The Surgeon's Engagement Wish

by Alison Roberts

Maybe they would be anyway.

  Beth handed Mike a new wide-bore cannula and was ready with the luer plug and flush moments later.

  ‘Any word from Sally?’

  ‘Sorry.’ Beth shook her head. This was the kind of thing she hated about starting a new job. ‘I don’t know who Sally is.’

  ‘She’s one of our paramedics,’ Maureen supplied. ‘The ambulance got called not long after Jackal’s mates took off from here.’ Her brief smile was intended to be reassuring for Beth. ‘Police back-up got activated at the same time.’

  Beth nodded, pleased to find her hands steady as she completed the fiddly task of screwing the luer plug into place on the cannula hub. She was injecting a bolus of saline to check that the IV line was patent when the radio on the main desk crackled.

  ‘Ambulance to ED. Do you copy?’

  ‘Shall I get that?’ Chelsea queried.

  ‘I’ll do it.’ Mike stripped off his gloves and then glanced at Beth. ‘Can you get some more fluids up?’

  ‘Sure.’

  Beth taped the cannula securely in place, having flushed the line. Then she reached for a giving set and a new bag of saline. The task was automatic enough not to distract her from listening to Mike as he reached for the microphone next to the radio set.

  ‘Mike here, Sally. Receiving you loud and clear. What have you got?’

  ‘Status one patient. Car vs pedestrian.’

  ‘Roger.’ Mike shook his head slowly as he pulled a pen from his shirt pocket. They all knew how unlikely this was to have been any accident. ‘Vital signs?’

  ‘Heart rate of 130. Respiration rate 36. Oxygen saturation down and blood pressure unrecordable at present. GCS of 8. Head and chest injuries. Multiple fractures.’

  Sid and Dennis looked at each other again. They didn’t need medical training to know that this patient was seriously unwell. Neither did they need the ambulance officer’s confirmation that this was another code yellow patient.

  The ETA of the ambulance was ten to fifteen minutes and any calm in the small emergency department vanished.

  Extra staff began arriving as Beth and Chelsea were assigned the task of setting up Resus 2 in preparation for the new arrival.

  ‘Have an intubation trolley ready,’ Mike instructed. ‘And a chest decompression kit.’

  ‘What happens with serious chest injuries here?’ Beth queried, pulling the crumpled sheet from the bed. ‘We don’t have a cardiothoracic surgeon, do we?’

  Chelsea shook her head. ‘We stabilise them and then chopper them to Wellington.’ She flapped the clean sheet to spread it over the mattress. ‘Same with head injuries. We don’t run to a neurosurgeon either.’

  Chelsea told Beth who the staff members were as the level of activity in the department steadily increased.

  ‘That’s Kelly—she’s a radiographer. Seth is the house surgeon on call. Looks like Rowena’s coming in to help as well. She’s a midwife.’

  The names flowed right over Beth’s head. These people were all still strangers and this was no time to start even trying to remember names.

  ‘And there’s Luke.’

  Beth flicked the laryngoscope she was checking shut to turn off its light. Despite herself, her head turned sharply at that familiar name but any view of the latest newcomer was blocked by the large figure of Dennis, the police officer.

  ‘The ambulance is here,’ he told them. ‘I’m going to see if they need any help.’

  Two other members of the local police force had accompanied the ambulance but the paramedics had been in no danger from the hit-and-run victim they were transporting.

  ‘Breath sounds absent on the left side now.’ A blonde woman had her stethoscope on the exposed chest, between ECG electrodes. ‘GCS has been dropping steadily. I’ve already done a decompression on the right side.’

  ‘Bring him straight in here.’ Mike pointed to the available resuscitation area and Beth stepped back as the stretcher moved swiftly towards her. Then she reached to help transfer the patient to the bed.

  ‘On the count of three,’ Mike directed, holding the patient’s head and neck still by supporting the cervical collar. ‘One…two…three!’

  ‘We think he was hit at a speed of at least sixty kilometres an hour,’ the paramedic informed Mike. Apparently he was airborne for twenty to thirty metres.’

