The Surgeon's Meant-To-Be Bride

by Amy Andrews

  She cleared her throat and waved her hand dismissively. ‘Sorry, guys, ignore me. I’ve always been too emotional.’ And she picked up her sandwich.

  ‘This is true,’ said Helmut.

  And everyone laughed, including Harriet. With the mood lightened a little, lunch proceeded. There was general conversation about what everyone was going to do in London and how they were going to spend their two months off.

  ‘Have you heard any more about your grandfather?’ Siobhan asked Gil.

  ‘No. If I don’t hear anything in the next couple of hours, I’ll ring my father,’ said Gill.

  There was a return to a more sombre mood again until Joan spoke up. ‘Come on, guys. Best and worst. It’s our last day. We always play it on our last day.’

  ‘Best and worst?’ asked Benedetto, who was the only one remaining at the table from the other surgical team, much to Katya’s chagrin.

  ‘It’s a game our team plays at the end of a mission,’ said Katya, her voice leaving him in no doubt that he wasn’t welcome to join in.

  Gill laughed. ‘Don’t mind Katya. She has no manners. Of course you must join us. In fact, you should go first. You have to tell us what’s been the best part of the mission for you and the worst.’

  Ben smiled. ‘Hah! That is easy. Katya. Dear, sweet Katya with the beautiful face and the shrewish tongue. She has been the best and worst of my time here.’

  People laughed and Katya blushed.

  ‘I shall miss her when I go back to my home on the Amalfi coast…unless she wishes to join me for a little holiday in Positano?’

  ‘I would rather drink bad vodka.’

  There was more general laughter and they moved on. ‘My best has been having Harry back,’ said Joan, and there was a general murmur of agreement.

  ‘Why, thank you, kind lady,’ said Harriet with a smile, and then remembered that this would be the last time she would see these people, work with them, and the smile left her eyes.

  ‘Worst…Hmm, let me see. The food?’

  ‘Oh, hell, yes,’ groaned Helmut, as he ripped the lid off his second juice tub. ‘I’d kill for a beer. A nice cold German beer. That’s my worst—no beer. And my best, well, Harry, of course, but also that pneumonectomy we did right at the beginning. That was a fine piece of work, Guillaume.’

  There were more murmurs of agreement. Gill had been really happy with it, too. The lung had been a mess, having taken a chunk of flying metal. The fact that the man had survived at all was a miracle. Gill had had little choice but to completely remove the lung.

  Had he had time and been in a major centre with every machine that went ping and the back-up of thoracic surgeons, he could have attempted to save some of it, but that wasn’t what field medicine was about. The objective of this kind of surgery was to stabilise the patient for transfer to a more major facility.

  They operated with basic equipment, the bare minimum. It was fix and fly. Not try something and see if it worked. There was no time for risky or fancy. No time for lengthy repair procedures. Fix and fly. Fix and fly.

  ‘My best is definitely having the whole team back together,’ said Siobhan, grinning at Harriet, ‘and I think I’ll have to agree with Helmut about the worst. What I wouldn’t give for a nice pint of Dublin Guinness.’

  Helmut made gagging noises. Helmut was not a Guinness fan. ‘I would rather drink bad vodka, too,’ he said, and laughter broke out again.

  It was Katya’s turn. ‘Da,’ she said. ‘Having Harriet back has been the best. The very best.’

  ‘OK, stop now, you guys, you’re embarrassing me!’ said Harriet. And making her feel equally rotten. She knew that the expectation in the room was that she’d be returning. And she knew she wasn’t.

  ‘My worst?’ She glared across the table at Ben and Harriet laughed. Poor Ben. He feigned a wounded expression but Harriet could tell he revelled in her attention. ‘The bloody flies,’ she said, still looking directly at Ben. ‘Buzz, buzz, buzzing around. Always buzzing.’

  Ben roared with laughter. ‘You are the only person who has ever compared me to a fly.’

  ‘Welcome to the real world, Count,’ she said, her face deadly serious.

