CHAPTER ONE

      ‘NINA WILSON.’

      Jack kept his face impassive, but his cynical grey eyes rolled a little when he heard that Nina was the social worker who was dealing with baby Sienna’s case.

      Nina was hard work, and well Jack knew it, because they’d clashed on more than one occasion over the past couple of years.

      Paediatrician Eleanor Aston had asked Jack, who was Head of Paediatrics, to join her in the case meeting that was to be held at nine this morning.

      ‘The social work department seems intent on discharging Sienna home to the care of her parents,’ Eleanor told him. ‘I’ve been up nearly every night for a fortnight witnessing Sienna’s withdrawal from methadone. The mother has already had two children taken off her. I personally looked after her newborn son last year.’

      Eleanor’s lips tightened at the memory of that time, but Jack chose not to notice. Instead, he flicked through the case notes as Eleanor’s voice heightened with emotion, which Jack didn’t respond to—he preferred facts.

      ‘I just don’t see why we’re giving her a chance with her third baby when we know how she’s been in the past.’

      ‘You won’t win with that argument against Nina Wilson,’ Jack said, and as he read through the notes he saw that some of them had, in fact, been written by him.

      One entry that he had written was just over a week old: Five-day-old, unsettled, distressed … He’d been called by the night team for a consult, he noted, but as Jack tried to picture the baby he had written about just a few nights ago he felt a slight knot of unease that he couldn’t place baby Sienna.

      He told himself that it was to be expected—Angel Mendez Children’s Hospital was a phenomenally busy free hospital in New York City. Not only did Jack head up the general paediatric team, he also dealt regularly with the board, Admin and the endless round of socialising and networking that was required to raise vital funds for the hospital.

      The Carters were a prominent New York family and, as the son of a Park Avenue medical