“Why do you want to kiss me?”

David turned around and faced her. “Because,” he said, equally softly, “I like you, Holly Jones.”

“I’m not the naive teenager you used to know,” she warned.

“I realize that. I like the woman you’ve become.” And I’ve never really stopped thinking about you. Wondering what went wrong. Wishing. Most of the time I kept you in the back of my mind, but you were always there. Waiting.

“I really hated you, David, for ruining my life. At the time, I thought the world had ended.”

“I hated you, too. I didn’t go out with anyone for three years after you.” They’d hurt each other, badly. Now perhaps it was time to heal each other. “Hol…” Words weren’t enough. They weren’t nearly enough to explain how he felt. What he wanted. What he needed.

Slowly, not quite believing that it was happening, he walked back over to her. Then she was in his arms, and he was kissing her as if he’d been starved of love for the last twelve years.

Dear Reader,

I was planning my next book when three doctors leaped into my head and hijacked me! Zoe, Judith and Holly trained together, are best friends and work together at London City General.

Zoe’s the clever one, a real highflyer who’s never found love, until she meets gorgeous Brad, on secondment to Pediatrics from California. Can she heal his broken heart—and can he help her feel less haunted by the secret she hasn’t even told her best friends?

Judith’s the glamorous one, who delivers babies by day and sings at hospital fund-raisers by night. She falls in love with Kieran, the new maternity consultant. But after a discovery threatens to tear their love apart, can she teach him to believe in her—and in himself?

Holly’s the “prickly” one with a soft heart—but it’ll take a special man to get close enough to find out! She chose the fast-paced life of the E.R. to help her forget her lost love. But when David walks into her life again, will it be second time lucky?

The best bit about working on a trilogy was that I didn’t have to say goodbye to my characters. They made appearances in each other’s stories! I loved being able to explore a hospital’s community and see how different departments work together, and I hope you enjoy life in the fast lane at London City General as much as I did.

With love,

Kate Hardy

The Doctor’s Pregnancy Surprise

Kate Hardy

www.millsandboon.co.uk

For Dot—good friend and ace agent—with love

CONTENTS

Cover

Dear Reader

Title Page

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Extract

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

HOLLY blinked hard on her way into the emergency reception area. The man walking down the corridor with Sue, their consultant…No. Of course it wasn’t David Neave. Plenty of men had dark hair. She hadn’t got a proper look at his face either, just seen the outline of his jaw and nose. So what if they’d reminded her of David? It was highly unlikely that he’d be in the emergency department at London City General.

What was she doing, thinking of him anyway? That part of her life was way behind her. She hadn’t thought of him in years.

Well, months.

Well, she had had that odd dream last week, the one where he’d been kissing her. It had been so real that she’d actually woken up and turned to cuddle into him. Except, of course, there had been an empty space and an unused pillow beside her. She’d almost been able to taste his mouth on hers, feel the familiar tingle as his fingers skated over her skin.

She shook herself. David Neave might have been the love of her life, but he’d also been the big let-down of her life. A glimpse of a stranger—a man who looked vaguely like him but couldn’t possibly be him—shouldn’t get to her like this. She’d moved on years ago. Hadn’t she?

She saw her next patient—a teenager who’d fallen off a skateboard and had gravel embedded deep in the grazes—and then went to the rest room for some much-needed coffee.

When she opened the door, she stopped dead.

The man she’d seen earlier was there. This time she saw his face rather than his profile, and her heart almost stopped.

It was him.

But why here, why now? It had been twelve years since she’d seen him. His dark hair had the odd grey strand in it, there were lines on his face that hadn’t been there during sixth form, and his shoulders had broadened, but he still had that charming smile. The one that had almost stopped her heart when he’d come to sit next to her in the sixth form.

That beautiful mouth. The one that had explored every bit of her body. The mouth that had whispered words of love, of passion: promises he’d never kept.

Oh, Lord. One smile and she’d gone right back to being eighteen years old, naïve enough to believe that ‘I’ll love you till the day I die’ really meant that, was more than just the magic words calculated to get him into her knickers.

She reminded herself sharply that she was thirty years old, and a specialist in emergency medicine. Holly the realist, not Holly the dreamer.

God only knew why David Neave was in the middle of the ED rest room at London City General, drinking coffee and chatting to the senior emergency nurse. Unless…A truly nasty thought hit her. Their new senior registrar was due to start today. David, like Holly, had always planned to become a medic. He was in the rest room, not the relatives’ room. QED: he was their new senior registrar.

Maybe he wouldn’t recognise her. She’d changed a lot in the last twelve years, particularly in the first six months. Not that he would have given a damn, because he’d made quite sure he hadn’t been around when she’d needed him.

Oh, who was she trying to kid? Despite the years, she knew exactly who he was. He’d know her, too. Well, she wasn’t going to skulk around. London City General was her patch. She was going to walk into that room with her head held high and not let him faze her. Everyone knew that Holly Jones was tough. Now was the time to prove it.

‘Morning,’ she said sweetly, aiming her smile at Anna, the senior sister, rather than their new medic, and slotted money into the chocolate machine.

The machine took her money and bleeped. The little coil of metal twisted round, but the chocolate bar stayed balanced at the end of its row.

Oh, brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. Just when she needed the stuff, even more than she needed coffee. A square of chocolate and she could face the world.

Face David Neave.

‘Is it playing up again?’ Anna asked. ‘I’ll get Siobhan to call Maintenance.’

‘No point. She’ll spend all her time batting her eyes at Mitchell and forget to ask him to sort the machine. I’ll deal with it.’ Holly narrowed her eyes and looked at the machine. ‘Now,’ she said, her voice quiet but very authoritative. She tapped the glass opposite the chocolate bar she’d paid for. And it fell neatly into the tray at the bottom.

‘That’s better,’ she said, unwrapped the foil and broke off a square. Yes. The chocolate rush hit her, and she could cope again.

David wasn’t sure which bit he didn’t believe. The fact that the vending machine had given her the chocolate on her command—or the fact that he was in the same room as her again. The woman who’d broken his heart when he was eighteen. Holly Jones.

Or maybe this woman was her double.

‘Holls, let me introduce you. This is David Neave, our new senior reg. He started this morning and Sue got called away so she asked me to show him round,’ Anna announced. ‘David, this is the woman who scares the chocolate machine into submission. Our registrar—’

‘Holly Jones,’ he cut in. It really was her. Except that her dark hair was now cut in a short, functional style instead of being tied back at the nape of her neck, and her grey eyes were much, much harder.

Or maybe they always had been hard but he’d refused to see it.

Anna blinked in surprise. ‘You two know each other?’

‘We were at school together. A long, long time ago,’ Holly said quickly.

Was it his imagination, or was there a twinge of guilt in her eyes? She’d looked away again almost immediately, as if she was too embarrassed to face him. It was a bit late for an attack of conscience now. She should have thought about that twelve years ago.

And now it looked as if he was going to have to work with her.

Holly Jones was back in his life.

Hell. She was even wearing the same perfume. How could such a tiny thing as a spritz of scent take him spinning right back twelve years? The past, when Holly had been in his arms, kissing him and whispering, ‘I love you.’ Words that had meant everything to him—and absolutely nothing to her.

‘We lost touch,’ David said.

That was one way of putting it. Because the love of his life had walked out on him when they were eighteen. And her timing had been impeccably bad: she’d done it the week before his A-level exams.

Holly could hardly believe her ears. Lost touch? Yeah, right. It had been none of her doing. He’d been the one to lose touch. Deliberately. The first sign of trouble, and he’d been out of there. Hadn’t returned any of her phone calls, hadn’t replied to her letters. When she’d gone to his house to talk it over face to face, he’d been away on holiday. With another girl.

He hadn’t accepted responsibility back then, and he certainly wasn’t going to admit it now.

What a creep.

More proof—as if she needed it—that she was better off without him.

‘So you’re from Liverpool, too?’ Anna asked.

‘I moved away a long time ago,’ David said. ‘I trained in Southampton.’

Holly knew that. She’d been there the day his offer from Southampton had come through. The same day as hers. They’d been offered places for getting the same grades, even. And they’d planned to go to med school together.

