Loe raamatut: «The Consultant's Italian Knight»

CHAPTER ONE

‘BE CAREFUL what you wish for.’

That’s what her mother had always said to her when she was a little girl, Kate Kennedy remembered.

‘Be careful what you wish for because it might actually come true.’

Well, it had come true, Kate thought, as she gazed out over the crowded waiting room of the A and E department of the General Infirmary in Aberdeen. Three years ago, at the age of thirty-two, she’d become one of the youngest A and E consultants in the country. She’d got the job she’d always wanted, a husband who had loved her, and the perfect home, but now…

‘Broken arm in cubicle 4, Kate. Stomach pains in 6, a wheezer in 1, and a seven-year-old with a cut leg in 3.’

Kate turned to see Terri Campbell, the blonde-haired, middle-aged sister in charge of the nursing staff of the A and E department regarding her expectantly, and managed a smile.

‘Business as usual, then,’ she replied, glancing back at the waiting room in time to see a fight break out between the two young men who had been drinking steadily ever since they’d arrived.

‘You OK, Kate?’

Concern had replaced the expectant look on Terri’s face, and Kate forced her smile back into place.

‘Bad attack of Saturday night blues,’ she lied. ‘Everyone else is out there enjoying themselves, and I’m stuck in here, on a hot August evening, tending to the ungrateful, the ungracious and the just plain stupid.’

‘Yes, but you wouldn’t want it any other way, would you?’ The sister laughed.

Once upon a time she wouldn’t have, Kate thought, but now she was beginning to wonder whether the price she’d had to pay for achieving her dream had been too high. Way too high.

‘Are you sure you’re OK, Kate?’

Terri was frowning at her now and, for a second, Kate hesitated, but she and the unit sister had been friends for the past three years and she knew she’d have to tell her eventually.

‘It came this morning,’ she said with an effort. ‘My decree nisi.’

‘Oh, Kate—’

‘It’s not like it was unexpected,’ Kate interrupted, not wanting the sister’s sympathy, knowing she couldn’t deal with it right now. ‘We both knew there was no way back when John left me last year, but I sort of thought…’ She sighed and shook her head. ‘I don’t know what I thought. Maybe that the decree nisi would be bigger, more impressive, but it was just an ordinary piece of paper. Not much to show for six years of marriage. Five years if you don’t count the year John and I were separated, and I don’t suppose I should.’

Terri stared at her helplessly. ‘Kate, I’m so sorry. I hoped there might be a chance of you and John getting back together again.’

‘He’s found somebody else,’ Kate said. ‘He told me last week. Her name’s Sandy. She weighs seven stone including her hair extensions, and she’s a fashion buyer.’

‘Oh. Right.’ Terri bit her lip, then pushed her glasses firmly up the bridge of her nose. ‘Well, at least some good might come out of this.’

‘Some good?’ Kate repeated faintly, and Terri nodded.

‘If she’s a fashion buyer maybe she’ll be able to talk him out of those God-awful black suits and button down shirts he will persist in wearing. The ones which make him resemble a third-rate undertaker.’

Kate stared speechlessly at the sister for a second, then burst out laughing.

‘Oh, Terri, what would I do without you?’ she exclaimed, and the sister grinned.

‘Be even loopier than you already are?’ she suggested. ‘Seriously, if I can help at all—if you want to scream or yell or just generally vent—I’m here for you.’

Did she want to scream and yell? Kate wondered. Did she really?

She might feel hurt, and confused, and not a little bewildered, but if she was honest with herself—and Kate fully intended to be honest—she didn’t want John back. They’d fallen out of love a long time ago.

‘I’m fine, Terri,’ she declared. ‘Truly I am.’

‘Well, the offer’s there if you should ever want it,’ Terri said. ‘Lord knows, you’ve listened to my worries about my son more times than I care to remember.’

‘Neil will be OK, Terri—I know he will,’ Kate said gently. ‘He’s only eighteen, and we all make stupid mistakes at that age, but he’s got you and Frank, and now this new job. He’s beginning to turn his life around.’

