Ultimate Heroes Collection

by Various Authors

  Seb frowned. ‘Seen what?’

  ‘She’d been crying.’

  ‘Because she found out he’s got no money?’

  Vicky slapped the back of his hand. ‘Will you shut up about that, Seb? I already told you, she was going to flay him because she thought he was doing private nip-and-tuck jobs. Money doesn’t bother her. She’s got principles.’ Vicky shook her head. ‘There must be some kind of crossed wires between them.’

  ‘And how are we going to uncross them?’

  Vicky sighed. ‘I don’t know. I tried talking to Charlie this evening, and he told me to leave him alone. Actually, he had a bit of a hissy fit on me for going to the hospital to check her out.’

  ‘He had one on me, too, for telling you about her in the first place,’ Seb said. ‘And Charlie doesn’t have hissy fits. I think he’s got it bad.’

  ‘She’s hurt him. Maybe we ought to pay her a visit.’

  Seb choked on his coffee. ‘Do you have any idea what that sounded like? Vic, you’re seriously scary.’

  His sister scowled at him. ‘I didn’t mean go and break her legs. She’s not like bloody Julia.’ They’d both wanted to murder her, and Seb had been the one to hold Vicky back. Just. ‘I meant, so we can find out what’s going on. He’s not telling, so we’ll have to ask her.’

  ‘What makes you think she’d tell us anything?’

  ‘You have a point. Women either faint at your feet or want to slap you—I think she’d fall in the latter camp. And she’s not likely to talk to me because I gave her the once-over before Charlie had even had the chance to introduce her to us.’ Vicky took another swig of coffee. ‘Maybe we should get him plastered and make him spill the beans.’

  Seb shook his head. ‘Nice try, but you could pour a bottle of twelve-year-old malt down his throat and he still wouldn’t tell. Charlie’s a gentleman, in all senses of the word. He’s too nice for his own good.’

  ‘Maybe we should invite them both for dinner—separately—and then disappear and leave them to talk?’ Vicky suggested.

  ‘And what reason would she have to accept the invitation?’

  ‘True.’ Vicky folded her arms. ‘We’ve got to do something, Seb. He’s eating his heart out over her. And we’re the only ones who can see it because everyone else believes the press image of Charlie, the debs’ darling. They don’t look any deeper.’

  ‘We’ll work on him first. Dinner,’ Seb said. ‘Saturday night.’ Then he patted his chest. ‘Ah, no, I can’t. I’m working.’

  ‘Tell her something’s cropped up.’

  Seb coughed. ‘I meant, I’m on duty.’

  Vicky grinned. ‘Sorry.’ There wasn’t a trace of sincerity in the word. She knew her brother’s womanising ways too well. ‘Swap your shift, then. I’m sure you can talk someone into letting you owe them a favour.’

  He raised an eyebrow. ‘Being bossy, squirt?’

  ‘Well, someone has to keep you two in line.’

  Seb grimaced. ‘And Mama dearest certainly isn’t the woman to do it. OK, Vic. We’ll take him out to dinner, pour a couple of bottles of Margaux down his throat and make him talk to us. Leave the booking to me. Somewhere quiet and discreet. I know just the place.’

  ‘You,’ Vicky said, taking another chocolate biscuit, ‘would.’

  Where was the Director of Surgery when you wanted him? Sophie thought. Charlie seemed to have made himself completely scarce. He was always in a meeting, and when he wasn’t either she was in Theatre or he was.

  If she never saw him, how on earth was she going to talk to him?

  Going to his flat uninvited wasn’t an option. For all she knew, the paparazzi would follow her, hoping to get a story. Asking Marion for an appointment with Charlie also wasn’t an option—she didn’t want to give anybody any cause for gossip.

  In the end she resorted to leaving him a message on his pager. ‘Charlie, can we talk? Please?’

  But either he didn’t pick up her message or he didn’t want to talk to her—because he didn’t call her or try to see her. He didn’t even email her.

  So she had to face it. She’d blown it. He didn’t want anything to do with her. And the fact that she couldn’t get him out of her mind … well, that was her problem. She’d have to live with it.

  Every day it took a bigger effort to walk into work. To pretend that everything was fine. To pretend she didn’t notice that he was making himself scarce. Though at least the gossip about them had died down—some other scandal had knocked them off the hot topic list on the hospital grapevine.