  ‘OK, OK,’ Gill interrupted. ‘My turn.’ He felt Harriet tense beside him. ‘Well, let’s see, it’d look pretty bad if I didn’t say Harry as well but, then…’ He grinned. ‘That pneumonectomy was good.’ In fact, having Harry back with the team had been indescribably joyous, but he knew the ending and it was anything but.

  ‘Way to go, fool,’ said Katya in her usual blunt fashion. ‘Chose a lung over your woman. When she leaves you again, don’t say I didn’t warn you.’

  Harriet knew Katya was only joking but the reality of the situation hit and she felt a wave of regret wash over her and lowered her eyes for a moment. She was leaving. And this time she wouldn’t be coming back.

  ‘Worst…well, there have been a few of them just today. The news of my grandfather was pretty bad, so was Nimuk.’ And then there were the papers that he had signed that morning. He looked at Harriet and noted the tense line of her body. Did she think he was going to air that here?

  ‘And I get the whole beer thing, too, but I think my very worst is breaking up.’ He heard Harriet’s swift intake of breath and met her eyes as she gave him a searching look. ‘Breaking up is hard to do,’ he said, looking at Harriet intently. Then, remembering the rest of the group, he returned his gaze to them. ‘It’s good to have a break and go home but I’ll miss you all.’

  ‘Amen to that,’ said Joan.

  Harriet looked around at the group, all nodding their heads sagely. They seemed to have missed the undercurrent between Gill and her. Except Katya, her eyes narrowed a little as she returned Harriet’s stare.

  ‘And yours, Harry?’ she asked.

  Harriet had the dreadful urge to tell all under Katya’s shrewd gaze. She was closer to this group of people in lots of ways than she was with any of her girlfriends. She wanted to say there was no best, because the worst was that Gill had just signed the divorce papers and he didn’t want a baby, and that she wasn’t coming back because she needed a job where she could find someone who would want to have a baby with her. And she should never have come back for these two months because leaving them all had been hard enough the first time.

  But she didn’t. Everyone had made a concerted effort to keep things light and she wasn’t going to buck the trend. ‘Being back has been so wonderful,’ she said, desperately trying to eject the husky note from her voice. ‘Seeing all your faces again…I missed you guys so much. That’s definitely been my best.’

  She paused for a while over her worst. Nimuk and the divorce were fairly good candidates but she cast around for something that would keep it light. ‘I know, that two days right at the beginning where I had that V and D bug. That was terrible.’

  Everyone laughed. She couldn’t remember ever vomiting so hard and had certainly never slept on the floor outside her toilet because the diarrhoea had been so violent.

  ‘You looked terrible,’ said Helmut.

  Harriet laughed. He was right—she had. She’d looked really bad and had felt so wretched she had just wanted to die. ‘Thanks a lot.’

  Harriet breathed a sigh of relief as everyone added their own colorful descriptions of her physical appearance while she’d been ill, teasing her mercilessly. The mood was light. Everyone was up again. She took a mental snapshot of the scene. In seventeen hours this chapter of her life would be closed for ever.

  CHAPTER NINE

  1500 HOURS

  HARRIET was in her room, packing, when Gill found her. She had her door open and he watched her putting her meagre supply of clothes in her backpack. Her shoulders were slumped and despite only three metres separating them, the gap yawned widely.

  He knocked softly on the door. ‘An aid helicopter carrying medical personnel has been shot down not far from here. There were six on board. Kelly’s gone out by road. We’re preparing to accept casualtie
s.’

  ‘What?’ Harriet couldn’t believe what she was hearing. ‘That’s awful,’ she gasped, sitting on the bed. ‘I hope everyone’s OK.’

  Gill stayed at the door and nodded silent agreement, but he didn’t hold out much hope. The likelihood of fatalities was strong and depended on many variables. He had no more information to go on. He didn’t know if the helicopter had been taking off or landing, which would be better odds for the occupants, or at altitude.

  Harriet felt the gloomy mood spread through her entire body. Today had been a pretty bad last day all round, and it wasn’t over yet. She didn’t feel remotely confident that any of the aid team had survived.

