“I’m asking you to let me go so I can find someone who wants a child as much as I do.”

The thought of her with someone else hurt like a fresh bruise deep inside. But she was right. If he couldn’t give her what she wanted it was wrong to keep her bound to him.

Gill sighed as he removed the divorce papers from the envelope. “Are you sure, Harry? What we have is special. Are you sure you can find that with someone else?”

He didn’t mean to sound conceited—he was just stating a fact. And it was buying him time. Putting off the inevitable.

“No, Gill.” She shut her eyes briefly and opened them again. “I’m just looking for a different kind of love. One that has room for three.”

He nodded slowly. Their love had always been all consuming. Blocking everything and everybody else out.

Yet, she looked so lovely standing in front of him and the desire to hold her in his arms was overwhelming.

Dear Reader,

It’s nearly seven in the morning and I can’t sleep. Today is the last day of our medical team’s rotation in this war zone. One of many over the years. The team and I operated for sixteen hours straight yesterday and didn’t finish until well into the night. But I don’t mind—I thrive on the challenge. And as great as it is to leave, it won’t take me long to miss it again. I love being part of this great team of people. Sure it can be dangerous, but what we do makes a difference to so many lives.

So why am I lying here awake when I should be sleeping? It’s Harriet. My wife. I’m losing her. I can’t put my finger on it, but last night, as we were standing together side by side and she was passing me instruments, I could feel her pulling away from me. We’ve been reconciled for two months now and I thought we were past the baby stalemate. Why is it that I can fix broken bodies with my eyes shut, but can’t seem to fix the rift in my marriage?

I love Harriet. From the moment I saw her, I’ve never wanted anyone else. The year we were separated was hell. Worse than living in a war zone. Our marriage had been perfect, an extension of our operating style—flawless with a poetic symmetry. But suddenly she wanted a baby. And I didn’t. And we were at an impasse. When she came back, I thought the issue had been resolved but…maybe not.

And so now I have a day to pull her back. It’s not much time, but a lot can happen in twenty-four hours—particularly here. I simply can’t bear the thought of losing her again.

Wish me luck, dear reader. Wish me luck.

Regards,

Dr. Guillaume Remy

The Surgeon’s Meant-To-Be Bride
Amy Andrews

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To Mark. For everything. LUVVM

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER ONE

0700 HOURS

THE divorce papers burnt a hole in her hand as she carried the large yellow envelope to her soon-to-be ex-husband’s sleeping quarters. Nausea threatened and she swallowed hard to dispel it.

Just knock on the door, hand it over, then leave, Harriet lectured herself as her rubber-soled shoes squeaked loudly on the aged linoleum in the hushed corridors. Do not stop for a chat. Do not go in for coffee. Do not let him make love to you.

She tossed her head and clamped down on the irony that threatened to bubble up in her chest and escape as sarcastic laughter. Sex, Harriet. Have sex with you. Their days of love-making were long past and she couldn’t afford such romantic stupidity.

They were getting divorced. The end. Finito. Period. They were just having a little difficulty remembering their differences in the haze of lust that descended upon them every time they got a little too close. Harriet hadn’t yet worked out the co-ordinates of that invisible line—the one that separated close and too close—but she certainly knew when she’d crossed it. Except by then it was usually…always…too late.

Harriet stopped in front of his door, gathering her courage. Tomorrow. She gripped the envelope tighter. She would be gone tomorrow and his signature would be on the papers and she could get on with her life. So she had to do this now.

She’d had the papers since she’d arrived in this country over two months ago but part of her had held back. Somewhere inside there had still been a small kernel of hope. A little Pollyanna ray of sunshine that had believed she could truly convince him to change his mind.

But two months of alternating between fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants medical drama and snatched moments of incredible can’t-get-enough-of-you sex hadn’t resolved anything. Sex they were great at. Marriage they weren’t.

Harriet took a moment to tie her wavy hair back in a hastily constructed ponytail. He was going to look all messy-haired and sleepy and sexy as hell, so she desperately needed to look no-nonsense. And he hated her hair tied back, and for this task she needed him to hate her a little.

Harriet knocked on the door. The noise echoed loudly down the corridor and she hoped she hadn’t woken anyone else. All the surgical teams had been up until 1 a.m. and she didn’t think they’d appreciate such an early wake-up call. But this had to be done. She’d put it off too long already.

She heard a mumbled expletive on the other side of the door and smiled to herself as she pictured Gill emerging from under his pillow, staring at the clock and frowning. Please, put a shirt on, she begged silently.

The door opened abruptly and Harriet was confronted with his magnificent naked chest. She looked into his grumpy face and watched as he bit off a retort and a slow lazy smile warmed his sleepy face. Oh, hell! Of all the men in all the world she had to marry one that looked like a naughty angel.

‘Harry,’ he murmured.

His morning voice stroked across her skin, sending every nerve ending in her body into a frenzy. She knew where the line was today. And she was standing on it.

‘I’m sorry I woke you,’ she said, lifting her eyes off his smooth pectoral muscles and trying to shut down her peripheral vision so she couldn’t see the bulge of his naked biceps.

‘I’m not,’ he said.

Harriet frowned at him. He lifted a hand and caressed the St Christopher hanging from the delicate silver chain around her neck. He had a mouth that was made for kissing and Harriet could feel herself teetering on the line. She wanted to lean forward and draw his soft bottom lip into her mouth and bite it.

