‘Like what?’
‘If I knew I wouldn’t have to ask. You don’t tell me much of what’s going on in your head.’ Frustration was building in his voice, and those hands she loved on her body were tightening their grip on his hips.
‘Until last week I always dealt with problems on my own.’ Usually by ignoring them or hiding. ‘I am still getting used to having you on my side, in my life.’
‘Problems. Are you having doubts?’ Conor demanded.
‘No,’ she shouted, too fast and too loud. ‘No,’ she repeated at lower decibels. At least she didn’t think so.
He continued to look at her as though searching for something. She only hoped it was something good and that he found it. Finally he returned to unpacking the shopping. ‘Guess we’re still on for steak, then.’
Tamara’s heart cracked. They’d had their first row. A very short one, but she felt terrible. This was Conor, the father of her baby, the man who’d stepped up to his responsibilities without a blink, including asking her to marry him. The man she could be falling in love with—if only she’d relax and believe in herself. Standing behind him, she slipped her arms around his waist and laid her face between his shoulder blades. ‘I’m sorry.’
Turning in her arms, Conor wrapped her into a hug. ‘Me, too, Tam. Me, too.’ His chin rested on her head. ‘It’s all taking some getting used to, isn’t it?’
She nodded. ‘Yeah.’
‘All I ask is don’t shut me out, okay?’
‘Okay.’ She stared at him. ‘You don’t think you’ve rushed the proposal?’
‘Definitely not. It’s what I want. I’ve never been so happy,’ he said gruffly. ‘I’m hoping you are too.’
‘It’s time I gave you a key to this place.’ That would go some way to showing how much he meant to her. No one else had access to her home, not even Kelli.
‘If you’re sure?’ A slow smile began creeping over his mouth, like a slow burn.
‘Absolutely.’ She trusted him with her inner sanctum. Just had to get the rest sorted out.
Conor flicked the cap off a beer. ‘We haven’t discussed names yet. Have you got any in mind?’
She had an idea, but hoped she wasn’t opening up trouble. ‘What was your brother’s name?’
Whack. His hand landed on his chest. ‘Sebastian.’
‘And your dad’s?’ Might as well go for broke.
‘Sebastian.’
That made it easy. As long as Conor agreed. ‘Then our boy’s called Sebastian.’ She smiled at him, silently pleading he’d accept her idea. ‘Or Sebastian Sebastian Maguire.’
The air whooshed across his lips and his eyes lit up with joy, then excess moisture swamped them and he was blinking rapidly. ‘Thanks,’ he managed before placing his lips on hers.
‘No problem at all.’ Now, that had been a lot easier than she’d expected, thinking Conor mightn’t want a daily reminder of those he’d lost. She still needed to get to know him more thoroughly.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
A WOMAN’S SCREAM rent the air of the emergency department, lifting the hairs on Conor’s skin. Mam? But of course it wasn’t. Dad and Sebastian had died in another lifetime, another country.
Tamara appeared at the entrance to Resus One, gently leading a sobbing woman to a chair out of the way. She glanced across at him, her face so sad it hurt him before she refocused on the woman.
‘Damn, but I love you, Tamara.’
What? His chair scraped the floor as he leapt to his feet. I do?
Yep, buster, you do. Lock, stock and every damned curve of her.
She couldn’t have heard his whisper, but he was receiving another glance from those brown eyes and a small, intimate smile as she turned back to the patient she was with.
Conor sank back onto his chair, watching her. He’d gone and fallen in love despite doing his damnedest not to. Hard not to, considering how he couldn’t get Tam out of his mind for a minute, day or night. And then she’d added a baby to the mix and bang. He was hooked.
Behind Tamara, Conor could see Michael and another emergency consultant working to resuscitate their patient, a forty-year-old man brought in after feeling unwell and noticing his mouth drooping. The man had a history of minor TIAs but today he’d hit the big mother. A stroke. And now heart failure.
