‘Spoken like a true Italian,’ Rachel teased, and Luca knew she was feeling better, although her words reminded him of the thoughts he’d had earlier—emotion versus practicality!
‘Contrary to what the world at large might think, we are not entirely ruled by our emotions,’ he told her.
‘No?’ She was still teasing, but this time she sounded more relaxed and he knew she was recovering. He was considering his reply—he would tell her about the practical side of the Italian psyche—when she spoke again.
‘So if I kissed you here and now, just a thank-you-for-being-there-for-me kind of kiss, would you respond, or tell me to get back to work?’
His heart upped its beat, and his body tightened, but the kiss she brushed across his lips was definitely a thank-you-for-being-there-for-me kind of kiss.
He could, of course, take hold of her shoulders and draw her close to respond but, though Rachel might read it as a think-nothing-of-it kiss, his body might be misled into thinking it was serious, and walking around the hospital with an obvious erection wasn’t something he could contemplate.
‘You are tempting fate, my beautiful Rachel,’ he said softly, then he stood up, touched her lightly on the head, and left the room.
CHAPTER FIVE
RACHEL followed, but more slowly, knowing she would have to walk past the baby’s room, and not sure how her muddled emotions would react.
If she hadn’t been so stubborn about not getting involved with their tiny patients, would she have recovered from Reece’s death more swiftly?
Would she feel less bad now about the decision Bobbie’s parents had taken?
Had she been holding back her recovery through cowardice?
And if non-contact with babies had been crippling her, then what was her non-involvement with men doing?
‘You’re only thinking that because you’re attracted to Luca,’ she muttered to herself as she made her way back to the rooms. ‘Involvement with men is entirely different to involvement with babies. Involvement with men leads to pain.’
You are such a wimp!
Fortunately she’d stopped thinking aloud and this last admonition was in her head, so Becky, who’d looked up as Rachel walked through the door, didn’t hear it.
‘The boss is back. He phoned from the airport. ETA at the hospital in twenty minutes.’
‘Great!’ Rachel found she was muttering again. Where was Luca? If he didn’t turn up, would she have to tell Alex of the decision?
Determined not to think any more about the baby, or the past, or even Luca, she went to her desk and grabbed all the untended mail sitting in her in-tray. It had been weeks since she’d seen the bottom of it, dealing with urgent matters and shuffling the rest back into the tray for some day when she had plenty of time.
Like today, because there was no op this afternoon…
She turned the pile over and started at the bottom, staring at an invitation to attend a theatre nurses’ seminar two weeks ago.
Binned it and lifted the next item. A circular advertising a range of clothing for theatre nurses. Why on earth had she kept that? The hospital supplied their scrubs and who cared what they wore beneath them?
She flipped the paper over, saw a phone number printed on the back and smiled.
Scott Douglas, the registrar who was working with the team, had written down his home phone number. It had been after he’d asked her out for the fifth or possibly the sixth time, and he’d finally said, ‘OK, when you feel like company, you call me!’
Right now a night out with Scott might be what she needed. She could ease back into male-female involvement without the high risk attached to doing it with Luca.
But Scott had had a pretty brunette with him at Maggie and Phil’s party, and they’d seemed to be quite attached to each other.
She binned the leaflet with the number on it. Too late to use it now!
Her theatre nurses’ association magazine, forwarded on from her US address, came next, and she shoved it in her handbag. She’d read it at home tonight.
An invitation to her cousin’s wedding. She’d already sent a gift, so why had she kept the invite?
She turned it over, wondering if it too might have another pencilled message, but apart from two golden, entwined hearts, the other side was bare.
‘Ah, golden hearts—you are a little sentimental after all?’
Luca’s voice startled her so much she glowered at him, though her pulse had accelerated at the sound of his voice—badly enough for her to consider pulling the circular out of the bin and phoning Scott tonight, brunette or no brunette.
‘This is how sentimental I am,’ she said, and dropped the invitation into the bin.
