Medical Romance November 2016 Books 1-6

Not when she was clutching the lapels of his jacket as if she could tug him into her very soul.

He angled his head, thrusting a little deeper into the heat of her mouth. Maybe they should just forget about the cold park and head back to the warmth of his cottage and the heat they’d find in his bed. There were taxis on practically every corner.

That was what he wanted: to have her. In bed. Skin to skin. With nothing between them but fire and raw need.

Just as he was getting ready to edge back enough to ask her to go with him, the sound of voices broke through the haze of passion.

Not Anna’s voice, but someone else’s. Close enough that he could tell they were man and woman.

Annabelle beat him to the punch, pulling back so suddenly that it left him reeling for a few seconds. She glanced at him and he looked back at her. They both smiled. Young medical students caught necking. It had happened before, when they’d been dating. Only that had been a police officer, who’d not been quite as amused by their antics.

‘Caught again,’ he murmured.

‘So it would seem.’

He looked over to see who was walking past and his smile died, icy fingers walking up his spine. It was indeed a man and a woman, but they were pushing a pram. Bundles and bundles of blankets were piled on top of what had to be a young infant. And their faces.

God. They were happy. Incredibly happy.

His gaze went back to Anna’s to find that all colour had drained from her skin, leaving her pasty white. The young man threw them a smile and a quick hello.

Somehow Max managed to croak something back, but the mood was spoiled. He could tell by Anna’s reaction that she’d been thrown back to the tragedy that had been their shared past. At least that was what he took her stricken gaze to mean—the way her hungry eyes followed that pram as it went past and disappeared into the darkness.

His teeth gritted together several times before he had the strength to stand up and say what needed to be said. ‘I think we’ve both had a little too much to drink. Maybe it’s time to call it a night.’

Anna’s one glass of wine and his two weightier beverages did not constitute drunkenness by any stretch of the imagination. Unless you considered being drunk on memories of the past as over-imbibing. It had to be all the reminiscing they’d done in the restaurant and the way her face had softened as she’d looked across the table at him. He’d always had trouble resisting her, and tonight was no exception. After one smile, he’d been putty in her hands. But he’d better somehow figure out how to put a stop to whatever was happening between them before one of them got hurt.

He’d opened his heart to her once before only to have it diced into tiny pieces and handed back to him. Never again. He would do whatever it took to keep that stony organ locked in the vault of his chest.

Far out of reach of her or anyone else.

CHAPTER FIVE

‘I JUST HEARD. There’s a heart. Get to the hospital.’

It took several seconds before a still-groggy Annabelle realised who was on the phone and what he was talking about. Once she did, she leaped to her feet, glancing at the clock on her nightstand to see what time it was. Three a.m.

Once a donor organ was located time was of the essence. It had to be transplanted within hours. ‘I’m on my way.’

Scurrying around as fast as she could, she found clothes and shoved her limbs into them, not worrying about how she looked other than a quick brush of her teeth and putting her hair up into a high ponytail. Then she was out of the door and on her way to Teddy’s. It was pitch black as she pulled her car out onto the roadway, and there were almost no other vehicles out this late. Blinking the remaining sleep from her eyes, she thought about the tasks she needed to do once she arrived.

Max evidently wasn’t at the hospital yet, since he’d said he’d just heard. Which meant they’d tracked him down at home. Wherever that was.

Last night after that disastrous kiss, he’d seen her home in a taxi, before giving her a tight wave as the driver pulled away. What had she been thinking letting him kiss her?

Letting him? More like her yanking him to her as tightly as she could. Once his lips had made contact with hers, he’d have been hard pressed to get away from her. She’d been that desperate to have him keep kissing her on into eternity.

Only that hadn’t happened.

She tightened her grip on the steering wheel. No, that couple with the baby had walked by ruining everything. It hadn’t been their fault, nor could they have known that Max’s face had hardened instantly, reverting back to the mask she remembered from the end of their marriage. Was he remembering how badly he’d wanted what she couldn’t deliver? No, he’d told her he no longer wanted children—maybe he didn’t want to see reminders of what could have been.

And the way he’d looked at her after the young couple had walked away...

As if he couldn’t wait to get away from her. He’d pulled her up from that bench so fast her head had spun. And no mention of when they would see each other again.

They wouldn’t, obviously. Not outside the hospital. Or outside surgical suites. Last night had been a mistake. A remnant of embers long since extinguished. Except for one tiny spark...

Wasn’t that what he’d called it? A spark?

