Page 12 of Mending Hearts at the Cornish Country Hospital (The Cornish Country Hospital #6)

Drew and Saskia had spent all morning in full PPE undertaking a postmortem ordered by the coroner’s office, on a patient who’d been very close to death when he was discovered by walkers on Bodmin Moor, less than twenty miles away from the hospital.

By the time the man had reached the emergency department, he’d gone into cardiac arrest and, despite attempts to save him, had sadly died.

There was every indication that he’d fallen and that the shock of his injuries and exposure to a violent storm overnight had ultimately caused his death, but it was Drew and Saskia’s job to keep an open mind and undertake the postmortem as if it wasn’t already a foregone conclusion.

If Drew ever reached the stage where he thought he had all the answers before he even started, it would be time to leave the job.

In a place as beautiful as the Cornish Atlantic coast, it seemed hard to believe that tragedies occurred.

Of course accidents happened everywhere, and the stunningly rugged coastline and beautiful moorland within easy reach of the area each held their own risks, despite their appeal, especially if people chose to ignore the basic principles they needed to follow to safeguard themselves.

Just like the man who’d gone into the sea for a swim, drunk and alone as night was falling, the moorland walker had taken foolhardy risks.

He wasn’t wearing the right kind of clothing for a walk on the moor, and he hadn’t had a phone with him when he was found.

He hadn’t been wearing a coat either. He was ill-prepared, but that didn’t make it any less of a tragedy.

In Drew’s experience, many people, especially men below the age of forty, carried around a feeling of invincibility.

He’d never had that; perhaps it was because of his neurodiversity, or maybe it was because of Flora’s death and the way it had affected Drew and everyone else around him.

Either way, that sense of surety had alluded him, and he wasn’t sorry.

Not when he saw what it cost so many others.

Despite the sometimes foolish behaviour, Drew never blamed the people whose death became a part of his working day.

Anyone could make a mistake, and even if their actions had been reckless to the point where the outcome had become almost inevitable, Drew didn’t judge.

He hadn’t walked a mile in any of their shoes and he didn’t like the idea of judging people on that basis.

It would have made him far too much like his father, and that was one thing he definitely didn’t want to be.

Drew’s father had spent his professional life judging other people, in his role as a high court judge, but his personal life had been far from beyond reproach.

He was a cold and manipulative man whose affairs and cruelty towards Drew’s mother had driven her to the edge more than once.

No one who’d encountered him on a professional basis knew the real him, and he was a skilled actor even with some of his inner circle, playing the bereaved father after Flora’s death to an Oscar-worthy level.

Yet he’d failed to be there for his broken-hearted wife, or the son left bereft by the death of his sister.

All he really cared about was his career and the things that inflated his already sizeable ego, including the string of much younger women fooled into believing his public persona.

So no, Drew didn’t want to be like his father, not the least little bit.

‘I’m going to go to the shop after I’ve cleaned up.

’ Drew made the announcement as Saskia began the scrub down process, once Connor Deakin’s postmortem was complete.

They’d been able to confirm that his cause of death was as suspected.

Evidence of both drugs and alcohol had been found at the scene, although the toxicology report that would confirm the extent of the role they had played in his death would take several weeks to be finalised.

Taking drugs and drinking definitely wouldn’t have helped the way Connor’s body had responded to the exposure overnight, and the compound fracture to his left leg had also caused internal bleeding.

It was no less of a tragic loss of life, but at least his family didn’t have to contend with the fact that someone else had been involved in his death.

‘What’s the matter, did you forget your wine gums this morning?’ Saskia turned to look at him, her eyes widening in response to Drew’s announcement.

‘No, I think it might just be a two packets kind of day.’

‘I didn’t know they existed.’ By now she was looking at him as if he’d suddenly sprouted two heads.

He should probably have been offended that something as simple as him deciding to make a second trip to the hospital shop in one day seemed so extraordinary, but he was a creature of habit and he could hardly blame his assistant for being shocked.