She could feel his gentle tug on the necklace drawing her into the room. Harriet resisted. She knew that crossing the line was not what this was about. Give him the papers and go. Run like the wind.

Harriet brought the envelope up between them, abruptly displacing his hand.

‘What’s this?’ he asked, a small smile playing on his lips and dancing in his grey eyes.

‘Divorce papers,’ she said, and felt stronger just saying the words.

Gill stared for a moment and shot her another slow smile as he took the envelope from her. He tossed it over his shoulder and Harriet heard it land on the floor behind him.

‘Gill…’ she chided softly. ‘I need you to sign them. It’s time.’

He stood to one side and gestured her into the room with a flourish of his deft surgeon’s hands.

Harriet shook her head vehemently. ‘No.’ She knew what would happen if she put her foot over the line. His quarters were three metres by three and dominated by an unmade bed and an undressed man.

‘Harriet,’ he sighed, but she could see the sparkle of amusement lighting his eyes. ‘I’m not going to discuss our divorce with you in the corridor.’

His rich, deep voice oozed like warm chocolate, coating her in its sweet, sticky web. He held out his hand to her. It sounded so reasonable. She looked behind her at the empty hallway and hesitated briefly, before taking his hand and feeling the gentle tug pulling her over the line.

When he reached behind her and pulled her hair free she didn’t protest. Neither did she when he kissed her. In fact, she welcomed it greedily, ready to join in this dance they did so well, eager to be naked with him one last time.

Harriet had felt the pull the moment he had opened the door and had known deep inside that resistance was useless. She could pretend as much as she liked that it was over between them, but she knew this would never be over. This insane lust that had blinded her with its ferocity for seven years.

He’d sign the papers and their union would be broken, but this endless urge to be with him, to know him carnally every time they were together, could never be broken. Her only hope was distance. Come tomorrow she was staying the hell away from him—for ever!

Harriet felt a quiver low in her abdomen as the sheer hunger and force of his kiss had her clinging to his broad naked shoulders. She heard him groan her name into her mouth and she whimpered in response.

‘Harry,’ he said again, tearing his mouth away and looking searchingly into her eyes as his breath came in harsh gasps, his grey eyes stormy with passion.

She claimed his mouth quickly, empowered by his almost bewildered look. The fact that she could do to him what he did to her was a powerful aphrodisiac and she felt her kiss become wild and savage against his full lips. Just for one last time she wanted him to realise what he was turning his back on.

Her hands roamed to the smooth muscles of his chest, trailed down his flat abdomen, and she took pleasure in their quick response to her touch. She could feel them contract beneath her nails and when she slipped her hands beneath his boxer shorts to grab handfuls of his tight buttocks she grinned in triumph as the hardness of his erection pushed urgently between her hips.

Gill grasped the bottom of her scrubs top and whipped it over her head in a swift movement. He didn’t bother fumbling with her bra clasp but yanked the cups aside, freeing her breasts and roughly stroked his thumbs over her nipples until they peaked into hard nubs.

He pushed her backwards and she fell against the rumpled bed. Harriet had a moment of clarity when she realised how she must look. Half-naked, her hair spread in wild abandon against the sheets, her bra ripped aside, her breasts achingly aroused. Then Gill removed his boxers and all rational thought fled.

He stood for a moment tall and proud, just looking at her with more lust than she’d known existed in the whole world. He wasn’t embarrassed by his arousal and already she wanted to feel its silky smoothness in her hands, her mouth, deep inside her.

She licked her dry lips and noticed Gill’s eyes widen at the unintentional come-on. He reached down and pulled the cord at her waist that held her scrubs up and yanked both them and her undies down in one swift movement. Now she lay totally naked before him as he stood before her, and she couldn’t stop the whimper of need that escaped her mouth or holding her arms out to him in silent consent.

And then his weight was on her and his mouth was everywhere. Drawing wet circles around her breasts and sucking her nipples to tortured peaks, nibbling her earlobes, tickling her stomach and licking inside her until she thought she would faint from the need.

And then when the desire built to fever pitch his mouth claimed hers and he let his fingers do the walking. They stroked and caressed and danced their way all over her body, and when he put them deep inside her she had to bite hard on her lip to stop the scream. Even crazed with lust, she remembered how thin the walls were!

‘Now,’ she whispered urgently, clinging to his neck as his fingers wove a magical rhythm and she could feel her orgasm rushing out from deep inside her, threatening to engulf her at any second.

Their gazes locked as he plunged inside her. Each stroke hurtled her closer, at each stroke his eyes seemed to dare hers to close. She refused. She would not look away or shut her eyes, even as the pressure built. She wanted to look straight at him as she came. She wanted to watch his eyes as he came, too. She wanted their last time to be indelibly imprinted on her retinas. She wanted to see his face as he lost control inside her.

Harriet bit down on her lip as the first wave broke against the shore.

‘Say it. I want to hear you,’

The demand was magnified by his panting breaths, trying to hold off his own pleasure until she’d reached nirvana as well. Harriet shook her head. If she let it out, the earth would shake and the parrots in the sparse trees outside would lift in noisy flight and every doctor and nurse in the complex would be woken from their slumbers.

‘Let it out,’ he demanded again.

She shook her head again and tried to internalise the orgasm that was eroding the edges of her endurance.

