‘How about during my next shift?’
* * *
‘Jack, there’s no way.’ Thea felt panic rising, already bubbling in her throat. ‘That’s just not a good idea.’
‘Sorry, Thea. That’s what the boss said. Ben’s on your team whilst you show him the ropes.’
‘No!’ She could have cried in despair.
‘C’mon, Thea, I know you think that working with a partner can split your focus, but for what it’s worth I’ve never known anyone as professional as you. And Major Abrams... Ben...has a formidable reputation. I don’t think it’s going to be as bad as you fear.’
Thea stared at Jack. His sincerity would have been touching if the entire situation hadn’t been so terrifying. There was no way she could tell him the truth. She couldn’t tell any of her colleagues. She and Ben had started their ‘happily reunited’ charade last week—now they had to live up to that.
Talk about impossible.
She had never taken a sick day in her life. Never missed a single day of work. But right now it was all she could do not to drop everything and run straight through the door to the car park and freedom.
She’d hoped to call Ben’s bluff about not having any problem with him working there, and she’d been surprised when he’d accepted the temporary role. But she’d taken comfort in the fact that at least they wouldn’t be working together.
That, she’d decided, would be a step too far.
And yet here he was, on his first day, assigned to her team. How were they possibly meant to work together when neither of them could bear to be in the other’s company for long? Ever since the pancakes, and their agreement to give friendship a go, they’d made a concerted effort to make small-talk and go out running together. Their strained conversation had been painful and draining. Work had been a welcome escape.
But now they were expected to work together.
Anything else she might have said to Jack stuck in her throat as Ben rounded the corner. She squared her shoulders, conscious of Jack watching them, and strived to regulate her laboured breathing. She had to keep it together.
‘What do you need me to do, Boss?’
Polite and deferential—all part of his Army training—but her throat was nevertheless too dry for her to answer. The idea of being boss to Dr Ben Abrams would have been a daunting prospect at the best of times, let alone given all the baggage between the two of them.
‘Boss...?’
She heard the gentle prompting in his tone. Jack didn’t know Ben well enough to pick up on it, but she knew Ben was trying to encourage her. She was both grateful and resentful at the same time.
‘You remember Ron and Andy? My paramedics?’
‘Yeah, and Harry, our pilot,’ Ben confirmed. ‘I’ve just been to introduce myself to them all again.’
Of course he had, she bristled. He might appear deferential, but he was used to running the show. How was he going to respond to taking orders from her? Because she would be giving them. That much had changed in five years. This was her team and she was responsible for what went on in the field during her watch. She took that responsibility seriously and she had her own way of doing things. A way which suited her guys.
Two bosses vying to take charge. Now what? How was this possibly going to work?
‘Thea—new call-out,’ Jack cut in with sudden efficiency as he slipped his headphones from around his neck to cover his head. ‘Sounds like a horse rider fell—the road ambulance have requested our assistance.’
Well, it seemed as though she was about to find out.
With a rush of adrenalin lending her strength, Thea turned her focus to the screen to read the incoming transcript. There was an open fracture to the ankle, hence the request for a trauma doctor. It didn’t take her long to make a decision, and she spun around to Ben.
‘Alert Andy and Harry and grab the gear. There won’t be enough seats if we have to transport anyone, so tell Ron he can monitor from here. Meet you at the heli.’
‘Understood.’ Ben issued the automatic verbal confirmation before ducking out of the door.
‘Send the co-ordinates to the chopper, Jack, and update me with anything as we’re in flight.’
‘Roger.’ Jack dipped his head.
Racing out into the corridor, Thea grabbed her own kit and headed out onto the Tarmac, swinging up into her seat just moments behind the others.
‘Harry—you’ve met Ben already, I understand? He’s a military trauma surgeon, recently returned from Afghanistan,’ Thea stated, as soon as Harry had completed his checks and they were airborne. It was a discreet attempt to establish herself as team leader.
‘Yeah, turns out we served in the same region a couple of years ago.’ Harry smiled. ‘Although we never met out there.’
Another veteran who no doubt knew of Ben’s reputation. Thea couldn’t help another small stab of apprehension. If Harry knew Ben in a professional capacity she might have to work even harder to ensure she didn’t end up losing control of her own team. It was almost out of her hands. The dynamics of the team largely depended, whether she liked it or not, on how well Ben could take orders from her.
‘Keep a look-out as we approach the scene and stay alert,’ Thea advised Ben over the headset. ‘The rider was apparently on a hack alongside a canal, so when we get closer we’ll follow the canal and look for somewhere to land. By the map it looks like there are some accessible fields nearby. You can learn a lot from the scene with a bird’s-eye view like this.’
‘Acknowledged.’
No doubt he already knew all that, from his military training, but so far he didn’t appear to be trying to take command—subconsciously or not.
‘Approaching scene,’ Harry confirmed about ten minutes later.
‘Rapid response vehicles, eleven o’clock,’ Thea observed.
‘Noted.’
As Harry checked the area for safe landing sites and brought the chopper gently down, Thea waited for the thumbs-up before nodding to her team and jumping to the ground.
