Page 39 of Welcome to the Cornish Country Hospital

‘How’s your pain, Glen?’ Danni addressed the patient, who opened his eyes briefly.

‘Yeah, good.’ The drugs seemed to be doing their job, so Danni felt confident about applying the traction, which would help realign the broken bone. It was a delicate procedure that always carried the risk of injury to other areas, but things could be far worse for Glen if she didn’t do it. Holding her breath, Danni extended the inner shaft of the splint.

‘Arrghh!’ Despite the pain relief, Glen had clearly felt something. But as soon as the procedure was over, he seemed to relax again.

‘That’s it, you’re doing great.’ Danni adjusted the straps as she spoke. ‘Julia, can you check the femoral pulse again please.’

Danni checked the pulse in Glen’s foot at the same time and breathed out slowly. The bleeding seemed to have stopped and all indications were that the splinting hadn’t affected his neurovascular function.

‘Is he going to be okay?’ Jimmy suddenly appeared at Danni’s side. He looked pale and wide-eyed, but relief flooded his face as she nodded.

‘I think he’s broken his femur and he’s got a nasty gash on his leg, but it doesn’t look like he’s sustained any other injuries. We can’t be sure until we get him to the hospital, but we’re ready to move now.’

‘Bloody idiot!’ Jimmy shook his head, but then he smiled, standing next to Glen and taking hold of his hand after he’d been transferred onto the stretcher. ‘You scared the life out of me. Only you would think you had to run ahead like that to try and make the proposal a big thing, when you know I’d have said yes if you’d asked me in the middle of washing up.’

‘Sorry, I just wanted to make it special.’ Glen’s voice was still muffled by the face mask, but he looked a lot more comfortable as the group began to make their way along the track, with Jonty and Julia manoeuvring the stretcher. It was a bumpy route back to the ambulance, but they’d decided it would be okay if they took things slow enough.

‘Glen was going to propose.’ Thalia turned and gave Danni a half-smile, as they edged along the track behind the stretcher, carrying the rest of the equipment. ‘I tried to keep him talking while we were waiting and he told me what his plan had been. He wanted to run ahead of Jimmy to get to the kissing gate, so he’d be ready to propose when Jimmy got there.’

‘Idiot.’ Jimmy repeated his earlier assertion, but there was real affection in the word nonetheless. ‘He had it all planned. You know what the tradition at the kissing gate is, don’t you?’

‘Not really.’ Danni had heard the term, but had never really understood why it was called that.

‘You have to close the gate to allow the other person to start passing through, but the tradition is that you don’t release the gate again until you get a kiss. Glen was planning to say that being allowed through came with the condition of answering a very special question.’

‘That’s so lovely.’ Julia sighed. ‘My fiancé said,“It’s been three years, I suppose we ought to get married, what do you reckon?” I should have made him work a lot harder!’

‘Kara’ was the Cornish word for ‘love’, so over time Port Kara had gained a reputation as a place of romance. Lucas had asked Esther to move in with him when they’d been for a picnic at Penwick Point during a weekend away, long before Danni had decided to move there. It was an area the three of them had holidayed in together, because of Danni’s childhood memories. But he was still the last person Danni had expected to see when they reached the point where the track met the main coastal path.

‘Someone up at the car park said there’d been an accident.’ Lucas sounded breathless as he reached the group. ‘Can I help?’

‘I think things are under control.’ Danni had known Lucas for over seven years, worked side by side with him, and loved him for almost all that time, but now she couldn’t even look at him.

‘He’s got a break to the femur that needed realigning and he’s lost a lot of blood from an open wound.’ Thalia looked at Lucas, giving the information with the same sort of zeal as a teacher’s pet answering a question in class. ‘I was wondering if there might be a risk of compartment syndrome, because of how long it took help to get here? I was on my own trying to help him for almost an hour; I just hope I did okay.’

‘It looks like you did brilliantly.’ When Lucas responded, she lit up like a Christmas tree. Danni recognised that look only too well, because she’d worn it every time Lucas had given her even the slightest praise when they’d worked together.

Lucas kept his gaze fixed on Thalia. ‘Are there any symptoms of compartment syndrome?’

‘He was very pale and there’s obvious swelling to his thigh.’ The young nurse was almost glowing now, and the skin on Danni’s scalp started to prickle. Something felt off, like Lucas and Thalia were party to a secret, or an inside joke, that no one else was part of. So Danni did what she never did and pulled rank.

‘His colour returned to normal once he had some pain relief, he hasn’t complained of any numbness and his femoral pulse has been steady throughout.’ If she hadn’t been carrying so much equipment, she might have folded her arms across her body. ‘There are no symptoms whatsoever to suggest compartment syndrome.’

‘I think I should follow you back to the hospital, because if he does need surgery, he’ll be glad Thalia made that call.’ Lucas was in danger of developing a bit of a God complex in the face of Thalia’s obvious adoration and there was a familiarity between them that made her almost certain something was going on. The fact he used her name without hesitation meant he knew her and Danni had a horrible feeling it wasn’t just through work. But now wasn’t the time to ask what Lucas was doing at Penwick Point.

‘You can do what you like, but we need to keep moving.’ Danni shot a look at Jonty. ‘Let’s get Glen back to the ambulance and if Lucas wants to come into A&E to assess him when we get to St Piran’s, that’s up to him. But there’s no indication we need to delay transfer any further.’

Danni didn’t even stop when Lucas tried to put a hand on her arm. All that mattered for now was getting Glen to the hospital. She’d given Lucas the power for far too long, but it was like her blinkers were finally off, and now she could see all the things that Joe and Aidan had tried to warn her about. It made her want to cringe that she’d been so desperate for his attention, and that she’d believed his feelings for her were real. She’d spent seven years loving a man whose main priority had always been himself, but even worse than that, Esther still did. She didn’t speak to Lucas again for the remainder of the walk to the ambulance, but that didn’t mean she didn’t notice the whispered exchanges between him and Thalia. She was almost certain she heard him apologise for being so late, but she couldn’t have sworn to it. She definitely saw their hands brush against each other’s more than once, and the thought of what she might be witnessing made her nauseous. Esther was panicking about whether she’d chosen the right dress, when all the time her fiancé wasn’t even sure he’d chosen the right person. She wanted to have it out with him, but for now her patient needed her to focus on the job.

‘Okay, Jimmy, you can come in the back of the ambulance with me and Julia, while Jonty drives, if you like?’ Danni turned to address him as the stretcher was finally loaded into the ambulance.

‘Just try stopping me.’

‘Are you coming back to the hospital?’ Lucas turned to look at Thalia as he spoke, his voice soft and low. Even though they weren’t touching, there was unmistakeable intimacy between them, and tears stung Danni’s eyes. Esther didn’t deserve this.

‘I’ve got my car here.’ There was a car park just behind the point where they’d left the ambulance. ‘But I’m feeling a bit shaky.’

‘I can drive you. Maybe we should get you checked over too, when we get back to St Piran’s?’ The suggestion might have sounded innocent, but the electricity pulsing between Lucas and Thalia was obvious to Danni, because she’d felt it too.

---