‘I want to hear you,’ he said. ‘One last time, Harry. Let me hear you.’

Harriet felt the guttural noise move through her from the tips of her toes, gaining momentum until the sheer enormity of it demanded an escape. She held his gaze, noticing the sheen of sweat on his brow, and realised she could stem the noise and the tide no longer.

‘Please, Harry.’ His voice was halfway between begging and groaning and she knew that she didn’t have the power to deny him this one last request. And she wanted to anyway. She wanted to yell and scream like a banshee. She wanted their last time to be memorable, imprinted on his mind for ever. So she let herself go, crying out his name as the tumult of her orgasm flung her into the far reaches of the galaxy.

She vaguely heard his voice joining hers, crying out in abandon as she hovered above the earth, amongst the stars, at one with the beauty of the heavens.

CHAPTER TWO

0800 HOURS

‘THE papers, Gill.’

Dr Guillaume Remy had been enjoying the disconnected feeling of being outside his body, letting his mind drift through the silky tendrils of sexual limbo. In the strange world between slumber and wakefulness he could forget about the papers lying discarded on his floor and that the woman he loved no longer wanted to be with him.

There was only the wonderful haze of pleasure that reached deep into his bones, making him feel heavy and weightless all at the same time. A semi-conscious state halfway between arousal and satisfaction that he wished they could stay in for ever. He supposed this was the high that drug addicts craved and thanked his lucky stars he didn’t need to inject anything to attain it.

He just needed Harriet. Oh, sure, he was no novice. He’d had his share of women with whom he’d experienced sexual pleasure before his marriage, but Harry…it had never been like this with anyone but her. They were so perfectly in tune, so intimately in sync, that sex with her was an addiction he doubted he’d ever manage to control.

They’d been apart for a year but when she’d rejoined his team two months ago it had been as if their separation had never happened. The way she talked and the way she laughed and the way she moved and her smell were as familiar to him as breathing. The way she kissed him, caressed him, touched him was still the biggest thrill he had ever known.

‘Gill!’ Her voice broke into the fog floating through his brain. He half opened his eyes and watched her pulling on her clothes, hiding her body from him.

‘Come back to bed,’ he murmured.

There were few things on this earth better than a naked Harriet. Her body was superb…perfect. She had the body and grace of a ballerina. Naturally slender. Toned arms, thighs and calves, flat stomach, long legs, a perky bottom and pert breasts. Her olive skin was blemish-free and the small mole on her left hip was as fascinating today as it had been seven years ago when she had broken all her rules and slept with him after knowing him for three hours.

Her gorgeous wavy hair flowed like a river of molasses down the elegant arc of her back almost to the curve of her buttocks. He had spent many an hour combing his fingers through its heaviness. It was long enough that if she brought it forward over her shoulders it covered both breasts, mermaid-like.

He had a sudden vision of himself as a lust-struck sailor scooping her up from a rocky outcrop, hypnotised by her beauty, and making love to her on a beach as the waves crashed around them. He felt himself twitch and knew that he wanted her again.

‘Gill,’ she said again, and the note of exasperation in her voice brought him fully out of his fantasy.

Harriet blasted a glare at him that would have vaporised most men, but still he could feel his erection build. If anything, her crankiness was turning him on. He watched her as she realised what was happening to his uncovered anatomy and the look of hunger on her face had him completely ready.

‘Come back to bed,’ he repeated in a low growl, and he watched the widening of her eyes as temptation flitted across her features and she absently dug her teeth into her bottom lip.

‘You know you want to, Harry.’

He knew instantly he had said the wrong thing as he saw the battle end and a look of grim determination set her lips into a thin line.

‘For God’s sake,’ she snapped, ‘get dressed and sign the papers.’

Harriet turned her back to him and Gill knew that he had lost her. He sighed and got up, pulling his boxers on.

‘You can turn around now,’ he said, amused by the rigidity of her back and the way she was impatiently drumming her fingers against her folded arms.

Gill scooped the envelope off the floor and sat on the edge of the bed as Harriet faced him, her arms still folded. They stared at each other for a few moments, not saying anything.

‘So this is why you came back to the team after staying away for so long? So you could hand deliver these?’

She felt two spots of colour rise in her face and stain her cheeks. He made it sound so calculating. She shook her head and swallowed the lump in her throat. She would not be shamed by him. ‘You’re surely not surprised by them?’

‘Well, actually, I am. I thought we were getting things back on track. For God’s sake, you’ve rarely been out of my bed.’

‘I came to try one last time, Gill. But we’ve resolved nothing.’

‘I love you, Harry. I don’t want a divorce. I didn’t want a separation. Look me in the eye and tell me you don’t love me.’

‘This isn’t about love, Gill, and you know it. We want different things.’

‘A baby.’ He sighed. They’d had this conversation about a thousand times in the year before Harriet had walked out.

‘Yes, Gill, a baby.’

Gill couldn’t think of anything worse if he tried. Except not being married to Harry. They had a great life. They were free to work where they wanted, live where they wanted, travel where they wanted. All with a backpack and a minute’s notice. They could make love all night and sleep in till lunchtime. Was there something so wrong with that?

He didn’t know a lot about babies but he did know that their lifestyle would have to change drastically. And they’d been having fun, hadn’t they? Travelling around the world with the charity organisation MedSurg Aid Abroad, living rough, working hard, changing lives, making a difference.