  She wondered what had gone through their heads as they had plummeted to the ground. A few years ago in a different war the team had been in a chopper that had come under heavy enemy fire and it had been the most terrifying experience of her life. She had shut her eyes and gripped Gill’s hand and watched a slow motion replay of her life. It had only been five minutes but it had felt like hours.

  ‘Didn’t they see the bloody great big medical aid symbol?’ she asked him. The question settled into the silence. He didn’t answer her and she didn’t expect him to. She already knew the answer. Probably. They just hadn’t cared.

  It was a stark reminder that their job was dangerous, and Harriet felt a rush of bile into her throat at the thought of Gill being at risk.

  ‘You will be careful, won’t you, Gill?’ she asked. Her association with him was coming to an end, and that was going to be hard, but she could deal with it as long as she knew he was safe somewhere in the world.

  ‘Of course, Harry,’ he said, as he came into the room and squatted before her. ‘I’m always careful.’

  Harriet snorted at him in disbelief. She had seen him take some incredible risks in their time together. ‘Oh, like that time that soldier held a gun to your head to make you operate on his friend first and you turned your back on him?’

  ‘He was a boy.’ He shrugged dismissively.

  ‘With a gun.’ The worst type, as far as Harriet was concerned. Drunk on power and too young to understand how to wield it.

  ‘He was frightened.’

  ‘Helluva way of showing it.’

  ‘I’ll be fine, Harry,’ he said, like he was talking to a patient child.

  Harriet saw red. ‘There’s a helicopter full of people just like us that’s crashed. They were just doing their job. Going about their business. Trying to help this messed-up nation. Don’t tell me you’ll be fine. Bet they thought they were going to be fine, too.’

  This day was already turning out to be too much. She could hear the edge of hysteria in her voice and never realised before just how much safety issues weighed on her mind.

  ‘OK, OK.’ He held his arms up, surprised by the vehemence of her reaction. ‘I promise I’ll be careful.’

  ‘Just play it safe, Gill. That’s all I’m asking.’

  He nodded at her and picked up her hand off her lap, giving it a squeeze. ‘I will. Safe as houses. Now, come on.’ He pulled her up off the bed as he stood. ‘Let’s think positive and get everything ready for six alive aid workers.’

  The team adjourned to the lounge after their preparations to await news. They were tense, their conversation sporadic and stilted. They were riding the adrenaline surge that always preceded an incoming wounded situation, but the thrill of high-pressure medicine, which they all thrived on, was tempered by the knowledge that they would be operating on their own.

  ‘How much O blood do we have?’ Joan asked.

  ‘Twenty bags,’ Siobhan confirmed, not even looking up from the magazine she was feigning an interest in.

  They lapsed into silence again. The ticking of the wall clock and the rustling of pages were ridiculously loud.

  ‘Have you heard any more about your grandfather?’ Helmut asked into the taut silence.

  Gill shook his head. ‘No. Not yet. I’ll wait till I know what’s happening with this first. If we’re going to operate, I’ll ring my father beforehand.’

  Harriet had almost forgotten about Henri for a moment. She glanced at Gill guiltily. Poor man. He had enough on his mind without Henri’s health to worry about.

  Fifteen minutes later—almost an hour after Gill had received the news—Kelly walked into the room. She looked haggard and her scrubs were dusty with a smear of blood down the front. She pulled up a chair and raked her fingers through her hair.

  ‘There were no survivors,’ she said blankly. ‘It was Peter Hanley,’ she said, staring at the chipped linoleum table top.

  ‘Damn it,’ swore Gill, as an audible gasp echoed around the table. The team had worked with Peter a few years back. He was a quiet, affable Englishman. A very experienced doctor who had worked for the aid organisation for twenty-five years. He had a wife and two children.

  ‘Bloody idiots,’ said Katya, scraping her chair back. ‘Bloody stupid wars.’ Her accent sounded thicker, more guttural as her emotions spilled over. That was Katya. She got mad and let it out. As she banged around the kitchen, everyone stared at their hands and let her vent her anguish.

  ‘Let’s just give them all guns so they can kill each other and get it over with.’ She plonked a cup of coffee in front of Kelly. ‘The bad can kill the good, the good can kill the bad, and then we’ll just be left with the rest of us. The sensible people. Peace-loving people.’

