A Doctor, A Nurse: A Christmas Baby

CHAPTER TWO

THE NEXT DAY was her day off but Maggie found herself at the hospital anyway. She was actively involved in Radio Giggle and volunteered there regularly. In fact, she’d been on the original committee that had pushed for its establishment after seeing the success of Radio Lollipop during her stint at Great Ormond Street in London.

Maggie had seen their humble service expand over the years from a handful of people launching the first two-hour broadcast to a band of volunteers that worked tirelessly, promoting the healing power of play.

Radio Giggle volunteers actively engaged children throughout the hospital in a variety of entertainment, from helping with the shows, requesting songs and hearing themselves on the radio through to bedside crafts, games and other activities for those children unable to make it to the studio.

In fact, anything that could be done to help make a child’s stay in hospital a little less frightening and a lot more fun, Radio Giggle were on it.

It wasn’t her usual day to volunteer but Ross Calvin, Giggle’s programme manager and only paid employee, was off sick today and had rung to ask her if she could take his place. Maggie hadn’t hesitated. Not being able to have her own children had been a huge blow, but hanging out with these kids helped to fill the gap.

Five-year-old Douglas Werner, a long-term inpatient, was the first person she saw when she entered the Radio Giggle office.

‘Dougy.’ She smiled and crouched down accepting the little boy’s enthusiastic cuddle.

‘He’s been asking for you.’

Maggie looked up to see fifteen-year-old Christine Leek, a cystic fibrosis patient and another regular in the Radio Giggle studio. ‘Well, here I am,’ she said, giving the little boy a quick rib tickle and laughing at his endearing shriek.

‘Guess what?’ Christine spoke over the top of Doug. ‘Ross said I could conduct the interview today all by myself.’ She looked over Maggie’s shoulder. ‘Have you seen him yet?’

Maggie watched while the painfully thin teenager shifted from foot to foot, her lip pulled between her bottom teeth. Christine was a blossoming DJ who wanted a career in community radio and spent every possible minute with the Radio Giggle organisation. ‘I’m afraid Ross is off sick today.’

‘Oh.’

Maggie couldn’t bear to see her so crestfallen. ‘You can still do it, though,’ she reassured her. Christine’s face lit up like a fireworks display and Maggie felt her heart contract.

‘Really?’ she squeaked.

‘Of course.’ Maggie laughed. ‘You know your way around the dials better than I do.’

They went through to the brightly painted studio and for the next half an hour Maggie and Christine worked out their music schedule with the requests they had in from the previous day. Christine was an eager helper, pulling out all the CDs they needed and stacking them in order, which was just as well as Dougy had commandeered Maggie’s lap.

He sat imperiously, his IV pole supporting his lifesaving fluids close by, well used to adults indulging him. He leant his colouring book against the console and Maggie chatted to him, accepting the crayons he gave her and colouring where he pointed. Meanwhile she juggled Christine’s questions and those of the volunteers as they wandered in and out on their way to the various wards in their bright Radio Giggle T-shirts.

Maggie knew the outside play area would be full of kids over the next couple of hours as those who could came down to see how a real radio show was run. They usually put callouts to their bed-bound friends and families and took part in the activities organised by the volunteers.

At four o’clock the programme got under way. Maggie and Dougy stayed in the studio and let Christine run the show. Dougy knew he had to be quiet and while he had his colouring book he was happy to sit without talking on Maggie’s lap and draw. Radio Giggle never pretended to be a professional outfit, given that the shows were largely run by kids, but it never hurt to strive for excellence.

Maggie rubbed her face against his blond curls and inhaled the hospital-soap smell as she dropped a kiss against his scalp. Dougy had been born prem to a drugaddicted mother and had developed necrotising enterocolitis, necessitating the removal of a large portion of his non-viable bowel.

He’d been very ill for the first year of his life and had been transferred from NICU to PICU at three months of age for ongoing management. He now had short-gut syndrome, which meant he didn’t have enough bowel length to absorb his food and had to be fed intravenously through a permanent line.

He’d been in hospital virtually all his life due to his condition and he made regular appearances in PICU with various infections which, due to his compromised immune system, usually knocked him for six. His last stay had been a few months ago during winter for bilateral pneumonia.

