Back in Dr. Xenakis' Arms

by Amalie Berlin

  “Not because you’re worried for the baby?”

  That she could be truthful about. “You’re far enough along that anesthesia is safe for both of you, and we’re going to take the very best care of you and your baby. I don’t want you to worry.”

  She let go of Jacinda’s hand and got her coffee again, tipped it to take a big drink with a hand she willed steady by mentally playing through the steps of the coming procedure. Force of will and work always saved her.

  Ares finally started moving and stepped around the table to the right of Erianthe. She eased higher up, to keep plenty of space between them, but despite that she still felt him enter her personal bubble, as distinctly as the whiff of ozone in the first minutes of a hard summer rain.

  “Where is the pain?” he asked Jacinda, and then followed that up with all the other questions he needed to ask in order to make his own assessment.

  Not a criticism, she reminded herself. Any good doctor would do the same. And Dr. Stevenson would’ve handled it far more condescendingly.

  She stayed largely silent and focused on Jacinda. If she wanted to stay with her patient during the surgery, she and Dr. Xenakis needed to get over this. Be completely professional and in the present. Be strangers.

  The way he looked, she could almost believe it. Ten years was a long time—they practically were strangers. Or at least she was a stranger to him. Even the strongest woman couldn’t go through all that and come out unchanged.

  “It’s hurting too far up,” he said, somewhat quietly. “It’s not appendicitis.”

  No accusation—just a statement. But it was an incorrect diagnosis on his part.

  “In the third trimester,” she said, surprising herself by how level her voice stayed, “the appendix gets shoved out of the pelvic cradle by the growing baby.”

  Both patient and husband turned their gaze to Ares, and his silence forced her to look once more at him.

  She ignored the pang that turned to a swirling in her insides when she looked into his beautiful eyes.

  Now he’d got past that brick wall his words had run into upon seeing her, the set of his mouth in that Wildman beard proved he felt the strain of their reunion as well.

  “I assure you that I’ve seen this condition several times, Dr. Xenakis.”

  He didn’t simply watch her now, and his frowning stare could mean lots of things—but none of them were good. Most likely his frown meant he was questioning her diagnosis.

  Shoving his hand roughly to the back of his neck, he rubbed like it was on fire. “Would you come with me to brief our anesthesiologist, Dr. Nikolaides?”

  No.

  Her body shrieked the word along every nerve ending, and she knew she’d gone pale by the funny looks she was receiving. So much for trying to remain calm and appear as though there was no liquid panic rushing through her veins.

  She nodded—an act of will—and once that domino fell, others followed.

  Everything was fine. She should be happy they had an anesthesiologist. Relief was the only acceptable emotion right now. Forget the rest.

  “I’d like Cailey to stay with them,” she managed to say, and waited for Ares to fetch her soon-to-be sister-in-law, giving her a moment to reassure her patient again and project the confidence she would surely start to feel any second now.

  Cailey brought the lab results with her, and Erianthe peeked at three numbers before giving a couple of quick instructions, then following Ares.

  Just another room. Just another doctor. Everything was normal. This walk didn’t lead to a gas chamber. Just to a conference with another colleague.

  Having never come to the clinic before, there was nothing for her to do but follow Ares to the anesthesiologist’s office.

  At the end of a short corridor, he opened a door and held it for her.

  Polite. Common courtesy. Normal.

  She stepped in.

  Tension in her shoulders spread to her chest as she scanned the unlit room. No desk. No people. Two bunk beds.

  Not an office.

  This must be the on-call room for the doctors. Her thought train derailed there. Rounding on him, she reached for the doorknob, her body registering her unease before she thought of a rational response.

  “Erianthe?”

  “There’s no anesthesiologist,” she blurted out.

  He stood in her way, and that was enough to make her draw back from the door and her only escape route.

  “I’ve never done an appendectomy on a pregnant woman. You want me to go with your diagnosis—I get it. She’s in a lot of pain, and her appendix could rupture before we get her to Athens. But—”

  “Where is the anesthesiologist?” she interrupted, cutting her hand through the air to make him focus, because knowing he wasn’t about to attack her didn’t make being alone with him feel any less dangerous.

  “Not here. They called him in already. He’s on his way. Before he gets here, tell me exactly how many of these surgeries you’ve been involved in. I’ve performed emergency appendectomies, but none where the appendix wasn’t in the lower right quadrant. We don’t have a CT scan to work from, so we don’t have a lot of options, but if your diagnosis is incorrect, this is unnecessary surgery. It puts her and the baby at risk. And the weight of that call is on me.”

  There it was—the elephant in the room, its neon hide impossible to ignore. Words flew out of her. “Do you really think that I, of all people, would put a baby in needless danger?”

  The color drained from his cheeks, confirming that her words had struck right where she’d intended. He stepped back from her, opening up a space that had suddenly become tight and toxic.

  “No.” It took him several seconds to make that one-word answer, and in this small room she couldn’t help but look at him, watch him, try to read him—not that she’d done so well in reading him when she’d been young and foolish enough to trust him.

