Chapter Five
‘HOW WERE YOUR days off?’ May asked.
‘Great.’
Rachel’s response was a little stilted—and not just because Dominic was sitting at the crowded nurses’ station. He was writing up some notes after a frantic morning, during which a serious head injury and a cardiac arrest had arrived simultaneously, all on Rachel’s first full shift in Resus.
So much for hardly seeing him!
And she felt particularly awkward because she’d told no one about her break-up with Gordon. There was no need to just yet, she’d decided. After all, it wasn’t as if she’d ever worn her ring at work. And it just felt somehow safer to say she was in a relationship when she was around Dominic.
Well, not safer.
But there was no point muddying things.
‘Did you end up going home?’ May persisted with the conversation.
‘Yes,’ Rachel said, and then checked herself, because she was being aloof. It was only Dominic she had to remember to stay entirely professional and polite with—not her colleagues. ‘I had dinner with my dad and his new girlfriend.’
‘How was it?’ May asked.
‘Awkward,’ Rachel admitted. ‘Though she seems nice and everything.’
‘Well, I’m sure you’ll soon get used to her.
’ May smiled and then picked up a large envelope and waved it in Dominic’s face.
‘I need your deposit for the night out. Cash only—I can’t be doing with your apps and things.
If you change your mind, you won’t get it back.
’ She read down her list to see who else was on it. ‘What about you, Jordan?’
‘Heather and I will be there.’ Jordan nodded. ‘I’ll have to get the cash to you another day.’
‘What about you, Rachel? Oh, you’ve already paid. What was your man’s name again?’
‘Gordon!’ Dominic answered for her, with a tart edge that May must have caught because she gave a slow blink.
‘So it is!’
‘I can’t wait,’ Tara chimed in, with a smile aimed at Dominic. Rachel felt her nostrils do that pinched thing all over again. ‘We’re going Greek!’
‘Fantastikós,’ Dominic said, and took his wallet out and peeled off the necessary notes. ‘I’m looking forward to it.’
* * *
Indeed Dominic was. Now.
He wanted to be very sure that Rachel Walker didn’t think that the fact she’d once been Rachel Hadley gave her any say in how he lived his life.
‘Right,’ he said, and stood. ‘I’m headed up to Maternity before they page me again.’
I’ve got this, Dominic decided as he made his way.
He and Rachel were all caught up. There was nothing left to say.
There was no way he was going to change his life, or tiptoe around Rachel. They’d spoken, she’d said she was fine with them working in the same building, and she was engaged to someone else. They had both moved on.
But he couldn’t deny he was keen to see this Gordon chap for himself.
The man who made Rachel happy.
His skin crawled at the very thought of it, and his jaw was clamped even as he entered the ward.
‘Dominic!’ Freya, the midwife who was Richard’s wife, greeted him warmly as he stepped into the delivery suite. ‘We’ve been waiting for you.’
‘I’m sorry it took me so long.’ He introduced himself, and apologised to both the patient and her partner for the delay.
‘Just don’t run off.’ The patient, Sonia, gave a weak smile that soon changed into a grimace of agony.
‘The last anaesthetist got paged to go to Theatre just as Freya was getting things ready,’ explained Josh, Sonia’s partner.
‘Well, I can vouch for Dominic,’ Freya said. ‘He gave me my epidural and I’ve been crazy about him ever since.’
It was one of Freya’s funny little stories to relax women in labour.
As Dominic set up, he looked over at Josh, who was comforting Sonia and telling her how great she was doing. They were both so young.
Dominic gave a lot of epidurals, and usually he could just shut his mind down on the past and get on with the job. But there were days—and this was one of them—when it was impossible to keep the memories away.
‘We’ll have you feeling a lot more comfortable very soon,’ he said as he washed his hands and then put on surgical gloves.
Sonia was amazing. Her partner held her hand and shared a worried glance with Sonia’s mother, who was stroking back her hair from her sweaty face. There was just so much love and support in the room.
There was no real comparison to when he and Rachel had gone through this, Dominic told himself. This baby, soon to be born, was healthy and full-term, yet for some reason it was just getting to him, when usually Dominic refused to allow it to do so.
With the epidural secured, he stepped back, and Josh, along with Freya, helped Sonia lie back on the delivery bed.
‘You’ll be feeling much better soon,’ Dominic said.
‘I think I’m already starting to.’
‘Told you he was good!’ Freya said.
