‘I CAN’T BELIEVE we’ve been home for nearly a month.’
‘I know…’ Kate took the pan Georgia had finished washing and began to dry it. ‘Time flies, doesn’t it? And it was a bit of a struggle to get back into routine. It was almost like jet lag, the aftermath of that epic road trip.’
It shouldn’t have been that hard to embrace her normal routine, however. Kate loved routine. Had the struggle been caused by an element of distraction? Because she had found her thoughts occupied by Luke so often? It had only taken a few days for the weariness of the long journeys and intense competition to wear off but even then, it was more than post-excitement fallout that had made Kate feel a little flat. She was too aware of what was missing from her life. She loved her job and she had great friends but there was a hole she’d been stepping around for years now.
And, more and more as the days went past, that hole was taking on a shape that looked as if it was custom made for Luke Anderson.
‘I’m still tired,’ Georgia groaned, scrubbing at the handful of cutlery she held. ‘Or maybe I’m bored.’ Her smile was mischievous. ‘If I get a callout that isn’t a challenge, I want to swap it for a new scenario. Like a bus crash or a shooting incident…’
‘Don’t say that. What if you’re tempting fate? How bad would you feel if it happened tomorrow?’
‘True. Guess I’d better be grateful for all the routine chest pains and stomach aches and overdoses.’ With a sigh, she dumped the cutlery onto the draining tray. ‘There you go. All done. Thanks for dinner, by the way. It was great.’
‘My pleasure. Your turn tomorrow. Oh, no…you’re on night shift, aren’t you?’
‘Yep.’ Georgia dried her hands on the corner of the tea towel Kate was using. ‘Hey, maybe you should go out for dinner. It’s high time you and Luke got together.’
It was Kate’s turn to sigh. ‘We keep trying but it never works out that we’ve got the same time off. I can guarantee if I text him and suggest it, he’ll be on call or something. We haven’t been able to manage a coffee since we’ve been back, let alone a whole day’s sightseeing.’
‘Make it happen,’ Georgia said. ‘You never know—it could change your life.’
‘You want to know something?’
‘What?’
Kate felt her lips curl into a smile that felt hopeful. ‘I think you might be right.’
‘Aha… I knew it…’ Georgia grinned back at her. ‘You’ve been so quiet lately. You’re really keen on him, aren’t you?’
‘We were such good friends, way back. I… I might have even had a bit of a crush on him.’
‘No way…really?’
‘It was short-lived. I got over it as soon as I realised he wasn’t interested in me like that.’ Kate bit her lip. Yes, she’d got over it fast enough but there had always been that remnant. That knowledge that this friendship had an element that made it unique. She let her breath out in a small sigh. ‘I don’t know if it could be anything more than what it always was but…’
‘But you’d like it to be.’
It was a statement rather than a question and Kate found herself nodding slowly in agreement.
‘So text him. Do it now.’ Georgia followed Kate from the kitchen into the small sitting room of their house and watched as Kate pulled her phone from her bag.
‘Oh… I’ve got a text.’
‘From Luke?’
‘Yes…’ Kate could feel butterflies in her stomach as she opened the message. Good grief, she felt like a teenager who’d been waiting for that boy to call.
‘What does it say?’
‘That he’s having a crazy week but has a day off on Saturday and maybe I’d like to go and find a ruined castle or look for the Loch Ness monster or something.’
Georgia laughed. ‘Sounds like a perfect date.’
Kate made a face. ‘Except I’m working on Saturday.’ She shook her head. ‘This is getting silly. Maybe it’s not meant to happen.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. What were the odds of you two meeting up again on a mountaintop in the Czech Republic? It was totally meant to happen.’
Kate had to smile. ‘It was certainly unexpected.’
Maybe she should really make an effort this time. She could ask to swap her Saturday shift with one of her colleagues. More than one of them owed her the favour, in fact.
Her smile was getting wider. ‘And it was you who had the mad idea of hooking up with someone while we were there. It was the last thing I was planning on doing.’
There was something about the way Georgia shrugged and turned away that raised Kate’s suspicions. Her smile faded.
‘I’m not the only one who’s been a bit quiet since we got back. What aren’t you talking about?’
‘Nothing.’
