Nurse with a Billion Dollar Secret, page 1
California Nurses
Welcome to Leanora Paz Memorial Hospital!
Roommates Serena Dias and Avery Smith have done it! They are officially qualified nurses. And they’re ready to hit the wards of Leanora Paz Memorial Hospital and save lives! While it’s never easy to start a new job, Serena and Avery are about to face more obstacles than most new nurses. Because Serena has a nine-month secret that she can’t keep from surgeon Tobias Renfro. And Avery has a billion dollar secret that he must keep from Dr. Robyn Callaghan!
Escape to San Diego with...
Serena and Toby’s Story
The Nurse’s One-Night Baby
by Tina Beckett
And
Avery and Robyn’s Story
Nurse with a Billion Dollar Secret
by Scarlet Wilson
Available now!
Dear Reader,
There’s something so nice about writing a duet with another author. Tina and I started writing medical romances around the same time and it was so nice to brainstorm with her about our apartment-sharing fellow nurses. This is also the first time I’ve written a male nurse, so that was fun!
Avery and Robyn both have nicknames. He’s Mr. Sunshine and she’s Dr. Grumpy, but in the San Diego hospital where they are working, opposites clearly attract. One has hidden secrets, and the other has a childhood past that has had a lasting impact on their life. Working these two through these big life issues was challenging in order to bring them to their happy ending.
This book is coming out around International Nurses Day. I’ve been a nurse in the NHS in Scotland for over thirty years and I don’t regret a single second—even in the tough times over the last few years. So I want to wish all nurses, all over the world, happy International Nurses Day—you do a spectacular job!
Best wishes,
Scarlet Wilson
Nurse with a Billion Dollar Secret
Scarlet Wilson
Scarlet Wilson wrote her first story aged eight and has never stopped. She’s worked in the health service for twenty years, having trained as a nurse and a health visitor. Scarlet now works in public health and lives on the west coast of Scotland with her fiancé and their two sons. Writing medical romances and contemporary romances is a dream come true for her.
Books by Scarlet Wilson
Harlequin Medical Romance
Night Shift in Barcelona
The Night They Never Forgot
Neonatal Nurses
Neonatal Doc on Her Doorstep
The Christmas Project
A Festive Fling in Stockholm
Double Miracle at St. Nicolino’s Hospital
Reawakened by the Italian Surgeon
Marriage Miracle in Emergency
Snowed In with the Surgeon
Visit the Author Profile page at Harlequin.com for more titles.
This book is dedicated to my fellow nurses all over the world on International Nurses Day. Thank you for the job that you do.
Praise for Scarlet Wilson
“Charming and oh so passionate, Cinderella and the Surgeon was everything I love about Harlequin Medicals. Author Scarlet Wilson created a flowing story rich with flawed but likable characters and...will be sure to delight readers and have them sighing happily with that sweet ending.”
—Harlequin Junkie
Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
EPILOGUE
EXCERPT FROM CHILDREN'S DOC TO HEAL HER HEART BY ANNIE CLAYDON
CHAPTER ONE
THE DAY WASN’T supposed to start out like this. It just wasn’t. Dr Robyn Callaghan pushed her hair out of her face for around the twentieth time and wondered why the air-conditioned hospital seemed to be keeping everyone cool but her.
She could feel a horrible trickle down her spine as she climbed the stairs—two at a time—to answer her sixth page of the morning. Her breakfast/lunch was still sitting on the cafeteria table, next to her coffee. There hadn’t been time to eat it. She’d need to remind herself about the solitary banana in her pocket whenever she finally got a minute.
She pushed open the doors to the cardiac floor and made it three steps before the arrest page sounded. No. Not again. She didn’t even listen to the rest of the message.
She looked up as she heard the echo of a similar page nearby and started running to the coronary care unit. She’d already attended two arrests in the unit that morning.
A large guy barrelled out of the door to her left and almost straight into her. Thankfully, his broad frame was deceiving; this guy could move like a dancer, as he dodged around her and gave her a half-amused smile. ‘Wrong way,’ he said as the rest of the arrest message was repeated.
‘Cardiac arrest. Main door, front entrance.’
Robyn nearly swore out loud. She spun around and darted after Mr Light-on-his-Feet as he disappeared through the door to the stairway. If the page had only gone off three minutes earlier, she would have saved herself a stair climb.
Her heart thudded as she tried to keep up with her athletic colleague. As he reached the ground floor he paused for a moment and held the door open for her.
‘Thanks,’ she breathed as she ran through and straight along the corridor to the main entrance. She could already see the commotion in front of them. A man in a suit was lying on the ground, a few people on their knees around him.
As she got closer she realised a nurse was already performing CPR on him. ‘I’ll get the cart,’ she said, darting to the right, where the outpatient department was based.
The bright red emergency trolley was fully stocked and sitting directly outside one of the consulting rooms. Robyn grabbed it and ran back to the main entrance, her brain going into automatic pilot. She lifted the defibrillator from the trolley, peeling the labels from the two pads, and positioned herself above the person doing cardiac massage.
The nurse stopped massage for a few seconds, and opened the man’s shirt, allowing Robyn to slap the pads onto his chest. It only took the machine a few seconds to read his heart rhythm.