Except she hadn’t made it.

And when she’d sat her A levels the following year—and got the straight A grades her teachers had predicted—she’d accepted the offer to train in London. No way could she have faced Southampton, knowing that he was there.

‘I worked in Newcastle for a couple of years, then came here,’ David said.

She knew he was looking at her. Knew he was expecting her to respond. And Anna expected it, too. If Holly followed her instincts and stomped out of the rest room, Anna would start to wonder. And although the senior sister didn’t gossip, the rest of the department did. It wouldn’t take long for rumours to fill in the blanks. The worst thing was, the wildest ones would probably be right on target. ‘I trained here,’ she said shortly.

Then she met his eyes, and wished she hadn’t. Because, for an instant, she’d seen a flash of yearning there. A yearning that was immediately echoed in her own heart.

She slammed the brakes on. There was no going back now. Working with David was going to be awkward, but she didn’t have a choice. Not unless she wanted them both to be the centre of gossip for an uncomfortably long time.

‘You two must have a lot to catch up on,’ Anna said.

Over my dead body! Holly thought. She couldn’t help looking at David, and was surprised to see questions in his eyes. Did he expect her to fill him in on her gap year—what had really happened? He hadn’t cared enough to find out at the time. Why did he want to know now, when it was much too late?

‘Years,’ David said, in answer to Anna’s question.

Though it underlined Holly’s thoughts. It was years too late for them.

‘It won’t take you long to settle in, then, seeing as you know each other. Sue put you on the same team,’ Anna said.

The blood rushed straight from Holly’s head and it was an effort to keep upright, her head was spinning so much. David was going to be working on her team? Given the new shift rotations they were doing, it meant she’d be spending every single moment at work near him. Forty-odd hours a week.

She tried to school her face into neutral and stared at his hands, hoping that she could think of some suitable response quickly enough to stop Anna asking questions. But looking at his hands was a bad, bad move—because she could still remember the pressure of his fingertips against her skin. Still remember what those hands had done to her. Why couldn’t she get him out of her head?

‘Holls? Are you all right?’ Anna asked.

‘Uh—yes. I hit traffic problems so I didn’t get back from Liverpool until pretty late last night. I, um, just need some sleep,’ Holly prevaricated. It was true, up to a point. What she really wanted was time to think, not time to sleep. She gave a huge yawn and hoped it didn’t look as fake as it felt.

Give me time. Give me space to deal with this, she begged. And, right on cue, her pager bleeped. She checked it. ‘Sorry. Gotta dash. Catch you later, Anna, David.’ She gave them both her best smile and left the rest room with indecent haste.

‘Fancy you two knowing each other. Still, at least we don’t have to warn you that Holls isn’t as scary as she seems,’ Anna said.

David frowned. Holly—his Holly—scary? Surely they couldn’t be talking about the same person. Holly had been the epitome of ‘sweet sixteen’. She’d been lovely. A little shy, but once David had got to know her he’d discovered her sense of fun.

Holly Jones, scary?

‘She tells it like it is, and God help you if you make a stupid mistake,’ Anna said, rolling her eyes. ‘But if anyone needs help, she’s the first one to offer.’ She smiled. ‘But I expect you already know all this.’

‘Yes,’ David lied. Maybe he’d been so in love with her that it had blinded him to her real self. If anyone had told him that Holly would dump him without an explanation, he’d have scoffed. He and Holly had told each other everything, even the secret dreams nobody else had known about.

Obviously he’d never really known her. Because the Holly Jones he remembered had planned to be a GP—so she could get to know her patients properly and look after them from cradle to grave. He’d felt the same. They’d even talked about having their own practice, a husband-and-wife team.

Even though he’d chosen his speciality years after their break-up, he hadn’t been able to face a GP rotation. Instead, he’d chosen emergency medicine, where he could do the best for his patients but he could stay uninvolved. He could walk away.

‘Right, now you’ve finished your coffee, I’ll show you round the rest of the department,’ Anna said.

‘Thanks.’ He smiled at Anna. So what if Holly was back in his life? She was probably married—to someone her family thought suitable for her—and used her maiden name for professional purposes. And even if she wasn’t married, David was older and much, much wiser. He wasn’t going to let her get close ever again.

As for her smile making his heart turn over, that was just a reflex action. He hadn’t thought of Holly for ages.

Ha. Who was he trying to kid? At the weekend, when he’d moved into his tiny flat round the corner from the hospital, he’d unpacked a few boxes and come across an old photograph of the two of them together. A photograph he should have thrown out years and years ago. He’d looked at her sweet, shy smile and wondered what she was doing now. Had she become a doctor? Was she married to another GP, with four children and a houseful of cats and dogs and hamsters, living the life they’d always planned, only without him?

Now he knew at least one of the answers. She was a doctor. An emergency specialist. They were going to have to work together and put the past behind them. Somehow.

‘It’s my stomach, doctor,’ Lucy said, doubling over as another spasm hit her. ‘It hurts so much.’

‘Lie back, try to relax and I’ll take a look,’ Holly said gently. ‘Breathe for me. In, out, in, out.’

Gradually Lucy calmed and lay back against the bed.

Holly bared Lucy’s abdomen and palpated it gently. ‘Tell me when it hurts,’ she said.

Lucy flinched wherever Holly touched her. ‘It hurts all over.’

An acute abdomen could mean one of about a dozen things. Holly had to narrow things down. Fast. ‘Have you had any other symptoms?’

Lucy grimaced. ‘I thought it was just a bug—the usual thing, a temperature and a headache and feeling a bit sweaty and tired. I’ve had that horrible summer cough and that makes everyone a bit breathless, doesn’t it?’

‘Maybe,’ Holly said.

‘It’s so hot in here,’ Lucy said, then shook her head. ‘Sorry. I’m trying not to whine.’

‘You’re not feeling well,’ said Holly. ‘And we all think we need air-conditioning, too.’

‘I was going to see my GP. I was starting to think maybe it was the menopause, even though I’m not quite forty.’

‘Because of the sweats?’

‘And my periods are next to nothing,’ Lucy said. She smiled wryly. ‘And I’ve been getting PMT. I mean, really bad PMT. Oliver’ll tell you, I’ve been a monster.’ Her hand tightened round his. ‘But then I got this pain in my stomach.’

‘I thought it might be her appendix so I brought her here,’ said Oliver, Lucy’s husband.

‘Have you been sick at all?’ Holly asked.

Lucy nodded. ‘And I’ve had a bit of a tummy upset. It might have been something I ate.’

‘She’s been eating like a horse lately,’ Oliver said.

‘I don’t think it’s appendicitis,’ Holly said. She checked Lucy’s temperature and pulse. Lucy’s pulse was definitely up—more than Holly had expected from the fever. ‘Have you had any other pains lately?’

‘She won’t admit it, but she’s had chest pains,’ Oliver said.

‘I am not having a heart attack. Will you stop nagging me, Oliver?’ Lucy said crossly. ‘Besides, I’m managing my weight so my heart’ll be fine. I’m on that new diet and it’s actually working.’ Despite the fact that, according to Oliver, Lucy had been eating a lot more than usual.

‘Have you lost much weight?’ Holly asked.

‘A stone and a half. It’s falling off,’ Lucy said. ‘First time ever.’

‘Probably because you never stop. She’s always on the go,’ Oliver added wryly. ‘She’s just been promoted to head teacher.’

‘So I need to put the hours in,’ Lucy said defensively.

‘I need to do some blood tests to rule out some possibilities,’ Holly said. ‘I’ll be back in a second.’ She smiled and left the cubicle.

‘Miche—just the woman I wanted,’ she said, spotting the staff nurse. ‘Can you give me a hand running some tests, please?’

‘Sure. What do you need?’

‘My patient’s in cubicle eight. Her name’s Lucy. I need some bloods done, first. Us and Es, ionised calcium, full blood count and differential. Ask the lab to check T4, T3 and TSH as well.’ Checking the tri-iodothyronine, thryoxine and thyroid stimulating hormone levels in the bloodstream would help Holly find out if it was a problem with Lucy’s endocrine system, and if so the results would help her give the right dosage of medication to get Lucy’s levels back to normal.