  Although one or two patients had given her strange looks and actually asked, ‘Aren’t you the girl in that magazine—Celebrity Life?’

  She’d pinned a smile she hadn’t felt onto her face. ‘I wouldn’t know. I don’t read those sort of magazines, I’m afraid.’ And she’d switched the conversation back to post-operative care, discouraging any further discussion about the photographs.

  She was coping, just, until she was paged by the emergency department. ‘Soph? It’s Paul. We’ve got a nasty for you. RTA. Child wasn’t strapped in properly in the back, Mum had to do an emergency stop when a cyclist shot in front of her, and the child went straight into the back of the front seat. Pushed Gran through the windscreen. Baby didn’t make it, Mum’s got whiplash and is completely distraught, and Gran’s in a bit of a mess—broken ribs, and I don’t like the sound of her chest. I think she might have a ruptured diaphragm.’

  A ruptured diaphragm was rare but could happen as a result of crush injuries—if the passenger had hit the dashboard on her way through the windscreen, the impact could have caused it. If left, the stomach would be strangulated. And if the herniation was massive, the resulting cardio-respiratory problems would get worse—and the patient could die. ‘Done the X-rays yet?’ Sophie asked.

  ‘Waiting for them. Charlie’s here, getting the glass out of her face and scrubbing it clean.’

  Charlie. It would be the first time she’d faced him in a few days. Either he’d been in a meeting or she’d been in Theatre, and she had a feeling that he’d taken his lunch-breaks at his desk. Just as she’d taken as many of her breaks at her desk—her paperwork had never been this up to date.

  And now she was going to have to work with him. She hated seeing that part of plastic surgery anyway—when they used a wire scrubber to get the dirt out to avoid tattooed scarring in the dermis. Seeing him would just make it worse. But she couldn’t possibly leave the patient until he’d finished. ‘I’m on my way.’

  She stopped briefly to ask Sammy to alert Theatre, then headed down to the emergency department. A quick assessment of her patient—noting that she was in respiratory distress and there were definite bowel sounds in her chest—and a check of the X-rays told Sophie what she needed to know. ‘Spot on, Paul. Ruptured diaphragm. And it’s a big one. I need her in Theatre right now,’ she told Charlie.

  He shook his head. ‘The quicker I get to work on these injuries, the better the results will be,’ Charlie said.

  ‘I need her in Theatre now,’ Sophie repeated. ‘She’s got a ruptured diaphragm. The X-ray proves it—there’s a linear split in the left diaphragm and her gut is herniating into her chest. Plus she’s got broken ribs. It needs fixing before she arrests.’

  ‘And I need to get this glass out of her face and clean it up. If I don’t do it now, her skin will start to close and she’ll have pitting and scarring. She’ll end up being unable to bear the sight of her face in a mirror—and every time she sees those scars she’s going to remember the accident and how her grandchild died. The chances are, she’s going to blame herself for it—why didn’t she make sure the child was strapped in properly, that sort of thing. So I’m not thinking of vanity here,’ he said crisply. ‘I’m thinking about potential psychological damage. Do you really think she needs a visual reminder of that loss every time she looks in a mirror?’

  ‘She might not be alive to see her face if you don’t let me get the rest of this sorted!’ Soph
ie snapped.

  He stared at her, a slight frown on his face, and Sophie flushed. Hell. She almost never lost her temper at work. And now here she was, yelling at Charlie. Add that to what had happened last week, and the hospital grapevine would be working overtime again.

  ‘Compromise,’ Charlie said quietly. ‘We need to work together on this—I’m well aware of the medical risks of leaving it. Give me a couple more minutes to finish scrubbing and getting the glass out here in Resus, and I’ll do the suturing in Theatre while you’re repairing the diaphragm.’

  ‘Right.’

  She had one eye on her patient’s monitors and one eye on Charlie as he worked swiftly, stopping every so often to assess the patient’s skin colour.

  But he still wasn’t working fast enough. ‘Charlie, I don’t want her to arrest.’

  ‘Will you stop nagging?’ he asked through gritted teeth. ‘I’m going as fast as I can.’

  She shut up.