  At another time they all might have laughed at the simplistic plan but right at this moment it seemed highly sensible. One thing Harriet had learnt from years of living in war zones was that it never made any sense. Whatever the reasons or the motives, it all still boiled down to one thing—too many senseless deaths.

  The phone rang and everyone started. Their nerves had been stretched tight and the harsh mechanical noise had been unexpected.

  ‘I’ll get it,’ said Gill to Joan, who had half risen. ‘It might be for me.’

  Joan nodded and sat back down.

  ‘Hello, surgical building, Dr Guillaume Remy.’

  Harriet knew immediately when Gill slipped into French that it was his father on the other end of the phone. Everyone waited with bated breath, eavesdropping unashamedly but unable to follow the conversation. Katya and Helmut picked up the most.

  ‘He’s stabilised,’ said Gill as he hung up.

  Before she could check herself, Harriet was out of her chair and folding her arms around him. She laid her head against his chest and felt the light brush of his lips on her forehead. ‘Thank God,’ she said.

  Gill hugged her to him and squeezed her close. The relief he’d felt wash over him had been great, but sharing the moment with Harriet, with his wife who loved and knew Henri as well, was even better. She looked up at him and smiled a smile of such sweet relief he didn’t question the irony of their closeness.

  ‘When are they taking him for angiography?’ Liz asked.

  ‘If he remains stable over the next twenty-four hours, they’ll take him then,’ he said, running his chin absently back and forth through Harriet’s soft hair, reluctant to let her go.

  At least there had been a glimmer of good news on this horrible, horrible day.

  CHAPTER TEN

  1600 HOURS

  HARRIET returned to her packing. They never brought much with them, just what could fit in a backpack. They wore scrubs all day and then got into their pyjamas. A couple of pairs of civis—jeans and T-shirts—underwear and toiletries were all they required.

  Harriet always shouted herself to a few nice outfits when she hit London. After two months of blue pyjamas she needed trendy and colourful. Something in the height of fashion and completely frivolous. This time tomorrow…watch out, Knightsbridge!

  Everyone else had adjourned to their rooms as well. The atmosphere was still heavy and they hadn’t felt much like conversing. The mood was different to most last days and it was awkward to say the least. They wanted to be happy, they had something to celebrate, but given the circumstances it just seeme
d wrong to be laughing and joking and fooling around as they would normally have done. The death of Peter and the other aid workers was a far too depressing reality.

  Harriet collected a few things from around the room—

  a nail file on the bedside table, a notepad and pen, her digital camera. She got down on the floor on her hands and knees and put her face down against the floorboards, looking for anything that may have rolled under the bed.

  Nothing. Clean as a whistle. The only thing under the bed was dust and that could most definitely stay. She rubbed her hands together to brush off the film of dust, sitting back on her haunches. She felt a stabbing pain low in the right side of her abdomen and subconsciously pressed the area with her hands. The twinge left as soon as it had come, replaced by a vague ache, which she dismissed. She’d had a couple of similar twinges over the last few days. Just another body ache and pain. She wasn’t getting any younger after all.

  She got up and picked up the family photos that adorned her window-sill. One was of her parents and the other was Gill with baby Thomas. Looking at the photo made her thoughts about age seem even more poignant. She was 35, her biological clock was well and truly ticking, especially with an already established sub-fertility problem.

  She felt a twinge again and wondered if this month was going to be bad for her ovarian cysts. Well, why not? She hadn’t had a bad month for quite a while and what was one more crappy thing to have to deal with today? She did some calculations in her head. She’d had her period two weeks ago, not that it had been much of a period, so she was coming up to mid-cycle. It was a little early but by no means unheard of for the cysts to be giving her a hard time.

  As her hormones cycled through, the cysts on her one ovary would expand and grow under their influence, becoming quite large and painful. She’d even had to have one drained once via needle aspiration. Ironically, that was how they’d found out about her missing Fallopian tube and ovary. When they’d diagnosed the cysts, they’d also found her other problem.