being ushered away by a security guard wearing the ship’s smart grey uniform. Fraser was crouched on his haunches over a large balding gentleman in his mid to late fifties.
‘What happened?’ She dropped to her knees beside him. It could have been the sight of him, knee-deep in an emergency, but her heart immediately upped its pounding.
‘Cardiac arrest. Help me intubate him. I’ve already called for a stretcher.’ He paused for a beat to meet her eyes. ‘They said he won some pretty big money. He obviously got so excited he collapsed.’
Sara felt stabs of adrenaline, as if she was hot-wired to Fraser as he started CPR. Nosy onlookers in cruise ship attire and enough bling to sink the ship stood out against others who were happily still playing on the slot machines, only feet away.
She finished fixing the Ambu-bag and an oxygen cylinder, then quickly lifted out the nasal tubes. Fraser took over. His Adam’s apple rose subtly above the collar of his white shirt and she followed it up to the dark line of stubble around his jaw as he pumped on the rich man’s hairy, tanned chest. A Rolex watch caught her eye. A golden wedding band.
Fraser held the man’s head back so she could help, and she lifted his puffy eyelids, noting the pale green irises. Behind her a slot machine dispensed more coins with a happy jingle. So bizarre.
She inserted the tube into the man’s trachea slowly, while the efficient blur that was Fraser administered more CPR. His biceps flexed through his shirt. Sweat glistened on his neck. Someone was talking about a stretcher. It was close. But she could barely hear a thing against the pinging and spinning and chinking of the coins.
‘Go again!’
Holding the man’s head on her lap, she put two fingers to his neck as Fraser commenced with another set of compressions. His hair was falling almost into his steely blue eyes. He was completely focused.
She held her breath. Still no movement under her fingers. Fraser watched her shake her head and used the Ambu-bag for rescue breaths. Their shoulders were touching. A stretcher was being carried down the aisle.
‘Everyone move aside, please. We have a medical emergency. Move aside, please.’
People responded quickly to Fraser, reading the waves of urgency in his words. Where was this man’s wife? Sara wondered. Was she on board too? Maybe he’d come here without her? Lots of people came on cruises alone—some kind of escapism, she supposed, from whatever they hoped could be left on shore.
They lifted the man onto the stretcher together.
Was Fraser Breckenridge escaping something out here? He’d tried to call her after she’d left him six years ago, but she hadn’t answered. When she’d fallen pregnant, after an out-of-character, grief-stricken, vodka-fuelled one-night stand, she’d seen it as one more sign that she and Fraser were truly over—especially when he’d stopped trying to contact her. Even if Fraser had wanted to be with her, there was no way she would have asked him to help raise another man’s baby.
‘Let’s get him on life support,’ Fraser said, jolting her back to the moment.
The medical centre, which was more like an infirmary, was located on the second deck. The smell of disinfectant was an extra punch to her swirling gut as they hurried in, and she clicked onto autopilot as they passed oxygen masks and pads and the IV.
Fraser arranged the patient on one of the few beds. It was just the two of them in the room. She started tugging the man’s shirt open even further, noting the soft gleam on his bald forehead, the dents around his ears from his glasses. Where were his glasses?
She prepped him for the defibrillator, just as Fraser rushed to hook it up. She watched him administer the jolts at one-fifty, eyeing the defib screen for signs of life, and noticed, despite herself, the faint lines on Fraser’s face that hadn’t been there six years ago—extra layers of thought around his forehead.
There was still no pulse.
‘Give me more,’ he instructed.
She obeyed and prayed it would work. The room was getting hotter. It felt as if hours had passed in the tiniest space she’d ever had to work in, packed with lab test equipment, immobilisation boards, X-ray and EKG machines and bottle after bottle of pills. Through the window land was now in sight, shimmering green under bright sunshine.
It was still a whole new world to her. It clearly wasn’t to Fraser.
‘We have a pulse!’ she announced finally, and relief flooded her veins.
A knock on the door minutes later made her jump, and she found her hand on Fraser’s arm. He steadied her, and at his touch she felt something inside her waking from a deep slumber.
‘Is he alive? Oh, God, please don’t tell me he’s dead. He always said he wanted to die on a cruise ship... He blimmin’ well said that before we left...’
A busty, tanned woman was talking at the speed of an auctioneer as she tottered over on high heels and placed two leathery brown hands on their patient’s cheeks, peering with squinty eyes into his big round face.
‘He’s breathing,’ she stated.
Sara couldn’t tell specifically if the woman thought that was a good thing or a bad thing.
‘You’ll be happy to know he has more than a few years left in him yet,’ Fraser told her.
Sara watched the woman pull something from her glossy designer handbag. ‘I’m so sorry, Harry. I was in the wine club with the ladies.’ She placed a pair of glasses on his face before dropping a tender kiss on his forehead.
Maybe she really did love poor old Harry, Sara thought, glancing at Fraser, who promptly shot her a wink. Love wasn’t always black and white, after all. Perhaps she should give Fraser a chance to say his piece. What had happened between them hadn’t all been his fault, after all; maybe they owed it to each other at least to get the past out, so that they could put it behind them and work together without it hanging over them.
Right?
No. Bad idea.
Hearing Fraser explain himself might mean she’d open a door that was better off closed. No matter the attraction that would never go away, everything was different now. Esme needed her mother’s full attention. What if they couldn’t find a donor for her?
Oh, God, she couldn’t lose Esme.
‘WHAT’S THAT THING stuck to your body?’ The kid in the bright green board shorts was pointing a finger at Esme’s catheter. ‘Are you an alien?’
Fraser’s brow creased where he sat three feet away on a beach chair, but Esme dropped the spade she was carrying and turned on her camcorder.
‘What do you know about kidneys? Three, two, one—go!’ She was challenging the kid, with five years of confidence behind her words. ‘I bet you don’t know anything.’
The boy’s face scrunched up. He put a hand over the lens as his mother called out from beneath a giant sun hat in the shallows. ‘Marcus! What are you doing?’
‘You’re weird,’ Marcus told Esme loudly, and ran off.
Sara was off her chair in a flash.
‘It’s OK, Mummy.’ Esme sounded tired. ‘I know he just doesn’t understand.’
‘No, he doesn’t.’
Fraser watched Sara reapplying her daughter’s sunscreen, listened to her chatter, trying to make her smile. She made a great mother. He’d always known she would make a good mother, and there had been a time when he’d actually thought they’d make a great team as parents some day—not that he’d ever told her that.
Sara