Emergency: Wife Lost and Found (2 page)

But midway there, James lost his stride, the whole party halting for less than a second as James caught up, or seemed to.

She’d always had pretty feet.

Despite her plain clothes and serious, unmade-up
face, Lorna had always worn pretty pink nail varnish just as this patient was, and Lorna had a mole just on the dorsum of her right foot too. James could feel the chest beneath his hand as he massaged the heart and he had, for that stupid second, wanted to stop the stretcher, wanted to rip the blanket from her face and find out that it wasn’t her.

Except James knew with dread that it was.

A coil of wet dark auburn hair had escaped the blanket, and as they whooshed into Resus and prepared to lift her onto the hard resuscitation bed, the blanket covering her was whipped off. Then he finally got confirmation, but he’d already known for a good fifteen seconds that it was Lorna.

He’d always wondered if she’d changed. Up in Glasgow for a conference a couple of years ago, he’d scanned the shops and bars for a woman with auburn hair and huge amber eyes. He’d told himself it was futile, that it had been so long ago she might have dyed her hair by now, she’d always hated that it was red after all—or maybe she’d have put on weight. Or, worse, he might bump into her pushing a stroller containing twins. He was being ridiculous, he had told himself that day, because even if she walked towards him, stood in front of him, he probably wouldn’t even recognise her.

He’d known at the time he was kidding himself and he’d had that confirmed today.

Ten years on and he’d recognised her in an instant by her pretty feet alone.

‘S
HE WAS UNRESPONSIVE
when they found her, but she had did have a pulse. She arrested when we moved her from the vehicle,’ the paramedic informed them as they raced into Resus.

‘Do we have an ID?’

As she transferred the patient over to the resuscitation bed it was May who asked the question when James didn’t—he was still massaging the chest, even though Lavinia had offered to take over.

‘From the driving licence in the car we have a Lorna McClelland, thirty-two years of age, from Scotland; she’s a doctor apparently…’

‘How was she missed?’ It was the first time James had spoken since her arrival, and it was an irrelevant question really. She had been found, she was ill, for now all they could deal with was what presented, and May frowned as James persisted with the pointless. ‘How could she have been missed?’

‘I’m not sure,’ the paramedic answered. ‘We just got a callout twenty-five minutes ago. Mind you, it’s been chaos out there.’

Instead of the emergency consultant it was Khan, the anaesthetist, who was running the show, flashing lights in the patient’s eyes, frowning up at James as he checked the airway, calling for drugs, and at that moment May stepped in. She had no idea what was wrong with James, but she would find out later. He was standing there, massaging the chest, as grey as sheet metal and instead of assessing the patient and commencing active treatment, still there he stood. It happened now and then, May knew that well, where staff just hit a wall. But maybe it was another peril of working in Emergency that was occurring here, May thought as she watched the beads form on his brow. He knew this patient!

‘Abby.’ Pressing the intercom, she summoned the registrar from her break. ‘We need you in Resus. Lavinia,’ May ordered, ‘take over the massage.’

He stood and watched, half heard May say to Abby something about James not feeling too good, but all he could really hear was the sound of gushing in his ears, and the blip, blip, blip of the cardiac monitor as Lavinia delivered cardiac massage.

Lorna’s blouse was already undone, her bra cut and pushed to the side. Her boots or shoes had already been taken off, where they had attempted IV access. They were slicing through her soaked clothes with scissors, sheering through her torn stockings and underwear. He could see the scars from her operation and it made him want to weep, but instead he just stood there, watching them lift her pale knees and insert a catheter, knowing
how
much she would hate all this, tempted to tell them to just leave her alone, tempted to pick her up and run, but wanting them to carry on as well.

‘Go to the on-call room,’ May said to him. ‘James, go to the on-call room, you look as if you’re about to pass out.’

‘I’m staying…’

He’d never felt more useless in his life. As an emergency consultant he was accustomed to crises, but to have her slam back into his life like this, he was literally paralysed. She was so white. Lorna had always been pale, yet now she was as white as the sheet she was lying on. Even her lips were white. The only colour on the bed was her hair, thick, long and red still, so she hadn’t dyed it after all. In fact, she hadn’t changed at all. This fragile, slender little thing was just as he remembered her, and the Lorna he’d known was such a private person she would loathe the intrusion on her body very much. The warming unit had been pushed aside as full access to her body was needed. Abby was here now, taking over, asking for peritoneal lavage—where a bag of warmed fluids would be run into her abdominal cavity. The anaesthetist called for an oesophageal warming tube, but then Abby checked the monitor, the fine VF required Lorna be defibrillated. As the first shock was delivered to the frail body, James truly thought he would vomit as her chest lifted off the resus bed.

