Chapter Two

All in a Smile

“There he is!”

Ollie glanced over his shoulder to Patty and Lily at the front nursing station in the cardiology ward where he was starting his next night shift. Patty had been the one to whisper the words loudly as she shoved Lily next to her. Ollie rolled his eyes. The two veteran nurses started with their usual fluttering of eyelashes and sticking out of bosoms for the arrival of Dr. Rawlings. Ollie, not having breasts in his arsenal and not bothering with the rapid blinking, turned back to the whiteboard. He scrubbed out the name of the child who had vacated from bed one during the day shift and squeaked his blue pen across the shiny board to write the new one.

“Evening, ladies.”

Dr. Rawlings, tall, dark and ridiculously handsome even for a bloke in his middle years, passed by the desk. He gave a tight nod, and the two girls giggled. Considering Patty was forty-one, married with three children, and Lily, in her thirties, had been with her boyfriend for a fair few years, it was nauseating how they melted into teenagers each time the pediatric cardiology consultant entered the unit.

“Evening, Doctor,” Patty replied. “I trust you had a good sleep?”

“Thank you, Nurse.” Dr. Rawlings’ deep-gravel voice resonated off the whitewashed walls. He flashed his pearly whites. “Unfortunately I was kept up most of the day preparing for the hospital’s annual charity fundraiser. I’m organizing the auction this year.” He stroked his dark, combed-back hair. “All in the name of those who aren’t as lucky as our patients here and need urgent medical attention in the third world.”

Patty and Lily swooned. Ollie rolled his eyes. Until he realized that would come across as though he didn’t care about the sick children in war-torn countries. He did. Obviously. It was just that the doctor felt the need to constantly bang on about how fucking great he was.

The doctor marched off to the first private patient bay, and Ollie let out the breath he hadn’t realized had been gathered in his lungs.

“The things I would let that man do to me,” Lily said, flicking through the files on her lap.

“I know, right!” Patty replied. “I think I might need a thorough examination.”

Ollie snapped the lid on his pen and spun on his heels to face his two fellow nurses. He was about to offer his disapproval of their blatant sexual harassment when Dr. Rawlings slinked out of the bay he’d just entered.

“Oliver,” he called, rather sternly. No nods and casual greetings now.

“Yes, Doctor?”

“We’ll need some help in here.”

Ollie stood straighter with a curt nod. He was rather proud it had been him chosen for the task and not the two veteran nurses who bowed to the doctor’s every whim.

“Bucket of water, cloths. PDQ.”

Ah.

“Yes, Doctor,” Ollie repeated. His shoulders slumped, but he quickly straightened them out when Patty turned and nodded with an encouraging smile. Nursing meant cleaning up shit and vomit as much as it did aiding doctors.

After rushing to get the buckets and cloths, Ollie hurried into the private room in time to see the second hacking-up from the patient whose name he had just written on the board. The sick landed all over Dr. Rawlings, midway through listening to the little girl’s heart with his stethoscope, dirtying his pristine-white lab coat. Luckily, Dr. Rawlings had it buttoned up. Ollie froze for a moment as the doctor stood, popped open the lab coat in one swift rip and squirmed free of it. The shirt beneath was one of his more tight-fitting, expensive ones and tucked nicely into a pair of fitted dark blue chinos that rounded the man’s perfectly constructed arse.

“Oliver,” Dr. Rawlings demanded, waggling an impatient hand.

Ollie snapped to and stepped into the room. He passed over a cloth, and the little girl threw up again, but at least the vomit landed in the cardboard tray Dr. Rawlings held out for her. Ollie took the sick-covered lab coat to throw into the waste bin outside the door. Dr. Rawlings waved again, and Ollie rushed forward to clear up the mess.

“Probably a bit more to come out,” the doctor said.

The small, pale, and fragile little girl whimpered, snorted, and hiccupped, tears trailing down her blotchy cheeks. Her mother stood on the other side of the bed, chewing on a manicured nail. Worry washed over her pale features, but she dodged to avoid having any more vomit splashing on her. It probably wasn’t the first time the mother had been covered in her daughter’s sick, and, possibly, she’d only just cleaned up in the en-suite bathroom from the last lot, considering the splats of wet patches blotting through her top. The girl cried, hacked up a bit more, and belched, loudly.