Why had he even called her about the heart? He could have operated on Hope in the middle of the night, and she would have known nothing about it until the next morning. Had he been worried about how upset she would be that he hadn’t told her?

Or was it simply the courtesy of a doctor to another member of a patient’s medical team?

That was probably it.

Well, it didn’t do any good to think about it now. This call was what Annabelle had been waiting for during the past two weeks. News that this particular baby might have a chance to live and grow.

She could put aside any discomfort working beside Max might bring. He and Sienna were both top in their field. She halfway wondered if the other doctor would be performing the transplant surgery. But Sienna had turned the case over to Max. Which meant he would be doing it.

Would he let her in the operating room? She wasn’t a surgical nurse, but she had done a rotation in the surgical suite. And she wanted to be there for Hope, even though the baby would have no idea she was there. And wouldn’t care.

She reached the hospital and made her way to the staff car park area. From the looks of the empty spaces, people still hadn’t recovered from the virus. Hopefully Max would be able to find enough healthy bodies to be able to perform the surgery in the middle of the night. Well, by the time things were all prepped, it would probably be closer to six o’clock in the morning. Still early, but not so far out that it would be hard to talk people into coming in to assist.

Hurrying to the main entrance, she was surprised to find Max waiting for her. ‘I thought you’d be in prepping for surgery.’

‘We’re still waiting on the medevac to get here with the heart.’

She walked with him, his long steps eating the distance. ‘Do you know anything about it?’

‘It typed right for Hope. The donor was an infant...the victim of a drunk driver. The family signed off just a few hours ago.’

Signed off. Such an impersonal term for what was a very personal decision. That baby had been someone’s pride and joy. Their life. She’d mourned the foetuses she’d miscarried. But how much more would she ache if she’d held those children in her arms only to have them taken away by a cruel set of circumstances?

Kind of like the devastation her sister had experienced when she’d tried to adopt. But at least that child was still alive somewhere in the world.

A telltale prickle behind her eyelids warned her to move her thoughts to something else. Like the way Max had sounded saying Baby Hope’s name.

Max had always been good at making sure parents knew that he thought of his tiny patients as people, painstakingly remembering even the names of extended family members. It was one of the things she’d truly loved about him. How special he made people feel.

It was what had drawn her to him when they’d first met. He’d acted as if she were the most beautiful girl in the room. Well, Max had certainly been the best-looking guy she’d ever laid eyes on, and when he’d said her name it had made her—

‘Anna? You okay?’

She scrubbed her eyes with her palms. ‘Still fighting the last bits of sleep, but I’ll be fine.’

It was a lie. Annabelle was wide awake, but she was not going to tell him that she’d been standing there remembering the way they’d once been together.

‘Well, you’d better finish waking up. We have a lot of work to do before that heart arrives.’

‘Were you able to assemble a transplant team?’

He nodded, looking sideways at her as they continued down the brightly painted corridor. Annabelle had always loved the way Teddy’s was so cheerful, almost as if it were a wonderful place for kids to laugh and play rather than a hospital that treated some of the most desperately ill children in the area.

‘You’re part of that team.’

Annabelle stopped in her tracks. She’d hoped he would include her in some way, but to put her on the actual team... That strange prickling sensation grew stronger. ‘Are you serious?’

‘I wouldn’t have said it if I weren’t.’

‘Thank you. You don’t know what this means to me.’

‘I think I do.’ He smiled, no hint of awkwardness in his manner, unlike Annabelle, who could barely look at him without remembering what had happened last night. ‘But I didn’t put you on it out of some sense of pity. I need you. You know Hope better than probably anyone else here at the hospital. I want you monitoring her, letting me know of anything out of the ordinary you see as we get her ready. And I want a sense of how she is when the surgery is finished, and she’s coming out of the anaesthetic.’

More beautiful words had never been spoken. Max acted as if it were a given that the baby would survive the surgery and actually wake up on the other side. As if there were no question about it. Done for her sake? Or because he really believed it? ‘You’ve probably studied her case as much as I have.’

‘I’ve studied it, but you’ve lived it, Anna.’

She had lived it. Some of it joyful, like when Hope opened those sweet blue eyes of hers and stared into Annabelle’s. Some of them terrifying...like the day before yesterday when she had gone into respiratory failure. Annabelle had thought for sure those were the last moments of the baby’s life. And now this. The sweet sound of hope...for a precious baby who was fighting so hard to live.

And now she just might get that chance.

‘Thank you. For letting me be a part of it.’

Max started moving again, his steps quicker, more confident. ‘I wouldn’t have it any other way.’

* * *

‘Ready for bypass.’

