by Andrews, Amy
Unfortunately...he’d just signed away any rights to seeing her naked ever again.
Her gaze met his and for a moment he felt as if she was thinking the same thing. No more nudity. No more Bondi. No more mangoes or barbeques or escargots.
At least, not together.
Did she feel that loss as keenly as he did or had she had time to get used to it? After all, in their year of separation he had never seriously believed that either of them would make it permanent. But she’d obviously thought about it - a lot.
‘What are the chances, do you think,’ Katya asked in her heavily accented English, ‘we will get out of here before any more casualties arrive?’
‘Zero,’ said Helmut, pessimistic as always.
The turn in conversation brought Gill out of his trance and he reluctantly broke eye contact with Harriet. Their flight left at 7 a.m. tomorrow morning. It wasn’t unknown to go twenty-four hours without incoming wounded, but it was the exception rather than the rule. Unfortunately, the human carnage was showing no signs of abating and it was never long between skirmishes.
But, if nothing else it would keep him busy today. Too busy to think about Harriet and the divorce and how badly his life was going to suck without her.
CHAPTER FOUR - 1000 HOURS
‘One more sleep, Harry,’ Katya said catching up with Harriet on their way to the morning triage meeting.
Harriet smiled at her enthusiasm. Katya was the youngest of the three nurses that formed their surgical team and had been with MedSurg for four years. The younger woman’s grasp of the English language was superb and her accent was very easy on the ear.
Entertaining, also, when Katya - the most volatile of the group - lost her cool, which happened a lot in the presence of such senseless carnage. She would slip back into her native Russian every third or fourth word and especially when she couldn’t think of an insulting enough English word.
Katya vehemently maintained that Russian swear words were the most poetic of all languages and, listening to her in full flight, Harriet had to admit she was right. She sounded like she was reciting Tolstoy, instead of a string of invectives that couldn’t be remotely classed as high literature.
‘You do know how happy we all are that you and Gill are back together.’
Harriet’s step faltered briefly. A denial rose to her lips but looking at the joy on her friend’s face she didn’t have the heart to speak the truth. What was the point? Their mission was over tomorrow. Why not part with everyone thinking she and Gill were going to live happily ever after? This fine group of people wanted so badly for them to be happy, for it to be like it had been, and they would all know the truth soon enough.
Harriet smiled and nodded. ‘Yes, I do.’
Katya grinned back at her and not for the first time Harriet thought what a good match Gill and Katya would make. In fact, she’d wondered when she left a year ago if they might hook up in her absence. Her and Gill had been separated and the blonde, petite Russian nurse was very pretty.
But there hadn’t been even be a whiff of anything between them. No awkwardness. No hushed, secretive conversations. No vibe that they knew each other intimately. Just the same friendly banter that had always existed between them. That the whole team thrived on. That gelled them all together.
She’d hoped Gill had found the idea of casual sex during their separation as abhorrent as she had. That their separation had devastated him as much as her. That sex with someone else just didn’t rate. But he was a virile man with appetites and she didn’t fool herself for a moment that men and women thought the same way about matters relating to sex.
And a year was a long time. A year of living apart, working apart. Harriet had stayed with MedSurg but had joined another surgical team that had gone to different hot-spots and had worked the opposite rotation to Gill’s. So when Gill’s team had been flying home for a month’s R and R, Harriet’s team had been flying elsewhere to start their two-month stint.
Communication between them had been complicated by their work assignments. The places they went to and the conditions of the local infrastructure often meant phone or mobile contact was not possible. MedSurg comms centre had enough on their plates, dealing with casualties and air evacuations and managing their ground-level programmes, without being a message centre for idle chit-chat. Only emergency calls for staff were allowed.
Email had been their most efficient communication tool. Separation via electronic mail. Harriet had hated it. She wondered now as they gathered for the triage meeting if they would divorce via the internet as well. Would they split up their assets, argue about which books, which kitchen appliances belonged to whom via their inboxes?
She imagined her email to him when the decree nisi arrived.
Dear Gill. It’s official. We are no longer joined in marriage. You should be receiving the paperwork soon. Have a good life.
Harriet shuddered. She felt so empty thinking about it, but the alternative Gill had suggested this morning made her emptier. A part-time father who’d rather fly around the world, fixing other people’s problems, than be with her and their baby?
To have to watch his detachment when he came home and live with him knowing he had one eye on the calendar.
She knew as surely as she knew that she loved him that she’d be more miserable with half of Gill than none of him.
‘Oh, great,’ muttered Katya beside her as she slipped into the seat next to Harriet. ‘Just what I needed on my last day. Casanova.’
Harriet smiled to herself. Sitting opposite them was another reason why Gill and Katya would probably never hook up. Count Benedetto Medici the third. Italian aristocracy, wealthy playboy and MedSurg’s newest surgeon. It was standard operating procedure for the organization to send two full teams to any
mission, and unfortunately, on-ground casualty numbers more than justified it.
