Buch lesen: «Weekend With The Best Man»

CHAPTER ONE

FRIDAY MORNING IN Casualty was the last place Senior Registrar Dan Rossi wanted to be.

And not with this patient—a seventeen-year-old drug-addicted youth. He’d arrested. And now the fight had begun to save his life. A life this skinny kid had valued so cheaply. How dared he?

Dan’s thoughts turned dark. ‘Start CPR!’ He bit the words out as the team began the familiar routine, working in concert around the senior doctor, responding to his clipped orders.

Expectations rose and fell as they treated the patient. Rose and fell again. Dan glanced at the clock. They’d done all they could but he didn’t want to call it. Not yet. Not today of all days. And not with this patient. What a waste of a young life. ‘Ramp it up!’

He felt the sweat crawl down his back, his heart like a jackhammer against his ribs. He shouldn’t be here. He’d lost his mental filter. Lost it.

Lost it. Lost it...

‘OK, he’s back.’

Thank God. Immediately, Dan’s chest felt lighter as if a valve had just released the pressure building inside him. He woke as if from a nightmare.

‘Pulse rate sixty,’ Nurse Manager Lindsey Stewart relayed evenly. ‘He’s waking up.’

Yanking off his gloves, Dan aimed them at the bin, missing by a mile. ‘Do what you have to do,’ he said, his voice flat.

And walked out. Fast.

Lindsey’s eyebrows hitched, her green gaze puzzled as she watched his exit.

* * *

‘That was a bit odd back there,’ Vanessa Cole, Lindsey’s colleague, said, as they watched their patient being wheeled out to ICU. ‘What’s biting Rossi?’

‘Something’s certainly got him upset,’ Lindsey agreed. ‘Dan’s usually very cool under pressure.’

‘He hasn’t been here long.’ Vanessa shrugged. ‘And we don’t know much about him yet. Perhaps it’s personal—girlfriend trouble?’

‘Does he have a girlfriend?’

‘Please!’ Vanessa, who seemed to be at the sharp end of all the hospital gossip, gave an exaggerated eye-roll. ‘With that dark, smouldering thing happening?’

‘That’s a bit simplistic,’ Lindsey refuted. ‘Dan Rossi is a senior doctor. He wouldn’t bring that kind of stuff to work with him. I’d better try to speak to him. If it’s a work-related matter, it’ll need sorting.’

‘Oh, Lins.’ Vanessa’s voice held exasperation as she pushed the privacy screen open. ‘Don’t start taking the flak for Rossi’s dummy spit. We run—that is, you run an extremely efficient casualty department. It’s my guess he’ll take a long lunch and snap out of whatever’s bugging him.’

Lindsey’s instincts were not quite buying that scenario. She recognised mental stress when she saw it, and Dan Rossi had been far from his usual self since the beginning of the shift. She frowned a bit, wondering just where he’d fled to.

‘Dan’s usually pretty good to work with.’

* * *

Dan knew he’d been discourteous to the team but today, for very personal reasons, he’d had to get out.

Had to.

In a secluded part of the grounds he sank into a garden seat, taking a deep breath and letting it go. Every sensible cell in his brain told him he shouldn’t have brought his personal problems to work today. In fact, he shouldn’t have come to work at all. If he’d thought it through, he’d have taken a mental health day available to all staff. Instead, he’d come to work in an environment where emotions went from high to low in seconds.

He made a dismissive sound in his throat. Having to treat that last patient had been the trigger that had shot his ability to be objective all to hell.

Addiction. And a foolish boy, abusing his body with no conception of the amazing gift of life. A gift Dan’s own babies had never had. No chance to draw one tiny life-saving breath. Two perfect little girls.

It was two years ago today since he’d lost them.

At the memory, something inside him rose up then flattened out again, like a lone wave on the sea. The grief he felt was still all too real. Grief with nowhere to go.

A shiver went right through him and he realised he’d rushed outside without a jacket. Lifting his hands, he linked them at the back of his neck. He needed to get a grip. Once he’d got through today, he’d regroup again.

Flipping his mobile out of his pocket, he checked for messages and found one from his colleague and closest friend, Nathan Lyons. The text simply said: Grub?