‘I hope so, but working in a bar…It’s not what I imagined for him,’ Terri said unhappily. ‘He was—is—such a clever boy, and if he hadn’t got in with the wrong crowd at school…Frank says the bar work will do him good, make him stand on his own two feet, but…’

‘Terri, he’ll be fine,’ Kate insisted. ‘He will.’

‘And so will you,’ the sister said, clearly deliberately changing the subject. ‘There’s somebody out there who’s just right for you, I know there is.’

‘I don’t want to meet anybody else,’ Kate said firmly. ‘One failed marriage is quite enough for me.’

‘Kate, you’re only thirty-four—’

‘Thirty-five at the beginning of next month,’ Kate reminded her.

‘—and just because it didn’t work out with John,’ Terri continued determinedly, ‘doesn’t mean it won’t work out with somebody else. For all you know, Mr Right could be just about to walk through that door this very minute, and change your life completely.’

Not Mr Right, but Mr Never-in-a-Million-Years, Kate thought, with a shaky inward chuckle, as Terri sped across to their receptionist to see why she was waving frantically at her and the door of the waiting room opened and two men appeared.

The younger of the two men was tall, in his early thirties, with neat blond hair and a frank, open face, but his companion…

Intimidating. That was the only word that could adequately describe him, Kate decided, and it wasn’t just because he was considerably taller and more muscular than his companion. It wasn’t even because his thick black hair brushed the neck of an ancient brown leather jacket, or his denims were faded and worn, or even that he was wearing a pair of the scruffiest trainers she’d ever seen. It was his face.

Darker skinned than the average Aberdonian, she would have guessed him to be Spanish, or Italian, if it hadn’t been for his eyes. Cobalt-blue eyes. Piercing blue eyes that stared back at her with neither warmth nor gentleness, but only a world-weary cynicism that said all too plainly, Don’t mess with me.

‘MVA on the way,’ Terri declared as she rejoined her. ‘Single car hit the crash barrier on the motorway, broken tib and fib, and suspected internal bleeding. Oh, and you’re going to love this,’ she added, her expression clearly suggesting otherwise. ‘We’ve also got a young man coming in from Aberdeen airport. He collapsed just after he came through Customs, and the security guys suspect he’s a body-packer.’

Kate groaned inwardly. That was all she needed this evening. If the young man was a body-packer then his collapse suggested that one of his packets had burst, and the only other body-packer she had ever treated had died. Swiftly, and extremely painfully.

‘OK, make sure we’ve plenty of house red for the MVA,’ she declared. ‘As for the body-packer…Let’s hope he’s simply an innocent traveller who’s had a heart attack.’

And the man in the waiting room was still staring at her, she noticed as she turned to go back into the treatment room. Staring, and smiling. Not at her, she realised, but at something his companion had said, but that smile…Just for a second it completely softened his face, making him heart-clutchingly attractive. He was still as intimidating as hell, of course, but that smile…Yup, it definitely pushed all of her buttons and, unconsciously, her fingers went up to the hair clips which were spectacularly failing to keep her shoulder-length, auburn hair back in a neat chignon.

Getting her hair restyled was on her ‘to do’ list. So was losing some weight and buying more furniture for the ground floor flat she’d moved into when she and John had separated. The flat that depressed the hell out of her every time she opened the front door, but why she should suddenly find herself thinking about that, and her hair, and losing some weight, just because an attractive—OK, make that very attractive—man was sitting in the waiting room was beyond her.

‘Kate?’

Terri was still waiting for her, and Kate squared her shoulders firmly.

The man was just a man. Someone she’d probably never see again, and that was exactly the way she wanted it. No more relationships, no more heartbreak, plus the likelihood of somebody like him ever being interested in someone like her was nil, she thought wryly, as she began to walk towards the treatment room door. No man who looked as good as he did when he smiled would ever be interested in an overweight little woman like her.

Which was just as well, she told herself, as she risked a quick glance over her shoulder and saw he was still watching her. Relationships might be fraught with uncertainty and danger at the best of times, but this man already had danger written all over him.

‘I thought he’d be here by now,’ Ralph Evanton declared, dragging his fingers impatiently through his blond hair as he sat down on one of the waiting room chairs. ‘According to our info, the ambulance picked him up ten minutes ago.’