Luca nodded, as if acknowledging her rebuttal, then settled into the other chair at the desk and said, ‘Alex is back. He is talking to the Archers.’
Seconds later, Kurt joined them, propping himself against the desk and lifting one eyebrow as he looked her way.
‘Good trip?’ she asked, hoping her reaction to Luca’s closeness wasn’t noticeable to her friend.
‘Successful,’ he said, but he sounded tired.
Rachel raised her eyebrows, and Kurt hesitated, then said, ‘I don’t know, Rach. We do such terrible things to those fragile babies, then expect them to get over it. What about the ones who don’t? Or the ones who suffer brain damage while on pump? Or have a stroke later because an air bubble has escaped someone’s attention and filtered through their bloodstream to the brain?’
‘Statistically, that rarely happens in Alex’s ops,’ Rachel reminded him, wondering if he’d already heard this afternoon’s operation wasn’t going ahead.
‘I know, but there was a little boy in the PICU down there in Melbourne. Surgeons had fixed his heart, but he’d had a stroke two days after the op. The parents were blaming the surgery, and they were probably right. It just makes me wonder about where and when to draw a line, that’s all.’
He stood up again, and moved restlessly around the desk, then shook off his negative mood and smiled at Luca.
‘Well,’ he demanded, ‘did you take advantage of my absence to get this woman into bed?’
‘Kurt!’
Rachel’s protest was lost in Luca’s angry protestations.
‘You should not talk of your friend that way,’ he said. ‘You should know she is not a woman who bed-hops indiscriminately. To suggest such a thing is…’
He broke off, apparently unable to find the English for what he needed, and finished with a stream of Italian.
Kurt’s startled face made Rachel laugh, and she grasped Luca’s arm as it seemed he could any minute explode into a physical fury against Kurt.
‘It’s OK,’ she explained. ‘I know he’s teasing.’ Then she looked at Kurt. ‘We haven’t had a lot to joke about this morning.’
‘Ah!’
‘And Rachel has already been unduly upset!’ Luca added, bringing not an ‘ah’ this time in response from Kurt but a quick frown.
‘Rach?’
‘I’m fine,’ she said, catching his eye and silently begging him not to pursue the subject, because she wasn’t entirely sure just how fine she was.
Surely she wouldn’t cry again…
Fortunately, Alex and Phil walked in at that stage, and Rachel could tell from their faces they’d heard the news.
‘The baby is being transferred back to his regional hospital. He’ll be cared for there for whatever time he has left,’ Alex said, but his eyes were asking questions Rachel didn’t want to answer.
‘It was a family decision,’ Luca told him, standing up and walking across to the two men, shaking hands with both of them, then remaining close by to explain. ‘We spoke only to the parents, and we left them to talk to each other, then they called us back and eventually asked the inevitable question.’
‘Whether we would operate if the child was ours?’ Phil said, sympathy in his voice.
Luca nodded, but before he could reply, Rachel stood up.
/>
‘I answered that one,’ she said, looking directly at Alex. ‘I said if he was mine I would operate, but my answer wasn’t an emotional one, Alex. It was nothing to do with what happened with Reece. I just pointed out how healthy little Bobbie is and said we’d operated on children who were far smaller and less well developed. I said his size and general health would make a difference in the overall result—make the risks much less—then the family arrived…’
She couldn’t go on—telling Alex she’d given an unemotional reply to the question yet choking up now as she talked about it.
Though for Bobbie, she was sure, not because of the past.
‘It is their decision to make and we have to respect it,’ Alex said wearily, ‘but, like you, Rachel, I felt he was so healthy, that little boy, he stood an excellent chance of getting through not just this op but the next two.’
‘But we can’t promise normal life even after all the operations, can we?’ Luca said. ‘And it was my impression that’s the promise those parents wanted.’
The gloom in the room was palpable, but then Annie whirled in.