‘What’s this? A patient with thyroid problems?’ a male voice asked beside her.

Damn. She could do with some kind of early warning system so she could avoid David—so she could avoid situations like this when he might catch her off guard. ‘I’m not sure. That’s why I’m asking for T4, T3 and TSH levels,’ she said shortly, and turned her attention back to Michelle. ‘Thanks, Miche. I’d also like to do some BMGs.’ BMGs, or bedside strip measurement of glucose, would check Lucy’s blood-sugar levels. ‘And a mid-stream urine specimen—Oh, and she’s got a bit of a chest infection, so ask the lab to run blood cultures, so we can see what’s causing it.’

‘What are her symptoms?’ David asked.

‘Acute abdomen, losing weight despite eating a lot, chest pains, a fast heartbeat, sweating, volatile emotions and tiredness.’

‘What about her blink rate?’ If Lucy was blinking less than normal, it was another pointer towards a thyroid problem. ‘Any swelling in the tissues around her eyes?’

Holly looked at him and had to fight to get her thoughts back in control. Hell, this was just how she’d imagined him as a doctor. Completely focused on his patients. Caring.

If only he’d been like that about her. ‘I’m doing bloods to check if it’s thyroid,’ Holly said.

‘I nearly specialised in endocrinology before I settled on emergency medicine. I could have word with her, if you like.’

No. I don’t want to work with you and I don’t want you interfering with my patients.

On the other hand, she’d taken the Hippocratic oath. She had a choice of letting David help or trying to get hold of Fabian, the endocrine specialist, who almost never answered his bleep and needed at least three follow-up nags. Her patient came first. Even if it meant that Holly was in the awkward position of owing David Neave a favour. ‘Thanks. I’ll introduce you.’

To her relief, he simply followed her back to cubicle eight. ‘Lucy, Oliver, this is David Neave, our new senior registrar. I’ve been talking to him about what the problem might be, and he’s your man for any questions.’

He used to be my man.

She pushed the thought away. The past was over. Over.

She forced a smile to her face. ‘Michelle, our staff nurse, is going to come and take blood for tests.’ She didn’t quite trust her hands to be as steady as usual if she had to take the blood under David’s gaze, and Lucy really didn’t need half a dozen puncture wounds from an incompetent doctor.

‘Do you mind if I have a look at your hand?’ David asked. He pinched the skin on the back of Lucy’s hand, very gently, as Holly watched. When the skin didn’t flatten again instantly, Holly knew that Lucy was dehydrated.

‘Has anyone in your family had problems with their thyroid gland?’ he asked.

‘Not that I can think of. Why?’ Lucy asked.

‘Holly told me about your symptoms and I think your thyroid gland’s overactive. What you’re suffering from is something called thyroid storm.’

‘Is it serious?’ Oliver asked.

Yes. If it went untreated, one in ten cases would die.

‘We can do something about it,’ David reassured them both. ‘Holly’s arranged the blood tests, we’ll give you some paracetamol to get your temperature down, a saline drip to help with the dehydration, some antithyroid medication to deal with the excess thyroid hormones and some beta-blockers to help slow your heart rate down to what it should be.’

‘Heart medicine? But…’ Lucy shook her head. ‘What’s wrong with my heart?’

‘It’s all to do with your thyroid gland producing too many hormones. The thyroid gland is just here in your throat, underneath your voice-box,’ David explained.

When he touched Holly’s throat, to demonstrate, her pulse went into overdrive and she only hoped that he couldn’t feel the frantic flutter.

‘It produces the hormones that regulate your body’s energy levels and at the moment it’s producing too much.’

‘That’s why you’re eating so much,’ Holly said, hoping her voice sounded less shaky than it felt. ‘Your body’s metabolism is working too hard, making you feel hungry so you want to eat, but you’re still losing weight.’

‘It’s also making your heart beat faster than it should,’ David added.

So’s mine, Holly thought in desperation. And it shouldn’t be. I don’t want it to.

‘Thyroid problems? Isn’t that something old people get?’ Lucy asked.

‘No. It’s more common in women, and usually it’s young to middle-aged women, in their thirties to fifties,’ Holly said.

‘If you’ve got an overactive thyroid but you haven’t been treated for it, and then you get an infection or you’re under a lot of stress, you can end up with thyroid storm. We’ll need to get you admitted because we’ll need to run more tests,’ David said. When Lucy coughed, he said, ‘We also want to know what’s causing your cough, so we can treat that, too.’ He looked at Holly. ‘Can you ask a porter to bring a fan in to make Lucy more comfortable, please?’

‘You don’t have to do that if it’s going to mean someone else will be all hot and sticky,’ Lucy said.

‘It won’t,’ Holly said. If necessary, she’d use the fan from her own office—she could manage without for a couple of hours. ‘We want your temperature down.’

‘Cool air, tepid sponging and paracetamol should do it,’ David explained with a smile.

Lucy groaned. ‘That’s what you do to babies! I feel such an idiot. I should have gone to see my GP when it all started, but I was busy and I didn’t want to waste his time.’

‘It might have saved you ending up in here,’ Holly agreed wryly. ‘But if it makes you feel any better, I would’ve done exactly the same.’

Yes, David thought bitterly, watching her retreating back. Holly had always done things her way, and to hell with the consequences. Even though he had the nasty suspicion that it was going to rake open old wounds, he knew they had to talk.

An hour and a half later—by which time Holly had calmed down a hysterical toddler and removed a bead from his nose, put a dislocated elbow back in place and removed broken glass from a nasty wound and then stitched it—she was in definite need of caffeine.

‘I’m taking five,’ she told Michelle, and headed for the rest room.

She’d just fixed herself a black coffee from the vending machine, poured the top quarter off and added enough cold water so she could drink it straight down, when David walked in.

‘Strong stuff, is it?’ he asked, seeing her holding the coffee-cup beneath the tap on the water cooler.

‘No. Just temperature regulation,’ she said, and drank her coffee. ‘Ah. I needed that.’ A caffeine fix might just jolt her body back into reality and stop it overreacting any time he came anywhere near her.

‘Holly,’ he said quietly.

Unwillingly, she faced him. Looked him in the eye. Was that regret she saw there? ‘What?’

‘I had no idea you worked here.’

She shrugged. ‘Why should you?’

He sighed. ‘I think we need to talk.’

Way too dangerous. On the ward, she could cope; in a quiet corner in a bar, it would be too much like old times. Just the two of them. ‘There’s nothing to say.’

‘We need to clear the air.’

‘There’s nothing to say,’ she repeated. Nothing either of them could say would change what had happened.

He raked a hand through his hair and she watched his fingers, mesmerised. She could still remember them running through her own hair. Hair that she’d had cut short the moment she’d recognised the truth, to wipe out the memories. Except it hadn’t really worked.

‘What happened between us was a long time ago.’

Was this his idea of an apology? It certainly wasn’t hers!

‘And in the emergency department we need to be able to work as a team.’

He’d phrased that very carefully. Good. Because if he’d dared to say anything about being able to rely on each other, she would have murdered him. ‘Of course,’ she said, as neutrally as she could.

‘We’re going to have to work together. And it’s better if we can do it without…problems.’

Did he think that she was going to weep and wail and ask him why he’d done it? No. Been there, done that, worn the T-shirt—when she was eighteen. She was older. Much wiser. So she could feel relieved that she’d had a very, very lucky escape. And she most certainly wasn’t going to act on that flicker of attraction. Blue eyes spelled danger. She didn’t make the same mistakes twice. ‘Of course,’ she said again.

At least he hadn’t suggested that they could be friends. Because she didn’t think she could go that far. Just in case he was entertaining the idea, she leapt in fast to state the ground rules. ‘We’re perfectly capable of being colleagues.’

‘Good.’

Just to underline the point, she added, ‘How’s Lucy?’

‘Fine. I’ve just had the results back and they’re pretty much what I expected, so I’ve written up the drugs and admitted her. How come she didn’t go to her GP before? She must have had symptoms.’

