Alison Roberts - St Piran's - The Wedding!

‘Let’s sit you up a little bit, Mrs O’Hara,’ a nurse said, slipping another pillow behind Claire. ‘And I’m just switching the oxygen over to this plug on the ceiling so we can get rid of the portable tank. No, don’t take your mask off.’

Claire ignored the nurse, pushing the mask clear of her mouth. ‘The twins, Josh … they’re …’

‘Please keep your mask on.’ The nurse gently moved Claire’s hand. ‘It’s important that you get some oxygen at the moment.’

‘I can hear you.’ Josh leaned closer. ‘What about the twins?’

‘They’re fine.’ The paramedic was loading the portable oxygen cylinder back onto the stretcher. ‘The doctor who called the ambulance for Mrs O’Hara said she’d be bringing them straight here. She can’t be far behind us.’

‘A doctor?’ Josh was confused. ‘Was she at the medical centre?’ Getting treatment, even, for some condition she’d never let him know she had?

‘No. She was at the beach. With the children and a big dog.’

‘Crash. Oh, no …’ The woman coming swiftly into the resus room sounded as though she was starting a conversation with an old friend. ‘What’s he been up to now, Claire?’ She was smiling down at her patient. ‘More importantly, what on earth have you been up to?’

The smile was reassuring but Josh could see the concern in the face of the head of the cardiology department. Concern that increased as a technician handed her the sheet of paper from the twelve-lead ECG machine. Ben was also reading the ECG over her shoulder.

‘What is it?’ Josh forgot his confusion about a doctor being on scene when Claire had become ill. He hadn’t missed the significant glance passing between Anna and Ben.

‘Left anterior,’ Anna said calmly. ‘ST elevation of up to three millimetres. Have we got anything back on the bloods yet? Cardiac enzymes? TNT?’

Josh had to take a deep breath as he heard Ben relay the earliest results. He didn’t want to let Claire know how serious this could be. An infarct that knocked out part of the left ventricle was more likely to have serious consequences. Every minute counted now so that they could save as much cardiac function as possible.

Anna had turned to Claire. ‘You’re having a heart attack, Claire,’ she said gently. ‘But there are things we can do to minimise the damage it might be doing to your heart. I’m going to take you up to the catheter laboratory and we can see exactly where the blockage is in your coronary arteries. We’ll clear it if we can and might put something called a stent in to keep the artery open.’

‘You’re going to … operate on me?’ Claire’s face was as white as the pillow behind her.

‘Not exactly. You’ll be awake. We put a tiny tube inside an artery and that goes into your heart. It’s very clever.’

‘And Anna’s very good at it,’ Ben put in. ‘You’ll be in the best hands, Claire.’

‘We’ll give you a sedative,’ Anna added. ‘You’ll be awake but it won’t hurt and we won’t let you get too anxious.’

‘No.’ Claire shook her head. She tried to peer past the medical team crowded around her bed. ‘I can’t go. Not yet. She said I’d see the children again. Very soon.’

‘ Who said?’ Josh could feel the tension of this whole situation spiralling upwards. They couldn’t let Claire get any more upset because there was still a definite risk of her rhythm degenerating into a fatal arrhythmia. Who had his children? Where were they?

‘She does.’ Claire’s lips were trembling. ‘The doctor.’

‘ What doctor?’

‘The one who … looked after them … when they were born.’

‘Megan Phillips? But that’s impossible. She’s in Africa.’

‘Not any more.’

Josh froze as he heard the voice coming from behind Ben and Anna on the other side of the bed. Everybody turned to see who was at the entrance to the room. Holding the handles of the double stroller that contained the twins.

‘ Daddy .’ Both Max and Brenna’s faces lit up with smiles as they spotted their father. They held up four little arms.

But Josh didn’t even see the plea. His gaze was locked on the woman behind the stroller.

Oh, my God.

Megan .

For just a heartbeat, the world stood absolutely still.

Nothing else mattered.

That his mother was dangerously unwell. That he had two tiny, defenceless children calling for him. That he was the head of a department of St Piran’s Hospital that was gaining widespread recognition as a centre of excellence in emergency medicine.

None of those things could even exist in the space Josh was sucked into for just a second.

A space of such intensity, it pulled the oxygen from the air around him and made it feel impossible for him to breathe.

The space he’d been in on that New Year’s Eve party when he’d met Megan properly for the first time. When he’d sensed the power of truly falling in love. The power that had held his mother captive and broken her life.

He’d been there again in the trauma of that emergency when it had looked as though Megan might die. When he’d sensed the power of what a parent’s love for a child could be as well, and had vowed never to let that power control him either.

During the course of that one, incredible night when he’d shared her bed for only the second time—just before he’d found out he was going to become a father.

On the day he’d had to do the hardest thing in his life, and tell her it was all over.

In that moment when he’d had to beg her to do her best to save the lives of Rebecca’s and his children.

Daddy .

The echo of the word penetrated the space. Grounded Josh instantly. He was where he needed to be. Living his life the way it had to be lived.

The way he wanted to live it.

Nothing could be allowed to change that. Somehow, he had to resist the incredible pull that that space could exert. It felt like his life was depending on it. It was almost ironic to have his mother in the same room. The example he’d grown up with of the damage that that kind of love could inflict.

Stepping towards the newcomers, Josh was aware of the tension around him. The kind that came from a collective holding of breath, waiting to see what was going to happen.

Their story was hardly a secret, was it? Not that Anna or Ben knew that he’d slept with Megan while he’d still been married. While his wife had been in the early stages of pregnancy with the twins. But everybody knew their early history by now. And if anybody had missed the way they’d been drawn back to each other when he’d first come to St Piran’s, the hospital grapevine would have filled them in. Maybe everybody did know about that night in the on-call room.

Oh … Lord … Tash knew everything. How much did his mother know?

Josh pulled the barriers of his professional image around him like a force field.

‘Megan … What a stroke of luck you were there for my mother when she got sick. And thank you so much for taking care of my children.’

He stooped to release the safety straps around the twins. Not that he squatted down fast enough to miss the change of expression on Megan’s face. Had she been holding her breath like everyone else in here? Hurt by his deliberate focus on his own family? Himself?

He hadn’t even asked her how she was despite some alarm bell ringing faintly in the back of his head. As he stood up, with a twin under each arm, he couldn’t help taking another look at her. That warning bell hadn’t been a false alarm. She looked … terrible.

So thin. So pale. Something was wrong. Her emerald-green eyes looked dull enough to be frightening.

Except that Josh had no right to have an emotional stake in Megan’s wellbeing any more.