Family history. It tore people apart, wrecked wonderful relationships, destroyed childhoods. Made a mockery of love. Love. He’d gone and fallen for Tamara. An oath tripped across his lips. He had made the biggest mistake of his life.
Conor needed to go help the medical team working on the stroke patient. Only then could he quieten his mind. But there were already more than enough highly skilled staff working on the guy. Instead, he tried to ignore the woman’s deep, heart-wrenching sobs and began entering comments into the computer file of his last patient.
But as the woman’s despair grew, there was no quietening his memories. Mam in the sitting room with two policemen. The spine-chilling screams and then the desperation in her bone-crushing hug as she’d clung to him. The tears that had lasted days. The hours when she hadn’t talked, had barely known him.
The buzzer from the ambulance bay was sharp and very welcome. Now he had something solid to concentrate on, someone in need of his help who would banish these unsettling thoughts. Damned memories. To think people liked storing them up. If only they knew.
‘Fractured bones at the elbow resulting in a torn artery and heavy loss of blood.’ The advance paramedic handed over the patient work sheet to Conor.
A quick scan and he said to the thirty-four-year-old woman, ‘I’m Conor, your doctor for the next little while. Can you tell me what happened?’
‘I was painting my house and fell off the ladder.’
‘Right, then let’s get you into the department and find out the extent of the damage.’ He took one side of the stretcher and, together with the ambulance officer, pushed his patient towards Resus Two, where Kelli and another nurse were waiting.
‘On the count of three.’ And they shifted the woman across to the bed.
‘Need Radiology and the lab here, and Orthopaedics on the phone,’ Conor ordered as he began examining the right arm, which was lying at an abnormal angle. Carefully removing the cardboard cast the ambulance crew had put in place to save extra movement and pain, he gently probed the elbow joint.
And still that woman’s sobs came through loud and clear from around the corner.
Ignore her.
Conor asked his patient, ‘Did you hit your head when you fell?’
‘Y
es, on the back, but it can’t have been too hard. I didn’t black out,’ she wheezed through gritted teeth as pain jarred her.
‘We’ll get an X-ray to be doubly sure.’
Someone handed him the phone. ‘Orthopaedics on the line.’
He moved away, turning his back so his words wouldn’t be heard by his patient. ‘I’m waiting for Radiology to come and take pictures, but I suspect a fracture to the elbow ginglymus and others to the humerus and ulna at the point of the hinge. There’s heavy blood loss from a torn artery.’
‘I’ll be down as soon as I’ve put Theatre on standby,’ the specialist told him.
Returning to his patient, he informed her, ‘You need surgery to put that elbow back together.’
She nodded. ‘Figured as much. Can someone call my husband? Let him know what’s going on?’
Another family whose day had been tipped sideways. But not as badly as the couple in the next unit. The sobs were quietening down now and Conor could hear his counterpart talking to the woman, explaining that her husband had been successfully revived.
‘Until next time,’ the woman cried.
Until next time. The words he’d carried around in his head since the day of his heart attack. Until next time. The reason for his panic attacks. That ‘next time’ hovered on the periphery of his mind. Most days it played nice. Occasionally, like last week, when life had been in turmoil, it had fired up, gripped his chest and sent him into a tailspin.
‘Conor? This your patient?’ The radiology technician had arrived.
He shook away the dark clouds in his head. ‘Yes. I need as many angles as you can manage without further collateral damage.’
Conor put everything into focusing on his patient and not on the litany of doom banging around his head. But the moment the orderly wheeled her away the fears and memories were back, larger, louder than before.
He aimed for the counter and a computer to update the woman’s notes. And locked eyes with Tamara as she stepped out of Resus One. Her face was drawn and that sadness in her eyes had grown heavier. His chest tightened. ‘Tam?’
‘We saved him, but he’s got a long recovery ahead of him. His chances of walking and talking in the near future are remote.’