Seeing places and people and things, both good and bad, that few people ever got to experience in their lives. Touring the world while fulfilling their deep humanitarian beliefs. It was the ultimate lonely planet lifestyle and he didn’t want to give that up for nappies and 2 a.m. feeds.

But with the divorce papers in his hands, the reality of the situation was difficult to ignore. Did he really want to lose her over this? Maybe if he compromised?

‘Look, I’m not saying I don’t ever want a baby…maybe one day I’ll feel differently.’

‘I’m 35, Gill. I don’t have time to wait for you.’

Harriet could be very stubborn. She didn’t sugar-coat anything. If she felt it, she said it. ‘Are you sure? You’ve had a year, Harry. I don’t see you pregnant yet.’

He heard her swiftly indrawn breath and wished he could withdraw the words.

‘You think I could go off with someone else and have a baby while I’m still married to you? You don’t know me at all. Do you?’

So, he had made her angry—well, join the club. Her changing her mind about what she wanted from life had pissed him off, too. ‘Well, I thought I used to but, no, these days I don’t know you at all. What the hell happened to “No, Gill, I don’t want a baby, never, absolutely not, no way. Too many kids in this over-populated world anyway, Gill.” What happened to that? So don’t blame me if this sudden desire to have a baby makes me think that you’ll stoop to anything!’

‘You know damn well why the suddenness, Guillaume Remy!’ said Harriet, her voice a vicious whisper.

‘Because of Rose? Your little sister has a baby and suddenly your clock is ticking louder than a home-made bomb?’

‘Don’t be so bloody obtuse,’ she said through clenched teeth. ‘Yes, Rose started it—how could you not want a baby when you look into Tom’s beautiful chubby face? But if you can’t understand why discovering that I only have one ovary and Fallopian tube could knock me for six, maybe I don’t know you either. I’m sorry I changed the plot on you, but when a gynaecologist tells me I might have trouble conceiving, it comes as a bit of a shock. Surely you can see that?’

No, he couldn’t. He was a man. And not just that but a man who didn’t have a paternal bone in his body. Sure, babies were cute—Tom was very cute. But their appeal had more to do with being grateful he could hand them back than any pleasure he took from holding them.

He’d had a close call as a med student that had scared the hell out of him. There had been no feelings of joy or expectancy, just a horrible sinking feeling that his life was over. He’d carried that experience with him always and in his head babies always equalled the end of your life.

As a doctor he had a great deal of empathy for the plight of the world’s poor and starving children and those working like dogs from dusk to dawn and those torn apart by diseases, war and poverty. He admired their strength and resilience and he’d spent many years patching them up when they were hurt or wounded, caught up in adult wars, but he’d never had the desire to adopt any of them or, God forbid, have one of his own.

He had such a strong sense of social responsibility. There was so much he could offer this world. Having kids would just be a distraction from that purpose. His grandfather, who had fought with the French resistance before migrating to Australia after the war, had raised him to think of the plight of others and Gill had always felt immensely proud of the work he did.

But. He was holding his divorce papers in his hand. Before him stood the woman he loved. Who loved him. And she was asking him for something. Was prepared to never see him again, to cut all ties. Was he that strong? Did his career mean more to him than her? Did the world’s children mean more to him than the one she so desperately craved?

He sighed. Saying goodbye to Harriet for ever wasn’t possible. Being apart from her for a year had been hard, but part of him had felt at ease, unbothered, knowing that it was temporary. That Harriet would get over her problem and come back and they’d continue their lives. But divorce? She was serious.

‘Look, OK. You want a baby? All right, then, fine. Let’s have a baby.’

He didn’t know what he expected but it certainly wasn’t Harriet’s cool, sceptical gaze. He thought she’d leap into his arms and tear the papers up. Instead, she rolled her eyes and her lips flattened into a terse line.

‘Don’t do me any favours, Gill.’

He would have been an idiot to miss the sarcasm. ‘I mean it, Harry. Really.’

‘No, you don’t, Gill. You’re just trying to appease me. Well, no, thank you very much.’

Hell! What did she want from him? ‘Well, don’t say I didn’t offer,’ he said glibly.

‘Offer? Offer!’ she raged. ‘I don’t want an offer, Gill. I want you to want a baby with me so much that your breath hurts when you think about it. That your arms ache and your heart feels bereft and your stomach is empty at the thought of not having one. You have to want one with very fibre of your being, Gill. Every cell. Can you offer me that, Gill? Because if you can’t then don’t try and placate me. It’s insulting.’

‘Look, OK, you’re right. I don’t. But I’m still willing to give it a go,’ he said quietly.

Harriet sighed. ‘How willing? Are you prepared to give up your job, your career, this lifestyle?’

‘I could have both,’ he said, annoyed at her all-or-nothing attitude. ‘You could go home and have the baby and I could have two months abroad and one month at home.’

OK, he was just making this up as he went along, but even he had to admit it sounded terrible. He could hardly blame her for her appalled expression.

‘No, Gill. You can’t. I don’t want to have a baby and be stuck at home by myself for great chunks of time. I want you to want to be around all the time for me and the baby. I don’t want to have to lie in bed each night worrying that you’re going to get shot by a local warlord or die in a helicopter crash or catch Ebola or something. You forget so easily that this work we do is dangerous. I can’t live like that.’

