Brides of Penhally Bay - Vol 3 (19 page)

There was an instant deathly hush in the operating theatre and she was certain that her mask was nowhere near large enough to hide the fiery blush that swept all the way up her throat and face until it reached her hairline under her disposable hat.

‘I beg your pardon?’ His eyes were almost black, as were the eyebrows that were raised so high that they nearly reached the hat covering his close-cropped hair.

In for a penny, in for a pound,
she could hear her grandmother saying, and she tipped her chin up an inch before she repeated her suggestion.

‘I said, if your back aches, you might try taking off your clogs and going barefoot…you could put disposable hats over your feet if you’re worried about contamination.’

This time the silence seemed to stretch for ever, filled only by the rhythmic bleeps and hisses of the monitors and anaesthetic regulators.

When she was beginning to wonder if she was going to be thrown out of the theatre for breaking his concentration, he gave one swift nod.

‘It is worth trying,’ he said, and in an instant there was a nurse on her knees beside him, giving a nervous giggle as she pulled a bright blue plastic hat over each
of his elegant long feet before she took his theatre clogs away.

Without another word, the operation continued as seamlessly as though the last couple of minutes had never happened, the second strip of misshapen bone carefully cut out of the skull so that the prematurely fused sutures were removed entirely.

Emily was utterly absorbed in the procedure, even more so now that she was assisting than when she had merely looked at a tape.

The brutal part was over and, hopefully, would never need repeating. Now it only remained to irrigate, check for leaks and close before he’d finished. She was quite looking forward to finding out if his suturing technique was as meticulous as every other one she’d observed when he suddenly stepped back from the table.

‘Taking the clogs off helped for a while,’ he announced in a slightly rough-edged voice as he stripped off first one glove and then the other, somehow managing to tuck one inside the other without getting any fluids on either hand. ‘But now I will watch while you complete the process.’

From the electric atmosphere in the theatre Emily knew that something momentous had just happened, but she couldn’t allow it to break her concentration, not if she was going to do herself and little Abir justice.

‘You might want to rest your best feature on an anaesthetist’s stool while I close,’ she said, as she positioned herself in his place at the table and held her hand out for the gently warmed saline, hoping her tone was matter-of-fact enough not to wound his ego. ‘I’ll probably take rather longer over this than you would.’

She almost chuckled when she heard Zayed murmur
‘rest your best feature’ in obvious amazement, and allowed herself just a couple of seconds to reflect on whether she’d spoken nothing less than the truth. The ubiquitous pale green scrubs he was wearing might be the most shapeless garments in existence, but when they were washed after every use, they soon became thin, and all it had needed was for the man to lean forward over his patient for every lean, tight curve of his muscular buttocks and thighs to be lovingly outlined.

Then it was time to switch her concentration up to full power as she thoroughly irrigated both operating fields to ensure that there were no bony fragments left inside the skull, then a minute inspection of the dura to check for any inadvertent tears. Of course, there weren’t any, and the way was clear for closing the initial incisions.

‘Clips or sutures?’ said the voice with a delicious hint of accent even in those few words.

‘I prefer sutures for areas that will be on constant show, even on a scalp where they will hopefully be covered by hair,’ she explained, pausing before she inserted the first one in case he had any objections to her decision.

Although she’d been conscious that those dark eyes were watching her every move, the fact had been reassuring rather than intimidating. It had been an amazing experience to be allowed to do such a sensitive part of the procedure on her very first morning on his team. Mr Breyley had allowed her to do little more than close for weeks before he’d allowed her to lead on more routine procedures, and even then he’d hovered over her, poised to take over at the first sign that things hadn’t been to his liking.

‘I am sure he will thank you if he eventually goes
bald,’ her new mentor said dryly, and she concentrated on drawing the edges of the incisions together with as neat a row of sutures as she could manage.

‘Are you happy to supervise his transfer to Intensive Care?’ he asked as she positioned protective dressings over her handiwork while the anaesthetic was reversed.

