Needed: Full-Time Father (Medical Romance) Read Free

tiny one, that his heart was fibrillating and that the reading was so fine the machine couldn’t pick it up, a tiny chance that he had a type of cardiac arrhythmia that could be reverted and Madison stoodback as Guy gave Gerard the benefit of the doubt and delivered a shock to his lifeless body.
    ‘Still asystole.’ Guy’s voice was hoarse. ‘Keep up the massage.’ They needed more hands, needed help here now, and thankfully it arrived. Shirley, the nursing supervisor, racing into Resus, her expression appalled when she took in the scene.
    ‘Bag him, Shirley,’ Madison ordered, clipping a tourniquet to Gerard’s flaccid arm and getting IV access as Guy continued to pound Guy’s chest. ‘Vic, call for an ambulance, tell them we need the MICA.’
    ‘MICA?’ Vic gave a panicked, bewildered shake of his head.
    ‘The mobile intensive care unit, Switch will understand. Tell them to say that our doctor has had a cardiac arrest and we need him to be transferred, we need an ICU bed…’ Madison was pulling up the standard drugs used during a cardiac arrest and handing them to Guy, before he even had to name them. She winced as he shocked Gerard again, the horrible, singed smell filling the sterile room. She felt the indignity of seeing the immaculate Gerard with his chest bared, his tie cut and pushed to the side. But as was so much the man, a handkerchief still peeped out of his suit pocket—a poignant reminder of the immaculate man they were trying to save.
    ‘Look, I don’t know if it means anything,’ Vic spoke, his voice shaky, unsure of his reception, but Guy was open to any suggestion and nodded urgently for Vic to go on. ‘He said something about a sore back last night when he went home.’
    ‘He could have a ruptured aortic aneurysm,’ Guy said, referring to a dire surgical emergency where the main artery of the body ruptured.
    ‘He strained his back, moving a box with me, last night,’ Madison said, shaking her head. ‘I was there, Guy. It was a simple strain, I saw it happen myself…’
    ‘Open a thoracotomy tray,’ Guy called, and almost on autopilot Madison went to retrieve one. She set it up to open Gerard’s chest, to rip through his sternum so that Guy could visualise the heart, massage it with his hands, clamp the aorta, tie off a bleed or remove a clot, do something, anything, that might prolong this wonderful life. But all Madison knew was that Gerard wouldn’t have wanted it.
    ‘We did everything we could.’
    She’d heard it said so many times, had used the sentence herself on many, many occasions, but maybe for the first time Madison knew exactly what it meant. That sometimes to do everything you actually had to be brave and do nothing—because nothing modern medicine had to offer was going to help now. Despite heroics, despite best effort, nothing could make a difference for Gerard—certainly not ripping open his chest with a saw.
    ‘He’s gone.’ She couldn’t believe she was saying it, yet she knew that it was true. Knew that going on even a moment longer was an indignity, that Professor Gerard Dalton had gone and nothing was going to bring him back.
    ‘He might have…’ For a second Guy wavered, tornbetween hope and truth, and for the first time Madison actually looked at him, took in the man she’d never formally met but who seemed somehow to understand the atrocity of what had taken place. Dark blond hair flopped over his forehead, the same raw anguish she had first witnessed when he had knelt down beside Gerard’s lifeless body in the entrance hall more visible now. His hazel eyes stared first at her then down at his patient, his tall, muscular body slumped in resignation, the rhythmic massage stilling. But his fingers were still knotted together over Gerard’s chest as he stared at the monitor.
    ‘There’s no history?’ he checked. ‘Any pre-existing—?’
    ‘He’s a workaholic,’ Madison whispered. ‘That’s all I know.’
    And the agony she had