Hollywood Hills Collection. Lynne Marshall

and the time passed quickly, as it always seemed to when she was immersed in surgery. She was impressed with Damien’s skill but also with the way he related to the theatre staff. He treated everyone with respect and she could tell that the nurses adored him. She had done a large percentage of each of the surgeries under Damien’s watchful eye and he’d been encouraging and complimentary about her skills. As far as she could tell, there was not a vast difference between cosmetic surgery and regular reconstructive surgery, although it was perhaps always important to make sure the stitches were as tiny and neat as possible, and preferably hidden, in all cosmetic procedures. But neat stitching was one thing she had always prided herself on.

      They were finishing off the second blepharoplasty and there was one more surgery still to come when the theatre phone rang. The blepharoplasty was something different for Abi. She was used to repairing eyelids, stitching eye injuries and even, on one occasion, making a new eyelid, but to do an eyelid lift purely to make someone look younger was novel.

      The scrub nurse had answered the phone and Abi could see her looking at Damien. ‘Dr Moore, it’s for you, it’s your daughter’s school. Apparently no one has come to collect her.’

      He had a daughter?

      She didn’t know why she was so surprised. She knew he was a ‘we’ but a daughter was more than she’d expected.

      ‘Can you finish up for me, Dr Thompson?’ Damien asked as he tied off the last stitch. Abi glanced at the clock on the theatre wall. It was already after four in the afternoon and she wondered what he was planning on doing. ‘She needs ointment applied to her eyelids before they are bandaged,’ he continued.

      ‘I can do it,’ the theatre nurse offered. Abi wasn’t sure if she was offering because she saw Abi’s vague expression and took pity on her or whether she was trying to get into Damien’s good graces, but Abi wasn’t about to let her take over. She could do this.

      ‘I’ve got it,’ she said.

      She listened in to Damien’s conversation as she applied the ointment. He could have taken the call on another phone but he seemed quite happy to have the conversation in front of the staff.

      ‘This is Dr Moore,’ Damien said, as the scrub nurse held the phone to his ear. He could feel the pressure building in his chest as anger rose in him. What was Brooke up to now? She was supposed to be collecting Summer from school. Had she forgotten again? What was the point of making arrangements with her if she was so unreliable? He worked hard to accommodate his ex-wife, he wanted to make sure that their daughter got to spend time with both of them, but sometimes Brooke made it impossible.

      ‘Summer hasn’t been collected,’ the woman on the end of the phone told him. ‘She has been sent to after-school care and I need to notify you. I need to make sure she is picked up by six o’clock.’

      ‘I’ve been in surgery all day, I’m still in surgery and I won’t be finished by then.’ Damien was aware that all the theatre staff could hear his conversation quite clearly but it was too late for secrets now. Abi was busy bandaging their patient’s eyes but he could sense by her posture that she was listening just as intently as all the others, but he couldn’t worry about them. Summer was his priority, now and always. ‘Have you contacted her mother? She was supposed to collect her.’

      ‘Of course, but she is in New York.’

      ‘What? She’s where?’ God, that woman was unbelievable. What the hell was she doing in New York?

      ‘She told me she contacted you.’

      ‘What? No, she hasn’t,’ he said, but he knew what she would have done. She would have left a message on his cellphone. No matter how many times he told her he didn’t check his cell if he was in Theatre, she never listened. Brooke always danced to her own tune; other people’s lives were of no consequence to her, she didn’t make allowances or exceptions for any of them, not even her own daughter. Once again, Damien would have to pick up the pieces left by Brooke’s selfishness. ‘Can you give me five minutes?’ he asked the woman on the phone. ‘I’ll make some arrangements and call you back.’

      He nodded to the scrub nurse to hang up the phone and let out another expletive.

      ‘What’s going on?’ the theatre nurse asked.

      ‘Summer hasn’t been collected from school,’ he replied. He had another couple of hours left in Theatre and just five minutes to work out a solution. He wouldn’t be finished before six so he wouldn’t be finished in time to collect Summer.

      His eyes roamed the room as he tried to figure out what to do. Abi taped the last bandage in place and looked up just as his gaze settled on her. She might just be the answer to his problem.

      ‘Abi, do you think you could do me a favour?’ he asked.

      Damien looked worried, stressed, and Abi thought it was probably best that he didn’t operate while in this state. ‘Sure,’ she replied without hesitation, expecting he was going to ask her to start his final surgery, but his question when he asked it was completely unexpected.

      ‘Would you collect Summer for me?’

      ‘What?’ Was he crazy? Surely he was kidding. ‘I’ve never met your daughter,’ she retorted, but even in her flustered state she realised there was something he hadn’t considered. ‘I doubt the school would send her home with a complete stranger. Why don’t you go and I’ll start the last case?’

      ‘The last case is a breast lift.’

      Abi knew that, she was supposed to assist for that surgery too.

      ‘How many of those have you done?’ he asked, and judging by his tone she knew he already knew the answer.

      Exactly none. She stared at Damien and her silence was all the answer he needed.

      ‘That’s what I thought. I need to finish off here. Would you please collect her?’

      ‘Why doesn’t Summer’s mother pick her up?’

      ‘That’s a good question,’ he replied with a sigh. ‘She was supposed to but apparently she is on her way to New York.’

      Apparently? ‘New York? Didn’t you know?’ Had it just slipped his mind that his wife was away and he was supposed to be picking up his daughter? Was it something he forgot on a regular basis and now he was trying to make it her problem?

      Abi didn’t think so. It didn’t seem to fit with his character and he seemed to be genuinely upset and to be struggling for solutions. She believed this had come out of the blue for him too.

      Damien shook his head. ‘Brooke told the school that she told me I would have to make arrangements but I haven’t heard from her. This is the third time she has done this.’

      ‘What did you do the other times?’ she asked, as the anaesthetist began to reverse the anaesthetic.

      ‘Once I collected her and another time she went home with a friend. But school finished forty-five minutes ago so those mothers would have left, and I don’t have any of their numbers. Please, Abi, I wouldn’t ask you if I had any other options. My daughter is five years old. You remember being five, don’t you? I don’t want her to feel abandoned.’

      That word cut Abi to the core. Abandoned was the one word to use if he wanted her sympathy and cooperation. But he couldn’t have known that. That would be impossible. It had just been a comment. But of course she remembered being five.

      She also remembered having no one to pick her up. Day after day she would get herself home from school. On a good day it had been because her mother had been working, but on a bad day her mother would be passed out on the sofa, hungover or drunk.

      Abi had had no one to rely on when she’d been five or seven or nine. She’d had no one until she’d joined the army at seventeen and had gone to medical school. She’d had no one really until she’d met Mark and even then she’d still ended up alone. There had never been anyone she could rely on. She knew