  Maureen handed Beth a pair of shears. ‘See what you can do to get rid of the clothing.’

  Beth was aware of more people pressing into the resus area to assist. ‘Tension pneumothorax on the left,’ Mike confirmed tersely. ‘Someone get me a decompression kit, please?’

  ‘I can do that.’

  The calm voice should have eased some of the tension but the shears in Beth’s hands closed with an uncontrolled snap. Her gaze shifted just as emphatically to the speaker and for a split second she actually forgot what she was supposed to be doing.

  Luke.

  It couldn’t be.

  But it was.

  Luke Savage.

  At Ocean View hospital?

  If Beth had tried to think of the last possible place on earth she would expect to see this man again, a smalltown hospital would have been way up on the list. A prison cell might have beaten it to top spot, of course, but not by much.

  He hadn’t noticed her. The surgeon was completely focussed on the task of inserting a needle between the victim’s ribs to release air trapped in his chest, which was preventing his lungs from functioning.

  ‘Pelvis is unstable.’ Mike was doing a survey for other major injuries while Luke was attempting to establish adequate breathing.

  The consultant’s statement was enough to start Beth’s hands moving again, her momentary lapse unnoticed. She peeled leather trousers clear of the deformity on the right thigh.

  ‘Open fracture of the femur,’ she advised.

  ‘Cover it,’ Mike responded. ‘We can’t deal with that just yet.’

  Beth reached for a large gauze dressing and tried to concentrate on squeezing a sachet of saline onto the pad to dampen it, but she simply couldn’t help glancing back towards Luke.

  Had Luke recognised her voice as easily as she had recognised his?

  Apparently not.

  ‘Oxygen sats aren’t climbing.’ Luke was staring at the monitor above the bed. ‘We’ll have to intubate.’

  ‘I’ll get another IV line going,’ Mike said. ‘We need to speed up this fluid resus.’

  A new face peered in through the curtain. ‘Luke? They just called to say they’re ready for you in Theatre.’

  His glance seemed to bypass Beth effortlessly as she used the damp dressing to cover the gaping wound on their patient’s leg. ‘Thanks. I’ll be up as soon as I can.’

  Mike took the cannula Beth was holding out for him. ‘Could you help Sid take Jackal upstairs, please?’

  ‘Sure.’ The prospect of making an exit was appealing.

  Was Luke simply being professional, ignoring her—quite properly—due to the emergency treatment of a patient? It was possible that he had not yet recognised or even noticed her.

  It was also quite possible that he just didn’t give a damn.

  And why, in God’s name, should that bother her so much anyway?

  Beth turned her back on Luke but she wasn’t going to escape quite so easily. The sound of breaking glass made everybody pause.

  ‘What the hell was that?’

  ‘We locked the doors when we came in.’ The male ambulance officer had abandoned his paperwork to step closer. ‘Sounds like someone really wants to get in.’

  A police officer appeared behind him. ‘ETA for the chopper is only two minutes. We’ve got a bit of a skirmish going on in the car park right now, though.’

  The sound of a shotgun being fired was unmistakable.

  So was the alarm that sounded on the new patient’s monitor in the tiny silence that followed.

  ‘He’s in VF,’ Luke warned.

  Mike was already reaching for the defibrillato
r paddles. ‘Everyone stand clear.’

  ‘I don’t want anyone moving from here until we get some back-up,’ the police officer ordered.

  ‘Stand clear,’ Mike ordered.

  Beth stood clear. In fact, she was quickly penned into the corner of the area, along with the paramedic and Chelsea, and couldn’t escape the awareness of how appalling the situation was.

  They watched as Maureen squeezed air into the patient’s lungs and Luke readied himself to do compressions when the initial series of shocks was completed. Mike pressed the paddles into position and pressed the buttons to deliver the second shock and then the third.

  Beth closed her eyes for a moment. This was all so bizarre it was almost a joke. Some huge, cosmic joke. And whoever decided which way the winds of fate were going to blow was laughing at her right now.