‘I could maybe cut down to just one or two overseas missions a year…’

He sounded lame and uncommitted. He’d hate it. He’d hate being away from the action so much, and she knew it. ‘And how long would we last, Gill? How long before you resented me? Resented the baby?’

Gill swallowed as he thought about her question. What an awful situation that would be.

‘This isn’t about me forcing you to do what I want. This is me saying I’m sorry, I changed the rules. You didn’t sign up for this and I know this isn’t what you want. I’ve always known. Heaven knows, I never expected to feel this way either. I’ve tried to change your mind but I can’t make you want this the way I want it. And I do want it, Gill. I need it. And I’m asking you to let me go so I can find someone who wants it as much as I do.’

The thought of her with someone else hurt like a fresh bruise deep inside that someone kept prodding. But she was right. If he couldn’t give her what she wanted then it was wrong to keep her bound to him.

Gill sighed as he removed the papers from the envelope. He could see her fingers stop their drumming and knew she was holding her breath. His eyes fell on the phrase ‘irreconcilable differences’. How pertinent. That was exactly their problem. They loved each other. They just wanted different things.

‘Are you sure, Harry? What we have is pretty special. Are you sure you can find that with someone else?’

He didn’t mean to sound conceited—he was just stating a fact. And it was buying him time. Putting off the inevitable.

Harriet shook her head and he was surprised to catch a shine of tears. ‘No, Gill. I’m not sure. I doubt I’ll ever love anybody as much as I love you. I honestly believe there’s only ever one true love for everyone. But that’s OK, I’m not looking for that. I know there’s someone out there that can make me happy and give me what I want the most.’

‘So you’re going to settle?’ he asked incredulously.

‘No, Gill.’ She shut her eyes briefly, blocking his amazement out, then opened them again. ‘I’m just looking for a different kind of love. One that has room for three.’

He nodded slowly at her. Their love had always been kind of all-consuming. Blocking everything and everybody else out.

She looked so lovely, standing in front of him, that the desire to hold her in his arms was overwhelming. She pulled a pen out of her scrubs breast pocket as if she’d read his mind, derailing his base urge. Yes, they’d had a good run but now it was time to let her go.

He took it from her and signed at the indicated places in his indecipherable doctor’s handwriting next to her neat signature. He placed her copies back in the envelope and handed them back to her, keeping his.

‘Thank you,’ she whispered.

He nodded and watched as she turned on her heel and left the room.

CHAPTER THREE

0900 HOURS

IF ANYONE noticed their indifference at the breakfast table, they didn’t say anything. In fact, as each of the team joined them at the communal table, good-humoured jokes were told about their early morning wake-up call.

‘Hell,’ said Joan Sunderland, yawning as she pulled out her chair. Joan was the team’s anaesthetist and had been working with MSAA and Gill for ten years. She was English, originating from Liverpool. ‘Parrots were loud this morning.’

‘Parrots?’ said Helmut. He was a Berliner and, as an anaesthetic technician, was Joan’s right-hand man. ‘Sounded human to me.’ And he winked at Harriet.

Harriet blushed and stole a furtive glance at Gill. He was concentrating on his toast but she could see the poorly suppressed grin. There was something so wrong about the team teasing them when Gill had just signed the divorce papers.

But, on the other hand, it was typical. They were a close-knit team. They’d been together on and off for a long time. They performed a stressful job in high-pressure situations and none of them could have come through some of the more awful things without the support of each other.

‘Hey, you two, keep it down next time,’ said Katya, her flat Russian accent accentuating her renowned bluntness as she and Siobhan entered the room together and joined them, completing the team.

Everyone laughed. Even Harriet managed a grin. She glanced around the table and noticed how relaxed and happy they all were. When Harriet had rejoined the team in their current locale two months ago they had been a little cool towards her. Tense and worried.

After all, they were the ones who had put up with Gill after she had left a year ago and the dreadful year before that when their relationship had slowly crumbled. Apparently his mood had been foul for a long time and, as delighted as they’d been to welcome her back into the fold, they’d been wary about the effect on the team atmosphere.

Cohesiveness was essential in their line of work. They didn’t have to all be bosom buddies but it helped. The dreadful security situations they faced in the countries they visited often meant they couldn’t even go out and soak up some local culture. They were stuck with each other’s company for two months at a time. Harmony was important.

And there was a certain sense of loyalty for Gill. Harriet had felt it the minute she had got back. Nobody had judged her but they’d been through Gill’s highs and lows for the previous year and it had been only natural for their sympathies to lie with him.

Gill was also the kind of guy who commanded loyalty and respect. Harriet sneaked another look at him as he poured coffee from the percolator into his mug. In his scrubs the naughty-angel look had gone. He was Dr Guillaume Remy. Surgeon extraordinaire. Calm and capable. Brilliant and cool under pressure.

Not a hot-shot arrogant city surgeon, specialising in a glamorous field and making heaps of money but a brilliant general surgeon getting paid a pittance to help the world’s poor and needy.

A real team player. A doctor who knew the value of a team and cherished the contribution of everyone. No throwing instruments around theatres and chucking tantrums. He possessed a poise that was exemplary and instilled a quiet confidence in all who worked with him.

He brought his mug to his lips and Harriet admired his long, beautiful fingers. She deliberately didn’t think of what they’d just done and where they’d just been and how they could stroke against her skin and reduce her to a whimpering mass of need. She thought instead about how many lives they’d saved. How efficient they were with a scalpel. How deftly they accepted an instrument without needing to look. How neatly they could suture to keep scarring to a minimum.