The smooth charm of the affluent newbie had well and truly rubbed Katya up the wrong way, her poor-as-dirt background giving her a healthy dislike of men born with silver spoons in their mouths.
It was obvious to all but Katya they were hot for each other.
‘Morning, Katya,’ he said across the table, sending her a smouldering smile.
‘Ben,’ she said shortly, in withering dismissal.
Harriet glanced at Gill, who winked at her, and for a second she forgot that they’d be nearly divorced by the time Gill returned to the team for their next mission. The memory of their joining this morning was still fresh in her mind and for a few seconds she remembered how much she loved him and how their romance, too, had blossomed in the diverse melting pot of a MedSurg mission.
Gill was also remembering. He’d been entering his fourth year with the organisation and had been a little apprehensive about the new RN taking over from Liesel, who was going back to Sweden to get married. It was always a little stressful when someone new joined an already established team.
Would they fit in? Would they complement the existing members, would the transition be seamless or would their presence cause ripples and potentially be disruptive? Would the unity of the team be irreparably damaged?
Did they have a sense of humour? Were they willing to fit in with the routines and procedures of the group? What had been their motivation to join the organisation in the first place? Was it for a genuine humanitarian reason or were they running away from something or dropping out of society?
Gill had been around long enough to see the effect one ill-suited person could have on the harmony of a team, so all these things had been careening through his mind the night he and the rest of the team had met Harriet at a London restaurant. And all his worries had been banished in an instant.
She had fitted in instantly, and they had both known without a single word being spoken that there was something between them, that their destinies were entwined. When they’d left together a couple of hours later there had been no question of saying goodbye at the door. The only question had been which hotel room �
�� his or hers.
They’d settled on hers because it had been the closest. And despite knowing that they were heading into the world’s latest war zone the next day, they had been up all night.
He remembered how Harriet had been worried the next morning about the consequences. How would the rest of the team feel? Would they judge her? Would they resent her? Should they keep it quiet? So they’d agreed to do that but they’d been so besotted with each other it had been hopeless and they’d given the game away within the first week.
And now here they were, seven years later, weeks away from divorce.
‘So,’ said Ben. ‘Shall we begin?’
Gill reluctantly broke eye contact with his wife - ex-wife, must get used to that – as the daily triage meeting got underway. It was held every morning with as many staff present as possible. Obviously if they were operating it was postponed, but otherwise 10:30 every morning — like clockwork.
Triage was a bit of a misnomer, really. Yes, decisions were made on a case-by-case basis as to who might get the next available helicopter to a major centre, but it was also a forum to debrief, air problems and talk about more mundane things such as supplies, equipment and procedures.
‘Three of my patients stayed in the HDU overnight.’ Ben’s rich, deep baritone held innate authority. ‘The liver lac has priority. His drain losses haven’t slowed and I’d like to get him out of here first.’
Gill nodded. He had two patients they hadn’t been able to evacuate last night and neither would take priority over the liver. One had been lucky and had taken minor shrapnel damage to his gut and the other had a penetrating eye injury that, while serious, was not life-threatening.
These were the decisions they made every day. Who couldn’t wait, who had to. Patients triaged in the field as requiring surgical intervention were choppered to their current location and it was the objective of the surgical teams to operate so the immediate threat to the patient’s life was alleviated and then evacuate as soon as possible to the most appropriate major centre.
Usually there were a couple of cases that, due to stretched resources, had to stay behind post-op. In this situation the least critical stayed and were nursed in their limited high-dependency unit. This had five beds and two nurses, with back-up from the surgeons and anaesthetists.
‘Comms from HQ this morning has authorized all cases for evac,’ Ben confirmed.
‘Good.’ Gill nodded. ‘We’ll do your liver first then the three abdo traumas then the eye.’
Harriet watched as everyone nodded in agreement. No one batted an eyelid that the patients were recognised by their body parts rather than their names. This had been the hardest thing for her to come to terms with in the field of surgery. Maybe it was the nurse in her but it just didn’t seem right to not know a patient’s name.
To be fair, a lot of this had to do with the language barrier and the fact that the majority of their patients were in no condition to divulge their names. Seventy-five per cent of their patients were unconscious, and with no IDs their names were impossible to know.
But surgeons did have a nasty habit of referring to their patients as a bunch of body parts and it was so dehumanising Harriet knew it was one part of this job she wouldn’t miss. But, then, nothing was more dehumanising than war.
‘I have an update on yesterday’s casualties,’ said Theire, the translator, in her soft, heavily accented voice.
Now, that was something Harriet would miss. The accents. Every working day she was surrounded by the music of other languages. From the people she worked with to the locals who were unfortunate enough to end up on their operating tables, it was like living in an opera composed by the UN.
She hadn’t realised just how deeply it had become a part of her subconscious. Her ears didn’t hear it any more but the thought of no longer hearing a mish-mash of foreign tongues was depressing.
Just in this room they had Italian Ben, Russian Katya,
German Helmut, Irish Siobhan, Theire, who spoke several of the local dialects, and various English, Indian, Filipino and Australian contributions as well. And then there was Gill.
