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‘Sure.’ Her colleague nodded. ‘Do you want me to get Maxillofacial?’
‘Good idea,’ she agreed. ‘Give them a shout. Okay, let’s get this little boy comfortable so that we can get him for a CT scan and check what’s going on in his head.’
Even as she spoke, the monitors began to bleep, and her colleagues around the boy simultaneously declared the patient was becoming breathless.
‘He’s going tachycardic,’ Anouk warned. ‘Let’s bag him.’
‘Do you want to intubate?’
Anouk frowned. Adam’s airway was at risk because if one of those loose teeth dislodged and he inhaled it, it could potentially block off his airway.
‘He hasn’t stopped breathing,’ she confirmed. ‘Let’s see if we can’t give OMS a chance to see him first.’
And the sooner she could get the little boy to the scanner to check his brain, the better.
* * *
‘You’ve been avoiding me.’
Anouk jumped at the quiet voice by her shoulder. She didn’t look up from the screen but she could no longer see a single word or image that was now swimming in front of her eyes.
‘No,’ she tried to deny it. ‘I’ve just been...busy.’
It was partially true. She had been busy. Mostly she’d been busy trying not to relive his declaration to her, because she honestly didn’t know how she felt about it.
She was supposed to not believe in love. She had spent years telling herself what love looked like and it had been an ugly, selfish, cruel image that she’d painted in her own head.
But the minute those very same words had come out of Sol’s mouth, they had erased all of it, leaving something so beautiful, and precious, almost ethereal in their stead. Almost too perfect to be real.
So how could she trust it?
‘I don’t regret saying it,’ he announced softly, as though he could read her thoughts.
The worst thing about it was that she so wanted to believe him.
‘I’m sorry... I can’t.’ She shook her head, her words almost lost between her voice box and her ears. ‘They’re just words. They don’t prove anything.’
‘You need to come with me.’
‘I’m working.’
‘The place is quiet. In an hour it probably won’t be, but, for now, you have half an hour. Come with me.’
She didn’t need to hear him move to sense that he was leaving without her. She ought to let him.
Rising from her stool, with just another quick glance around to check that all was okay, Anouk followed him out of Resus.
‘Where are we going?’
The winding nature of the old part of the hospital seemed to conspire with Sol to add to the sense of suspense today.
It had been a good day. Even her young patient, Adam, had defied the odds to avoid any serious injuries.
‘You’ll see.’ Sol didn’t slow his pace.
She tried not to dwell on the fact that he sounded so serious and intent. It was just her second-guessing herself. Not wanting to give away the fact that she’d realised she was doing something as wholly and utterly stupid as falling for the man.
She’d have to be an idiot to forget who she was dealing with.
