The Surgeon's Perfect Match

by Alison Roberts

  Holly was listening but her frown of concentration suggested she was still perplexed.

  ‘I went into medicine and paediatrics in particular because I see a lot of that kind of “Flint philosophy” in kids. They can face the most appalling medical conditions or a limited life span and still get on with life and give and receive so much happiness. And then you have perfectly healthy people out there who can always find something to moan about. They could learn a hell of a lot from those kids. I find it inspiring every day.’

  Holly was nodding now. Was she thinking about Michaela, perhaps? Or Daniel or Leo or any one of the dozens of children’s lives they had been involved with?

  ‘I married Elise when I was still in med school,’ Ryan continued quietly. ‘More than ten years ago. She got diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma a year later and I think she gave up on the day she got diagnosed. There’s a seventy-five per cent chance of long-term survival with non-Hodgkin’s patients now, but Elise refused to try a second round of chemo. She gave up trying to live and became a permanent invalid. She only went through the bone-marrow transplant because I was so determined, but it wasn’t enough. She died six months later.’

  Holly’s soft words broke the silence that fell. ‘I’m so sorry, Ryan.’

  ‘It happened,’ Ryan said evenly. ‘It was a long time ago and it was part of what life dished out. Maybe that’s what drew me to working with kids in the first place. They have so much of that Flint philosophy. So do you, Holly. In spades.’

  This was great. He was comparing her to his dog instead of his wife but at least Holly was looking thoughtful rather than offended.

  ‘I admire your courage,’ he added. ‘And the way you don’t let your illness hold you back from what you give to your patients and their families. You touch a lot of lives, Holly. You help so many people. I’d like to be able to look back on my life and know that I did something special to help you.’

  He could see the instant the tears welled up in Holly’s eyes because he held her gaze so intently. She blinked and tiny droplets caught in the dark tangle of her lashes. Then a single tear rolled down the side of her nose.

  ‘So…’ Holly cleared her throat but her words were still choked. ‘Your offer is still open, then?’

  ‘Of course it is.’ Ryan couldn’t stop himself reaching out and gently running his thumb down the side of her nose to collect that tear.

  ‘In that case…’ Holly’s gaze slid sideways for a long moment, seemingly focussed on the computer screen. Then it came back to catch and hold Ryan’s.

  He could see the kind of determination he’d come to associate with Holly Williams in that gaze. Fear and hope in equal quantities that somehow came together to create that amazing courage she possessed.

  She cleared her throat again. ‘I’d like to accept your offer, please, Ryan. As long as we are as compatible as you think.’

  ‘We’re compatible, Holly. You’ll be convinced as soon as Doug shows you what a perfect match we are.’ Ryan couldn’t stop smiling. He was about to put himself through a probably painful and unpleasant procedure and he’d never felt so ridiculously pleased about anything. And Holly was smiling back at him.

  ‘Perfect match, huh?’

  ‘Perfect,’ Ryan said with assurance. ‘You just wait and see.’

  CHAPTER FOUR

  RENAL physician Doug Smiley was more than living up to his name.

  He was beaming, in fact, as he looked at the two people sitting opposite his desk.

  ‘This is great! Fabulous news! You’ve made my day so you must be absolutely thrilled, Holly.’

  Holly nodded but an anxious frown creased her brow. ‘I just hope it’s going to work, Doug—for Ryan’s sake as much as mine. I’d hate him to go through with all this for nothing.’

  Doug waved a hand dismissively. ‘No reason to think negatively. You two couldn’t be a better match as far as the preliminary testing went. We’ll have to run a repeat series to recheck antibodies and cross-matching, of course. And you’ll need a few extras this time, Ryan, like hepatitis and AIDS screening.’

  Ryan didn’t seem to share Holly’s embarrassment at any oblique reference to his sex life. He merely nodded.

  ‘I’m confident they’ll all come back with no nasty surprises.’

