‘I only look at his pictures because I’m trying to work out if his haircut would suit me.’
‘You’d need to buy a toupee first.’ Gary’s response was so deadpan that for a moment no one reacted, but then they all started to laugh, even Esther.
‘They call them hair systems these days actually, old man, but you’d know that if you hadn’t been around when man first made fire.’ Aidan nudged his friend and a warm glow settled in Eve’s stomach. She loved this, the easy banter between her colleagues that she was finally starting to feel a part of. She might not be right in the thick of it yet, but she was getting there and she no longer saw herself as a complete outsider. St Piran’s was beginning to feel like home.
‘Sorry about the delay.’ Danni offered up the apology as she came into the staffroom. ‘I was with Zahir and we were waiting to hear whether any more of the patients we’ve been keeping stable in the department are being transferred to the specialist burns unit in Bristol, or whether they still need to wait for a bed in ICU. Isla just took a call to say that the burns unit has accepted the last of the patients with more serious burns, so it looks like the crisis is over and we should be in for just another normal day at the office.’
‘You know you’re not allowed to say that!’ Esther pulled a face. ‘That’s the first rule of A&E, and you can’t even blame baby brain any more. I mean when I eventually get pregnant, I fully intend to blame my children for all eternity for ruining my washboard abs, even though I’ve never actually been able to find them, but you looked like a supermodel a week after giving birth. If you weren’t my best friend and I didn’t love you so much, I might actually hate you!’
‘Don’t worry, there’s not a chance of there being any washboard abs under here either.’ Danni smiled, but there was a troubled look in her eyes and Eve sensed Eden stiffening beside her.
‘Right, come on then, let’s get to work.’ Danni headed out of the door first and Eve slowed her pace, falling in line with Eden at the back of the group.
‘Was it just me or did Danni look at bit worried about something?’ Eve kept her voice low. ‘You don’t think there’s anything wrong, do you?’
‘No.’ Eden’s response was assured, but when Eve turned to look at her, she had the same troubled expression on her face as Danni had worn. ‘I think she’s pregnant again.’
Eve held her breath as the paramedics rushed towards her. Paediatric emergencies were always enough to make her heart sink to the floor, but she knew just from the sight of the tiny little boy lying on the stretcher, who couldn’t have been more than three, how serious it was. His skin had a blueish grey undertone and his abdomen appeared distended, as he coughed and tried to pull the oxygen mask off his face. Eve had answered the red phone when the paramedic team had called to say the little boywas on the way, so she knew the cause of his symptoms even before Jeff, one of the paramedics, outlined what had happened.
‘This is Carter, he’s three years old. He was found face down in a garden pond by his mother and he wasn’t breathing at the time of discovery. She managed to resuscitate him with support from the 999 call handler, but no one saw Carter go into the water and we don’t know how long he was in there for.’
Eve’s stomach roiled as she looked at the tiny child in front of her, unable to stop herself from thinking about just how different the outcome could have been for him if his mother had found him a few minutes later, or if she hadn’t known what to do to resuscitate him. She’d seen children brought in who hadn’t made it. Her training at St James’s had made her more adaptable than many A&E doctors, because she’d specialised in emergency medicine with a sub specialism in paediatric emergency medicine. It meant she’d witnessed more tragedies than she wanted to think about and seeing Carter looking so vulnerable hurt her heart. The only positive was that if she’d been forced to bet on it, she’d put her stake on him being okay, because he was alert and had enough strength to fight against the oxygen mask.
He wasn’t completely out of the woods yet, though, due to a phenomenon called secondary or delayed drowning, which had the potential to cause respiratory failure and death, even days after a near-drowning incident. Carter was safe for the time being and he’d be monitored for any signs once his condition was stabilised and his symptoms treated. It was the what-ifs that Eve found so much harder to shake off, especially since Max’s attack. Things could have ended so differently for him that night, if he’d only left the club five minutes earlier or five minutes later, or taken another route through the city. It seemed impossible to her that their lives could have changed so catastrophically because of such tiny, almost meaninglessdecisions. Sometimes the thought crippled her, when she was forced to choose between two seemingly innocuous decisions. It was such a waste of energy thinking that way, because no amount of considering the what-ifs could change the outcome, but she seemed powerless to stop. Shaking off thoughts of Max, she looked at Jeff.