‘OK, you lot, no operating this afternoon, so let’s have a unit meeting over lunch. I’ve booked a table for us at the Seasalt Café down by the shore and have liberated one of the hospital minibuses to take us there.’
It was the last thing Rachel felt like doing—socialising with the others—but she knew they all needed to be jolted out of the depression that was already settling in, and put on a brave face as she congratulated Annie on her brilliant idea.
‘Let’s go!’ she said, slinging her handbag over her shoulder and heading for the door. ‘Before our usually budget-conscious unit manager changes her mind!’
The others followed her out, Kurt introducing a safe topic of conversation—food. More specifically the virtues of various brands of sea salt he’d tried while in Australia.
‘He’s a clever man, Kurt,’ Luca said, moving smoothly through the others to walk beside her. ‘He not only senses the mood of people, but can find a way to change it. Did he know Maggie is as interested in cooking as she appears to be?’
‘I suppose we all know that—we’ve eaten at her and Phil’s place often enough. But Kurt’s clever in that he thinks to change the subject. Me, I’d just have plodded gloomily along.’
‘Never gloomily,’ Luca contradicted. ‘There is too much sunshine in your nature for you to be gloomy for long. Sad, yes, but that is different. Sad is natural. Gloomy—pah! Not you!’
He waved his hands, dismissing her gloom as ridiculous, then leant closer and whispered in her ear.
‘If we sit together, may I hold your hand on the bus?’
‘Like two kids at school?’
Luca smiled.
‘I suppose a bit like that, but I was not thinking childish thoughts.’
‘I know you weren’t,’ Rachel told him, but what she didn’t know was how to deal with her own thoughts, let alone how to handle Luca’s.
The Seasalt, to Rachel’s delight, was situated on a cliff near the head of a narrow inlet, so the waves washed in beneath it, broke over the rocks in a sparkle of spray and a flurry of foam, then rolled out again, providing nature’s music as an accompaniment to the meal.
‘This city is so beautiful, with the beaches and the ocean close enough for us to lunch above them,’ Luca said, breathing deeply to inhale the ‘sea-salted’ air.
The meal, too, was special, Rachel choosing a dish of squid barbecued with a chilli marinade, while Luca pronounced his grilled swordfish the best meal he’d had in Australia.
But when the plates were cleared, Annie called them to attention.
‘I warned you it was a working lunch,’ she said. ‘As you all know, this unit was set up as a prototype of a small paediatric cardiac surgical unit, but it was always in the nature of a trial. So I thought you might like to know that the higher-ups at Jimmie’s and in the Health Department are all very pleased with the way things are going, and the board of Jimmie’s has just committed to keeping the unit running.’
Someone cheered and there was a general raising of glasses in a toast. Then Annie silenced them again with an upraised hand.
‘But now the unit will be permanent we need to start getting things together, so the people who will be appointed when the US members of this team go back home have everything already set up for them. We’re already training theatre and nursing staff, and specialist paediatric cardiac surgeons are being approached to head up the new unit. But there are little things that need doing. Up to now, we’ve been using information sheets Alex brought with him from the US, updated and changed to fit with Australian hospital procedures but still copies of other hospitals’ info. I think we need our own, and I want help from all of you to make sure the information we give out to parents is easily understood and covers all they need to know. Not an easy task, but we’ll do it.’
‘I’ll be revamping the surgical procedure ones,’ Alex said, taking over from his wife. ‘And Phil is doing general information on congenital heart disease. Maggie, I’d like you and Kurt to work on a glossary of terms, explaining in simple English the words, phrases and acronyms parents will hear all the time.’
He paused, then turned to Rachel.
‘We’ll also need to revamp the information we send home with parents—post-op care info. I’ll get Susie from the PICU to do wound care and dressings and the pharmacy to do medication. Would you like to tackle feeding babies with congenital heart defects? I’ll give you what I have from other hospitals, but you’ll have to check with the pharmacy about supplements available here.’
