Sheikh Surgeon, Surprise Bride

by Josie Metcalfe

  There was an uncomfortably chastened silence in the room as he continued with his examination of their handiwork, and he pronounced himself satisfied with progress with the minimum of facial expression before he stalked out of the room.

  Lily followed him in silence until they were well out of earshot before she queried in an innocent voice, ‘So what exactly would prevent Gary Freshett from being a candidate for a knee joint replacement if he messes the osteotomy up?’

  ‘If he messes it up by deliberately doing too much weight-bearing and flexion too soon, he will have proved that he is too stupid and arrogant to be given a joint replacement,’ Razak snapped.

  Lily deliberately stayed silent for several seconds before she raised her eyes to meet his, but she couldn’t prevent the corners of her mouth quivering as she fought a grin.

  ‘Too stupid for a joint replacement?’ she said softly.

  ‘Don’t forget arrogant,’ he reminded her, then flung both hands up in the air. ‘Damn it all, it was his crazy need to prove he’s some super-stud sportsman that caused the damage in the first place. We worked hard to give him as much range of movement as we could and to make him as pain-free as possible, and he’s trying to ruin it all before the anaesthetic is fully out of his body.’

  ‘His life, his body, his choice,’ Lily chanted softly. ‘That’s what one of our tutors told us in the early days of our training. He said that all we could do was our best. The rest was up to the patient.’

  ‘And on that note it’s time to go and see how Mr Bullen is doing,’ Razak said with a slightly unsettling air of resignation.

  ‘Apparently, he’s off ventilation,’ Lily offered. ‘He’s still in ICU on diminishing levels of monitoring, but will be moved out if they get a more acute patient needing the space.’

  When they reported their arrival to the senior sister on ICU, just the mention of Simon Bullen was enough to garner a reaction.

  ‘Is there a problem, Sister?’ Razak asked, with a worried glance in Lily’s direction. They both knew just how long it had taken to repair Simon’s injuries and how complex the surgery had been. Had they managed to miss something vital?

  ‘Only the fact that he doesn’t want to be here,’ she said cryptically.

  ‘In ICU?’ Lily asked.

  ‘Alive,’ Maura Philips corrected grimly. ‘He’s only been conscious a short while but he’s been making my staff’s lives such a misery that almost any one of them would willingly do the job for him just to shut him up.’

  ‘So he’s not going to be showering us with gratitude for putting the jigsaw back together again, then?’

  ‘No. We’ve actually had to move him into the isolation bay at the far end of the unit because he was upsetting the other patients and visitors.’

  ‘Well, then, perhaps it’s time to find out if he’s got any genuine grievances,’ Razak suggested grimly, and gestured for Sister Philips to lead the way.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  INITIALLY, Lily was happy to stay in the background—after all, Razak was the consultant and hadn’t really needed to have her with him.

  She couldn’t fault the way he greeted the man surrounded by all the high-tech monitoring equipment, his manner as polite and courteous as ever. She was concerned when the man merely glared at them when Razak enquired about the level of pain he was suffering, but this turned to anger when the man finally opened his mouth.

  ‘Interfering bloody busybodies!’ he railed in a voice that sounded painfully raw as he forced it out through the bruised tissues of his throat. He spat out a string of foul curses. ‘Why couldn’t you just let me die? I wanted to die. I’ve got nothing left to live for. Nothing! She’s taken it all away.’

  ‘Mr Bullen,’ Razak began gently, ‘we were only doing our job and—’

  ‘Only doing your job?’ he interrupted rudely, and laughed hoarsely, but there was no humour in the sound. ‘That’s what the lawyer said, the divorce lawyer who helped her to take everything from me…my house, my business…I don’t care about them. I could always start again…set up a new business, buy another house…but she’s told so many lies, alienated all my friends and even took my dog…’ He tried to wipe away the tell-tale tears but the arm he chose was the one they’d had to repair after its shattering contact with the banister rail. He angrily brushed away Lily’s silent offer of a handful of tissues.

