Mac might tell her that these few days had changed everything. That he felt like he might be falling in love with her and he couldn’t bear the thought of never seeing her again. But...she hadn’t disagreed with him when he’d said that it couldn’t last for ever. That this was no more than a fling. She already had plans for the rest of her holiday and it wouldn’t surprise Mac at all if she met someone else along the way. Someone who was more like herself and could embrace the kind of freedom and openness and ability to live life to the absolute limit that was such a part of Hanna’s soul.

  He wasn’t about to spoil anything for her by making their parting difficult in any way and he wasn’t about to make a fool of himself by suggesting that this was anything more than Hanna believed it was so it was just as well he was a master at hiding his feelings. He’d been telling the truth when he’d said he’d never forget her but he had his doubts about following her advice to take more risks in his life. Risk was the opposite of control, after all, and he’d spent his life keeping as much control as he could to avoid exactly that.

  Control kept you safe from the kind of emotions that, right now, were threatening to become unpleasantly overwhelming so the sooner he got on with restoring familiar levels of normality the better. Mac pulled his phone from his pocket, opening a browser as he continued walking.

  Because it wouldn’t hurt to check if there were any flights from Barcelona to Amsterdam later today. If nothing else, it would be a good first step in the right direction. Back to the ordered reality of his own planet, which might lack the same levels of personal indulgence and pleasure but at least it was safe.

  And being safe was almost the same thing as being happy.

  Wasn’t it...?

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  ‘HANNA... THANK GOODNESS you’re back. I’ve missed having you around.’

  ‘I’ve missed being around.’ Hanna hugged Jo back—as best she could over a now impressively pregnant belly—and found herself very unexpectedly blinking back tears, which, of course, her best friend noticed instantly.

  ‘You okay? Did something happen on your holiday?’

  Oh...where would she start? Yes. Something had indeed happened on her holiday. Something huge. An emotional roller-coaster like no other and the plunging dip that had started when she’d said goodbye to Mac was apparently still going despite her homecoming yesterday. The ride had been bumped up at times on her continued travels but, despite Hanna’s determination to make the most of a trip she’d been looking forward to so much, those temporary lifts had only seemed to speed up the next dip into a very unfamiliar, lonely space. At some point in the near future, she might have to stock up on wine and chocolate and have an evening with Jo to tell her everything.

  Outside the internal double doors that led to Dunedin’s Princess Margaret Hospital’s emergency department, when they were about to start a morning shift was certainly not the time to even hint at such personal woes.

  ‘It’s just jetlag.’ Hanna smiled as she hung her stethoscope around her neck. ‘And, on top of that, I got home to find my flatmates had a big party last weekend. They hadn’t noticed that someone had crashed in my bedroom so I had to change my sheets and do a full load of laundry before I could even start unpacking.’

  ‘Ew...’ Jo made a disgusted face. ‘I don’t know how you can still cope with flatting.’

  ‘I’m beginning to wonder myself.’

  ‘My wee house has got a temporary tenant, but it’ll be available to rent again sometime soon if that’s an option. I might even sell it before the end of the year.’

  Hanna loved Jo’s quirky cottage but...living alone? When she was currently trying to get used to a loneliness like nothing she’d ever experienced before? She needed to change the subject.

  ‘Are you and Cade still loving your new house on the peninsula?’

  ‘Oh, yeah...you’ll have to come and see it. Maybe we can have a last barbecue before winter sets in properly. I need to show you our holiday photos, too. I’m still on a high from that idyllic beach. It was perfect...’

  ‘I’m so glad.’ Hanna was looking through the glass panels of the doors. ‘Looks busy in there. I’d better get to work.’ She pushed one of the doors open and gestured for Jo to go ahead of her but Jo shook her head.

  ‘I’ve got to duck up to Admin. There’s some final paperwork for my maternity leave to sign off. Officially starts today, actually—I’m just here to tie off some loose ends.’

  ‘Any luck with the locum?’

