Dangerous Love (2 page)

CHAPTER TWO

“Someone didn’t get enough sleep today,” Josie Howard laughed when she walked up to the desk and caught ENP Sister Regan Tyler halfway through a yawn.

Someone didn’t get any sleep at all today if the truth was known Regan thought wryly. Thanks to the heating system breaking down at Oaks Drive School, her daughter had been sent home and Regan’s sleep time had been seriously compromised. Bless her heart, Georgie had tried very hard to be quiet, but Regan couldn’t sleep. A five year old needed supervision, not to mention company and in the end she’d given up even trying to snatch a few winks.

It was at times like this she found being a single parent hardest. How nice it would be to have someone say, “Get off to bed, love, you look all in. I’ll keep an eye on Georgie.” But there was only one someone she’d want to say that to her and that was a scenario so far out of the question it was way over the other side of the planet. Georgie’s father was long gone from her life and he wasn’t coming back.

Regan didn’t mind working nights, but it wasn’t an easy shift when you had a five year old daughter – a very lively daughter at that. Lally Shires stayed over to look after Georgie when Regan worked the night shift. She was a good neighbour, a nice woman and a real friend.

She picked up the records of the next patient waiting in Minors and gave Josie a grin. “Stanley Bishop again – I wonder what it is this time?”

“Poor old guy,” Josie said, screwing her face up. “But I’m glad he’s yours.”

“Ah, he says it’s his heart,” Regan sighed as she checked the admission card. “But I guess it probably has more to do with this heavy rain. I daresay sleeping under the arches gets pretty damp in this weather.”

“We’re not a homeless shelter, Regan,” Josie said, but her pretty grey eyes weren’t without sympathy. There was something gentle and harmless about old Stanley and if coming in here got him out of the wind and the rain for a little while, then who was to know? If Minors happened to be busy on a night that Stanley came in, then he was left in chairs to wait the night out and often left the department when the sun came up and before the day shift arrived.

If he happened to call in on an extremely busy night, then he slipped quietly away again, especially if Mike Anson, the department head was about.

“I just hope he hasn’t brought any visitors with him,” Josie grinned. “Or you won’t get any sleep tomorrow because you’ll be scratching your bites!”

Regan rolled her eyes. It wouldn’t be the first time.

“That’ll be your ambulance arriving,” Regan said as sirens approached. “What have we got coming in?”

“A child went over the cliffs and thank goodness someone saw her and reported it. They found her on a ledge near the bottom, but I gather her injuries aren’t life threatening.”

Regan shook her head. Kids could be daft sometimes. She wouldn’t mind betting the child was a teenager who’d been playing a game of dare with her mates, probably showing off in front of some lads. Those kinds of accidents usually involved locals who should know better and should certainly have more respect for the area in which they lived – not to mention respect for themselves.

“Right, Stanley,” she looked up from the notes and smiled at the empty chairs and the one, grey-coated and rather wet figure sitting slap bang in the middle.

He looked up, surprised, his eyebrows rising slightly.

“Oh, is it my turn?” he asked breathlessly. It was a game they played. He always pretended to be pleasantly surprised and since he was only called if they weren’t busy, it was a game they were happy to indulge. The longer it took him to walk from the chairs to the cubicle, the longer he would be inside and out of the rain.

It wasn’t right that an old person should have to live like that, Regan thought, but she had no idea why he lived the life he did. Perhaps it was through choice. It seemed sad that at his age there was no one to take proper care of him, no warm-hearted daughter to take him shopping, no strapping grandson to do a bit of decorating for him.

She held his arm as they walked through. He was amazingly thin beneath the layers of wet clothing. They’d offered to try and get him “in” somewhere, but he wasn’t having any of that. He’d rather end his days on the ground under a flattened cardboard box than imprisoned in a home. That’s how he saw it. Prison.

The doors opened and the paramedics came in with the cliff fall casualty. Funny, but the figure on the bed didn’t look much like a teenager. In fact she looked rather small. Not that Regan could see much. The paramedics were rapping out what had happened as they sped towards Resus with Josie and the duty doctor, Karen, running alongside.

Regan’s eyes strayed to the doors, waiting for them to open, for an anxious parent or two to come through. No one came. And now the phone was ringing and everyone else was busy.

“Excuse me,” Regan said, sitting Stanley on a chair inside an empty cubicle. “I’ll just get that. I’ll be right back.”

“Take your time, dear,” Stanley smiled. “I’m in no hurry. In fact my heart feels a lot better since I got here.”

The call was brief. Regan hung up and hurried over to Resus. The door opened and Josie came out, her face as white as a sheet.

“There’s another ambulance on the way,” Regan said, watching Josie carefully. “Apparently the lifeboat guy who retrieved the casualty then went over the cliff himself. Suspected spinal injuries. Would… What’s the matter, Josie? You look as if you’ve seen a ghost. You haven’t lost her?”

“Sorry, there’s no easy way to say this. It’s Georgie,” Josie said, reaching out and touching Regan’s arm.

Regan blinked, confused. What did she mean? Georgie was at home in bed.

“Georgie was the child that went over the cliff,” Josie went on, her voice leaden because she knew the impact the news would have on Regan. “She’s okay, she’s not badly hurt, but…”

“Georgie?” Josie whispered. Her heart felt as if it had dropped like a stone right down through her chest into the pit of her stomach. She felt her insides tighten, her heart freeze with fear. “My Georgie? No way, you must be mistaken, Josie.”

