Angel Kate Read Free Page A

died that had been the wake-up call to make her change her silly selfish life. To grow up and make herself useful in the world.
    This night, hand and voice were steady and confident as she took the emergency call.
    'St Crispin's. Accident and Emergency.'
    The staff nurse's ear received the terse message with alert detachment: three minutes warning of a bad RTA being brought in from the motorway.
    Simon Brownley, the Resident Surgical Officer, was back from supper but busy in theatre patching up a teenage motor-cyclist with a number of nasty, though not disabling, injuries.
    'Sue! Get Mike Filing!'
    Kate called urgently to a third-year nurse who had heard the emergency phone and was holding aside the curtains of the cubicle in which she'd been dressing a knife wound.
    'RTA, one man—multiple injuries, arriving in two minutes!'
    As the ambulance raced up to the emergency doors Kate was ready and waiting, glancing back anxiously over her shoulder for reinforcements. The ambulance crew would have done all they could as trained paramedics, but right now that patient needed the doctors! Where the hell had Mike got to? Surely everyone must have been alerted by the shrill call of the emergency phone.
    'Any other casualties, Ted?' she questioned breathlessly as the driver of the ambulance ran round to open up the rear doors for her to board.
    Ted Piggott shook his head, his face unusually grim. 'Poor devil must've fallen asleep at the wheel, hit one of the motorway bridges. They work too damn 'ard, our doctors. Brace yourself, Staff, we've got Mr Galvan in here!'
    The world spun.
    Then a sort of frozen professionalism urged Kate to her patient's side. Only the thick black curls were just about recognisable beneath a film of pale dust that must have showered Tom Galvan when he smashed into the concrete obstruction. He didn't seem to be wearing his thick overcoat. His swollen face was a mess of bloody lacerations. The features could have belonged to anyone.
    'You're sure it's Mr Galvan?' There was a shudder in Kate's voice as she recalled the surgeon as she'd seen him only a short while ago, tall, handsome, at the height of his physical and intellectual powers, sombrely shrugged into his heavy black overcoat.
    Tim O'Reilly winced at the memory of that tangle of yellow twisted metal. Mr Galvan had operated on his father-in-law once—removed a clot from his brain and made a new man of him. His voice was choked with emotion. 'Soon as I saw the wrecked car, I knew! I shouted it out loud. 'Not him. Not our Tom.'
    At this, though to all appearances unconscious, the injured man groaned. Kate remembered that the sense of hearing remained acute even in those close to death. She put her finger to her lips.
    The crew had seen to the basics, checking the airway and keeping their surgeon warm beneath a space blanket. Carefully Kate exposed the upper body, noting the evidence of traumatic injury: left arm oddly distorted and clutched across the chest in such a way that it was impossible to gauge the damage to heart or lungs.
    That was definitely a grunt of protest.
    'Won't let us near that arm, Staff.'
    As if he comprehended what was being said Tom Galvan sighed and muttered, and it seemed to Kate that an almost subliminal determination on the injured surgeon's part held his shattered arm immobile. Chill droplets of perspiration beaded his forehead mingling with the cuts and dirt. Reaching beneath the blanket, she noted the cold clammy feel of hands and feet, the racing, thready pulse reflecting a heart struggling to circulate its diminishing supplies of blood.
    An icy desperate calm took hold of her as her worst fears were realised. Somewhere deep within there must be haemorrhage, the silent unseen oozing of blood into the cavities of the body.
    'BP a hundred over sixty,' hissed O'Reilly. 'Pulse a hundred and fifty and rising.'
    Kate nodded, her face stiff with tension. In the absence of a doctor it was up to her to assess Mr Galvan's most urgent