  ‘Anyway, why would you care how I am?’ the man challenged with a rapid return to belligerence. ‘Look at you with your expensive suit, silk tie and hand-made shoes. What would you know about the lives of ordinary people? You just patch them up and forget about them once they hobble out of the door.’

  Lily had reached the end of her patience.

  ‘Mr Bullen,’ she said sharply. ‘I want you to take a look at these.’ Anger at his unwarranted attack on Razak had put a fine tremor in her hands but she still managed to slot the set of X-rays onto the view box with icy precision.

  ‘These are your X-rays. They show your ankles—Mr Khan and I actually operated on one each, putting in plates and screws to rebuild the bones so you would be able to walk again. This picture shows the pin we had to put in to repair your thigh. You were bleeding so much from this injury that by the time we got you on the table you’d already lost nearly a third of your blood volume and you were in danger of kidney failure. This one is of your lower back and those bits there are the vertebrae with the crush fractures that we can do nothing about except to wait for them to heal and stabilise. You will probably always suffer from backache as a result.’

  She had to pause a second to draw breath but she didn’t dare to glance at Razak. Was he furious that she’d intervened when she was nothing more than his junior?

  ‘This,’ she continued, as she slapped up the next plate, ‘is your elbow. You were extremely lucky that the break didn’t involve the joint itself. As it is, once that’s mended it probably won’t give you any problems other than aching when the weather changes. But this one…’ She tapped the monochromatic evidence of the damage done to the man’s neck by his inexpertly tied knot. ‘This is the prize exhibit. This one is the reason why you’ve got the Meccano set attached to your head because this is where you broke your neck.’

  ‘Broke my—’

  She was on a roll now, and he had no chance of interrupting.

  ‘You could have died instantly…which is obviously what you were intending…or you could just have paralysed yourself, but instead you had a whole team of people—many of whom had already worked their full shift that day but we all stayed on, just for you—who worked damn hard on you for hours to put you back together. And all you can do is curse at us for interfering?’

  He was definitely a little stunned by her unexpected vehemence and for a moment he even had the grace to look shamefaced but then his expression closed up.

  ‘You shouldn’t have bothered,’ he said quietly, at least this time without the profanities. ‘There’s no point. I’ve got nothing and no one—not even a dog any more.’

  ‘That’s not true,’ she argued, as she approached the side of the bed. ‘You’ve got you.’ She reached out a hand to touch his wrist, wondering if she was completely wasting her time. ‘You’re a good-looking man and you’re probably quite intelligent if you’ve managed to set up a successful business. You speak well, even if your vocabulary is a bit repetitive at times, and if you like animals you can always adopt a rescued one…they need your love even more than one that’s never known cruelty. I’d say you’ve got plenty of bait to go fishing and there are definitely plenty more fish in the sea…’

  She finally wound down with an uncomfortable feeling that she’d said far more than she should have, but it would all have been worth it if even one of the things she’d said penetrated the man’s depression.

  She felt her cheeks heat up when she realised that she’d used her own sister’s analogy of hooking a mate, and with Razak listening in, too.

  The lengthening silence was broken by the irritat
ing bleep of someone’s pager and when Razak stepped outside the room to answer the call, their patient’s eyes followed him thoughtfully out of the door.

  ‘The two of you work together a lot?’ he asked.

  ‘Hours at a time,’ she said, and was so cheered by this first indication that he was thinking about something other than his own situation that it loosened the strings on her tongue. ‘So you can tell I definitely know what I’m talking about when I speak about good-looking men.’

  Simon Bullen’s eyes flicked away to something over her shoulder and with a dreadful sense of inevitability she turned to see that Razak had come back into the room. For several endless seconds he held her gaze with his and she wished the highly polished floor would open up and swallow her.

  ‘Thank you for that kind testimonial, Dr Langley,’ he said without a flicker of reaction, ‘but that was Tim telling us that our first patient is ready for Theatre.’