The man from the cardiac unit grabbed a bag and mask from the cart, positioned it appropriately and started to bag air into the guy’s lungs. It was clear from his colour he wasn’t breathing for himself.
All eyes were fixed on the monitor. Two seconds later it went dead.
Robyn leaned over and gave it a knock. She’d never seen a defib turn itself off. The nurse in pale pink scrubs on the floor seemed stunned. But the guy—the dancer—in the green scrubs of the cardiac unit raised his eyebrows and got to his feet. ‘First time for everything. I’ll get another.’
He took off at a run, leaving Robyn and the outpatient nurse staring in dismay at each other. A little light flicked in Robyn’s brain. If she told her medic friends this at a later date they would all shake their heads in horror. But Robyn refused to let panic anywhere near her. While a defib was now considered an essential part of a hospital’s equipment, at some stage they hadn’t existed. ‘You bag, I’ll do massage,’ Robyn said to the nurse, hoping to kick-start her natural instincts again.
In an ideal world, she’d be trying to get venous access by inserting a cannula—but right now, that would have to wait. Come to think of it—where was the anaesthetist? There was usually one who responded swiftly to an arrest page, but, no matter how hard she strained her ears, she couldn’t hear the sound of any other pairs of running feet.
One of the hospital porters came out of a nearby room, blinked twice, then leaned over. ‘Shall I get you guys a trolley?’
They both nodded, Robyn as she started chest compressions, and the nurse, who inserted an airway and started bagging the patient.
‘Do you know anything about this man?’ Robyn asked the nurse.
She shook her head and gave a half-smile. ‘I was just going on my break.’ She glanced over her shoulder. The doors to Outpatients were closed behind her. ‘They’ll think I’m in the canteen.’
‘Robyn Callaghan,’ Robyn said quickly. ‘Just started my cardiac rotation here.’
‘Monica Garske,’ said the nurse. ‘Been in Outpatients for twenty years and never had a cardiac arrest.’ She smiled nervously.
A firm hand landed on her shoulder. ‘And you’re doing a great job.’ The guy in the green scrubs dropped to his knees. He had another defib in his hands and swopped the pads over in a virtually seamless motion. He pressed the button on the machine as an older man appeared, slightly sweaty, and stared down at them. The anaesthetist had finally arrived.
‘Tell me we can get this guy a little higher. I don’t think my back can take it.’
‘Don’t worry, Joel,’ said Mr Green Scrubs smoothly. ‘Ardo is on his way with a trolley. I’ll get him up for you.’
Robyn’s eyes were on the monitor again. ‘Ventricular fibrillation,’ she said, perfectly in time with her green-scrubs-wearing counterpart. Their eyes locked for a moment and her breath caught somewhere at the back of her throat. He might have been kneeling next to her, but she hadn’t really loo
And now was certainly not the time.
If she had the time, she might consider that the green of his scrubs definitely brought out the green in his eyes. His tanned skin and slightly longer dark hair made him resemble that Italian male model from years ago who had appeared out of water in very tight white trunks, advertising aftershave.
If she’d had the time, she might have lingered on all of that. But the human brain was amazing, and all that flitted through her mind in the literal blink of an eye.
‘Charging,’ she said, leaning forward, pressing the button and sweeping her gaze around. ‘Clear, everyone.’
Hands were lifted and everyone stepped back. The man’s body shuddered but the heart rate remained unchanged.
A trolley rolled next to them, and a plastic sliding mat appeared in the corner of her eye. Five seconds. That was all it took to slide the flexible plastic mat under the man and lift him up onto the trolley, the defib being lifted second and placed next to his chest.
‘Clear,’ Robyn said again, as if this were the most regular thing in the world. In an ideal world, she would have had the time to take him into a suitable room and do a proper assessment. But cardiac arrests were pesky. They didn’t give anyone time. In fact, they were the direct enemy of time. And she knew the sooner they could shock him out of this rhythm, the better.
‘Clear,’ she said as she pressed the button again and electric charge was applied directly to the gelled pads on his chest.
Again, there was no response. She flicked the switch to turn up the joules. As she turned back she saw that the older anaesthetist was checking the patient’s airway, and Mr Green Scrubs was tapping his arm, ready to slide a cannula in place to give them venous access. She might not know either of these individuals yet, but everyone clearly knew their job.
She waited the few seconds it took for the cannula to slide into the vein and be secured and tried not to be put out. Sometimes siting a cannula was a pain in the neck. Lots of patients had tricky veins, small and delicate, that would collapse as soon as anyone tried to get access. But her colleague had slid it into place as if it were the easiest thing in the world.
The defib showed it was ready and she checked again. ‘Clear,’ she announced, giving a nod when everyone had lifted their hands from the patient.
His body arched and after an ominous pause the heart tracing changed, giving a few spread-out beeps. Robyn held her breath. ‘Sinus rhythm, bradycardic,’ she said.
‘ER or Coronary Care?’ asked the anaesthetist.
‘ER,’ said Mr Green Scrubs, just as she said, ‘Coronary Care.’
She stared at him, hard. She was the physician leading the crash team. This should be her call.