Kate stared at her friend’s back. ‘You never did tell me where you disappeared to for so long during that party.’
The silence suddenly seemed charged.
‘Oh, my God,’ Kate breathed. ‘You did hook up with somebody. And you never told me?’
‘Wasn’t much to tell.’ Georgia’s voice sounded tight. ‘I’d rather forget about it.’
But Kate couldn’t let it go like that. ‘It can’t have been Matteo,’ she said, ‘because I saw him and asked if he knew where you were and he said he had no idea.’
Georgia’s expression suggested that Kate might have just beamed in from another planet. ‘Why would it have been Matteo?’
‘Oh, I don’t know…’ Kate’s tone was teasing. ‘Because he was gorgeous, maybe? Or because you two seemed to be getting on incredibly well?’
Georgia shrugged again. ‘I guess some people aren’t okay with casual sex. I don’t think I am any more either. It wasn’t my best idea, was it?’ She reached for the television remote. ‘Let’s see if there’s something worth watching, shall we?’
Clearly, it was time to change the subject but Kate was frowning. It wasn’t like Georgia to keep things bottled up so the experience must have been more disturbing than she was letting on. She sat down on the couch beside Georgia and gave her a quick hug.
‘It’s in the past now,’ she said. ‘And yeah…it wasn’t your best idea but you’ll know not to do it again. Are you okay? Really?’
Georgia nodded, hugging her back. ‘I’m fine. Really.’
One of their favourite dramas was on but Kate couldn’t get involved with the new plot twists. She was still worried about her friend. Worried about herself, too, if she was honest. She was one of the people who weren’t okay with the idea of casual sex herself. Not that it would be for her if she and Luke got together but, from his point of view, it would never be anything more than a friendship with benefits.
Was she setting herself up to be in a far worse position than Georgia had been left with after her ill-advised one-off encounter? Maybe calling in a favour to get the day off on Saturday wasn’t such a good idea. Given this new spin, perhaps she needed some more time to think things through. Or to let her hormones settle down or something.
She still had her phone in her hand. She hit ‘reply’.
Sorry, Luke. Working on Saturday. Let’s try again next week.
* * *
Luke Anderson loved his job with a passion but there were occasional moments when he knew he desperately needed more in his life.
Like right now. Here he was, on a lovely Saturday afternoon, when he could have been anywhere—doing anything—that had nothing to do with the surgical management of injured children. But here he was, in his office near the paediatric intensive care unit, in Edinburgh’s Royal Children’s Hospital.
It was Kate’s fault.
She hadn’t suggested trying to swap her weekend shift with someone. She hadn’t even offered a definite time that they could try again. ‘Next week’ felt vague enough to be a brush-off, albeit polite.
Perhaps she wasn’t as keen to see him again as he was to see her?
After travelling back to Italy with Matteo and having a few days’ holiday in Milan he had been later getting back to work than Kate but he’d made his first attempt to catch up three weeks ago now and it still hadn’t happened.
With a sigh, Luke turned back to his computer screen. He had decided to prepare a case history to offer at the weekly lunch meeting next Friday, where interesting cases were presented for analysis and discussion. The little girl he’d operated on for a ruptured diaphragm and spleen was a good example of how dangerous a lap belt could be in even a relatively minor car accident and what early signs and symptoms were important to take notice of.
He’d only just set up his first slide to introduce the case when his office door burst open.
‘Oh…you are here.’ The anxious expression on the face of one of the senior nurses from PICU was morphing into relief. ‘Someone said you might be.’
‘What is it, Elise?’
‘There’s an incoming emergency. ETA about ten minutes. Eighteen-month-old boy who was climbing a table and it flipped over onto him.’
Luke’s brain engaged instantly. Where had the edge of what was probably a heavy piece of furniture landed? Did the toddler have abdominal injuries or was it his chest, neck or head that had been affected?
‘How much information do we have so far?’
‘The mother heard the crash. He was unconscious and having a seizure when the ambulance arrived.’
Elise was already leading Luke rapidly along the corridor towards the lifts. There was no question for either of them that he would take charge of this case, even if he wasn’t officially on duty.
She pushed the button to summon the lift. ‘He got to Glasgow’s Eastern Infirmary thirty minutes later with a GCS of five and was intubated.’