Ollie wiped his wet cloth across the girl’s lips. She peered up at him, her blue eyes bloodshot but full of gratitude. Ollie smiled. Being a pediatric nurse meant learning to perfect the delivery of a smile. There were gradients of them. Sympathetic ones, friendly ones, humoring ones, sincere ones, and the ones he had to stick on all day, which fell into the “slightly unnerving” column. The one he gave the little girl was his best friendly smile. It made his eyes sparkle beneath his dark-rimmed glasses. He placed a soothing hand on her back and rubbed small, gentle circles.

“It’s okay, sweetie.” He attempted to soothe her. Tense vomiting caused the belching, and relaxing the body helped vomit to flow more freely. “I was sick in my own hair once.”

The little girl twitched half a smile.

“Don’t ask.” Ollie shrugged with one shoulder. “Nursing school is for more than just nursing.”

The girl giggled. Ollie was pretty sure that, at eight years old, she wouldn’t understand what he was getting at, but it helped relieve her fear, and that was what he was there for. The giggle led to continued coughing, and Dr. Rawlings shoved the cardboard container at Ollie. He held it in front of the girl’s mouth while she threw up yellow bile more freely, this time into the already filled pot of lumpy canteen food.

“Right, well.” Dr. Rawlings patted Ollie’s back while acknowledging the mother. “Oliver can take it from here.”

Ollie offered a smile to the doctor. He wasn’t sure which type it would be labeled under. Incredibly awkward could be aptly used to describe its delivery. Dr. Rawlings didn’t seem to notice, or care, and marched out of the room. Ollie sighed and watched him through the gap in the window blinds. The doctor stopped at the nurses’ station, offered his dashing smile with whatever few words he bestowed upon the ladies this time, tapped the desk, and stalked out of the cardiology wing. Ollie stuck on his friendly smile and turned back to the little girl.

“How you feeling?”

“Sick,” she replied.

Her mother stepped forward, uncrossing her arms with a harrumph. Ollie quickly merged the friendly into sympathetic.

“I thought we’d get some answers,” she hissed.

“It’s a long process,” Ollie replied. “The doctor needs to check in every so often. He has to consult with the other doctors and make decisions based on her recovery.” He continued rubbing soothing circles on the little girl’s back but stood to speak at the mother’s level. “I know it can seem like a waiting game—”

“That’s all I fucking do,” the mother snapped and ran a hand through her long blonde hair that clearly hadn’t been washed in a few days. “Wait around for men to decide what to do.”

“That’s life, honey.” Ollie removed his hand as the little girl leaned back into the bed. “But perhaps keeping the language at a child-friendly level would be best all around.”

The mother glared back. Ollie was used to it. Parents thought they could say anything, considering it was their child stuck in a hospital. They had a point. But swearing should never be tolerated while in the presence of a child, sick or not. The woman recrossed her arms and glared past Ollie as a figure approached the doorway.

“Of course, you turn up.”

Ollie twisted to see who the recipient of such disdain was, figuring the woman wouldn’t be speaking that way to a doctor in charge of her child’s care. The man at the doorway clutched a soft pink teddy bear, clearly purchased on a whim from the ground-floor shop. He smiled. His, however, was definitely in the not really wanting to but having to category. Ollie knew all about those.

“Daddy!” The little girl’s voice was hoarse and light.

“Hey, Daisy,” the man greeted, then paused at the frown displayed across the features of the girl’s mother. “I came this morning, but they told me she was being moved. I had to go to the office to sort a few things and came back as soon as I could.”

Remnants of white snowflakes dotted the broad shoulders of the man’s black trench coat, beneath which he wore a white shirt and thin blue silk tie. He ran a hand through his thick, dark hair that flowed freely, quite longish, down to his cheekbones. He wiped it away from his face to reveal deep blue eyes identical to the little girl’s and once again tried a smile.

“Well.” Daisy’s mother slapped her hands down to her sides. “If you’re staying, then I’ll go home. I need a shower. And sleep. Considering I’ve been the one to be here the whole fucking time.” She bent to kiss the tip of Daisy’s nose and then stalked around the bed.

Ollie did a quick check of the name above the bed and hoped he wasn’t going to make the same faux pas he’d made many times in his short career. He’d soon gotten used to it and cared less and less about offending mothers whose names didn’t match their child’s. But he also hated the one-size catchall “mum” that most medical professionals used. He knew how much it pissed off the mothers of regular patients when medical carers never bothered to learn their names.

“Mrs. Monroe,” Ollie started. “I do urge you again to keep the language child friendly. We are in a children’s hospital.”

