A Very Special Marriage. Jennifer Taylor

do. She ran back upstairs to the hospital bay and quickly scrubbed up then slid on a gown and a fresh pair of gloves. She’d been a theatre nurse for a number of years and it was reassuring to slip back into the familiar routine. She laid out the instrument trolley then unpacked sterile drapes to cover the patient during the operation. By that time Liam had arrived.

      ‘I need to scrub up,’ he told her tersely, shooting an anxious look at the man lying on the stainless-steel kitchen trolley. ‘We’re going to have to be quick, though, because he’s losing a lot of blood.’

      ‘I’ll take him through while you get ready,’ Sophie assured him. ‘Who’s going to do the anaesthetic, though?’

      ‘Me.’ Liam’s tone was grim. ‘It’s times like this when you could do with an extra pair of hands, isn’t it?’

      ‘We’ll manage.’ She smiled at him and saw his grey eyes darken before he abruptly turned away.

      ‘I’ll be as quick as I can,’ he said gruffly.

      Sophie wheeled the patient into Theatre, trying to decide exactly what she’d glimpsed in Liam’s eyes just now. She sighed when it struck her how pointless it was to worry about it. Once her replacement arrived she would be leaving the ship and she doubted if she and Liam would ever meet again. The thought gave her very little pleasure, oddly enough.

      Liam must have got ready in record time because barely a minute had elapsed before he elbowed the door open. He had Charlie Henshaw with him and Sophie raised her brows when she saw that the steward was gowned and gloved as well.

      ‘Charlie has offered to help,’ Liam explained, going straight to the trolley. He nodded to Charlie. ‘Let’s get him on the table.’

      Sophie didn’t question his decision as she hurriedly draped the patient. If Liam thought that Charlie would be of use then that was fine by her. He was preparing the anaesthetic now—checking the settings on the machines then attaching the tubes which would provide sufficient drugs to keep the patient unconscious during the operation. It was obvious that he knew what he was doing, too.

      ‘Looks as though you’ve done that a time or two,’ she observed lightly, swabbing the man’s chest. Blood was oozing out each time his heart beat so she checked the bag of fluid to see if it needed replacing.

      ‘More times than I care to count. I had to be anaesthetist, surgeon, physician and general dogsbody in my last job. There certainly wasn’t any point standing on your professional dignity when there was just Julia and me to deal with every patient who turned up at the clinic.’

      ‘It must have been tough,’ Sophie said quietly, because hearing him speak about the difficulties he and Julia had encountered made her heart ache. Once upon a time she would have been the one to share such experiences with him.

      She shrugged off the thought as Liam instructed Charlie to keep an eye on the monitor that registered the patient’s blood pressure and heart rate, and to tell him immediately if there was any change. She and Liam had had their chance at happiness and it hadn’t worked. What had she told him earlier, that it was a case of once bitten and twice shy? Well, that applied doubly in this instance. She would never make the mistake of falling for her ex-husband again!

      The operation progressed remarkably smoothly, given all the problems they faced. Sophie had to admit that she was impressed by Liam’s expertise. He handled the delicate operation of stitching up the hole in the patient’s right ventricle with a skill and panache that she’d rarely witnessed during her time in Theatre. By the time it came round to closing the patient’s chest, she was confident about the outcome.

      ‘You did a great job,’ she said sincerely as Liam administered the drugs which would reverse the anaesthetic. The patient was now ensconced on a proper hospital trolley and would shortly be moved to the sick-bay.

      ‘Thanks, but I couldn’t have managed without your help, or Charlie’s for that matter.’ Liam smiled as he stripped off his mask. ‘You two make a great team!’

      ‘All part of the service, Doc,’ Charlie observed cheerfully then chuckled. ‘Wait till I tell my missus that I assisted at an operation. She’s mad keen on all those hospital dramas on the telly and she’ll be really impressed!’

      ‘And so she should be.’ Liam clapped the steward on the shoulder. ‘Remind me to buy you a drink as a thank you.’

      ‘I’ll hold you to that, Doc.’ Charlie suddenly grimaced. ‘And now I’d better get that trolley back to the kitchen. The chef is going to be less than impressed when he finds out what it’s been used for.’

      ‘If you have any problems, just give me a call and I’ll sort it out,’ Liam told him. He turned to Sophie after the steward left. ‘Rather a baptism of fire, wouldn’t you say?’

      ‘I would. A bit more exciting than handing out tablets for sea-sickness.’

      ‘Just a bit!’ Liam chuckled, a throaty sound which made the tiny hairs on her arms stand to attention. ‘I’d forgotten about your dry sense of humour, Sophie. You always did make me laugh.’

      ‘Not always,’ she said, bending to pick up the bag of rubbish because she didn’t want him to see how much that comment had stung. In the weeks leading up to their divorce they’d had very little to laugh about and the memory still had the power to hurt.

      ‘No. We had bad times, too, didn’t we? Far too many of them at the end. But it wasn’t like that in the beginning, was it? We seemed to spend most of our time when we were together having fun.’

      ‘Did we? I really don’t remember.’

      She quickly sealed the sack and elbowed her way out of the door. She wasn’t sure what the procedure was for disposing of surgical waste so she turned round to ask Liam and felt her heart ache when she saw the sadness on his face. Was he thinking about how much joy they’d found in one another’s company? She might have claimed not to remember how wonderful it had been, but it had been a lie.

      She was filled with a sudden and overwhelming sense of loss. Liam had been her whole world at one time and she’d been his. How had they allowed themselves to lose all that they’d had?