The thought that the Eastern Infirmary was where Kate worked was only a flash of distraction. The low GCS score indicated a level of consciousness that suggested a severe injury.
‘Investigations?’
‘There were no obvious external injuries but they noted a mild upper body cyanosis and an ultrasound revealed a pericardial effusion.’
So it was a chest injury and there was fluid—probably blood—collecting around the child’s heart. It was obvious that emergency surgery could well be needed.
The lift doors closed in front of them.
‘Have we got a theatre available?’
‘Yes. That was organised as soon as we got the call about the transfer. Apparently there wasn’t anybody available in Glasgow for emergency chest surgery and we were going to page Colin but somebody said they’d seen you here earlier so I checked your office first.’ Elise smiled up at Luke. ‘If it was my kid, I’d want you to be looking after him.’
The compliment regarding his abilities as a paediatric trauma surgeon had a bitter-sweet edge for Luke as he recalled the moment of doubt he’d experienced only minutes ago. He put everything into his work and continued to strive towards being even better at his job—but was it at the expense of so many other things that life could offer?
The doors opened on the ground floor and they both headed past a busy reception and waiting area, through the emergency department and out through the automatic doors that led to the ambulance bay.
Only a minute later, they could hear the siren of an approaching ambulance and then it came into view. The siren was switched off but the beacons were still flashing as it stopped and then swiftly reversed towards the edge of the loading bay.
Luke could feel his adrenaline levels kick up several notches and he felt like he was the front line again—the way he had been, working with Matteo at the paramedic competition. Waiting right behind that impression was a reminder of Kate but it was easy to ignore. There was a potentially critically injured child inside this ambulance and it was real this time. If it was a blunt force injury to the little boy’s heart, it would be a miracle if he was still alive but, if he was, then Luke was going to do everything in his power to save him.
The cabin of the ambulance was crowded. Luke could see the tiny child, wearing only a nappy, lying deathly still on the stretcher, surrounded by equipment like the portable ventilator, a cardiac monitor and a tangle of IV lines. A paramedic was removing oxygen tubing from the main supply to attach it to a portable cylinder. A distraught-looking woman who had to be the child’s mother was holding her head in her hands and a woman dressed in scrubs had a stethoscope against the toddler’s bare chest. She had her hair scraped back into a ponytail. Blonde hair.
Some tiny part of Luke’s brain registered that this hair was the exact shade of Kate’s hair and then the doctor straightened and turned, hooking the stethoscope back around her neck.
Of course the hair was the same shade as Kate’s. It was Kate’s.
The distraction was only the timespan of one heartbeat but Luke could feel it throughout his entire body.
Kate was here.
And it felt astonishingly good…
‘We’ve got a systolic blood pressure of eighty.’ The flash in Kate’s eyes suggested that she was just as pleased to see Luke but she wasn’t about to waste any time on personal greetings. ‘He’s in a sinus tachycardia of one hundred and eighty and the upper torso cyanosis is increasing.’
The ambulance crew wasn’t wasting any time either. The crew member who had been driving had stepped through into the cabin and unhooked the stretcher restraints. Luke had to step to one side as they rolled the stretcher out, the wheels folding down and locking automatically as it emerged from the ambulance. He was intensely focussed now. This child was still alive…
‘We’re clear to bypass Emergency,’ he told the crew. ‘And an elevator’s being held. We’re heading straight for Theatre.’
The child’s mother stumbled as she stepped down from the back of the ambulance in the wake of the stretcher and Luke caught her shoulder to steady her.
‘Oh, my God…’ she whispered, as she looked up to catch his gaze. ‘Theatre?’
‘I’m Luke Anderson,’ he told her. ‘I’m a trauma surgeon here at the Royal and I specialise in chest injuries like this.’
They were moving now—straight through the emergency department towards the doors at the other end that led to the bank of elevators. Staff were moving obstacles like trolleys and wandering patients from their path.
‘He’s not going to die, is he?’ the mother sobbed. ‘This is all my fault… I should have been watching him more carefully…’
Kate turned her head, IV tubing in her hands as she protected a line. ‘Jacob’s in the best place he can be, Jennie. And with the best surgeon.’