‘She’s just been promoted. She’s been busy at work, thought maybe she was going through the menopause early and she’d picked up a bug that was doing the rounds.’

‘A pulmonary bug?’

Holly nodded, knowing that a pulmonary infection was the most common event that could spark off a thyroid storm. ‘Thanks for seeing her for me.’

‘Pleasure.’

She wished he hadn’t said that word. She scrunched her cardboard cup into a ball and threw it at the bin. It went straight in first time. ‘I’d better get back to my patients. I told Michelle I was just taking five minutes. And we’re short today.’

‘Right.’

She’d half expected him to say, See you. But he hadn’t. Just as well. Because she didn’t want to see David any more than she had to.

Did she?

CHAPTER TWO

IT WASN’T working.

Holly gritted her teeth, adjusted the incline on the treadmill and increased the speed. But running uphill to the beat of the rock music she was playing on headphones—even at high volume—wasn’t enough to drown out her thoughts. It wasn’t enough to stop her remembering.

The past is over, she reminded herself harshly. You got through it. You don’t have to go back there. You’re thirty years old, you’re a registrar in the emergency department and everybody at London City General respects you. You are not eighteen years old with your world collapsing round your ears. Get a grip.

But the pep-talk didn’t work.

Even though she knew it was pointless and stupid and wasn’t going to change anything—yada, yada, yada—she still couldn’t get David out of her head. Couldn’t stop the memories replaying. David, leaning over her in the orchard next to her parents’ house. Those blue, blue eyes, the same colour as a midsummer sky, glittering with love and laughter. The smile on his face, making him more handsome than ever—and then suddenly growing serious as he lowered his mouth to hers. Kissed her. Made love with her, their textbooks and revision forgotten. Skin to skin with sunlight dappling over them, the scent of apple blossom in the air and the sound of birdsong all around.

Stop. Just stop. Holly slammed the ‘stop’ button on the treadmill, switched off the music and leaned with her arms on the supports and her forehead resting on her arms.

She hadn’t thought about this for years. Hadn’t allowed herself to think about it for years.

Oh, who was she trying to kid? She faced it every time there was an obstetric emergency. Every time a child was brought in. Faced it for a second, blanked it and made the professional in her take over. She was a doctor. First, last and always. Nothing else.

And yet her hands crept instinctively to her flat stomach. Rubbed. Splayed in the protective gesture that all newly pregnant women made, cradling the little life in their womb.

The little life hadn’t been there for long. Just long enough to disappoint her parents—nice, middle-class Mr and Mrs Jones, in their big house in the posh bit of Liverpool, with their orchard and their two big cars and their terribly nice, clever children.

Ha. She’d hit eighteen and she’d let them down. Her brother Daniel had waited until he was nineteen before he’d gone off the rails, and he still wasn’t quite back on them. They’d both been a disappointment. And Holly’s career hadn’t quite redeemed her in her parents’ eyes. After all, she was in east London, practically the slums as far as they were concerned, when she could have lived somewhere so much more upmarket.

‘Holly, how could you be so stupid?’

The words echoed again and again in her head, in her mother’s cut-glass tones.

Stupid. She’d been that all right. Stupid enough to think that David would stand by her. OK, so it would have changed their plans a bit, having a baby. A lot, even. She’d have had to take a gap year for starters. But there were nurseries, day-care centres, crèches. They could have coped. Studied together and watched their baby grow up into a toddler and start primary school. Qualified. Moved to a little cottage in the country where they’d have been the village GPs, with four children, a couple of dogs and a rabbit and a guinea pig and maybe a pony for the kids.

Everything they’d wanted. Just as they’d planned—except one of the children would have been a teensy bit older.

Holly took a shuddering breath, willing herself not to cry. She’d cried enough over David the day she’d phoned him to tell him the news. The news that she’d gone into Liverpool the previous day and bought a pregnancy testing kit from a chemist’s where nobody had known her or would report back to her mother. She’d done the test secretly that morning. Squirreled the test stick back to her bedroom and watched for five agonisingly slow minutes until the results had shown up. And then she’d known her missed periods and nausea had been nothing to do with exam stress.

Except he hadn’t been there.

And he hadn’t returned her call—that day, or the next, when she’d phoned him again. She’d believed in David. He wouldn’t let her down. He wouldn’t desert her when she needed him most…

But he hadn’t called her back. It had reached the point where Holly had suspected he’d actually told his mum to lie on the phone and tell Holly that he wasn’t there.

He’d been doing biology A level, so he’d have been perfectly capable of working it out for himself. Missed periods probably equalled baby. But he had also been a teenage boy. Full of testosterone and panic. It had taken her long enough to work it out, but in the end she had appreciated his logic. Warped, but understandable. He’d gone for the easy way out. If he didn’t contact her again, his girlfriend would eventually realise that he’d dumped her. No mess, nothing to face, nice and clean.

For him.

Not for her.

At least her parents hadn’t gloated. Hadn’t gone into the I-told-you-so routine. Laura Jones had simply held her daughter and gone into organisation mode. Not for nothing was Laura the chair of the local WI, the Rotary Group and the local school governors.

‘We’ll get through this. You know you can’t possibly keep the baby. Not unless you want to ruin your career before you’ve even started. So I’ll get you booked in somewhere to deal with it. Concentrate on your exams—and we’ll get your exam centre changed. You can sit them without having to worry about seeing him.’

Holly hadn’t wanted a termination. OK, so the baby hadn’t been planned, and the father didn’t want to know, but plenty of people coped in the same situation. Maybe once the baby was born, her mother would come round to her way of thinking. She’d get decent A-level grades, take a gap year, then start her course when her baby was around nine months old.

If her parents wouldn’t support her, she’d find a way. She’d become a damned good doctor, and she’d be all the family her baby would ever need. She’d do it all on her own if she had to.

Except it hadn’t turned out like that.

It had all come crashing down, two hours before her first A-level exam.

Holly scrubbed at her eyes. Stop being such a wimp, she told herself fiercely. You’ve got everything you want in London. The best possible friends and the best possible job—a job where every single minute’s different. And where there wasn’t any time to think and wonder about what might have been.

So what if her two best friends had both just got married and she’d been their bridesmaids? So what if, a year or two down the line, Zoe and Jude would have babies and ask Holly to be godmother?

It didn’t change her plans. Not at all.

And neither did David’s arrival. He was her colleague and they were going to be working the same shifts, but she didn’t need to have that much contact with him. They’d agreed to be polite to each other and work as a team, for the sake of the ward. That was enough.

Outside London City General, she’d stay well clear of him. She wasn’t going to get sucked back into that old attraction. She wasn’t going to fall for those beautiful blue eyes. Or the well-shaped mouth that knew exactly where and how she liked being kissed. Or the clever hands that she’d known would be gentle with patients but were passionate with her.

Get a grip, Holls, she told herself again. Physically, he’s your type. And, yes, the sex was good. But that was in another life, another world. It was over between you years ago. He’s probably married. Married, with children. She linked her hands across her abdomen and pulled tight to take away the emptiness, the memories of the child they’d made who hadn’t been born. And even if he isn’t, he’s not the kind you can rely on. He’s not worth it. Just forget him.

So who was the real Holly Jones?

The question had been nagging at David all day. And even an hour’s unbroken swim hadn’t driven the question out of his head.

Who was she?

She was a doctor. Caring. Kind to patients—he’d discovered that she’d lent her own fan to Lucy, their patient with the thyroid storm, before Lucy had been transferred to the ward. It was the kind of thing that the Holly he remembered would have done.

But she had a reputation here for being that little bit unapproachable. Scary. And she’d been ambitious enough to dump him just before their A levels, concentrating on her work rather than her relationship. She’d even made arrangements to sit her exams elsewhere—and when she hadn’t turned up at Southampton he’d realised the truth. She never had wanted to do the village GP thing with him. She’d just been playing with him, marking time. Holly Jones had gone off to conquer the world.

His mum had been the one to tell him.

‘Sorry, son. She rang while you were out. She doesn’t want to see you any more.’

He hadn’t believed her. His mother had never liked Holly, saying that she was stuck-up and was only slumming it with David to pass the time. He’d always been able to shrug it off, until he’d gone down to the phone box on the corner to ring Holly. And then he’d spoken to her mum.