He spoke with the careless drawl of a fair dinkum Aussie, but when he spoke French it was like he’d been born there. She would really miss that. Miss how he would speak French with his parents and grandfather in her presence from time to time, or jokingly ask for an instrument in the language to crack everyone up, or casually slip into it at home because he knew how much it turned her on.
He made love in French, too.
‘I have been in contact with the various facilities that our patients were transferred to.’ MedSurg always employed local interpreters for each mission. Their services were invaluable.
‘The man with the bullet in his brain did not make it. Nor did the little boy with the traumatic amputation of his leg.
The three chest traumas are still in critical conditions but holding their own. The woman with the gut full of shrapnel had to go back for more surgery. They removed an extensive amount of ischaemic large bowel and she now has a colostomy.’
There was silence in the room as they all thought about the people from the day before. Harriet had been assisting in the operating theatre with Gill as he’d tried to save the little boy. The child had lost so much blood, and even as he had been tying off the bleeders and stabilizing his condition, Harriet had known deep inside that the child wouldn’t make it.
The wound had been incredibly dirty, dragged through filth and mud as the boy had crawled to safety. It was always going to be a matter of whether his profoundly hypovolaemic state or a massive bacterial infection would kill him first.
Harriet glanced at Gill now, their gazes locking. He looked gutted and she couldn’t blame him. The unfairness of it all was breath taking.
What had a child of eight done to deserve that?
Suddenly, relief overlaid her guilt at turning her back on all of this. To never have to look into the eyes of another man, woman or child injured through the stupidity of war would be a huge weight off her shoulders because it was just too, too much to bear sometimes.
Gill would do this forever, she knew that. Because he was good and honourable, driven by a truly deep compassion for the suffering of others.
But Harriet was done.
CHAPTER FIVE - 1100 HOURS
Megan, one of the HDU nurses interrupted the end of the meeting. ‘Gill,’ she said, ‘can you review your abdo trauma from last night? He’s febrile and tachycardic. His drain losses are increasing as well.’
‘Damn it!’ Gill muttered as he stood.
Harriet could tell he was already reliving the operation in his head. Going over the possible causes for deterioration. She’d been by his side as he’d spent over an hour picking shrapnel out of the rebel soldier’s intestines. When he’d closed he’d been confident the damage had all been repaired but Harriet knew the chances of missing a little knick somewhere, was always a possibility.
‘Ladies first,’ he said, smiling at Megan, indicating she should precede him.
Harriet rolled her eyes as the nurse turned a pretty shade of pink and beamed back at the sexy surgeon. Her husband.
For another few weeks anyway.
Man, he should be banned from smiling. She couldn’t blame Megan for feeling a little flushed, it made her go positively weak at the knees.
She watched them as they walked side by side and then disappeared into the room that housed the HDU. How was it possible to make a set of plain blue baggy scrubs sexy? She remembered how she had thought him breathtakingly gorgeous that first night in London dressed to impress and later how magnificent he was undressed.
But nothing had prepared her for how perfectly he filled out a set of scrubs. Like blue cotton had been invented just for him.
The minute he donned his scrubs he became Dr Guillaume Remy, surgeon. The sense of authority that he exuded was powerful, virile — almost sexual. The blue theatre cap tied and anchored at the back of his neck just belo
w his hairline made him look even sexier.
If anyone were to ask her in years to come what her fondest memory was of their time together, there would be no hesitation. Seeing Gill in his scrubs and cap, laughing his deep, sexy laugh, oblivious to his innate sex appeal.
Greedily, she stored the memory away. One more day of memories and that was it.
Harriet and Siobahn were the only ones of the gathering left lingering when Gill strode back down the corridor ten minutes later. Everyone else had departed for the dining area and another cup of artificial stimulant.
‘We have to reopen the soldier,’ he said.
The soldier. Harriet shook her head. He’d looked no more than sixteen and had refused to give Theire his name.
What was wrong with the world? Babies fighting wars?
But that’s what they did. This was MedSurg’s mission. It didn’t matter how young or old, male or female, civilian or military, goodie or baddie. If you were injured and needed surgery, the doors were always open. There were no moral or ethical judgments — it was just patch ’em up and ship ’em out.
‘There’s a significant amount of free fluid visible on the portable scanner. Megan’s getting him prepped.’
Harriet stood. ‘I’ll alert the others.’
‘Where’s Theire?’ he asked.
‘Making some more calls,’ replied Siobhan as she also stood.
‘I’ll get her to talk to the patient,’ Gill said. ‘I’ll also see Ben about evac’ing him out with the liver. See you both there in five.’
Harriet and Siobhan located the team in all their scattered locations, which wasn’t difficult, given their close confines.
There wasn’t the infrastructure for a paging system so word of mouth was how it usually worked, except in the event of a mass casualty arrival.
In that situation, a hand-operated siren was used by Dr Kelly Prentice, the on-site medical director. It wailed mournfully between the two buildings occupied by MedSurg, spreading its bad news like an involuntary shudder to the furthest reaches of the complex.