Picking up the Pieces. Caroline Anderson

      ‘I know what you want,’ she muttered, reaching for the suture.

      He said something under his breath. It could have been ‘You and me both,’ but she wasn’t sure. She wasn’t about to ask him to repeat it, anyway. She was ready with the suture but his admonishment had wounded her and she bit her lip.

      She wouldn’t be much use either to him or to the patient if she couldn’t keep her mind on the job!

      It seemed to take forever, but finally he was satisfied that the circulation and nerve supply was restored as well as possible. At last the fixator was screwed home, and the patient wheeled out to recovery.

      As he moved away to talk to the anaesthetist about the next case, she checked her instruments, wheeled the trolley out and stripped off her gloves.

      Her hands were shaking, but whether from the contact with his body or the reaction to his anger she didn’t know. It was going to be a long old night.

      It was, every minute of it as long as she could have imagined, and fraught with difficult cases. As Nick said, it was the anaesthetist who had the hardest job, because several of their patients had had a skinful and their systems were already severely depressed, but she would have swapped with the anaesthetist in a second. Anything rather than stand hip to hip with a man whose temper had scalded her.

      Not that she hadn’t deserved it; although her lapse hadn’t been that major, it had thrown his concentration. Not hers, though. Hers had already been thrown, or she wouldn’t have done anything so stupid. Even so, she had been unprepared for the anger in his eyes — not to mention the contempt. And they had been working so well together until then …

      One man was seriously touch and go, and when the anaesthetist reported a plummeting blood-pressure Nick shook his head and stood back.

      ‘He doesn’t need me. He’s got comparatively little bleeding from this femur — he needs someone to take a look inside that abdomen.’

      ‘Spleen?’ the anaesthetist murmured, and Nick nodded.

      ‘I reckon. He was the driver, wasn’t he? I think he’s got an encapsulated haemorrhage, and I’m not going to go rooting about in there. Is there anyone available?’

      ‘Ted’s on, isn’t he?’ Cassie said quietly.

      Stephen, the anaesthetist, nodded. ‘I believe so.’

      Mary-Jo, the circulating nurse, left the room at Cassie’s signal, and came back moments later.

      ‘The switchboard are paging him. He’s in the hospital.’

      He appeared within seconds, and within minutes was scrubbed and opening the man up.

      ‘Ouch,’ he muttered. ‘Splenectomy — that’ll get his new year off to a good start!’

      They were running whole blood into him as fast as possible, and as soon as the blood supply to the spleen was clamped his condition started to pick up immediately.

      ‘Lucky.’

      The surgeon peered at Nick over the patient. ‘He may not think so when he comes round. What are you going to do about the femur?’

      Nick frowned. ‘I’ll have to pin it — it’s a nasty spiral. If we could do it with traction I would, but it’ll just slide every time he moves and he’ll be back to square one. I’ll let you finish and see how he is.’

      ‘He seems stable now,’ the anaesthetist told them from the head of the table.

      Ted shrugged. ‘You carry on — I’ve done the tricky stuff. Just warn me if you’re going to hammer anything and shake him about so I don’t stick a suture into his aorta.’

      Nick grinned, his eyes crinkling above the mask. ‘OK. Here we go, then.’

      They worked well together, pausing for each other occasionally, and when they were finished and the man was taken away they left the operating-room and went into the staff lounge in the theatre suite.

      ‘New, aren’t you?’ Ted asked, eyeing Nick over his coffee.

      Nick grinned at Cassie, his anger apparently forgotten. ‘Ah — you could say that. Actually I’m supposed to start officially on Tuesday, but technically my contract runs from the first of January, so I guess I’m on the staff as of about —’ he glanced up at the clock ‘— six hours ago.’

      ‘Is that the time?’ Cassie asked incredulously.

      The ODA popped his head round the door. ‘That’s all, folks. All quiet on the Western front.’

      ‘Well thank the lord,’ Mary-Jo said with a heartfelt sigh, and, kicking off her rubber boots, she curled up in the chair and rubbed her feet.

      Now how does she manage to look elegant doing that? Cassie wondered in amazement. Even more amazing was the sudden realisation that Nick didn’t even seem to have noticed, but was turning to her, just as her mouth opened in an enormous yawn.

      He followed suit, displaying a full set of even, gleaming white teeth, and then chuckled.

      ‘I wonder why yawning’s so infectious?’ she said with a strained little laugh.

      Nick’s mouth lifted in a heart-stopping, crooked grin. ‘Defence mechanism. If you yawn, perhaps your body knows something mine doesn’t, so if I yawn, I’ve covered my bases without having to go to the effort of finding out why.’

      ‘You’re crazy,’ she told him, her voice uncooperatively breathless.

      ‘Mmm. Fancy some breakfast? I’m starved. I didn’t get round to eating last night, and I could eat a horse.’

      Cassie’s stomach rumbled in anticipation, and she clapped a hand over it and giggled. ‘Betrayed! How can I pretend otherwise?’

      His smile was slow and lazy. ‘Your body’s not very good at keeping secrets, is it?’

      She flushed, suddenly aware of him again and wondering what else her body was giving away apart from exhaustion and hunger. Oh, lord, had he known what she was thinking when she handed him the wrong instrument?

      Nick unwound his legs and stood up, holding out a hand to pull her to her feet.

      ‘Come on, then, let’s get out of this fancy dress and go and find some food.’

      They disappeared into their separate shower-rooms, and emerged a few minutes later looking much refreshed. Nick could have done with a shave and Cassie felt her make-up needed a bit of attention, but, considering the night they had had, she felt they looked pretty respectable.

      She was unprepared, however, for Nick’s open appreciation over breakfast in the gloomy canteen.

      She paused, a loaded fork hovering in front of her mouth, and met his eyes.

      ‘Have I got a smut on my nose?’ she joked to break the tension.

      ‘I didn’t realise eating could be so erotic,’ he said softly, and she felt hot colour flood her cheeks.

      She set her fork down again.

      ‘You’re being ridiculous.’

      ‘Am I?’ His gaze was hot, intent, and he took a bite of toast and ran his tongue round his lips to retrieve the crumbs. ‘Really?’

      Cassie’s heart jerked against her ribs, and she looked away, taking refuge in her coffee.

      ‘You’re beautiful.’

      She choked into her cup.

      ‘And you’re nuts,’ she croaked, glaring balefully at him over the remains of her coffee.

      His mouth lifted again, one side tilting slightly higher to lend a touch of piracy to his lean, shadowed cheeks and wickedly twinkling blue eyes. ‘I don’t think so.’

      ‘You look like a pirate,’