‘Lucky for us I have two condoms in my wallet. Two new ones.’
Maggie looked up at him. ‘I thought we just established there’s no need.’
Nash dropped his head and kissed the tip of her nose as he kept up the massage of her breasts. The thought of being inside her with no barrier between them was so very tempting.
‘Old habits die hard.’ He kissed her nose again. ‘Just because you couldn’t fall with your ex doesn’t mean you won’t with me.’
Maggie smiled at his youthful cockiness. ‘You think your swimmers can manage what medical science couldn’t?’
He grinned back at her. ‘I don’t want to risk it.’
Maggie sobered. Wow. He really, really, really didn’t want kids. But then his right hand wandered from her breast, down her stomach and totally distracted her. She bit her lip and arched her back again. ‘Are two going to be enough?’
Nash chuckled, his erection straining as he gazed down at her, her nipples taut, her stomach quivering beneath his touch. ‘I’ll get creative,’ he murmured.
And he was. Very, very creative. All night long.
Two weeks later both Nash and Maggie found themselves on a run of nights together, the first time their shifts had coincided since their one-off night of passion allowing them to easily avoid any awkwardness on the unit. Sure, she’d seen him around since but had managed to avoid working with him too closely.
There wasn’t that kind of luxury on night duty with only one registrar manning the ship.
Maggie was nervous about finally working with him but she needn’t have been. He just smiled at her in all his jeans-clad glory, a secretive I’ve-seen-you-naked-but-it’s-okay smile when their gazes first met and she knew it was going to be all right.
Okay, yes, she’d spent two weeks reliving that night and all its wonder over and over in her head. She dreamt about it – fantasised about it. About him. About his hands and what he’d done with them. His mouth and where he’d put it. And the pleasure he’d rained down on her in a frenzy of desire.
But they’d made a deal. One night only. And she had no intention of welshing. Even if sleeping in her bed with his smell embedded in her sheets and his touch - his taste - embedded in her memories, was driving her crazy. What she had was a prime case of lust and she was fairly certain she wouldn’t die from denial.
And anyway, the night didn’t allow time for either of them to psychoanalyse their night of hot sweaty sex. They hit the ground running and didn’t stop. Maggie was in charge of the shift and a retrieval arrived as soon as handover finished.
Billy Sugdeon was a five-year-old immersion, pulled from a back-yard fishpond with a ten-minute downtime. The little boy was barely visible beneath the metallic space blanket as the paramedics pushed the gurney into one of the side rooms. Maggie and Gwen, Billy’s assigned nurse, worked with Nash to get the blond-haired, blue-eyed darling unhooked from all the transport monitors, one ear on the handover.
They transferred him to the bed and began hooking him up to their monitors. ‘Are the parents here?’ Maggie asked as the retrieval crew prepared to depart.
‘Mum is. She’s waiting in the parents’ lounge. We told her you’d need half an hour to get the little tyke settled but you’d go and get her when you were done.’
‘Thanks.’ Maggie nodded as she adjusted the ventilator settings.
Nash inspected the intra-osseous needle site. It had had been screwed into the patient’s tibia when no other venous access could be found. The boy was pale and cold despite the space blanket, his heart rate a little too slow for his liking.
‘Let’s warm him up and get some lines in,’ he said, flicking on the overhead warmer switch. ‘We’ll take him to CT after that.’
‘You want some sedation running?’ Maggie asked as Gwen went to get some blankets from the warmer.
‘No. We’ll let the retrieval stuff wear off and see what he does.’
Maggie and Nash worked together like they’d been doing it for years. Like they were professional colleagues only and their night of rapture had never happened. She assisted with several intravenous line placements, an-endotracheal tube change and a chest X-ray.
Billy’s limbs started to twitch as soon as the X-ray plate was removed from behind him.
‘Midazalom,’ Nash ordered.
Maggie administered the pre-prepared solution into Billy’s central line and watched as the seizure stopped. It wasn’t an unexpected development. Often times an injury to the brain, be it traumatic or hypoxic, could result in some sort of seizure activity. She just hoped it was as the result of initial brain swelling and not a sign of more permanent damage.
‘I’ll write him up for a loading dose of phenytoin,’ Nash said, accessing the computerised medication chart at the bedside console and ordering the anti-convulsant therapy.
Maggie checked the drug with Gwen. ‘Why don’t we get Mum in now? It’ll give her some time before the CT scan.’
Nash nodded. ‘I’ll get her.’
Maggie watched surreptitiously a few minutes later as Nash approached the bedside with Billy’s mother. He was talking in a low voice, his voice soothing to the obviously emotional woman. Her eyes were red-rimmed and her hands were visibly shaking.
As she got closer and saw her son looking small and helpless amidst all the medical equipment she pressed her hand to her mouth and fresh tears welled in her eyes. Maggie could see her hesitate, falter and then crumple.
‘Whoa, there,’ Nash said as the sobbing woman collapsed against him. He put his arm around her shoulders, holding her upright. ‘Chair, Maggie.’
Maggie, well used to the emotional shock parents felt on seeing their children in a critical care environment, was two steps ahead of him and had the mobile stool behind the mother in an instant, allowing Nash to lower her gently. He knelt beside Billy’s mother and shot a grateful smile at Maggie.
‘Thanks,’ he murmured.
Maggie nodded admiring his way with the devastated woman reminding herself of their one-night-only deal. ‘No problems.’
Gwen and Nash accompanied their patient to CT twenty minutes later and Maggie watched them go with a heavy heart. She shook her head and wondered how many blond-haired, blue-eyed immersions she’d looked after.
She’d lost count over the years.
Glancing through the glass window separating the two side rooms she took in the red-headed burns boy next door. Why were they always red-headed? She wondered if anyone had done a study on hair colour and its correlation to specific types of accidents?
Maggie laughed out loud, the sound echoing in the empty room strewn with discarded packaging, used linen and multiple bits of medical plastic that had wound up on the floor. It seemed like such a trivial thought but anything that kept her mind off the horrifying prospect that Billy might be severely brain damaged was more than welcome.
He and his mother had managed to touch her heart.
Checking the wall clock, Maggie couldn’t believe it was nudging midnight and she’d only just managed to get around to all the patients. Thankfully Linda and another experienced nurse were helping to run the shift tonight so Maggie knew everything was being taken care of including the staff breaks.
There were two patients of concern.