The Nurse's Secret Son Read online

‘I know,’ she admitted, ‘but maybe we can get some through. You watch his chest.’

  Sophie blew into the port at the top of the rubber mask that formed a mouthpiece. She repeated the exercise a few times.

  ‘No chest movement,’ said Daniel. ‘It’s no good, we’ll have to trachy him.’

  ‘What?’ Sophie stared at him like he’d just suggested they put a gun to Charlie’s head and shoot him. ‘Are you crazy? How? What with? We can hardly see each other, let alone perform an operation on his neck!’

  ‘It’s the only way, Sophie, trust me,’ he said, running to his car.

  Twice. Since he’d left for New York she’d seen him twice. And now he was asking her to trust him. Sophie frantically attempted to push some more air into Charlie’s lungs but his chest remained deathly still. The strange thing was, she did trust him. Before this rocky patch she had trusted him implicitly and, despite everything, here in the pouring rain, trying to save Charlie’s life, she still did.

  Daniel hurried back with a pocket-knife and a black ballpoint pen with the ink cartridge removed. It was now just a hollow plastic tube.

  She stared at him through the lashing rain and swallowed hard. He was really going to do this. Sophie had seen many tracheostomies being performed, both in the controlled environment of an operating theatre and in critical situations in the accident and emergency department. But in the field?

  She didn’t want to think about it. Only she had to because every second Charlie went without oxygen took him a step closer to irreversible brain damage, cardiac arrest and death.

  ‘Please, tell me you’ve done this before.’ She placed a stilling hand on his as he quickly prepared his equipment.

  ‘I’ve done this before.’

  She smiled at him then. Water rivulets ran over her lips, moistening them, and a sudden rush of desire kicked him hard in the solar plexus.

  ‘Come on, then, Daniel.’ She smiled, his confidence infectious. ‘Time is brain cells.’

  He instructed Sophie to extend Charlie’s neck. She did so with one hand and held the torch with the other. Daniel noted her professional hold, knowing that she was monitoring Charlie’s carotid pulse, as well as giving Charlie good jaw support to optimise his airway. Once again he found himself grateful to have such a skilled assistant.

  Daniel ran an index finger down the hard ridges of cartilage that formed Charlie’s trachea until he identified the Adam’s apple, or thyroid cartilage. He kept his finger there and slid his middle finger lower until he found the cricoid cartilage. The indentation between the two was where he would make his incision.

  He drew a steadying breath and sensed Sophie tense as he positioned the knife. Daniel made a small horizontal incision in the cricothyroid membrane and felt the give as the knife entered the trachea. There was surprisingly little blood.

  He placed his finger inside the slit to open it slightly to allow passage of the hollow pen. He pushed the plastic tube into the stoma he had created—it was a snug fit. He blew some deep breaths into the artificial airway and only acknowledged his thundering heart when he saw Charlie’s chest rise and fall again.

  ‘You did it, Daniel! You did it!’ It had seemed like an age to Sophie yet in reality the procedure had taken about twenty seconds.

  Daniel smiled around the pen keeping his eyes down so he couldn’t see her brilliant smile, her triumphant face or the way the rivulets of rain ran down her neck and chest into her soaked and clinging shirt. Seeing that was not good for his concentration.

  Sophie’s celebrations were short-lived, however, as she felt Charlie’s pulse slow, become irregular and then stop.

  ‘Lost his pulse.’ Sophie tried to keep the alarm out of her voice. She was a professional. She knew what to do. But this wasn’t some anonymous patient. This was Charlie.

  ‘You do chest compressions,’ Daniel said between breaths.

  Sophie shifted position and started compressing Charlie’s sternum with her interlocked hands. They couldn’t lose him after all this.

  They fell into a routine, he delivered one breath for every five of her compressions. Daniel couldn’t help himself. He looked out the corner of his eye as her rhythmic shoulder movements caused her breasts to bounce. The rain ran down her bare arms and plastered the fabric of her shirt to her breasts, moulding them, the nipples on show to the world. He tried not to think of the hours he had spent touching them and how she used to beg him to never stop.