  When they were finally in Theatre, she decided the best way through this was to pretend Charlie wasn’t there and use this as a teaching session for Sammy. ‘Sammy, ruptured diaphragms are quite rare. They’re usually the result of a crush injury—typically from a car crash. I’m going to repair it abdominally for two reasons. Which are?’

  ‘Because it doesn’t tend to happen on its own and you want to check for any other organ damage.’

  ‘Well done. It often occurs with a broken pelvis, but in this case the X-rays show we’re OK. The most likely problems are a ruptured spleen—’ the first case she’d worked on with Charlie. Not that she wanted to remember that right now ‘—and a ruptured liver. I hope it’s not the liver, because if a hepatic tear extends to the cava we can end up with an air embolism. The other reason?’

  ‘Not sure,’ Sammy admitted.

  ‘Because we’re less likely to have pulmonary problems post-op,’ she explained. She made the first incision. ‘The liver’s OK. That’s good.’ She sighed. ‘But we have a damaged spleen. I’m going to do the diaphragm first so I’ve got room to work. The spleen isn’t too bad, so I’ll be able to glue it.’

  She talked Sammy through the operation, explaining that she was extending the diaphragm rupture laterally so she could push the patient’s stomach back into the abdomen. ‘Next we wash out the chest. Why?’

  ‘To avoid contamination from clots,’ Sammy said.

  ‘Spot on. Want to do it?’

  Sammy nodded, and she supervised as he washed out the chest.

  She repaired the laceration with continuous nylon suture. ‘I’m putting stay sutures on either side to help tent the diaphragm downwards, because it helps with closure. You need to be careful here, Sammy. If the tear extends to the central tendon, there’s a risk that you might catch the myocardium in it.’

  She’d just finished suturing and was about to start repairing the spleen when the monitor beeped.

  ‘Shit, she’s gone into VF.’ VF—ventricular fibrillation—was where the heart didn’t beat properly, it just quivered. ‘We need to shock her. You’re not dying on me,’ she told the patient as she prepared to use the defibrillator. ‘Absolutely not. Your daughter’s just lost her little one. She’s not going to cope with losing her mum as well. We’re going to get you through this. Charging to two hundred. And clear.’

  Everyone stood back, including Charlie.

  She placed the paddles on the old lady’s chest.

  ‘OK, sinus rhythm,’ Sammy said.

  First time. Lucky, but she couldn’t take any more chances. She needed to work as swiftly as she could. ‘We’re there. BP OK?’

  Sammy told her the readings.

  ‘Good. Now for the spleen. I’m going to glue it.’ She smiled at him. ‘I know you’ve seen this before, so if you want to see what Plastics is doing—and Plastics doesn’t mind being observed—that’s fine.’

  ‘Plastics,’ Charlie said, his voice holding a noticeable chill, ‘doesn’t mind if Surgery doesn’t. Sammy, if you stand here you’ll get a better view.’

  Sophie concentrated on gluing the spleen, but she was aware of everything Charlie was saying.

  ‘With facial injuries, you can’t use vertical sutures because you’d have to sacrifice too much viable tissue. So instead you use a large number of very, very fine sutures. What you need to do first with irregular wounds like these ones is to look for landmarks and match them—you’re not wasting time by looking, because you don’t get a second chance to do it. You look for two points that definitely fit, suture them together, and you’ll find that more points fall into place: you suture them, and gradually fill in the bits in between. It’s like putting together a very, very delicate jigsaw.’ He sighed. ‘With windscreen injuries, it’s hard to get faces of tissue together that are exactly the same thickness. And we have to be very conservative about excising wounds—we need as much viable tissue as we can get. As it is, I’m probably going to have to do more surgery in a year or so’s time—Z-plasty or dermabrasion.’

  ‘Why are you using forceps and a curved needle and not a skin hook?’ Sammy asked. ‘I thought skin hooks caused less trauma to the wound margins.’

  ‘They do—but they’re slow, and we need to work as fast as we can,’ Charlie said. ‘With a curved needle you need to rotate your wrist so the insertion and pull-through point are in the line of the needle’s curve. Just after you’ve sutured the wound there will be some oedema, so you need to take that into account when you’re tying the sutures. If the knot’s too tight, the suture cuts into the skin more rapidly and leaves a suture mark—that means a poor scar. And it’s better to use interrupted sutures rather than continuous ones, because it gave a better cosmetic result.’