  ‘Mmm...’ Jo was already turning away but there was an odd gleam in her eyes as she threw a glance over her shoulder. ‘I wanted to let you know who it was before you got back but Cade thought it might be a nice surprise. They’re rostered on today for second shift so you’ll find out soon enough.’

  ‘It’s someone I know?’

  But Jo was already on her way to where she needed to be and only raised a hand in farewell. Hanna stepped through the doors into ED and immediately forgot about it. As the charge nurse for the upcoming shift, she needed a detailed handover so that she was on form to supervise the department’s nursing staff and use any opportunity to teach the less experienced nurses. She would also have to field any patient complaints, liaise with specialists for consultations, keep an eye on medical supplies and be available at all times for a trauma code. On the plus side, not only would she have no time to think about her own emotional state, her jetlag would be well and truly dealt with by the time Hanna had coped with the next nine hours. She could then go home and crash and, with a bit of luck, life would seem far more back to normal by tomorrow.

  Shifts were arranged to overlap so there wasn’t a complete changeover that could disrupt the continuity of patient care so Hanna had been working for a couple of hours before the second shift started. The department was busy enough for her to feel she was totally back in the swing of things so she was unprepared for the blow that came completely out of the blue. Feeling pleased that she’d found time to give one of the new nurses a tutorial in placing leads to take a twelve lead ECG on a cardiac admission, she felt it like a body blow to glance across the department and see the back of someone reading the electronic census board, which was the access point for any operational and patient-related information.

  Someone tall, with dark hair, who was standing with commendably good posture, which made them look an awful lot like Hamish MacMillan.

  Hanna had every reason to go and check the board herself and make sure that the requested consult with the cardiology department was now recorded for the patient she’d just seen but she found her steps slowing as she approached. Because this was more than simply seeing someone that reminded her of Mac. The weird tingling sensation that was getting stronger with every passing second was surreal. The realisation that Mac was, in actual fact, standing right in front of her—giving her that crinkly-eyed intense look and smiling at her—was overwhelming.

  ‘Hey, Hanna...’

  She couldn’t say anything. For that first, long moment of suspended time, all Hanna was aware of was a joy like no other. A feeling that the huge, empty space she’d been living with for the past two weeks had suddenly vanished. Filled by the physical presence of the man she felt so strongly about. Her words came out in no more than a whisper.

  ‘Mac...what on earth are you doing here?’

  As she spoke, Hanna could feel the wash of something that felt like...anger?

  How on earth was she supposed to get over how she felt about Mac if she had to go back to square one again?

  ‘I followed my nose,’ Mac said. His voice was low enough for nobody else to hear. ‘And I put my hand up to be Jo’s locum.’ He hadn’t broken their eye contact. ‘At least for a while. You did tell me I should do something new.’

  ‘Yes...but...’ Hanna was lost for words. He hadn’t needed to come to the other side of the world to do something new. Had he come this far because she was here? With another twist, a flash of hope cut through her tumbling emotions. Perhaps Mac had been following his heart and not his nose?

  ‘Hanna?’

  The tone of the person calling her from the central desk made Hanna turn her head swiftly. She could feel that kaleidoscope of her own feelings evaporating instantly.

  ‘Ambulance notification.’ A senior nurse was putting down the dedicated phone. ‘Penetrating mechanism chest injury. Systolic BP less than ninety. Heart rate greater than one twenty. Shall I initiate a trauma Code Red?’

  Hanna was there in no more than a few steps. ‘Yes. What’s the ETA?’

  ‘Four minutes.’

  There wasn’t much time and it was Hanna’s job to get everything organised. Alerts had to go out to members of the team. In addition to the most senior emergency consultant available in the department, they needed an anaesthetist, radiologist, a surgical consult on standby and all the usual staff for a resuscitation area. The blood bank needed to be contacted and have blood products and thawed plasma available. Hanna wanted to ensure that a rapid infuser was primed and ready for use in Resus and that an ultrasound machine was at the bedside. A check that tranexamic acid—to reduce or stop traumatic haemorrhage—was amongst the available drugs was also high on her list.