He looked like all kids with severe malabsorption disorders. Skinny arms and legs and a protruding stomach. While long-term parenteral nutrition was lifesaving for Dougy it did have its side effects, and Maggie knew liver damage was a major contributing factor to Dougy’s pot belly. She could feel its rounded contours through the thin cotton of his hospital-issue pyjama shirt and dropped another kiss on his head.

‘So this is where the party’s at.’

Maggie would have jumped a mile in the air had Dougy not been weighing her down as Nash Reece’s voice intruded into the studio bubble. What the…? Was the man stalking her?

‘Dr Reece!’

Maggie blinked as Christine jumped up from the console, reefing her headphones off smiling crazily at him. She turned to see him standing in the doorway in dark chinos and another checked shirt. A young child sat on his hip, pulling at a lopsided bandage wrapped around its head. Nash looked natural, at ease with the child and her stomach did that strange flopping thing again.

Nash smiled at the teenager. ‘Hello, Christine.’Then he turned to Maggie, looking smoking hot in her tight black denim Capri pants and her red Radio Giggle top fitting snugly across her breasts. ‘Hello, Maggie from ICU.’

Maggie felt heat creep into her cheeks as his eyes roved all over her body.

‘This little munchkin says his name is Brodie and he wants to say hello to everyone on ward three,’ he announced to Christine, dragging his eyes off Maggie.

‘Bring him over here.’ Christine smiled, holding out her arms and waggling her fingers. ‘I’ll help him. Then we can do your interview.’

Maggie looked at him dumbly as Christine settled the little one on her lap. ‘You’re the interviewee?’

Nash chuckled. ‘You think I’m going to tank?’

Maggie felt more fire in her cheeks. ‘Of course not.’ It was hardly Meet the Press. She’d just wished she’d known. She hadn’t asked Christine about the interview because she’d assumed it was going to be one of the other inpatients as usual. ‘How’d that come about?’

He shrugged. ‘I’ve been dropping in from time to time and Christine asked if she could interview me.’

Nash had been dropping in to Radio Giggle? ‘Oh,’ she said.

‘What about you? You help out here much?’

Maggie shrugged. ‘From time to time.’

‘Hey,’ Christine said, butting in. ‘That’s not true. Don’t listen to her, Dr Reece.’ She pointed to a series of framed photos on the wall above the console, several of them starring Maggie. ‘Ross says Maggie was the driving force behind Radio Giggle and that it wouldn’t even exist without her.’

Nash cocked his head back and looked at the enlarged snaps. A younger-looking Maggie with headphones on, sporting a wedding band and grinning at the camera caught his eye. And another with Maggie helping a very official-looking gent in a suit cut a ribbon across the doorway behind him.

He whistled. Yesterday he’d seen her as the efficient PICU nurse and today he’d seen her in another light. While his libido saw her as a gorgeous, sexy woman, the evidence of his eyes told him Maggie was definitely more than a pretty face.

Dougy finally looked up from his picture. ‘Dr Reece,’ he called, and Maggie was spared from the frank curiosity in Nash’s face.

‘Hey, Dougy.’ Nash crossed the small distance and crouched beside Maggie. Doug had been his patient during his medical rotation. ‘How you doin’, mate?’

Dougy held up his colouring book. ‘I’m colouring in a princess. Isn’t she pretty?’

Nash nodded. ‘As a picture.’

‘She’s not as pretty as Maggie, though.’

Nash, fully aware that his knee was almost brushing her thigh, glanced at her face and smiled as Maggie’s cheeks bloomed with another flush of red.

Out of the mouths of babes.

‘No,’ he agreed, his gaze holding hers. ‘No one’s as pretty as Maggie.’

There was a strange couple of seconds when everyone else in the room ceased to exist. And it was in that moment that Maggie saw the difference in Nash. He wanted her, she could tell, but there was something more there. Respect maybe. Whatever it was it was infinitely more seductive than flirty Nash of yesterday.

‘Okay,’ Christine said, pulling the earphones away again while simultaneously jiggling her new assistant on her lap. ‘After this song you’re up, Dr Reece. Are you ready?’

