Needed: Full-Time Father. Carol Marinelli

to have a treat. ‘I got you these from the vending machine. As it turns out, you were the first customer. Go and give one of these to Richard and play for ten minutes. I’ll call you in soon.’

      ‘What happened today?’ Helen asked as Emily scampered off, her voice filled with concern.

      ‘How do you know anything happened?’

      ‘Well, it’s the first time in living memory you’ve given the kids chocolate so close to dinner, and the first time you haven’t pulled out Emily’s homework diary to check that it had been filled in.’

      ‘Am I that predictable?’ Madison sighed.

      ‘Wonderfully so.’ Helen grinned, placing a steaming mug of coffee in front of Madison and waiting till she took a long grateful sip before resuming the conversation. ‘So what went down today?’

      ‘Gerard Dalton collapsed and died.’

      There had been no easy way to say it, so Madison had just gone right ahead, nodding grimly at Helen’s shocked expression to confirm the terrible news. ‘We’d both arrived at work, there was no one else in the department and we were going over the day’s plans. He’d just made me a coffee…’ She gave a tiny ghost of a smile as Helen, with a rather startled look, promptly put down her own mug. ‘Sudden death isn’t catching, Helen!’

      ‘Sorry,’ Helen mumbled. ‘Go on.’

      ‘So, it was just the two of us in the department, the new consultant had arrived, but the emergency doors were closed and he was locked outside. We were going around to meet him when I realised Gerard wasn’t walking with me. I turned around and he’d collapsed.’

      ‘Did he say he had chest pain?’ Helen asked, clearly stunned but her medical brain trying to fathom out what had happened.

      ‘He said nothing.’ Madison blinked into her coffee. ‘Nothing. One minute we were chatting, and I headed off to go and the next I turned around and he was sliding onto the floor. Looking back on things, I think Gerard was actually dead before he hit the ground. He didn’t stand a chance.’

      ‘So what caused it?’

      ‘We don’t know yet.’ Madison gave an exasperated shrug. ‘There’ll be an autopsy, of course, but for now it could be anything—cerebral, cardiac or a PE maybe. For a moment there it looked as if it could be a ruptured aneurysm—he’d been complaining of mild back pain but, as I pointed out, he’d strained his back lifting a box the night before.’

      ‘You’d get a bit more warning with an aneurysm, you’d think,’ Helen pondered out loud. As a surgical nurse she’d seen her fair share. ‘I mean, he’d have been pale and sweaty, in some sort of distress.’

      ‘He was nothing like that,’ Madison said. ‘Given it’s Gerard, I’m sure the autopsy will take place very quickly and I’d expect we’d have some answers by tomorrow. Not that it’s going to help. You should have seen his poor wife and children, they were absolutely devastated. It came completely out of the blue. They’re such a close family.’

      ‘And you were there on your own?’ Helen gasped.

      ‘Only for a couple of moments,’ Madison corrected. ‘Like I said, the new consultant had arrived and even though he couldn’t get in straight away, he saw what was happening through the glass doors and raced around.’

      ‘Poor thing,’ Helen sighed. Madison was grateful for the coffee and sympathy, glad to peel off her shoes for five minutes and dunk a chocolate biscuit in her coffee. But when Helen continued talking, with a jolt Madison realised her sympathy hadn’t been aimed towards her. ‘It must have been awful for him. Imagine that happening on your first day!’

      ‘He seemed to deal with it all OK.’ Madison chewed her lip as she thought back over the day. ‘He just got on with it, I guess.’

      ‘Only because he had no choice,’ Helen pointed out. ‘Imagine starting a new job and your mentor and senior dropping dead. Poor thing, I bet it was all left for him to carry.’

      ‘Not all of it,’ Madison answered, but her response was a touch too quick, just a tad too defensive. As busy and as awful as her own day had been, for Guy it must have been far worse. Despite the fact the hospital was brand-new, they’d had a generous number of patients and Guy, with no senior on hand and no orientation day behind him, had had to deal with the lot. From critically ill patients to just the basics everyone encountered when they started a new job—such as where the loo was located, the coffee-mugs, the X-ray pads. It was the first time Madison had actually thought about it, the first time she had really taken stock and looked at the events from someone else’s perspective. A wave of guilt washed over her. Throughout the day, Guy had repeatedly asked her how she was bearing up, had even made her a cup of tea and bought her a sandwich from the machine at around two when he’d realised that she hadn’t eaten. And what had she done for him?

      Precisely nothing!

      ‘Gosh.’ Helen blinked. ‘What a terrible start.’

      ‘It was.’ Madison grimaced. ‘I’m going to try and not think about it, at least until I’ve got Emily into bed.’

      ‘Good idea,’ Helen agreed sympathetically. ‘Switch that brain off for a couple of hours—it must have been an exhausting day. Do you want to stay here for dinner?’

      Madison was about to say no, to shake her head and call for Emily to collect her things, but the prospect of going home, of pulling one of many frozen casseroles out of the freezer and attempting to be normal after the day she’d had, had Madison changing her shake to a nod.

      ‘That would be great, if you’re sure you don’t mind.’

      ‘Mind? Life’s so much easier when Richard’s got someone to play with. And, before you ask, despite Emily’s guilty look, she was actually a delight last night. They were both asleep by eight.’

      ‘Good.’ Madison gave a relieved smile, then chewed her lip nervously, taking a deep breath before continuing. ‘Helen? Given what’s happened today, I actually can’t see me managing to get away on time for a while.’ Madison gave a guilty shuffle in her seat, which Helen easily interpreted.

      ‘Don’t worry if you’re late home over the next couple of weeks, it doesn’t matter a scrap. You were always going to be busy, with the department opening, and with what’s just happened you can hardly be expected to just walk out at three-thirty!”

      ‘You don’t mind?’ Madison checked, relief flooding her.

      They had an arrangement with childcare that only two women could have engineered or understood. Both were single parents, both lived in the same street, both were nurses, which meant guilt heaped upon guilt, trying to juggle work and motherhood. Two years ago, moaning over their questionable cappuccinos, courtesy of the canteen’s new machine, they had come to a tentative agreement. Madison dropped Emily off at seven each morning, leaving Helen to give her breakfast and do the school run, as well as picking Emily up from school. Madison’s shifts normally finished at three-thirty but as a NUM her work hours were as close to nine to five as nursing got, and even when she’d worked at her old hospital, which was further away, more often than not Madison’s car had pulled into Helen’s drive only a moment or two after Helen’s. But it was great to know that Emily was taken care of and not to have to rush away from work if the situation dictated that she stay. In return for Helen doing the school run, Madison had Richard to sleep over one night a week to enable Helen to do a night shift—or a ‘sanity shift’, as Helen called it.

      And two years in, despite Madison moving to the new hospital, despite the occasional hiccup when one of them was sick, somehow the system they had created that long-ago morning still stood strong.

      ‘I don’t a mind a bit if you’re late for a couple of weeks,’ Helen carried, her voice a touch higher as she asked for a favour of her own. ‘Actually, it will make me feel less guilty, asking you for a favour! I need a babysitter on Friday night.’

      ‘Are