Abigail Gordon - Paramedic Partners

Selina gasped. ‘You have some nerve! You’re just like the rest of the male population…under the impression that, having lost one husband, I’m on the lookout for another…or the equivalent of.’

Her voice broke on a sob and he flinched.

‘It’s not like that,’ she choked. ‘I just want to be left alone.’

Kane bit into his bottom lip with even white teeth. If he’d wanted to break through Selina’s reserve, what better way could he have found? But what a fool to make such a comment!

‘I’m sorry, Selina. I spoke without thinking. It’s just that in the past I have been propositioned and…well, I don’t like it. So do please dry your eyes and tell me I’m forgiven for being such an insensitive clod.’

She threw him a watery smile.

‘You’re forgiven. I’m afraid I’m very touchy these days…And, Kane…?’

‘What?’

‘I’m not surprised you’ve had to fight them off.’

Abigail Gordonloves to write about the fascinating combination of medicine and romance from her home in a village in Cheshire, England. She is active in local affairs and is even called upon to write the script for the annual village pantomime! Her eldest son is a hospital manager and helps with all her medical research. As part of a close-knit family, she treasures having two of her sons living close by and the third one not too far away. This also gives her the added pleasure of being able to watch her delightful grandchildren growing up.

Recent titles by the same author:

EMERGENCY RESCUE

THE NURSE’S CHALLENGE

Abigail Gordon

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

THE breakfast pots had been washed, the beds made, the washer switched on, the letter from her father-in-law in the morning post dutifully read, and now Selina was about to top up her tan on a sunlounger in the back garden.

Creamed against the powerful rays of a midsummer sun and wearing a black bikini, she was looking forward to some prime time by herself. Shutting her ears to the noises coming from the main street of the village, which was only yards away, she sank down thankfully onto the soft upholstery.

Two whole days, she thought thankfully. Time to recharge her batteries before going back on the unit for night duty.

Tomorrow there was to be a fête on the village green they might go to, and there was a film on in the town centre that she wouldn’t mind seeing afterwards.

But today she was going to potter. Sunbathe for a while, have a leisurely lunch and then later make a nice meal for the two of them.

When the phone rang she groaned. Letting the magazine she’d brought out with her fall to the ground, Selina eased herself off the sunbed and padded inside.

The voice at the other end of the phone belonged to the head teacher at Josh’s school, and her face blanched as he said in subdued tones, ‘I’m glad I’ve caught you in, Mrs Sanderson. I’m afraid that your son has had an accident.’

‘What do you mean?’ she cried. ‘What kind of an accident?’

‘He ran out of the school yard onto the main road to retrieve a ball during breaktime and into the path of an oncoming car.’

Don’t let him be dead, she prayed as dread turned the blood in her veins to ice. Not my little one. I can’t take any more.

‘We’re not sure how badly hurt he is,’ he went on. ‘We haven’t moved him under the circumstances and an ambulance is on its way.’

So at least Josh was alive, she thought frantically, but for how long?

‘Tell the paramedics to wait for me,’ she shrieked into the receiver, and before he’d had time to reply she was flinging open the hall cupboard and throwing on a long raincoat to cover the bikini, at the same time forcing her feet into the nearest footwear to hand, which happened to be the trainers she wore for jogging.

She was at the junior school on the outskirts of the village within minutes, and she didn’t have to search for the scene of the accident. The ambulance was already there, standing purposefully at the kerbside outside the gates. Even if it hadn’t been, the crowd that had gathered would have been indication enough.

As she flung herself out of the car and began to push past the onlookers with frantic haste, Selina’s horrified gaze was on the small figure of her son, lying very still at the pavement edge.

A paramedic was bending over him and another was stepping down from the ambulance with a red response bag in his hands.

‘I’m his mother,’ she cried, falling to her knees on the other side of the small casualty with hands outstretched to do the things she’d done countless times…for other people’s children.

The man bending over her son was examining him with deft yet gentle hands. Beside herself with panic, she cried, ‘Have you checked that he’s breathing? For spinal injuries? That his tongue is free? That his tubes aren’t—?’

He didn’t lift his head.

‘Yes. I have,’ he informed her levelly, ‘as far as is possible under the circumstances. Now we need to get the boy to hospital as quickly as possible.’

‘Roll him onto a backboard,’ she ordered. ‘I don’t want Josh risking further injury by being handled too much.’

Selina wasn’t aware of the brief appraisal of a pair of dark eyes, or that the man’s voice when he spoke again wasn’t quite as impersonal as before.

‘We’re going to do that. So if you would, please, stand back?’

She could hardly bear to move an inch away from Josh, but heaven forbid that she should behave like other hysterical relatives she’d seen, hindering the progress of the ambulance team.

‘I’m coming with you,’ she cried.

‘Of course,’ he said crisply, and within seconds they were off, with the siren blaring and the light flashing above the fast-moving ambulance with its distinctive coloured flashes.

Instinctively Selina reached across for the advance support bag containing the equipment that would be needed if Josh went into cardiac arrest or if his airways became blocked. But a voice from beside her, which was heating up by the moment, cried, ‘Do you mind? I’m in charge of this vehicle. You may be the boy’s mother, but I’m the paramedic and I have everything under control. At least I would have if you could resist trying to take over. I understand your great anxiety but do, please, leave it to me.’

As if realising for the first time that he was in charge, Selina just sat and blinked at him.

‘As you can see,’ he continued, ‘we have your son on a backboard to prevent further spinal injury, should there be any, and we’ve tied his legs together as the left one is almost certainly fractured. The cuts on his head and arms are mostly superficial, except for the gash on the temple…and I will be monitoring his heart all the time we’re in transit. Does that satisfy you?’