  ‘So am I.’ Doug nodded agreement, smiling at Holly again. Pushing sixty now, Holly’s renal physician was clearly very fond of his patient. ‘And the transplant team will want a fairly in-depth look at your family history for things like cancer, diabetes, hypertension and so on.’

  ‘That might be a bit trickier,’ Ryan said. ‘I’m an only child and my parents both died in their fifties in a bus crash when they were touring Europe on a second honeymoon.’

  ‘Grandparents?’

  ‘All got to their eighties in pretty good health. And I’ve still got my paternal grandfather around. Pop’s ninety-six and he can still beat me at chess.’

  ‘Fabulous!’

  Holly was silent as the two men conversed but her head was spinning. She had just learned more about Ryan in thirty seconds than she had ever known. Somehow it didn’t surprise her that he would take the time to play what could be a lengthy game with an ancient relative but she was surprised to learn he was an orphan and that he played chess at all.

  She joined in the chuckle when Doug made a comment about it being nice to have a kidney that was coming from a good home, but as she left the office with Ryan a few minutes later Holly was starting to wonder how much more she was going to learn about Ryan before all this was over.

  Possibly a lot more than she’d bargained for.

  ‘Let’s duck into the treatment room in the ward,’ Ryan suggested. ‘We can take each other’s bloods off and get a head start on those tests. That way the results will all be there before we meet the transplant team in the next day or two.’

  There was nothing unusual in Ryan taking a blood sample from Holly. He had often drawn blood for her routine monthly antibodies check and anything else Doug might have ordered simply to save her the trouble of finding a venipuncturist during their already overly busy days.

  Somehow, it felt different this time. Holly sat on the edge of the bed in the treatment room and pushed her sleeve up, and was suddenly embarrassed by the lumpy scar of the old fistula. Ryan tightened the tourniquet around her upper arm and Holly didn’t need to be told to open and close her fist a few times.

  Maybe it felt different today because the tests were for such a different purpose. Or maybe it was because she was suddenly connected to Ryan in a far more personal way. It was all happening so quickly it was no wonder she hadn’t quite got her head around it all yet.

  Whatever was causing it, Holly was acutely aware of Ryan’s touch. It was as gentle as it always was as he felt for a vein and swabbed her skin but she could feel it much more intensely. Something strange had been sensitised and it was disturbing.

  Even more disturbing was having to return the favour for him. She saw him in theatre scrubs several times a week, so why did rolling up the sleeve of his dress shirt make it seem like more of his skin was exposed than she had ever seen before? And why hadn’t she ever noticed that the tawny hair on his tanned skin was an exact match for the streaks in the hair on his head?

  ‘Veins like drainpipes,’ she quipped, in an effort to distract herself, as she clicked the tourniquet closed. ‘Can’t miss, can I?’

  ‘Hope not.’ Ryan smiled. ‘Unless you’re after revenge for the number of times I’ve stuck a needle into you.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’ Holly bounced a vein lightly with her fingertips and then reached for an alcohol wipe. Its cool dampness was welcome. How weird was it to be touching Ryan like this? No wonder she was getting this odd tingle that appeared to connect her fingertips to her spine.

  She held the needle in his vein as steady as possible as she pushed the rubber ends of the vacuum tubes onto the connecting end of the needle. Blood pulsed into tube after tube.

&nb
sp; ‘You might need a cup of tea and a sandwich after this.’

  ‘Doubt it. I lose far more every time I donate blood.’

  Another surprise. ‘Are you a regular blood donor, then?’

  ‘I’ve always felt obliged to, what with having one of the rarer groups. They’re always short and patients can run into real trouble if they can’t get a match. Knowing how much can get used with cardiac patients started me off, I guess.’

  ‘Maybe you’ve got a thing about giving bits of yourself away.’ Holly pulled the needle free quickly and pressed a swab to the puncture site. ‘You’re a generous man, Ryan.’

  He grunted in an unimpressed fashion, taking over putting pressure on the swab.