‘Sorry, David. She doesn’t want to see you again.’

‘I’d just like to speak to her, please, Mrs Jones.’

‘I’m afraid she won’t come to the phone. She really doesn’t want to be bothered with you, David.’

He’d refused to leave it at that. As soon as he talked to Holly they’d be able to sort out the problem, whatever it was. He knew it. So he’d tried hanging about in the street in the hope that he would see her. But the one occasion when he’d seen her get into her mother’s car she’d averted her eyes. She’d refused even to look at him.

Then David had finally realised that his mother was telling the truth after all. Holly had grown bored with him. She hadn’t even had the guts to tell him to his face that it was over. So maybe his mother’s prejudices had been right all along.

He grimaced and went for a shower. The water was almost scalding hot but he didn’t feel it. Didn’t feel anything.

Because Holly was back in his life.

Holly. The woman who’d ruined him for relationships. The woman who’d been a ghost throughout his marriage—as his ex-wife had thrown at him the day she’d walked out on him.

He’d learned not to do relationships any more. So now he was a dedicated doctor. A good one. He’d be able to treat Holly as just another colleague.

Wouldn’t he?

The emergency department was trialling a different way of working shifts: instead of the usual internal rotation of two or three earlies plus two or three lates for three weeks, then four nights in the fourth week, they were trying two earlies, two lates, two nights, four off. Which would have been fine by David if Holly hadn’t been on his team—because her shifts were identical to his.

If he asked for a change, people would notice. Especially as he’d admitted to knowing her at school. The hospital grapevine was definitely stronger here than it had been in Southampton or Newcastle, and he didn’t want to become the focus of gossip. He knew Holly wouldn’t take it well either. So he had to put up and shut up.

His doubts lessened as the week went on because Holly stuck to the rules: she treated him as just another colleague, giving him as much information as he needed about patients and steering well clear of anything remotely personal. Which suited him fine.

Until the Friday night, when David was treating a patient with chest pains and heard an almighty racket coming from Reception.

He glanced at the clock. Yep, just as he’d thought: chucking-out time from the pubs. It sounded as if there were a number of drunken people wandering round Reception, demanding treatment. Probably a punch-up, he thought. Bruises, lacerations, the odd fracture.

But they’d probably demand immediate treatment and would harry the receptionist until they were seen. Which meant he needed to step in before things escalated.

‘I’ll be back in a moment,’ he promised the elderly man. ‘Keep breathing the oxygen for me. Slow breaths. In and one and out and one,’ he counted, checking that his patient was keeping the same time. ‘That’s great. If the pain gets any worse, press the buzzer here.’

Oh, great. Just what they didn’t need on a busy Friday night. Six men in their early twenties who’d all drunk way too much beer. Probably with a few vodka or tequila chasers. And they were getting aggressive with Siobhan.

If she didn’t do something, right now, this could escalate into something really nasty.

Holly strode over to them. ‘I believe you gentlemen require assistance?’

As she’d hoped, they turned away from Siobhan, giving the receptionist a chance to hit the panic button. All Holly needed to do now was to keep them talking until Security arrived.

‘You going to kiss it better for me, then?’ One of them swaggered over to her.

I’ll kick it, more like, if you don’t put a sock in it, Holly thought, but she smiled sweetly. She’d had it drummed into her at medical school that you treated all patients the same, even if you didn’t like them. Conflict slowed things down and made it more likely that you’d make a clinical error. You had to defuse volatile situations as quickly as you could.

‘I know you need to be seen, but Friday nights are always really busy, and, I’m sorry, that means you’re in a queue. We’ll be able to treat you much more quickly if you wait in a line and give our receptionist the details she needs—one at a time. If you’re all talking at once she’s not going to be able to hear you properly and that’s how mistakes get made.’

‘Bossy. Bet you like it on top, don’tcha?’ The one with the black eye leered at her. ‘You can give me one, if you like.’

She laughed it off. ‘I can tell you’ve had a bump on the head.’

‘Oi, you’ve got to see our mate. Now. He’s been knifed—he’s bleeding,’ one of them said, jabbing a finger in the air at her.

Holly kept her arms calmly by her sides and flexed her fingers to avoid her gut reaction of balling her fists ready to punch him. ‘We’ll see you all in time. But there’s one thing you should all know.’

‘Yeah?’

She beckoned the one with the black eye closer. ‘If you’re drunk, I’ll have to assume your body won’t be able to tolerate any anaesthetic—because it’ll make you ill,’ she said quietly. This wasn’t strictly true, but she was banking on his knowledge of medicine being confined to TV dramas. ‘With a bloke your size, I’m going to have to use a big needle to stitch your wounds. Without anaesthetic, it’s going to hurt.’

‘Needle?’ Black-Eye said, colour draining from his face.

Just as she’d calculated: the bigger the braggart, the more fuss he made about things hurting. Particularly needles. ‘Big needle,’ she emphasised. ‘And, of course, I’ll need to give you a tetanus booster.’ From years of experience, she kept an empty epidural syringe in her pocket when she did the night shift on Fridays or Saturdays, for just this sort of situation. She withdrew it and showed it to him.

He swore in horror. ‘That—that’s huge!’

Which was the whole point: even without the needle, it looked impressive. Her patient didn’t need to know the syringe was used for anaesthesia and guiding a tube into the spinal cord—it certainly wasn’t used to give vaccinations or local anaesthetic for suturing wounds! She managed to hide her grin. ‘If you sit quietly and don’t hassle the other patients—or my receptionist—I’ll assume you’re not drunk and I’ll make sure you get some painkillers before I sort out that cut. So it’s your choice, mate. Drunk and painful, or not drunk and painkillers?’

‘Right.’ Black-Eye looked thoughtful. ‘Come on, lads. Let’s do what the doc says. Sit down and wait.’

‘I’m not waiting. That bastard sliced my arm. I’ll bleed to death! I want it stitched now, so I can go and sort him out,’ another one said, thrusting his face belligerently into Holly’s. ‘You a doc or a dolly?’

She nearly gagged at the alcohol fumes. ‘A doctor. A female doctor. One who’s been on her feet all evening and really, really needs a cup of coffee. The longer you keep me here, the longer it’ll take to treat you. So why don’t you sit down and let me finish helping my patient, so I can start seeing to your arm?’

He glared back at her, but he sat down, just as two burly security men entered the room and David emerged from the cubicles.

‘Problems?’ one of the security men asked.

‘Not any more—are there, lads?’ Holly asked.

‘No, Doc,’ Black-Eye said politely.

David stared at Holly. ‘What did you do?’ he asked.

‘Not a lot. Just pointed out a few things.’ She shrugged. ‘Siobhan, who’s next on my list?’

Holly had just taken on six drunken men—all of whom were a good six inches taller than she was. All muscular, all drunk, and all of them had been fighting, so adrenaline was pumping through their bodies, and they’d been raising hell in Reception.

Without even raising her voice, she’d got them all to sit down. Without a fuss. Then had coolly asked to see her next patient.

The sweet, gentle Holly Jones he’d known definitely wouldn’t have been able to do that. She’d lived a sheltered life and had probably never even seen anyone drunk or violent—whereas he’d lived on a rough estate where he’d seen situations like this every single night.

So maybe the real Holly was the scary one.

Maybe Holly had turned into her mother, the most formidable woman David had ever met.

‘Our Holls is pretty amazing, isn’t she?’ Siobhan said wryly.

‘Just remind me never to get on her bad side,’ David replied.

Though he didn’t think she could do anything else to him. She’d already put him through the mangle and hung him out to dry.

When David had finished treating his share of the drunken brawlers, he headed for the rest room. He needed coffee. Now.

Holly was already there, curled up with a cup of coffee and a chocolate brownie.

Food. He needed food. ‘Where did you get that?’ he asked, eyeing the brownie. He just hoped the shop was still open, wherever it was. And still had something like that left.

He was disappointed. ‘Zoe from Paeds left it for me. I’m one of her testers for new recipes.’

‘Oh.’

He wasn’t going to ask her for a bite. Even though he was starving.