  Sophie glanced at him and caught him staring. There was an intensity in his incredibly blue eyes that was compelling. Was he…he appeared to be…staring at her breasts? She looked down at them as she kept up the rhythm on Charlie’s chest.

  She almost gasped. Her top was clinging to her braless form, leaving nothing to the imagination. She was mortified. She may as well have PLEASE OGLE MY BOOBS tattooed on her forehead! She felt her cheeks grow warm and looked away.

  A rush of memories assailed her. It was hard to believe from their current strained relationship that there had been a time when they hadn’t been able to get enough of each other. When making love had been a desperate, urgent need that they had slaked as often as they could.

  A siren blaring in the distance pulled her out of the past and an ambulance pulled up a minute later. Three paramedics dressed in rain gear hurried to them.

  ‘Hi, Jane Carter, I’m a paramedic. What’s happened here?’ Her friendly voice was a welcome distraction and Sophie noted the stripes on her shoulder indicating Jane’s intensive care status.

  ‘Sophie, swap with me,’ said Daniel, shuffling along so they could change positions. Daniel took over chest compressions, allowing him to talk.

  ‘Daniel Monday, off-duty paramedic. Anaphylactic shock following an assumed beesting. Adrenaline administered via Adrenipen. I performed a tracheostomy due to complete upper airway obstruction from the tongue—’

  ‘You did?’

  Sophie smiled at the incredulous note in Jane’s voice. ‘Don’t worry, Jane, he’s an IC para, like you,’ she said, lifting her mouth briefly from the plastic tube and then returning to her task.

  ‘He needs a trachy tube, IV access, fluids, more adrenaline, as well as some hydrocortisone and Phenergan.’

  ‘You trachied him,’ Jane repeated, her stunned expression still firmly in place. ‘Good call.’

  The paramedics sprang into action, relieving Sophie of her job. She rose slowly, the skin on her knees abraded by the constant needling of tiny sharp rocks. They were muddy and bloodied.

  ‘Get in the back of the ambulance,’ one of the paramedics offered. ‘There’s blankets to dry off and keep warm.’

  Sophie checked on a still sleeping Max first and then gratefully sought the shelter offered. The flashing red emergency lights still active on its roof gave the ambulance a welcoming glow. It beckoned her, all dry and warm.

  She wrapped a white cellular blanket around herself and watched as Daniel and the three paramedics continued to work on Charlie.

  Daniel placed a proper tube into the hole he had created in Charlie’s trachea and they attached a bag to the end to administer lungfuls of one hundred per cent oxygen.

  ‘How long has he been down?’ Jane asked.

  ‘He went into cardiac arrest only a couple minutes before you got here. He stopped breathing about ten minutes ago but his ventilation has probably been severely compromised for about twenty minutes.’ Daniel’s reply was methodical. Concise.

  Sophie was relieved to see a cardiac rhythm come back quickly after adrenaline was administered down the trachy tube and directly into the lungs. She started to feel a spark of hope.

  Twenty minutes later Charlie was as stabilised as they could get him in the rain on a roadside. They loaded him into the ambulance and Daniel and Sophie watched its flashing red lights until it disappeared from sight.

  They stood in silence for a moment as the rain finally eased to a light shower.

  ‘Well, this’ll be something I won’t forget in a hurry,’ said
Daniel.

  ‘You can say that again,’ she said, and gave a half-laugh. She turned to face him. Now the emergency was over she didn’t know what to say. It had been two years since she’d last seen him and the terrible things they had both said still seemed so fresh they could have spoken them yesterday.

  ‘Why don’t we go back to the house? I think we need to talk.’

  ‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘I need to get back. Sally needs to know about Charlie. I don’t want her to hear it over the phone and I have Max in the car.’

  He shot her a measured look. ‘How is my little nephew? Mum said you took him to see G.’

  ‘Yes, he’s much happier now.’

  The rain continued to sprinkle down around them as another silence fell between them.

