Pregnant With The Boss's Baby. Sue MacKay
camera flashed again, and Tamara stepped away from it, her face contorted with a mix of anger and hopelessness. Then two guys in uniform were hauling the cameraman away none too gently.
Conor turned Tamara back to their case. ‘Don’t think about it. Save it for later. You’re needed with our lad at the moment.’
Her body shuddered as she drew a breath, and she slapped the back of her glove-covered hand across her cheeks. ‘They have no respect for anyone.’
‘Tam, focus now.’
‘Don’t call me Tam,’ she snapped, but at least her spine straightened and all her focus returned to where it was meant to be.
He worked with Tamara, stabilising and checking blood flow, oxygen, getting the boy ready for surgery. Then his patient was gone, onto the next phase of being put back together, though for the boy that would be a long process.
Tamara’s eyes were chilly and giving nothing away as she stretched her back, pushing her breasts up. His mouth dried. Then he recalled some comments made about her when he’d first started here. Something about how the media were always waiting to pounce if she so much as breathed out of order. She had history with them, but he’d never asked what it was about, figuring it was none of his business.
Now he wanted to take them all down in a bloody thrashing for upsetting Tamara.
A little girl arrived before them.
‘Nine years old, suspected fractures to both arms and legs, and possibly ribs.’ A nurse from the nightshift read the details as Conor nodded to the X-ray tech.
The thrashing would have to wait.
As would thinking about that baby.
* * *
The hours disappeared in a haze of anguish and despair. Children came through ED, some staying longer than others before moving on to Theatre, or, for the lucky ones, to the children’s ward with plaster casts or multitudes of stitches.
Finally, ‘We’re all done.’ Mac appeared from the adjoining resus unit, looking like he’d been living a nightmare for hours. Which he had. They all had.
It was over. Air leaked from Conor like a puncture as the tension that had been with him from the moment Michael had told them what they were in for softened. ‘I didn’t know they could fit so many children on one bus.’ The exhaustion that’d been beating him up earlier in the afternoon returned at full throttle. ‘Glad that’s done.’ Except there were parents throughout the hospital dealing with their worst nightmares.
Parents. Closing his eyes, he rubbed them with his thumbs, and was confronted with an image of Mam letting herself in through the front door, shoulders drooped, knees buckling. Those laughing eyes he’d looked for on waking every morning of his four short years had been dulled with pain and anguish. Her arms had shaken as she’d clung to him. He hadn’t recognised her voice as she’d croaked, ‘Sebastian and Daddy are in heaven, my love.’ And there had begun the rest of his life.
‘I’ve never dealt with anything like it.’ Mac rolled his neck left then right.
‘What?’
‘Go home, Conor. Get a beer in you and hit the sack.’
Looking around, Conor couldn’t find Tamara. He stumbled. ‘Where is everyone?’
Tam, did you cope? Really? Behind that mask, are you okay?
Mac was muttering, ‘I sent day shift home half an hour ago. They were shattered after already working a shift, and I figured my team could handle the remainder of cases. Not that they’re in much better shape.’
‘It’s going to be a long night for them.’ What was left of it.
Mac gave him a rueful smile. ‘You sure knew how to cope with the situation.’
‘For all the wrong reasons, unfortunately.’ The wall clock read nine twenty. He wouldn’t have been surprised if it was after midnight. As it was, he’d be back on duty all too soon. With that thought his mind filled with the urgent need to get out of there while he could still walk. ‘I’m gone.’
Home. A shower. Bed.
Tamara.
Now that you’re coming down from the high we’ve all been on for endless hours, are you looking all peaky and worried again?
She’d be beyond exhausted now that she had pregnancy to contend with as well.
I hope you’re all right. That my baby is doing okay.
TAMARA HUDDLED AGAINST the bench in her kitchen, waiting for the toaster to pop. Wet hair hung down her back. Blow-drying it would take energy she didn’t have. Tomorrow it would stick out in all directions but right now she didn’t care. All she wanted was to eat something fast before slipping between the clean sheets she’d put on the bed that morning. To fall asleep and forget all the horrors of the day.
Those poor little kids, broken, in agony, some damaged for ever. The parents’ distress had been equally harrowing. Not something she’d have considered from a parent’s perspective until that thin blue line had entered her life. Never before had she seen such despair, so much shock, all at once.
The day the fraud squad had turned up at her family home had been shocking, but in a very different way; certainly not life-threatening, only life-changing. Back then, the press she had been used to, following her around to photograph her latest outfit or hairstyle, or who she’d dined with and where, had turned on her. Painted her the same black shade as Peter. From that day on she and the media had come to a mutual understanding. They disliked each other; a far cry from the fawning she’d grown up knowing and enjoying. These days, loath to attract attention of any kind, she no longer wore supermodel clothes or spent a fortune on make-up and hair. Nowadays she hid behind dull and duller.
A sigh escaped. What a day. And she’d thought telling Conor about their baby had been difficult. It had been a breeze compared to what those poor parents were dealing with.
Ding-dong. The doorbell was loud in the quiet space.
Her neck cricked painfully when her head snapped up. Who was here at this hour? She didn’t have visitors at any hour. Staring at her bedraggled reflection in the microwave door, she hoped whoever was out there would take the hint and go away.
Ding-dong.
Pulling the belt of her bathrobe tight, she took another moment to stare at the image gleaming back at her. Whoever it was, they’d soon take a hike when they saw her looking like something hauled out of a dumpster.
Ding-dong.
Persistent. ‘Yes, yes, I’m coming,’ she muttered as she gave in. Opening the front door, a gasp escaped her. ‘Conor.’ Might have known, considering the persistence aspect.
‘Did you check to see who was out here before you opened the door?’ he growled.
She hadn’t given it a thought. ‘Hang on.’ She made to close the door and peek through the eye-hole just to wind Conor up. How else to deal with him when she could barely remember her own name?
He was too quick for her, splaying his hand on the door to keep it open. ‘Can I come in?’
Don’t tell me we’re going to discuss our baby now.
She’d be at a huge disadvantage, her brain only functioning on low. Yet she stepped back, breathed him in as he passed. Her body succumbed to the scent of man with an overlay of antiseptic. ‘You’ve come straight from the hospital?’ she finally managed.
‘I wanted to make sure you’d got home all right and was coping with what went down in ED today.’
Of course she was. And wasn’t. ‘There’ll probably be some nightmares,