‘You’re going to have a word with his parents?’ Her quick glance in his direction told her that even sitting down for the last part of the operation hadn’t relieved his pain, if the tension around his eyes was any indication. What on earth had the man done to himself?

‘The waiting is awful, so I’ll just let them know that the operation went well,’ he explained, already on his way to the door, adding over his shoulder, ‘And tell them that they’ll be able to see him in PICU in—what—twenty minutes?’

‘Maybe half an hour, to give us time to get him settled properly?’ Emily glanced up at the experienced nurse who would be accompanying Abir on the short journey from the operating theatre to the nearby unit, and received a confirming nod.

‘That will give us long enough to put some bandages on and clean his little face up a bit,’ the older woman said. ‘Although we’re not going to be able to do anything to disguise his swollen eyes. Poor little mite looks as if he’s not even going to be able to open them when he comes round.’

‘Thank goodness that’s one of the less important side-effects of the procedure…one that will sort itself out,’ Emily murmured, even as she winced at Abir’s appearance. ‘But he does look as if he’s gone several rounds with a prizefighter, and lost.’

After transferring him to Intensive Care she reassured herself that he was receiving the right levels of sedation and pain medication. Then there was the post-operative paperwork to take care of, so it was nearly an hour before she was able to think about the sudden detour her career had taken. And as for finding time to hunt down a cup of coffee and something to put in her rumbling stomach…

‘Forget it,’ she muttered as she hurried towards the outpatients clinic in response to her first bleep.

‘Mr Khalil has been called down to Accident and Emergency, and he is very particular about his clinics starting on time,’ snapped the heavily accented voice of his disapproving secretary. ‘Some of his patients have travelled a very long way to see him.’

Unspoken, but hovering in the air like a bad smell, were the words ‘and they won’t be happy to see someone as insignificant as
you
when they walk in the room’, but there was nothing Emily could do about that. All she could do was dive in at the deep end and hope that she didn’t drown before he arrived.

Her heart nearly stopped when she stuck her head round the doorway to the waiting area and realised that the majority of the people waiting there were probably going to have as little command of English as the Hananis.

‘Don’t panic,’ said a reassuringly Cornish voice behind her. ‘I’ve put out the call for an interpreter, just in case.’

‘Were my thoughts
that
obvious?’ Emily asked as she turned to find a pair of dark eyes smiling up at her from a motherly body in a uniform that could have done with being a size larger.

‘Not your thoughts, maid, but the look on your face
told me you were about to head for the nearest hideyhole.’ She chuckled richly. ‘So, shall we make a start? I’m Keren Sandercock, by the way.’

‘I’m very pleased to meet you. As you’ve probably gathered, I’m Emily Livingston, the newest member of Mr Khalil’s firm.’ She gulped. ‘I know it will slow everything down, but could you possibly give me a couple of minutes with each file before you show the patient in?’ she suggested.

‘I can do better than that,’ Keren said with a smile. ‘I can introduce you to each of the patients and tell you all about them. Save you all that time trying to decipher the notes.’ She winked slyly. ‘He might be the most wonderful surgeon and the best looking man at St Piran’s but his writing’s atrocious. And anyway, I’ve been part of this unit ever since Mr Khalil set it up so I’ve already met them all.’

‘What do you mean,
he set it up
?’ Emily hurried in her wake and found herself obeying instantly when Keren pointed briskly at the gel dispenser.

‘You mean you’ve joined the madhouse without knowing anything about what’s going on here? You’m brave, maid.’ She chuckled richly again and hitched one ample hip on the corner of a desk that was already groaning under a mountainous pile of files. ‘Well, here’s the potted version. Mr Khalil was given permission to set up this paediatric orthopaedic unit on the understanding that he is free to treat children from his own country who would otherwise not be able to get any help. Of course, he also treats patients from the area around St Piran’s, but his special interest is the ones who wouldn’t have a hope of getting any surgery if he didn’t bring them over here.’

Emily was speechless, but before she could find the words to ask how she hadn’t heard a word about what was going on here, there was a brisk tap at the door.