  She had come here to get away from the stress of dealing with violence and was now up to her neck in the most major incident she had ever encountered.

  And she had also come to get away from the lingering effect Luke Savage had branded on her life. She had just ended her extremely brief engagement to Brent, for heaven’s sake, because she had recognised that the only qualities he had that were attractive had been the ones that reminded her of Luke.

  The prospect of actually crossing paths with Luke Savage had haunted Beth for far longer than the fear of finding herself living Neroli’s nightmare, and coming to a small town like Hereford had seemed like the perfect way to escape that particular ghost.

  And here she was, only a few feet away from the man. And it felt like the first time she had seen him all over again. He was just as physically attractive, but it hadn’t been simply his looks that had drawn her so convincingly at that first meeting. It had been his presence. The feeling she’d got that this man would be able to handle any situation he found himself in, no matter what it was. And she could feel that again right now. Luke was just…exactly the same.

  It was so bizarre. It went way beyond being a disappointing start to a new beginning. This was gutting. Maybe she should have taken up Neroli’s invitation to go to Australia with her. Melbourne would be a nice place to live and Neroli’s sister was always short of waitresses in that coffee-shop.

  The static cleared from the monitor screen after the third shock to show a pattern that settled over several seconds into normal sinus rhythm. The quiet was broken by the steadying beeps of the monitor, loud but muffled shouting from somewhere outside and then the crescendo of an approaching helicopter’s rotors.

  Relieved glances were exchanged between staff members and it was only then that Beth’s gaze met that of Luke. The, oh, so familiar dark grey eyes beneath that shaggy mop of black hair widened and Beth realised that he hadn’t been ignoring her.

  He couldn’t look this shocked if he had known she was so close.

  Her presence was a surprise. And it wasn’t a pleasant one.

  It shouldn’t have hurt but it did. Any fantasies she’d ever had of looking into those eyes again and seeing the love that had once been there were crushed in an instant, and Beth could hear echoes of that cosmic laughter.

  She wanted nothing more than to get away, and Mike’s repeated instruction to help shift Jackal up to Theatre seemed timely.

  It wasn’t until Beth pulled the curtain back and stepped outside the resuscitation area that they realised the move had been premature.

  Black-clad, helmeted and armed offender squad members were filing rapidly into the emergency department of Ocean View hospital, but the skirmish that had been taking place outside had also moved in. Somehow one of Jackal’s mates had gained access and was now standing outside Resus 1 with a knife in his hand as a member of an obviously rival gang advanced rapidly towards him.

  And Beth had inadvertently stepped right between them.

  Was this the punchline of the joke?

  There was nobody close enough to help but the fear that should have swamped and immobilised Beth simply wasn’t there.

  ‘Don’t even think about it!’ she snapped.

  Beth drew herself up to her full height of a not very impressive five feet four inches. Her lack of height was irrelevant because the misery over the personal disaster she had engineered for herself in coming here had just morphed into pure fury.

  ‘You!’ She jabbed her finger at the leather-clad chest of the man whose progress towards Resus 1 she had just blocked. He was at least six feet tall and his bearded, tattooed face was bleeding heavily from a jagged laceration. ‘Go and sit down and behave yourself.’

  Whirling to confront Jackal’s mate, Beth was dimly aware that the police officers rushing to her assistance had slowed involuntarily, their jaws drooping.

  ‘Drop the knife,’ she commanded.

  ‘No!’ she yelled as both men made a move to close her further into the middle of the potentially very dangerous human sandwich. Her voice remained at a furious shout. ‘Do as you’re bloody well told! I am just so not in the mood for this.’

  Amazingly, the gang members froze. The hand holding the lethal-looking knife began to drop and suddenly the police were right there. As fast as the incident had occurred, it was defused and the space cleared.

  Beth was aware of a curious shaking sensation in her knees. She turned her head slowly to see the occupants of Resus 2 staring at her.

  ‘Woo-hoo!’ Chelsea called softly. ‘You go, girl!’

