered down to narrow hips.
One strong leg, bent at the knee, was positioned slightly out to the side and the dark fabric of his trousers pulled across his thigh, outlining the slab of muscle she knew, from living in close proximity, defined his upper leg.
She waited for him to finish, knowing that Peyton needed time to pull herself together and McKenzie’s condition would benefit from the supplemental oxygen.
‘You certainly did a good job of it, Bill,’ Alessandro murmured, as he pulled away from the eyepieces. ‘Bullseye on your cornea.’
‘Never do anything by halves, Doc.’
Nat sensed rather than saw Alessandro’s momentary eyelid flicker which told her he knew she was there. It was probably imperceptible to most, but after a few days of cohabitation and an almost electric awareness of him, she was coming to know all his cues – both obvious and subtle.
Alessandro continued with his patient. ‘It’s not too bad, though, only superficial by the look of it. Some antibiotic eyedrops should work like a charm.’
Nat lounged against the doorframe and waited.
She was used to him ignoring her now anyway.
It was a policy they’d both adopted and, as far as it went, it wasn’t such a bad idea.
There was an attraction there. He knew it.
She knew it. It hummed between them like a palpable force, like powerful magnets irresistibly drawn to each other.
But acknowledging it out loud was just plain dumb when neither of them was going to do anything about it. So, they were polite. They addressed each other when required and worked together with utter professionalism. In short, they carried on as if nothing had ever happened.
Like he’d never licked Napolitano sauce off her chest.
When Alessandro stood, Nat spoke. ‘Excuse me, Dr Lombardi. I have a patient for you.’
He didn’t say anything as he looked at her fully, just a brief nod of acknowledgement before turning back to his patient. He held out his hand and shook Bill’s. ‘I’ll send someone in with some drops for you.’
Nat stepped back from the doorway as Alessandro passed by, cool and distantly polite – professionalism personified. She fell into step beside him. ‘Three-year-old ex-twenty-seven-weeker. Twin one. Twin two died at four months of age.’
Ignoring the lurch of her cells at his nearness, Nat launched into the standard summary she’d give any doctor she was handing over to.
Here at St Auburn’s she was a nursing professional and she would be professional if it killed her.
Even if she did want to find the nearest vacant room and tear all his clothes off.
‘Chronic neonatal lung disease, oxygen dependent for first two years of life, recurrent chest infections, failure to thrive. I think she’s brewing another infection. Febrile. Sats ninety on room air. Bilateral chest crackles. Listless. Cool peripherally and mottled.’
Alessandro nodded as they walked. ‘What was her birth weight?’
Nat struggled to keep up with Alessandro’s stride, which seemed to lengthen with each footfall. ‘Twelve hundred grams.’
‘How many days ventilated.’
‘Twenty.’ The answers to his spitfire questions were well known to her but his emotionless firing of them was irritating.
‘Which cube?’
‘Eleven,’ she said as they drew level with the central nurses’ station.
‘Chart?’
She handed the thick file to him but kept hold of it. He frowned. ‘Problema?’
‘Peyton is that friend of mine I told you about in the lift that day. She lost a baby, her husband walked out and she’s dealing with her daughter’s fragile health.
McKenzie’s implant operation has been postponed three times in the last year and she’s supposed to go in next week for it and that probably won’t happen now so Peyton is…
a little emotional at the moment. Just… I don’t know…
’ She looked at his forbidding face. ‘Smile or something.’
Ignoring her jibe, he cut straight to the chase. ‘Implant?’
‘Sorry.’ Nat let go of the chart realising she’d left out a vital part of patient history. ‘Cochlear implant. McKenzie’s profoundly deaf.’
Unsurprised, he just nodded and said, ‘Are you coming?’
He didn’t wait for an answer and Nat followed him across to the cubicle.
The harsh screech of the curtain as he snapped it back didn’t bode well and she castigated herself for irritating him just prior to seeing Peyton.
But she needn’t have worried; he gave Peyton a gentle smile, his gaze flicking over a listless but awake McKenzie, before saying, ‘Hello, I’m Alessandro. ’
And signed, it too.
Nat’s eyes bugged, as did Peyton’s. ‘Oh. You sign?’
He smiled and nodded. ‘In a fashion. I have an aunt in Italy, who’s profoundly deaf. I spent a lot of time there as a kid. She was like a second mother to me. My cousin Val, her son, is a renowned cochlear implant surgeon in London.’
Continuing to sign as he spoke without giving it conscious thought told Nat all that she needed to know about his level of skill with the language. Not that McKenzie cared or could probably even understand his mixture of sign language but it was evident signing was very familiar to Alessandro.
And that was just the beginning. Nat marvelled at the change in Alessandro when he was with a patient.
He was great with McKenzie, getting her X-rayed, admitting her for intravenous antibiotics when the films revealed bilateral consolidation and quickly placing an IV.
He was especially good with Peyton, chatting about sign-language differences and asking her about the scheduled operation.
He was like a different man. Involved. Animated.
Connected. Now, if he could just be more like that at home she could walk out of their lives in a couple of months knowing it had all been worth it.
Even if it meant having to go to bed every night with a fire in her belly and a buzz in her blood that wouldn’t quit.