  So she thought he was good-looking, Razak mused as he strode swiftly ahead of her, hoping she couldn’t see the grin spreading across his face.

  It was one thing to find her attractive but it was another thing entirely to discover that she felt the same way. So good for the ego.

  Not that he hadn’t had any number of women attracted to him before, but there could be so many reasons for that…his family’s wealth being the primary draw for some women and his slightly exotic looks for others.

  Which was it for Lily? She’d commented on his looks when she hadn’t realised he’d been able to overhear her but…was he a fool for hoping that she would be one of the few who saw him as a doctor first and foremost, that she would see beyond the surface trappings?

  Not that he could act on it even if she did, no matter what the woman did to his blood pressure.

  He gave a silent huff of laughter when he remembered the way she’d read the Riot Act to Simon Bullen. She certainly had fire in her belly and didn’t care who knew it. And he’d thought she would be one of those stereotypical repressed English women, cool to the point of frigidity and totally unable to let their hair down, even in the bedroom.

  ‘Bad move,’ he growled softly, when the thoughts of Lily and bedroom collided in his head. It would have to be enough for him that he’d realised she was so much more than he’d anticipated and that he already knew that she was going to be a key player in the eventual success of the new unit.

  ‘Anything else is strictly off limits,’ he said aloud, as the door to the changing room swung shut behind him and he began to strip his suit off…as if that would stop his imagination.

  Things didn’t get any better when he strode into Theatre ten minutes later to be greeted by the sexy wail of a saxophone.

  ‘Who chose the music?’ he asked in surprise. Tim usually opted for something with a driving rock beat while his choice veered between classical instrumental works or his latest introduction, evocative unaccompanied voices singing traditional Gaelic songs.

  ‘I did,’ said Lily behind him, and he pivoted to face her, strangely delighted to find that she’d surprised him again. ‘Tim said it was my turn to choose today, and then he pulled a face when it came on.’

  ‘So you like blues.’

  ‘And jazz,’ she elaborated. ‘But preferably instrumental when I’m trying to concentrate.’

  ‘Well, let’s see if it works,’ he suggested, as he waved her towards the table to which their first patient had just been transferred.

  He waited until she was just inches away from him before he drew in the familiar perfume that followed her wherever she went.

  ‘So,’ he murmured under the cover of the sounds of the empty trolley leaving the theatre and the swing doors thumping shut. ‘You listen to jazz and you wear jasmine.’ Her wide eyes flicked up to him with an almost startled expression in them and when he refused to let her look away, he actually saw the moment when awareness replaced her surprise.

  Silently, he was berating himself for instigating even this tiny bit of intimacy between them but it had been irresistible…She was irresistible, with more facets than a brilliant-cut diamond.

  Enough! Concentrate!

  He drew in a deep breath and blew it out through his mouth in a steady stream into his mask, where no one else would see what he was doing to bring his thoughts back under control.

  ‘Our patient is Chloe Westerham,’ he announced to the room at large. ‘She’s seventeen years old and has been undergoing chemo for a tumour in her tibia. The tumour has greatly reduced in size but to make sure there’s no recurrence or spread of the cancer there’s no way we can remove it without taking a significant amount of the bone as well. That leaves us with two logical choices, amputation, which in a girl of this age would be devastating, especially as she’s a keen sportswoman and dancer, or a titanium replacement.’

  Lily let Razak’s slightly husky accent flow around her while she tried to get her rioting emotions under control. She didn’t need to concentrate on his words because the two of them had already discussed what he’d decided to do during Chloe’s operation.

  She had no doubts about her ability to assist him during the young woman’s surgery. There was something about working with him that seemed to give her the confidence to feel that she could do almost anything.

  What she didn’t know was why her emotions were so scrambled. What was it about this man in particular that had her hormones in an uproar? It had never happened before so she couldn’t understand why a single dark-eyed glance across the operating table…No, not even that. He just had to walk into the room and her heart beat faster.