Max glanced back at the perfusionist seated at the table across from him, its myriad tubing and dials enough to make anyone nervous. But Gary Whitley—an expert in his field, Max had been told—was at the helm, his white goatee hidden beneath the surgical mask. ‘Tell me when.’

Once they put Baby Hope on the bypass machine, the race with time would begin once again. The sooner the donor heart was in place and beating, the better chance the baby had for a good outcome. The risk for post-perfusion syndrome—the dreaded ‘pump head’—grew the longer a patient was on bypass. Most of the time, the symptoms seemed to resolve after a period of weeks or months, but there were some new studies that suggested the attention and memory problems could be long-reaching for some individuals. Hopefully the baby’s young age would preclude that from happening.

‘Let’s start her up.’

Gary adjusted the instrumentation and looked up just as the centrifugal pumps began whirling, sending the blood through the tubes and over into the oxygenator. ‘On bypass.’

Max then nodded at Anna, who noted the time. She would keep an eye on the maximum time allowable and notify the team as they arrived at certain critical markers: one-quarter, the halfway mark and the three quarters mark, although he hoped they didn’t cut it that close.

Using a series of clamps and scalpels, they finished unhooking Hope’s defective heart, and, after checking and double checking the great vessels, they removed the organ from the opening in her chest wall.

‘Ready for donor heart.’ The new organ carefully changed hands until it reached Max. He checked it for damage, despite the fact that it had already gone through rigorous testing. He preferred to inspect everything himself...to know exactly what he was dealing with.

Was that one of the reasons he’d asked Annabelle to be involved in the surgery? Because he knew what to expect when they worked together?

Yes. But it was also because he knew this patient meant so much to her. Leaving her out after all the time, effort, and—knowing Annabelle—love she’d put into Baby Hope seemed a terrible act. Almost as if he were discarding her once she’d served her purpose.

That thought made him wince, but he quickly recovered.

Everything looked good. He measured the new heart for fit on the patient’s left atrium and trimmed a tiny bit of tissue to ensure everything went together as it should. Then he set about the painstaking process of suturing it all back together.

‘One half.’ Annabelle’s voice was calm and measured, giving no hint of what must be going through her mind. Things like, Are we on track? Or, How long until I see those beautiful eyes of hers open?

Max knew those fears all too well. He experienced them on each and every surgery. But for him to do his job, he had to put those thoughts aside and move systematically through the process. The worst thing he could do was waste precious time worrying about each and every possible outcome.

But Max couldn’t help giving her a tiny piece of reassurance. ‘We’re a little ahead of schedule. As soon as I finish these final sutures we can begin warming her up.’

In his peripheral vision, he saw Annabelle’s eyelids close as if she was relieved by the words. Then she squared up her shoulders and continued to watch both him and the clock.

When the last stitch was in place, Max looked at every vessel and each part of the heart, making sure he’d forgotten nothing. Only when he was completely satisfied did he give Gary the okay to start the warming process and begin weaning Hope off the bypass machine. Sometimes the weaning process itself would coax the new heart into beating, the return of blood flow triggering the electrical impulses, which would then start firing. The surgical suite was silent until Annabelle’s voice again counted down the time. ‘Three quarters.’

This time there was the tiniest quaver to her tone. Don’t worry, sweetheart. Just give her a few minutes.

Sweetheart?

He hadn’t used that endearment when thinking about her in ages. And he shouldn’t be thinking it now.

His gaze zeroed in on his patient’s open chest to avoid glancing up at Annabelle, knowing something in his expression might reveal emotions he wasn’t even aware of having.

Two more minutes went by. If the heart didn’t start soon, they would have to shock it with the paddles. Even if it came to that, they could still have a good outcome, but something made him loath to use more aggressive measures.

Just one more minute. Come on. You can do it.

This time he couldn’t resist glancing at Annabelle. Her face was tight and drawn, no colour to be seen, even in her lips. It was as if she were sending her own lifeblood over to the baby so that she could live.

His assessment of his wife’s thoughts was interrupted by a quick blipping sound from a nearby machine. Everyone’s attention rocketed to the heart monitor. Blip-blip.

Looking directly at the new heart, he saw a beautiful sight. The organ contracted so strongly it seemed to want to leap out of its spot.

Within a few more seconds, it had settled into a normal sinus rhythm. Strong. Unfaltering. Unhesitating. The most beautiful sight he’d ever seen.

‘It’s working.’