  ‘Who’s on as trauma team leader today?’

  ‘Jo. No, wait...it’s her locum.’ The nurse must have noticed something in Hanna’s expression. ‘Don’t worry. Word is that he’s the best.’

  * * *

  It was Mac’s first trauma call on his first day of this locum position in a small—by international standards—hospital at the bottom of the globe. With his level of expertise and experience, it shouldn’t be anything out of the ordinary but Mac was aware of a heightened alertness that made this somehow more significant.

  Because this was the first time he would be, officially at least, working with Hanna Peterson and...he wanted this to be successful. Impressive, even? Or to erase what had looked disturbingly like a flash of something like fear in her eyes when she was struggling with unexpectedly seeing him again?

  Whatever. There was no time to spare even another thought about Hanna as Mac donned his PPE and tried to familiarise himself with this new resuscitation space as rapidly as possible.

  Finding that the paramedic bringing this critical trauma case into the department was one of the only three people Mac had ever met from this city helped ground him. And Cade’s handover was giving him vital information about this case.

  ‘This is Sean Watson. Forty-one years old. Forestry worker who got caught by the canopy of a falling tree. A branch penetrated the left side of his chest, third intercostal space, leaving a puncture wound but no visible impaled object. BP is currently one hundred over sixty-five, up from eighty-five over sixty on arrival. Suspected tension pneumothorax but fluid seen on ultrasound did not suggest a cardiac tamponade. He’s had bilateral decompression but he’s having increasing difficulty breathing. GCS thirteen on arrival but probably twelve now.’

  ‘Oxygen saturation?’

  ‘Variable. Between eighty-six and ninety-four.’

  ‘Sean...can you hear me?’

  The patient groaned beneath his oxygen mask. He opened his eyes but his agitation made his speech hard to understand. His skin was grey and he was clearly terrified.

  ‘You’re in hospital now,’ Mac told him. ‘We’ve got you, okay?’ He glanced at the team around him, including Hanna, who seemed to still be assigning roles. A scribe was ready to record everything, a nurse was stationed beside the drugs trolley and an orderly was standing by, probably to deliver bloods samples to the laboratory and bring back the products that might be needed from the blood bank.

  ‘Let’s get him onto the bed,’ Mac directed. ‘I’d like to do another ultrasound.’

  His FAST examination—the Focused Assessment with Sonography in Trauma—confirmed Cade’s impression that there was no blood to be seen in the area around the heart, which was consistent with other signs like the patient’s neck veins not being distended. That they were dealing with a life-or-death situation became more apparent in the short time it took to use the bedside ultrasound, however. It was Hanna who called out the warning that Sean’s blood pressure was falling rapidly and it was only seconds later that their patient lost consciousness.

  It was Hanna who assisted the airway doctor when Mac made the call to sedate and intubate Sean and he could see her in his peripheral vision, efficiently checking and then administering the drugs needed and then providing the assistance like pressure on the cricoid cartilage to aid the passing of the endotracheal tube. At the same time, she was clearly supervising the setup of the O negative red blood cells and the thawed plasma and Mac was relieved to have them available when he made an incision in the chest wall to try and get to the blood that was accumulating internally.

  Even in a space full of people who were accustomed to dealing with major trauma, there was a collective gasp as an estimated blood loss of more than two litres happened the moment Mac opened the anterolateral incision he’d made. The resus area immediately took on the appearance of a war zone but the glance he caught from Hanna as she positioned herself beside him to assist was calm and the silent message perfectly clear.

  I’m here. What do you need?

  ‘No pulse,’ the airway doctor warned.

