Now that the Court of Appeal were about to give their decision, Annie was back to being like a cat on a hot tin roof, displaying some of the same behaviours she had just after Brandon Moorcroft was sentenced and Lily moved away. Eve couldn’t bear the thought of her spiralling down to rock bottom again, so she was doing everything she could to prevent it.
‘Have you eaten anything today?’ she’d found herself asking Annie as the two of them crossed the car park together on their way in to see Max.
‘I can’t seem to face anything, my stomach’s like a washing machine.’ Annie had thrummed with nervous energy, tapping her fingers against her thighs almost as if she had an involuntary twitch.
‘You’ve got to eat something, otherwise you’re going to make yourself poorly again.’
‘I’ll be okay once this week’s over and we get the verdict.’ She’d looked at Eve, then, her eyes like two dark pools, contrasting sharply with the pallor of her face. ‘I might even manage to make it through the night without waking up in a cold sweat thinking about the prospect of Moorcroft being released from prison.’
Eve had wanted to ask her what would happen if the sentence was upheld, but she’d already known the answer. Annie would go into the kind of apocalyptic meltdown that would almost certainly lead to another crisis. But it wouldn’t matter what Eve said or what she did, she wouldn’t be able to prevent that because Annie was pinning all her hopes on the sentence being extended. All any of them could do was hope that the Court of Appeal revised the sentence sufficiently to avoid triggering a complete breakdown in Annie’s mental health, although in truth no sentence they could impose would ever be enough for her. Eve was almost as worried about what might happen when Annie’s energies were no longer being poured into trying to get Moorcroft’s sentence increased; when she no longer had that as a focus, she might finally have to face up to the reality of never getting the old Max back and, when she did, Eve had a horrible feeling that it would trigger an even bigger crisis.
Whatever the next week brought, she knew one thing for sure, now wasn’t the time to tell Annie about Felix. She wasglad to have work to focus on, even on days like today, when it seemed to be one high-octane emergency after another.
‘There’s an RTA on the way in. The patient has bullseye’d the windscreen and there’s a suspected spinal injury. ETA five minutes.’ Aidan summarised the outcome of the call that had just come through on the red phone and the team swung into action to prepare resus for the latest patient’s arrival. The first priority would be to stabilise them and then get a CT scan to check the extent of the injuries, before deciding which specialist teams to involve. Eve just hoped that stabilisation would turn out to be possible, whatever injuries the patient might have. RTAs were one of the biggest causes of fatalities coming into the emergency department, and Eve had seen far more deaths than she wanted to remember. She’d also seen life-changing injuries, sometimes ones so catastrophic that patients had told her they wished they’d died.
When Eve and Max had got together, they’d talked about all kinds of scenarios; hardly surprising given their occupation. He’d told her that if he ever got an injury that left him too disabled to do his job, or live the life he wanted, he’d rather not survive. She’d challenged him back then, about all the people who’d adjusted to their new normal after a serious injury, sometimes achieving the most amazing things. He’d accepted that was true, but had still insisted that if he couldn’t be a surgeon he would never be truly happy. She’d wondered in the early days after the assault, when they hadn’t been certain whether he’d live or die, what she should pray for. But the thought had only ever been fleeting, and she’d begged every deity that might exist to save him, no matter what the cost. Max had been saved, but it had quickly become clear that his life would never be the same again and she’d found herself wondering something else; whether he still wished he hadn’t survived. He’d never said so, but after the assault he’d been adifferent person, with different views about almost everything to those the old Max had held.
Now, whenever Eve got a call to say a seriously injured patient was on the way in, she found herself praying that they’d be able to take the first steps to ensuring the person made a full recovery, but if they couldn’t, the patient would get the outcome they would have wanted, even if that meant not making it. She’d never admitted that to anyone, and had never done less than everything possible to save a life. She just had to hope that the cost of that was never more than that person would have been willing to pay.
Right now though, she had a job to do and as Jeff and Julia, two of the paramedics, rushed the patient into resus, Eve caught her breath at the amount of blood caking the woman’s face. Her hair looked blonde, but it was so matted with dried blood that it was impossible to know for sure.
Jeff gave a rundown of the painkillers administered at the scene and the checks on her vital signs that had been carried out en route to the hospital. The patient had regained consciousness at the scene, but had been hysterical and incoherent, resisting attempts to move her from the vehicle, and they’d been forced to sedate her for her own safety and theirs. The outcome of the checks suggested the injuries weren’t life threatening, but there was no way of knowing yet whether they might be life-changing. Jeff turned to look at Eve. ‘Unfortunately, we haven’t got a name, because there was no ID in the car, no handbag and not even a phone.’
‘The sedation should wear off soon and hopefully she’ll be able to tell us who she is.’ Eve turned to look at Meg as she spoke. ‘But I’m worried about the extent of her facial injuries and whether that might affect her ability to talk, as well as what else might be going on internally. Given her agitation on scene,I think it might be best to maintain sedation until the scan, bearing in mind that she’s stable. What do you think?’
