The Magic of Christmas (12 page)

‘I don't see a black side to snow.'

‘Of course there's a black side,' Jane said gloomily. ‘A mere sprinkling of white dust and
the whole city grinds to a halt. Cars slither, people slither, bones are broken…'

‘Well, we're stuck here, anyway, so we may as well have some customers.'Lara heard the siren and gave a nod. ‘Here we go. Lights, camera, action.'

The paramedics took the unconscious man straight through to Resus and seconds later Christian joined them.

Jack, the paramedic, helped transfer the patient from their stretcher to the resus trolley. ‘His name is Gordon Baxter. He's fifty-five, lives with his wife. She went out shopping this morning and found him when she returned. Apparently there was a note telling her not to call the ambulance.'

The team listened to the handover as they worked.

Without delay, Christian intubated the patient and Lara helped Penny insert a line into the patient's vein.

Jack moved the stretcher away and retrieved his blanket. ‘He's been treated by the doctor for depression but there were no empty bottles lying around. We looked.'

‘Is his wife here?'

‘Just giving his details to Fran in Reception.'
Jack looked at the man on the trolley. ‘Apparently he lost his job six months ago and he's been depressed ever since.'

‘Poor man,' Lara murmured, monitoring his pulse rate. ‘It's a hundred and forty, Christian.'

His mouth tightened. ‘He's taken something. We just need to work out what. Can someone go and question his wife in more detail? Were any of his tablets missing?'

‘I'll talk to her,' Jane said immediately, and Lara reached for the ECG machine.

‘Let's do a trace.'

‘Yes.' Christian was examining the patient, checking his eyes. ‘He has a divergent squint and his pupils are unreactive. Penny—we need to check his blood gases.'

Lara attached the ECG leads to the patient and Penny stared at the machine. ‘He's in VT.'

‘No.' Christian studied the trace. ‘It's sinus tachycardia with prolonged conduction. Look…' He drew a finger along the trace. ‘The P wave is superimposed on the T wave. That's why it looks like VT.'

Lara stared at the ECG and wondered if she
would have spotted the same thing. Maybe. ‘Tricyclic antidepressants?'

‘Possibly.' Christian nodded. ‘Very possibly. Can someone ring his GP's surgery and find out what he was taking, just to be sure?'

Penny looked at them both. ‘How do you know it's tricyclics? It could be anything.'

‘Not anything,' Christian said calmly as he tested the man's reflexes. ‘The signs are there if you know what you're looking for. Lara, you should train as a doctor.'

‘I wouldn't know what to do with the salary,' Lara said cheerfully. ‘I've been living on nothing for so long.'

At that moment Jane hurried back into the room. ‘He's been taking amitryptoline. His wife couldn't find the bottle when she looked in the cupboard so it could be that.'

‘We can safely assume that it's amitryptoline. Lara, did you send those bloods off?'

‘Yes.' She looked up at him. ‘Do you want to give him activated charcoal?'

Christian shook his head. ‘Only if it's within an hour of overdose and we're way past that. Jane,
do you know if the formulation he was taking was sustained release?'

‘It wasn't. I asked.'

‘Good.' Christian gave a nod of approval. ‘So let's give him 8.4 per cent of sodium bicarbonate. Hopefully, by correcting the hypoxia and acidosis, we'll treat the arrhythmias.'

Lara reached for the ampoule. ‘One hundred mils?'

‘We'll start with that. Sometimes it produces a dramatic improvement.'

Penny stepped closer. ‘Why?'

‘It alters protein binding and lowers the amount of active free tricyclic drug.' Christian injected the sodium bicarbonate and looked up. ‘How's his blood pressure?'

‘Dropping,' Lara murmured, her eyes on the screen.

‘Can we elevate the foot of the trolley? And let's give 1 milligram of glucagon. Jane, can you ring the physicians? He's going to need to be admitted.'

They worked to stabilise the patient and then the physicians arrived.

Christian went with Jane to talk to the man's wife and Lara helped transfer the patient to the ward.