  CHAPTER TWO

  THE SATISFACTION OF seeing Ares blanch came and went in a single sluggish heartbeat. Fighting about the past wouldn’t do anything to help this situation, and Jacinda and her baby deserved one hundred percent of their focus and attention. Now wasn’t the time to talk about their own child.

  Erianthe tried again. “I’ve assisted before in this type of surgery twice. I’ve observed another couple times. I’m not a surgeon, but I perform C-sections and I’ve done surgery rotations. If we had any other option, then I’d say send her off the island, but you saw the level of her white cell count. It’s possible the damned thing has already ruptured. It has to come out as soon as possible. We cannot wait.”

  He held out his hand for the results and she handed them over. It wasn’t so much that she wanted to look at him, but there was nowhere else to look in order to divine what he was thinking.

  Resignation was clearly written in the grim set of his lips, the furrow of his brow. “Tell me where the appendix tends to get shoved. Is the surgery usually performed with an ultrasound to guide?”

  She shook her head, then waved a hand. “Imaging is used, but not usually ultrasound. I think we could do that, though, if you wanted to get a look at it.”

  He nodded. “Have you ever assisted in this surgery without the patient being pregnant? Can you tell me what differences occur between the two surgeries?”

  He was going to do it. Thank goodness. “I can tell you what I know, but it’s been years since I saw a run-of-the-mill appendectomy.”

  “When?”

  “My first year in residency.”

  “How are you with an ultrasound?”

  That she could give him confidence with. “Excellent.”

  “That’s your other job—assisting and maneuvering the wand so we can get and keep a visual on the appendix until I understand what I need to do.”

  “I can do that.”

  “I�
��m trusting you,” he said—which shouldn’t have made cold shoot through her, but did.

  She couldn’t bring herself to say anything, to pretend the sentiment was reciprocated. It wasn’t—except probably medically. Whatever might have been said or done between them, she didn’t trust him personally. She was just taking the only available exit from a burning building right now, and that was what made her stomach pitch and roll like a dinghy on the front edge of a tsunami.

  “The anesthesiologist—do we know if he’s put under a pregnant woman before? It’s not as deep a sleep. And there are frequent issues with reflux, so we need a good proton pump inhibitor.”

  He opened the door and stepped out, one curt hand motion beckoning her to follow after him.

  Inside thirty minutes they had Jacinda in the surgical suite, were both scrubbed in and had her under. Erianthe kept the anesthesiologist busier than normal, demanding that the heart rate for both mother and baby be announced at any change of more than three beats per minute.

  In her head, when she’d pictured how this surgery would go, she’d been standing on the opposite side of the table from Ares, with the patient—and space—between them. But with the introduction of the ultrasound she not only had to stand beside him, she had to be close enough that the fabrics of their surgical gowns brushed and rustled against each other.

  Something else to ignore.

  She focused on the ultrasound wand in hand and maneuvered the cart holding the unit with her foot, so that Ares could best see the screen.

  “Here—that’s the cross section of the appendix.”

  “Enlarged...” he murmured, confirming the diagnosis in that second.

  Why hadn’t she thought about ultrasound to image the appendix before? Because she wasn’t a surgeon. Because she was used to modern, fully equipped hospital situations. Because she didn’t even know what equipment was located at this facility—which had to change immediately.

  Moving on, she slid the wand to another position and pressed, showing the path usually taken in such a procedure. He had her move the wand a few more times, until he was satisfied with the visual and knew that he’d have room to move.

  As soon as he’d made his incision the ultrasound was abandoned, and her job shifted to handing over the instruments as he asked, holding back tissue with forceps, controlling the flow of blood.

  “How’s the baby’s heartbeat?” she asked the anesthesiologist yet again, probably ensuring that he’d never want to be on the same surgical team with her ever again, prompting him for readouts even if he’d only just given them.

  The pattern they fell into was surprisingly easy. Ares’s hands, always elegant in their masculine way, moved with a certainty and grace his current appearance contradicted.

  She’d gotten by on having faith in her coping mechanisms for so long, but she found that faith shaken before they scrubbed in. Chatter and keeping her mind occupied held the line between being shaken up and on the floor, but she couldn’t dismiss her doubts about how long she could keep it up.

  However, unlike what she’d expected, he was professional. And extremely skilled.

  And different.

  But then so was she.

  “I see it,” he said, and leaned over a bit, letting her visualize the swollen, enflamed organ.

  “Goodness, it’s big. But it looks clean.”

  “Doesn’t look like it’s ruptured either. I’ll extract—you examine it.”

  She passed over instruments, one at a time, allowing him to clamp the organ off from the ascending colon, then repeat the maneuver from the colon side so he could make a clean extraction.

  Once he had placed the faulty organ into the surgical tray, she maneuvered it around to look for any openings.

  “Intact,” she announced after pressing and examining for longer than she would probably have done under normal circumstances. She needed an extra layer of assurance that her powers of observation and attention were still functioning at a high level, even with the chaos going on in her head.

