Caroline Anderson - Picking up the Pieces

‘Ah-hem.’

‘What?’ She jumped guiltily and blinked at her colleague. ‘Sorry, Mary-Jo, did you say something?’

Mary-Jo chuckled. ‘Pardon me for interrupting! I said, he’s gorgeous. Six feet of solid M-A-N — whoo-whee!’

Oh! Well, I suppose so, if he’s your type…’ Cassie hastily stuffed her hair under her cap and skewered it with grips, and tried to ignore Mary-Jo’s soft laughter behind her.

‘Oh, yes, he’s my type … I wonder if he’s single?’

‘Haven’t got a clue.’

‘I’ll have to find out.’ Mary-Jo practised her smile in the mirror beside Cassie, and then winked at her. ‘We can’t have all that testosterone going to waste — criminal!’

Cassie laughed. ‘You’re disgusting.’

‘No, I’m realistic. It wouldn’t hurt you to be exposed to a little testosterone every now and again. In fact, I’ll be generous. As a seasonal gesture of goodwill, I’ll let you have him — how about that for a New Year present?’

‘Wasted,’ Cassie said drily.

Mary-Jo shrugged. ‘Oh, well, don’t say I didn’t offer, but there’s a limit to my generosity, and he is quite spectacularly gorgeous …!’

Gorgeous? Gorgeous didn’t even begin to touch it, Cassie thought. All afternoon she’d noticed him, carrying stuff in and pottering in and out of his room, and then their meeting — well! Crashing into his chest was just calculated to do unbelievable things to her blood-pressure, but surely to goodness it should have settled down by now!

And she was going to be working with him, though how she had no idea. Every time she looked up, he seemed to fill her vision, and her heart seemed to have acquired a unique rhythm all of its own tonight.

Lord knows what’s so special about him, she thought. He wasn’t particularly tall — maybe six feet, certainly not much more — not particularly broad, although what she could see of him was beautifully put together; all in all, he was pretty average, really, except for those eyes. That was it, the eyes, that amazing, shatteringly clear blue — or was it the way that oh, so soft dark hair flopped over his eyes, or the little-boy grin, lop-sided and appealing?

She shook her head hard to clear it, muttering under her breath, and jumped when his soft, husky voice sounded in her ear.

‘OK?’

She swallowed, forced herself to meet those beautiful eyes in the mirror and nodded. ‘Yes.’

‘Let’s go, then. The patient’s up here.’

She had already introduced him to the rest of the team, and now she watched as he quietly took charge as soon as the anaesthetist handed over.

He had studied the X-rays and decided to use an external fixator on the shattered tibia exposed by the sterile drapes.

‘Circulation’s a bit iffy — I want to see if I can improve that. Maybe when the bones are realigned the pressure might ease.’

After cleaning the wound and manipulating the bones back into approximate alignment, he concentrated for a while on the blood vessels, and Cassie was fascinated to watch him. He worked swiftly and economically, causing as little disruption to the tissues as possible.

She had seen other surgeons clearing such a large area of skin away from the field that the skin subsequently died and had to be replaced with grafts.

Not so with Nick. He was steady, thorough and absolutely meticulous, completely absorbed in his task, and Cassie found herself able to anticipate exactly what he needed and have it ready to give him at the precise second he needed it. As the operation proceeded, they found their minds and hands meshing in a carefully orchestrated dance, as if they were one.

It was exciting, totally absorbing, and she felt as if they’d been working together for years. There were no hitches, no hold-ups, no words needed bar the absolute minimum.

Compared to the way she worked with Trevor, it was a miracle, but then Trevor often did what she would not have done. Perhaps that was the answer. Nick seemed blessed with a methodical logic that was a gift to follow — or perhaps he was just her sort of person.

She didn’t want to think about that. The last time she had worked with a surgeon who was ‘her sort of person’, he had turned out to be someone else’s sort of person, too — and that person had been his wife.

The hurt had been deep, and the wariness still lingered, three years later. Oh, there were dates, but nothing serious, nothing — well, physical. Not now. Not since Simon.

Nick shifted slightly and she was instantly aware of the change of pressure between them, standing as they were so close together. She tried to move away, but it was impossible without moving the trolley, so she was forced to stand there, his hip hard against hers, desperately conscious of the warmth of his body and the subtle flex of muscle in his thigh as he shifted again.

He held out his hand, and she blindly reached for the trolley and slapped an instrument in his hand.

There was a little snicker from Mary-Jo, and Nick sighed pointedly.

Her eyes flew up to his face, and the blaze of fury and contempt in his eyes took her breath away. Horrified, she looked down at his hand and saw a scalpel lying there.

‘How the hell am I meant to suture him with that?’

His voice was cutting, and she felt the flush crawl up her throat and stain her cheeks. ‘Sorry, I was thinking about something else,’ she mumbled helplessly.

‘Evidently. I want —’

‘I know what you want,’ she muttered, reaching for the suture.

He said something under his breath. It could have been ‘You and me both,’ but she wasn’t sure. She wasn’t about to ask him to repeat it, anyway. She was ready with the suture but his admonishment had wounded her and she bit her lip.

She wouldn’t be much use either to him or to the patient if she couldn’t keep her mind on the job!

It seemed to take forever, but finally he was satisfied that the circulation and nerve supply was restored as well as possible. At last the fixator was screwed home, and the patient wheeled out to recovery.

As he moved away to talk to the anaesthetist about the next case, she checked her instruments, wheeled the trolley out and stripped off her gloves.

Her hands were shaking, but whether from the contact with his body or the reaction to his anger she didn’t know. It was going to be a long old night.

It was, every minute of it as long as she could have imagined, and fraught with difficult cases. As Nick said, it was the anaesthetist who had the hardest job, because several of their patients had had a skinful and their systems were already severely depressed, but she would have swapped with the anaesthetist in a second. Anything rather than stand hip to hip with a man whose temper had scalded her.

Not that she hadn’t deserved it; although her lapse hadn’t been that major, it had thrown his concentration. Not hers, though. Hers had already been thrown, or she wouldn’t have done anything so stupid. Even so, she had been unprepared for the anger in his eyes — not to mention the contempt. And they had been working so well together until then …

One man was seriously touch and go, and when the anaesthetist reported a plummeting blood-pressure Nick shook his head and stood back.

‘He doesn’t need me. He’s got comparatively little bleeding from this femur — he needs someone to take a look inside that abdomen.’

‘Spleen?’ the anaesthetist murmured, and Nick nodded.

‘I reckon. He was the driver, wasn’t he? I think he’s got an encapsulated haemorrhage, and I’m not going to go rooting about in there. Is there anyone available?’

‘Ted’s on, isn’t he?’ Cassie said quietly.

Stephen, the anaesthetist, nodded. ‘I believe so.’