  ‘And you play chess.’

  ‘Is that so strange?’

  Holly busied herself tipping the glass tubes to mix the blood. ‘It just feels weird, I guess. You’re going to give me a kidney and I didn’t even know that you play chess.’

  ‘Would you prefer a kidney from someone who played Scrabble?’

  Holly laughed. ‘It’s not something I’d even be thinking about if it was an anonymous donor.’

  ‘Wouldn’t you?’ Ryan looked curious. ‘If it was me, I think I’d end up wondering rather a lot about where it had come from. What kind of person the previous owner had been.’

  Holly thought about the request she’d seen on the organ matching website, that the recipient have the chance to get to know the donor and vice versa. And the interview clip where the relationship between donor and recipient had become as close as family.

  How close was this going to make her and Ryan?

  He must have picked up on her speculation. ‘You’re welcome to know as much—or as little—as you want to know about me, Holly.’ He gestured towards the impressive row of test tubes she was picking up to go into the path lab bag. ‘If my health is the only concern, you should get all the answers you need from that lot.’ He slid off the bed and plucked a roll of tape from the top of the trolley. ‘And I’m fit. Going to my fencing club once a week takes care of that.’

  Holly sealed the top of the plastic bag. ‘Fencing?’

  ‘You really think I’m strange now, don’t you?’

  ‘Um…’ Holly held onto the bag without moving to drop it into the collection tray. ‘Are we talking farm fencing or pickets?’

  ‘Neither. Sport fencing. You know, swordfighting?’

  Holly just stared at him, completely at a loss for words at this latest revelation from her boss.

  ‘I don’t compete or anything.’ Ryan was fiddling with the length of tape as he stuck it to the swab covering his puncture site. ‘It’s just a fitness thing. It’s physically challenging and you have to use your brain at the same time.’ His glance was slightly defensive. ‘Not really so strange. I heard someone refer to it once as chess at a hundred miles an hour.’ He shrugged. ‘I guess rock ’n’ roll dancing would do the job just as well but you need a partner for that.’

  ‘Oh, I’d love to be able to dance!’

  The words came from nowhere. Holly barely had the energy to walk some days and a conscious desire to do any form of dancing had never surfaced coherently. Something fundamental in her life seemed to have changed in the last few hours and it was unsettling.

  So was the rather speculative gleam in Ryan’s eye.

  ‘Tell you what,’ he said. ‘Let’s make a deal. When we’re both back on our feet after all this, we’ll see if we can find a dance class to get really fit again. Rock ’n’ roll—or would you prefer Latin?’

  ‘Um…’ A sudden image of dancing a tango with Ryan flashed into Holly’s brain and she could feel a faint sense of panic at the bizarre, if not altogether unpleasant, notion.

  Learning to live with her illness had meant careful planning and organisation. Being impulsive or ‘going with the flow’ was alien to Holly but she felt like she was being swept along on some current right now. A current that was being generated by the man who had clearly just noticed her discomfort.

  ‘It’s not a prerequisite or anything,’ he said lightly. ‘Don’t worry. It was just a thought.’ Ryan checked his watch. ‘It’s time we headed home, I think. Big day tomorrow.’

  ‘Mmm.’ It was a relief to switch to familiar discussion ground. ‘I want to read up on transposition of the great arteries so I know exactly what you’re doing with Grace tomorrow.’

  Not that Holly would be assisting with this major surgery, which could take many hours. The consultant from the other paediatric cardiac surgery team would be working with Ryan this time, but Holly would get to watch and that was exciting enough.

  The next couple of days would be full on, what with Grace’s surgery and with Leo still in Intensive Care after his successful operation today, but that was a good thing. Holly felt a distinct need to ground herself before taking the next step in the journey she had embarked on by agreeing to the kidney transplant. She went home, determined to focus on nothing but the upcoming stint in the operating theatre the next day.