  With the direct vision Mac had of the heart, he could see that it had stopped beating. He placed one hand behind the heart and the other in front and began a rapid squeezing motion from the apex upwards. The movement was easy to continue automatically, as Mac controlled the chaos around him. Blood products were being rapidly infused, the patient was being ventilated. Drugs were being drawn up and blood samples sent for analysis including rapid measurements of oxygen levels. Vital signs measurements were called out for the scribe to record. Pauses in the cardiac massage initially revealed the potentially fatal rhythm of ventricular tachycardia but, at one point, after drugs were administered, it reverted to a normal sinus rhythm, which gave everybody the hope that this dramatic emergency department intervention might be one of the few that could succeed.

  Except that Sean was still losing blood. Eight units of blood and fluids had now been infused but the blood loss was ongoing and it was impossible to see where it was coming from.

  ‘I can see it pooling on the front wall of the ventricle.’ Mac pressed the swab Hanna passed him against the outer wall of the heart to try again. ‘But I can’t see the puncture wound.’ He caught Hanna’s gaze. ‘I’m going to have to open the sternum.’

  A single nod and Hanna opened a new sterile roll onto the trolley to hand Mac a scalpel, then a bone saw and then retractors. This was a desperate last attempt to save this patient’s life and Mac wasn’t about to think about how unlikely it was to be successful. Especially when he could now see the two-centimetre hole in the right ventricular wall.

  ‘Suture, please, Hanna,’ Mac said quietly. ‘And we’ll need a Teflon patch if we’ve got one. I want to get this as secure as possible before we shift to Theatre.’

  Against all odds, that was what they managed to achieve only a short time later, as Sean’s blood pressure finally started to rise to an acceptable level as the injury was closed and his heart was able to start beating normally to restore his circulation.

  Mac went with his patient to Theatre but, as the senior consultant on duty in the department, he couldn’t stay to watch the surgery. He did have to take the time to completely change his scrubs, though. Even the best PPE hadn’t been enough to prevent the bloodstains. The resus area would be out of action for a while as well—there was a team still cleaning up as Mac arrived back in the ED.

  Hanna was the first person he saw as he walked through the doors and, this time, there was none of the shock he’d seen on her face earlier this morning. He could see the hope in her eyes first of all and he nodded.

  ‘It was still looking good when we got him into Theatre. Sinus rhythm, systolic BP just over a hundred.’

  The consultant who’d been in charge of Sean’s airway and ventilation came past and stopped to offer Mac a handshake.

  ‘First time I’ve seen that happen successfully,’ he told Mac. ‘That’s some way to introduce yourself, mate.’

  ‘Yes. Welcome to Dunedin, Mac.’ Hanna was smiling. ‘We’re lucky to have you here.’

  He could see admiration in her gaze, but Mac shrugged off the praise. ‘I’ll be waiting to see what the post-surgery ultrasound can tell us about heart function. And whether there are any neurological sequelae. Where am I needed next, Nurse Peterson?’

  And there it was...

  A flash of something extremely personal and a very long way from being unpleasantly surprised to have him appear in her life again. An acknowledgement of the astonishing physical connection they’d discovered with each other in Europe, if nothing else, which was one of the reasons he’d talked himself into finally visiting this far corner of the globe.

  Because he’d started missing Hanna Peterson the moment his plane had taken off from Barcelona.

  She was the one to break the eye contact. ‘Let’s have a look at the board,’ she suggested. ‘I’m not going to tempt fate by mentioning the “Q” word but it might be possible for you to grab a coffee. Do you know your way to the staffroom?’

  ‘I do. Perhaps you might be due for a break as well?’

  The glance he received was speculative. ‘Perhaps. I have to say I’m looking forward to finding out what persuaded you to come and be Jo’s locum.’

  ‘It was you,’ Mac told her, as they stopped in front of the digital board.

  The glance he got this time was startled. Disconcertingly, he could see something in her eyes that reminded him of her silent query for an update on their dramatic chest-cracking case—a question that was steeped in hope... Had he said too much? The wrong thing? Was she taking it to mean something too personal, which would be unwelcome given that she had spelled out her feelings about marriage and, presumably, any committed relationships? He tried a wry smile to defuse any tension.