  ‘We need to talk, Sophie. We’re going to be seeing a lot of each other. G. needs support and harmony, not—’

  ‘I assume you’re staying at Arabella?’ she asked, interrupting him as she thought quickly ahead. She didn’t want to have this conversation with him now. In the growing darkness, in the rain, in soaked clothes, with Max asleep in the car and with Charlie’s emergency and John’s stroke weighing heavily on her mind. She was a little too overwhelmed to think straight. If this conversation turned out like their last then she’d need to have her wits about her.

  ‘In my old room,’ he said, a small smile on his lips.

  ‘OK,’ she said, shrugging the heavy, sodden blanket from her shoulders and opening her car door. She needed action. Anything to take her mind off the things they had done in that room. ‘We can talk tomorrow.’

  Sophie seated her drenched body in her beautiful car pleased to see that Max had slept his way through the whole incident. She started the car and realised she hadn’t even thanked Daniel. They may have had their problems but she knew one thing for sure—Charlie would be dead right now if he hadn’t come along when he had. She pressed the button for the electric window and it slid down with a soft whirr.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said, hating the husky note that had crept into her voice.

  He nodded at her wordlessly and she drove away carefully. Sophie watched the unmoving form of Daniel in her rear-view mirror until the rain and night totally obscured him. Her arms and legs started to shake as reaction from the events of the night sank in. She shivered and turned the heater on high.

  So, Daniel had come back. She had asked and he had come. And he was living at Arabella. Well, it was his home after all. Much more his than hers. She shifted uncomfortably in her seat, the wet denim of her shorts chafing her thighs. Could they live under the same roof?

  She pushed her disturbing thoughts aside and switched on the radio. The DJ announced a mushy love song in a chirpy voice and she quickly changed channels. A hard rock song blared out and she turned up the volume. Anything to stop herself thinking about Daniel.

  Daniel stayed rooted to the spot for who knew how long. Long after her car lights disappeared. Long after the rain finally stopped.

  She was still exactly the same.

  Still the same girl who had shadowed him constantly when she’d been five and he eleven.

  Still the beautiful teenager who had begged him for her first kiss when she’d been sixteen.

  Still the desirable woman who had given him the gift of her virginity and had told him she loved him.

  Still the woman who had married his brother instead.

  Still the woman who had slept with him mere hours after they had laid his brother, cold and dead, in his grave.

  How could she have done that? How could he?

  CHAPTER TWO

  DANIEL tracked Sophie down the next afternoon on his return from the beach house. They had to have that talk. The way things had been left between them could make living under the same roof very difficult. There were things that needed to be said.

  After enquiring about Charlie and finding out he’d already been transferred from ICU to a ward, Daniel came straight to the point. ‘About what happened after Michael’s funeral, the things we said.’

  Sophie felt nauseous, thinking about it. It hadn’t been the highlight of their tangled relationship.

  ‘It was something that shouldn’t have happened,’ Daniel said.

  ‘Yes, thank you, I got that.’

  ‘Look. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said the things that I did. I was just a little…shocked at our—my—behaviour and I handled it very badly.’

  Sophie almost laughed out loud at the extent of his understatement.

  ‘I’d just buried my brother, Sophie. I wasn’t thinking straight.’

  OK. That was it. He wasn’t going to pull the grieving brother card. ‘Well, gee, Daniel, I’d just buried my husband but I didn’t accuse you of being some kind of Jezebel or whatever the hell the male equivalent is.’

  ‘I know. I know. I’m sorry. I really am.’

  ‘It takes two to tango, Daniel. I didn’t notice you trying to put the brakes on.’ Sophie was surprised at how raw her hurt still was.

  He shut his eyes and tried to erase the images that sprang into his head. He didn’t want to go over that night blow by blow—he just wanted to clear the air over it. Obviously she was still hurting from their angry exchange of words.

  ‘Look. All I wanted to say was I’m sorry that it happened and sorry for what I said. We both have to live under this roof and I’d like to be able to get past what happened.’