When she returned to Resus, Christian was in the room, finishing the notes.

‘Will he live, do you think?' Lara felt a rush of sadness as she thought about the man lying still and unresponsive on the trolley. ‘I hate to think of anyone feeling that desperate. It must be awful for his wife.'

‘She's blaming herself. It's the usual question of “what if?” What if she'd come home earlier from shopping? What if she'd decided to go on another day? It's hard for her.' Christian finished writing and walked across the room to the sink. ‘Let's hope he'll be OK.'

‘Christmas can be a difficult time of year.'

‘Yes.' His answer was surprisingly terse and she studied his profile, remembering what he'd said about his wife leaving at Christmas.

‘Did she leave before or after?'

He took a long time washing his hands and, for a moment, she wondered if he'd even heard her question. Then he turned off the water, dried his hands and turned to look at her. ‘After. Just.' He
gave a short laugh that was markedly lacking in humour. ‘I think she imagined that the children might be so pleased with their presents that they wouldn't notice that she wasn't around.'

Lara couldn't bear to think about how awful it must have been. ‘They must have been very shocked.'

‘To begin with, Aggie didn't really see a difference because her mother was always jetting off to different parts of the world so her absence wasn't a rarity. It took a while for it to sink in. But Chloe…' He broke off and his mouth tightened. ‘Chloe was devastated. For weeks she seemed to shrink into herself and then she just quietly got on with her life.'

‘And you?'

‘I applied for this job and we moved house.'

‘Based on the principle that three major life changes are better than one?' She pulled a face. ‘You certainly believe in piling on the stress, Dr Blake.'

‘I thought moving house might be good for all of us. And the house is nearer to the girls' school.'

‘And was moving a good thing?'

He dried his hands. ‘I think so.Apart from the fact that Chloe is far too quiet, they seem more stable.'

‘And what about you? How are you?'

‘It isn't about me.' He frowned, as though he considered the question strange. ‘It's about the children. They didn't choose to be in this situation.'

‘And you did?'

Something bleak flickered in his eyes. ‘No. But I should have foreseen it. We were a disaster waiting to happen. My wife wasn't good at relationships. And apparently I'm not an easy man to be married to. That's got to be a flaw. You might want to remember that one, Lara.'

She sighed. ‘Sorry, but that would only count as a flaw if I was planning to marry you. Given that my longest relationship is three dates, I think that's an unlikely scenario. I need a flaw that will kill the chemistry stone dead. I thought your chocolate restraint was bad, but apparently it isn't bad enough.'

They looked at each other for a long moment and Lara felt her mouth dry and her heart bump hard against her chest.

It didn't matter what they said or did, the chemistry
was there, sizzling away like a high-voltage power cable.

She wanted to kiss him. Just once. To satisfy her curiosity.

And perhaps he read her thoughts because he drew breath sharply and a muscle flickered in his hard jaw. ‘Lara—there are some instincts and urges that should be ignored. This is one of them.'

Her whole body burning with frustration, she ran her tongue over her lips to try and moisten them. ‘Right. I'm sure that's absolutely the right decision.'

His eyes dropped to her mouth, lingered there for a moment and then he turned sharply and strode out of Resus, shouldering the door open so violently that it crashed against the wall.

Lara flinched and stared after him in helpless frustration.

The chemistry between them was virtually setting fire to the building and he was walking away from it?

She wanted to ask him for a few hints and tips because she wasn't finding it anywhere near as easy to handle as he clearly was.

Then she looked at the door, which was still swinging from the force of his exit.

Maybe he wasn't finding it that easy, either.

Deciding that what she needed was to throw herself into her work and stop dreaming about kissing Christian, she walked back round to the main area of the emergency department to start working her way through the steady stream of patients that poured through the doors on a daily basis. All required concentration and focus. But none prevented her from thinking about kissing Christian.

By the end of her shift, she was becoming impatient with herself.

This was completely ridiculous.

She'd never felt this way about a man and she didn't understand why she was feeling this way now.

It had to be because a relationship just wasn't possible.