But it must have shown on her face because she rolled her eyes. ‘All right, all right, I’ll split it with you.’ She broke the cake in two and handed one half to him, with just the hint of a smile.

‘Thank you.’ His head was reeling. This was Scary Holly, the one who’d made the drunken louts behave like lambs. How could she be Nice Holly, who shared her goodies? Especially, he thought when he took his first bite, something as scrummy as this, which any normal person definitely wouldn’t have wanted to share?

‘Enjoyed your first week here?’ she asked.

‘Yes.’ Once he’d got over the shock of seeing her again. But she was being friendly enough to him. He could handle this, treat her as a colleague. Ignore the tingle at the base of his spine every time he looked at her mouth. ‘This shift pattern takes some getting used to, though.’

‘Give it six months, then the human resources bods will come up with another clever idea for us to try.’

‘Such cynicism in one so young,’ he teased.

He’d obviously hit a raw nerve, because her face changed. Became shuttered and cool.

What had he said?

He backtracked, fast. ‘I was impressed with the way you handled that lot out there.’

She shrugged. ‘You get used to it. Most Friday and Saturday nights we get the same sort of thing. It’s just a matter of defusing the situation before things get out of hand. Give them a choice so they don’t feel they’re going to lose face, and they’ll usually shut up.’

‘They could have hit you.’

‘Security were on their way.’

‘You still took a risk.’ A stupid risk, and it made him want to protect her—despite the fact she’d already proved she was tough, not the sweet and gentle middle-class girl he’d known years ago. She didn’t even have that posh accent any more.

‘There’s a little trick that a registrar taught me when I was still a house officer.’ She withdrew the epidural syringe from her pocket. ‘You’re drunk and you’re hurt and the doctor tells you this is what she’s going to have to use for your tetanus booster, because when you’re drunk you need more medication—though if you wait your turn without a fuss she’ll assume you’re sober and use a smaller syringe. Are you going to hit her or are you going to shut up and sit down?’

‘That’s an epidural kit, without the needle.’ David stared at her. ‘And it’s not true about vaccinations. You didn’t.’

‘It was a white lie.’ She grinned. ‘And it worked, didn’t it?’ She finished her coffee. ‘I’d better get back and see how we’re doing out there.’

David gulped his coffee as he watched her leave the room. That smile. It would be so, so easy to forget what had happened between them. To fall for Holly again. She was brave and funny—and beautiful. She’d been pretty as a teenager, but she’d lost that plump ripeness. Thinner, older, with that gamin haircut showing off her incredible bone structure, Holly Jones was beautiful.

But he wasn’t going to let her break his heart a second time.

CHAPTER THREE

SATURDAY night was even busier than Friday had been, so Holly barely had a chance to talk to David during the shift. Just when she was going to take a break, Rick, one of the paramedics, brought in a young man.

‘His name’s Gary—I couldn’t get a second name out of his mates. Collapsed in the middle of a nightclub. His mates say it’s drink.’

‘But you don’t think so?’

‘Nope.’ Rick ran through the usual handover, noting Gary’s pulse, breathing rate and his GCS, or Glasgow coma scale, level, which told Holly how the patient was reacting to stimulation. ‘He’s been drifting in and out of consciousness on the way here. His mates are waiting outside. Want me to send one of them in to see if you can prise anything out of them?’

‘Please.’ Holly smiled at him. ‘Thanks, Rick.’

‘Any time, sugar.’

She turned to her patient. ‘Hello, Gary. My name’s Holly. Do you know where you are?’

The young man looked confused. ‘Dunno. Head hurts.’

‘You’re in London City General. I’m just going to check you over, OK?’

His pulse was way too fast. She shone a torch into his eyes and discovered that his pupils were dilated. He was sweating and a quick examination showed her that he had increased muscle tone. So he must have taken amphetamines of some sort. ‘Gary? What did you take tonight?’

‘Nothing.’ Gary leaned over the side of the bed and was promptly sick.

Before Holly could reach for a kidney dish to catch the vomit, a hand had already pushed one under Gary’s chin. ‘Here you go, mate.’

She winked at Rick. ‘Just in time. Thanks.’

‘Pleasure. I’ve brought Gary’s friend in to have a word with you.’

‘I’m Holly Jones, the registrar,’ she said. The young man looked so nervous that she didn’t ask him his name in case it made him bolt. It was more important to find out more about her patient. ‘Can you tell me a bit more about Gary?’

‘He just collapsed.’

Holly nodded. ‘Has he taken anything?’

‘No. Just drink.’

She raised an eyebrow. ‘Look, I’m not here to lecture you. I’m not going to grass you up to the police or anything like that. I just need to know what he’s taken so I can treat him properly.’ She spread her hands. ‘I’ve seen enough drunks in my time here to know when someone’s drunk. Gary doesn’t smell of booze. What did he take?’

‘He hasn’t taken nothing.’

‘It looks like amphetamines to me. Ecstasy?’

The young man looked at her for a moment, then sighed, as if knowing that he was beaten. ‘No. He couldn’t get no disco biscuits. He bought some Eve.’

Eve, or MDEA, was a type of amphetamine similar to Ecstasy. ‘Thanks,’ Holly said. ‘Do you have any idea how long ago he took it?’

‘Forty minutes—something like that, I guess.’

‘Great.’ She smiled reassuringly at him. ‘Now I know just what to give your mate to get his body back to normal.’

‘He is going to be OK, isn’t he?’

‘It’s too early to say, I’m afraid—though you did the right thing by calling the ambulance. If you want to wait in the relatives’ room, I can come and see you later to let you know how he’s getting on.’

‘Right.’ The young man bit his lip. ‘He’s been doing it for a while. E, I mean. And Eve. I thought he knew what he was doing. But this bloke offered him some cheap. I never saw him before. Must have been dodgy.’

‘It happens.’ And the friends and family were left to pick up the pieces. Holly knew that only too well—both as a doctor and as a relative.

‘You’re really not going to have a go about how drugs are bad for you?’

She shrugged. ‘Not my place. And you’re old enough to know that for yourself.’

‘Yeah.’ He smiled wryly back at her.

‘There’s a coffee-machine in the corridor outside the relatives’ room, if you need it. There’s a vending machine for chocolate, too.’

‘Cheers.’

Holly turned back to her patient. Since he’d taken the drugs less than an hour ago, activated charcoal would help to reduce the amount his body absorbed.

‘Gary, I’m going to give you something to help your body get rid of the drugs still in your stomach. And I’m going to take a blood sample to see how you’re doing.’

She took the sample, capped it and called to the staff nurse working on her team. ‘Miche, can you get the bloods sorted, please? Usual stuff—full blood count, Us and Es, creatinine, glucose and arterial blood gases. And if you could give me a hand with some activated charcoal?’

‘My favourite,’ Michelle said wryly. ‘I’ll get these to the lab and then I’ll come back.’

The charcoal was messy but effective.

‘I’m not happy about his temperature—or his blood pressure,’ Holly muttered to Michelle a little later.

‘Or his ECG,’ Michelle said, looking at the display. ‘He’s still tachycardic.’

Before either of them could say another word, Gary started having a fit.

‘Oh, no. Can someone get me some chlormethiazole?’ she called. Although diazepam was usually used to control fits, chlormethiazole had the extra benefit of helping to lower a fever.

‘Hold his arm still for me. I’ll get it in,’ David said, appearing with a syringe.

‘Sure,’ Holly said, knowing that now wasn’t the time to be proud. She needed his hands as well as the contents of the syringe. When someone was having an epileptic fit, it was much easier if one person held the arm still while another did the injection. Michelle was holding Gary’s head, making sure he didn’t swallow his tongue. Holly held Gary’s arm still and David injected the chlormethiazole.

The fit stopped, and then Gary was sick again.

‘It’s OK,’ Holly soothed, wiping his face. How many times had a doctor given the same treatment to her brother, back in Liverpool? And how many more times would it have to happen before Dan realised what an idiot he was being?

Gary couldn’t be more than a year or two younger than her brother. For a moment her vision blurred and she saw Daniel’s face in front of her. Then she blinked. Hard. This wasn’t Dan. And her brother had been clean for months now. He might even have turned the corner.

