Ultimate Dilemma (Justice Again Book 2) by M Comley (best books under 200 pages txt) 📕

She waved goodbye and left the locker room to begin the long walk through the hospital corridors down to the car park. There were fewer people around at this time of night. Visiting hours had finished long ago, and they were starting the graveyard shift as most of the staff called it. Anything after ten was deemed that, and it was already ten past by the time she stepped through the main entrance. Fortunately, she made it to the car without being side-tracked by any other members of staff.

Nadia crossed the road to the designated staff car park and pressed the key fob to open her Mini. It was a rust bucket but went well and had never let her down. She’d had her eye on a new car but there was no way she’d be able to afford the extortionate payments on a loan, not on her meagre wage, and there was no way she would ask her father to chip in. He’d made it perfectly clear years ago, that once she started earning money for a living she was on her own. That suited her. If she couldn’t afford something, she never bought it. She had no debts, and her bank balance had a couple of hundred sitting in it at the end of the month. Talking to her friends, not many of them could say that.

Most of her friends were sinking in a whirlpool of debt just so they had bragging rights to owning the latest cars and, in some cases, designer outfits. Not her. She was plain old Nadia, risk averse and happy to plod along in life.

The right man had failed to come her way. At twenty-eight, most women would be panicking about not having a band of gold on their finger, but not her. All right, she couldn’t say she enjoyed her life as it was, but she was better off than most women she knew. She had a roof over her head and a career she loved.

She drove towards home and turned up the radio when one of her favourite songs came on. She loved Michael Bolton, had even splashed out on a ticket to see him up in Birmingham a few years back on his sell-out tour of the UK.

The day’s anxieties drifted away during the drive. She was looking forward to opening the bottle of wine she’d spoken about with Dawn and Jane. Her father would be watching some action movie or other on Netflix in the lounge. That didn’t bother her. She’d rustle up her omelette and take it upstairs, eat it in her bedroom while catching up on the soaps she’d recorded that had aired earlier on in the evening.

The light was on in the lounge, and there was a gap in the curtain, one of her pet hates, and her blood boiled. Her father usually did that just to annoy her. She exited the car and made her way towards the house. She slotted her key in the lock. The TV was blaring as usual. She called out, but her father either ignored her intentionally or hadn’t heard above the din. After slipping off her shoes, she pushed open the lounge door. “Dad, do you have to… Dad, no, are you all right?”

Her father was lying on the floor, blood soaking into the cream carpet all around him. It was up the walls and all over the matching cream leather sofa. Tears stung her eyes, and her throat clogged up. Calm, keep calm. Do what you need to do to make sure he survives. She gently shook his shoulder and then tore off her jacket and pressed down on the gaping wound to his throat.

“Dad, please, stay with me.” She reached for her handbag and fished out her mobile to ring nine-nine-nine. “Yes, I need an ambulance at seven Rotherhide Close. It’s my father, he’s been attacked in our house… I’m a nurse, I’ve just finished my shift and found him like this. Get an ambulance, please hurry.”

“Don’t worry, one is on its way. You know what to do or do you need me to see you through the procedure?” the woman at the control centre asked.

“No. I know. Please hurry, he’s lost so much blood. Shit, he’s not going to make it.”

“Hang in there. The ambulance is a few minutes away.”

“Dad, they’re on their way. Don’t you dare fall asleep, you hear me?”

A few minutes later sirens wailed in the distance. She shifted her father’s head off her lap, opened the front door and urged the paramedics to hurry. She led the two men into the living room. They took over, assessed his vital signs and injected him with morphine.

“What’s your name, love?”

“It’s Nadia. I’m a nurse. I did what I could to stop the bleeding. Please, you have to save him.”

“He’s more comfortable now. We’ll take him to the hospital, they’ll be able to tend to his wounds better there. Do you want to come with us or stay here and talk to the police?”

“The police? No, I need to stay with Dad, he needs me, the police can wait.”

The paramedic with the brown hair nodded and asked his colleague to fetch the stretcher. The other man shot out of the room.

While he was gone, the paramedic with the brown hair asked, “What happened?”

“I don’t know. I’ve been on shift all day. He was like this when I got home. Will he make it? Look at all the blood he’s lost.” She pointed at the huge amount covering the sofa.

“We’ll have to wait and see. Stay positive, these things have a habit of working out for the best.”

“I wish I had your faith.”

“Has he spoken to you?”

“No.”

“Don’t worry. Let’s get him to the hospital and go from there. Do you need to call a member of your family?”

“I don’t want to worry my sister, not until I know the outcome. Oh God. Dad, please be all right.” She touched his cheek with a