In seconds, Dan had texted back.

Leo’s in ten.

* * *

With things in Casualty more or less under control, Lindsey decided to take the early lunch. She needed to get her head together. In the staffroom she collected the minestrone she’d brought from home and reheated it in the microwave. Ignoring the chat going on around her, she took her soup to a table near the window and buried her head in a magazine.

Halfway through her meal she stopped and raised her head to look out of the window. She’d have to say something to Dan. She couldn’t just pretend nothing had happened. But how to handle it?

It wasn’t as though they had any kind of relationship outside the hospital. What did she really know about him anyway? She knew he’d worked in New York and, more recently, he’d left one of the big teaching hospitals in Sydney to come on staff here in this rural city of Hopeton. But beyond that? Except for the fact that Dan Rossi kept very much to himself—and that alone was an achievement in an environment where you were thrown together all the time—she knew next to nothing about his personal life. But she remembered his first day vividly.

She’d sneaked a quick peek at him as the team had assembled for the start of the shift. Her quick inventory had noted his hair was dark, very dark and cut short, his eyes holding a moody blueness, the shadows beneath so deep they might have been painted on. His shoulders under his pinstriped shirt were broad. She had taken a deep breath and let it go, realising as she’d done so that she’d been close enough to smell he’d been shower-fresh. In the close confines where they worked that mattered to Lindsey.

Then he’d caught her looking. And it was as if they’d shared a moment of honesty, a heartbeat of intimacy. His mouth had pulled tight then relaxed. He’d almost smiled. Almost but not quite.

And for what it was worth the vibe was still there between them. But it seemed to Lindsey that for every tiny bit of headway she made with Dan Rossi on a personal level, he took off like a world-class sprinter in the opposite direction.

She blew out a long breath of frustration, slamming her magazine shut as she got to her feet. Why was she even bothering to try to find out what made Dan Rossi tick? After her last boyfriend had cheated on her so spectacularly, she’d questioned her judgement about men. How did you work out which of them to trust and recognise those who were into game-playing? And right now, after the rotten morning they’d had, it was all too heavy to think about.

* * *

Leo’s was five minutes away from the hospital, the unpretentious little café drawing the hospital staff like bees to puffy blossoms. Chef Leo Carroll kept his menu simple. And he’d done his market research, opening at six in the morning to accommodate the early shift who just wanted a coffee and a bacon roll. Lunch began at noon and lasted until three. Then Leo closed his doors, cleaned up and went to play guitar at a blues bar in town.

Dan settled into one of the comfortable side booths and stretched out his legs. Already he could feel the tension draining from him. Nathan’s continued support had steadied him in ways that were incalculable. Dan recalled the day he’d flown into Sydney from the States. He’d been standing feeling a bit bemused in the passenger lounge, getting his bearings, when he’d heard his name called. He’d spun round and found himself looking into a familiar craggy face lit with a lopsided grin.

‘Nate!’

Before Dan could react further, he’d been thumped across the back and enveloped in a bone-crunching hug that had almost undone him. ‘Glad you made it back in one piece, dude,’ Nathan had said gruffly.

Dan had swallowed. ‘How did you know I’d be on this flight?’

‘I have my ways.’ Nathan had tapped the side of his nose. ‘Now, come on, let’s move it. I’m short-term parked and it’s costing me a fortune.’

Dan had booked into a boutique hotel near the harbour, intending to stay there until he could find an apartment. As they’d driven, Nathan had asked, ‘Do you have some work lined up?’

‘Starting at St Vincent’s in a week.’

‘Still in Casualty?’

‘It’s what I do best. You still in Medical?’

‘It’s what I do best.’ Nathan had shot him a glance. ‘Uh—not going to see your folks, then?’

‘Not yet.’ His family lived in Melbourne and while he loved and respected them, he just wasn’t up for receiving their sympathy all over again.

A beat of silence.

‘I’ve met a girl.’ Nathan’s embarrassed laugh eased the fraught atmosphere.

Dan spun his friend an amused look. ‘Serious?’

‘Could be. Think so. She’s a flight attendant. Samantha Kelly—Sami.’