He paused, then added, ‘Luca, you’re not obliged to do any of this, but maybe you have some suggestions for Rachel of what, in your experience, is offered to parents.’
‘I’ll be happy to work with Rachel on this project,’ Luca said. ‘And as we apparently have the bonus of a free afternoon, maybe we can start when we return to the hospital.’
He turned to smile at Rachel, who knew this wasn’t nearly as good an idea as he and Alex seemed to think. She needed to be avoiding Luca, not having more opportunities for them to be together thrust upon her.
The general conversation turned to what parents needed to know. Keep it practical, Scott suggested. Keep to simple notes but with web sites and contact phone numbers of support groups so families could find out more when and if they so desired. This suggestion came from Kurt, who had designed an information pamphlet on the bypass machine that was now used in many hospitals throughout the US.
Rachel began to think about what she knew about feeding. Babies with congenital heart disease grew more slowly than healthy babies, and those with congestive heart failure, as a result of their defect, might grow in length but put on weight very slowly.
‘They need a greater caloric intake, because their hearts have to work so hard, yet they usually take in less food because they breathe rapidly and are more easily fatigued.’
As Luca spoke, Rachel knew they were on the same wavelength. Papers on feeding infants with congenital heart disease would be available in every large hospital in the world, but she understood Annie’s desire to have one specifically designed for the unit here at Jimmie’s. But to work with Luca on it?
Not ideal!
‘It was a good idea of Annie’s, taking everyone to lunch,’ Luca said, when he’d followed Rachel off the bus and they were re-entering the hospital. ‘And to have a job to do—that, too, will take people’s minds off the baby.’
Rachel nodded but he sensed she was distracted, and he wondered if mentioning the baby had been a mistake.
But when she turned to him and asked, ‘Do you think Annie asked us to work together because she thinks there’s something going on between us?’ he realised how far off the track his assumption had been.
‘Would that bother you? For people to think this?’
She looked at him, amber eyes serious, scanning his face as if to commit his features to memory.
‘I don’t know,’ she finally replied, and he knew from the little frown creasing her forehead that she spoke the truth.
He smiled at her.
‘Maybe we shall have to test it out. Get something going on between us so you can see if people knowing worries you.’
For a moment he thought he’d lost her, then she smiled, not only with her lips but with her eyes as well.
‘Maybe we shall,’ she said softly, and Luca felt his body respond, not to the smile but to the implication in her words.
This was not the time, however, so he set it aside, sitting at her desk with the folder of information pamphlets Annie had collected on feeding infants with heart problems.
‘Let’s read them all, mark the pieces we think are excellent, and take notes about what we don’t like.’
Rachel handed him a small pile of maybe ten information sheets and folded pamphlets.
‘Half each!’
They read, but Luca found his attention wandering, and he wondered if Rachel was as aware of his body beside her as he was of hers.
‘Pooh! Too much information in most of these,’ she said some time later, setting the last of her pile aside. ‘I wonder if we’re trying to generalise too much. Maybe we should have a computer program with a variety of options, and printout sheets according to specific needs. Say, infants awaiting surgery who need to be built up to a certain weight. Their needs are different to a neonate post-operatively and different again to a two-year-old who’s had a minor adjustment to a shunt. Then we’ve got babies who’ve come off the ventilator and don’t take kindly to oral feeding—there’s such a wide range of patients.’
‘Special printouts are an excellent idea,’ Luca said, ‘and so is dinner. Do you realise everyone else has gone home? We are the last two here.’
She looked around in disbelief, and Luca laughed.
‘Did you really not hear people say goodbye to you? People leaving?’
Rachel shook her head.
‘I’m very good at focussing,’ she said, and he knew she must be. To have continued working in Theatre with babies with heart defects when her own baby had died of a similar condition, it would have required a tremendous effort of divorcing her work from her emotions—tremendous focus.
The Italian Surgeon Page 6