  Finally satisfied, she returned to his side to help flush the area with saline before closing up.

  “We’ll have to check our antibiotic inventory. If there’s one you prefer but we don’t have in stock, we can have it by the evening. I’m starting her on whatever’s the best we have in the meanwhile. Eri... Dr. Nikolaides...”

  Even with the face mask he wore, she saw his silent correction in the squint of his eyes. But she didn’t know what it meant. She didn’t know what any of this meant to him. He’d frozen, briefly, upon seeing her. And again when she’d reminded him what the health of her patients meant to her, but she still didn’t know what it meant to him.

  He could just be reacting to the worry that she was going to lose it in front of everyone and he’d have to answer difficult questions. Or he might not care at all about her, or the events that had rewired her brain to expect betrayal from those she loved.

  But she told herself she didn’t care about how affected or unaffected he was. She cared about Theo, Chris and Deakin. She had to figure out how to be around Ares without losing her senses, or all those years of keeping secrets from the rest would come undone, and that would mean she’d gone through all that alone for no reason.

  Theo, the quintessential protective older brother? She didn’t even have to wonder how he’d react. And, no matter what Chris and Deakin might think, knowing what had happened between Ares and her would divide the four close friends, probably forever.

  Even if the clinic didn’t rely on them all getting along and maintaining their long, loving, sibling-like relationship, she didn’t want to be the cause of their pain. Every single one of them had gone through enough pain in their lives without her adding to it now, when it could change nothing about the past.

  And she’d lost enough. She didn’t deserve to lose Chris or Deakin, even if they were more forgiving than her super-protective brother would be.

  “Dr. Nikolaides?” He said her name as if he’d said it before, and she finally realized what he’d said about the antibiotics. She hadn’t answered him.

  “I’ll look as soon as we’re done,” she said, clicking back to the present. What was the next step? “Does anyone in the lab stay around the clock? I’d like labs drawn tonight and in the morning, to track her blood count. And I want the bacteria in the appendix cultured to check for resistance.”

  “We can arrange it. If not, I’ll stay and do it. I’ve done them before.”

  “Do you do every job with your charity outfit?” He’d clearly learned pretty adept surgical skills there.

  “We all do whatever we have to, to keep things going. They’re even worse off for personnel than we are here.”

  He tied off the last suture and she clipped it, then took over swabbing the incision site and applying a good dressing. That was the next step. The anesthesia was out, and she grabbed a stethoscope to listen to the baby’s heart and then the mother’s.

  “And I’m good at what I set my mind to,” he added.

  Hearts were steady—both of them. Jacinda’s rate was a little higher than she’d like, but that happened with infection.

  “Do we have a recovery room? I’m guessing not...?” Erianthe asked, pulling the earbuds out.

  He’d removed his mask and gloves but stood watching her in that same way he had in the patient’s room, looking too long, too intently. It made the back of her neck prickle, and she felt that tension return. What did it even mean? She had no way to know what he was thinking and never had—even when she’d thought she couldn’t know anyone better than she knew him.

  “She’s coming up,” the anesthesiologist interrupted.

  Erianthe removed her mask to stand over her patient’s head. “Jacinda? Open your eyes for me.”

  When she complied, Erianthe delivered the good news and Ares backed her up.

 
“We’re going to take you back to a room and look after you there.”

  His voice changed when he spoke to Jacinda, becoming imbued with a gentleness that made her own throat thicken. It reminded her of the way he’d held and comforted her after the pregnancy test that had changed everything. When she’d been terrified of the way Dimitri and Hera would react to it, wondering if they could run away to be safe.

  “Where are you going?” he asked her now, the voice change denoting the shift from comforting his patient to addressing Erianthe.

  “Nowhere...” she croaked, then cleared her throat.

  “You’re backing up.”

  He did seem farther away.

  A shake of her head and she gestured to the door. “I’ll go with her to monitor vitals.”

  “Was the baby’s heart rate still good?”

  “Yes,” she confirmed, still wanting to talk about the patient as it kept her from thinking about the way he was looking at her. “Can we bring the ultrasound to her room?”

  Ares pulled his surgical cap off and tossed it into the bin, tired all the way to his bones suddenly. Too tired for gentleness, or for this weird circling around one another that they were doing.

  “You take her up and I’ll bring it in a moment,” he said.

  She had always bristled when told what to do, but who knew if she still had something to prove? It was a long time ago, and they’d both had to grow up in that time.

  All he knew was that he needed air at this precise second, so he might as well go home. If he stayed, as was his usual custom, he’d only be stuck in a room with her and nothing to do. Judging by her actions and words so far, there was no way she’d leave a pregnant mother and child in possible jeopardy.

  Besides, his own island was very close to Mythelios proper, and his boat was fast. He’d rather stagger out of bed in the middle of the night and rush here without pants on than stay in a room with Erianthe for hours, when every time she looked at him her expression seemed stuck somewhere between someone just vomited on me and why is that spider carrying a machete?

  “Who is going to show me where that is and help get her settled?”