* * *
By the time everything was sorted out quite a large queue had formed in Reception. Suzy was doing triage that night—making sure the most seriously injured were seen first. Ambulance control had rung as well to say there was a young man who’d been involved in an RTA on his way. He had a suspected fractured pelvis so Molly told the paramedics to take him straight to Resus when he arrived and buzzed for Sean. As the senior doctor on duty, he was the one who would need to deal with this casualty and she would assist him.
‘Right, so what’s happened here?’ Sean hurried into Resus and came straight over to the bed. Molly moved aside to give him some room as he bent over the bed. He was wearing light blue scrubs that night and she found herself thinking all of a sudden just how much the colour suited him, emphasising the intense sapphire-blue of his eyes. Sean was an extremely handsome man, with that jet-black hair and those clean-cut features, and it was impossible to ignore the fact too. It took every scrap of willpower she could muster to concentrate as the lead paramedic did the handover.
‘This is David Gregory, aged twenty-two. He came off his motorbike after hitting a pothole in the road and slammed into a stone wall,’ the paramedic explained. ‘There appears to be some instability around his pelvis which is why we fitted a belt. He’s had ten mgs of morphine for the pain plus eight mgs of metoclopramide to counteract any sickness.’ The crew finished off with an update of the patient’s BP and Sats before they left.
‘Hello, David. I’m Dr Fitzgerald. I know you must be in a great deal of pain but I need to check what damage you’ve done to yourself. OK?’
Sean set about his examination when David nodded. He was quick but thorough, his hands moving as gently as possible over the young man’s hips and pelvis. He glanced at Molly and she could see the concern in his eyes. ‘Can you organise an X-ray, please, Sister? There’s quite a bit of movement here and I’d like to check if we’re dealing with more than one fracture.’
‘Of course.’ Molly hurried to the phone and summoned the radiographer. She arrived just moments later and quickly set about taking the X-rays they needed. Resus was equipped with an overhead X-ray machine so there was no need to move the patient. They all stepped aside while the films were taken and in a very short time the results were up on the screen. As Sean had suspected, David Gregory had fractured his pelvis in not one but two places, which made the situation even more complicated.
‘He needs to go to Theatre ASAP,’ Sean said after studying the films. ‘If I’m not mistaken, there’s some damage to the bladder and that needs sorting out immediately. Who’s the surgeon on duty tonight—do you know?’
‘I think it’s Adam Humphreys,’ Molly informed him. ‘Do you want me to phone him and tell him we have a patient for him?’
‘If you wouldn’t mind.’ Sean smiled at her. ‘Thanks, Molly. It will save me a job.’
‘No problem.’ Molly gave a little shrug before she hurried over to the phone but she couldn’t ignore the fact that her heart had lifted when Sean had smiled at her. Was she right about him being hurt in the past? she wondered once again and then sighed. She had to stop trying to find excuses for him and simply accept that he had finished with her because he hadn’t wanted to be with her any longer.
Molly deliberately turned her mind to tracking down Adam Humphreys, not an easy task, as it turned out, as he wasn’t in the surgeons’ lounge or in Theatre, and he wasn’t responding to his pager either. She finally traced him to Women’s Surgical, where he was checking on a patient he had seen earlier in the evening. He was full of apologies when she politely pointed out that his pager appeared to be switched off. He promised to come straight there and, true to his word, he arrived a couple of minutes later.
Molly knew him quite well and had always found him a pleasant if not very exciting kind of a man. He had asked her out a couple of times, but she had always made an excuse and refused. However, when he repeated his invitation after he had finished examining the X-rays, she found herself accepting. Maybe she should go out with Adam and forget about Sean. Having Sean turn up out of the blue like that had had a highly detrimental effect and she hated the fact that she couldn’t seem to get him out of her head. Why, just look at the way she had seriously considered instigating another affair with him! It had been madness, pure, unadulterated madness, to come up with such a crazy plan. Going out with someone as uncomplicated as Adam Humphreys would help to put her back on track. And who knew what might happen in the future? It could turn out that Adam Humphreys was her Mr Right, the frog who finally turned into her very own prince.