The Surgeon's Second Chance

by Meredith Webber

  Would be worse, part of him confirmed.

  The phone, on the floor by the wall until the furniture arrived, rang and she dropped down, cross-legged, to answer it.

  ‘Dr Pritchard’s rooms.’

  Harry studied her while she listened to the caller, pulling a notepad towards her and jotting down words or figures. She might only be acting as a receptionist but whatever Steph tackled she did well, focussing on the task or position with such intensity she was, at times, unaware of what went on around her.

  Which had made it easy for Martin to cheat on her.

  She’d dropped the phone back into its cradle and was scribbling on the notepad.

  ‘That was Medi-Rentals. From a tax perspective you’d have more immediate deductions renting, but if you borrow money to buy the equipment you need, the interest is also tax deductible and you end up owning the stuff.’

  She hesitated, frowned at him, then added, ‘Though, with specialist medical equipment, that’s not always good because it needs upgrading regularly, so it could be a false economy. I’ll do a few sums and set them out on a sheet of paper so you can compare and decide.’

  Harry stared at her. This was not what he’d expected when Steph had blackmailed her way into his office. Though he realised now it was no more than another example of her intensity and focus. He wanted to say something—to tell her he appreciated the effort she was putting in—but the phone rang again, and this time when she answered it her face grew grave and she passed it up to him.

  ‘It’s a child with facial injuries—a fractured eye socket from a fall off a bike. Possible depressed fracture of the maxilla as well.’

  Steph touched the bone that swept around the nose and held the upper teeth in place, imagining the outcomes for the child if he or she wasn’t operated on. She was thinking of how she’d react to Fanny being injured when Harry replaced the receiver and asked his question, so at first it made no sense.

  ‘Did you ask if I would assist? In the operation? You can’t just take anyone you like to assist in an operation at the General. It’s a public hospital.’

  ‘The patient’s been admitted to Summerland Private,’ Harry explained. ‘That’s the first hospital Bob Quayle built—the one close to the beach—isn’t it?’

  Steph nodded, more intent on Harry’s offer than on where the hospital was—although now she did consider the hospital, she felt a shudder of distaste run through her. But Harry’s offer was too good to refuse, though in all conscience she had to point out a few things.

  ‘I haven’t done any surgery since my first year as a resident,’ she told him.

  ‘Maybe not,’ he said easily. ‘But you’ve been stitching people up in the clinic, and I’ve no doubt you can still hold a clamp on a blood vessel.’

  He’d been shrugging into his jacket as he spoke.

  ‘Come on. The sooner we start, the easier it is to put the pieces back together and the less likelihood there’ll be of infection.’

  Slightly dazed, but essentially excited, by this turn of events, Steph followed him out the door, turning to lock it behind her.

  ‘Why did they phone you?’ she asked, when they were in the car.

  Harry smiled at her.

  ‘You make it sound as if I’d be your last choice,’ he teased. ‘Actually, the A and E doctor at Summerland Private who first saw the boy worked with me in Paris for a while and knew I’d done a lot of reconstruction work with children. I was talking to him last week.’

  In Paris? It seemed odd to Steph, but the closer they drove to the hospital, the more uneasy she felt, and she was so focussed on not thinking about the last time she’d been there, she missed the opportunity to ask for more information about Paris.

  ‘Have you been back since?’

  Harry had either caught her apprehension, or was mind-reading. He certainly wasn’t thinking about Paris!

  ‘No!’

  He glanced her way, but said nothing, negotiating the turn into the hospital grounds and pulling up in one of the spaces reserved for specialists. But when he’d turned off the engine, he reached out and took hold of her hand.

  ‘This place had nothing to do with what happened, and if you think of it as where Fanny was born—that’s surely a happy thought—rather than where you learnt of Martin’s death, it might be easier.’

  Steph leaned across and kissed him on the cheek.

  ‘We’re still not friends,’ she warned. ‘You’re too firmly in the enemy camp. But thanks for that, Harry. Having Fanny is definitely worth everything that’s happened.’