And elephants were pink, with wings.

When Holly was sure that Gary was responding to his treatment, she almost staggered to the rest room for a break. She nearly walked out again when she saw David already sitting there. She really, really wasn’t in the mood for facing him right now.

‘Hey.’ Almost as if he’d guessed that she was about to back away, he held up a bar of chocolate. ‘I owe you half, I think. Seeing as you shared your brownie with me last night.’

Colleagues. Yes. She could handle that.

She grabbed a coffee and sank into the chair next to his. ‘Thanks,’ she said, taking the proffered squares.

‘Tough night?’ he asked.

‘Drug cases always get to me. I suppose it’s because of Dan,’ she said. ‘I always think it could be him.’

‘Why?’

She sighed. ‘He got in with a bad crowd at uni and went off the rails pretty spectacularly. He’s living with Mum and Dad right now, in a temporary truce—but every so often he does something stupid, Mum gets too heavy with him and I have to go back to broker peace between them again.’

‘Little Danny does drugs?’ Disbelief was written all over David’s face.

‘Dan’s not so little now,’ she said wryly. ‘He’s twenty-five—bigger than me. Bigger than you, actually.’ She shrugged. ‘Ah, well. Your mother was right. Our family’s stuck-up, and we’ve had our comeuppance for it. Both of the kids brought shame on the family.’

‘What do you mean?’ he asked.

As if he didn’t know. ‘Forget it,’ she said shortly.

‘Holly—’

‘Just forget it,’ she said, and walked out before she said something she’d regret.

Just what was going on in her head? She was impossible. Really, really impossible, David thought angrily. Holly might be a good doctor—and good at defusing awkward situations with patients—but her manner with him left a hell of a lot to be desired. Yes, they had a history, but she shouldn’t take out her guilt on him!

Maybe on Monday, after he’d had some sleep, he’d have a word with Sue and see if he could be moved to the other team.

‘Peter Kirby. Suspected multiple rib fractures,’ Rick said as he ran through the handover. ‘Query organ damage, too.’

Holly glanced at their patient and winced. ‘Someone’s given him a hell of a kicking. Funny, he doesn’t look the fighting type.’

‘Probably just in the wrong place at the wrong time,’ Rick said wryly. ‘Wouldn’t surprise me if it was gay-bashing.’

‘Hey. We’re not all homophobic,’ she said gently, touching his arm. ‘Do you know him?’

He rolled his eyes. ‘I don’t know every gay male in London.’

‘What? A seasoned flirt like you?’ Holly teased.

He grinned. ‘Let’s just say the old radar tells me something.’

‘Be careful out there, yeah?’ she asked.

‘I can look after myself.’

It wasn’t a macho boast. Rick had run self-defence classes for the staff last year, and was qualified in martial arts. ‘You know what I mean.’

‘Yeah, sugar. I know. Right, I’m going to do my reports. And then I’m going home to sleep, sleep, sleep.’

‘I should be so lucky.’ Holly smiled at him, then went over to her patient and introduced herself. ‘I’m just going to examine you, Peter. I’ll be as gentle as I can, but tell me if you need me to stop, OK?’

‘My chest hurts,’ he whispered. ‘Hurts all over.’

‘OK, Peter. I’ll give you something to help that.’ She inserted a couple of IV lines then gave him IV analgesics, noting as she did so that his breathing was a little faster than she would have liked and there were slight traces of blue round his lips, a condition known as cyanosis.

Which meant compromised respiration.

‘Hurts to breathe,’ he said.

It could be a tension pneumothorax, where air leaked into the space around the lungs and was trapped. The pressure caused one of the lungs to collapse and could rapidly lead to a cardiac arrest.

Then Holly noticed something she really, really hadn’t wanted to see. As Peter breathed in, part of his chest moved inwards too, and as he breathed out the same segment moved out again. Flail chest, she thought with a sinking heart. Where at least three ribs had broken, in two or more places, part of the chest wall could move independently—known as ‘flail chest’, it meant that there was likely to be significant damage to the lung underneath it. If he got through surgery, he’d be in Intensive Care for a while.

A quick check on the pulse oximeter showed her that Peter’s oxygen saturation was dropping. His blood pressure was low, too, so either it was a tension pneumothorax or there was a chance that the kicking he’d received had ruptured something, possibly his spleen.

‘I’m going to put you on an oxygen mask,’ she told him. ‘That’ll help you breathe more easily. Take it slowly—in and one and out and one,’ she counted as she slipped the mask over his head. ‘Miche, we need a chest X-ray and the usual bloods, cross-matching,’ she said. She slipped on the earpieces to her stethoscope. ‘Can you get David?’

David was at her side almost immediately. Holly turned away from Peter for a moment and gave David a quick rundown in a low voice. ‘There’s definitely flail chest but I don’t know how bad the damage is. I’m not happy with his blood pressure or his oxygen sats. I don’t think it’s a tension pneumothorax—I’ve checked and there’s no absence of breath sounds on one side, no tracheal deviation, and his neck veins aren’t distended. I think the low BP could be related to organ damage rather than a tension pneumothorax.’

‘Have you ordered a chest X-ray?’

‘Yes, and the usual bloods.’

‘OK. We’ll get Theatre on standby and warn the anaesthetist there’s a strong risk of pneumothorax,’ David said. ‘We need to find out if there’s any internal bleeding. Any obvious signs?’

‘No.’

‘DPL, then.’ Diagnostic peritoneal lavage, or DPL, was used in patients with multiple injuries to assess possible abdominal injuries. ‘Can you get the patient’s consent?’

Holly held Peter’s hand and explained what they wanted to do and why. ‘Can you sign a consent form for me, sweetheart?’

‘Yeah,’ he whispered.

The scrawl was barely decipherable but it was enough.

While David fitted a nasogastric tube, Holly inserted a catheter to decompress Peter’s bladder. Holly cleaned Peter’s skin while David draped sterile towels over the area, then gave Peter a local anaesthetic.

‘Ready?’ he said to Holly.

‘Ready.’ Strange how easily they’d gelled into a team, working together without getting in each other’s way or even needing to say much to the other. But then, she’d known him so well, all those years ago. She’d almost been able to read his thoughts.

Which was why his behaviour had hurt so very much when he’d let her down. Because it had been the last thing she’d expected.

David made a vertical incision in the skin, about three centimetres long. ‘Can you put pressure on the edges, Hol?’

To minimise bleeding. ‘OK.’

‘Dividing the linea alba,’ he said. To her relief, he was the type who said exactly what he was doing so she didn’t have to second-guess him. ‘I’ve got the peritoneum. Can I have clips, please?’

Holly was already passing them to him.

‘Thanks.’ David brought the peritoneum into the wound and felt the edge between his thumbs to check no bowel had been caught into the clips. When he was satisfied, he made a tiny incision and inserted a peritoneal dialysis catheter, made sure the seal was tight and aspirated the fluid.

‘Positive,’ Holly said very quietly as blood started to appear. ‘He needs a laparotomy.’

‘I’ll close. You get Theatre,’ David said.

While Peter was being whisked to Theatre, Holly and David cleared up in Resus.

‘Thanks for your help,’ Holly said. ‘It’s good to know I can rely on you…’

David frowned. Was it his imagination, or had she muttered ‘now’? Her face said it, too. ‘What do you mean, now?’ he demanded.

She smiled thinly. ‘You know exactly what I mean.’

‘I think,’ he said quietly, ‘we need to talk.’

‘The time for talking was twelve years ago. You weren’t interested then—and I’m not interested now.’

‘What?’ His frown deepened. ‘Hang on a minute. Twelve years ago you dumped me.’

She scoffed. ‘More like you abandoned me. Just when I needed you.’

His eyes narrowed. ‘I can’t be hearing you straight. I must be in caffeine withdrawal.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Look, we’re both at the end of our shifts. It’s been a long night and we’re both tired. Come and have breakfast with me. I just want a bacon sandwich—preferably with a ton of tomato ketchup.’

She shook her head. ‘Forget it.’

‘Hol, we need to talk.’

