The Emergency Specialist. Barbara Hart

it was only meant to be for a few minutes!’ said the man wretchedly. ‘I had to go—I had to take my wife to the hospital! She’s eight months pregnant and she was bleeding and—’

      ‘I thought I recognised you,’ interrupted Tammy. ‘I remember you coming in with your wife earlier in the evening. You’re Mr Wyatt, aren’t you?’

      ‘Yes,’ he confirmed. ‘Todd Wyatt.’

      ‘Well, Mr Wyatt, why didn’t you call an ambulance?’ Jack asked him, his anger barely concealed below the surface.

      ‘I did, but it didn’t come! I thought my wife was going to die. I went upstairs to Jamie’s room and he was asleep. I thought I’d better not wake him up and bring him along with us because there was all this blood and everything. I thought it would really upset him. So when the ambulance didn’t come I decided to drive her to hospital myself, thinking it would only take a few minutes, but the car broke down on the way back. When I finally got home the whole place was in flames, fire-engines everywhere.’

      He put his hands over his face and sobbed. ‘It was terrible! I thought Jamie was still in the house!’

      Anna stripped off her latex gloves and binned them before putting a comforting hand on Todd Wyatt’s shoulder.

      ‘We hope it’s going to be all right, Mr Wyatt. Your son’s heart stopped at one point but he’s stabilised now. He’s been very badly burned and we’re now sending him to the hospital’s burns unit. They can do miraculous things these days with skin grafts. What happened to your wife? How is she?’

      It was as though the man had completely forgotten about her for the moment.

      ‘Oh,’ he said, trying to cast his mind back to his other, earlier traumatic event. ‘They’ve taken her in for observation. The baby might be born prematurely, they said. I’ll go and check on her when I know what’s going to happen with Jamie. I’ll have to tell her, of course. Oh, hell, how am I going to tell her?’

      ‘I’d like to talk to you about Jamie’s pyjamas,’ said Jack, still extremely angry with the man but accepting that he had been placed in a terrible dilemma.

      ‘Pyjamas?’ said the man, still in a state of shock. ‘I don’t know anything about pyjamas.’

      ‘One of the reasons Jamie got so badly burned was because he wasn’t wearing flame-retardant pyjamas. They’re the only kind they’re supposed to sell for children. It’s the law.’

      ‘I think he’d gone to bed in his new judo outfit, or just the bottom half of it. He was very chuffed with it, wanted to wear it all the time. My wife made it for him from some material she got from the market, you know, to save money. She’s very clever with the sewing machine.’

      Jack caught Anna’s eye. ‘Not so very clever, as it turned out,’ he said under his breath.

      The trolley, with Jamie on it, was in the process of being transferred to the burns unit.

      ‘Tammy,’ said Anna to the nurse, ‘would you help Mr Wyatt find out what’s happened to his wife?’ Turning to the distraught man, she said, ‘Jamie’s condition is under control now. He’s sedated and he’s in good hands, and he won’t really know whether you’re here or not, Mr Wyatt, so you may as well go and be with your wife, particularly if they’re delivering the baby. I’m sure you’ll want to be there to give her support.’

      Todd Wyatt followed the nurse to the main desk area and she sat him down while she made enquiries from the maternity unit.

      Anna and Jack went into the changing room where they removed their surgical gowns, masks and hats.

      ‘I must have a shower before I even think of going home, I’m so hot and sticky,’ he said, reaching for a clean towel from the overhead lockers. ‘You look as fresh as a daisy,’ he said to Anna, his body very close to hers. ‘It’s always the way with the shift hand-over. The freshly laundered taking over from the jaded, perspiring ones!’

      As he stretched up and grabbed the fluffy white towel provided by the hospital laundry, the heady scent of fresh, male sweat invaded her nostrils.

      She was a fastidious person. Normally she couldn’t stand being too close to a sweaty person—man or woman. But she didn’t find Jack’s glowing proximity at all repellent. Far from it. She amazed herself by actually finding it quite attractive. She breathed in again and almost felt like swooning. Must be something to do with pheromones, she thought with an inward laugh…although she’d always believed those special sexual chemicals were reserved for the animal kingdom—in particular, moths! She found herself laughing out loud.

      ‘What’s so funny?’ he asked.

      ‘I was just thinking about moths,’ she said, then, moving away, added, ‘It’s too complicated to explain.’

      ‘Do you like Mozart?’ he asked.

      She puzzled over the connection between moths and Mozart.

      ‘Give up,’ she said. ‘I know he wrote something about a bat, Die Fledermaus? Or was that another composer?’

      Jack leaned on the metal doors of the locker, his body relaxed, all the tension from his long working day vanished. Her misunderstanding appeared to amuse him greatly.

      ‘Forget moths,’ he said, grinning at her. ‘I’m talking about a Mozart concert at the Bridgemore Hall. Do you fancy coming along?’

      Anna was about to refuse. Her mouth opened, but before she could get the words out he was one jump ahead.

      ‘I’ve checked your rota. The concert’s next week when you’re on the day shift.’

      ‘You checked my rota?’ She wasn’t sure whether to be flattered or annoyed at this evidence of snooping on his part. When he nodded, all she could bring herself to say was, ‘Oh.’

      ‘Do you like Mozart?’ he repeated. ‘When I mentioned loud disco music the other day you implied that your taste ran more along classical lines. And the tape I was playing in the car on the way to the pub was a Mozart symphony. You said you liked it…so I thought it would be nice to go to a live concert.’

      He’d certainly done his homework!

      ‘Well, I…’ began Anna.

      He’d put her in an awkward position. She liked him, and she was even beginning to find herself physically attracted to him, but she wasn’t ready to start dating anyone at the moment. And yet it was going to be very difficult to turn him down, particularly when he said, ‘I do hope you’ll come, Anna. I haven’t been out to a concert or a movie, or anything really, since I lost my wife. Going out on your own can be a very depressing activity in those circumstances.’

      ‘I’m sure you could have found someone to go with you,’ she exclaimed, before realising how crass it sounded. She bit her lip.

      ‘I’m sure I could,’ said Jack. ‘But that’s not the point. I haven’t wanted to ask anyone to come with me up to now. That’s the difference. But if you don’t like Mozart, I’ll give the tickets to Christine and she can take a friend along.’

      ‘Oh, but I do like Mozart,’ said Anna, who was beginning to feel this conversation was leading in one direction only. Jack was so determined that she would go out with him that she might as well give in gracefully.

      ‘What day is the concert?’ she asked.

      ‘Thursday,’ he said.

      ‘I’d love to come, Jack. Thank you very much. Now, you’d better take that shower and I’d better get back on duty.’

      * * *

      The next day, when she got back home after the night shift, there was a message on her answering machine.

      ‘Hi, Anna, it’s Rebecca. Give me a ring soon as you can, will you, darling? Bye