Nash reluctantly flicked his gaze from Maggie to Christine, giving the teenager his full attention. ‘Ready when you are.’

Maggie watched Christine blush under Nash’s gaze. It was apparent the girl had a massive crush on him, a fact of which he was obviously aware as he carefully navigated the interview. He was charming and gentlemanly to a fault, and everything a teenager hooked on Jane Austen could ever hope for, but Maggie could tell he was constantly aware of the boundary.

He spoke about growing up on a huge cattle property hundreds of kilometres west of Sydney in rural New South Wales and taking his school lessons via a radio through the School of the Air and mustering cattle in a helicopter.

‘And why did you decide to become a doctor?’ Christine asked.

Maggie, who’d been preoccupied with colouring a pink flower, looked up at the question. Christine had her back to Maggie but Nash was facing her. She noticed that at some stage Brodie had switched laps and was once again cuddled into Nash’s side. She wouldn’t have thought it possible but he looked more masculine, more appealing. Their gazes locked as he answered.

‘My sister was sick a lot when we were kids and she had to go to Sydney frequently for treatment because there just weren’t the services in the bush. I promised her then I’d become a doctor and change it.’

Maggie noticed the lightness to his voice and the smile he flashed Christine as he broke eye contact with her, but it was too late. For a brief moment she’d seen a vulnerability in his gaze as he’d spoken about his sister that called to her more than any amount of sexual attraction. And who could resist a fervent boyhood promise?

‘You told me the other day that Radio Giggle was a life-saver. What did you mean by that?’

Maggie gaped at the very grown-up question. Forget community radio, Christine was heading for a career with 60 Minutes.

‘The hospital in Sydney where Tammy…stayed had its own kids’ radio station. My sisters and I used to ring up and put in requests for her. She listened every day, she said it helped her miss home a little less.’

Goose-bumps broke out on Maggie’s arms at the streak of raw emotion in Nash’s not-quite-steady voice. His family had obviously been close and the connection with his ill sister through a hospital radio station, no matter how far in the past, clearly still resonated with him.

She’d never thought of that aspect of Radio Giggle before, more concerned with its diversionary attributes. But as a way for inpatients to feel connected to home, it was extraordinarily touching and she was proud all over again to be part of such a great organisation.

‘Do you have a special request for us today, Dr Reece?’

Brodie started to grizzle and Nash shifted him to the other hip and jiggled him a little. ‘I sure do. I’d like to hear “Puff the Magic Dragon.” It was Tammy’s favourite.’

Maggie was pleased for Dougy and her enforced activity as the mournful strains of ‘Puff’ filtered through the studio. She gripped the crayon hard, the goosebumps multiplying.

‘Thanks, Dr Reece,’ Christine enthused, pulling her headphones off.

Nash smiled and stood. Brodie was becoming more fractious, rubbing his eyes. ‘No probs.’ He started to sway as Brodie’s grizzling became louder. ‘Better get this little one back to the ward.’

Christine nodded. ‘See you later.’

He nodded to the teenager then looked down at Maggie, who was colouring in studiously. ‘See you, Maggie.’

Maggie looked up, unprepared for the picture Nash made as he swayed with bandage-headed Brodie. He was lean and sexy and utterly endearing. Yesterday she had thought how totally out of his league she was but today, child on hip, amidst the background chaos of Radio Giggle, he looked totally down-to-earth. Easily within reach. Temptingly so.

‘Bye,’ she dismissed, returning her attention to Dougy almost immediately.

She gripped the crayon harder as his sexy chuckle lingered in the studio well after he’d gone.

If she was ever granted the use of a magic wand for even just a few seconds, Maggie would use it to completely annihilate night duty from existence.

She hated it. With a passion.

Her first night in particular. So, she wasn’t in the best of moods the next night when she switched off her ignition and climbed out of the car beneath a star-studded sky. Ten hours stretched before her and she yawned. Not a good sign!

Oh, she knew once she actually walked through the doors and greeted her fellow sufferers she’d be fine— it was the thought that was the most depressing. And the older she got the harder they were to get over. Back in her student days she’d bounce straight back. Twenty years later it took her a good couple of days to get over a run of nights.

