safer sitting up if he were to vomit, and X-rays of a possible broken hip would have to wait.
Then she stood back and looked at the bed. The bed had rails, ready to be raised at will. Oscar needed those rails to be safe.
‘Right, let’s get you organised,’ she muttered.
The trolley was resting against the bed, but it couldn’t reach the wall at the bedhead because of the bedside table. She could do better than that.
In seconds she was under the bed, grabbing the bedside table and hauling it under. She pushed the head of the trolley hard against the wall at the end of the room, then shoved the trolley sideways till it was against the wall. Which left a foot between bed and trolley.
What was happening outside? Don’t ask, she told herself. Get Oscar safe first. She flipped the bed rails up and shoved the bed sideways, securing her patient with the wall on one side of him and the railed bed on the other.
Oscar was now as safe as she could make him, apart from his breathing. But even there… What else could she do? His oxygen was up to maximum. His airway was clear.
He needed supervision, but if there was a greater need and Fergus needed her as a doctor…
‘What happens if I want to get out?’ Oscar mumbled, but he was so close to sleep she could hardly hear him.
‘You’re welcome to try,’ she told him. ‘But I suspect you’re trapped. Just like I am.’
‘Ginny…’ It was a call from the corridor, urgent. Miriam’s face appeared round the door. ‘Fergus needs you,’ she snapped, and disappeared.
‘I need to go,’ she told Oscar. ‘Stay breathing. That’s an order.’
‘I need a doctor.’
‘You’ve had one,’ she told him. ‘Relax and let yourself go to sleep.’
‘Get lost,’ he snapped, and added another word for good measure.
She turned away but she couldn’t help but grin. That last expletive had been strong and sure, reassuring her more than anything else that the man might very well survive.
She was right back into medical mode now, almost as if she’d never been away. In truth, the adrenalin surge was there, as it always was in these situations. She’d missed it.
Maybe she could work a little with Fergus.
What sort of man was he?
‘Dangerous,’ she muttered as she pushed open the swing doors to Emergency, though she wasn’t sure why she thought it. But that was her overriding sensation. She’d looked up from the cattle grid as she’d tried to hold onto the lamb, and she’d been caught. Fergus was tall, big-boned and a bit…weathered? He had deep brown hair, crinkly, a little bit too long. It needed a comb. Maybe he raked it with his fingers, she thought inconsequentially. That was what it looked like. His lazy grey eyes held laughter and a certain innate gentleness. He wasn’t much older than she was.
He seemed nice.
Definitely dangerous, and she didn’t have time in her life for dangerous.
She didn’t have any inclination to go down that road. Ever.
CHAPTER THREE
THAT was the last chance Ginny had time to think of the personal for hours.
The moment she opened the doors to Emergency she could see why the ambulance boys hadn’t had time to radio in. A woman was lying on the trolley and one glance showed Ginny that they were in trouble. She seemed to be unconscious, limp and flaccid, with each breath shallow and rasping. She was in her late twenties or early thirties, Ginny guessed, simply dressed in faded jeans, white T-shirt and pink sandals. Long blonde hair lay limply around a pallid face and even from the door Ginny could tell that here was a woman who was fighting for her life.
Or maybe here was a woman who’d come to the end.
‘Mummy…’
Ginny glanced across to the main entrance to see a little girl being carried in. Four years old, maybe? She looked a waif of a child, tear-streaked and desperate. Her blonde hair, shoulder length, was tied back with a red ribbon with blue elephants on it, but the ribbon was grubby and the curls hadn’t been brushed for days. She was wearing shorts and a T-shirt and nothing else.
But it was her feet that caught Ginny’s attention. She was barefoot, and her soles seemed to be a mass of lacerations. There was blood on her ankles.
Triage.
Fergus was working over the mother, and he had Miriam and an ambulance officer helping him. The guy holding the child seemed helpless.
Ginny moved at once to the child.
‘Mummy,’ the little one screamed, every fibre of her body straining toward her mother’s trolley.
‘Dr Fergus is looking after your mummy,’ Ginny told her, but the child was past listening. The ambulance officer was looking to Ginny, desperate to hand over responsibility.
‘Give her to me.’ Ginny sat on the examination couch and gathered the little girl into her arms.
Miriam was hauling the crash cart toward the trolley and Ginny thought, Uh-oh.
Should she swap places with Miriam? She watched for a minute as the child fought her hold. Miriam looked competent and swift. There was already a cardiac monitor set up. The woman’s breathing seemed to be pausing. She was suddenly so limp that Ginny thought, Oh no.
But Fergus was shaking his head at Miriam, signifying the paddles weren’t needed. There must be a heartbeat but the expression on Fergus’s face as he looked at the monitor…
Ginny knew what that look meant. She’d worked for three years in ER in a major teaching hospital and she knew it all too well.
Triage. The child’s feet were bleeding-badly-and her terror was palpable. Unless Fergus said otherwise, Ginny was needed where she was.
‘You’ve cut your feet,’ she told the little girl, making her voice sound astonished. She was trying to haul the child’s attention from her mother to her feet. ‘Goodness, what have you been doing?’
‘I want Mummy,’ the little girl sobbed, and Ginny’s heart twisted. But this was hopeless. Fergus needed all his concentration if he was to get a good result, and there was no way the little girl could go to her mother.
So make a break and make it fast.
‘Dr Fergus is looking after your mummy and I’m looking after you,’ she told the little one, forcing her voice to sound authoritative, hugging her close but standing and moving toward the door. ‘We need to get bandages for your feet before you can come back and see Mummy.’
‘Mummy.’ The child’s voice was a terrified scream.
Fergus looked up and met her eyes. He gave an imperceptible shake of his head.
Get her out of here, his body language said. Please.
‘Let’s go,’ Ginny said. ‘Bring what I need for stitching and dressing,’ she told the nearest of the ambulance boys. ‘Now.’
It took almost an hour to get the little girl’s feet dressed. She sobbed and sobbed and in the end Ginny administered a sedative and then simply sat and hugged her close until the child’s sobs subsided. Finally she collapsed into exhausted sleep and Ginny was able to lay her down on the bed in an empty ward and take care of the worst of the damage.
Some time while she’d hugged, the ambulance officer who’d brought her the dressings she’d needed had disappeared. Soon after he had been replaced by a young male nurse who’d introduced himself as Tony. Tony wasn’t what Ginny was accustomed to in a nurse. Under his obviously hastily donned theatre gown, he was dressed in football gear-filthy shorts, a black and orange jersey, muddy socks and muddy knees. The six-foot-three footballer