She didn’t deserve this!

May didn’t just tell him to leave again, she took him. There were plenty of experienced staff in with the patient now and guiding him by the arm through the department as if he were sleepwalking, she took him into his office and sat him at his desk, where he put his head in his hands.

‘Stay in there with her,’ James said, hating being away yet knowing it was right that he was. There wasn’t a hope in hell of being objective with her care. He’d never been able to be objective where Lorna was concerned, so how could he possibly start now? But the thought of her alone, the thought of him
not
being there for her when she needed him most, had him halting May as she turned to go. ‘May, if they stop…’

‘I’ll come and get you.’

‘Before they stop,’ James added.

‘Of course.’

‘What’s wrong with James?’ Abby frowned, looking up briefly as May made her way back to the resuscitation area.

‘He’s been here since 3 a.m.,’ May shrugged. She certainly wasn’t going to fuel the fire! ‘He mentioned he didn’t feel well when we were waiting for the ambulance.’

There was no time to dwell on a consultant missing in action, though.

An hour in, May rang her husband and told him she’d be
really
late now and to go ahead and have dinner..

Very
late, she told him a couple of hours later when she got the chance to ring again.

James had been right with his prediction—it was a long resuscitation.

The rapid warming did its job and then they had to work on getting the heart to beat independently, but for now she had an external pacemaker. Then there was a rapid CT scan, which showed a hairline fracture and cerebral swelling, and while all this was going on the
police had tracked down her relatives and informed them of the direness of the situation.

‘What do you think, Abby?’ May asked as they walked back from ICU where the ‘forgotten patient’, as all the news channels were calling her now, lay fighting for her life, with many doctors and nurses fighting for it alongside her. But May had heard the consultant talking and could see it well enough herself. The outlook was dim.

‘Well, she’s been given every chance. And she did arrest at the scene, so that’s something, but still it doesn’t look at all good.’ Abby said, her pretty face serious. ‘Poor woman, she’s my age, you know. Hopefully her parents will get here in time.’

‘She could make it.’ May said. ‘We did get her back.’

‘As what, though?’ Abby said, stopping at a water fountain and filling a small cup with water. ‘We’ve been going for hours, she’s already got a head injury from the accident. I just wonder if we’ve done her any favours. Still…’ She screwed her cup up and tossed it in the bin. ‘At least her family might have a chance to say goodbye.’

And now May had to tell James.

The staff all thought he had gone home sick, so he hadn’t been disturbed.

He was just as she’d left him, sitting at the desk with his head in his hands. He hadn’t even turned on his desk light but the anguish in his face when he looked up to her would stay with May for ever.

‘She’s just been moved to ICU.’ May dragged a chair over and sat beside him. ‘She has some fractured ribs and a small hairline fracture to the skull, but…’ James
knew the score, but he still needed to hear it. ‘She did make some movement when her temperature came up but Khan was worried she was about to convulse, so he’s keeping her paralysed and intubated for forty-eight hours. She’s had a CT, which shows cerebral swelling, but really…’

‘We won’t know for a while,’ James finished for her.

‘No, we won’t. But, James…’ She took his hand, because she cared about him, and because he really didn’t need false hope, she made herself say it, ‘It really is minute by minute at the moment. She’s very unstable. Khan’s not optimistic about her chances and neither is Abby. We’re just hoping her parents get here soon. According to the papers in her car she was here in London for an interview. The police just contacted her next of kin—her parents. Apparently they’re on their way.’

‘Great!’ There was a bitter note to his voice that May had never heard from James before.

‘I’m sorry, James.’ May patted his arm then rubbed it, hating to see him like this. ‘You obviously know her.’

‘I haven’t seen her in ten years…I knew something was up, though not with her, of course, but since I got back from the accident…’ His logical, analytical mind just tripped at that point. ‘I knew something was wrong, I knew something wasn’t right—it just doesn’t make sense.’

‘It does to me,’ May said. ‘How many times have we had babies brought in a whisper from death because their mums suddenly woke up to check them, or daughter who popped into their dad’s for no real reason only to find him on the floor…’

‘I just
knew
something was wrong.’

