Their First Family Christmas. Alison Roberts
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he hadn’t actually been in the department this time last year but there would be very few people in this hospital who hadn’t heard every single detail about the heartbreaking tragedy she and Jack had been so much a part of. The aftermath had been the hot topic for gossip for weeks as well. And everybody knew how much Emma’s life had changed when she’d finally taken responsibility for Lily.
Maybe Alistair thought she should step out. That she would prefer not to be caring for Jack after those traumatic weeks that had ended in a battle that everyone believed Jack had deserved to lose.
She couldn’t let him—or anyone else—know just how far from the truth that was. Her next words came out a little more sternly than was probably warranted.
‘Don’t move your head. I’m undoing the collar so I can have a feel of your neck.’
* * *
Jack couldn’t see Emma because she was standing behind his head.
But he could feel her.
Not just the obvious touch of her fingers on his neck as she pressed her thumbs on each side of his spine, putting systematic, gentle pressure down the midline to check for the presence of tenderness before moving further from the midline to repeat the process.
No. He could feel her in a much more ethereal sense. He hadn’t known which hospital he was being transported to after the accident and he hadn’t been feeling that great when he’d arrived, but even with his eyes shut, he’d known that Emma was in the room.
He had felt something of that aura of determination and genuine caring that made Emma Matthews stand out in any crowd of equally intelligent and successful medics.
And then he’d opened his eyes and she looked exactly the same. Those bright hazel eyes. The matching freckles sprinkled over a button of a nose. Jack could even see the usual coils of that astonishing hair that had wormed their way out from beneath the prisons of their clips.
It hit him like a brick. All that time he’d been away, he’d been so convinced that he didn’t miss her. That she was just another one of the stream of women that had shared his life—and his bed—for a limited time.
But he had been missing her, hadn’t he? Every minute of every day. And all that accumulated emotion coalesced into one king punch that was far more painful than anything going on in his battered body at that moment. He’d had to press his lips together against the pain. Screw his eyes tightly shut so that he didn’t keep staring at her and making the pain worse.
And now she was touching him and it made him remember how clever those small hands were. How gentle Emma was.
How the touch on his skin made it feel like he was being caressed by a whisper of a delicious, cool breeze on the hottest day ever. That coolness had been an illusion, though, hadn’t it? It could flick in a heartbeat to a heat that no other woman had ever evoked.
Jack had to stifle a groan. The morphine was clearly scrambling his brain. He shouldn’t be thinking of something like that. It was over. Dead and buried. And he’d been the one to kill it.
Emma must have heard the small sound. ‘What’s hurting?’ she asked. ‘What’s bothering you?’
Oh...that was a question and a half. Would she actually want to know about the guilt over abandoning his brother’s child that had been hanging around his neck like an ever-increasing weight?
The shame of the way he’d behaved in those dark days? The way he’d treated her?
Even if she was prepared to listen to him, it would have to be a very private conversation and there were others around. He could feel the sting of the damaged skin on his arm being cleaned and redressed. Of his lower leg being unwrapped from its temporary splint. And he could hear the voices of new arrivals—the radiographers, probably—who would be preparing to operate the overhead X-ray machines.
‘Is it your neck? Was it here?’ Her fingers were pressing again on the last spot she’d touched at the bottom of his cervical spine.
‘No...my neck feels fine.’
‘Really?’ Emma’s face appeared as she moved to one side of the bed. So close to his own he could see those unusual golden flecks in the soft brown of her irises. ‘And you really haven’t been drinking?’
That hurt. He might have been a complete bastard in those last weeks but he’d never been less than honest with her. With anyone, for that matter.
He saw the flicker in her eyes. ‘Sorry...I just needed to be sure.’
‘Yeah...you always were very thorough, Dr Matthews. It’s a commendable attribute.’
That earned a tilt of her lips that was almost a smile. ‘There’s a checklist for determining whether a cervical spine is stable, as you well know. You don’t seem to have any midline tenderness and there’s no evidence of intoxication. You seem to be reasonably alert and oriented to time and place.’
Jack could feel his own lips curve. ‘Cheers. Under the circumstances, I’ll take reasonably alert as a good thing.’
Emma unclipped her small pen torch from the top pocket of her scrubs tunic and flicked the light on. Jack kept his eyes open and stared straight ahead as she moved the beam to check his pupil sizes and reactions.
‘Equal and reactive,’ she said. ‘There’s only one other thing on the checklist. Do you remember what it is?’
Clever. She was throwing in something completely different as another check on his neurological status.
‘Whether there are any painful, distracting injuries, like a long bone fracture.’
‘And is anything painful enough to qualify as a distraction?’
‘No.’
‘Mmm... Okay, then, I reckon you pass.’ She looked away from him to someone he couldn’t see. ‘I’m happy to leave the collar off but I’d still like a cervical X-ray series, please. Along with chest, pelvis, left tib/fib and the left forearm.’
‘Do you want a lead apron?’ someone queried.
Emma shook her head, looking down at Jack again. ‘I’m happy that your condition hasn’t deteriorated in any way. I’m going to duck out and get up to speed with what’s happening in the rest of the department until I get your X-rays up on the computer. I won’t be far away and someone will come and get me if I’m needed.’
Jack nodded. He closed his eyes as he did so because he didn’t want Emma to see how much he would have preferred for her to stay here.
He had no right to put any kind of pressure on her.
About anything.
* * *
Alistair had beaten her to the patient board and he was frowning as he scanned the changes that the last ten minutes or so had produced.
‘We’ve got to clear some space,’ he said. ‘Waiting times are getting to an unacceptable level.’
‘I’ll see if we can get another registrar or two on board.’
‘We’ve got an ambulance arriving in the next few minutes,’ Caroline warned them. ‘And the police. Sounds like a turf war broke out between a couple of Santas selling hats or something.’ She tried to suppress a grin. ‘Could be serious. One of them got stabbed, by the sound of things.’
‘I’ll take it,’ Alistair said. ‘But do you want me to help with that dislocated shoulder in Curtain Two first? He’s been waiting a while.’
‘I’ll get one of the housemen. It’s only brute strength required.’ One of the junior doctors—a young Australian called Pete—was heading towards her, in fact, but Emma didn’t get the chance to speak first.
‘Can I get you to have a look at my patient when you’ve got a minute? Twenty-nine-year-old with epigastric pain but I don’t