CAROL MARINELLI - Special Deliveries - Wanted - A Daddy - Dr. Dark and Far Too Delicious / Royal Rescue / Father by Choice

The more he wanted.

Despite all efforts to take things slowly, things were gathering pace between them. They’d been seeing each other for a few weeks now—at least, whenever they got a chance.

They rang each other a lot, and went out whenever shifts and babysitters permitted, or more often than not they ended up back at his for a few stolen hours.

It just wasn’t enough, though.

Concentrate on work, he told himself as he ran along the beach that night.

Except she was home, he knew it.

And Simon would be in bed.

And she wanted to keep that part of her life very separate.

So too did he, Jed reminded himself.

He caught sight of the city shimmering gold in the distance. Melbourne offered a gorgeous skyline but a different skyline from the one he knew so well.

He’d come here to get away, Jed reminded himself.

To finally focus on his career and get ahead.

Yet he looked at the tall gleaming buildings of Melbourne and as much as he loved Peninsula, there was something about the city, or rather a busy city emergency department.

And still Melbourne Central beckoned.

JASMINE STARED AT the roster and gritted her teeth.

Jed was filling out blood forms and suitably ignoring her, and Penny was at her annoying best, suggesting that the nurses join her in Resus so that she could run through a new piece of equipment with them.

A new piece of equipment that had been there as long as Jasmine had and had been used often.

Honestly, the second the place was finally quiet Penny found a job or an activity for everyone.

No wonder she was so unpopular.

The roster had finally been revealed for the next eight-week period and as she tapped the shifts into her phone Jasmine could feel her blood pressure rising.

Yes, she was the new girl.

Yes, that meant that she got the rubbish shifts—but she had more late duties coming up than she could count, and lots of weekends too, which she would usually be glad of for the money, but of course the crèche wasn’t open on weekends and, even though she’d been told it was only about once every three months, there was another stint of nights coming up in two weeks.

Her mum would be on her cruise by then.

‘Problem?’ Lisa checked.

‘Just the nights,’ Jasmine said. ‘I thought it was every three months.’

‘Well, we try and share it, but especially when someone’s new I like to get them to do some early, so that was an extra for you.’

Was she supposed to say thanks?

She liked Lisa, Jasmine really did, and she was running a department after all, not Jasmine’s childcare arrangements, but the pressure of shift work and single parenting, let alone trying to date, was starting to prove impossible.

Idly flicking through the patient bulletin, her eye fell on the perfect job for a single mum who actually wanted to have a little bit of a life too.

It was in the fracture clinic and was almost nine to five.

It was a level above what she was on now, but with her emergency experience she would stand a pretty good chance at getting it.

‘Fracture Clinic!’ Vanessa peered over her shoulder. ‘You’d go out of your mind.’

‘I’m going out of my mind looking at the roster,’ Jasmine admitted.

‘Don’t think about it,’ Vanessa said breezily. ‘Something always turns up.’

Jasmine rolled her eyes as Vanessa walked out. ‘I wish I had her optimism.’

‘Jasmine.’ She turned and smiled at the sound of Mark’s voice. ‘How are things?’

‘Good.’ Jed saw she was uncomfortable, saw she glanced over her shoulder to check whether or not he was there, and it was none of his business, he wanted it that way, yet he wanted to know what the problem was, why Mark thought she was hiding.

‘Just giving you the heads up, no doubt you’ll be alerted soon, but there’s a nasty car versus bike on the beach road. Sounds grim.’

‘Do we know how many?’ Jed asked.

‘That’s all I’ve got but they’re calling for backup.’

‘Thanks.’

Jasmine let Lisa know and the orthopods were down anyway, looking at a fractured femur, and Lisa said to just wait till they heard more before they started paging anyone but that she’d let Penny and Mr Dean know.

Then Mark’s radio started crackling and he listened, translating the coded talk of the operator. ‘They’re just about to let you know,’ Mark said. ‘One fatality, one trapped, one on the way—adult male.’

The alert phone went then and Lisa took it just as Penny appeared, looking brusquely efficient as usual.

‘Car versus motorbike,’ Lisa said. ‘We’ve got the biker coming in, he’s conscious, abdominal injuries, hypotensive.’ She looked up at the clock. ‘He’s five minutes away and they’ve just freed the trapped driver, so he’s on his way too.’

‘I’ll take the first,’ Penny said. ‘If that’s okay with you, Jed?’

‘Be my guest,’ Jed answered, but Jasmine saw the clenching of his jaw and knew that Penny was seriously rattling him—she was always jumping in, always trying to take over anything that was remotely interesting.

‘Have we paged the surgeons?’ Penny asked.

‘Done,’ Jasmine said.

‘Blood bank?’

‘I’ve let them know.’

Penny gave no response, but with reason as the blast of a siren told them the ambulance was here. As the paramedics raced the patient in, Jasmine didn’t blame Penny a bit for the curse she let out when she asked where the hell the surgeons were.

The patient, though conscious, was beyond pale. His pulse was thin and thready and Jasmine set to work, with Greg cutting his leathers off.

‘Can you tell me your name?’ Penny asked as she examined him.

‘Reece.’

‘And do you know where you are?’

He answered the questions when prompted but kept closing his eyes and drifting off. Jasmine could only just palpate his blood pressure manually and Penny wasted no time in drawing blood for an urgent cross-match and telling the porters to run it up.

‘And I mean run!’ he warned. ‘Let’s put the O-neg up.’

Penny was possibly up there with the most horrible doctors Jasmine had worked with. She was abrupt to the point of rudeness, gave no thanks, only barked demands, except …

She was brilliant.

‘If they can’t be bothered to get down here,’ Penny shouted as Jasmine tried to locate the surgeons again, ‘tell them that I’ll meet them up in Theatre.’

The patient had had a spinal and chest X-ray, and despite the O-negative blood being squeezed in, his blood pressure was still barely discernible. It was clear he needed Theatre and Penny wanted him taken straight up.

Jed was dealing with the latest admission, and Jasmine quickly prepared Reece for theatre, loading his clothes into a bag and itemising his valuables—rings, wallet … But as she opened up the wallet Jasmine hesitated. There were loads of hundred-dollar notes—at best guess the wallet contained a few thousand dollars.

‘Can someone check this with me?’ Jasmine asked.

‘I’ll check it with you later,’ Greg called. ‘Just put it in the safe.’

‘Can we just check it now?’ Jasmine pushed, except Greg wasn’t listening, so she popped her head around the curtain to where Vanessa and Lisa were assisting Jed. ‘Can someone check this, please? He’s got a large amount of cash.’

‘Just pop it in the safe,’ Lisa called. ‘I’ll count it when things have calmed down.’

‘We’re supposed to check it before we put it in the safe.’ Jasmine’s voice was shrill. ‘We’re not supposed to sign—’

‘Here.’ It was Penny who stepped in. ‘Give it to me, Nurse. I’ll put it in the safe.’ She walked over and took the wallet, signed the piece of paper and threw the contents into the safe. Jasmine realised that she was sweating and she could feel Jed’s eyes on her.