Her gaze travelled up to his face and lingered there for a while. His grey eyes were clear and bright, like a still tranquil pond, and his fine sandy hair framed a face that could almost be described as beautiful.

He looked…European. Tall with finely chiselled features, fabulous cheekbones and a regal nose. His body was lean, fine-boned, and had she not known him at all, his French heritage would not have surprised her. Yes, he was an Australian through and through, but there was just something so French about him also…

He laughed at something Helmut had said and Harriet blinked, realising she was staring. She tuned back into the conversation and immediately picked up the undercurrent of excitement as they all contemplated their last day of the mission. Tomorrow morning the organisation would fly them to London and then on to their different corners of the world for a month’s R and R before bringing them together again in another unfortunate part of the planet.

They were doing their things-I-have-missed-most-about-home routine. Yes, they all loved their jobs sometimes with an almost fanatical zeal, but two months away from all you knew and loved, flung into the pressure cooker of a crumbling foreign nation, it was only natural to miss certain things. It was a game they always played on the last day of a mission. There was only one rule—it had to be something different every time.

‘A BBQ and my grandfather’s escargots,’ said Gill.

Hmm, thought Harriet. Now, that she could relate to. Henri cooked the best snails. They were addictive.

‘The zoo. And frozen cobwebs,’ said Helmut.

Well, living in Sydney, she didn’t see too many frozen anything but she understood the sentiment. In this place it didn’t even get cool overnight. Just the same oppressive heat. No wonder the locals were so crazy. If she had to live here permanently, she’d want to kill somebody, too.

‘Ice-skating and vodka. The proper stuff,’ said Katya. Everyone laughed, no doubt remembering the time they’d all got merry together at an airport stopover a few years back on Katya’s vodka when their plane had been delayed.

‘The Mersey and British Rail,’ said Joan, and laughed at her own joke.

‘Well, I’m going to say shopping in the high street and the smell of peat fires,’ said Siobhan in her lilting Irish accent.

Harriet and Gill had stayed a few days at Siobhan’s family’s farm deep in the Irish countryside five years ago, and she’d loved the earthy smell of burning peat as well. Harriet smiled fondly at the memory and it took her a few seconds to register that they were waiting for her contribution.

She glanced at Gill and quickly looked away as she met his steady grey gaze. What she missed most about home was the beachfront apartment she and Gill lived in at Bondi, and how they would make love all night and sleep till noon, then stroll along past all the cafés and eat pasta at their favourite Italian one. She missed that a lot.

‘Mangoes.’

She smiled as an unbidden memory of Gill feeding her mango in bed rose in her mind. He had trailed the seed over her breasts and then thoroughly removed the sweet, heavenly juices with his tongue. She blinked. ‘And…um…sun-baking.’

Gill had the same mango image in his mind and felt his mouth water. He looked at her when she mentioned sun-baking and remembered how she liked to go nude on the beach so her olive skin wasn’t marred by white strap marks.

He smiled to himself. Once a hippy, always a hippy. Harriet had been brought up by alternative lifestyle parents who still lived a communal existence in the hinterland of the mid New South Wales coast. They had instilled in her a wonderful sense of justice and fairness and doing unto others, and he knew they had made her the wonderful humanitarian she was today.

And because of this lifestyle he didn’t think he’d met anyone quite as at ease with their body or nudity as Harry. At home she barely wore clothes and every opportunity she got to disrobe she took gleefully. And, dear God, what a body it was. As far as he was concerned, she could be permanently naked. But 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 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.

He found himself in a perverse kind of way hoping there would be. Not that he wished any of the locals ill, he just knew from the last two months that the human carnage was showing no signs of abating, the civil war gathering momentum if anything, and that it was never long between skirmishes. If it was going to happen, just bring it on, he thought. He needed to keep busy today so he didn’t have to think about Harriet and the divorce and how badly his life was going to suck without her.

CHAPTER FOUR

1000 HOURS

ON THEIR way to the morning triage meeting, Katya caught up with Harriet.

‘One more sleep, Harry,’ she said.

Harriet laughed. Katya was the youngest of the three nurses that formed their surgical team and had been with MedSurg Aid Abroad for four years. Harriet loved to listen to her talk. Her grasp of the English language was superb and her accent very easy on the ear, adding a husky quality to what she was saying.

She especially liked it when Katya, the most volatile of the group, lost her cool, which happened from time to time 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 always said that Russian swear words were much more poetic than English. And listening to her in full flight, Harriet had to admit she was right. It was as if Katya was reciting Tolstoy, the frown on her pretty animated face a reminder that her words weren’t really high literature at all.

‘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. 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 half suspected that they would have hooked up in her absence. The blonde, petite Russian nurse was very pretty in a perky kind of a way and there had been a time when Katya had first joined their team that she’d had a huge crush on Gill.

Not that Harriet had ever felt threatened by it. If anything, it had been amusing and Katya had been far too young and innocent to take seriously. Gill and the group had been patient and allowed her to get over her hero-worship without an embarrassing confrontation.

But there didn’t seem to even be a whiff of anything having happened. No awkwardness between them, 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 filed into the triage meeting if they would divorce via the internet as well. Would they split up their assets, argue about which books, which CDs belonged to whom?

