‘Yep, me too,’ Tress agreed, sitting up straighter, as if full of sudden resolve. ‘I just want to make sure Odette is okay, then go home, call your brother… In fact, I’ll let him know what’s happened now.’ Tress picked up her phone and called, then almost immediately mouthed, ‘Voicemail,’ before pausing for a few seconds, then, ‘Hey, Noah, it’s me. So the date was a bust and loads of other stuff has happened. I’m with Keli and we want to tell you about it, so call me back. Love ya.’ Tress hung up, slipped her phone back in her bag, and then noticed that Keli and Yvie were staring at her. ‘Why are you looking at me like that?’
Under normal circumstances, Keli would keep her nose out of it, but sod it, tonight was anything but normal. ‘I just think…’ She paused. No. She shouldn’t say anything, but suddenly a couple of comments her mum had made about Noah and Tress were making sense to her. The way they spoke to each other. The connection between them. It was more than friends. She could see it.
Yvie didn’t have the same level of restraint. ‘You and Noah would be perfect together. We love Cheska, but the rumour in the hospital is that she’s going to go off to some swanky new job in America.’
‘Is it?’ Keli asked, astonished.
‘Oh. Sorry. I heard that today,’ Yvie replied. ‘I knew there was something I meant to tell you but you kind of stole the thunder with the whole celebrity boyfriend thing. Anyway, Tress…’ She refocused. ‘I wish you’d get it together with Noah, because that would be the perfect romcom ending to this story.’
‘No,’ Tress flinched as if she’d been slapped. ‘No. I can’t. You’re wrong.’
‘But why? What’s wrong with my brother?’ Keli tried to make it sound like a joke, but she did want to know the answer.
Tress thought about it for so long, Keli gave up on getting a straight answer, until finally Tress said, ‘Not a single thing. And that’s why I could never risk losing him.’
Before Keli could ask anything more, they all juddered forward as the car came to a stop in the drop-off zone right by the ambulance bay at Glasgow Central. Keli snapped straight back into work mode, sprinting from the car, so she was ready in case the paramedic team unloading Odette needed her. In all the time she’d worked at the hospital, this was the first time she’d arrived via the A&E entrance.
‘Take Calvin to the waiting room and I’ll come get you,’ she told Tress, as she and Yvie fell in beside the stretcher.
They’d only gone a couple of steps when the doors burst open and Dr Cheska Ayton, the A&E chief, rushed out.
‘I got your text,’ she told Keli. ‘Listen, on you go inside, go see Noah.’
Keli didn’t understand. Why would Noah be here? He wasn’t working tonight. She’d seen him earlier at their mum’s and he didn’t mention that he was coming back here. Was there some emergency on his ward and he’d been called in? Or had he come to chat to Cheska on her break? Yep, that must be it.
Tress got to the relevant question before her. ‘Noah is here?’
Cheska stopped, her gaze going to Tress, then back to Keli.
‘He was brought in an hour ago. There was an accident on the motorway.’
MIDNIGHT – 8 A.M.
33
ODETTE, TRESS, NOAH AND KELI
Keli and Tress both took off at a sprint, through the doors that Cheska had just opened, down the corridor and into the central nursing bay on A&E. Heart thudding, fear squeezing her chest so hard she could barely breathe, Tress fell behind Keli, realising that she’d know where to go, all the while, screams filling her head.No. No. No. Not again. Not again. Not Noah. Not Noah. Not him.
Keli slammed to a halt at a board with a whole lot of numbers and names on it, searching frantically for something… ‘There! Cubicle Six. This way.’ She gestured to a couple of the staff over at the nursing station and they waved her on. No need for ID checks when you were a nurse at the hospital and your doctor brother had just been brought in.
She grabbed Tress’s hand and they ran along the corridor, ignoring the moans and conversations and drunken yells coming from behind the curtains that they passed.
Tress was trying desperately to make sense of it. Why was Noah on the motorway? Last she heard he was going to his mum’s for dinner? This didn’t make sense. Maybe he was called in? But usually he’d text her to let her know that. And whycouldn’t she breathe? And when were they going to get there? And WHERE THE HELL WAS HE?
Keli jarred to a stop, their panicked eyes met, and she knew they were both thinking the same thing – please don’t let this be bad.
Chest heaving, fear running through every vein, Tress gave an almost indiscernible nod, and Keli threw back the curtain and…
And…
And…
He was lying on the bed, eyes closed, one side of his head packed with a dressing, a bandage wrapped around it. Noooooooo.
Tress heard a strangled gasp, realised it came from her, then watched as his eyes flew open and he jolted his shoulders off the bed, only to exclaim with pain and flop back down again.
In two steps, she was at his side, his sister next to her, just as he exclaimed, ‘Ouch, shouldn’t have done that. Head rush.’