The man’s eyes closed in a wince, and Ollie knew he’d done it and braced for impact. The woman spun around, and Ollie was hard-pressed not to recoil from her scowl of hatred and contempt.

“I am not Mrs. Monroe,” she growled through gritted teeth.

Ollie guessed this wasn’t her first time having to utter those words.

“And my child has undergone heart-fucking-surgery, so I’ll fucking swear if I fucking well want to!”

“Becky,” the man urged, and if Ollie thought the scowl he’d gotten had been bad, it was nothing in comparison to the one she now shot at the man Ollie figured was Daisy’s father and who no longer shared a bed or bodily fluids with Daisy’s mother.

“Fuck off, Jacob. You no longer have any say in how I act.”

She stormed past Ollie and brushed a shoulder against the man, making him bump against the doorframe. Her heels tapped on the linoleum flooring all the way out to the exit. Not even the bleeping of machines and crying of children drowned out those raps; those stomps demanded to be heard. Just like her curse words.

Ollie caught the eyes of the man he would hazard a guess was called Jacob, although he probably should ask as his assumptions weren’t going down too well that evening. He offered one of the smiles from his back catalog.

“Daddy?” Daisy croaked. She scraped her head along the pillow, her long dark hair spreading over the cheap white cotton case.

Jacob perched on the edge of the bed and took her hand in his. “I’m here, pumpkin.”

The smooth-as-silk voice, not to mention the man’s sincere compassion and concern for his daughter, made the hairs on Ollie’s arms stand up. Ollie smiled, his genuine one he didn’t struggle to put on. He went to clear up the sick and vomit that had landed on the floor. Such was the lot of a nurse.

“I was sick.” Daisy’s voice was hoarse from the obvious strain it had undergone not only from the vomiting but the breathing tube she would have had plunged down her throat the last couple of days.

Jacob wiped Daisy’s clammy hair from her forehead and felt her skin with his palm. He glanced down at Ollie, concern flickering across his face.

“Is she okay?” His voice cracked.

“The canteen food sometimes does that to me,” Ollie replied, standing and scrunching the dirty cloth in his hand. He smiled. Obviously.

“It wasn’t the meds? The pain relief?” Jacob near stuttered.

Ollie shook his head and nodded for Jacob to follow him outside the private room. The concern across the man’s face was unmistakable. A man clearly in love with his daughter, who feared all news, good or bad.

“What is it?” Jacob asked, once outside in the main ward, trepidation in his voice. He divided his gaze between Ollie and the gap in the window blinds.

“We don’t like to say that medication might be the thing making children sick, if they can hear or understand,” Ollie explained. “It can bring fear of trying any new medicine. So, we make light of it. The canteen served pasta today. Lord knows what they put in that sauce, right?” He shrugged.

Jacob nodded. He ran his floppy hair back from his face and scrubbed under his nose.

“Sorry, this is all—”

Ollie cut him off. “It’s okay,” he said, and his fresh-faced, genuine smile came to the forefront without any coercing. “The best we can do at this stage is to keep her smiling.”

Jacob nodded. He glanced through the gaps in the blinds to his daughter, exhaustion across his otherwise handsome face.

“I’ll bet she’s a firecracker, am I right?” Ollie said.

Jacob tore his eyes away from the window and slowly chuckled, giving a fond nod. “She can be, yeah.”

“Then she’ll be just fine.”

“The surgery went all okay?”

That was a question and not a statement. If this was the girl’s father, it seemed a little off that he hadn’t already been informed how the open-heart surgery had gone, by either a doctor or the girl’s mother. It would have been a couple of days ago, at least—one day for the patient in Intensive Care, two in the High Dependency Unit, to today moving into the main Cardiology wing. Clearly the man had a tempestuous relationship with the mother, but still, this was their daughter who’d gone through a major operation. Surely differences should be put aside?

“Nurse?”

Ollie snapped out of his thoughts and quickly offered a smile. “Sorry.” He wasn’t normally one to ponder so much about his patients’ family lives. “Let’s go check her notes. I’ve just come on the night shift, so wasn’t here during the day.”

Ollie gestured for Jacob to reenter the private room where Daisy sprawled out on the thin mattress, eyes closed, hugging her pink teddy bear. Ollie picked up the clipboard at the end of the bed and checked through all the written observations and notes collected during the day shift. He’d been given a handover on arrival and brought up to speed on all his patients, but it never hurt to check through the written words to be sure. The doctors sometimes added in their own notes from time to time, so it would have been foolish to think he would know it all on a twenty-minute handover from the day nurse.