Because she couldn't have it, she wanted it.

Determined to think about something other than Christian, she wandered through to Reception to talk to Fran, hoping for distraction.

She found her standing on a chair, pinning metres of tinsel around the reception area.

Lara handed her another rope of tinsel. ‘You look unreasonably cheerful for a woman fighting at the front line.'

‘I
am
cheerful. I met a man last night.' Fran hugged a piece of tinsel to her chest and beamed. ‘Oh, Lara, he was
gorgeous
.'

Lara thought about the psychic's prediction. ‘Did you use contraception?'

‘Lara!! I can't believe you just asked me that!' Fran covered her mouth and started to laugh, and Lara gave a sheepish smile.

‘Sorry.' She stooped and picked up a pile of mistletoe that was lying on the floor. ‘So tell me all about him.'

‘He's a fireman. I met him when he brought that little boy in a couple of weeks ago.'

‘The one who had his leg stuck in the bicycle wheel? Oh, yes, I remember him. Are you seeing him again?'

‘Tonight.'

‘Good. Well, I hope you have—Make sure you don't—' Deciding that there was no best way to
tell someone that a psychic had predicted she'd be pregnant by Christmas, Lara waved the mistletoe.
It was all nonsense, anyway.
‘Where are you planning to put this? Not in Reception, surely? It's asking for trouble. Somebody is bound to eat the berries and sue us.'

‘It's going in the staffroom.' Fran jumped down from the chair. ‘I thought it might liven up everyone's working day.'

Lara looked at the mistletoe in her hand.

Why not?

It might be the only cure for her problem. It had always worked before. ‘Good idea.' She gave Fran a casual smile. ‘I'll go and pin it somewhere obvious.'

Lara strolled back down the corridor but instead of turning left to the staffroom, she turned right towards Christian's office. His door was open and he was on the phone, but the moment he saw her his brows rose questioningly. He swiftly terminated the phone call and rose to his feet. ‘Problems?'

‘I'm afraid so.' She closed the door behind her and gave an apologetic smile. ‘Bit of an emergency going on here. I need your help with something.'

Restoring her sanity.

He glanced at the clock on the wall. ‘Aren't you supposed to be going home?'

‘I'm going home right after this,' she assured him, her heart pounding as she watched him walk around his desk towards her, concern in his eyes. ‘I just need you to do something for me.'

‘What's that?'

He was so close to her now that she could hardly breathe. Feeling reckless and daring, she rose on tiptoe and the mistletoe slipped from her fingers as she slid her arms round his neck and touched her mouth to his.

His shock was palpable.

Her fingertips registered the sudden tension in his broad shoulders, the hesitation. He stood rigid, his hands by his sides. For a moment she thought he was going to step back and break the connection. But then he brought his hands up and slid them up her back, hauled her against him and took over the kiss.

His mouth was hot and demanding and he powered her back against the door of his office, his body hard against hers as he finally submitted
to the violent attraction that they'd both been fighting for weeks. Or had it been months?

She no longer had any sense of time.

His hands slid into her hair and his mouth plundered hers, the astonishing skill of his kiss driving the breath from her body and all coherent thought from her brain.

Somewhere deep inside her she registered that this wasn't turning out quite the way she'd planned, but she felt too dizzy to work out exactly where her plan had taken a wrong turn.

It was the most exciting, erotic moment of her life and, if she'd been able to think, she would have realised that she was out of control for the first time ever. And the kiss wasn't enough. She wanted to touch him. She had to touch him.

Dropping her hands from his neck, she slid them under the top of his scrub suit, feeling hard, male muscle and the tantalising brush of body hair against the tips of her seeking fingers.

‘You feel so good,' she gasped against his mouth, sliding her hand around his back. ‘Kiss me again. You have to kiss me again.'

‘I'm kissing you.' His voice rough, he growled
the words against her lips, one of his hands still locked in her hair, while the other slid under her clothing. His touch maddeningly seductive, he stroked his hand down her spine and then pulled her pelvis against his in a gesture as erotic as it was possessive.