‘OK. I’ll tell you, because it’s sort of for you, too.’
Bryony held her breath, hoping desperately that it wasn’t a pet. Her life was so frantic she absolutely didn’t have time to care for an animal on top of everything else. A full-time job and single parenthood was the most she could manage and sometimes she struggled with that.
A pet would be the final straw.
But then she looked at Lizzie’s sweet face and felt totally overwhelmed by love. More than anything she wanted her daughter to be happy and if that meant cleaning out a rabbit…
‘Whatever it is you want,’ Bryony said softly, reaching out and stroking her daughter’s silken curls with a gentle hand, ‘I’m sure Santa will get it for you. You’re such a good girl and I love you.’
‘I love you, too, Mummy.’ Lizzie reached up and hugged her and Bryony felt a lump building in her throat.
‘OK.’ She extracted herself and gave her daughter a bright smile. ‘So, what is it you want for Christmas?’
Lizzie lay back on the pillow, a contented smile spreading across her face. ‘A daddy,’ she breathed happily. ‘For Christmas this year, I really, really want a daddy. And I know that Santa is going to bring me one.’
CHAPTER ONE
‘SIX-month-old baby coming in with brea
thing difficulties.’ Bryony replaced the phone that connected the accident and emergency department direct to Ambulance Control and turned to the A and E sister. ‘That’s the third one today, Nicky.’
‘Welcome to A and E in November.’ The other woman pulled a face and slipped her pen back in her pocket. ‘One respiratory virus after another. Wait until the weather gets really cold. Then everyone falls over on the ice. Last year we had forty-two wrist fractures in one day.’
Bryony laughed. ‘Truly?’
‘Truly. And you wouldn’t laugh if you’d been working here then,’ Nicky said dryly as they walked towards the ambulance bay together. ‘It was unbelievable. I wanted to go out with a loudhailer and tell everyone to stay at home.’
As she finished speaking they heard the shriek of an ambulance siren, and seconds later the doors to the department crashed open and the paramedics hurried in with the baby.
‘Take her straight into Resus,’ Bryony ordered, taking one look at the baby and deciding that she was going to need help on this one. ‘What’s the story?’
‘She’s had a cold and a runny nose for a couple of days,’ the paramedic told her. ‘Temperature going up and down, and then all of a sudden she stopped taking any fluids and tonight the mother said she stopped breathing. Mother came with us in the ambulance—she’s giving the baby’s details to Reception.’
‘Did she call the GP?’
‘Yes, but he advised her to call 999.’
‘Right.’ Bryony glanced at Nicky. ‘Let’s get her undressed so that I can examine her properly. I want her on a cardiac monitor and a pulse oximeter—I need to check her oxygen saturation.’
‘She’s breathing very fast,’ Nicky murmured as she undid the poppers on the baby’s sleepsuit. ‘Poor little mite, she’s really struggling. I suppose we ought to call Jack—even though calling him will massage his ego.’
Bryony looked at the baby, saw the bluish tinge around her lips and heard the faint grunting sound as she breathed.
‘Call him,’ she said firmly. ‘This baby is sick.’
Very sick.
She didn’t care if they massaged Jack’s ego. She trusted his opinion more than anyone else’s and not just because he was the consultant and she was a casualty officer with only four months’ A and E experience behind her. Jack Rothwell was an incredibly talented doctor.
Nicky finished undressing the baby and then picked up the phone on the wall and dialled, leaving Bryony to carry out her examination. She watched the baby breathing for a moment and then placed her stethoscope in her ears, strands of blonde hair falling forward as she bent and listened to the child’s chest.
When she finally unhooked the stethoscope from her ears, Jack was standing opposite, looking at her with that lazy, half-bored expression in his blue eyes that always drove women crazy.
And she was no exception.
She’d known him for twenty-two years and still her knees went weak when he walked into a room. She’d often tried to work out why. Was it the sexy smile? The wicked blue eyes that crinkled at the corners when he smiled? The glossy dark hair? The broad shoulders? Or was it his sense of humour, which had her smiling almost all the time? Eventually she’d come to the conclusion that it was everything. The whole drop-dead-gorgeous, confident masculine package that was Jack Rothwell.
When she’d started working in A and E in the summer, she’d been worried about how it would feel to work with a man she’d known all her life. She was worried that finally working together would feel odd. But it didn’t.