St Piran's: Tiny Miracle Twins. Maggie Kingsley

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СКАЧАТЬ in terms of time or personnel.’

      ‘Not everything can be measured in terms of time management, or personnel distribution,’ she said acidly. ‘Especially the care of very vulnerable babies.’

      ‘I see,’ he said, but she doubted whether he did as she watched him type something into his state-of-the-art phone, which could probably have made him a cup of coffee if he’d asked it to.

      Figures, statistics had always been his passion, not people, and he didn’t seem to have changed.

      ‘Connor—’

      ‘Does this unit normally have quite so many unused incubators? ‘ he asked, gesturing towards the two empty ones at the end of the ward.

      ‘There’s no such thing as “normal” in NICU,’ she protested. ‘We’ve had occasions when only three of our incubators have been in use, times when we were at full capacity, and last Christmas we were so busy we had to send babies to Plymouth because we just couldn’t accommodate them. It was tough for everyone, especially the families.’

      ‘It would be.’ He nodded. ‘Christmas being the time when most families like to be together.’

      And you’ve missed two with me. He didn’t say those words—he didn’t need to—but she heard them loud and clear.

      ‘Things don’t always work out the way we planned,’ she muttered, ‘and babies can’t be expected to arrive exactly when you want them to.’

      ‘Not babies, no. Grown-ups, on the other hand,’ he added, his eyes catching and holding hers, ‘have a choice.’

      And you chose to walk away from me. That was what he was really saying, and she swallowed painfully.

      ‘Connor, please,’ she said with difficulty. ‘This is a good unit, an efficient unit. Please don’t make this personal.’

      His eyebrows rose. ‘You think that’s what I’m doing?’

      ‘I know it is,’ she cried. ‘Look, I can understand you being angry—’

      ‘I’m sorry to interrupt,’ Rita interrupted, looking anything but as she joined them, ‘but I’m afraid we’ve had a complaint about your car, Sister Flannigan.’

      ‘A complaint?’ Brianna echoed in confusion, and Rita smiled.

      A smile that was every bit as false as the sympathetic sigh with which she followed it.

      ‘You’ve parked it in the consultants’ side of the car park today instead of the nurses’. Easily done, of course, when you’re stressed—’

      ‘I’m not stressed—’

      ‘Of course you are, my dear,’ Rita declared, her face all solicitous concern, but her eyes, Brianna noticed, were speculative, calculating. ‘How can you possibly not be when you’re doing two jobs?’

      ‘Sister Flannigan has two jobs?’ Connor frowned, and Rita nodded.

      ‘Our nurse unit manager returned to Spain a few months back, and, as Admin haven’t yet appointed his replacement, Sister Flannigan has had to temporarily step into the breach, which is probably why we’re not as efficient as we should be.’

      ‘I can’t say I’ve noticed any inefficiency on Sister Flannigan’s part,’ Connor replied, attempting to walk on, but Rita was not about to be rebuffed.

      ‘Oh, please don’t think I’m suggesting Sister Flannigan is inefficient—’

      Yeah, right, Rita, Brianna thought angrily, and this is clearly payback time because I chewed your head off yesterday.

      ‘But when you’re as much of a perfectionist as I am,’ the ward clerk continued, all honeyed sweetness, ‘I do like everything to be just so.’

      ‘Which makes me wonder why you’re still standing here,’ Connor declared, ‘and not back in your office, dotting some i’s and crossing some t’s.’

      The ward clerk’s mouth opened and closed soundlessly for a second, then she clamped her lips together tightly.

      ‘Well, no one can ever accuse me of remaining where I’m not wanted,’ she said, before stomping away, and Brianna sighed.

      ‘Which, unfortunately, isn’t true.’ She glanced up at Connor hesitantly. ‘Thanks for saying what you did, for backing me up.’

      For a moment he said nothing, then his lips twisted into something like a smile. ‘I thought I always did. I thought we were a team.’

      They had been once, she remembered. There had been a time when she couldn’t have imagined her life without him, and then, little by little, things had changed, and two years ago…

      ‘I’m sorry, Connor,’ she murmured, ‘so sorry.’

      ‘Sorry you left, or sorry I found you?’

      His eyes were fixed on her, and the awful truth was she couldn’t give him an answer, not without hurting him, and she backed away from him, afraid he would realise it.

      ‘The car,’ she said haltingly. ‘I have to…I need to move my car.’

      She was gone before he could stop her and, when the ward door clattered shut behind her, Connor clenched his fists until his knuckles showed white.

      She hadn’t answered him. He’d asked her a simple, easy-to-answer question, and yet she hadn’t answered him, and he needed—wanted—answers.

      Dammit, she owed him that at least, he thought furiously. When he’d first seen her yesterday, his initial reaction had been to thank God she was safe, his Brianna was safe, but then anger had consumed him. A blazing, blinding, irrational anger that she could be standing in front of him looking better than he’d seen her look in a long time, had been living happily in Cornwall for the last two years, when he’d been to hell and back, fearing the worst. And she’d disappear out of his life again in an instant given half a chance. He’d seen it in her dark brown eyes, in the way she looked at him.

      Well, she wasn’t going to walk away from him a second time, he decided. This time he wanted answers, proper answers, and not some nonsense about him never talking to her, never listening, and he headed for the ward door to follow her.

      ‘I’m really very sorry about this, Sister Flannigan,’ Sid, the hospital handyman, said uncomfortably after she’d moved her car out of the consultants’ bay and into the nurses’ part of the car park. ‘To be honest, I don’t think there should be any divisions in the car park, but some consultants…’ He shook his head. ‘It’s a status thing for them, you see.’

      ‘It’s all right, Sid, truly it is,’ Brianna said quickly. ‘I don’t know where my brain was this morning…’ Well, she did know—it was on Connor, she’d been thinking about Connor, and how she didn’t want to meet him again, but she wasn’t about to share that even with someone as nice as their handyman. ‘So could you please tell whoever it was who complained that it won’t happen again?’

      The middle-aged handyman didn’t СКАЧАТЬ