Healing the Single Dad's Heart

One of the nurses was at her door. ‘What’s wrong, Tan?’ she asked.

‘I’m sorry for waking you, but one of the kids that came in last night—he’s taken a bad turn.’

Lien was already walking back to her bedroom to grab some clothes. ‘Tell me more.’

‘He’s seven. Khiem admitted him with a type of malaria. His temperature had been really high and he had some infected bites. We started him on IV fluids and IV antibiotics. For a few hours we thought he was picking up.’

She’d finished pulling on her trousers and blouse. Her stomach had that sinking feeling as she quickly brushed her teeth. Over the last couple of years she’d managed to get dressed and out of the house within two minutes. As she crossed the grounds towards the hospital she twisted her hair up and fastened it with a clip.

A range of things was shooting through her mind. Japanese encephalitis? It could progress out of nowhere really quickly.

She’d only just made it onto the ward when Joe joined her. He was wearing jeans and a red shirt. Her stomach twisted. It was the one he liked to wear in bed.

‘Where did you come from?’ she asked.

He gave her a soft smile. ‘Haven’t you realised I’ve got a built-in radar when it comes to you?’

She returned his smile. Since coming back from the other hospital their relationship had blossomed quickly, and no one seemed surprised.

They never slept overnight in the same house but she often joined Joe and Regan for dinner, and frequently told Regan a bedtime story. It was always the small hours of the morning when she made her way back to her own house. They’d never really discussed it. There had been plenty of times when Joe had hugged her tighter and asked her to stay. But for Lien it didn’t feel right. She didn’t want Regan to wake up early one morning and find her in Joe’s bed when he wasn’t expecting it. She liked the way their relationship had been a slow burn.

It made it feel more real. More valuable. She’d got to know both Joe and Regan over months before anything had happened. They were friends first. He respected her. Getting to know him felt like peeling back layers. The big Scot was so much more vulnerable than anyone really knew—she suspected even his mum and dad. He hid it well. But the fact that he exposed little bits of it to her made her appreciate how close they were becoming. There were still parts of herself that she kept locked up—she continually tried to avoid thinking about the differences in their backgrounds. So she couldn’t really expect him to tell her everything at once.

Esther’s name was barely mentioned. Lien didn’t like to ask questions. What she knew and what she’d learned had mainly been through casual conversations about something else, or from the little snippets that Regan occasionally blurted out.

His family were so welcoming. She’d already had an open invitation to visit Scotland from his mum and dad, and while that was lovely, it only made her feel more self-conscious. Could she really visit and be around people so obviously wealthy? She hadn’t fitted in before, and she’d vowed never to feel like that again.

Joe touched her arm and smiled at her. There was an intensity to the gaze between them now, an intimacy, and every time he looked at her that way her mouth automatically responded. ‘Tell me about our patient,’ he said.

Tan appeared with the notes and gestured them both over to the room where the small child lay. She spoke quickly. ‘This is Chinh. He was admitted last night with a fever and infected bites. He has malaria and has been on IV fluids and IV antibiotics with little effect so far. His heart rate has increased, and his blood pressure has dropped in the last twenty minutes.’

Lien went to step forward but Joe got there first. He touched the little boy’s hand and his head shot round, his gaze fixing on hers. She could tell immediately he was concerned. ‘What?’ she mouthed.

Joe bent over the little boy and started saying a few words in Vietnamese to him, asking him how he felt, and if he could tell him his name, with little response.

He ran his hands over the little boy’s arms, lifting the sheet to look at his leg. Two of the bites on his lower leg looked particularly angry. One had a nasty thin red trail tracking just underneath the skin.

‘Sepsis,’ said Joe quietly, his head flicked to Tan. ‘Do we have a sepsis trolley?’

Lien shook her head. ‘No.’

He turned to face her. ‘We have a history of skin infection, he’s tachycardic, his breathing is shallow, he’s confused and it looks like one of the bites is tracking. His hands are cold and clammy and his colour is poor.’ He pulled his stethoscope from his pocket and listened to the little boy’s chest. ‘Shallow breathing,’ he murmured.