Before Meg could even answer, the doors to resus burst open and Eve caught her breath. Nigel was suddenly framed in the doorway. Aidan right behind him, urging him to stop.
‘I’ve told you, you can’t go in there. You need to wait outside and I promise to find out if your wife has been admitted.’
Nigel lurched forward, pushing Aidan out of the way as he tried to block his path. Eve blinked hard. This couldn’t be happening. It had to be a nightmare, one she’d wake up from at any moment.
‘Eve, it’s her, isn’t it? It’s Annie.’ The fear in his eyes made her shiver and she tried to speak, to tell him that he was wrong and it wasn’t his wife lying on the bed in front of her, covered in so much blood that she was unrecognisable, but the words wouldn’t come out. Instead she turned back towards the patient and glanced down at her hand, spotting the distinctive sapphire engagement ring, circled by petal-shaped diamonds, like an exotic flower. Eve had only ever seen one like that before and it had been on Annie’s hand.
Felix had been looking forward to finishing work all day. It wasn’t because he didn’t love his job or because he was the sort of person who watched the clock from the moment he arrived, waiting for it to be time to leave. The reason he hadn’t been able to wait on this particular Tuesday, was because he had a date to go to the cinema with Eve. It might have sounded pretty dull to anyone else. But it was the routine nature of it that appealed to him most. He really liked her, more than he probably should this early in their relationship, but then Felix had never been one toplay games, and he wasn’t really the sort of person to date for the sake of it – at least not now he was in his mid-thirties. He was dating with a view to the long term and the hope that this might have the potential to go the distance. He wanted someone he could do the ordinary things with, as well as embark on big adventures.
Going to the cinema was something couples did all the time and the fact that Eve had agreed to such a public date, in the cinema at Port Tremellien, where anyone could see them, felt like a milestone. She might still be waiting for the right moment to tell Annie and Nigel that she was seeing Felix, but she wasn’t trying to hide it from them or anyone else either. It was proof that she’d meant what she said, and she liked him enough to risk the consequences of their reaction. That in itself felt huge and, if he hadn’t like her as much as he did, he might have been the one urging her to proceed with caution. The last thing he would have wanted if he wasn’t sure about Eve, was for her to put her relationship with Annie and Nigel on the line, but hewassure about Eve. He’d been 99 per cent certain before San Francisco, but afterwards there’d been no question in his mind.
Felix had been relieved when Eve had told him she’d spoken to Eden about him, and it had meant he felt able to confide in Drew and admit just how much he liked Eve.
‘Do you think I should try and play it a bit cool?’ He’d posed the question to his sister’s boyfriend when they met for lunch and Drew had laughed.
‘You’re asking the wrong person if you want advice on how to be cool.’
‘Oh, I don’t know, whatever you did worked on Eden, and my sister can be a hard nut to crack.’
‘I just won Teddie over first.’ Drew had shrugged, a smile quickly spreading across his face. ‘Maybe that’s the answer, find someone she loves and get them on side first.’
‘I think I might already have done that. I’m the only OT Max will cooperate with, but it’s not him Eve is worried about upsetting by dating me, and I don’t think anything would make that okay with his parents. Eve is the biggest link to who Max was before the assault, and if I break that link in any way they’ll be forced to face up to the fact that things are never going to go back to the way they were.’
‘They’re never going to do that anyway.’ Drew had shrugged for a second time, his brilliantly straightforward response quite possibly a by-product of his high-functioning autism. ‘I think what Eden appreciated was that I didn’t mess her around, I said what I meant and I meant what I said. It might just be because of the way I’m wired, but I think all relationships should operate on that basis. Don’t try and play it cool if you like Eve as much as I think you do, be honest with her, so that she’s got the confidence to be honest with Max’s parents too. That way, everyone knows where they stand and they can decide if they’re in or they’re out.’
‘Has anyone told you you’re a genius?’
‘Not nearly as often as they should do.’ Drew had laughed again and Felix had decided to follow his advice. You couldn’t go far wrong by being honest, and Meredith had proved just how much harm lies could do. She’d lied to everyone, including herself, about just how out of control her addiction had become. Eve couldn’t have been more different to Meredith, and she’d already decided she wanted to be honest with Annie and Nigel. Felix couldn’t imagine them turning their back on her, but he also understood why she wanted to make it as painfree for them as possible, when they learned that she was moving on. He wasn’t going to put any pressure on her to have that conversation with Max’s parents; it was enough to know she wanted to. If she could put so much of her life on the line to see where their relationship might go, the least he could do was tellher just how much she meant to him and he had every intention of doing that tonight.
He’d arranged to meet her in the emergency department, once his shift ended. She was due to finish before him, but she’d told him she was more than happy to have the chance to catch up on some paperwork and an online training course she’d been putting off for weeks. Felix had expected her to be ready and waiting when he got to the department, but she was nowhere to be seen.
‘You don’t know where Eve is, do you?’ Aidan stopped in his tracks as Felix called out to him, a pained expression on his face.