‘No beds in Coronary Care,’ he said with an apologetic smile. ‘ER for now, and I’ll go up and clear a bed for you once we have this man stabilised.’
He was annoying her now. ‘And you are?’
There it was again. That tiny quirk of the eyebrow. She was being rude, and she knew it. But he hadn’t introduced himself.
‘Avery Smith, Coronary Care Unit.’ He had a broad smile on his face. And it didn’t help. Because this guy was more handsome than was healthy for a work environment.
‘Robyn Callaghan, I’m your new doctor,’ she said briskly.
A figure appeared next to her, pulling up the side rail and clipping it into place. ‘ER it is,’ said the porter and started wheeling the trolley.
Avery kept pace, automatically clipping his side rail into place and talking to the anaesthetist. ‘Didn’t think you had the page today, Joel.’
‘I didn’t, but Emmanuel’s wife decided to go into early labour. He had to leave.’
Avery’s face instantly creased. ‘Gemma’s okay, though? What is she—three weeks early?’
Joel gave him a knowing smile and nodded. ‘You remember everything, and yes. There’s no big problem, though. Her waters broke earlier, and she started to labour, so called Emmanuel to tell him she was heading in. I’ve never seen anyone happier.’
‘So why the long face?’ asked Avery. ‘Did you really not want to carry the page that much?’ His voice held a hint of teasing in it.
Joel shook his head. ‘No, but it means I’ve lost the theatre wager on the baby’s date of birth.’
Avery let out a laugh as the automatic doors to the ER opened and they rolled the trolley down towards the resus rooms. A harassed-looking woman with messy blonde hair frowned at them. ‘What’s this?’
Robyn bristled at the woman’s tone, about to reply, but Avery got in there first. ‘This...’ he paused at the word, making a point, but in a much smoother way than she would have ‘...is a gentleman who had a cardiac arrest at the front door. I haven’t managed to get his wallet out yet because we’ve had to shock him three times to get him back into sinus rhythm. Coronary Care is full, so could you give us some space so our doctor, Robyn—’ he said her name as if they were best friends ‘—can stabilise our man, while I go up and free up a bed for him upstairs?’
The woman rolled her eyes and let out a sigh. ‘Fine.’ She gestured with her head sideways. ‘In there. But don’t be long. This place has been hectic all day.’ She gave Robyn a stern glance. ‘And I can’t free you up a nurse.’
This time Robyn couldn’t help herself. ‘If he’d collapsed in the entrance way of your ER, could you have freed me up a nurse then?’
She could almost see the cogs and wheels of the woman’s brain turning. Robyn’s Scottish accent always got stronger when she was annoyed, and right now she was distinctly irritated. It took a few seconds for her counterpart to make sense of what she had said.
‘Fine.’ The woman turned to face Avery. ‘But I need my room back in an hour.’ She turned and headed out of the door.
‘Is everyone here always this friendly?’ muttered Robyn under her breath as her patient groaned. She moved forward and talked slowly. ‘Hi there, I’m Robyn. You’re at Leanora Paz Memorial Hospital. I’m one of the doctors. Do you remember anything at all?’
The man took a few moments, then shook his head, confusion all over his face. Avery moved into full charm mode on the other side of him. ‘I’m Avery, one of the nursing staff. You’re in the ER. Can I just check inside your jacket pocket? We want to get your name and details.’
The man gave a brief nod, and Avery slid his hand inside, pulling out a wallet he flipped open. ‘Hal Delaney?’
The man gave another nod, and Avery turned the driver’s licence to a colleague behind him to take some details. ‘Can I let someone know you are here?’
Hal sighed, clearly still confused, and patted his trouser pockets. After a few seconds, he realised his shirt was wide open and there were pads on his chest. ‘What happened...?’ he asked.
Robyn wasn’t happy. She wanted to look after her patient properly, and the noisy ER wasn’t ideal. She gently peeled the defib pads from Hal’s chest and put on some electrodes from a nearby cardiac monitor, fastening a blood-pressure cuff to his arm.
‘Hal,’ she said in a low voice. ‘We need to have a chat. Your heart wasn’t beating properly. You collapsed in the entrance way of the hospital. We had to give you some electric shocks.’
Hal’s eyes widened. He looked terrified.
She kept her voice steady. ‘Did you come here to visit someone? Or did you come to the hospital because you weren’t feeling well?’
He shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I had an appointment.’
‘At Outpatients?’ asked Robyn.
Hal shook his head again. ‘With Mr Paz.’
It was only for a split second, but Robyn noticed it. Avery froze. It was as if he’d been caught in a set of headlights.
Robyn was new here. But she knew the hospital had been built as a memorial to the wife of a wealthy billionaire businessman, who had died years earlier. The Paz surname was apparently synonymous with wealth beyond measure in the San Diego area. She was sure that the Mr Paz he was meeting wasn’t the original Mr Paz, but maybe it was his son, or grandson?
She pretended not to notice Avery’s frozen position and turned to the nursing assistant behind her. ‘Can you dial up to the office of Mr Paz and let the secretary know that Mr Delaney has taken unwell, and is currently in the ER?’