‘Get out of here!’ Dan leaned across and fist-bumped his friend’s upper arm. ‘Tell me about her.’

‘She’s blonde.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Funny, sweet, smart...you know...’

‘Yeah. And she’s got you wrapped around her little finger. Nice one, mate. I hope it works out for you and Sami.’

‘Uh—if it doesn’t pan out for you in Sydney,’ Nathan said carefully, ‘you could come across the mountain to us at Hopeton District. Get some rural medicine under your belt. We’re always looking for decently qualified MOs.’

‘Mmm—maybe.’ Dan gave a dry smile. Nathan went on to enthuse about the vibrant country city a couple of hours from Sydney across the Blue Mountains.

‘And would you believe you can still fossick for gold around Hopeton?’ Nathan concluded his sales pitch emphatically.

And six months later Dan had taken everything on board and made the move and now here they were, with Nathan’s and Sami’s wedding just a week away and he was Nathan’s best man.

Dan looked at his watch just at the moment Nathan burst through the door.

‘Sorry I’m a bit late,’ he apologised, sliding his big frame onto the bench seat opposite. ‘Would you believe I’ve just had to cannulate three old coots on the trot—no veins to speak of, dehydrated as hell. Why don’t old people drink water, for God’s sake?’

‘Because it’s a generational thing,’ Dan said patiently. ‘They drink tea. Probably have done so since they could hold a cup.’ Dan turned his attention to the short menu. ‘We need to get a wriggle on. What are you having?’

‘If there’s pasta of some description, I’m your man.’

‘There is,’ Dan said. ‘And I’ll have the steak pie.’

Leo was there in a flash to take their orders. ‘Won’t be long, Docs,’ he promised, batting his way back through the swing doors to his kitchen.

Nathan sent a narrowed look at his friend. He was well aware of the significance of the day in Dan’s life. ‘How’s it going?’ he asked quietly.

Dan’s mouth bunched into a tight moue. ‘Getting there, as they say.’

Nathan wasn’t so sure and he knew his friend well enough to ask, ‘It’s got to be hard for Caroline as well. Have you tried contacting her again?’

‘What would be the point? She couldn’t wait to dump me and our marriage—such as it was.’

‘Yeah—well.’ Nathan decided it was time for some straight talking. ‘I don’t want to be brutal, but it was never going to work after the babies died, was it?’

‘Probably not.’ Dan frowned. ‘But she wasn’t even willing to try!’

Nathan shook his head. They’d had this conversation before—or one similar. ‘Listen, Dan, I’ve known you for a thousand years. It’s in your DNA to be decent and, to use a very old-fashioned word, honourable. But you and Caroline weren’t in love and, believe me, that’s the only reason you should get married. And stay married. For your own sanity, you can’t keep second-guessing all the what-ifs.’

Dan knew what Nathan said made sense and, God knew, he’d tried to let it go. His mouth gave a wry twist. ‘The last time I spoke to Caroline, she said she’d moved on.’

‘Then maybe it’s time you did as well,’ Nathan said frankly. ‘Hey!’ He injected an air of enthusiasm around them and beat a little drum roll on the table. ‘It’s Friday and Sami’s decided we need a night out. There’s a new club in town. Why don’t you join us?’

Dan’s insides curled. He could think of nothing worse than tagging along with a completely loved-up pair like Nathan and Sami. ‘Thanks, mate, but I’ll be fine. You and your bride-to-be have better things to do—or you should have.’

‘Speaking of brides...’ Nathan picked up the pepper mill and spun it between his hands. ‘Sami wants us to wear cummerbunds.’

Dan snorted. ‘I’d rather shove my head in a bucket of prawns.’ He took a mouthful of water, very carefully replacing the glass on its coaster. ‘I’d probably walk through fire to save your butt, Nathan, but I am not wearing a cummerbund at your wedding.’

Nathan gave a bark of laughter and confided, ‘Sami reckons it’s modern vintage.’

Dan looked unimpressed. ‘Tell her the menswear shop in Hopeton have never heard of cummerbunds, let alone stocked them.’