After communal handover in the tearoom Maggie was allocated bed three and took bedside handover from Ray, the nurse who’d been looking after Toby Ryan since his admission to the unit at lunchtime.

Toby was a three-year-old boy who’d been born with a rare hereditary haematological disease. He’d been in and out of hospital most of his brief life, undergoing a multitude of different therapies in a bid to cure him. When everything had failed a bone-marrow transplant had been his only option and he was now fifty days post-procedure.

But not out of the woods. Unfortunately nothing had gone smoothly for little Toby and his chest X-ray had deteriorated in the last few days and was looking very pneumonic. He’d been started on antibiotics and had had sputum collected for analysis, but it had become obvious that morning that he required closer monitoring and further respiratory support so he’d been shifted to PICU.

She watched her patient carefully, noting even in his sleep he was using the accessory muscles in his chest to help him breathe. The sound of high-flow oxygen whooshing through his face mask and filling the attached plastic reservoir bag was surprisingly loud in an already noisy environment.

He was as cute as a button with tight black curls crowning his head, clutching a raggedy-looking teddy bear that was missing an eye and half an ear. He was wearing only pyjama pants, leaving his upper half exposed. Maggie frowned. He was working really hard, which was concerning especially considering his state of slumber.

Maggie did her start-of-shift checks and nursing assessments. Linda, the nurse in charge of the shift and a close friend, was setting up bed four for a retrieval patient when Maggie asked her to check some drugs shortly after. Then Toby’s mother, Alice, returned and Maggie chatted with her for a while.

It was a good couple of hours before Maggie had the chance to sit down and read back over Toby’s notes. The PICU had electronic charting, with each bedside having its own computer terminal. Maggie sat at hers and read back through her patient’s history. She noted that Toby’s cousin had died from the same condition only last year.

She looked up from the screen and took in Alice dozing by her son’s bed, his hand in hers. Maggie couldn’t even begin to imagine how scary it must be for her and the rest of Toby’s family.

The night settled into a familiar rhythm. Toby slept and held his own. Around her the other patients were behaving themselves also. The everyday noises of the unit didn’t register as Maggie went about her work. The low hum of machines, the beeping and trilling of monitors, the slurp of suckers and the variety of alarms attached to the technology-saturated environment formed a continuous background drone.

Collectively they were as familiar to Maggie as the sound of her own breath, the beat of her pulse. And subconsciously she registered what each of them were. She knew which ones to worry about and which ones to ignore. And even deeply involved in other tasks, she knew instantly when something sounded different.

Linda relieved Maggie for her first break. She returned half an hour later, coinciding with the arrival of the retrieval patient. Two paramedics pushed the gurney accompanied by a wardsmen and Gwen, the retrieval nurse.

But none of them held her interest or her gaze. Maggie could focus only on the other member of the party making their way towards her.

Nash Reece.

What the hell? What was Nash doing here? Wasn’t it bad enough that visions of the man with a child on his hip had been in her head like a recurring nightmare since yesterday? His gaze locked with hers as the gurney rolled past and he winked at her.

‘Hello, Maggie Green.’

Maggie stared at him, not even registering that he now knew her last name as her brain grappled with how exactly he came to be doing a PICU retrieval. Or at least it was trying to underneath the surge of one hundred per cent octane lust that had flooded her system and threatened to overload her circuits.

The man looked incredible. His hair was mussy in a too-sexy-to-be-true fashion, no doubt aided by the inflight helmet. The navy-blue shirt of the retrieval uniform fitted snugly across his broad shoulders and chest, the pocket announcing his position as Doctor in vibrant red stitching. The cuffs were rolled back to reveal those strong forearms dusted with blond hairs.

Flaunting propriety, he wore a pair of faded jeans instead of the matching navy trousers. They clung in all the right places and Maggie found herself wondering what he’d look like in nothing but the jeans.

‘I’ll shut this across, Maggie, so we don’t wake Toby,’ Linda said.

Maggie nodded mutely and watched as the concertinaed divider between beds three and four shut out not only the spill of light but also Nash Reece and those damn distracting Levi’s.

Trying to concentrate on her work now was utterly useless. The voices next door were muted but she seemed finely tuned in to every low rumble or murmur that was distinctly Nash. Luckily Toby continued to sleep and although his effort remained the same, he still appeared to be coping.