“No mistake I’m afraid, Regan. Go in with her,” Josie said, smiling but looking as if she might be about to burst into tears herself. “But be prepared. She’s got a scalp injury so there’s quite a lot of blood. I know you’re used to it, but when it’s your own…”

The lead in Regan’s feet turned to air and she flew through the door and into Resus where she saw her own little girl on the bed, her head immobilised in a brace while Karen gently checked out her arm.

“Mummy!” Georgie wailed.

“Oh, sweetheart, what have you done?” Regan said, rushing to her daughter’s side and taking her uninjured hand in hers. Her eyes looked very bright against the mask of red covering her face. Even her little hands were scarlet with blood.

“I fell off the cliff, Mummy,” Georgie said and at that point it all became too much for her and she burst into tears, relief at seeing her mother tipping her off the fine brave line she’d been treading.

This was not the time to ask why she was on the cliff. That could wait. Right now Regan needed to know the extent of her injuries. She looked at Karen.

“She’s going to be okay, Regan,” Karen said. “Has she any allergies we should know about? Regan?”

“Yes? Er, no,” Regan said, pulling herself together. “She’s fine with anything.”

She squeezed Georgie's hand and felt another hand squeeze round her heart. She’d always been good at what ifs, too good, and now the what ifs were coming thick and fast. What if no one had seen her go over the side? What if she’d missed that ledge?

She felt as if she was a still picture in one of those films where everyone else moves at super speed. Everything happened so fast around them, yet in the middle of it all, Regan stood beside the bed holding Georgie’s hand, her mind crowded with thoughts. She left briefly to call Lally and let her know, but it sounded as if Lally had just found an empty bed anyway and was already upset and sobbing.

When she got back, Mike Anson, their department head had arrived.

“What are you doing here, Mike?” Regan asked, instantly worried. Why had Karen called in reinforcements?

“I’ve been visiting my father,” Mike explained. “He’s in Baker Ward. I heard about the incident on the cliffs and that there’s the possibility of more casualties, so I thought I’d swing by and see if I could help.”

He reached out and squeezed Regan’s shoulder.

Regan thought briefly of Stanley waiting in the cubicle. If Mike knew he was here cluttering up his department – even if it was empty – he’d do his nut! Then she thought of Georgie, the focus of all this attention – she could have been killed this evening. Mike could have been down here comforting her for completely different reasons.

She blamed Bram for this. Bram and his reckless genes. Only a child of his would venture too close to the edge of a cliff when she shouldn’t have been there in the first place. Not content with inheriting his vivid blue eyes and the dark lashes that went with them, she’d taken on his outgoing personality. Regan couldn’t look at her daughter without being reminded of Bram and she’d learned to live with that, but how was she going to live with another daredevil?

“Don’t cry, Mummy,” Georgie said.

“I’m not crying,” Regan forced a laugh and rubbed at her eyes. “Silly old thing! I’m just tired.”

Golden rule for parents with kids in hospital – you do not cry in front of them and make them even more frightened than they already are. You smile, you don’t look worried and you speak with utter conviction that everything is going to be all right. Which it is!

“I’m going to take Georgie into theatre now, Regan,” Mike told her. “I’ll get that arm sorted out, make her comfortable and she should be able to come home in a day or two. Did you want to be with her while we put her under?”

“Stay with me, Mummy,” Georgie pleaded, her voice so small and helpless it nearly tore Regan’s heart out. “Don’t go. Stay.”

“Of course I’ll stay with you, darling,” Regan said. It would be just until she was put under, then Regan would slip away, ready to return when Georgie was in recovery so she’d be there beside her when she woke up.

And it was only after Georgie’s eyes had closed and Regan was no longer needed that she allowed the tears to come.

“She’ll be all right, Regan,” Mike said, his eyes serious over the top of his mask. “She’s safe in my hands.”

“I know,” she whispered. “But she’s my little girl.”

As she hurried back to A&E, she wondered what on earth Georgie thought she was doing tonight. And she had to try to figure out some way of curbing her daughter’s wild streak.

“I tell you I’m fine!” The voice stopped Regan dead in her tracks. That voice! No mistaking it. She shook her head and carried on. Tiredness and worry was making her delusional. She’d been thinking rather too much about Bram tonight, that was all. There was no way he was here in her hospital, no way on earth. When she’d sent him away, he’d gone for good and he’d been most adamant he wouldn’t be coming back.

Way back then he’d looked up at her from his wheelchair, his bruised, battered and stitched face changed almost beyond recognition. He’d looked far from beautiful, but it wasn’t his beauty she’d fallen in love with. If he’d had a face like the back of a bus she would still have been in love with him and the scars and bruises made no difference to how she felt about him. If anything they made her love him more which made it hurt even more and it was a pain she just couldn’t bear.

They were just back from their friend Tom’s funeral, still in their black clothing. Regan had brought Bram back to the hospital to continue his treatment and the funeral had exhausted him. Regan could not get the image of Tom’s widow at the graveside out of her mind. She stood erect and pale, flanked by her two white-faced weeping children as they watched their hero being lowered into the ground. Their dead hero. Regan didn’t want a dead hero – she wanted a living, breathing man in her life. Bram had almost died and as well as his physical injuries from the sea rescue that had gone so dreadfully wrong, he had psychological scars that would never heal.

He’d kept Tom afloat, struggled to keep him above water, but Tom had already been dead and Bram almost lost his own life hanging on to a corpse.

“If I walk out that door, Regan, it’s the last you’ll see of me, I promise you that.”

“Fine,” she’d said hotly. “Then hurry up and go. I can’t wait.”