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Mac winced. ‘Nine, eh? That’s a small body to land on a solid object from that high.’
‘The mother’s with her.’ Kelli stared at her hands. ‘A parent’s nightmare really.’
‘How do parents cope with not always being able to keep their kids safe? It would drive me crazy.’ Keeping those he loved or cared about safe was as ingrained as taking a shower every day. Not that he always did well at saving people. He looked at his bare ring finger as if he needed reminding.
‘I guess they can only set the boundaries, keep a vigilant eye out, and cross their fingers.’
That didn’t stop bad things happening. He’d done all of that and yet his wife had died. In bed. Beside him. While he slept. He was a doctor, and that had meant absolutely nothing when he was most needed. He should’ve sensed something was wrong with Cherie even in his comatose state brought on by exhaustion after too many sixteen-hour shifts in ED. But he hadn’t. The aneurysm had been a silent killer, stealing the love of his life and their unborn infant.
Pushing down on the flare of pain and distress, he growled, ‘Let me know when the helicopter’s landed.’
‘Yes, Doctor.’ The door closed with a small bang.
Fair cop. It wasn’t Kelli’s fault he was flawed, hadn’t been able to save Cherie. No, that was his to own. But it didn’t give him licence to be surly with Kelli. Yet how to keep her away? How to stop the fissures she was opening within him from spreading throughout his soul just by being around her? She had hang-ups aplenty. Was always trying to appease people and keep the department happy and relaxed—except when it came to him. Then she could be lippy as all hell. Lippy. Lips. Oh, hell.
Those lips, that mouth. Soft while demanding, hot and giving, made to bring a man to his knees. How he’d walked away that night was beyond him. Showed the strength of his fear of opening up to another woman, because, as far as he could work out, that was the only reason he’d hightailed it away from her.
Hopefully his abrupt dismissal might keep her distant for the rest of the shift. By tomorrow he’d be over whatever was tying him in knots every time Kelli came near, and remember only that she was an exceptional nurse who always went the extra distance for her patients.
An attractive nurse with a body that filled scrubs in a tantalising way they weren’t designed for.
A woman with shiny dark blonde hair piled on top of her head and kept in place with carefully positioned decorative combs. And when those combs came out, the thick locks had been satin in his fingers.
He wouldn’t think of the smile that warmed him right down to his toes, and the laugh that lodged in his chest when he wasn’t on guard.
All of that was before Sydney, buster. Not only since then.
Mac threw his pen at the far wall. Ping. Didn’t underline his feelings. The water bottle followed. Bigger ping. Just as well he’d already drunk the contents.
Not feeling any better here. Cherie had been the love of his life. Had been? Still was. There wasn’t room for another one. He’d never recover if something went wrong a second time. He was still recovering from losing Cherie.
Where was that chopper?
Ten minutes could whizz past in seconds, or it could drag out into an hour. Today was the drawn-out version. Mac chewed and chewed on his tasteless sandwich: cold beef with zucchini pickle care of his mother. She sent him a package about once a month, filled with jars of homemade jams and pickles, a fruit cake, and sometimes in winter homemade chocolates, which he gave to the kid next door. Comfort food that he enjoyed but wouldn’t admit to in case it made him look like a spoiled brat.
His mother had been the cushion in his life growing up with a tyrannical father who believed his way was the only way for just about everything. Make that absolutely everything. So the packages were warmly accepted as a reminder of his mother’s unconditional love and how not everyone was hard on others. They’d stopped when Mac married, but about a month after Cherie died there’d been one on the doorstep when he’d got home from work, and they hadn’t stopped since.
Stephanie waltzed through the door without any preamble. ‘Our girl’s being brought down from the landing pad now.’
Instantly on his feet, Mac tossed the remainder of his snack in the bin. ‘Let’s go.’
‘If it’s okay, I’ve put Kelli on this one. She’s good with the littlies.’
So were other nurses, and they weren’t distracting. But, ‘Why wouldn’t it be all right?’
Stephanie watched him, her head on a slight angle. ‘I think you can probably answer that better than me, but it seems she’s got you rattled.’
Fortunately Stephanie headed out of the room so he didn’t have to come up with some unlikely reply, denial being at the top of the list. And if he denied what she was implying, he’d be lying.
His gut had been in turmoil from the moment he’d seen Kelli on the sidewalk outside the hospital on the phone to Tamara, and didn’t feel as if it intended settling down any time soon.
Time to focus on the job, starting with the young girl now arriving in ED.
* * *
Izzie had been given morphine making her barely comatose, which was a good thing, Mac decided as they worked to find the extent of her injuries. She’d hit the post with her thigh, fracturing the bone in three places. Her pelvis hadn’t come off any better.
‘Thankfully none of her organs were damaged,’ Mac informed the girl’s mother as they waited for the orderly to take the child to Theatre to have those bones seen to. ‘Nor is there any head injury apart from the cut above her eye, though there’s a severe whiplash to her neck, which will cause ongoing issues with headaches and muscle tension. Izzie will be referred to a neurologist for help with that.’
Tears poured down the young mother’s face as she gripped her unconscious daughter’s hand. ‘But she will be all right? Won’t she? Please say yes.’
He wanted to. He real
ly wanted to. It was inherent in him to make people feel better, or safe, or at least able to function normally. It was something that had started the day he saw his father kicking the family dog for being sick on the kitchen floor. Mac had snatched Pippy away and run for the garden shed, only to be followed and given a lesson in not letting animals or people turn him into a miserable excuse for a man.
But being honest was right up there too. ‘Izzie may always walk with a limp. Whiplash can also be hard to completely put right.’
The tears became a torrent. ‘My poor little girl. It’s not fair. She’s always been such a monkey, climbing trees and ladders and getting into places no one would’ve thought possible. She terrifies me at times, but there’s no stopping her. She thinks she’s bulletproof.’
‘She’s probably had the biggest wake-up call possible.’ Or she’ll take it on the chin and carry on being a monkey. ‘Parenting, eh? Who said it was easy?’
‘You got kids, Doctor?’
Cherie had been four months pregnant when she died. ‘No.’ The word spat out, so he added with more restraint, ‘Not yet.’ Never. Unless... Unless he could talk about the past, undo those crippling fears enough to let the sun shine in—as in Kelli sunshine.
Right that moment Kelli walked past, helping her next patient, an elderly man with what appeared to be severe arthritis in his leg. She did not acknowledge him. Had been distant in the room with Izzie. Had been distant ever since leaving his office an hour ago.
Hopefully she’d find him a smile before the end of the week or it was going to be a long, awkward weekend on Waiheke Island. It was already a long, awkward shift.
Bring on eleven p.m.
* * *
That time did eventually tick over. Monday’s were never frantic but this one seemed quieter than usual. In other ways Mac’s mind was constantly on alert, Kelli alert. Her laughter, her voice, scent, the way the air cracked like an approaching storm. For eight hours he’d been put through the wringer, his body tense and filled with need. Immediately after completing handover he grabbed his bag and headed to the staff gym in the hospital basement. A hard workout would fix what ailed him.
