‘Come and lie down somewhere.’ The sound of the siren was fading rapidly as Ari put a supporting arm around her shoulders. ‘Couch or bed—whatever’s easier. We need to find out what’s going on.’
A very short time later, he ended his phone call, hoping that he would be hearing another siren from an emergency vehicle in the very near future—from the ambulance he had just summoned.
* * *
Paramedic Kelly Reynolds shut down the lights and siren on the rapid response vehicle she was driving as she approached the suburban address she’d been dispatched to. Parking directly behind a large motorbike, she jumped out of the driver’s seat to go to the back hatch of the SUV to collect the gear she might need, slipping her arms through the straps of the backpack that contained an extensive first-aid kit. One hand was then free to carry the life pack with its monitoring and defibrillation capabilities and Kelly took a deep breath as she took her first step across the road.
As a rapid response paramedic it was her job to either arrive first to assess and stabilise what could be a serious case, or back up an ambulance crew that needed expert assistance. Sending an officer that worked alone—especially a female officer—into a potentially volatile situation was not ideal but when a call like this came in, it had to be the closest available vehicle that got dispatched and, this time, that had been Kelly.
She wasn’t about to stand back and wait for the back-up of the ambulance that she had heard being dispatched at the same time she had received the Code Red, urgent priority callout, on her radio. Not when there was a pregnant woman and a midwife on scene who needed assistance. She just needed to remember her training. To keep a clear escape route behind her at all times and to carry a heavy bit of kit like the defibrillator in front of her so that, in the worst-case scenario, she could throw it at someone to make her escape easier.
There was a woman leaning on an iron railing fence that separated her property from the house they’d been dispatched to.
‘’Bout time someone got here,’ she told Kelly, with satisfaction. ‘He’s kicking off again.’
Kelly acknowledged the greeting with no more than a nod. She could hear a raised voice coming from inside the house so she walked past the neighbour and rapped on the open door.
‘Ambulance,’ she called loudly.
The hallway was empty. The man’s angry voice was coming from a room to one side.
‘It’s her own bloody fault. I reckon she got pregnant on purpose. How do I even know the kid’s mine?’
It was the cry of pain from a woman that made Kelly move, her hackles rising as she got closer to what turned out to be a living room. She held the heavy life pack in front of her body as she’d been trained to do—poised to hurl it if she found herself under attack. The angry man wasn’t making an assault on anyone, however. He had a can of beer in his hand and he was simply standing in the doorway to a kitchen. The woman who sounded as if she was in severe pain was lying on a couch and there was another man crouched beside her.
An extraordinary-looking man, with olive brown skin and his hair pulled up into a bun that was a lot higher than the one Kelly always used to tidy her own hair for work. A lot messier, too. He was wearing jeans and a leather jacket of all things but he had what looked like a professional medical kit open on the floor beside him with a stethoscope and blood-pressure cuff visible. And he was placing his hands on the woman’s pregnant belly. Large, capable-looking hands, she noticed, but even from this distance she could see—or sense—how gentle his touch was. Kelly wasn’t the only one watching.
‘Get ya hands off her,’ the man yelled. ‘Nobody touches my wife without my say so.’
He lunged towards the couch but Kelly was faster as she stepped into the room at the same moment to get between him and the pregnant woman. He stopped in his tracks and swore vehemently but then backed off a little. He was a bully, Kelly realised, lowering the defibrillator. He might thrive on making threats but he was actually unlikely to follow through on them. Not that that made the abuse or interference with medical care any more acceptable, of course.
‘It’s not my fault,’ he muttered as he stepped back. ‘It’s that cow next door. She’s the one who’s causing all the trouble round here—not me. So we were having a bit of a barney...so what? Who doesn’t?’
‘What is happening here?’ Kelly only took her gaze off him for an instant because, while she thought she had the measure of this man, he was still clearly posing a threat. Her swift glance over her shoulder was long enough to see that the woman on the couch was looking distressed and far too pale. It was also long enough for the man who was crouched beside her to look up and meet her gaze.
Dark, dark eyes. A serious expression on a very intelligent-looking face.