“All went according to procedure,” Ollie said, skimming the notes. Jacob nodded, pulling up the comfy chair beside his daughter’s bed and gripping her hand. “It says here surgery lasted four hours. The ASD repair has been patched and patient responding well. She woke up approximately five hours after surgery and has been in and out of consciousness since then. All obs normal.”

Ollie hooked the clipboard back on the end of the bed. Daisy was out cold again, and Ollie understood she looked a lot paler than how her father would be used to seeing her. Ollie was more used to pale children. Unfortunately.

“Tough cookie, really,” Ollie remarked. “To be on the ward so quick. If she’s already been up, eating, talking, and throwing up, then she’s on my list of all-time greats. She’ll be home by tomorrow, building a snowman by Wednesday, dancing by Thursday, and running you ragged by the weekend. You’ll be begging for me to take her back.”

Jacob snorted in amusement, and his piercing blue eyes, with their now added sparkle of relief, caught Ollie off guard. Ollie had blue eyes himself, but in comparison to this man’s dark features, his seemed washed out and gray. Jacob’s eyes could light up a room.

“Thank you, Nurse.” Jacob stroked his thumb along his daughter’s delicate hand, being careful not to catch the IV drip stuck into her vein.

“Ollie.” Ollie moved around the bed to hold out his hand. “The name’s Ollie. I’ll be Daisy’s night nurse until she’s discharged.”

Jacob shifted in his seat, slipped his hand from his daughter’s, and took hold of Ollie’s. His grip was firm, and his cold skin scraped against Ollie’s palm as Jacob slipped his hand into his. “Jacob,” he said. “Jacob Monroe.”

Jacob’s fingers curled around Ollie’s, and he gave one shake before slipping his hand away and covering his daughter’s hand once more. Ollie twisted on his loafers, the rubber bottoms squeaking against the floor. He walked over to the door to leave the man alone with his daughter. She seemed in good enough care now, and Ollie had another three children to check half-hour obs on.

“I suppose you think I’m a bad father.”

Ollie stopped. He wasn’t sure if the man was talking to him or his daughter. Jacob’s eyes were firmly on the girl in the bed, so Ollie thought perhaps he was intruding on a moment and went to walk out, until Jacob lifted his bowed head.

“I didn’t know.”

Ollie smiled. It was all he had as a comeback.

“Me and her mother aren’t together, anymore. Haven’t been for quite some time.”

Ollie was used to parents treating him as a confessor. Under strenuous circumstances, people often chose nurses to open up to. All that was required of Ollie during those situations was to offer a sympathetic ear. And add it to his list of patient confidentiality. He nodded and smiled the category of smile that went into the this holds no other meaning other than the fact I have heard you.

“I work away a lot. Came as soon as I heard,” Jacob continued. “So thank you for letting me know about the surgery. Means I don’t have to beg Becky to explain it all.”

Ollie fixated on the man’s voice. It was deep and low yet had a smooth undertone, like the low buzz of bees wading through honey. He couldn’t help note the sheer regret in it too. Whether that was about Jacob not being there for his daughter during her surgery or about his breakup with her mother, Ollie wasn’t sure. But he guessed which female had most of Jacob’s attention as Jacob leaned forward to kiss his daughter’s forehead.

“The surgery is usually a waiting game for parents,” Ollie offered. “Long hours hanging around, not able to do anything. Then ICU and HDU—they mostly drift in and out of consciousness with no real idea what or who’s there. This bit here”—Ollie nodded at the bed—“is the hard part. The part where parents are needed most. You’ve got perfect timing, in her book.”

“Thank you, Ollie,” Jacob replied, giving a somber smile in return.

Ollie hated to admit the tingle he felt at hearing his name uttered by this near stranger. He nodded and scuttled out of the door before any further feelings could be felt. He bumped into Taya trotting his way, coat slipping off her arms and dark ponytail swishing as she ran. He could smell the smoke as she trundled past.

“When do you start your resolution, then?” Ollie asked with a smirk.

Taya twisted around to stick her tongue out. Ollie shook his head. He didn’t blame her, really. Second week of January and all that. Which would officially start in… He lifted his wrist, then slapped it down to his side with a mumbled curse. He no longer had the watch he’d worn since he was sixteen. The one his father had given him. He pulled at the fob watch clipped to his scrubs pocket by a plastic monkey face, and the retractable wire zipped free for him to check the time. Three hours. Three clear hours until the second week of January.

Seriously, what can happen in three hours?