Czytaj książkę: «Paddington Children's Hospital Complete Collection»

CHAPTER ONE

‘HELLO, BEAUTIFUL!’

Victoria’s smile was friendly as she walked into the lounge ahead of Glen, to where little Penelope Craig, or Penny, as she liked to be known, lay on the sofa. Victoria had already had a conversation with Julia, Penny’s mother, in the hallway.

Usually, two paramedics dressed in green overalls entering a home would be a somewhat nerve-racking sight for a six-year-old, but little Penny was more than used to it.

‘Victoria!’

Even though she was unwell, little Penny sat up a touch on the sofa where she lay, and her huge grey eyes widened in delight. She was clearly pleased that it was her favourite paramedic who was here to take her to Paddington Children’s Hospital, or the Castle as it was more generally known.

‘She hoped that it would be you coming to take her,’ Julia said.

Victoria gave a friendly smile to Julia and then went to sit on the edge of the sofa to chat to her patient. ‘Yes, I was just thinking the other day that I haven’t seen you in a while.’

‘She’s been doing really well,’ Julia said.

There was a three-way conversation going on as Victoria gleaned some history from Julia and also checked Penny.

Penelope Craig had been born with a rare congenital heart condition and had spent a lot of her life as a patient at the Castle, but for a while she had been doing well. Her dark hair was tied in braids and she was wearing pyjamas. Over the top of them was a little pink tutu that she wore all the time.

Penny was going to be a ballet dancer one day.

She told that to everyone.

‘Your mum said that you’ve not been feeling very well today?’ Victoria said as she checked Penny’s pulse.

‘I’m nauseous and febrile.’

Whereas most children would say that they felt sick and hot, Penny had spent so much time in medical settings that she knew more than a six-year-old should.

She was indeed febrile and her little heart was beating rapidly when Victoria checked her vital signs.

‘She’s being admitted straight to the cardiac unit,’ Julia said as Victoria checked Penny over. It wasn’t an urgent transfer but, given Penny’s history, a Mobile Intensive Care Unit had been sent and Victoria was thorough in her assessment.

‘Though,’ Julia added, ‘they want her to have a chest X-ray first in A&E.’

Which might prove a problem.

Accident and Emergency departments didn’t like to be used as an admissions hub, though it was a problem Victoria dealt with regularly. In fact, just three days ago she had had an argument with Dominic MacBride, a paediatric trauma surgeon, about the very same thing.

Victoria just hoped he wasn’t in A&E this evening, as they tended to clash whenever she brought a patient in.

Generally though, things were better at Paddington’s than at most hospitals. The staff were very friendly and there was real communication between departments.

And also, Penny was a little bit of a star!

They’d just have to see how it went.

‘I like your earrings,’ Penny said when Victoria had finished taking her blood pressure.

‘Thank you.’

Usually Victoria wore no jewellery at work. It was impractical, given that she never knew what her day might entail. Her long dark brown hair was tied up in its usual messy bun and, of course, she wore no make-up for work. So yes, her diamond studs stood out a touch.

The earrings had been a gift from her father and Victoria wore them for special occasions. She had been at a function yesterday and had forgotten to take them out.

Penny was ready to be transferred to the hospital. For such a little child, often Glen or Victoria would carry them out, the goal being not to upset them. Once though, Victoria had referred to the stretcher as a throne and Penny, who loved anything to do with fairytales, had decided that she rather liked it.

Penny insisted on moving onto the stretcher herself and Julia took a moment to check that she had all of Penny’s favourite things to bring along. They were very used to a ‘quick trip’ to Paddington’s turning into a longer stay.

‘Ready for the off?’ Victoria asked, and Penny gave her regular thumbs up.

Spring was a little way off just yet, and so even though it was only early in the evening, it was dark outside.

‘Are you just starting or finishing?’ Julia asked as Victoria took her seat in the back of the ambulance with them.

‘Just finishing,’ Victoria said.

‘Have you got anything planned for tonight?’

‘Not really,’ Victoria answered, and turned her focus to Penny.

In fact, Victoria was going out on a date.

A second one.

And she was wondering why she’d agreed to it when the first hadn’t been particularly great.

Oh, that’s right, she and Glen had been chatting and he had suggested that she expected too much from a first date.

Not that she said any of this to Julia.

Victoria gave nothing away.

She was very discerning in her dealings with people. She was confident yet approachable, friendly but not too much.

The patients didn’t mind; in fact, they liked her professionalism.

Socially, she did well, though tended to let others talk about themselves.

Victoria relied on no one.

She and Glen had worked together for two years and it had taken a long time for Victoria to discuss her private life even a little with him. Glen was a family man, with a big moon face that smiled rather than took offence at Victoria’s sometimes brusque ways, and he loved to talk. He was happily married to Hayley and they had four hundred children.