  Sophie finished closing before Charlie was through.

  ‘I’m going to see her daughter and give her an update on what’s going on. Up to you if you want to stay,’ she said to Sammy.

  ‘Is that OK with you, Charlie?’ Sammy asked.

  ‘Sure.’

  Charlie hadn’t looked at her once, she noticed. Well, she could live with that. And she’d been snippy with him. Maybe they just needed to clear the air. She’d wait until he was out of Theatre, then tackle him.

  Though it was easier said than done. When she did catch up with him and he turned to face her, his expression was completely unreadable. He may as well have still been wearing his surgical mask.

  ‘I left you a message on your pager,’ she said softly. ‘A few days ago. Did you get it?’

  His eyes glittered, just for a second. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then …’ He wasn’t going to make this easy for her, was he? Then again, she hadn’t exactly behaved well. ‘Can we talk?’ she asked. ‘Not here, I mean.’ Not where people could see what was going on and jump to wrong conclusions. ‘Somewhere a bit quieter.’

  He shook his head. ‘There’s no point. We have nothing to say to each other, Sophie. We’re merely colleagues.’

  People who had to work together and just lump it. He didn’t even want to be friends with her any more.

  ‘As you wish,’ she said coolly, hoping that the misery weighing down the pit of her stomach didn’t show in her eyes, and turned away.

  There was nothing more to say.

  Maybe it was time she started looking for another job.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  ‘SO WHAT’S the occasion?’ Charlie asked as he took his seat in the restaurant on Saturday night.

  ‘Do we need an occasion to treat our beloved older brother to dinner?’ Vicky asked.

  He narrowed his eyes at her. ‘Before you say anything, I don’t want to discuss that.’

  ‘Discuss what?’ she asked sweetly. ‘The venue? That’s Seb’s department.’

  ‘You know exactly what I mean,’ Charlie said warningly.

  ‘OK, no discussion. I’ll just tell you what we think, then. You need to find another girlfriend to take your mind off Sophie,’ Seb said.

  At Seb’s grunt of pain, Charlie assumed that their sister had
just kicked him under the table. Hard.

  ‘What he means is, you’re not happy,’ Vicky corrected. ‘We can see that. And we want to help.’

  ‘Just stay out of it,’ Charlie said tightly.

  ‘Absolutely not. I’ve met her, remember. I liked her, and I think you’d be good for each other. You’re obviously eating your heart out over her, and I reckon she’s doing the same.’

  Charlie looked away. ‘I wouldn’t know.’

  ‘Well, we do. You’ve thrown a huge brick wall up. Just as you did after She Who Must Not Be Named hurt you. Sometimes you can be too stubborn for your own good.’ Vicky folded her arms. ‘Have you discussed the problem with her, whatever it is?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘That’s my business.’

  ‘Er, no. This affects us, too,’ Seb informed him. ‘Neither of us likes seeing you unhappy.’

  ‘Typical male,’ Vicky said witheringly. ‘You think women can read your minds and you don’t have to tell them what you’re thinking. Well, we can’t. You need to talk to her, Charlie.’

  ‘Is she on duty tonight?’ Seb asked.

  Charlie shrugged. ‘How would I know?’

  ‘Ring her, then, and find out. You do have her home number, I assume?’ Vicky asked.

  Yes. But he didn’t think she’d speak to him. He leaned back in his chair. ‘What’s the point? I told her the other day that we had nothing to say to each other.’

  ‘Which was very stupid of you. You’ll just have to unsay it,’ Vicky said.

  ‘How?’

  ‘Roses. Chocolates. Use your imagination. Oh, for God’s sake, Charlie, stop being such a wimp. Just go and see her.’

  ‘Right, and she’ll really love having her pictures plastered everywhere again. Me with roses, her slamming the door in my face,’ Charlie said wryly. ‘I can see the headlines now. CHARLIE’S NOT HER DARLING.’

  ‘Oh, stuff the paparazzi,’ Seb said.

  ‘Actually,’ Vicky said thoughtfully, ‘he’s got a point, Seb. The media could screw this up, big time. What we need is a diversion. Then, while the paparazzi are busy with our little distraction, Charlie can leave quietly and sort things out with Sophie.’