‘It’s Saturday night,’ Mario Volante replied. ‘The traffic will be heavy.’

‘I suppose so.’ Ralph glanced round, then lowered his voice. ‘Do you reckon he’s still alive?’

‘If the ambulance comes in with its siren blaring, he’s alive. If it doesn’t…’ Mario pulled over one of the battered waiting room chairs and sat down, too. ‘Either way—alive or DOA—we’ll know soon enough.’

‘You’d think they’d realise it was a mug’s game, wouldn’t you?’ Ralph observed. ‘That what they’re buying into can all too quickly become a one-way ticket to the Big Guy upstairs.’

Mario shrugged. ‘Life’s tough. It’s even tougher if you’re stupid.’

Ralph stared at him silently for a moment, then cleared his throat. ‘You know, you can be a complete and utter bastard at times.’

‘I prefer to call myself a realist.’

‘Yeah. Right.’

Absently, Ralph drummed his fingers against the side of his chair, then pulled his mobile phone out of his jacket only to swiftly pocket it when Mario nudged him and gestured towards the sign on the waiting room wall reminding all visitors that mobile phones must be switched off within the hospital confines.

‘Oughtn’t we to at least introduce ourselves to that woman on Reception?’ Ralph demanded. ‘Tell her why we’re here?’

‘The fewer people who know who we are, the better.’

‘I guess so.’ Ralph turned in his seat as the waiting room door opened, and grimaced as a girl with a badly cut knee limped in. ‘I hate hospitals.’

‘Really?’A glimmer of a smile creased Mario Volante’s lips. ‘I never would have guessed. Look, will you relax?’ he continued as Ralph opened his mouth to protest. ‘I’m trying very hard not to draw attention to myself, but you’re squirming around as though you’ve sat on something.’

‘Sorry. I just—’

‘Hate hospitals,’ Mario finished for him, his smile widening. ‘Yeah, so you said.’

‘It looks like something might be happening,’ Ralph declared, sitting up straighter in his seat and nodding in the direction of the reception desk. ‘That blonde-haired nurse with the glasses looks worried, and so does the pretty little nurse with the auburn hair.’

‘The chubby, auburn-haired one is a doctor not a nurse.’

‘Mario, she only looks chubby to you because you usually date toothpicks,’ Ralph protested. ‘To me she looks like a real woman. A woman with her curves in all the right places.’

‘And does Jenny know you’re looking at other women and deciding whether they have their curves in all the right places?’ Mario said with a quizzical glance.

Ralph looked smug. ‘My wife trusts me.’

‘Uh-huh. Plus, I distinctly remember her saying at your wedding that if you ever cheated on her she’d nail your butt to the wall and use it as a dartboard.’

‘She did, too,’ Ralph said with a splutter of laughter. ‘But I stand by what I said. That girl has all her curves in the right places, and she’s pretty, too.’

But not happy, Mario decided as he stared across at the auburn-haired girl. In his work it was his job to read people, and this girl—woman—was definitely not happy. There were shadows under her large grey eyes, and her face was white and drawn as though she hadn’t been sleeping well recently.

‘That’s what you need,’ Ralph observed, seeing the direction of his gaze. ‘A good woman in your life.’

‘And just when did this paragon become not just a real woman, but also a good one?’ Mario protested, and Ralph shook his head, clearly amazed at the question.

‘She’s a doctor, Mario. It stands to reason she’ll be the caring, nurturing type.’

With a backbone of steel if he was any judge of character, Mario decided as he watched the auburn-haired doctor reply to something the nurse had said. Medicine was a tough profession for a woman, and for this woman to work in A and E she had to be no pushover, and from the stubborn tilt of her jaw he knew she wasn’t.

‘What you need is some stability in your life, Mario,’ Ralph continued, ‘starting with a proper, grown-up relationship.’

‘You’ll be trying to fix me up with your kid sister next,’ Mario said dryly. ‘Or your cousin from Glasgow.’

‘I wouldn’t trust you with either of them, but that girl looks as though she could handle you.’