The stretcher rattled as it went over the metal rim of the elevator and there was a moment’s pause as the team manoeuvred everything to make room for people.
‘Can I come with him?’ Jennie begged.
‘Of course you can.’ Elise had been trailing the team but she stepped up now and put her hand on Jennie’s arm. ‘There’s a place that you can wait and someone will be with you all the time. Come with me… We’ll take the next lift. My name’s Elise and I’m a nurse in the intensive care unit that Jacob will be going to after his surgery.’
Luke and Kate squeezed in alongside the stretcher. They were both trying to get as much information as possible by scanning readouts on the monitors and by what they could assess visually.
Luke caught Kate’s glance and he could feel his mouth tighten into grim agreement. It might be just the strong lighting in this small space but they were both thinking that the bluish tinge to Jacob’s skin looked worse. The ability of his heart to function was deteriorating rapidly.
The doors opened and it was another straight line, through two sets of double doors to the suite of operating theatres. A theatre team was waiting beside an empty bed covered with a white sheet. The transfer of the tiny child was swift and smooth and the ambulance crew gathered their equipment on top of the stretcher, preparing to leave.
Luke caught Kate’s glance again as the bed was rolled towards the induction room where the anaesthetist was waiting. ‘Are you going to stay?’
‘Can I? You don’t mind if I observe?’
‘You’re more than welcome. Someone will find you some gear. Or there’s an observation deck if you want a better view from the close-up camera. I need to go and scrub in.’ But Luke paused for a brief moment as he turned away. He didn’t actually smile, but he could feel the corners of his mouth soften. ‘It’s good to see you, Katy.’
* * *
Maybe the view wasn’t as good standing at the head of the operating table, out of the way of the surgical team, but Kate was happy. She wanted to be as close as possible to this small patient whose outcome she was already so invested in. And it meant she was also as close as possible to Luke.
She watched as he entered the theatre, gloved hands crossed in front of his body to prevent any accidental touch of something not sterile, a nurse still tying the strings of his gown behind him. With a hat covering his hair, a mask over his nose and face and protective eyewear on, it could have been any surgeon coming in but Kate’s body told her exactly who it was.
The tingle of anticipation—or maybe it was more like attraction—was powerful enough to actually distract Kate from everything else going on around her. It felt like an electrical current touching every cell in her body and it was emanating from a knot of sensation deep in her belly.
Yep. That was attraction. She recognised the point of origin all too well. But had she ever felt it quite this fiercely?
For a nanosecond, Kate actually thought the alarm she could hear was something internal but, in the same instant, she tapped into the acceleration of tension around her.
‘He’s in VF.’
The nurse painting Jacob’s chest with disinfectant stopped swabbing and her forceps froze in mid-air. Kate held her breath. Ventricular fibrillation meant that the small heart had given up trying to pump blood—probably because of the pressure of the fluid trapped around it. And, if that was the case, simply delivering an external shock would not be enough to keep this little boy alive.
It seemed like time had stopped and frozen this tableau but that impression lasted for only the time it took for Kate’s heart to skip a beat. And then she watched as Luke took complete control of everything with a calm confidence that took her breath away all over again.
‘Scalpel, please,’ he requested. ‘And some blunt forceps. I’ll need the saw in a second, too.’
Stepping closer to the table, he made a swift incision down the centre of their tiny patient’s chest. Within a couple of minutes, the heart was visible. Using forceps, he lifted the tissue surrounding the heart in an enclosed bag and then made another incision.
‘Suction, please…’
Luke was scooping clots of blood from around the small heart as his assistant angled the suction tubing.
‘I can see where it’s coming from,’ Luke said a minute later. ‘We’ve got a right atrial rupture here. Clamp, thanks…’
The bleeding from the heart was controlled within seconds but the heart was still not functioning.
Luke’s hands were continuing to move with smooth confidence. Kate was biting her bottom lip so hard it was painful, as she watched him take hold of that tiny heart in his hand and start squeezing it with rapid compressions.
‘Charge the internal defibrillators,’ he ordered. ‘But this may be enough…’ He eased his hand out of the chest and Kate felt herself leaning forward, trying to see what the heart was doing. Was it still quivering ineffectively? Had it stopped completely? Or…?