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. Harriet 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 MSAA to send two full teams to any mission, and unfortunately 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, and Harriet admired her withering dismissal.

She 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 next time. 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 an MSAA mission.

Gill also remembered. 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 fit 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 had been banished in an instant. She had been gorgeous and had fitted in instantly, and they had both known without a single word being spoken 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. Better get used to that, he thought. Ex-wife. Ex-wife.

The daily triage meeting was held 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 which patient got 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. The liver lac has priority. His drain losses haven’t slowed and I’d like to get him out of here first,’ said Ben.

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 medical or surgical intervention were choppered to the MSAA facility. The objective of the surgical teams was 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 confirmed they can evac everyone,’ said Ben.

‘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 this field of medicine. 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 workload 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 she 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, American 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 while he was working 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 a local interpreter 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. Gill had operated on the little boy. The child had lost so much blood, and even as he had been operating to tie off the bleeders and stabilise his condition, he 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. Gill wanted to punch the table at the unfairness of it all. What had a child of eight done to deserve that?

He looked at Harriet and could see she was affected by the news as well. He suddenly envied her 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. For the first time he wondered how long he could do it for. There was always going to be another war. Could he do this for ever? He’d always thought he would but…

She gave him a sympathetic smile and he shook himself out of his reverie. Their divorce conversation had obviously got to him. He just needed a break. Two months of this kind of stuff was tough mentally. But this was what he did. This was who he was.

CHAPTER FIVE

1100 HOURS

‘GILL, can you review your abdo trauma from last night? He’s febrile and tachycardic. His drain losses are increasing as well.’

Damn it! He must have missed something. He’d spent two hours picking shrapnel out of the rebel soldier’s intestines and was confident that they’d removed it all. But as thorough as he’d been, Gill knew that the chances of missing a little hole somewhere, caused by the trajectory of the shrapnel, was always a possibility.

‘I’ll be right there,’ he said, smiling at the HDU nurse.

Harriet rolled her eyes as Megan 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 night in London dressed to impress and later how magnificent he was undressed, but equally impressive was how he filled out a set of scrubs.

It was like the minute he donned them he became Dr Guillaume Remy, surgeon. The sense of authority that exuded from him was powerful, virile—almost sexual. The blue theatre cap tied and anchored at the back of his neck just below 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. Harriet felt a moment of panic as she stored away the memory. One more day of memories and that was it.

Gill took one look at his patient and knew he was going to have to reopen him. The man was burning up and muttered unintelligibly, the words both foreign and muffled by the face mask. Megan gave Gill the hand-held ultrasound and he could feel the rigidity of the man’s abdomen as the transducer glided through the gel. There was a significant amount of free fluid visible.

‘I’ll mobilise the team,’ he said to Megan.

Gill strode down the corridors, figuring everyone would have adjourned back to the dining area for another cup of artificial stimulant.

Only Harriet and Siobhan were there. ‘Let’s go,’ he said. ‘We have to reopen the soldier.’

The soldier. Harriet shook her head as she stood. 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 the organisation’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.

‘I’ll alert the others,’ said Harriet.

‘Where’s Theire?’ he asked.

‘Making some more calls,’ replied Siobhan as they moved past him to go and set up the theatre.

‘I’ll get her to talk to the patient. I’ll also see Ben about evac-ing him out with the liver. See you there in five,’ Gill said.

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 when there were mass casualties arriving. Then a hand-operated siren was used by Dr Kelly Prentice, the on-site medical director, who took the call from comms. 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.

MedSurg had set up in an old whitewashed convent that harked back a couple of hundred years to colonial times. Kelly used this building for the medical side of the mission and across the dirt a long, rickety concrete path connected it to the old orphanage building, which was where the surgical side was housed. Gill’s territory.

The area had once been a thriving community—now it was just a few buildings in the middle of nowhere on the periphery of a war zone. The buildings had been used until the recent civil unrest as a medical facility. The nearest towns were at least one hundred kilometres in any direction, the nearest hospital at least two hundred and fifty kilometres away.

The old orphanage now used as the surgical block was a double-storey building with wide, open verandahs that wrapped around the entire building to take advantage of any breeze that might be wafting by. Two downstairs rooms had been converted to operating theatres with basic tables, anaesthetic machines, monitors and overhead lights, and smaller side rooms each housed ancient instrument sterilisers and served as storage rooms.

Another of the bigger rooms was set up as the HDU/recovery area and there were various smaller rooms used for their triage meetings and as a communal kitchen and lounge area.

Upstairs were the living quarters, which, although were small, had French-style doors that opened onto the verandahs. Not that it was actually that safe to be sitting out there a lot of the time, but the tantalising luxury was there if anyone had the nerve.

By the time the rest of the team arrived, Harriet and Siobhan had everything under control. Siobhan was scrubbing up when Gill strode into the theatre. ‘Everything good to go?’ he asked a masked Harriet.

Gill forgot the urgency for a fleeting moment. Harriet in her mask, her features completely hidden from his gaze, was mystically beautiful. The deep brown depths of her eyes were emphasised tenfold, and he felt like he was falling into a warmed vat of deep rich chocolate and drowning.

Her luxurious hair was also hidden within the confines of the most unglamorous headwear on the planet, but he still couldn’t disguise his fascination with it. He knew that beneath the almost see-through blue fabric it was up in a ponytail and, despite her complaints about hat hair when she removed it between cases, it always made him forget to breathe.

