Marion Lennox - Midwives On Call - Stealing The Surgeon's Heart

Faint with longing, she mumbled with protest as he pulled away, her lips stinging, her body alive.

‘I have to go,’ Ciro said in that low, husky drawl that had her insides turning.

‘Do you?’ It was bold and it was brave and it was completely out of character, but it was exactly how he made her feel, caution thrown to the wind. But Ciro deftly caught it and handed it softly back.

‘I do,’ he said slowly, as he stared down at her, his eyes infinitely kind, taking away the sting of embarrassment at her earlier boldness. ‘And you have to be very sure that this is what you want.’

She did want.

But in a flash of self-preservation Harriet didn’t voice it, just nodded back at him, chewing on her bottom lip as he went on.

‘This has been a wonderful evening, Harriet, and it would be very easy to…’ He gave a small shrug. Maybe he didn’t know the right word, or maybe he knew that if he voiced it, made it real, then it would be even harder just to walk away. ‘I don’t just want to console you, Harriet. Do you understand what I’m saying?’

Dumbly she nodded, watching as he picked up his keys and left.

Heading back onto the balcony, Harriet sat in the darkness hugging her knees to her chest, listening to lapping waves. Slowly her breathing evened, slowly sensibility crept in, bravado fading with every passing second.

Ciro might be worried that she’d regret it in the morning, that this was a mere rebound, but Harriet already knew from just one kiss that it was way more than that.

Pulling her wrap tighter around her shoulders, she shivered for a moment, the absolute magnitude of what was taking place only just starting to hit home.

Ciro had been right to halt things, he had been right to insist that they take things slowly.

It would be so very easy to fall.

But almost impossible to get up again.

‘HARRIET!’

The same voice that filled her dreams was summoning her from sleep, a loud banging on the door snapping her into consciousness. Harriet stumbled out of bed, desperately trying to orientate herself, recognising the urgency in Ciro’s voice, that frantic call for assistance she had heard from more doctors than she could remember.

But she wasn’t at work.

It took a moment to find the light switch, a moment to comprehend that this wasn’t a dream and that she wasn’t at work, that she wasn’t even at home, but it was definitely Ciro knocking loudly at her door and from the urgency in his voice this was no time to try and locate her gown.

‘Harriet!’ His shout didn’t fade as she flung open the door draped only in a bathroom towel, blinking at the bright hall lights of the apartment block, squinting at Ciro who was crouched in her doorway equally suitably undressed in a pair of dark boxers. He was pulling on a pair of runners. ‘Those kids that were partying on the beach…’ Footwear on, he was heading for the stairwell, giving her just enough information to act before he bolted down the stairs. ‘I’ve called for an ambulance, they’re in trouble.’

And that was all the information she needed. Berating the fact she wasn’t tidier, Harriet located her shorts from her bedroom floor and pulled them on before yanking open her chest of drawers and grabbing the first T-shirt that came to hand. For the sake of speed and safety she followed Ciro’s cue and spent thirty seconds pulling on her own runners so she could race down the stairs and out into the night. The air was cool now, the foreshore eerily dark without the familiar glow of the cafés. There were just a few streetlights to guide the way. The moon was hidden behind low clouds, bobbing out occasionally to give Harriet a view of what lay in store as she ran along the beach. And it wasn’t a pretty sight.

Ciro, waist-deep in the water, was diving in, swimming towards a surfboard that an exhausted swimmer was trying to drag to shore, an inert body lying, floppy and prone, on it. Harriet knew, even from this distance, that the victim was in serious trouble. However, causing her even more concern right now was the group of hysterical teenagers that were shouting and swaying on the beach, screaming frantically for Ciro to hurry, one even trying to run into the inky water. Harriet was genuinely concerned that this already bad situation could turn into a complete disaster.

‘Stop him,’ Harriet shouted, pointing to the drunk teenager who was already knee-deep. But her voice was carried away in the wind. Her only option was to run faster, to stop him before he drowned himself.

Accelerating harder, her breath caught in her lungs, the salty air stung her nostrils, her heart pounded in her chest, and she tried to ignore the pull of her recent stitches as she stretched the boundaries of gentle postoperative exercise.

She could feel the waves whipping around her ankles and already her trainers were making running even heavier. But if she wanted to stop him there wasn’t time to take them off. The ground suddenly shifted beneath her, the water waist-high now, and Harriet took a final lunge at the young man, deciding in her own mind that if she couldn’t reach him there was no way she was going in any further, the water was just too deep, the surge too strong for her in her already exhausted state.

‘Get back to shore.’ His arm was wet under her grip, shrugging her off.

‘I want to help.’

‘Not this way,’ she shouted. ‘They’re bringing him in. That man’s a doctor. You’re going to end up needing to be rescued yourself.’

Mercifully he didn’t take another step out, but neither was he heading back to the safety of the shore, and Harriet knew she only had a small window of time to persuade him before foolish bravado took over and he headed back out.

‘You can help him,’ Harriet shouted, ‘by going to the street and directing the ambulance.’

‘But Vince needs his mates.’

‘He needs medical help,’ Harriet said urgently. She was freezing now, struggling to keep her footing. ‘You need to wave them down and show them exactly where we are. Come on,’ she insisted, heading back to the shore and praying he would follow her lead.

After a small hesitation he saw sense, wading through the waves to his waiting friends, urging them to the street. But Harriet’s real work had barely started. Ciro was swimming back now with the other rescuer, both men attempting to guide the surfboard, but Harriet could see it was growing increasingly difficult as they neared the shore, the breaking waves making the task more difficult. She watched with her heart in her mouth, knowing from her brief foray in the water just how exhausted Ciro and the rescuer must be, but knowing that unless they hurried they weren’t going to make it back in time, that already it might be too late to save this victim.

‘Stay there, love.’

Sheer relief flooded her as she heard the welcome sound of reinforcements. Three burly men, alerted by the distressed teenagers, were rushing past her, heading out just as Ciro had done, with no thought for their own safety, willing to help a stranger in trouble. And many hands did make light work. They dragged the victim those last exhausting metres and as they lifted him out of the water, not for the first time Harriet thanked her lucky stars that these men had arrived. The victim was a thick-set, burly guy and it would have been an almost impossible feat in Ciro’s and the rescuer’s depleted state to drag him the last few metres to where Harriet was waiting. Wasting no time, Harriet set to work, sweeping his airway clear, palpating his neck for a pulse and then pinching his nostrils and extending his neck. She delivered two swift breaths into the patient before commencing cardiac massage.

‘I’m coming.’ Ciro was nearby, his hands on his knees, coughing, choking on the salty water that must surely be filling his lungs, trying to somehow summon the energy to complete the task.