She covered the distance to the casualty quickly, taking in everything around them as she introduced herself and her team to the patient and offered some brief reassurance. A quick visual confirmed the leg injury.
‘Open fracture above the ankle.’
‘Right.’ Ben nodded grimly.
His jaw had locked, and she knew he had the same concerns as her. Open fractures to the ankle were often associated with a lack of blood supply to the foot, which could result in the loss of the foot itself. Like her, he must be running through ways to protect the blood supply.
Still, before focussing all her attention on the obvious injury she wanted to ensure that there wasn’t another, less obvious but potentially more life-threatening, injury to prioritise. Distracted by the open wound, the road crew might have missed potentially fatal internal bleeding into the patient’s chest, his pelvis or his stomach.
To her surprise Ben, as though anticipating her immediate priority, stepped away to the rider’s girlfriend, to ask what had happened, as she took the opportunity to ask the rider himself. Her account might shed light on something the patient himself had missed—like the angle of his fall. It might help Thea to decide if there was another test she needed to carry out.
After running through her checks Thea stepped away to discuss a treatment plan with Andy. Ben quickly joined them.
‘A startled duck took sudden flight off the canal, spooking his horse. The horse bucked and the rider fell onto the gravelly, tree-root-riddled path,’ Ben advised.
‘I got the same account.’ Thea nodded. ‘Plus he was clear, concise and calm. My gut says that although he’s in some pain, there are no underlying issues. He’s stable.’
‘Agreed.’
‘That blood supply concerns me,’ she murmu
red. ‘I want to try an open reduction before we move him.’
‘Good plan, but you’re going to need some strong pain relief if you want to get that bone back under the skin,’ Ben noted.
‘I’ll get the Ketamine,’ Andy said, jogging back to the helicopter.
‘That’s a pretty powerful drug.’ Ben looked surprised. ‘I didn’t know emergency vehicles carried it.’
‘The road ambulances don’t,’ Thea agreed. The drug could effectively unplug a patient’s sight, hearing—the lot. ‘But it’s another advantage of the Air Ambulance having trauma doctors. We can carry a range of equipment and drugs other rapid responders can’t.’
‘Nice.’ Ben looked impressed. ‘So is that why the road crew called us out instead of just packing the rider into the ambulance and taking him to hospital?’
‘Yep.’ Thea busied herself getting her kit together to perform the reduction procedure. ‘The road crew can only scoop and run, whilst with our knowledge and our kit we can, as they say, stay and play. Treating an injury like this in the field can mean the difference between the foot needing to be amputated and saving it.’
‘Right...’ Ben nodded in agreement. ‘It’s a very battlefield-orientated approach.’
Thea blushed. Of course he would already know that as well as anyone. Still, he wasn’t rolling his eyes or complaining at the lesson. Perhaps her initial fears about them working together were unfounded. And it felt good to be in control of something—of Ben—when up until half an hour ago she’d been feeling as if she was drowning.
‘Exactly. Right, I’m going to update them back at base. Do you want to go and explain to the rider what we’re about to give him and why?’
‘Sure.’
Ben jogged off immediately and Thea contacted Jack. She couldn’t help noticing a slight stiffness in his gait. The cold weather, she realised instinctively. She’d noticed he always seemed to be in that bit more pain when the temperature dropped, or if a storm was brewing. He was like a human barometer.
As she checked in with Jack she took the opportunity to snag a high-vis puffer jacket from the helicopter, and she tossed it to Ben as she returned to the rider.
‘I need you to go to the end of the lane when you’ve finished with the patient and flag down the second road crew who are on their way. Put that on and they’ll see you better.’
She studiously ignored Ben’s sharp look as she administered pain relief to the patient, but noticed that he was quick to wriggle into the jacket’s cosiness. The pain must have been twisting into his bones.
She sat back thoughtfully for a moment whilst the drug took effect. Ben had turned towards the rider, and his reassuring voice was repeating information to ensure the guy understood.
‘Okay, so Ketamine’s what we call a dissociative drug. It’s going to make you feel a little strange, maybe a little spaced out, and you might not remember any of this—all right?’
The patient muttered something which she didn’t catch, but Ben was clearly completely in control.
‘It’s going to take your pain away and enable us to do our job. We’re going to try to save that foot.’ Ben glanced up as Thea took the ankle and gave him the nod. ‘Okay, are you ready?’
Confident that Ben had the rider’s trust and attention, Thea knew all she needed to do was get on with her job. With any luck she would have five, maybe six minutes to reduce the open fracture. If the patient wasn’t compliant, she would have to administer a second dose.
‘Just try to relax,’ Ben soothed the rider. ‘This stuff will work much better if you’re relaxed.’
Andy and Ron were both good, and she was proud of her team, but there was no doubt that Ben had an extra edge. It wasn’t just his Army training, or his skill as a trauma surgeon, it was something essentially Ben. He was still talking to the patient, looking up to give her a brief nod when he saw the drug was starting to work at the same moment as she was already moving in to work on the ankle. They seemed to be completely in sync.
