Page 30 of Prognosis Christmas Baby

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A month passed. Theirrelationship blossomed. Slowly at first, as Maggie tried to ration their time together, resisting the strong attraction that tugged at her continuously. But as they worked together more and more, their shifts coinciding more and more, walking to the car park together at the end of the shift, it seemed only natural to go back to her place together.

Still, it was clandestine. Maggie had some pride. She wasn’t stupid, she knew it was no love match and had no desire for all and sundry to know. When he left she didn’t want to face a barrage of poor Maggie whispers or sympathetic how-are- you looks?

So they never went to dinner or the movies or anything that resembled a proper date. And that was fine by her. This was an affair — pure and simple. And both of them wanted the same thing — as much naked time as possible.

Maggie wasn’t interested in getting to know him. She didn’t want to pepper him with questions about his dead sister, or his home, or his parents, or his grandmother, who he mentioned sometimes with such great affection. Or his plans for his flying paediatrician service.

What was the point when he was leaving?

They went to her place, steamed up the bedroom windows well into the night - or day, depending on their shifts - and then did it all over again the next time.

As far as Maggie was concerned, the less she knew, the easier it would be when he got on that flight to London.

Because one thing was for certain, she was going to miss the physical side of their relationship fiercely. Waking up to his wandering hands, the magic of his kiss, the feel of him deep inside her.

After being asexual for so long, he’d awoken a raging nymph that was going to be hard enough to deny. She didn’t want to miss the non-physical aspect of Nash as well.

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The first day in Decemberdawned bright and early as Maggie watched it through the windows at work. The sunrise was glorious but she knew pretty soon she’d have to twist the knob and shut the blinds as the rays would be poking their intense fingers between the slats, stabbing the dilated pupils of her nocturnal staff with laser-like intensity.

Night duty, hideous at the best of times, was worse in summer. In winter, when the sun finally made an appearance it was a sign the shift was almost over and it had an instant reviving affect, like a magic wand. In summer the big yellow ball made an appearance at four a.m. with hours to go until knock-off time.

In summer it sat low in the sky, mocking them all.

‘Are you going to help me with this tree or what?’

Maggie sighed and shut the blinds, blocking out the depressingly early sunshine. God, she hated this hour of the morning. Between four and six was the hardest. It was the time when things most often went wrong. When the hours dragged the most. When she felt cold and hungry and even occasionally downright nauseous.

A Christmas tree was a great distraction from four-in-the-morning misery. ‘Yep,’ she said. ‘Let’s do it.’

She passed Nash at the central station hunched over his computer. He was rubbing at his jaw, looking haggard and tired and eminently sexy. He winked at her as she went by and her stomach did its wild jig thing.

Not a good combination in its already delicate state.

Luckily the unit was quiet tonight, only three patients. That could all change in a matter of hours so it was nice to have lulls, no matter how brief, when they had time for frivolous things like Christmas decorations.

From where the tree was set up she could see all their patients. Bed three was still occupied by Toby, whose condition had continued to worsen. He was now on high-frequency ventilation and nitric-oxide therapy. The duff-duff noise of his ventilator reverberated through the unit like a stereo system as the pistoning membrane delivered a couple hundred breaths per minute.

His kidneys had also started to fail and a dialysis machine whirred quietly in complete contrast to the ventilator. It efficiently extracted, cleaned and returned Toby’s blood via the vascath in his groin. Things were looking grim for the little boy and Maggie’s gaze moved away quickly.

She couldn’t bear thinking about the battle he was waging.

In bed four was a five-year-old girl who’d been bitten by a brown snake twelve hours previously and was on the unit for monitoring after administration of the antivenin. She was doing well, self-ventilating on room air and showing no signs of envenomation.

In bed eight was a four-week-old baby boy who’d had a tracheostomy for a critical airway a few days before. He’d been born with a rat’s-tail trachea, interfering with his ability to breathe properly. He was coping well with his operation but needed to stay on the unit for a week to ten days for one-on-one management in the initial post-op stage.

Bed eight had seen six patients since Ruby’s death a month ago but still the tragedy lingered in Maggie’s soul. Some kids, some cases touched you more than others and made her wonder what the hell she was doing here.

Luckily the patients since Ruby had all been in and out reasonably quickly helping to restore her faith.

Linda had put a Christmas CD on as they worked and it chimed happy, snowy, merry tunes and Maggie concentrated on them instead. It even managed to partially drown out the duff-duff of Toby’s oscillator.

Maggie yawned, bone tired as she threw some tinsel around the base to cover up the rather utilitarian plastic bucket the tree was propped in. The vague queasy sensation she’d quelled earlier returned with a vengeance.

God — night duty sucked!

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