Dominic ran through his instructions again, and Freya thanked him as he left, but as he stepped out of the delivery suite, it felt as if the sound of all the babies crying in the unit was playing in stereo in his head.
Wah, wah, wah.
He sat there, trying to write up his notes, as the tiny babies cried and wailed. And all he could think was that he couldn’t recall the features of his son with the precision he required.
Dominic didn’t have so much as a photo of him.
Rachel had them all.
But it wasn’t just her reappearance in his life that had him wanting a photo. He’d tried to get one a few years ago, but the hospital where his son had been born had long since closed down.
Wah, wah, wah.
For Dominic, the worst part was that, despite having been told he had died, despite having seen his still, silent heart on the ultrasound while he was still in Rachel’s womb—despite all that—when he’d been born, when Dominic had seen his son for the first time he had still expected him to cry.
Dominic put down his pen and buried his face in his hands, not even noticing that Freya had come to the desk.
‘You okay, Dominic?’ she checked.
Normally he’d make a joke—especially to a colleague—and laugh it off. But right now he could not make a joke and he could not laugh it off. He was at work on a ward, updating his charts, and about to break down. That would never do.
‘Dominic?’ Freya checked again.
‘I’ve got a thumping headache.’
He didn’t, but for appearances’ sake Dominic accepted a glass of water and took a couple of headache pills.
No, he and Rachel were not all caught up. They had some unfinished business after all.
He wanted those photos and he was going to ask her for them.
Having made the decision, he headed back down to Emergency. There he found Rachel, restocking the drawers in the Resus nurses’ station, and as he tried to decide how best to broach the subject, she shot him a look.
‘What?’ Dominic said, surprised at the venom in her look when she was normally so inscrutable.
‘You know very well what.’
‘I don’t.’
‘You. Earlier,’ she said. ‘Answering for me.’
‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’
‘Telling May Gordon’s name.’
‘So? May forgets names all the time. It was just a little sarcasm aimed at her,’ Dominic lied smoothly. ‘I was pointing out that even I know your fiancé’s name.’
He knew that not for a second did she believe him.
‘Don’t do it again,’ Rachel warned. ‘I’m doing my level best to stop this from getting out.’
‘Guess what, Rachel?’ Dominic answered. ‘You don’t get to tell me what to do. Don’t you remember that conversation we had in the canteen?’
He took a seat and tried to focus on what he’d come here to ask, but Rachel incensed him out of all reasonable proportion with all her no-go zones.
Even the scent of her hair as she filled the drawers incensed him—because even all these years on beneath it was the scent of her. And it made him speak without thinking.
‘I don’t see why it has to be such a secret.’
‘Don’t you?’ she checked.
‘No. I honestly don’t.’
‘Perhaps I don’t want it to get out that I was married to The Primary Hospital’s own resident alley cat.’
‘Ha-ha.’ He said it sarcastically.
‘You’ve changed,’ she accused.
* * *
And it wasn’t just because he’d become something of a womaniser, thought Rachel. The Dominic she had known had been loyal and faithful. Something twisted inside her as she recalled the slightly shy, somewhat awkward boy she had once known.
But Dominic wasn’t apologising for anything these days.
‘Of course I’ve changed,’ he retorted. ‘From what I recall, the old me wasn’t getting very far.’ And then he warned her with a pointing of his finger. ‘Don’t try and police me, Rachel.’
So much for professional and polite!
‘I’m just trying to keep the past where it belongs. I’ve barely been here a week and I do not want to be the topic of gossip.’
She had filled every drawer bar one, and to show him he didn’t affect her in the least, she asked him to move—just as she would if it were anyone else—so she could get the last one done.
‘Excuse me,’ she said.
He shifted his knees to the left without a word, and as her arm brushed his, Rachel wondered if the fire alarms were about to go off, because his very touch scorched.
‘Thanks.’
To her displeasure, she knew they were both turned on and trying very hard not to be.
‘We clearly need to talk,’ Dominic said. ‘But away from here.’
‘I don’t think we do. We’ve already talked, in the canteen, and said all that needs to be said.’
‘There’s something I need to ask you and I’m not comfortable doing it at work. Look, I don’t want to make any trouble between you and your fiancé...’
She opened her mouth to tell him that she and Gordon had split up, but closed it as he continued.
‘There’s that pub I told you about, just across the road from the main entrance,’ Dominic said. ‘I’m on until six...’
Rachel shook her head. ‘I finish at four.’
‘Then I’ll speak to Richard and see if I can get away early. I’ll be there around five and I’d really appreciate it if you would join me.’