‘Yup.’ Harriet nodded briskly and busied herself with opening the sterile packs, ignoring the brooding presence of her husband. She daren’t look at him. She could feel the intensity of his gaze like he had X-ray vision. What was he thinking? Was he reconsidering his position? Or just trying to visualise her naked? Suddenly the mask felt claustrophobic and she was grateful when he left.

Siobhan entered a few moments later, her arms held slightly aloft and bent at the elbow, water dripping from them occasionally. She picked up the sterile towel that sat folded on top of the sterile gown that Harriet had opened for her and placed on a stainless-steel trolley.

Siobhan dried her hands and arms thoroughly on the cloth and then picked up the gown, climbing into it with an efficient sterile technique and turning so Harriet could tie it at the neck. Next she moved to the size-six gloves Harriet had also opened and in a couple of smooth movements had gloved up. Siobhan set about sorting out the tray of instruments on her sterile draped table and she and Harriet conducted a count of the swabs, towels and instruments most likely to be used during the procedure. Harriet scribbled the numbers on the count sheet so they knew how many extra bits and pieces had to be kept track of.

Then Gill entered the room in the same fashion as Siobhan and after he’d dried his hands he gowned, and Harriet had to get up close to tie his gown for him. She lingered for a moment too long and could tell by the stiffness of his shoulders that he was more than aware of it. He smelt so good and it was hard to believe she would never see him operate again after today.

The patient came in then, accompanied by Katya and Joan, and it was all hands on deck. Joan and Helmut anaesthetised him and Katya left to scrub in as well. Harriet was the circulating nurse—euphemism for gopher. Anything any of the sterile people needed, she fetched. The three nurses took it in turns, rotating from scrubbing to circulating, and the system worked well.

Finally everything was ready. The suction was working, the diathermy was in order and an earthing plate had been stuck to the patient’s thigh. The patient was draped and the surgical area prepped with Betadine. Joan signalled she was happy with their patient’s condition and for Gill to commence.

As he removed the staples he had placed less than twelve hours ago, Harriet placed an Ella Fitzgerald CD in the portable player and switched it to background. It was Gill’s favourite, his grandfather’s influence, and he loved to listen to her dulcet tones as he operated. She knew it helped him relax into the job at hand and, well, she’d suffered worse surgeons’ tastes in her many years as an operating nurse.

One particular surgeon she had worked for had insisted on listening to arcane, obscure Gregorian chants, and by the time the theatre list had ended, she’d always been at screaming point.

Gill quickly opened the abdominal wound. ‘Retractor,’ he said, and Siobhan placed it in his hand. He inserted the heavy metal contraption into the wound and turned the cogs, watching as it slowly cranked open, taking the skin and layers of adipose tissue with it, pushing them back to either side to give a clear view of the abdominal cavity.

‘OK, folks,’ he said, ‘let’s find us a hole.’

Gill knew this could take five minutes or two hours. Finding a little tear was sometimes like trying to find a needle in a haystack. He decided to try a short-cut first.

‘Saline.’

Gill tipped the sterile bowl full of warmed sterile saline gently into the abdominal cavity, submerging the bowel, and waited. After a minute a small bubble squirmed to the surface and popped. As he’d suspected, he’d missed something. Now he just had to find it! And hope that one bubble meant only one hole!

It was probably on a posterior side somewhere. He’d have to start from the top and work his way down. Siobhan used a sucker to remove the fluid and Gill began the painstaking process of checking every centimetre of the intestine. It felt warm in his gloved hands and sort of rippled. It was all gooey and squishy, like a bowl of warm jelly, but looked and felt like a string of sausages.

He heard Harriet humming to ‘Cry me a River’ and glanced up. She always did that. Even scrubbed, she would hum along to Ella, completely unaware she was doing it. He’d missed that this last year, watching Harriet move around a theatre, humming quietly to herself. Or standing next to him, rubbing shoulders, passing him instruments as she hummed away. He’d had it back for a blissful two months and she was going to snatch it all away again.

His eyes flicked back to what he was doing. He really needed to concentrate, damn it! He was too aware of her. Today in particular. Today, the day he’d signed pieces of paper that would put them asunder for ever—it was most distracting! He was excruciatingly aware of her every move around the theatre. Opening things, writing things, murmuring something to Helmut and humming along to Ella.

‘Could you adjust the light, Harry?’ he asked. Why, he didn’t know. The light position was just fine. But then she moved closer and reached up so the fabric of her scrubs pulled taut across her chest and he could smell her perfume, and he was very glad he had asked.

She’d moved it a millimetre when he said, ‘That’s fine.’

Harriet glanced at him, a puzzled look in her eyes—she’d barely moved the wretched thing! Only his eyes were visible to her gaze and she raised her eyebrows at him. Their gazes locked and she saw a flicker of desire brighten the grey. She rolled her eyes at him and stepped back.

After another twenty minutes of looking, he finally located a small nick on the posterior wall of the ascending colon not far from the appendix.

‘Bingo,’ he murmured. ‘Suture.’

Gill over sewed the minor tear, and then gave the entire area a good lavage with warmed saline to wash out any debris that might have found its way into the abdominal cavity through the small hole. Fortunately the patient already had triple antibiotics on board to cover infection. Siobhan suctioned the saline out again as Gill reinserted a new drain through the old tract.

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