Caroline Anderson - Picking up the Pieces

Mary-Jo, the circulating nurse, left the room at Cassie’s signal, and came back moments later.

‘The switchboard are paging him. He’s in the hospital.’

He appeared within seconds, and within minutes was scrubbed and opening the man up.

‘Ouch,’ he muttered. ‘Splenectomy — that’ll get his new year off to a good start!’

They were running whole blood into him as fast as possible, and as soon as the blood supply to the spleen was clamped his condition started to pick up immediately.

‘Lucky.’

The surgeon peered at Nick over the patient. ‘He may not think so when he comes round. What are you going to do about the femur?’

Nick frowned. ‘I’ll have to pin it — it’s a nasty spiral. If we could do it with traction I would, but it’ll just slide every time he moves and he’ll be back to square one. I’ll let you finish and see how he is.’

‘He seems stable now,’ the anaesthetist told them from the head of the table.

Ted shrugged. ‘You carry on — I’ve done the tricky stuff. Just warn me if you’re going to hammer anything and shake him about so I don’t stick a suture into his aorta.’

Nick grinned, his eyes crinkling above the mask. ‘OK. Here we go, then.’

They worked well together, pausing for each other occasionally, and when they were finished and the man was taken away they left the operating-room and went into the staff lounge in the theatre suite.

‘New, aren’t you?’ Ted asked, eyeing Nick over his coffee.

Nick grinned at Cassie, his anger apparently forgotten. ‘Ah — you could say that. Actually I’m supposed to start officially on Tuesday, but technically my contract runs from the first of January, so I guess I’m on the staff as of about —’ he glanced up at the clock ‘— six hours ago.’

‘Is that the time?’ Cassie asked incredulously.

The ODA popped his head round the door. ‘That’s all, folks. All quiet on the Western front.’

‘Well thank the lord,’ Mary-Jo said with a heartfelt sigh, and, kicking off her rubber boots, she curled up in the chair and rubbed her feet.

Now how does she manage to look elegant doing that? Cassie wondered in amazement. Even more amazing was the sudden realisation that Nick didn’t even seem to have noticed, but was turning to her, just as her mouth opened in an enormous yawn.

He followed suit, displaying a full set of even, gleaming white teeth, and then chuckled.

‘I wonder why yawning’s so infectious?’ she said with a strained little laugh.

Nick’s mouth lifted in a heart-stopping, crooked grin. ‘Defence mechanism. If you yawn, perhaps your body knows something mine doesn’t, so if I yawn, I’ve covered my bases without having to go to the effort of finding out why.’

‘You’re crazy,’ she told him, her voice uncooperatively breathless.

‘Mmm. Fancy some breakfast? I’m starved. I didn’t get round to eating last night, and I could eat a horse.’

Cassie’s stomach rumbled in anticipation, and she clapped a hand over it and giggled. ‘Betrayed! How can I pretend otherwise?’

His smile was slow and lazy. ‘Your body’s not very good at keeping secrets, is it?’

She flushed, suddenly aware of him again and wondering what else her body was giving away apart from exhaustion and hunger. Oh, lord, had he known what she was thinking when she handed him the wrong instrument?

Nick unwound his legs and stood up, holding out a hand to pull her to her feet.

‘Come on, then, let’s get out of this fancy dress and go and find some food.’

They disappeared into their separate shower-rooms, and emerged a few minutes later looking much refreshed. Nick could have done with a shave and Cassie felt her make-up needed a bit of attention, but, considering the night they had had, she felt they looked pretty respectable.

She was unprepared, however, for Nick’s open appreciation over breakfast in the gloomy canteen.

She paused, a loaded fork hovering in front of her mouth, and met his eyes.

‘Have I got a smut on my nose?’ she joked to break the tension.

‘I didn’t realise eating could be so erotic,’ he said softly, and she felt hot colour flood her cheeks.

She set her fork down again.

‘You’re being ridiculous.’

‘Am I?’ His gaze was hot, intent, and he took a bite of toast and ran his tongue round his lips to retrieve the crumbs. ‘Really?’

Cassie’s heart jerked against her ribs, and she looked away, taking refuge in her coffee.

‘You’re beautiful.’

She choked into her cup.

‘And you’re nuts,’ she croaked, glaring balefully at him over the remains of her coffee.

His mouth lifted again, one side tilting slightly higher to lend a touch of piracy to his lean, shadowed cheeks and wickedly twinkling blue eyes. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘You look like a pirate,’ she said without thought, and his smile widened.

He leant towards her, and his hair flopped forward again; her fingers itched to smooth it back. ‘Is that your private fantasy?’ he murmured. ‘To be captured and dragged off on to the high seas, condemned to a life of sexual slavery at the hands of the autocratic pirate king?’

She snorted inelegantly. ‘Sounds like your private fantasy to me,’ she told him bluntly.

His grin was wicked. ‘You’ve found me out. Finish your breakfast — I promise not to ogle.’

But her appetite had gone, replaced instead by another hunger, one long suppressed.

‘I don’t want any more,’ she told him, and pushed back her chair, glancing at her watch. ‘It hardly seems worth going to bed,’ she said rashly, and could have bitten her tongue out as his brows arched speculatively.

‘Oh, I don’t know.’

She glared at him, trying hard to ignore the beating of her heart and the slow spread of warmth through her veins.

He stood up too. ‘I’ll walk you back to your room.’

‘There’s no need.’

‘There’s every need. I don’t know where you sleep. How can I indulge my fantasies without knowing where you sleep?’

‘Precisely my point,’ she retorted, but her heart beat even faster. She had to get away.

‘I’ll follow you,’ he taunted softly.

She turned to glare at him, hands on hips, and met the challenge in his laughing eyes.

She chuckled, defeated. ‘You would, as well. All right, you can walk me to the door, but you’re not coming in.’

‘Of course not.’

‘Hmph.’

They made their way through the corridors of the awakening hospital, bustling now with the new shift coming on, the cleaners timing their assault on the floors to coincide exactly with the busiest period.

It was worse in the residence, with doors banging and water running, radios blaring, occasional laughter, the odd plea for quiet from some overhung young reveller desperate for a few more hours of oblivion.

‘Here we are,’ she said, and turned her back to the door. ‘My flat — or “flatette”. It isn’t really big enough to be called a flat, but it’s home, and it’s a sight cheaper and cleaner than the only sort of hovel I could find in London —’ I’m babbling, she thought frantically, but she didn’t know how to get rid of him. Try the blunt approach, she told herself. She forced herself to meet those lazy, knowing blue eyes.

‘Thank you for breakfast. Goodbye —’

‘But you’re not safely in. You might have lost your keys, or you could have had an intruder —’

‘Nice try, Mr Davidson. Bye-bye.’

He grinned appealingly. ‘Thirty seconds? There’s something I have to say to you.’

‘Can’t you say it out here?’

He pulled a thoughtful face. ‘It’s a little sensitive. It’s about your — er — lapse in Theatre.’