  Once inside the hospital, she had no time to think of the past. They were escorted into a small operating theatre usually used for day surgery.

  ‘The two main theatres are being used, but this theatre has been fitted up for cosmetic surgery so will have everything you need. We’ve called an experienced theatre nurse back on duty and we’ve an anaesthetist standing by.’

  All this information was directed to Harry, though from time to time the woman delivering it—one of the theatre administrative staff, Steph guessed—cast sideways glances at Steph, who, as usual, was in jeans and a T-shirt. Today’s proclaimed her to be the sexiest woman in the world—with a huge NOT written on the back.

  If this job lasted until Harry started seeing patients, she might have to upgrade her wardrobe—or at least censor the T-shirts.

  ‘This is Dr Prince—she’ll be assisting,’ Harry was saying, and Steph put out her hand and introduced herself by name to the woman, who was obviously too startled by Harry’s revelation to offer her own name.

  In the small dressing area adjoining the theatre, more introductions followed—to the anaesthetist and two theatre nurses, all of whose names passed completely over Steph’s head as she pulled on theatre garb and wondered if she’d remember any of the surgery she’d once done.

  The little boy, heavily sedated and accompanied by his mother, was wheeled into the theatre anteroom, where the nurses took over, positioning the trolley beside the operating table, then gently sliding him across.

  Monitor leads were already in place on his chest, and a shunt was taped to the back of his small hand. He didn’t look much older than Fanny, and Steph couldn’t help thinking how she’d feel if it was her child.

  Then Harry slid the X-rays into the light-boxes on the wall, and she stopped thinking of the small person and concentrated on what they had to do.

  ‘We’ll cut the skin here, near the hairline, and peel it back. Steph, your job will be to keep it irrigated. Because he’s so young and his bones are still growing, they should heal well, but we need to make sure they’re aligned properly and check for nerve or blood-vessel involvement.’

  Steph nodded, knowing a nerve pinched between two pieces of bone would soon die and the child would end up palsied, like her patient of the previous week. Had it only been last week that Harry had reappeared in her life?

  She glanced at him, but he was focussed on the child, and she joined him, keeping out of his way but close enough to be useful.

  ‘If you’re not putting in pins to hold the bones together, how do you stop a child his age from damaging his face again before the bones have calcified over the break?’

  ‘We can use a mask. I don’t know if they’re available here, but overseas I’ve seen masks made like Spiderman and Batman, even Superman. For little girls there are fairy masks. So rather than bandage the whole face so he looks like the mummy from hell, we can pad the damaged area then use a mask.’

  He glanced towards the theatre sister.

  ‘Do you know if they’re available here?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Perhaps we can make one,’ Steph suggested. ‘Plaster might be too heavy, but fibreglass could be used—from the rolls used for plastering breaks now.’

  ‘Maybe we could,’ Harry agreed. ‘We’ll bandage him to start off with, and enquire about masks later on.’

  He was cutting as he spoke, separating the skin from conne
ctive tissue underneath so he could peel away the upper layer and get at the damaged bones beneath it.

  Steph, working close beside him, felt transported back in time to when they’d first qualified and worked surgical rotations together, Harry’s eyes meeting hers over the top of his mask. Harry’s eyes telling her things his lips hadn’t said.

  Then Martin had decided he loved her, and had swept her off her feet…

  Concentrate! she told herself.

  It became easier as Harry began to manipulate the child’s fragile bones back into their rightful positions. But the maxilla proved a problem. It was cracked through just below the child’s nose, and would need to be plated in order to save his teeth. But though a plate could remain in place for ever in an adult, with a child it would have to be removed later to allow for growth.

  ‘If his new teeth had been right through, I could have wired them to hold the bone in place.’

  Harry’s voice echoed his frustration. Steph understood he’d been hoping to save the child another operation later.

  ‘No, we’ll have to plate it.’

