The Italian Surgeon

by Meredith Webber

  Thinking philosophy was better than thinking of Luca in danger, so she pondered the problems of the world as she boarded the plane, then ate her meal and settled herself to sleep her way across half the world.

  At Rome airport, she went through customs and more security checks before boarding a local plane for Milan. Somehow, in the ten hours between making her booking and leaving the flat, Kurt had managed to get hold of an Italian phrase book for her though, looking at it now, she doubted it would be much use to her.

  She didn’t think she’d need a phrase for ‘Where can I buy shoes?’

  But she flicked through the phrase book anyway, remembering words Luca had whispered to her, and learning they were, as she’d suspected, words of love.

  His voice, husky with desire, echoed in her head and she felt a little of her hard-won control slipping. But falling apart wasn’t going to help Luca. She had to find his family and plan what would help him.

  Milan airport was even more crowded than Rome, although she’d only been in transit in Rome so probably hadn’t seen all of it. But walking off the plane into a sea of excited Italians, all calling and gesticulating to friends and relations, made her realise just how alone she was.

  Until someone grabbed her arm and a small woman with grey streaks in her severely pulled-back dark hair said, ‘You are Rachel?’

  Rachel looked at the stranger and nodded.

  ‘Ha, I knew!’ the woman said, turning away to beckon to someone in the crowd. ‘Beautiful hair, Luca said, so I knew at once, though Sylvana and Paola did not believe.’

  Two more women, younger, joined them, both smiling and both looking so like Luca Rachel had to bite her lip to stop from crying yet again.

  ‘I am Paola,’ the taller of the two said, then she introduced her sister and her mother. ‘Our two other sisters and their husbands are all talking to the diplomatic people. My husband is trying to find out things from a newspaper magnate he knows.’

  Rachel tried to absorb this information but all she could think of was the kindness of these people, and how they seemed to consider her as family, wrapping her in the security that came with belonging.

  Had Luca told them more than the colour of her hair?

  ‘We will go to my place, which is near the clinic,’ Paola said. ‘I’m the other surgeon in the family. We have good friends at home by the telephone, and at Luca’s office at the hospital, so if any news comes, we will hear it as soon as possible.’

  Rachel allowed herself to be led away, first to the baggage retrieval area, then out of the airport to where a long black limousine waited at the kerb. A chauffeur leapt from the driving seat to take her case and open doors, and they all clambered in, Mrs Cavaletti sitting next to Rachel and holding tightly to her hand.

  And suddenly Rachel felt what the older woman must be going through—the risk of losing a beloved only son, and not for the first time.

  ‘How do you stand it?’ she asked, and Luca’s mother smiled at her.

  ‘With a whole lot of faith,’ Mrs Cavaletti said. ‘Faith in Luca for a start—he is strong and he has so much work left to do in his life he will not give up easily. And faith that things will come out right in the end.’

  She gave a little nod, and squeezed Rachel’s hand. ‘That is the strongest belief. We must never for a moment think it won’t come out right.’

  ‘Mamma is big on positive thoughts,’ Sylvana, who was on the jump-seat opposite the other three, said, and Rachel was struck by the strong American accent in the English words.

  ‘Have you lived in America?’ she asked the younger sister, and Sylvana rushed to explain how a year as an exchange student had led to her continuing to do a university degree over there.

  ‘Sylvana is engaged to a young doctor in New York,’ Paola explained, then she smiled at Rachel. ‘We have been saying we shall lose one sister to America, but that country, from what Luca has told us, will be giving one back to us.’

  Rachel’s heartbeat speeded up. She remembered Luca saying his family talked about everything—and laughed, cried, hugged and generally shared. But for him to have spoken so much of her? Maybe his love was genuine.

