CHAPTER ONE

      THERE WERE TIMES when Evie Cooper wished she could clone herself, and this was definitely one of them.

      As if it wasn’t enough that she felt responsible for the success of this evening’s gala opening for the Hope Children’s Hospital, she was getting bombarded by seemingly urgent text messages from home.

      Have you picked up the new test sticks for my blood sugar monitor?

      She texted back to her father.

      Yes. But I won’t be home till late tonight. Have you got any left?

      Think I’ve got one.

      Evie briefly considered sending a message that, next time, it might be a good idea to let her know sooner that he was running out but she was distracted by her colleague, Michelle, who was looking flustered.

      ‘The caterers have arrived. They’re asking for you.’

      ‘Tell them to get set up in the conference room. I’ll get there when I’ve got a minute.’

      Her phone beeped again.

      Where are my skinny jeans?

      She texted back.

      No idea.

      I put them in the wash DAYS ago! I have to wear them tonight for the school disco!!

      Evie didn’t respond. A couple of very anxious-looking people were approaching her reception desk.

      ‘Welcome to ICU.’ She smiled. ‘You must be Mr and Mrs Taylor? Baby Cameron’s grandparents?’ She’d been warned they might turn up.

      The man nodded. ‘We’re so worried about the little chap. We’re hoping to get to see him.’

      ‘I understand.’ Evie nodded sympathetically. ‘Let me see what I can do. Your daughter’s in with him, of course, but it’ll depend on how well he is whether anyone else can go into the unit.’

      ‘But we’re his grandparents.’ The woman pressed a tissue to her nose. ‘We need to see him.’

      ‘I know.’ Evie kept her smile in place. ‘I understand completely. But we have a lot of very sick babies in our Neonatal intensive care unit and we have to make sure our staff aren’t distracted in any way from doing their job. Please, take a seat in the waiting area. I’ll talk to the doctor who’s looking after Cameron.’

      She put her phone on silent as it beeped again in her pocket. Her sister was fourteen now, for heaven’s sake, not five years old—as she had been when their mother had died. Evie had too many other things to sort right now. Stella was old enough to sort her own laundry.

      It took some diplomacy to appease the Taylors and it was Evie who came up with the idea of Cameron’s mother taking a photograph of her premature baby and then coming out to the waiting area to talk to her parents-in-law for a few minutes.

      Surely things would settle down now, long enough for Evie to dash over to the other wing of the hospital? As the head of the committee organising the gala function tonight, she wanted to make sure that the decorations in the conference room had been completed and that there were not going to be any last-minute glitches. What if the time-lapse video that had captured every stage of building this amazing new hospital wasn’t already installed in the data projector, for example?

      But Michelle was looking wide-eyed enough to suggest that something major had cropped up.

      ‘There’s people here from Chat Zone,’ she whispered.

      Evie frowned. ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’

      ‘It’s the society magazine that’s giving all the others a run for their money. They’re covering the gala tonight. Someone at main Reception has pointed them in your direction.’

      ‘Why?’

      ‘I don’t know.’ Michelle grinned. ‘Maybe because you know so much about everything around here? Can you talk to them?’

      ‘I haven’t got time. We’re expecting that new neonatal cardiac surgeon to arrive any minute. The Australian guy?’

      ‘Ryan Walker.’ Michelle nodded. ‘I can look after him. And ICU Reception for you. Go on, it’ll only take a few minutes and...and the photographer is pretty cute. And we don’t want Hope Hospital to get a bad write-up, do we?’

      Maybe Evie could kill two birds with one stone. Take the journalist and her photographer to the conference room and check out the decorations and everything else while they set themselves up to record one of the most glamorous evenings that would happen in Cambridge this year.

      But that wasn’t what this pair were after.

      ‘We’ve got plenty of time to do the actual event,’ a pretty blonde, who introduced herself as Pippa, assured her. ‘What we want is more background. Especially for the high-profile parts of the hospital like the neonatal intensive care unit.’

      They both looked no older than her brother, Peter, who was in his last year of school. Evie suddenly felt a lot older than her twenty-eight years. She wanted to suggest that they could have done their homework in a more timely fashion. Instead, she drew in a deep breath and smiled.

      ‘I haven’t got long,’ she warned. ‘But I’ll do what I can to help.’

      Because that’s what everybody expected of her, wasn’t it? And because that’s what she did. Always had and probably always would.

      ‘Can I get a shot inside the unit?’ the photographer, Jason, asked. ‘I’ve heard that it’s a world-class facility.’

      ‘ ICU is actually two units,’ Evie told him. ‘It’s a pod system, with PICU—that’s paediatric intensive care—on one side and NICU—neonatal intensive care—on the other. They share a central staff station and service areas. There’s room for growth with additional pods in the future if necessary.’

      She took them as far as the entry-controlled glass doors so that Jason could get some pictures of the banks of monitoring equipment, the transparent, oval cribs and the incubators. The doctors here were wearing pale blue scrubs. The scrubs of the nurses and ancillary staff had a teddy bear print. Everybody was clearly focused on their tiny patients. Even at the central staff station, every patient was under direct observation or being carefully monitored via video cameras and data recordings from the wealth of the best equipment available.

      ‘Every detail was chosen by our CEO, Theo Hawkwood.’ Evie was so proud of these units. ‘Even tiny things have had to meet the highest standards. Like all those windows to provide natural light and ceiling soffits and baffles to reduce echoed sounds. That paint colour on the walls? You wouldn’t believe the