  Mike had an astonished grin on his face but it was Luke who drew Beth’s gaze. He was staring at her as well, of course. Who wouldn’t be? He wasn’t looking shocked any more. He was looking as though Beth were a complete stranger.

  A rather impressive stranger, in fact.

  Straightening her back made that weak-kneed sensation subside almost completely. The calm, confident smile Beth was aiming for probably came out more like an embarrassed grin, but it didn’t seem to dull the respect she could detect from her small audience.

  An audience that included Luke Savage.

  How cool was that?

  CHAPTER TWO

  GOOD grief!

  Luke was still shaking his head in disbelief as he scrubbed up for Jackal’s emergency laparotomy ten minutes later.

  Seeing Beth again after all these years was unbelievable enough. Seeing her doing that warrior princess act with the gang members had been…

  The sexiest damn thing Luke had ever seen in his life.

  He scrubbed beneath his nails hard enough to cause real pain.

  Beth was the only woman who had ever made him seriously consider marriage.

  And she was the only woman who had ever dumped him.

  The hurt and the ensuing anger that had caused should have been rendered inconsequential by the blows life had meted out since then, so it was incredibly disturbing to find how easily the years could be peeled back.

  One good look into those bright blue eyes and there he was again. Not measuring up. Just not being good enough, no matter how much love he had to offer.

  What the hell was Beth doing in Hereford of all places?

  Luke took his foot off the water control and reached for a sterile towel. She’d probably come here to give her kids a nice, healthy rural upbringing or something. Snapping on gloves, Luke turned abruptly to let the scrub nurse tie up his gown. That flash of something astonishingly like jealousy at the thought of the father of those children was ridiculous.

  So she was still an attractive woman. So what?

  So she had grown up a bit and become brave about confronting things she didn’t like. Again, so what?

  Luke had more than enough to deal with in his life right now, without complicating things by renewing any kind of relationship with Beth. The last thing he needed was to try poking an old scarred area when the potential to find a tender spot was so clearly possible.

  A deep breath was called for here. And rational thinking. This disturbance was probably just part of the surprise factor of seeing Beth again. All he needed to do was ride it through and there would be no sho
rtage of distractions if that proved in any way difficult. It was a relief to use the one immediately available.

  ‘Let’s get this show on the road, shall we?’

  With his hands held carefully crossed in front of his chest, Luke used his shoulder to push open the swing doors into Theatre.

  At just after 3 a.m. on a Tuesday morning, Ocean View’s emergency department was stretched to slightly over its full capacity.

  One of the high-tech resuscitation areas was still occupied by a seriously injured patient, the other one having just been vacated by the hit-and-run victim, who had gone up to Theatre 2 for the attention of an orthopaedic surgeon. All the beds in the cubicled area were also full and half of those patients were still waiting to have bones X-rayed or lacerations sutured. The treatment rooms were full and there were no spare seats in the waiting area either.

  A few people with minor injuries were in Reception but most of them were simply there to offer solidarity to their mates, and they included some of the loudest and most unpleasant women Beth had ever encountered.

  They were all unkempt, tattooed, pierced in multiple places and inebriated, and only too happy to demonstrate their contempt of any authority figures or lack of appreciation for any medical assistance. But the police presence was strong enough to ensure the safety of staff and the background noise of obscene language and shouting was so constant Beth could tune it out now.

  It had already become automatic to seek the company of a police officer before approaching or treating a patient, and all the nurses remembered to wait until a member of one gang had left the X-ray department before escorting a member from the rival gang down the corridor.

  Hopefully, the stab victim who was currently in Resus 1 would also be sent up to Theatre soon. When the doctors could be freed from attending the critically injured patients they should be able to deal with the minor injuries rapidly. They would be able to clear the department and then they could all have a well-deserved break.

  Oddly enough, the chaos and unpleasantness of her current environment had been quite enjoyable over the last hour or so. Not the patients, of course, but their uniform lack of co-operation or appreciation had provided a bond of camaraderie amongst the staff members that had only increased under pressure.