  Or maybe he’d just been assuring Paola he had a good PA for the clinic…

  ‘No negative thoughts,’ Sylvana murmured, and Rachel realised she must be frowning. But Sylvana was right—the first priority was to get Luca home safe, and after that…surely they’d have a chance to talk, to sort out things like love and trust…

  Paola’s apartment was in a tall, glass-fronted building, the inside decorated in white and black and grey, sleekly modern and quite stunning though, having driven past some really beautiful old stone buildings, Rachel was a little disappointed not to be seeing the inside of one of them.

  ‘Luca’s apartment is in an older building,’ Mrs Cavaletti said, and Rachel turned to the woman in surprise.

  ‘I sometimes thought Luca could read my mind, but I didn’t know it was a family trait,’ she said, and Mrs Cavaletti smiled.

  ‘Your face tells all—it is so expressive it is no wonder my son could read it.’

  ‘That can’t be true,’ Rachel protested, thinking how she’d never told Luca of her love, but wondering just how often it might have been written on her face.

  ‘It is,’ Sylvana told her. ‘I’m not as good as Mamma and Luca at reading faces, but even I could see it.’

  Paola, who had disappeared when they entered the apartment, returned with a tray holding a coffee-pot and cups.

  ‘No news, but I’ll call my husband shortly and see if he has made any progress.’

  By late afternoon Rachel knew one more cup of coffee would have her hanging from the ceiling, and if she didn’t get out in the fresh air, she’d fall asleep in the chair.

  ‘I think jet-lag is catching up with me,’ she said. ‘Would you mind if I went out for a walk?’

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ Sylvana offered, then she laughed. ‘I can see you want to be alone, so I won’t talk to you, just make sure you don’t get lost.’

  Rachel thanked her, but found she didn’t mind Sylvana talking, especially as the younger woman prattled on almost ceaselessly about her fiancé in New York and the wedding that was planned for January.

  They returned an hour later, Rachel feeling revived, though she didn’t remember many of the details of dress, flowers or wedding cake. Three men had joined the waiting women, and Paola introduced Rachel to her husband, a colleague of his and another man who was from some government department.

  ‘The government has word of Luca,’ Mrs Cavaletti said quietly, her dark eyes sombre as she looked at Rachel. ‘It appears he was offered safe passage out of the country, because the people now in command have no bad feelings against our country, but the hospital is largely unstaffed and what staff remains is over-worked, treating wounded from the fighting, so Luca has elected to remain, in part to care for the baby but also to help out in other ways.’

  Rachel felt her knees give way, then someone grabbed her shoulders and led her to a chair, where she sank down and rested her head in her hands.

  ‘Stupid, stupid man!’ she muttered, oblivious to the stupid man’s family gathered around her. ‘Why would he do that? Why not leave and come home? The baby is going to need another operation in a few months, and if there’s no one there who can perform it he’ll die anyway. But, no, Luca has to stay and care for him.’

  She shook her head, the last of the anger leaching out of her, then she looked up at the people watching her in various degrees of amazement and distress.

  ‘I’m sorry—of course he’d have chosen to stay. Being Luca, he couldn’t have done anything else, but it’s all so senseless, isn’t it? First the baby’s parents risk their lives to get him to Australia for the operation, and probably put their government at risk because the coup happened while they were gone, and now this—a situation that’s lose-lose whichever way you look at it.’

  ‘But it may not be,’ Sylvana said. ‘When
things settle down, the hospital in that place will find new doctors and maybe one will be a surgeon who can do the next operation on the baby.’

  Rachel had to smile.

  ‘I remember Luca saying something like that to me on a day when I was thinking negative thoughts. Thanks for that, Sylvana!’ Rachel turned to Mrs Cavaletti. ‘And that’s the last negative thought from me,’ she promised.

  She looked up at the government official.

  ‘If you have learned this from someone in the country, is there two-way communication? Can you speak to people over there?’

  The man looked dubious, but perhaps because he didn’t understand her, for one of the other men translated.

  ‘We are talking to them, yes,’ he said to Rachel.

  ‘Then maybe you can offer them help. Tell them you have heard the hospital is understaffed and you know a nurse who is willing to go over there.’

