She held eye contact with him only momentarily before she looked away, barking orders at those around her. Jacob squeezed her hand and then stepped away before he began doing as she asked, but it was this tender gesture after all she'd done to him that made Connie change her mind. "Actually, Dylan you take over here. I need to be out there trying to shift some of this backlog."

As Connie went to slip from the room, she glanced back at Jacob to see him offer her a gentle smile. Though she smiled back, his eyes were already back on the girl in front of him.

...

"Call for you on line 2, Mrs Beauchamp!" Noel called when she strode past him a short while later.

With a tut, she just held out her hand for the phone. "Connie Beauchamp."

"I'm so sorry to call, I know you must be awfully busy-" A voice came down the line.

"I am. Who is this?" Connie questioned sharply.

"...No one. Sorry for wasting your time."

The voice went to hang up, but hesitated when Connie offered, "It will be even more of a waste if you don't tell me why you wanted to speak to me."

"Well, I... He'll be annoyed with me for calling you, but you are the only person he's mentioned and I wasn't sure where else to begin. I'm looking for Jacob. Jacob Masters. He was supposed to meet me at the train station a short while ago, but he didn't arrive and his phone is switched off."

She paused, irritated and confused. He had told this person about her?

"Who is this calling?" She heard a sigh on the other line before the woman spoke again.

"It's his mother."

She couldn't deny the empty, sick feeling that had now quickly occupied her stomach. She motioned to the receptionist that she was taking the call to her office, her heels clicking quickly as she tried to recover herself. She wasn't aware that Jacob had told her anything about their relationship, he knew that neither of her parents were alive and when they were together he had expressed no intention of bringing her to meet his family.

"I'll pass on the message, I'm sure he'll call you back when we're less busy."

"Look, I know that you're his boss..."

"He's not available at the moment."

"You don't understand..."

"I'm sorry, but we're short staffed and I'm not going to pull him away from a patient, in an emergency department, just because he forgot you were going out. I'll tell him to..."

"It's his brother's funeral." The woman spoke quietly, but Connie heard her, and her eyes immediately turned in the direction of resus, from where she stood in the centre of her office.