There were cheers of relief throughout the operating theatre, but one voice was missing. When he looked up to see why, Annabelle’s hand was covering her mouth and tears were streaming down her face. His instinct was to go to her, wrap her in his arms and say everything was going to be okay. But he couldn’t promise her that. Not ever again. It was why they were no longer together, because he couldn’t bring himself to say those words. He’d been at the end of himself by that point and had to let her go in order to save her.

At least that was Max’s reasoning at the time.

Had it been valid?

It didn’t matter now. What was done was done. There was no going back. Not that he wanted to.

So he turned his attention to the patient in front of him, assessing her needs and checking the sutured vessels for any sign of leakage. Everything looked tight and steady. And that beautiful heart was still beating.

Five minutes later, the decision was made to close her up. Max could have passed that work over to someone else. In fact it was customary after a long surgery to let an intern do the final unglamorous job. But Max wanted to do it himself. Needed to follow the path all the way to the end before he would feel right about passing her over to the team of nurses who would watch over her all night long.

‘Let’s finish it.’

Soon the room was alive with different staff members doing their appointed tasks, the atmosphere much different now than it had been twenty minutes ago when that heart had sat in Baby Hope’s chest as lifeless as her old heart was now. They would start the immunosuppressant medication soon, to prevent her body from turning on her new organ and killing it, mistaking it for an invader. She’d be on medication for the rest of her life, which Max hoped would be a long and healthy one.

He set up the drainage tube system and then closed the sternum, using a plating technique that was made up of tiny screws and metal joiners. He carefully tightened each and every screw. Once that was done, muscle was pulled back into place and finally the skin, leaving space for the tubes that would drain off excess fluid. And the ventilator would remain in place for the next day or so, until they were sure everything was still working the way it should.

An hour later, an exhausted but jubilant Max cleared the baby to head to Recovery and then to the critical care ward to be closely observed over the next couple of days. Six hours of surgery had seemed like an eternity, at least emotionally. He was worn out.

When the baby was wheeled away, he congratulated his team, aware of the fact that Annabelle was standing in the corner. She looked as tired as he felt. A cord tightened in his gut as he continued thanking everyone individually.

The last person he went to shake hands with was the perfusionist, who had done his job perfectly, with stellar results. Only when he reached the man, his head was swivelled to the side, looking with interest at...

Annabelle.

He frowned.

Max peeled off his gloves and tossed them in the stack of operating rubbish that sat in a heap a few feet away, watching Annabelle. She was gathering instruments, seemingly unaware of the other man’s gaze.

Gary’s attention finally swung back to him and he smiled, stretching his hand out. ‘Were you waiting for me? Sorry. It was great working with you.’ He nodded in Annabelle’s direction. ‘I was just wondering who the nurse was. She looks vaguely familiar, but I don’t think I’ve seen her in surgery before.’

One of his biceps relaxed, and he accepted the man’s quick handshake.

She wasn’t using her married name any more, but he decided to use a tactful approach and see if the perfusionist understood his meaning. ‘That’s Annabelle Brookes-Ainsley. She works down in the neonatal unit, but was interested in this particular case.’

‘Because...’ The drawn-out word said Gary hadn’t connected the last names yet.

‘Because she’s been working with this patient. And it’s my first surgery here at the hospital. It was a chance to see me in action.’ He connected the two phrases, even though one had nothing to do with the other. He certainly didn’t want to spell out that Annabelle was his wife. He was pretty sure she wouldn’t appreciate that, but the guy had put him in a tough spot.

‘To see you in...’ Gary’s eyes widened and a hint of red crept up his neck. ‘Of course. I should have realised.’

‘Not a problem. I’ll let you get back to what you were doing, but I wanted to come over and say how much I appreciate the smooth handling of this surgery.’

‘I—well, I appreciate it.’

With a ghost of a smile, Max swung away from the man and spoke briefly with the intern who’d been observing, answering a couple of questions he had. He kept that easy smile, but his insides were churning to get to Annabelle before she disappeared. And she would, if he knew her. She would want to go see how Baby Hope was doing.

The heart transplant marked the third patient ‘crisis’ that she’d assisted him with, and in each instance she’d done her job with precision and without hesitation. Max found it amazing that two people who’d been through what they had could still pull together and work for the good of someone else.

No rancour. No snide remarks, just an uncanny ability to know what the other was thinking, probably ingrained from years of living together. Whatever it was, they’d worked well together.

Except it evidently didn’t carry over to their ‘off times’ because Max had no idea what she was thinking now. He answered one final question and then glanced at where Annabelle had been a second ago. Except, just as he’d suspected, she wasn’t there. She’d already left the room. Without a single word.