The truth was he didn’t want her questioning him further, because he didn’t like lying; in fact, he hated it.

The first pack of wine gums were still untouched and the reason he wanted to go to the shop had nothing to do with wanting to buy more of them.

He wanted to go there because the early shift in the emergency department would be finishing soon and he’d seen some of the A&E staff at the shop, grabbing a coffee after work.

He couldn’t be sure Eden would be there, but there was a chance she would.

Drew couldn’t have explained why he wanted to see Eden, even if he’d been up front with Saskia about his reason for going to the shop.

Eden hadn’t got in touch with him to arrange to meet up and, even if she had, it would only have been for them to talk about her son.

He couldn’t rationalise his reason for wanting to see her, because it wasn’t rational.

He wanted to see Eden because he was attracted to her, and he didn’t want to be.

Relationships were complicated, and in Drew’s experience, far more painful than they were worth.

Yet here he was, lying to his assistant about where he was going, with the sole intention of hoping to see Eden.

‘Double wine gum days definitely exist and today is one of them.’ Drew shrugged. ‘Can I get you something? You’ve worked really hard today. You always work really hard, and I’m sorry if I don’t tell you enough, but I’m very grateful.’

He meant every word, but as Saskia looked at him again, tilting her head to one side as she did, he suddenly realised she might think he had an ulterior motive for the compliment he’d just paid her.

He was fifteen years older than Saskia, and any kind of romantic connection was the last thing on his mind when he thought of her.

Although the nuances of social interaction could be as treacherous for Drew as open moorland could be to a drunk man who’d left his jacket and phone behind in the pub.

He wanted to tell her that he absolutely didn’t mean anything by the compliment, except to express his gratitude for her help, but the last thing he wanted was to make things worse.

He’d done that far too often in the past.

‘Thanks, Drew.’ Behind the clear screen of the face shield she was wearing, her expression relaxed into a smile and the tension left his shoulders.

Saskia knew him well enough now and there’d been no misinterpretation of what he meant.

Thank God. ‘I appreciate working for a boss like you too. You’re always giving me the opportunity to learn and you treat me like an equal, even though you’ve got enough certificates to wallpaper this whole mortuary. ’

‘Not quite.’ Sometimes Drew just couldn’t help being literal, but he needed to get out of here before he said something else awkward. ‘So can I get you anything?’

‘I’ll have a Snickers bar if they’ve got one and a can of Coke. My boyfriend thinks I’m a total weirdo, but I’m always ravenous after a postmortem. Maybe it’s just my body reminding me that I’m alive.’

‘Could be, but there’s nothing wrong with being a weirdo.

The world needs us.’ Drew knew there was a good chance that Saskia had deliberately reminded him she had a boyfriend, but he was trying not to overthink it.

His head was already full of how to handle imagined conversations with Eden if he did bump into her, he didn’t need anything else to worry about.

* * *

The first half of Eden’s shift had been just as she’d expected it to be.

She was in A&E paediatrics and had looked after patients with the kind of fairly routine childhood injuries and infections they often dealt with.

There’d also been a ten-year-old boy who for some reason had decided to see if he could charge down his classroom door using his shoulder and had ended up with a broken collarbone instead.

It wasn’t until towards the end of her shift that Bea, an eight-year-old girl, was brought in by her very worried parents, who’d been keeping her off school for the past week with flu, but she seemed to be getting worse.

‘I can’t understand why she isn’t getting any better. We’ve all had the flu, but she’s getting more and more listless.’ The little girl’s mother, who’d already introduced herself as Sara, had clutched her daughter’s hand tightly as she spoke. Bea had hardly even seemed to respond.

‘Can you tell me a bit about her other symptoms?’ It had been easy to see how terrified Bea’s parents were and Eden had done her best to be as reassuring as possible.

Over the years, she’d discovered that time spent on trying to stop the parents from panicking always paid off and it was the best way to ensure she got the information she needed.

A parent frozen with panic wasn’t what Bea needed right now.