  It just wasn’t logical. She’d spent so many years concentrating on achieving her goal without being even remotely sidetracked by her male colleagues, while he…

  She ventured a look at him, his dark hair covered by a pale blue disposable cap that should have done nothing for his masculinity, and at least half of his face hidden behind the ubiquitous mask. She could see no more of him than she could of Tim, ensconced behind his dials and cylinders, but Tim had never made her heart skip so much as a single beat where Razak…

  ‘Hey, Jazz, are you still with us?’ his husky voice demanded, snapping her out of her introspection, and there was something fiercely intimate in the gaze that held hers.

  Startled by the heat and almost afraid of her own reaction to it, she swiftly dragged her eyes away and back down to the job in hand.

  Surely there hadn’t been anything in what he could see of her expression that would have given her thoughts away. That would be just too embarrassing.

  Thank goodness she could see exactly what it was that he needed her to do without having to ask. At least the rest of the team wouldn’t have to know that her concentration had wavered.

  ‘Is that Lily’s new nickname?’ Tim demanded with a spark of curiosity from the head of the table.

  ‘Because she likes jazz,’ confirmed the scrub nurse, sounding knowledgeable. After all, she’d been listening to their conversation about the choice of today’s music when Razak had come into Theatre.

  Lily flicked her eyes up to meet his, startled to find that they were waiting for her, and realised that only she knew that her taste in music was no more than half of the story.

  There and then she decided that she was going to get rid of every one of her jasmine-scented toiletries and replace them with something completely different.

  ‘Don’t change it. It suits you,’ he murmured softly, almost as if he’d been listening in on her private thoughts, and that unnerved her even more.

  By the end of the surgery, the only conclusion she’d come to was that she needed a few minutes to think…some time to get her head in order before she had to concentrate on the next case. She was part of a team and each patient deserved her best, not a brain that was focussed more on the lead surgeon and her feelings towards him.

  Desperately needing to avoid Razak while she did her soul-searching, she’d stayed in Theatre, checking and rechecking her part of the case notes to all
ow him to get well away. She barely stopped herself groaning aloud when the phone rang as she was about to leave and the receptionist on the other end asked to speak to Razak.

  ‘Can I give him a message?’ she offered. He was the last person she wanted to have to speak to. ‘I’m Dr Langley, his junior, and we’ve just finished our first case, so he’s probably in the staffroom, having something to drink. I could fetch him if you want to wait.’

  ‘Oh.’ There was a world of indecision in that single syllable. ‘He’s got a long-distance phone call from someone who says he’s Mr Khan’s brother.’

  ‘Switch him through and I’ll see if I can take a message. If not, I can suggest a time for him to try to ring back,’ Lily said with a sudden surge of curiosity. Thoughts of her charismatic boss filled most of her waking and sleeping moments, but she really knew very little about him. The thought of speaking to his brother had a special appeal.

  ‘Hello. This is Karim Khan. To whom am I speaking?’ said a voice with a rather heavier version of Razak’s attractive accent but without the husky note to his voice that made her every nerve quiver.

  ‘I’m Lily Langley, a surgeon who works with your brother. Can I give him a message for you?’

  ‘I really need to speak with him. Is there some way he could come to the phone?’

  ‘It might take a few minutes but I’ll go and find him straight away,’ she offered, hearing strain and urgency in his voice and wondering at the situation that had put them there. ‘If you get cut off in the meantime, I’ll tell him to ring you straight back.’

  ‘You are most kind. Thank you so much,’ he said with a degree of courtesy that she thought had long since disappeared. But there was no time to ponder comparative standards of politeness.

  Depositing the receiver on the desk, she hurried out into the corridor and was relieved that the first person she saw was Razak.

  The second person was Reg and from the expression on his florid face this was not a friendly conversation.

  The difference between the two men couldn’t have been greater as they faced each other. As he was part of the way through an operating shift, Razak was in a set of the usual washed-to-death cotton scrubs with a pair of white clogs on his feet. By comparison, Mr Smythe in his expensive suit should have looked superior but it was Razak who was the embodiment of leashed power as he stood listening.