  The circulating nurse was sent to find a selection of small plates and screws, while Harry removed some chips of bone.

  ‘How did it happen?’ Steph asked the anaesthetist, who’d seen the child earlier.

  ‘Riding his bike, hit a kerb and flew over the handle-bars into a brick wall. He was wearing a helmet but his face took most of the impact.’

  Steph shivered, thinking how easily accidents could happen, then Harry’s arm brushed against hers, and though there were several layers of covering between them, she still felt comforted.

  You can’t trust him, she reminded herself as she helped him set the plate he’d selected into position, then prepared the skin for closing. But as she watched him place the final tiny staples to close the outer layer of skin, wanting to do it himself to make sure it was perfect, she remembered the Harry she’d operated with before, and the way she’d begun to feel about him—before Martin had stepped between them.

  ‘Done!’ Harry said, stepping back and peeling off his gloves with an air of great satisfaction.

  The child’s face had been protected by layers of wadding, then bandaged to provide more protection. Seeing the mummified look, Steph understood why masks of any kind would be a kinder option for a child.

  ‘You’ve done that before,’ the anaesthetist said. ‘That was as neat a job as I’ve seen in ages.’

  ‘Practice makes perfect,’ Harry said, shrugging off the compliment. But Steph caught the ‘Unfortunately’ he muttered, almost under his breath, and knew darkness shadowed the words. Again she wondered about reconstructive work on children. And Paris.

  ‘I’m going to see the parents,’ he said to Steph as they stripped off. ‘Then there are a couple of people here I want to talk to. You can take the car back to the office—I’ll phone when I’m done and you can come and get me.’

  He tossed the car keys to her as he spoke, and she caught them automatically but, certain one of the people he wanted to talk to would be Bob Quayle who had an office here, she couldn’t hold back a protest.

  ‘I’m not your chauffeur!’

  She threw the keys right back, hoping he’d miss the catch, but, of course, he didn’t.

  ‘No?’ he said, eyebrows rising above treacly brown eyes. ‘I understood you’d offered to be anything I wanted you to be, Steph. Anything!’

  The keys landed back at her feet and, before she could think of a reply, he’d walked out of the room.

  Seething helped, but not much.

  Calling him names wasn’t much better.

  And you did offer to do anything—as long as he paid doctor’s wages, her conscience reminded her.

  Anything?

  This time she repeated it with the intonation Harry had used, and an inner tingle of excitement—the kind she hadn’t felt for a long time—ran along nerve-paths she’d thought were dead for ever.

  Hell! That was the last thing she needed. Harry Pritchard is inextricably linked with the Quayles, she lectured herself. You’ve blackmailed him into employing you for the moment, and you might—repeat might—reach some kind of understanding with him so Fanny can see him regularly, but lusting after him—and that’s all it could be—is definitely not on.

  She drove back to the still-empty office and took out her bad temper on office suppliers who thought they might be able to overcharge her for their equipment.

  ‘I would have thought your first priority would have been for a practice manager rather than a receptionist,’ she told Harry when, obedient to his command, she’d driven back to Summerland Private to collect him. He’d taken the wheel for the drive back, which was a shame as it would have given her something to do with her hands other than wave them in the air, illustrating the extent of the job ahead of them.

  ‘Have you considered bank accounts—patient trust accounts for people who want to pay something in advance? You’re going to need at least one other signatory on those, unless you can handle being called out of an op to sign a rent cheque.’

  ‘Overdramatising, Steph?’ Harry sent a wry look her way. ‘After all, regular payments like rent will be made by bank transfer.’

  ‘And if there’s no money in the operating account and you need some transferred?’

  ‘Do it by phone or on the internet. Whoever I finally employ will know the access codes.’

  Steph, who hadn’t had enough money recently to worry about either internet banking or access codes, pondered this for a moment.

  ‘You’ll be putting a lot of trust in that person,’ she pointed out. ‘Are there safeguards you can put in place?’