‘And you were right,’ May said, but she couldn’t hold back any longer, she just had to know who this pale red-haired beauty was. ‘Have you worked with her?’ May asked, frowning because she would recognise most of the doctors who had been through the department and certainly Lorna, with her stunning hair, would have stood out, except May couldn’t recall her at all.

‘I knew her from medical school.’

‘That’s right—you went to medical school up in Scotland. Was she in your year?’

James shook his head. ‘No, she was a couple of years below me.’

Even though he was sitting down he
still
looked as if he was about to pass out and May knew that Lorna must have been more to him that a fellow student a couple of years his junior. One of the downsides of working in Emergency was when friends or relatives came in unexpectedly, and she’d been on duty when James’s own father had suffered a heart attack, yet still he had held it together that day.

He wasn’t holding it together now.

‘Did you used to go out with her?’ May asked gently.

‘A bit more than that.’ James’s voice was suddenly urgent. ‘I need to go and see her, before her parents get here.’

‘Of course,’ May said. ‘I’ll walk up to ICU with you.’ Only she couldn’t hold back the question that was on her mind any longer. They were just past the canteen and turning left for the lifts when May finally cracked and asked what she wanted to know. Yes, she was curious, but it wasn’t just that that had her probing. She wanted
to help James just as she did with any friend or relative of a critically ill patient—and to do that, it would help to know.

‘Who is she, James?’

It took till they were in the lift and heading upwards toward ICU for James to answer.

‘She’s my ex-wife.’

M
AY HADN’T SEEN
that one coming. Oh, she knew they all had pasts but she’d been working with James since he’d come to the department on his emergency rotation as a senior house officer, had known him since he’d been fresh faced out of his internship, yet never once had he mentioned that he was or had been married.

For James, that walk to ICU was the longest of his life. Stuck in his office these past few hours, he’d almost prepared himself for her death. He had tried not to think of what would be going on in the resuscitation room. He had just thought about her and felt strangely grateful that Lorna was here in London, that he could be with her now if that door opened and May told him they were stopping the resuscitation attempt.

Yet she’d made it through that, and now he must make it through this.

It felt strange to buzz the intercom and ask for permission to enter, only not as a doctor this time, to have to wash his hands and sit in a little side room as May spoke with the nursing staff.

‘They’re just settling her in.’ May clucked like an old hen when she returned, pouring him a cup of water from the little sink in the relatives’ room. ‘You’ll need to turn off your mobile here, before you go in.’

He pulled it out, saw that there were eight missed calls and he hadn’t even heard the phone ring.

Ellie. He glanced at the clock on the wall. He was supposed to have been there hours ago. He turned off his phone and used the one on the table beside him, listening to it ring and her irritated voice when she realised who it was.

‘Hi, Ellie.’ He tried to keep his voice vaguely normal. ‘Look, obviously I’m not going to be able to make it tonight.’ He heard her strained sigh and glanced up at May, who was pretending not to listen. ‘No, it’s not work…’ He raked a hand through his hair, took a breath and continued, ‘You know I told you about Lorna…’ His words were met with silence. ‘Well, she’s had an accident. She’s here at the hospital in Intensive Care. There’s no one else here for her yet.’

He glanced over to May, who must have read the ‘Please Wash Your Hands’ sign about twenty times now.

‘No.’ James said, and then ‘No,’ again. ‘Look I’d really rather just deal with this on my own. I’ll call you tomorrow.’

‘Ellie.’ James said, when May sat down.

‘Your girlfriend?’ May asked, because even though she never usually would, she was here tonight as a friend and colleague and she was also treating him as a relative of a patient, trying to piece it all together so that she could help him best. ‘So she knows about Lorna.’

‘I told Ellie about Lorna a couple of months ago. We
were starting to get a bit more serious. I thought it was right…’ His voice trailed off.

‘You were married to Lorna?’ May checked. ‘For how long?’

‘Not even a year.’ He could have stopped there. A year wasn’t long after all and it had been a decade ago. It should all be neatly relegated to the past, only he’d never quite managed to do that, had never been able to add a neat full stop to that chapter in his life and move on. He’d tried, though, over and over he’d tried, but that year with Lorna had been a roller-coaster ride from start to finish and he felt as if he were back on it again. He’d wondered sometimes at the ease with which patients gave the most personal details, had decided there was this need to make sense of the life the doctors and nurses were fighting for, to make that person real and warm and perhaps, a need to put things into frantic perspective. He had been right, because here he was doing the same now, trying to match up that limp lifeless patient with the person he knew or, rather, had known.