  And if they did? Weren’t there still a thousand other things between them that were also hard to get past? ‘And what about all the other stuff, Daniel?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know about you but I’m over all the other stuff. I thought you would be by now, too.’ It was important that she knew that up front. He was over her.

  Sophie saw red. What exactly was he trying to imply? ‘I am one hundred per cent over you, Daniel Monday. As far as I’m concerned, you and I never existed.’

  Good, he thought, they understood each other. He didn’t need any rekindling of old flames. Michael might be dead but his obligations to his brother hadn’t died with him. He owed his brother and Sophie belonged to Michael. Period.

  And that was the last conversation they had for a while. The entire family devoted their time to keeping John company at St Jude’s and Daniel and Sophie fell into a pattern. For the three weeks John was hospitalised they rarely saw each other. Sophie took some leave, spending the days with Max and then heading off to St Jude’s at night, while Max was sleeping, to read to John.

  Daniel spent the mornings with John and spent the afternoons making the necessary arrangements to pack up his New York life and find a job. He wanted to be around for John. Seeing his strong, able-bodied grandfather so dependent had been a wake-up call. John wasn’t a young man and Daniel wanted to be there for his grandfather’s twilight years, just as his grandfather had always been there for him.

  Once John’s cerebral oedema had settled he improved quite quickly, regaining a good portion of the function he had lost. His gag and swallow reflex had returned to almost normal by the end of the first week and his speech improved dramatically with just occasional slurring of some words. That had been a great relief to everyone as John’s frustration was making him very cranky.

  The left-sided paralysis had lessened but there was still a significant residual deficit on that side and he was going to need intense physiotherapy to regain the power and use of his limbs. Mobilisation was limited, with John relying heavily on a wheelchair.

  But nothing on earth was going to keep John in St Jude’s a moment longer than he needed to be. Not the private room, not the attentions of the top neurologist or the very best of everything St Jude’s could lay on. He had spent too many years walking its corridors as an eminent professor of microbiology to suddenly be in a position where he felt vulnerable and powerless.

  And the stroke certainly hadn’t affected his obstinate streak. He was eighty-four and had suffered a huge cerebral insult, but he remained sharp as a tack and determined to m
ake a full recovery. At home. At Arabella. Surrounded by his family and everything dear and familiar to him.

  Luckily Arabella was already equipped for a wheelchair. It had been fully converted for Michael—ramps, rails and even a lift to the upper storey had been installed. Hallways and doorways had been widened where necessary. All the conversions money could buy had been put in place. Little had they known that not one but two Mondays would benefit from the changes.

  The family had arranged the best care in Brisbane. A private physiotherapist and nurse had been arranged to come in on a daily basis. They’d also consulted other allied health fields and a private occupational and speech therapist would also be involved in John’s care.

  When the big homecoming day finally arrived, Sophie was relieved as splitting herself in two was quite exhausting. She and Max had shifted from their wing to make way for John as these rooms were the most wheelchair friendly. Michael, Sophie and Max had lived in them as a family so they were decked out with every device imaginable to make living in a wheelchair as easy as possible.

  They moved into the guest wing with much excitement on Max’s side. Sophie not as much. She knew that it was the most sensible thing for John but she had a sense that things were changing in her life that were beyond her control. Daniel’s presence only intensified this feeling.

  Her living space hadn’t changed in four years and she’d never realised what a security blanket it was. The love and the laughter the three of them had shared in these rooms was difficult to let go of. It was so silly. She was just moving down the corridor and yet it seemed like a whole new world.

  In fact, as she had shifted their belongings she had even contemplated moving out altogether. Maybe it was time to make a clean break? Living with Daniel was going to be awkward and even though Sophie looked upon Arabella as her home she had no real claim on it and even less now that Michael was dead.

  Wendy and Edward, Michael and Daniel’s parents, were horrified when she had broached the subject at dinner one night.

  ‘Goodness, Sophie! What do you mean, move out? That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard!’ Edward had said, dropping his fork on his plate with a clatter.