  Ryan’s initial offer had been enough to start her wondering about his personal life. Now that she’d agreed to accept that offer, she was discovering things that were downright startling. There was no denying a desire to bolt back to a place where Ryan was primarily a surgeon again and several hours of standing on her feet while the congenital abnormality in tiny Grace’s heart was repaired should make that desire quite achievable.

  It wasn’t working.

  Being a spectator rather than an active participant didn’t help. It gave Holly’s concentration far too many opportunities to slip. And the frequent glances coming her way from the personnel crowding Theatre made it virtually impossible to focus for long.

  It was her own fault. Holly had arrived early that morning to be present at the final preparatory review of the case and found she had beaten the second surgeon, Colin. Ryan had been pleased to have a moment to themselves because he’d had a question for her.

  ‘How private do you want to keep this transplant business, Holly? Only I’m going to have to have a word with Colin about cover. We can postpone any elective cases easily enough but emergencies are a different story and I’ll need some co-operation to bring my annual leave forward.’

  Holly had searched his face but hadn’t found any clues about what his preference might be. ‘I think privacy is a luxury that can go straight out the window when medical professionals have medical procedures. Will it bother you that people know?’

  ‘Not if it doesn’t bother you. I’m more than happy to be open about it.’

  ‘Me, too.’ Holly’s nod had been resigned. ‘It’s not as if people don’t already know about my state of health.’

  So Ryan had talked to Colin and Colin had said something to his registrar who happened to be dating the scrub nurse on duty that morning so it had taken a matter of minutes for the news to get passed to her. They had been overheard by the technician setting up the heart-lung machine and by the time they had all been ready to shift their focus to the major task ahead, the only person who hadn’t known had been the anaesthetist who’d been in the anteroom with baby Grace. He’d managed to get clued up somehow despite his attention to his own tasks.

  ‘Congratulations,’ he whispered hurriedly to Holly when she moved past. ‘Fantastic news!’

  The level of interest didn’t surprise Holly at all. She’d been through it once before when last month’s potential transplant had disrupted her working week. But the depth of interest this time was so much greater because another colleague was also involved and the potential for success was also higher. The pleasure she could sense on her behalf was something of a revelation and, judging by those frequent glances coming her way, they would all be eager for more information and progress reports.

  It was easy initially to push personal concerns aside as the surgery began. Baby Grace’s tiny chest was opened and the sternum retracted. The membrane around her heart was divided and then sutured to the surrounding stockinette woun
d towels to elevate the heart for better exposure. Ryan and Colin spent some time carefully assessing the coronary anatomy, using marking sutures to indicate the intended positions of the coronary arterial openings. The baby’s body was cooled to a temperature of less than twenty degrees Centigrade and cardiopulmonary bypass was started.

  For a long while, even Ryan’s favourite Vivaldi CD did little to counteract a tense atmosphere as the intricate surgery progressed. Holly had never seen a procedure quite like it. Tiny buttons of flesh and string-sized vessels were cut free, repositioned and sewn into place with the most precise stitches Holly had ever seen Ryan perform. She couldn’t see into the actual field of surgery from where she stood, but the camera in the magnifying goggles Ryan wore sent the images to a large screen on one side of the high-tech operating theatre.

  Thus distanced, it was too easy for part of her mind to start playing truant—thinking about Ryan the man rather than the surgeon. The information she had gained so recently was changing her perspective an astonishing amount. She watched the almost negligible cuts being made with a razor-sharp scalpel and wondered if the amount of control needed got somehow replenished when Ryan indulged in his hobby of swinging a large sword at an opponent. Was his fencing an instinctive form of gaining balance in his life as much as a small boy’s dream technique of keeping fit?

  Maybe she should try it for herself when she felt fit enough?

  Maybe she should even take up Ryan’s offer of being a dance partner?

  Then again, maybe she should just concentrate on her career and try not to let herself get so distracted by the upcoming changes in her life—particularly ones that were based on the oddly new habit of fantasy rather than the well-rehearsed practice of dealing with reality.