‘Given that he’s likely to have ingested pond water, we’ll need to get him on IV antibiotics and warmed IV fluids to bring his temperature up. I also want a scan to rule out any injuries he might had sustained from falling or jumping into the pond. Even if all that’s clear he’ll need to be monitored for at least eight hours. Where’s his mum?’
Meg and Esther hurried towards Eve, as she looked past the paramedics, expecting to see Carter’s mother there. She might well need treatment herself, after the shock and trauma of what she’d witnessed, but there was no sign of her.
‘She’s coming along separately, with the police.’ Jeff had a grim expression on his face.
‘Do they think it wasn’t accidental?’ Meg looked horrified and the question had taken the words right out of Eve’s mouth.
‘I’m not sure, but it was clear she was known to them and the social worker is also on the way. Poor kid.’
‘I hope they lock the mother up and throw away the key.’ Meg’s eyes had darkened and Eve had never heard her sound so hard. It was understandable given what had nearly happened to Carter, but they were supposed to keep some degree of impartiality, especially as his mother might need treatment, and they didn’t even know if the woman had been charged with anything yet. But Esther was nodding vigorously.
‘It makes me sick to my stomach that there are people out there who don’t prioritise their kids at all and yet seem to be able to have them without any difficulty whatsoever, when me andJoe would do anything to have a child and we’d build our whole world around them.’
‘All we can do is make sure Carter gets the care and attention he deserves now. We’ll deal with the problem of his mother if and when she turns up.’ Eve didn’t give the others any opportunity to respond, instead detailing what she needed Meg and Esther to do, before arranging his scan and calling the children’s ward to ascertain availability of a bed, if they decided it was safe to move Carter there for observation. Technically Eve wasn’t Meg’s superior, but she had far more experience when it came to paediatric emergency medicine and there was no room for ego in A&E. At least there shouldn’t be.
‘I just wanna know he’s okay, I’m his mum for God’s sake and you’ve got no right to stop me from seeing him.’ As soon as Eve heard the woman shouting, forty-five minutes after Carter had been admitted, she knew who it was and, when the woman clearly didn’t get what she wanted, she started screaming a string of expletives. Her little boy was stable and he was going to be okay, maybe hearing that would be enough to calm her down. For the other patients’ sakes, Eve had to try.
Hurrying down the corridor she went through to the waiting area and found a painfully thin woman with greasy, dark blonde hair and hollows beneath her eyes that made her look like a skeleton come to life. She was a poster girl for addiction and Eve’s heart hurt even more for the beautiful little boy who’d almost lost his life. There was no sign of the police. But a harassed looking woman wearing a lanyard with the Cornish County Council logo, who Eve assumed was the social worker, was trying to calm Carter’s mother down, as she paced aroundthe waiting area ranting; the other patients watching her, like she was an animal in a zoo.
‘I’ve called security.’ Cheryl, one of the receptionists, hissed as Eve approached and she nodded, hoping that by the time they came this would all be over. Taking a deep breath she approached the woman, and began to speak, keeping her tone deliberately soft.
‘Hi, I’m Eve Bellingham, one of the doctors and I’ve been looking after Carter.’ For a split second it crossed her mind that she may have got it wrong and that this might not be his mum after all, but the expression on the other woman’s face told her she was right before she even responded.
‘Is he okay?’ There was such desperation in the woman’s tone, that, in that instant, Eve’s heart ached for her. Most people who came to the kind of addiction she would have sworn this woman was in the grip of, had been through trauma of their own and the haunted expression in the woman’s eyes told their own story.
‘He’s stable and breathing without assistance, but we won’t know for a while yet whether the submersion in the water has caused any further complications. He has two cracked ribs, likely to be from when the CPR was performed.’
‘Oh thank God, and thank you so much.’ Carter’s mother seemed to lose all her fight as she clasped Eve’s hand. And as her face relaxed there was a softness there that wouldn’t have seemed possible a moment or two before.
‘Can you be certain that’s what caused the injury?’ The social worked narrowed her eyes and Carter’s mother immediately tensed again, her arms flying upwards and nearly knocking Eve back.
‘I’d never hurt Carter, not on purpose and you fucking know that, Pippa. I’m in a bad place and I wasn’t watching him like Ishould have been. You know it wasn’t deliberate and so do the police, otherwise they’d be here.’