He shot her a nod of acknowledgement. ‘For me, this has to be sepsis.’

He gave her a few seconds. Her brain was racing. It had been a while since she’d seen a child with sepsis. Their deterioration could be very rapid as the infection raced through the blood, and the body’s own overwhelming response could lead to tissue damage, organ failure and death.

She reached up and turned the IV bag around. ‘These antibiotics clearly aren’t working. Let’s give him something else. Let’s do something about that blood pressure too.’

‘He needs an ICU,’ said Joe in a hushed voice. ‘Is there one nearby we can transfer him to?’

‘Let me try and arrange it,’ she said, tears pricking at the back of her eyes.

Sepsis could rarely be predicted but sometimes, if it was recognised early enough, action could be taken to stop it being fatal. Lien was praying that Tan had called them quickly enough to try and have some kind of effect.

She picked up the phone. Transferring a patient from their hospital to the nearby ICU would be costly. May M?n Hospital would be expected to pick up the cost as the referring hospital. The truth was, Lien didn’t care about things like that. But life at the hospital meant making a decision that could affect everyone who worked here. It could mean fewer supplies, fewer facilities for the large population of people that they served. She could stop and wake up Khiem and Hoa to consult with them. But they trusted her. And she knew the decision had to be made.

She started speaking to the ICU, arranging the admission by speaking to the receiving physician, then booking an ambulance to transfer the little boy. Tan had already spoken to the parents—but they hadn’t arrived yet.

Joe moved about, making up a new set of IV antibiotics and starting their administration. He monitored the little boy alongside Tan, charting everything carefully.

He was meticulous, and she was grateful for that, because she could feel herself starting to feel overwhelmed at the speed with which the little boy’s condition was deteriorating.

The ambulance arrived and they helped with the transfer. The little boy’s parents appeared just in time to climb in the back of the ambulance and kiss him before the transfer. By now Khiem and Hoa had appeared, with Hoa offering to drive the parents to the other hospital.

Lien waited until everything was done and the ambulance had disappeared in the distance before she felt her shoulders start to shake.

Joe exchanged a glance with Tan as he slung an arm around Lien’s shoulders. ‘Is there anything else that needs to be done right now?’

Tan shook her head and Joe nodded gratefully. ‘I’m taking Lien for a break.’

He walked her back across the gardens to his house, settling her on the sofa while he woke Regan, got him dressed and fed him breakfast in extra quick time.

Regan was his usual chatty self and didn’t seem to notice that anything was wrong.

Joe bent down and whispered in her ear. ‘Do you want to wait here while I drop Regan at school?’

She shook her head. Her stomach was in such knots that she just wanted to get some air. ‘I’ll come with you. The walk will do me good.’

She still felt jittery. She couldn’t stop thinking about the little boy. It didn

’t matter that Hoa had admitted him the night before. Lien had been on call last night. Maybe she should have gone over to the ward in the middle of the night just to double-check on the patients. Instead, she’d been in Joe’s house—in Joe’s bed—for a few hours before finally stealing back to her house in the early hours of the morning.

Tan had come for her this morning, but if Lien had been there, would she have picked up any deterioration earlier?

Joe held her hand the whole way to the nursery, and had his arm around her as they walked back, guiding her into one of the local coffee houses and sitting her at a table. She didn’t even need to say what she wanted. An iced coffee and a bar of her favourite Vietnamese chocolate.

She’d expected him to sit opposite her, but he didn’t. He sat next to her, putting his arm around her waist.

As she reached for her coffee she realised her hands were shaking.

‘We need to give it a few hours,’ Joe said. ‘I’ll phone to find out how he’s doing. You know things will be hectic while they try to stabilise Chinh.’

It was almost as if he’d flicked a switch and turned on a tap in her. All her emotions bubbled to the surface. ‘What if I missed it? What if I could have picked this up hours ago?’