‘She was a couple of years younger than me,’ James explained. ‘She seemed a strange little thing, very prim and shockable, or she was when we were at medical school. She never came to many of the social things, but she always stood out.’

‘With her hair?’ May smiled, but James shook his head.

‘There are plenty of redheads in Scotland. I don’t know May, she just always stood out for me, sort of stood apart. I was a bit fascinated by her, I guess. And then one night there was a party and she was there…’ He even smiled at the memory, his face ashen but still
he smiled in recall. ‘She just blew me away, we couldn’t stop talking. We’d known each other vaguely for a while yet that night it was as if we’d met each other for the first time. We went to bed that night. She’d never slept with anyone before…’ He shook his head as if he still couldn’t believe what had happened. ‘But there was no question in my mind that she’d ever sleep with anyone but me again. I was crazy about her. We spent the next two weeks in bed, not just that, talking, studying, May it was the best two weeks of my life. It was crazy, it was wild, but it made perfect sense at the time.’

‘And then what?’

James didn’t answer straight away. He stared up at the clock that must surely have stopped, because if felt as if they’d been sitting in there for hours. Felt as if he was living it again after all these years.

‘Let’s just find out!’ Normally calm and practical, he needed to be even more so here, James had realised, because Lorna was a mess. Handing her the little paper bag with the pregnancy test kit he had bought, he remembered guiding her to the bathroom, but at the door she baulked.

‘You don’t understand…’

‘Lorna!’ He was getting exasperated now. For two days she’d been panicking that her period was late, two days of anguish, which, over and over he had pointed out, might be unnecessary
—
they had been careful. ‘Let’s just find out first if there really is anything to worry about.’

He’d sounded so calm and practical, but sitting outside the bathroom in his junior doctors residence flat, he had been nervous. He’d just started his internship
,
had just moved out of student accommodation, and was finally starting to earn some money
—
and now this! As careful as they had been…well, they’d barely been out of bed, and…He closed his eyes and blew out a breath, trying not to think about how they could have been a bit more careful. Well, they would be in the future, James had decided. She hadn’t wanted to go on the Pill in case her parents found out, which James had found bizarre! Well, they’d have to sort something out, they couldn’t go through this each month.

They wouldn’t have to.

Her sobs from the bathroom told James before he even went in that there would be no second chances. Holding her sobbing body, he tried to comfort her, to tell her it would be okay, that they would sort something out, that they would get through this, only she was beyond comfort.

And as he held her late into the night, only then did the realisation hit that she wasn’t worried about her career, or her future, or how a baby would affect her life, and she wasn’t worried what a pregnancy three weeks into a relationship might do to them. The only thing that consumed her, the only thing that seemed to literally terrify her, was how her father would react.

‘What happened then, James?’ May’s voice broke him from his introspection.

‘We found out that she was pregnant.’

‘Hello!’ A bubbly ICU nurse who introduced herself as Angela came in and interrupted them, but even with her bright demeanour James could tell she was nervous—it was never easy dealing with staff, especially when the patient was so ill. ‘Sorry to have kept you
waiting so long, but we’re still having a lot of trouble stabilising her. Now, I just need to go through a few details. You’re Lorna’s ex-husband?’ she checked.

‘That’s right.’

‘Firstly, is there any past history you’re aware of that we should know about?’

James hesitated for a second, not sure it was relevant, not really wanting to share that part of his past, but if it helped her, they had to hear it.

‘I don’t think so. She had an appendectomy when she was twelve, I believe, and she had an an ectopic pregnancy, but that was ages ago.’

‘How long?’ Angela asked, scribbling the information down.

‘Ten, nearly eleven years ago.’

‘Anything else? Diabetes, epilepsy…’

James shook his head. ‘Not that I’m aware of.’

‘Do you keep in contact with Lorna?’

‘No.’

‘And how long is it since you’ve spoken with her?’

James gave a tight swallow. ‘Ten years.’

‘I see.’ James felt sorry for Angela, it was a difficult situation after all. He had no real right to see Lorna, less right even than a person on the street who might walk in now and claim to know her. Divorce did that, James had long ago realised. ‘Her family are on their way,’ Angela said. ‘They should be landing any time now—they got a flight as soon as they were informed. Obviously, while Lorna is unable to speak for herself, we have to rely on the next of kin to determine her wishes, which in this case is her parents.’