‘Why are you not started?’ demanded a heavily accented voice, and Emily didn’t need to turn round to know exactly who had just marched into the room, neither did she need to see the sour expression on Keren’s face to know that the other woman shared her feelings about Zayed Khalil’s secretary.

Start as you mean to go on,
she could hear her grandmother’s voice advising her when she began each new project, and she whirled sharply to face the intruder.

‘Out!’ she ordered firmly, flinging one hand out with a finger pointing directly at the door. ‘And you will
never
come into my room again without waiting to be invited. Is that clear?’

‘It is not
your
room,’ she sneered. ‘It is
Zayed’s
room.
He
is the consultant.’

‘And that is all the more reason why a
secretary
should never enter without an invitation,’ Emily insisted. ‘What goes on in this room is private and confidential and you will
not
walk in again like that or I will report your unprofessional conduct to Mr Khalil. So, unless you have brought me some important paperwork pertaining to one of the patients waiting outside, anything you have to say to me can be communicated by telephone. Please, leave. Now.’

‘Good for you, maid,’ Keren murmured as the elegant fashion plate flounced out of the room, shutting the door sharply in her wake as she no doubt muttered imprecations through clenched teeth. ‘She needed telling, but I’m afraid you’ve made yourself an enemy there, especially as she’s angling to marry our gorgeous consultant.’

Emily’s instant pang of dismay was followed by a silent admission that the two of them would look perfect together, tall and dark-haired with the same deep gold skin…

For heaven’s sake! What did it matter what he did in his private life? She had a roomful of patients to see.

‘Well, now that we’ve got rid of her, perhaps we should start on the clinic,’ Keren continued briskly as she picked the top file off the pile. ‘We’re a couple of minutes early, but I can’t see any of them complaining about that. Now, your first customer is Ameera Khan. She’s here for her final check-up before she returns home. Her operation was fairly simple and straightforward—the correction of a break which had gone untreated and had set badly, leaving her with limited movement in her right arm.’

Emily tipped the X-rays out of the accompanying envelope and slid the first set under the clips at the top of the view box. She winced when she saw the way the original break had healed so that virtually no rotational movement had been possible. The second set had obviously been taken shortly after surgery had been completed, with plates and screws much in evidence to hold everything back in the correct position while it healed. The final set had that morning’s date printed at the top and showed good progression in the healing process.

Meanwhile, Keren had flipped open the file and when the first thing Emily saw was a set of photographs of a solemn-eyed child cradling her twisted arm with a hopeless expression on her face, she could understand exactly why her new boss had been determined to help.

‘Can you show Ameera in?’ she asked while she scanned the notes as quickly as she could, looking for any
problems that might have been noted at the time of the operation. There was nothing untoward—in fact, this was the sort of simple problem that should never have necessitated a child having to travel to a strange country for treatment…unless her own was so impoverished that even the most basic facilities were unavailable.

The little girl who came bouncing in through the door looked nothing like the sad-eyed waif in the photos, and the young woman who accompanied her was having trouble keeping up with her, especially as she was heavily pregnant.

‘This is Mrs Khan,’ Keren began the introductions. ‘And this is Dr Emily Livingston, who is working with Mr Khalil. She would love to see how strong and straight your arm is, Ameera.’

The interpreter had slipped into the room almost unseen behind the woman and child and, as Keren spoke, translated her words into a mixture of incomprehensible sounds that sounded almost like spoken music.

Without any hesitation, the little girl tugged her sleeve up to reveal a scar so neat that, in time, it would probably become almost unnoticeable.

It didn’t take long for Emily to gain her trust, especially when she discovered that the youngster was ticklish, and it was very satisfying to note that every test she performed confirmed that the prognosis was excellent.

‘It is good, yes?’ her mother asked, clearly worried about her daughter.

‘Yes. It is good,’ Emily confirmed with a broad smile. The flaking skin that was the result of the time spent in a cast would soon disappear, and the way Ameera eagerly
completed every task Emily had set her spoke well for her regaining her full range of motion in time, even if structured physiotherapy wouldn’t be available once she returned to her own country. ‘I just wish I could take another photo to put in the file.’