‘She said she’d order them online—but don’t panic.’ Nathan held up a hand in a staying motion, deciding to let his friend off the hook. ‘I’ve talked her out of it.’

‘How?’ Dan’s interest picked up. From what he’d seen, Sami was one determined lady. In the nicest possible way, of course.

‘I had a mental picture of us with bulging satin waistlines and fell about laughing. Sami wasn’t amused. She wrestled me to the sofa and belted me with her slipper. Then she saw the funny side and laughed too.’

And then they’d probably gone to bed, Dan thought. It was great Nathan was so happy, so...loved. He deserved to be. Dan wondered how long it would be before he had someone special to call his own. Someone to love and who loved him back the same way. Unconditionally. And that was what had been missing with Caroline.

‘So it’s sorted, then?’

‘It is. When are you coming up?’

‘The day before, on the Friday, if that’s OK?’ The couple were being married in Sami’s home village of Milldale, some thirty miles north of Hopeton. The wedding reception was to be held at Rosemount, one of the historic homes in the district that had been revamped into a functions venue.

‘Friday’s fine,’ Nathan said. ‘Sami’s booked us into the local pub. My folks are staying there as well.’

‘Your meals, gentlemen.’ Leo slid plates the size of cartwheels down in front of them. ‘Enjoy.’

‘This looks good.’ Nathan rubbed his hands in anticipation. ‘Dig in.’

Halfway through their meal, Dan said, ‘When is Sami leaving her job?’

‘She has already. She’s going to start up her own business here, a travel agency cum tourist thing. She’s had mega hits on her website already.’

‘That’s fantastic. You’re going to settle here in Hopeton, then?’

‘Yep.’ Nathan twirled a length of spaghetti around his fork. ‘It’s a good fit for us at the moment. And my job’s safe—well, as far as any job can be these days.’

Dan’s throat closed for a moment. Nathan’s future seemed secure and...good. If only his own future had a semblance of the same simple expectations attached to it. He shook his head. God, he’d better lighten up, or he’d be like a wet blanket at his friend’s wedding.

As if he’d tuned into Dan’s thoughts, Nathan said, ‘Have you written your best man’s speech yet?’

‘Not yet.’

‘Don’t say anything too incriminating that’ll get me hanged, will you?’

Dan’s mouth twitched. ‘Like the after-rugby parties when we were at uni?’

‘You were there too, matey,’ Nathan reminded him. ‘Let’s not forget that.’

A swirl of emotions juxtaposed in Dan’s head. They had been good times. Uncomplicated. Until life had happened. He swore inwardly. He had to release this choking collar of useless introspection. But it was the day, he justified. The date. The memories. ‘I suppose I could talk about your peculiar eating habits.’

‘Like what?’ Nathan gave an offended snort.

‘In all my travels, I’ve never seen anyone consume food as quickly as you.’

‘It’s a gift.’ Nathan gave a Gallic shrug. ‘What can I do?’

Dan chuckled. ‘Ratbag.’

‘So,’ Nathan asked, suddenly serious, ‘how was it this morning in A and E?’

‘I wish you hadn’t asked me that.’

‘You didn’t kill anyone, did you?’

Dan shook his head. ‘Probably worse. I dumped all over the team in Resus and walked out.’

‘Crikey. I’ll bet Lindsey Stewart was impressed—not!’

Dan grimaced.

‘Did you apologise?’

‘Not yet.’

‘Lins has the respect of the whole hospital.’ Nathan looked serious. ‘You’d better do a real grovel. Ask her for a drink after work and do it then. Properly.’

Dan felt worse and worse. He’d apologise, of course. But ask her for a drink? She’d probably turn him down flat. And he wouldn’t blame her. In the short time he’d been at Hopeton he’d hardly put himself out to get to know her or anyone else. Out of nowhere, Lindsey Stewart’s flashing green eyes seemed to challenge him. And he realised on some basic level that he wanted to get to know her. To break away from the past. He had to turn things around. ‘I shouldn’t have come to work today.’

‘Possibly not,’ Nathan agreed. ‘Just fix it, mate. Hopeton’s not so big that bad behaviour goes unnoticed.’