Sue MacKay - Pregnant With The Boss's Baby

The phone was at her ear immediately as she hadn’t put it down from her last urgent call. For a brief moment they locked eyes and he felt a surge of adrenalin. It was like she was his other half. The calm, self-assured nurse who now had him under control and as calm as she was. The woman carrying his baby. Conor’s gut clenched. Baby. Child. Accidents. Death and destruction. Forget calm. What if something like this happened to their child? What—?

‘Here.’ Tamara shoved the phone at him and instantly replaced his hands with hers on their small patient’s leg to continue pressing on a pad staunching the blood flow that had restarted while they’d been investigating his injuries.

Conor swallowed down the fear and said into the phone, ‘Kay, we’ve got a lad whose left foot has been severed.’ As he rattled off details he refused to think about how the loss of a foot would affect a young child. Instead he concentrated on Tamara as she bent over the boy, whispering sweet nothings to him even when there wasn’t a chance in hell the boy heard a word. This was Tamara at her best. Calming.

That night in his bed she’d been the antithesis of calm.

Conor slammed the phone back on the hook. Concentrate, man. He called, ‘Orderly,’ and returned to the lad’s side. ‘Obs? How’s that oxygen flow?’

Mam, how did you survive watching Sebastian die?

Conor’s heart stopped. Slashing his forearm across his eyes, he stared at the boy before him. Life was so unfair. But he wasn’t going to let this kid die.

Bright lights flashed in the department, temporarily blinding Conor. ‘What the...?’

‘Get out of here,’ Tamara snarled. ‘Conor,’ she yelled. ‘We need Security. Yesterday.’

Conor blinked, saw rage fill Tamara’s face, her eyes, as she stalked past him towards a man pointing a camera in the direction of their patient.

‘The media?’ Tell me I’m wrong. ‘How the hell did you get in here?’ he demanded of the man, anger now running in his veins too.

‘Like they always do, by pushing people aside as if they have a right to.’ Tamara was shaking.

He placed a hand on her shoulder. ‘Ignore him. Our patient needs us.’ Where were those security guys?

The camera flashed again, and Tamara stepped away from it, her face contorted with a mix of anger and hopelessness. Then two guys in uniform were hauling the cameraman away none too gently.

Conor turned Tamara back to their case. ‘Don’t think about it. Save it for later. You’re needed with our lad at the moment.’

Her body shuddered as she drew a breath, and she slapped the back of her glove-covered hand across her cheeks. ‘They have no respect for anyone.’

‘Tam, focus now.’

‘Don’t call me Tam,’ she snapped, but at least her spine straightened and all her focus returned to where it was meant to be.

He worked with Tamara, stabilising and checking blood flow, oxygen, getting the boy ready for surgery. Then his patient was gone, onto the next phase of being put back together, though for the boy that would be a long process.

Tamara’s eyes were chilly and giving nothing away as she stretched her back, pushing her breasts up. His mouth dried. Then he recalled some comments made about her when he’d first started here. Something about how the media were always waiting to pounce if she so much as breathed out of order. She had history with them, but he’d never asked what it was about, figuring it was none of his business.

Now he wanted to take them all down in a bloody thrashing for upsetting Tamara.

A little girl arrived before them.

‘Nine years old, suspected fractures to both arms and legs, and possibly ribs.’ A nurse from the nightshift read the details as Conor nodded to the X-ray tech.

The thrashing would have to wait.

As would thinking about that baby.

* * *

The hours disappeared in a haze of anguish and despair. Children came through ED, some staying longer than others before moving on to Theatre, or, for the lucky ones, to the children’s ward with plaster casts or multitudes of stitches.

Finally, ‘We’re all done.’ Mac appeared from the adjoining resus unit, looking like he’d been living a nightmare for hours. Which he had. They all had.

It was over. Air leaked from Conor like a puncture as the tension that had been with him from the moment Michael had told them what they were in for softened. ‘I didn’t know they could fit so many children on one bus.’ The exhaustion that’d been beating him up earlier in the afternoon returned at full throttle. ‘Glad that’s done.’ Except there were parents throughout the hospital dealing with their worst nightmares.

Parents. Closing his eyes, he rubbed them with his thumbs, and was confronted with an image of Mam letting herself in through the front door, shoulders drooped, knees buckling. Those laughing eyes he’d looked for on waking every morning of his four short years had been dulled with pain and anguish. Her arms had shaken as she’d clung to him. He hadn’t recognised her voice as she’d croaked, ‘Sebastian and Daddy are in heaven, my love.’ And there had begun the rest of his life.

‘I’ve never dealt with anything like it.’ Mac rolled his neck left then right.

‘What?’

‘Go home, Conor. Get a beer in you and hit the sack.’

Looking around, Conor couldn’t find Tamara. He stumbled. ‘Where is everyone?’

Tam, did you cope? Really? Behind that mask, are you okay?

Mac was muttering, ‘I sent day shift home half an hour ago. They were shattered after already working a shift, and I figured my team could handle the remainder of cases. Not that they’re in much better shape.’

‘It’s going to be a long night for them.’ What was left of it.

Mac gave him a rueful smile. ‘You sure knew how to cope with the situation.’

‘For all the wrong reasons, unfortunately.’ The wall clock read nine twenty. He wouldn’t have been surprised if it was after midnight. As it was, he’d be back on duty all too soon. With that thought his mind filled with the urgent need to get out of there while he could still walk. ‘I’m gone.’

Home. A shower. Bed.

Tamara.

Now that you’re coming down from the high we’ve all been on for endless hours, are you looking all peaky and worried again?

She’d be beyond exhausted now that she had pregnancy to contend with as well.

I hope you’re all right. That my baby is doing okay.

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