Well, four.

But while Glen chatted away about his wife and children and the little details of his day, Victoria didn’t. Certainly she wasn’t going to open up to her patient’s mother about her love-life.

Or lack of it.

Julia, as she often did, told Penny a story as the ambulance made its way through the Friday rush hour traffic. They weren’t using lights and sirens; there was no need to, and Penny was too used to them to want the drama.

‘I think it looks like a magical castle,’ Penny said as Paddington Children’s Hospital came into view.

The Victorian redbrick building was turreted and Victoria found herself smiling at Penny’s description.

She had thought the same when she was growing up.

Victoria could remember sitting in the back seat of her father’s car as he dashed to get to whatever urgent matter was waiting for him at work.

‘That’s because it is a magical castle,’ Victoria said, and Penny smiled.

‘It’s her second home,’ Julia said.

It had been Victoria’s second home too.

She knew every corridor and nook. The turret that Penny was gazing at could be accessed from a door behind the patient files in Reception, and had once been Victoria’s favourite space.

She would sneak in when no one was looking and climb up the spiral stairs and there she would dance, or dream, or simply play pretend.

On occasion she still did.

Well, no longer did she play pretend, but every now and then Victoria would slip away unnoticed and look out to the view of London that she somehow felt was her own.

‘Such a shame they’re closing it down.’ Julia sighed.

‘It’s not definite,’ Victoria said, though not with conviction. It looked as if the plan to merge Paddington’s with Riverside, a large modern hospital on the outskirts of the city, would be going ahead.

There was a quiet protest taking place outside, which had been going for a few days now, with protestors waving their placards to save the hospital.

Victoria’s father now worked at Riverside. The only real conversations she had ever had with him were about work. The function she had attended yesterday had been for an award for him, and in a conversation afterwards Victoria had gleaned that it really did seem the merger was going to go ahead.

Of course, the beautiful old Paddington’s building was prime real estate.

As always, it came down to money.

‘I don’t want it to close,’ Penny said as they pulled up under the bright lights of the ambulance bay outside Accident and Emergency. ‘I feel safe here.’

And Penny’s words seemed to twist something inside Victoria.

That was how she had felt as a child whenever she was left here.

Yes, left.

Her father’s quick check-in at work often turned into hours but, though alone, and though lonely, here Victoria had always felt safe.

‘I don’t want it to close,’ Penny said again.

‘I know that you don’t.’ Victoria nodded. ‘But Riverside is a gorgeous hospital and the staff there are lovely too.’

‘It’s not the same.’ Penny shook her head and there were tears in her grey eyes.

‘You don’t have to worry about all that now,’ Victoria soothed. ‘It might not happen.’

She wished she could say it probably wouldn’t but it was looking more and more likely with each passing day.

And it mattered.

‘Penny!’ Karen, a charge nurse, recognised Penny straight away. ‘You didn’t come all this way just to see me, I hope!’

‘No.’ Penny gave a little laugh, but just as Victoria went to hand over, Karen was urgently summoned.

‘It’s fine—we can wait.’ Victoria nodded.

They stood in the corridor and made sure that Penny was okay, while Glen chatted with her mother and Victoria started to fill out the required paperwork.

He was there.

She knew it.

And although they clashed, although she had told herself that she hoped he wouldn’t be there this evening, Victoria had lied.

She wanted to see him.

Dominic MacBride had been working at Paddington’s for a few months.

He was from Edinburgh and that low Scottish brogue had Victoria’s toes curl in her heavy boots. Or was it his blue eyes and tousled black hair?

Or was it just him?

She couldn’t quite place why she liked Dominic so much. He was crabby with the paramedics and he and Victoria tended to clash.

A lot!

And he was making his way over.

‘Here we go,’ Glen said under his breath, referring to the argument that Dominic and Victoria had had three days ago.

Victoria was very confident in all her dealings and her assertion seemed to rub Dominic up the wrong way.

He made his way straight over.

‘Are you being seen to?’ he checked.

‘Yes, thanks,’ Victoria said. ‘Karen’s taking care of us. She’ll be back shortly.’

Victoria got back to filling in the patient report form but, just as she did, Julia chimed up.

‘She’s a direct admission but she’s just going to have a quick chest X-ray before she goes to the ward.’

‘I see.’ Dominic nodded and then he came over to where Victoria stood. She could feel him in her space and that he was requiring her attention but she carried on writing her notes, refusing to look up.

His scent was subtle, soapy, musky and male and the faint traces cut through the more familiar hospital scent.

And still she did not look up.

‘Could I have a word, please?’ he asked.

And now Victoria looked up, quite a long way, in fact, because he was very tall and broad.

He was wearing dark navy scrubs and he needed a shave. He looked as if he had either rolled out of bed or should be about to roll into one and she did her best to stop her thought process there.