  ‘You can’t do that!’ Sylvana shrieked, while Paola added her own protest, but Mrs Cavaletti seemed to understand, for she took Rachel’s hand again and held it very tightly.

  ‘I can and will go if it’s at all possible,’ Rachel said to Luca’s sisters, then had to explain. ‘You see, for a long time I’ve been…well, uninvolved is the only way I can explain it. Detached from life—living but not living. Luca reminded me just how rich life can be, but it is he who has made it that way. Without him, well, I think it would lose all its flavour again, so I might just as well be with him over there as dying slowly inside without him here in Italy—or anywhere else for that matter.’

  She looked directly at his mother.

  ‘You understand?’

  The woman nodded, then she took Rachel’s face in her hands and kissed her first on one cheek, then on the other.

  ‘You will go with my blessing.’

  At ten that night, when Rachel had been dozing in a chair while Luca’s family members and friends had come and gone around her, the man from the government returned.

  ‘We have found a doctor who is joining a Red Cross mission due to leave from Switzerland in the morning. He will collect you in an hour. You will drive to Zurich, then fly part of the way and finish the journey by truck. The Red Cross people have cleared you to go with the mission.’

  Rachel couldn’t believe it had all been so easy—or seemingly easy. She shook herself awake and stood up, looking around for her luggage. She’d take only necessities—change of panties and toiletries, a spare pair of jeans and a couple of T-shirts, water—in her small backpack.

  Paola was ushering her towards the bathroom.

  ‘It might be the last running water you see for a while,’ she joked, and Rachel realised the whole family was thinking of her.

  But excitement soon gave way to tiredness and she slept as they drove through the night, missing the views of the wondrous mountains she knew must be outside the window of the car, too tired to even register a trip through a foreign country.

  ‘I’m sorry I wasn’t much company,’ she told the man who’d driven her as they left his car in a long-term car park—talk about positive thinking!—and walked towards the airport building.

  ‘You have travelled far,’ he said, understanding in his voice.

  Inside the terminal, they found the rest of the party easily, for all were wearing, over their shirts, white singlets with the distinctive red cross of the organisation across the chest and back.

  ‘Here’s one for each of you,’ the team leader said, introducing himself as Martin Yorke, an English doctor who had worked for many years in the country and was now returning in the hope of helping people he thought of as his friends.

  The rest of the team, when Rachel had been introduced and had woken up enough to sort out who was who, were technical people, drafted to help get essential services working again. Phone technicians, pumping experts, mechanics and structural engineers—all would have a role to play in helping the country back to stability.

  What surprised Rachel most was the enthusiasm they all showed, as if they were off on an exciting adventure.

  But twenty-four hours later the enthusiasm had waned considerably. They had been bumping along in the back of an old van for what seemed like for ever. Dust seeped through the canvas sides and every jolt on the road hurt the bruises they were all carrying.

  ‘Not as bad as East Africa,’ one of the men said, and talk turned to other places these volunteers had served. And as she listened, Rachel felt her own enthusiasm returning, her doubts about what lay ahead—what would Luca think of her arriving?—set aside as she contemplated how, if things didn’t work out with him, she could make a new life for herself on missions such as this.

  They crawled into the capital at dawn, the vehicle stopping first at the hospital as most of the supplies were medical.

  Now the doubts returned, and with them fear that Luca might not still be there. Might not even be alive…

  ‘He will be all right,’ the doctor who’d driven her to Switzerland assured her, and Rachel frowned at him. Now virtual strangers were reading her face!

  The hospital, though the corridors were crammed with patients, smelt and felt like hospitals did all over the world, the familiarity helping soothe Rachel’s agitation. Martin spoke the language and it was he who asked for news of Luca.

  A long, involved conversation followed, accompanied by much waving of arms.