‘I’m Kelly,’ she introduced herself. ‘From the ambulance service.’ She was still a little confused about who this man was. ‘And you are...?’
‘He’s a midwife,’ the man in front of her sneered. ‘A boy midwife. And you’re a girly medic. Who let you out to play all by yourself? If you ask me, the world’s gone bloody mad...’ He crumpled his beer can, hurled it towards the corner of the room and then turned back towards the kitchen. ‘I need another drink...’
Kelly ignored him, her gaze fixed on the midwife. She could sense that, beneath that calm expression, he was worried about his patient. Seriously worried.
‘I often work with the obstetric and neonatal flying squad,’ she told him. ‘Do we need to call them?’
The flying squad was a specialised team with a dedicated ambulance that was mainly used for transport of premature or sick babies to a hospital like the Kensington, which had a neonatal intensive-care unit, but it could also cater for any obstetric emergency like a home birth going wrong or a complication like a post-partum haemorrhage or obstructed labour. The team could include an obstetrician and/or a neonatal specialist, midwives and paramedics and had an incubator as part of their equipment in case an out-of-hospital birth or transport was needed for a fragile infant.
‘Maybe.’ There was a hint of a smile on his face as the midwife spoke to Kelly for the first time but it was ironic rather than amused. ‘For now, it’s good that you’re a “girly” paramedic. Between us, we might be able to properly assess how much blood Vicky’s actually losing.’
Any hint of that smile had faded but his glance still communicated the fact that this man was well aware of the threat that Vicky’s husband posed and that his attitude to a male midwife being here was exacerbating that threat. He wasn’t about to let it stop him doing his job, which deserved serious respect as far as Kelly was concerned. That simple reference to her being “girly” conveyed both an understanding of the kind of prejudice that could come with crossing perceived career boundaries or trying to assert authority and the kind of humour that meant he’d learned long ago how to deal with it. That earned more than respect from Kelly.
She liked this man.
As an advanced paramedic whose expertise had been requested, Kelly was theoretically now in charge of this scene but she wasn’t about to ask this midwife to step back if it wasn’t necessary. He had looked as though he knew exactly what he was doing when he’d been checking both the position of the baby and how tender or rigid Vicky’s abdomen was, and now he was about to move her clothing to check on her blood loss—something they both needed to assess as rapidly as possible.
A split second later, however, he reared back as an open beer can, spewing froth, whistled through the air to narrowly miss his head. Vicky cried out in fear and shrank back against the couch, even as the midwife moved to shield her, and it was in that instant that Kelly knew this woman had been struck in the past.
Maybe they should have waited until they could have taken Vicky out of there and into an ambulance before starting any assessment or treatment but this was most definitely not the time to start thinking about how she could have improved
her management of this scene. Abuse of any kind was totally unacceptable and the midwife—who’d come into this situation alone with the sole intention of looking after a vulnerable woman—could have been seriously injured by that can.
With anger driving her muscles, it only took Kelly three steps to get to the other side of the room, although it was long enough for a hole to get punched into a wall. Not that that slowed Kelly down. If anything, she was even more furious as she faced up to the violent thug that Vicky was unfortunately married to.
‘Get in there,’ she shouted, jabbing her finger in the direction of the kitchen. ‘If you so much as put a foot back in this room while we’re looking after your wife, I’ll have the police here so fast you won’t know what’s hit you. And, believe me, they’ll make sure you don’t get to cause any more trouble for anyone for a very, very long time. Now...move...’
* * *
Wow...
Ari had his stethoscope in his ears because, having seen the alarming amount of blood Vicky had already lost, it was a matter of urgency to check on the baby’s status, but there was no missing the absolute authority in that voice. This paramedic—Kelly—might be blonde, pretty and as “girly” as they came, but she was not about to get messed with and that was exactly the kind of medical back-up he had hoped would arrive. He moved the rounded bell side of his stethoscope to pick up the baby’s heartbeat, which was reassuringly rapid and steady...for now.
‘Have you been feeling the baby move today, Vicky?’
‘Yes.’