‘Sure,’ Victoria said. She was about to be churlish and add, In a moment, and then take said moment to finish her report, but instead she moved away from the stretcher and followed him into a small annexe.

He leant against a sink and she stood in front of him, not quite to attention but she was very ready to walk off.

‘Can you not see how busy we are?’ Dominic said. ‘We don’t have time to do the wards’ work as well.’

‘I don’t make the rules.’

‘You know them though and your patient is a direct admission,’ Dominic said. ‘If she goes up to the ward she can wait in a comfortable bed.’

Victoria said nothing.

They both knew the unofficial consensus was that Penny would be pushed to the front of the X-ray list, just so she could quickly be moved up to the ward.

The annexe was very small.

Dominic was not.

He was tall and broad and his eyes demanded that she look at him; Victoria rose to the challenge and met his angry glare as he spoke.

‘I’ve just come from explaining to a father that there’s a three-hour wait for an X-ray. Your arrival has just added to that load.’

‘So what would you like me to do?’ Victoria asked.

She just threw it back at him because, despite the comfortable bed that Penny would have on the ward, once there she would be shuffled to the bottom of the X-ray pile. It could well be midnight before she was brought down to the Imaging Department.

‘It’s not just a matter of filling in an X-ray request,’ Dominic said. ‘She should be examined before she goes around. If anything happens to her without her being seen—’

‘So,’ Victoria calmly interrupted, ‘what would you like me to do?’

She did not engage in small talk; she was confident and assertive and refused to row.

‘There you are.’ Karen came into the annexe. ‘Cubicle four has opened up if you’d like to bring Penny through.’

She and Dominic stared at each other.

The choice was his.

‘Fine,’ he eventually said, and Karen nodded and went back to Penny.

‘Next time...’ Dominic warned, but Victoria just shrugged and walked off.

‘Victoria!’

She halted.

There was an angry edge to his voice, but that wasn’t what stopped her—she didn’t think he even knew her name, so his use of it surprised her.

‘Don’t just shrug and walk off when I’m trying to have a conversation.’

‘A pointless one,’ Victoria said as she turned around. ‘In fact, we had the same conversation three days ago.’

His mood had been just as bloody then and she watched as his eyes shuttered for a moment.

‘As I said then, I just go where I’m told and deal with the inevitable angry consequence—I get your ire if I bring the patient here, or the ire of the ward if they arrive without the X-ray.’

She went to walk off, but this time it was Victoria who changed her mind and continued the conversation.

‘Sometimes it’s made easy though and the staff get that I’m just doing my job. That’s generally the case at Paddington’s, though I guess it just depends who’s on. I have to go and move my patient and then I’m out of here. Which is just as well...’

And then she crossed the line.

For the first time she made it personal. ‘Your misery is catching.’

Dominic watched as she swished out of the annexe and he let out a long breath.

They were both right.

There were limited resources and the staff all fought for the charges in their care.

She had rattled him though, not just with her little sign-off comment, but the reminder that they had had this conversation three days ago.

It was a difficult time for Dominic and he was self-aware enough to know he had been less than sunny on that day as well.

And he knew why.

Dominic had always been serious and a bit aloof but he loathed that, of late—Victoria was right—he was miserable.

Not to the patients though.

He shoved his messy personal life aside there.

And then from outside he heard laughter.

Victoria’s.

He came out of the annexe and there she was making up the stretcher with her colleague.

‘Victoria.’

She turned around. ‘Yes.’

‘Could I have a word?’

She rolled her eyes but came over. ‘Are we really going to do this again?’

‘No, I wanted to apologise for earlier.’

‘It’s fine.’

She didn’t need it.

In Victoria’s line of work, a small stand-off with a doctor barely merited a thought and she was trying to keep it at that.

But this was a genuine apology and he offered her a small explanation.

‘Today’s a tough one.’

He offered no more insight but Victoria knew she was hearing the truth.

‘Then I hope it gets better,’ Victoria said.

‘It shan’t.’

She gave him a smile and Dominic knew he had lied because it already had got a bit better.

Victoria was stunning.

She was wearing green overalls and heavy black boots and it should have been impossible to look stunning in those, yet she did. Her hair was worn on the top of her head but glossy waves tumbled over her face and her hazel eyes held his.

Yes, she was stunning.

And that was why she annoyed him.

Dominic was not looking to be stunned.

His personal life was very messy and, furthermore, Victoria was far from his type.

She was very direct and he usually liked subtle. He liked women who, well, stayed a bit in the background and didn’t demand too much headspace.

And lately Victoria was starting to command a lot of his thoughts.

‘I’m sorry too,’ she said. ‘That bit about you being a misery...well...’ She couldn’t resist a little play. ‘I meant crabby.’