  Harry laughed.

  ‘I doubt there’ll be anything to worry about for the first few years,’ he said. ‘By the time I’ve covered overheads and interest, I imagine my receptionist will be earning more than me.’

  ‘But cosmetic surgeons can earn huge amounts of money—and so much of what they do isn’t time-consuming. Look at Botox. You could do half a dozen an hour and…’

  She stopped, mainly because Harry had stopped—stopped the car! He’d pulled over to the kerb and had turned to face her, then he put his hands on her shoulders and turned her so she faced him.

  ‘Steph, do you really know so little of me that you’d think I’m in this for the money? That I’ve set up to do nothing more than inject fillers into people’s sagging faces, or poison into muscles that cause wrinkles? It’s not even surgical work!’

  Shame caused a momentary spasm in her heart, but she rallied.

  ‘I thought I knew you once, Harry,’ she reminded him, ‘and maybe if you’d come back under different circumstances, we’d have got over what happened in the past. But since the day Fanny was born, Bob Quayle has been trying to get control of her life so, seeing your connection there, I can’t help but be wary.’

  ‘Oh, Steph,’ he said softly, then he leaned forward and kissed her, oh, so gently on the lips.

  She knew it meant nothing more than the previous kiss had meant. It had been a kiss of comfort, while this one was more a gesture of despair than love. But her physical self didn’t realise that, and excitement buzzed down those recently re-alerted nerve tracks to the inner depths of her body, while the tiny tendrils grew to vines and choked her lungs.

  She felt her own lips respond, parting to invite him in, to share the sweetness of the kiss, and for a moment he did, exploring her mouth with a tentative gentleness that teasingly promised passion yet held it back. Then he drew away, leaving coldness where the warmth of his mouth had been—more coldness in her heart.

  Releasing her shoulders, Harry turned to stare out the window, then slapped his hand against the steering-wheel. Where had that kiss come from? He’d wanted to protest about her apparent distrust of Bob, but at the same time assure her he wouldn’t ever do anything to hurt either her or Fanny. But he’d already, unwittingly, done that with the closure of the clinic.

  Although he couldn
’t believe Bob had closed it to put Steph out of a job…

  ‘What do you want me to do?’ he asked, knowing she’d understand what he meant.

  ‘Find rooms somewhere else, for a start.’

  He shook his head.

  ‘I can’t do that, Steph. I’ve a particular reason for wanting to work from the new hospital.’

  ‘Because Bob’s bribed you with cheap rent? Promised you star billing among his collection of top specialists? Guaranteed you more operating hours than anyone else? Thrown in a free apartment?’

  She was angry and he didn’t really blame her, but until all the arrangements had been finalised he wasn’t going to talk about the deal he’d done with Bob. Especially not to Steph who, from their long friendship, should have known that neither fame, nor fortune, nor star billing had any appeal to him.

  Though the free accommodation had been a help…

  He started the car and drove back to the new building, parking in one of the spaces reserved for his rooms. The feel of her lips—soft yet wanting—was burned into his brain, and the feel of her bones beneath her skin as he’d held her shoulders was imprinted on his hands.

  ‘I went home and got a card table and a couple of folding chairs on the way back from the hospital earlier,’ she told him as she opened the car door. ‘I’ve put some comparisons—buying versus renting furniture and equipment—on the table. If you tell me what accounts you want, and what bank you prefer, I can get the forms you need to fill in on my way to collect Fanny. You’ll have to take them back yourself as you have to show a heap of identity papers before you can open an account.’

  She climbed out, leaving him sitting, slightly stunned, behind the wheel. He couldn’t believe she could behave so—so ordinarily. As if the kiss hadn’t happened.

  As if she were nothing more than a real receptionist setting up his office for him.

  And doing it efficiently, too, as far as he could make out.

  He followed her into the rooms, then realised she’d unlocked the door. He had a key on the bunch with his car keys and she’d have used it earlier, but he hadn’t given her one for her own use.