  ‘He’s here, in a ward at the end of this corridor,’ Martin said at last, then he hesitated, shrugged his shoulders and added, ‘But if you could see him really quickly, this man was telling me they’re about to operate on a child who’s had the bottom part of both legs blown off and they have no theatre staff. We’ll need you there.’

  Luca was at the end of the corridor, but a child who’d been very badly injured was in Theatre?

  ‘Let’s go straight to Theatre,’ she said to Martin. ‘Some of those boxes have theatre instruments in them. Shall we carry them through with us? These people are busy enough handling their patients without having to lug boxes.’

  Martin beamed at her, then spoke to the man again.

  ‘I have told him to let Luca know you are here,’ he said, following her back towards the old truck.

  ‘You wouldn’t believe where the shrapnel’s got to,’ Martin said, an hour later. He had tied off blood vessels and neatened the stumps of the child’s legs, but during the operation the patient’s blood pressure had dropped so low, the makeshift team of Martin, Rachel and a local nurse, doing the anaesthetic, had realised there was something else seriously wrong.

  The child had stood on a land-mine, but as well as the immediate damage to his legs, shrapnel from the blast had pierced his bowel and all but severed his inferior mesenteric artery. Now, with the artery fixed and the damage to the bowel removed, Martin was searching for missing pieces of metal, afraid that if he missed one, all the work they’d already done to save the boy’s life would go to waste.

  ‘There!’ Rachel said, spotting a piece close to one kidney.

  ‘It wouldn’t be so bad if we could be sure they’d stay where they are,’ Martin grumbled, ‘but if they start moving around the abdominal cavity and one pierces the bowel again or, heaven forbid, the kid’s heart, he’ll be in trouble.’

  Rachel used saline to flush out the abdomen again and again but, conscious of limited supplies, she didn’t flood the cavity but drew the fluid into a syringe and squirted it around.

  The operating table was low, and her back ached, while tiredness from too much travel and not enough sleep tightened all the muscles in her shoulders and neck so even the slightest movement was agony.

  Then the tension eased, as if someone had wiped a magic cloth across her shoulders. Wonderingly, she raised her head and looked around.

  Luca stood just inside the room, a mask held across his mouth and nose, his eyes feasting on her—his face, for once, as easy for her to read as he found hers. For amazement, disbelief and, most of all, love were all reflected in his eyes. She knew he smil
ed behind the mask before he shook his head and left again.

  The young local who was doing the anaesthetic spoke to Martin, his voice excited and emphatic.

  ‘Seems your boyfriend has been all but running the hospital, operating day and night, never sleeping, teaching people to take care of their sick and injured relatives, performing minor miracles right, left and centre,’ Martin explained.

  And although she couldn’t see his mouth, Rachel knew he, too, was smiling, and the warmth of the love she felt for Luca spread through her body, banishing pain and stiffness—even banishing her doubts…

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  THEY caught snatched moments together over the next few days, but time only to hold each other, not to talk. Well, not to talk much, though Luca had scolded her for coming, and called her a fool and idiot, but in a voice so filled with love Rachel knew he didn’t mean it.

  He was exhausted, and Martin, who was now nominally in charge of the hospital, had ordered him to bed soon after the arrival of the reinforcements.

  Then Rachel was asleep while Luca woke up and returned to work, and it seemed as if their schedule would never allow them the time they needed together.

  But apart from that frustration, which Rachel was too busy to let bother her, there was so much to be thankful for.

  She was close to Luca for a start, and she could feel his love whenever he was near. On top of that, the baby was doing well, already off the ventilator, and surprisingly healthy in spite of lack of the personal care and attention he’d have received in a PICU. A young aide, following orders from Luca, was with him a lot of the time, nursing not only the post-op patient but other babies in the small ward.

  Rachel learned her way around the single-storied building, built as a hollow square around a garden, spending time in Theatre when she was needed, helping out on the wards when no operations were under way. She learned a few words of the local language, and became friends with the local staff, finding them all gentle people, as bemused and distressed by what was happening in their country as people in any war-torn place must be.