Dr. Dark and Far-Too Delicious by Carol Marinelli Read Free Book Online Page B

herself that he had his razor set that way, that he cultivated the unshaven, up-all-night, just-got-out-of-bed look, that this man’s looks were no accident.
    Except he had been up all night.
    Jed let out an irritated hiss as he read through the patient’s treatment card, as if she were the one who had made the simple mistake, and then wrote up the prescription in his messy scrawl.
    ‘Thank you!’ Jasmine smiled sweetly—just to annoy him.
    She didn’t get a smile back.
    Mind you, the place was too busy to worry about Jed’s bad mood and brooding good looks, which seemed to get more brooding with every hour that passed.
    At six a.m., just as things were starting to calm down, just as they were starting to catch up and tidy the place for the day staff, Jasmine found out just how hard this job could be at times.
    Found, just as she was starting to maybe get into the swing of things, that perhaps this wasn’t the place she really wanted to be after all.
    They were alerted that a two-week-old paediatric arrest was on his way in but the ambulance had arrived before they had even put the emergency call out.
    Jasmine took the hysterical parents into an interview room and tried to get any details as best she could as the overhead loudspeaker went off, urgently summoning the paediatric crash team to Emergency. It played loudly in the interview room also, each chime echoing the urgency, and there was the sound of footsteps running and doors slamming, adding to the parents’ fear.
    ‘The doctors are all with your baby,’ Jasmine said. ‘Let them do their work.’ Cathy, the new mum, still looked pregnant. She kept saying she had only had him two weeks and that this couldn’t be happening, that she’d taken him out of his crib and brought him back to bed, and when the alarm had gone off for her husband to go to work... And then the sobbing would start again.
    She kept trying to push past Jasmine to get to her baby, but eventually she collapsed into a chair and sobbed with her husband that she just wanted to know what was going on.
    ‘As soon as there’s some news, someone will be in.’ There was a knock at the door and she saw a policeman and -woman standing there. Jasmine excused herself, went outside and closed the door so she could speak to them.
    ‘How are they?’ the policewoman asked.
    ‘Not great,’ Jasmine said. ‘A doctor hasn’t spoken to them yet.’
    ‘How are things looking for the baby?’
    ‘Not great either,’ Jasmine said. ‘I really don’t know much, though, I’ve just been in with the parents. I’m going to go and try to find out for them what’s happening.’ Though she was pretty sure she knew. One look at the tiny infant as he had arrived and her heart had sunk.
    ‘Everything okay?’ Lisa, early as always, was just coming on duty and she came straight over.
    ‘We’ve got a two-week-old who’s been brought in in full arrest,’ Jasmine explained. ‘I was just going to try and get an update for the parents.’
    ‘Okay.’ Lisa nodded. ‘You do that and I’ll stay with them.’
    Jasmine wasn’t sure what was worse, sitting in with the hysterical, terrified parents or walking into Resus and hearing the silence as they paused the resuscitation for a moment to see if there was any response.
    There was none.
    Jed put his two fingers back onto the baby’s chest and started the massage again, but the paediatrician shook his head.
    ‘I’m calling it.’
    It was six twenty-five and the paediatrician’s voice was assertive.
    ‘We’re not going to get him back.’
    He was absolutely right—the parents had started the resuscitation and the paramedics had continued it for the last thirty-five futile minutes. Jasmine, who would normally have shed a tear at this point before bracing herself to face the family, just stood frozen.
    Vanessa cried. Not loudly. She took some hand wipes from the dispenser and blew her nose and Jed took his fingers off the little infant and sort of held his