An hour later, as Maggie typed her username and password into the computer to sign for a drug, she felt Nash’s presence behind her like the heat from a nuclear power plant.

‘MMG,’ he mused, reading over her shoulder. It had taken him a few days to get a handle on the electronic charting and there was probably a heap of features he’d yet to work out, but he did know that all the staff user-names consisted of their initials. ‘What’s your middle name, Maggie Green?’

Maggie ignored him, refusing to turn and acknowledge his query. It was none of his business.

Nash moved so he was standing in front of her, one tanned elbow and one lean hip propped against her mobile computer table. ‘Is it May? Are you a “Maggie May”? Was your mother a Rod Stewart fan?’

Maggie thanked her lucky stars for the relative dimness of the room as he crooned the opening notes of the well-known song.

‘Yes. I know what you meant,’ she said cutting into his surprisingly good baritone not sure she could stand being serenaded with that particular song about an illicit love affair between a younger man and an older woman. ‘I was named May after my grandmother,’ she said frostily. ‘I’m older than the Rod Stewart song.’

Nash chuckled. ‘I’ve never met a woman so keen to talk up her age.’

Maggie shrugged with as much nonchalance as she could muster. She couldn’t help it if the twentysomethings he dated had issues with getting older.

‘I guess I’d better get used to it seeing as how I’m working here for the next three months.’

Maggie took a moment to reel in the leap of her pulse. Three months? Maggie frowned as a sudden realisation hit her. ‘You knew!’ she accused. ‘The other day…at lunch…yesterday…you knew you were coming here.’

Nash smiled. ‘Guilty.’

Maggie looked into his utterly guiltless face. ‘You might have told me.’

‘And have you prepared?’ Nash laughed. ‘I like seeing you flustered, Maggie Green.’ Nash suspected not much flustered her and the fact that he’d put her off balance three times now was the boost his ego needed in the face of her continued resistance.

Maggie took a breath, refusing to rise to his bait or let him see how the prospect of three months in his vicinity rattled her. ‘So how’d you swing that? The current registrars are only halfway through their term.’

‘A short-term position came up. Dr Perkins offered it to me.’

Maggie frowned. Dr Gemma Perkins, the PICU director, never offered reduced terms. He must be bloody good. ‘Why only three months?’

‘I’ve got a position at Great Ormond Street in January.’

Maggie blinked. London? It must be part of his great career plan. ‘Good hospital,’ she murmured.

Still…London? She found it hard to believe how he’d survive in the environs of British medicine where suits and ties were mandatory. He’d changed from his retrieval top into a T-shirt, that combined with the faded fashion of his low-rider jeans, was the epitome of laid-back.

Did he even own a tie?

Nash grinned at her understatement. G.O.S.H. was a world leader. ‘The best.’

She nodded. ‘I worked there years ago.’

Nash couldn’t resist. ‘Back when you were my age?’

Maggie looked into his open flirty gaze, humour skyrocketing his attraction tenfold. ‘No. Back when I was first married. Twenty years ago. I do believe you must have been about ten at the time?’

‘About that.’

Maggie shook her head at his unabashed reply. He was never ten.

‘Well, I guess I’d better get my A into G,’ Nash said, reluctant to leave. ‘I’m sure Mac wants to be getting home.’

Tonight? He was working tonight? She gave an inward groan. She’d assumed he was just doing the retrieval and then leaving. Great! Now she had to add Nash Reece and his unsettling presence to her first-night blues.

Two hours later Maggie lay in the darkened break room on a mattress on the floor, cocooned in warm blankets from the blanket warmer, trying to sleep. But her thoughts kept turning to Nash Reece with his impossible blue eyes.

Damn it! She was supposed to be sleeping.

She had one precious hour to recharge her batteries and here she was staring at the ceiling with Nash’s I like seeing you flustered, Maggie Green whispering its treachery into her subconscious.

After twenty minutes she admitted defeat, got up and headed for the tearoom, feeling tired and irritable. She was going to have to settle for bad late-night TV and a cup of tea instead. She was channel-surfing when Nash entered the room a little later.