‘You think I need handling?’ Mario declared, amusement plain on his face, and Ralph raised an eyebrow.

‘Mario, you discard women with as little thought as you change your socks. Now, that girl—’

‘Enough, Ralph,’ Mario interrupted, his patience clearly at an end. ‘I’m not interested.’

‘Then you should be,’ Ralph insisted. ‘Hell, mate, you’ve been divorced for four years, and, OK, so divorce is never pleasant and Sue hurt you badly, but it’s time you moved on, time you buried the hurt.’

He would have done, Mario thought grimly, if Sue really had hurt him, but the trouble was she hadn’t. If she had hurt him he would at least have known he was still able to feel, to care, but when she’d left all he’d felt was an overwhelming sense of relief that the arguing was finally over.

‘Mario, listen to me—’

‘Madre di Dio!’ Mario exclaimed, and Ralph held up his hands in defeat.

‘OK—OK. When you start speaking Italian I know it’s time to shut up. You’re happy as you are. Fine. Great.’

And he was happy, Mario thought as he watched the auburn-haired doctor fiddle with her hair. Lovely hair it was, too. The kind of hair that should never be tied back but allowed to flow loose and free, and Ralph had been right about the curves. They were definitely in all the right places, but he wasn’t interested. He had a job that he loved, the career he’d always wanted, and it was enough for him. OK, so there were times when he was lonely, but if he’d been looking for a new relationship—and he wasn’t—the girl standing at the reception desk wasn’t for him. He preferred his women quiet, placid and accommodating, and he suspected the auburn-haired doctor was anything but.

‘Sounds like it might be show time,’ Ralph declared as the distant wail of a siren split the air.

It did indeed, Mario thought, as he saw the nurse and the auburn-haired doctor disappear back into the treatment room. It also meant their man was still alive, and with a sigh he stretched out his long, denim clad legs. It was going to be a long night.

‘According to his passport, his name’s Duncan Hamilton, and he’s nineteen years old,’ one of the paramedics declared, desperately trying to restrain the arms and legs of the young man who was thrashing about wildly on the trolley. ‘When security at the airport said they suspected he might be a body-packer, we just bagged him, and did a scoop and run.’

‘Symptoms?’ Kate asked.

‘Severe agitation, BP 160 over 90 and rising and he started fitting just as we pulled up outside.’

Kate bit her lip. Absorption of large amounts of cocaine caused agitation, hypertension and seizures, but Duncan Hamilton’s symptoms could be due to other conditions, too. If she knew for certain that it wasn’t a leaking cocaine packet she would immediately have started him on naloxone, but the drug would have no effect on a patient suffering from a massive overdose.

‘Did he have anything else on him apart from his passport?’ she asked hopefully. ‘Maybe a medic alert disc detailing a preexisting medical condition?’

The paramedic shook his head, and Kate swore under her breath.

If Duncan Hamilton was a body-packer then it certainly sounded as though one of his packets had burst, but she needed more than a suspicion. She needed certainty.

‘Mr Hamilton—Duncan,’ she said, leaning as far over the young man as his writhing body would allow. ‘Do you know where you are, and what’s happening to you?’

A low moan was her only reply, and she gave up on the preliminaries and went for the straight approach.

‘Duncan, how many packets of cocaine did you swallow?’

‘I didn’t…I haven’t swallowed anything,’ the young man gasped as Terri finished cutting off his clothes and began placing plastic suckers on his chest to link him to the heart monitor.

‘Duncan, if one of your packets has burst you could die,’ Kate persisted, ‘so tell me the truth. How many did you swallow?’

For a moment she didn’t think he was going to answer, then he muttered, ‘Hundred. Swallowed a hundred.’

Hell-fire, and damnation. The average lethal dose of cocaine hydrochloride was 500 milligrams. Body-packers commonly swallowed packets containing at least 12 grams each, and Duncan Hamilton said he’d swallowed a hundred of them. If just one of them had burst then more than twenty-four times the lethal dosage was seeping into his body, affecting his central nervous system, and respiratory and cardiovascular systems.