The beep from the machine right beside her was a very different sound from the previous alarm. A single beep and then another one after a gap. And then the beeps got faster. Steadier…
‘We’re back in sinus rhythm,’ Luke said. ‘Thanks, team. Let’s get this damage repaired, shall we? Suture, thanks…’
Over an hour later, Kate was still watching Luke—this time in the PICU. Jacob had been transferred there for the intensive care he was going to need for some time and Luke was using transoesophageal echocardiography to examine Jacob’s heart.
‘I’m happy.’ His words were directed at Jennie, who was sitting on the edge of her chair, one hand holding that of her son. Jacob’s father was by her side now, too, and he was holding Jennie’s other hand. ‘There’s no sign of any residual injuries and his heart is working perfectly.’
He removed the tubing that contained the transducer at its tip from Jacob’s throat and then he stripped off his gloves.
‘We’ll keep Jacob in here for a day or two to keep a close eye on things but then we’ll wake him up and move him to the cardiac ward.’
‘Is he…will he…?’ Jacob’s father had to stop and clear his throat and then he couldn’t continue.
‘I’m happy,’ Luke said again, and this time he was smiling. ‘I think he’s going to be running around again in no time—probably giving you all the normal worry that toddlers can create—but he’s come through this crisis with flying colours.’
Jacob’s parents were both smiling and crying at the same time and Kate felt the prickle of her own tears.
From the moment this child had arrived in her emergency department—hours ago now—she had had very little hope of an outcome as good as this.
And it was thanks to Luke. The parents didn’t need to know how close to a very different ending they had been up there in Theatre but Kate knew.
So did Luke.
His gaze met hers as Jacob’s parents embraced each other.
He looked exhausted, which was hardly surprising. Kate felt like she’d just run a marathon herself and she’d only been watching, for heaven’s sake.
At least he would get a break now. Jacob was under the care of an expert team who would only call Luke in if he was really needed and, the way things were looking at the moment, that was very unlikely.
They left the PICU together and walked in silence towards the elevator. Luke pushed the button and then tilted his head, one eyebrow raised as he caught Kate’s glance.
‘So this is what it takes to see you again? Full-on emergent cardiac surgery? Don’t you think that’s a bit high maintenance of you?’
Kate grinned. ‘I have to say it was a very impressive performance but, no…it wasn’t something I want to repeat in a hurry.’
‘At least it broke the barrier.’
‘Barrier?’
Luke waited for Kate to step into the lift ahead of him. ‘I was beginning to think that you didn’t really want to see me again.’
‘Oh…’ Kate could feel a flush of warmth in her cheeks, along with the flash of guilt that she had pretty much brushed Luke off in her last text. And then she looked up to see the way he was looking at her and the warmth suddenly went south.
There it was again.
That flash of a totally new kind of attraction.
‘That’s not true,’ she said softly. ‘I’m really happy to see you again.’
She couldn’t look away. Neither, apparently, could Luke. They were locked in that eye contact until the elevator shuddered to a halt on the ground floor.
‘How are you going to get home?’ Luke asked as they walked through the reception area. ‘Or do you need to go back to work?’
‘I can go home. I was off duty a couple of hours ago. And I can call a taxi. My hospital will cover the cost because I came here as a medical escort.’
‘Are you in a hurry?’
It only took a flash of that eye contact to set off that tingle again. No… Kate wasn’t in any hurry to go anywhere away from Luke. Quite the opposite.
‘Only I’m starving,’ he continued. ‘And I know a really nice Italian place not far from here, if you fancy having dinner with me.’
Saving a small life had been more than enough to make this a great day for Kate but, amazingly, it had just got a whole lot better.
Or maybe not.
‘I can’t go to a restaurant. I’m wearing scrubs.’
‘This is a place that is a favourite with the staff. They’re used to people wearing scrubs. Did you bring a coat with you?’
‘No. We left in kind of a rush.’
‘You can use mine. I’ll get changed so I won’t need it.’ His eyebrows were raised enough to make his face a picture of persuasion. ‘Deal?’
Kate didn’t need much persuasion. She was, in fact, grinning.
‘Deal.’