‘They won’t be thrilled to see me!’ James looked her
right in the eye. ‘Look, there was nothing acrimonious in the divorce.’ It was killing him to discuss this with a stranger, he
wouldn’t
discuss this with a stranger. ‘It just didn’t work out, but we did both care about each other. I know I’m her ex, which should mean I’m the last person she wants to see,’ he faltered, because from previous indication that was exactly the case. ‘She was in full cardiac arrest in my department. I just need to see for myself…’

‘I understand.’ Angela said, but James was quite sure she didn’t. However, her eyes were kind and she gave a sort of half-smile. Then what she said next made him realise that maybe she did understand after all. ‘I’m divorced myself, but I know I’d want to see him if he was so ill. But once the family get here, the decision will be theirs.’

‘I understand that.’ James gave a grateful nod. ‘I’m not going to get in the way.’

‘Do you want me to come?’ May offered, but James shook his head. ‘I’ll just wait here.’

He’d always wished for one more chance to see her, to talk to her, to say he was sorry, so very sorry for all that had happened and to find out why, and some of his wishes had been granted tonight. Even though they hurt like hell, he was incredibly grateful for them.

She was pinker now. It was the first thing he noticed when he approached, just as if she were sleeping really, apart from the tubes everywhere.

The warming unit was on—a large inflated duvet, that would help maintain her temperature, and she looked tiny beneath it with just her head and shoulders visible.

He’d wanted this moment with her, would have pulled rank or just stormed his way in to get it, only now it was here, James didn’t know what to do, didn’t know what she’d want him to do.

A chair had been placed by the bed so he perched on it. Angela took over from the float nurse who had been watching Lorna and now she sat, high up on a stool at the end of the bed, reading all the equipment and filling in the charts, watching Lorna every second, which was what Intensive Care was, after all, but he’d have killed for just a couple of minutes alone with her.

‘She’s the most private person.’ James glanced over at Angela. ‘I mean, she’d really hate all this. I know anyone would, but…’ He was rambling, really didn’t know what to do. Her collar bones were exposed so he pulled the warming unit up higher around her neck. She’d always been slim but she was skinny now. As Angela exposed her arms to check her reflexes he could see the veins, see her neat, short nails which, unlike her toes, were left unpolished.

‘Here.’ Angela left one skinny forearm out from under the warming unit. “Why don’t you hold her hand, tell her that you’re here? It might be reassuring for her to hear a familiar voice.’ He hadn’t held Lorna’s hand in ten years and he didn’t know if he should, but when he did her hand felt cool, but that was how she had always felt. He stared at the bony fingers and the blue veins on the back of her hand and the smattering of freckles that he had adored but she had so hated.

‘She was always cold.’ He was talking to Angela but looking at Lorna. ‘She’d come in after a night shift and she’d be frozen.’ Now he was remembering things that
he had chosen not to, those freezing winter mornings when she’d climb into bed beside him as cold as the ice outside, or when he’d crawl into bed beside her at 7 a.m., cold himself to find her for once warm. He wanted to warm her now, wanted to crawl into bed and hold her,
feel
her again. Only he couldn’t, hadn’t been able to for a decade now.

What to do, what to do? His head was spinning. She’d left him, would she even want him sitting beside her now?

Yes.

Accidents did happen—James Morrell knew that better than anyone, but for her to be here when she was so very ill…His head tightened at the thought that she might die, or be brain damaged, but somehow there must be a reason that she was here. Somehow she had come back to him, even if it was just to say goodbye.

He was holding her hand to his face now and it was like a dam breaking. Feeling her skin beneath his lips he leant over, buried his face in her hair, inhaled the last wisps of the lavender shampoo she had always used, felt her cheekbone rest beneath his.

For a second he thought someone must have died in the next bed, because he could hear crying—a deep, pained crying. It was only when he felt a hand on his shoulder that James realised it was him.

‘Talk to her, James.’ Angela must have gone and got May, because it was her at his shoulder, urging him to say what he had to while he had this chance. So he did—told Lorna all the things he’d wanted to say, all the things he never had, told her over and over in the pathetic hope that maybe she could hear him.

‘Her family just arrived.’ Ages later, but way too soon, May prompted him to move. ‘They’ve asked that you leave.’

He’d worked in Emergency for years and had never understood it—those flashpoint rows that were so out of place in a hospital, rows that infuriated the staff and prompted review panels to be set up to avoid them. But seeing that smug face come towards him, seeing the beatific smile of Minister McClelland as he approached him, suddenly James understood.

‘James.’ Minister McClelland held out his hand. ‘Thank you for sitting with Lorna till we arrived. It is much appreciated.’