Working carefully and quickly, she tried the procedure, but the man was becoming agitated, and with only a look to Ben Thea was able to confirm that the rider wasn’t responding adequately to the drug. She wouldn’t be trying a second time.
Ben left to flag down the second road crew whilst she stabilised the rider for transportation to hospital, since they had been unable to reduce the wound on site.
As they flew back to the base Thea couldn’t help admiring Ben. It was odd, but the ease and harmony the two of them lacked in their personal relationship had appeared automatically within the first hour of their professional one.
CHAPTER EIGHT
FOR THE FOURTH time in as many minutes Ben tried to read an interesting article in his newspaper, but he found his eyes wandering back to the glass wall which separated himself and Thea. Just as they had been doing more and more frequently since he’d started working with the Air Ambulance less than a week ago.
If he’d thought their working and living together would drive a much-needed wedge between them, dampen his emotions and desires, then he’d been completely wrong. All it had shown him was that Thea really was incredible. Dedicated, focussed and skilled, with a knowledge base a doctor twice her age would be proud of. She quietly commanded loyalty and respect from her team—and the other teams, too—and gave it back in spades. And Ben knew he wasn’t the only one to think so.
In spite of all that had happened to her—losing her parents as a kid, losing Dan, and then his own actions—Thea had held tight to her resolve and grown into a kind woman and an extraordinary trauma doctor. And he felt proud of her even though she’d done it all on her own. It was getting harder and harder to keep his distance, but he knew he had nothing to offer her and she deserved so much.
He watched as Thea reappeared from the kitchen, making her way to the rec room area, where various other team members sat relaxing. She flopped down sideways onto an easy chair and threw her legs—long, sexy legs, even clad in her flight suit—over the chunky chair-arm, before tucking into a yoghurt with a sense of relief.
‘Voracious appetite!’ Nic teased her, and despite himself Ben set down his paper and sauntered casually over, just as Thea replied.
‘Yeah, well, having had nothing but paperwork to do all morning, the very second I decided to grab lunch there was, of course, a call-out. Now I’m starving.’
‘And that’s the extent of your lunch?’ Ben frowned as he sank down with careful nonchalance in the chair next to Thea.
‘Are you kidding?’ She snorted, jerking her head back over her shoulder. ‘I inhaled a pulled pork sandwich before I even left that kitchen.’
‘Hey, that was mine!’ Harry stopped tapping on his phone long enough to look up.
‘Sorry, mate—first come, first served.’ Thea grinned. ‘You were on a call-out.’
‘Oh, yeah...’ He pulled a face. ‘A fourteen-year-old swimmer at a meet—bad dive, landed on her head. Probably permanent spinal injury, unfortunately, poor kid. I’m kidding about the sandwich, by the way. I brought enough in for everybody.’
‘Yeah, I know.’ Thea smiled. ‘I heard you tell everyone this morning.’
The banter continued and Ben smiled at the easy camaraderie. It was what had made it so easy for him to slip into his new role—feeling instantly accepted and welcome. It would be a shame to leave. He’d thoroughly enjoyed his first couple of days with Thea, and now working with Team Two was proving almost as enjoyable.
When he’d first realised Nic was the trauma doctor in charge of Team Two he’d had his reservations, but it turned out Nic was a good leader and a skilled doctor, with the same strong ethos as the soldiers Ben had worked alongside in combat. Working with the new team was proving enjoyable as well as informative; it was clear that whatever had happened between Thea and Nic was firmly in the past—for both par
ties.
He knew it shouldn’t please him that Thea had no love interest. It wasn’t his business and it shouldn’t have any bearing on him whatsoever. Yet whenever he watched her Ben couldn’t help feeling...what? Contentment? Pride? Maybe even a hint of healthy possessiveness?
He shook his head. He had no business feeling either of them. His Army Medical Board assessment was a matter of weeks away and then he would be shipped out to another combat zone. Back to actual trauma surgery in the field, to that rush of adrenalin, the pressure, the buzz.
Funny, but the thought of it seemed to have lost its ability to give him that same high it once had.
He glanced across at Thea. No more having to feign being a happily married couple in front of everyone. That should be a good thing. Only over the last few days it had felt less and less like such a charade. The air had been significantly cleared between them, and ever since he’d admitted to his old feelings for Thea it seemed to have paved the way for them to cultivate the beginnings of a real friendship, much to his surprise. If only he could keep control of the lust, which seemed harder to resist with each passing day.
Thea was intelligent and fun and witty, as well as being stunningly beautiful. He enjoyed being around her to listen to her, talk to her, work with her. The feelings had crept up on him, slowly at first, and now he found himself actively seeking her out, feeling pleased when she seemed to come looking for him, too.
He tuned back in to the conversation just as Ron was urging Thea to join them at the pub.
‘Sorry, Doc, no crying off—this one is mandatory.’
‘Since when is going to the pub mandatory?’
Thea tried to laugh it off, but Ben could see those tiny stress lines of hers—imperceptible to anyone else—tightening around her eyes.
‘Since we’ve been working together for a couple of years, and not one of us here knew you were married.’ Ron feigned hurt. ‘Let alone to sod-that-for-a-game-of-soldiers Major Abrams, here.’
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