‘OK, Terri, we need to calm him and cool him down fast!’ she exclaimed as the paramedics wheeled their stretcher out of the cubicle. ‘I want 5 milligrams midazolam, supplemental oxygen, his head, neck and chest kept cold with cold water, and can you get me a fan? If we can control his agitation and temperature we might be able to get his BP down. If not…’

The sister’s eyes met hers, and Kate knew what Terri was thinking. Duncan Hamilton could code at any minute, and with so much cocaine travelling through his body the chances of pulling him back were slim.

‘I’ll get the fan,’ Terri said but, to Kate’s dismay, the minute the sister had gone Duncan Hamilton wrenched the ambu-bag from his face.

‘Need to…tell you something,’ he said, his breath coming in great, ragged gulps.

‘Later—you can tell me later,’ Kate declared, desperately trying to get the ambu-bag back in place but he fought her all the way.

‘Important!’ he exclaimed, grasping her wrist tightly. ‘Have to tell you. Names…Important names. Bolton…Faranelli—’

‘Duncan, will you please let me put this back on you,’ Kate insisted, seeing the heart monitor starting to display an increasingly erratic tracing.

‘Mackay…Di Angelis…And addresses—I have addresses. You must hear the addresses.’

‘OK—OK, I’m listening,’ Kate replied, hoping that the quicker the young man told her whatever he wanted so desperately to tell her, the sooner she might be able to re-affix the ambu-bag.

‘6 Mount Stewart Street…12 Picard Avenue…’

Oh, shut up, Kate thought as Duncan rambled on and she scarcely listened. He was dying, and yet he was giving her what sounded like the entire contents of the telephone directory.

‘Did…did you get all that?’ Duncan Hamilton demanded eventually, and Kate nodded.

‘Absolutely,’ she lied, sighing with relief as she snapped the ambu-bag back in place, but neither it, nor the fan Terri brought, nor the sedation, reduced Duncan Hamilton’s soaring temperature.

‘If we don’t get his temperature down soon he’s going to develop hypothermia,’ Terri declared, worry plain in her voice. ‘Will I start him on lidocaine?’

‘It won’t help,’ Kate replied, no less concerned than the sister was. ‘It produces similar effects on the myocardial cell membrane to cocaine. I’ve used sodium bicarbonate for tricyclic antidepressant overdoses and it worked with them so maybe…’

She didn’t get a chance to finish what she’d been about to say. Duncan Hamilton suddenly gave an odd breath, and the heart monitor let out a low and constant tone. He’d coded, and immediately Kate hit him squarely in the centre of his sternum, then glanced across at the monitor. Nothing. No change. The heart line remained resolutely flat.

‘Paddles, Terri!’ she exclaimed.

Swiftly, the sister handed them to her, and equally quickly, Kate rubbed the defibrillating paddles together with electrical conducting gel. It was on occasions like this she wished she was six feet tall instead of five feet nothing. To successfully shock a patient you had to lean over the examination trolley, place the paddles in exactly the right place, then press down really hard, but the trolleys had metal rails and if any part of you touched them…

‘Instant cardiac arrest, Kate,’ she muttered, standing as high on her toes as she could. ‘Stand clear, Terri!’

The sister stepped back from the trolley, Kate pressed the paddles down as hard as she could on either side of Duncan Hamilton’s chest, and he convulsed briefly.

‘Nothing,’ Terri said, her voice tense.

‘I’ll tube him,’ Kate declared. ‘The ambu-bag’s not enough any more, so I’ll tube him and then I want the power up to 300.’

Terri waited until Kate had inserted an endotracheal tube down Duncan Hamilton’s throat, then upped the power on the defibrillator paddles to 300, but though Duncan Hamilton’s body convulsed again when Kate placed the paddles on either side of his chest the monitor reading didn’t change.

‘IV bolus of 500 milligrams of beryllium,’ Kate said in desperation. ‘Power up to 360 joules.’

Again, and again, she placed the defibrillator paddles on either side of the young man’s chest, but no amount of electricity kick-started the young man’s heart and eventually she stepped back from the trolley, and switched off the current.

‘You did your best, Kate,’ Terri declared, watching her. ‘It’s just…’

‘This time we didn’t win.’ Kate’s eyes clouded. ‘I know.’