‘I don’t think your wife will be very happy about that.’

‘I’m divorced. And, anyway, I’m only asking you to talk to me.’ He paused. ‘What about you? Anyone waiting at home who’d be worried if you were late?’

‘No.’

‘Then I think we owe it to each other to get this straightened out. If nothing else, it’s going to be easier to work together. That, or I’m going to have to ask for a transfer to the other team because I can’t work with you—not if there’s all this stuff bubbling under the surface. Everybody knows you went to school with me. So what’s the gossip machine going to claim when we can’t work together?’

Holly sighed. ‘All right. Breakfast it is—but not in the hospital canteen. There’s a greasy spoon just down the road. It’ll be quieter.’

‘We need to do our handovers. Meet you in—’ he glanced at his watch ‘—ten minutes?’

‘By the entrance.’

‘OK. And if anyone asks, we’re simply colleagues flaking together after a heavy shift, in need of breakfast.’

They didn’t speak as Holly led the way to the café. Not until David had ordered two bacon sandwiches with lots of ketchup and two large black coffees.

‘I’m too tired to be polite. Let’s cut to the chase,’ he said as they sat down at a table at the back of the café. ‘Where do you get this “abandon” thing from?’

‘I can understand why you did it. Typical teenage boy. Can’t face telling his girl it’s over, so he doesn’t ring her, doesn’t contact her, doesn’t return any of her calls—and if she’s pushy he gets his mum to tell her it’s over.’

He snorted. ‘Rubbish! More like you’d finished slumming it and you got your mum to tell me it was over. And don’t lie, Hol. You didn’t return any of my calls.’

‘What calls?’

‘Come on. I must have phoned you dozens of times, and every time you got your mum to say you were out. When you didn’t turn up to take your A levels, I asked Mrs Smith what had happened to you.’ Their old biology teacher. ‘She was in the exam room. She told me you’d arranged to take your exams somewhere else.’

She frowned. ‘Yes.’

David’s lip curled. ‘So you’d had it planned for God knows how long.’

‘No. It was a last-minute thing.’

He scoffed. ‘Come off it. You can’t change your exam centre at the last minute.’

‘Yes, you can.’ Holly lifted her chin. ‘Mum organised it. I suppose she knew who to talk to.’

Yeah, well. Laura Jones would. She’d probably been mates with the chairman of the examining board.

His thoughts must have been written all over his face, because Holly folded her arms defensively. ‘But there was a good reason for it.’

‘Such as?’

‘If you remember so much about it, then you’ll also remember there was something else worrying me besides exams.’

‘You were stressed, yes.’

‘Oh, for goodness’ sake! Do I have to spell it out?’

She’d dumped him, and now she was trying to claim it had been the other way round. ‘Yes, Holly. You do.’

‘I’d missed two periods.’

‘You told me it was exam nerves, because the same thing had happened just before your GCSEs. And you were a vir—’ He exhaled sharply, as if someone had just thumped him in the stomach. Hard.

Holly had been a virgin before he’d met her. When their relationship had progressed to making love they’d been careful, but condoms weren’t a hundred per cent reliable. His head started spinning. Was she telling him…?

‘Oh, my God.’ He couldn’t get any air into his lungs. ‘Are you telling me we’ve…we’ve got a child?’ He stared at her in disbelief. ‘I’ve got a son or daughter who’s—’ he calculated the age quickly ‘—about eleven years old?’ How could she have kept a secret like that from him? How could she possibly have had his child and not told him?

Holly shook her head. ‘You don’t have a child, David.’

‘All right. So you didn’t name me as the father.’ But no way could the father have been anyone else. Holly might have dropped him without bothering to tell him it was over, but she’d been faithful to him while they’d been together. He was sure of that without having to ask. But he had to know the truth. Did they have a child? ‘Are you telling me that you have a child who is eleven years old?’ he asked, his voice shaking slightly.

‘No.’

‘Then what? You had the baby adopted?’ Her mother would have put pressure on her. A lot of pressure. Of course Holly would have caved in. Nobody could withstand Laura Jones in full flow.

‘No.’

He stared at her. She couldn’t have…She wouldn’t have…Surely not. Not even if her mother had frogmarched her to a private clinic somewhere…would she? ‘You had a termination?’ he asked, his mouth dry.

‘I had a miscarriage,’ she informed him quietly. ‘It started two hours before I was going to sit my first exam. I was in hospital for two days. So I didn’t take my A levels at all that year. I had a gap year and sat them the following summer.’

‘You had a miscarriage?’ Even though her eyes were telling him to back off, he needed to touch her. Comfort her. Feel her touch comforting him. They’d lost a baby and he’d had no idea. He reached across the table and took her hands. ‘Hol, I’m so, so sorry. I had no idea. If I’d known, or even guessed…I would have been right there with you. I’d have sat by your bedside and held your hand, and to hell with my exams.’

She withdrew her hands. ‘Yeah, right. You cared that much.’

‘You know I did. I loved you, Holly. More than anyone.’ Before—or since. Not that she needed to know that. ‘Your mum said you didn’t want to speak to me. I didn’t believe her, so I waited outside your house, hoping I’d get a chance to see you. You were in the car with your mum. And you blanked me.’

‘What did you expect? David, I’d just had a miscarriage. I couldn’t take my exams so I lost my place at university, and my career plans had gone down the toilet. And, worst of all, my so-called boyfriend couldn’t even be bothered to return my calls.’

‘I did ring you. Several times.’

‘Right. And that’s why you went on holiday with another girl?’

‘I did what?’

‘When I…Afterwards.’ She gulped and David suddenly realised how much it must have affected her. Maybe that was the reason why the sweet Holly Jones he’d once known had become so hard. Since she’d lost their baby and thought he’d deserted her.

‘When I thought I could face you without crying, I went round to your place. Your mum was there on her own. She said you’d gone on holiday, with another girl.’

None of this made sense. Had he just been transported to some weird parallel universe? ‘Don’t be stupid. She wouldn’t say something like that.’

‘You’re calling me a liar?’ She folded her arms. ‘You weren’t there. It was the week after the exams finished.’

He thought back and frowned. ‘I went on holiday, yes.’

‘With another girl.’

‘What? That’s ridiculous. I nearly cracked up, what with you dumping me just before the exams. So my uncle David—my mum’s brother, the one I was named after—took me on holiday to get me out of the house and try to stop me moping around.’

‘Your mum said you’d gone with another girl.’

‘You must have misunderstood. I went with my aunt and uncle, and my little cousin Jeannie.’

Holly made a contemptuous noise. ‘Your mother was very clear about it. She said you’d gone on holiday with your girlfriend. She didn’t mention your aunt or uncle. She lied to me, David.’

He shook his head. ‘She wouldn’t have done that.’

Holly took a swig of coffee. ‘Wake up, will you? Your mum hated me. She’d have done anything to keep us apart. Did she tell you that I came round?’

‘Well, no,’ he admitted.

‘She wanted to make sure I stayed away from you.’

He frowned. ‘As far as she was concerned, you’d dumped me. You broke my heart, Hol. She was probably trying to protect me and make sure you didn’t hurt me again.’

She laughed mirthlessly. ‘Your loyalty’s commendable. It’s just a shame you didn’t show the same loyalty to me when I needed it.’

‘That’s unfair. I didn’t know about the baby.’

‘And your mother was wrong. I didn’t dump you. Of course I bloody didn’t! I rang you to tell you I’d done a pregnancy test.’

‘I didn’t get the message.’

‘I spoke to your mother. I didn’t tell her what the problem was—I wasn’t that stupid—just that I needed to talk to you. But she said you were out.’

He shrugged. ‘I probably was.’

‘So why didn’t you ring me back?’

‘Because I didn’t get the message.’

‘Deliberately.’

‘It might have slipped her mind.’

She shook her head. ‘No way.’

He sighed. ‘If, and I mean if it was deliberate, she did it with the best of intentions. What about your mother? She said you were in but you just didn’t want to talk to me. Her exact words were that you couldn’t be bothered with me.’

Holly scoffed. ‘She knew I loved you. She knew about the baby. What reason would she have to lie to you?’

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