‘Look, why don’t you take a break, grab yourself a cup of coffee?’ the sister suggested. ‘I’ll clear up in here for you.’

‘Thanks,’ Kate replied. ‘I just want…’

‘A few minutes alone with him,’ Terri finished for her. ‘I understand.’

And Terri did, Kate thought. The sister knew how much she hated losing a patient—any patient—and this man was so young. Nineteen, the paramedic had said. Nineteen, and his whole life should have been ahead of him, but now…

Tears pricked at the back of her eyes, and desperately she tried to blink them away. It wasn’t like her to break down like this, and if the other consultants at the hospital could see her they’d have a field day.

‘Head of A and E isn’t a suitable position for a woman,’ they’d whispered when she’d got the job three years ago. ‘And thirty-two’s far too young.’

Maybe they’d been right, she thought as she gently closed Duncan Hamilton’s eyes, and whispered, ‘I’m sorry—so sorry,’ as she always did when she lost a patient. Maybe if she hadn’t been quite so driven, quite so determined to prove she was up to the job, but the glossy magazines had said she could have it all, and she’d believed them.

She’d kept on believing them even when John had started muttering that he hardly ever saw her. She hadn’t even worried when he’d begun booking himself on seminars without talking to her about them first, but her morning’s post had burst her illusory bubble once and for all. You couldn’t have it all. Or, at least, she couldn’t.

‘Did you forget something, Terri?’ she said, wiping her eyes quickly with the back of her hand as she heard the sound of the cubicle curtains opening behind her.

‘I’m not Terri.’

He wasn’t. He was the dark-haired, olive-skinned man from the waiting room and, as he advanced towards her, she wondered why she had ever thought him attractive. Up close, with a twoday stubble that wouldn’t have looked out of place on a convict, and a good sixteen inches taller than she was, he looked even more intimidating than he had at a distance.

‘I’m sorry, but we don’t allow friends or family members into this part of A and E,’ she said with a calmness she was very far from feeling. ‘If you’d care to wait outside—’

‘I’m not a friend or family.’

That didn’t surprise her. In fact, she had a sudden horrifying suspicion that he was probably the man who had put Duncan Hamilton into A and E in the first place.

‘If you’re not a friend, or family, you’ll definitely have to wait outside,’ she said. ‘Somebody—’ hopefully not her ‘—will be able to give you an update on Mr Hamilton’s condition in a few minutes.’

The man glanced down at Duncan Hamilton.

‘Not much need of an update when he’s rather obviously dead,’ he said. ‘What I’m more interested in is what he might have said to you before he died.’

That didn’t sound good, and neither did the way this man was looking at her.

‘We don’t give out information to non-relatives,’ she declared, ‘so will you please go back to the waiting room.’

He didn’t look as though he was going to. In fact, a look of distinct irritation appeared on his face and, as he reached inside his leather jacket, every police drama she had ever seen on TV suddenly flashed into her mind.

He was going to kill her. He was Duncan Hamilton’s fixer, or agent, and though his accent was surprisingly Scottish he was probably a member of the Mafia as well, and he was going to kill her.

But that didn’t mean she had to give in without a fight, she decided.

‘OK, I’ve tried polite!’ she exclaimed, snatching a syringe from the instrument trolley beside her, ‘but polite is clearly something you don’t understand. This syringe contains a sample of your friend’s blood and if I’m not very much mistaken he’s probably HIV positive. Come one step closer to me and you’re going to be HIV positive, too.’

He glanced down at the syringe, then at her. ‘That syringe is empty.’

Damn, and blast, but she’d picked up the wrong one.

‘It’s…plasma.’ She bluffed. ‘Plasma is a part of blood, but it has no colour—’

‘Lady, that syringe is empty, and I am…’ He reached inside his jacket again, and she closed her eyes.

This was it. She was dead, finished, history, and she could see the newspaper headlines now.

Forty-five-year-old, divorced female consultant…because the newspapers always got your age wrong…murdered at the General Infirmary. Ms Kate Kennedy was found lying in a pool of blood having been shot at close range by—