Stormbound Surgeon

by Marion Lennox

  Much to Joss’s relief, the contusion on Malcolm’s forehead didn’t match a skull fracture. The skull was fine. There was only the hip. Which was bad enough.

  To Joss’s huge relief there was little bone damage. The force of the impact on the rocks had punched Malcolm’s femur out of the rim of the cup, but the cup itself was intact. There’d be nerve damage, Joss thought as he studied Amy’s pictures. The sciatic nerve would be traumatised and that could well mean months of pain before it resettled. But for now there was only the matter of getting the femur back in place before the hip was irretrievably damaged.

  ‘Can we organise helicopter evacuation?’

  ‘Kitty checked while you were doing your hero stuff,’ Amy told him. ‘The weather reports are saying the wind’s dying and the rain has cleared. The place where they’ve landed before is deep mud but Jeff’s organising gravel to be laid now. It should be possible to bring in a machine by this evening.’

  ‘Not until this evening?’ He winced, staring at the X-ray. ‘This won’t wait.’

  ‘Can you do it?’

  ‘With your help. Are you willing to do the anaesthetic?’ It wasn’t fair to ask her but he must.

  Her gaze was untroubled. ‘Yes. It has to be easier than Charlotte. Doesn’t it?’

  He gave her a faint grin of reassurance. ‘Yes, it does. But contact the helicopter people and tell them we do need an evacuation, even if it’s late. With a hip dislocation there may well be nerve damage. He’ll need specialist assessment for long-term care. But the first thing to do is get the ball back into the socket. I’ll ring the orthopod at Sydney Central and run this by him, but I think he’ll tell me what I’m already guessing. This can’t wait until this evening. We need to do it now.’

  Amy gave the relaxant anaesthetic almost without guidance. She was getting to be an expert, she thought grimly. Joss was setting himself up for the procedure ahead and, while Malcolm slipped under the anaesthetic, she had a moment to think.

  What on earth was Malcolm doing here? This was so out of character for him that it was crazy.

  It didn’t make sense-but a moment’s thought was all she had. Joss was ready.

  ‘We’ll administer suxamethonium as well,’ he told her. They’d stripped off their outer gear and scrubbed, but there was time for no more. ‘The muscle will have seized up as the hip wrenched out of place.’

  Mary was in Theatre as well this time, so he had two trained nurses-or rather, two trained nurses under eighty, with Marie and Thelma still acting as back-up. Mary was beginning to think she’d missed out on the excitement of Charlotte and if there was any more excitement to be had she’d like a hand in it, too, please. From nurses who’d been willing for Amy to shoulder total responsibility, she and Sue-Ellen were now both actively looking for ways to help.

  The hospital was seeming more and more an acute-care facility and all the staff were stepping up a notch in their expectations of themselves.

  Amy could only be grateful. Her hand might be rock steady as she administered the anaesthetic, but inside she was jelly.

  This was Malcolm.

  Or…maybe it wasn’t just that. Maybe part of it was reaction. To watching Joss haul himself up those damned rocks. To seeing the water wash over him…

  ‘Ready?’ Joss asked and she took a deep breath.

  ‘Ready.’

  In the end it was fast. Joss had done this once before as a surgical registrar, but he’d done it then under supervision. It wasn’t the same as doing it alone. More than anything, he wanted a skilled orthopaedic surgeon to be present-but it was himself or no one.

  What was the old adage? See one, do one, teach one? If that was the case, he’d be ready for a teaching job tomorrow. With that wry thought he started.

  The moment the muscle relaxant took hold, Joss placed his knee up on the table to give him greater leverage. Once in position he took hold of Malcolm’s upper thigh. While the two nurses watched in astonishment-this wasn’t like any surgery they’d ever seen-he lifted his other knee until he was kneeling completely on the table. Now he was gripping Malcolm’s right leg, the lower leg at ninety degrees to the upper.

  This didn’t look like any operating scene you’d see in the movies, Amy thought, stunned. This was a real manipulative nightmare, where what was called for was a mixture of brute strength and skill. And courage.

  ‘Can you lean in and push down on each side of the upper pelvis?’ Joss demanded. He was breathing hard-what he was attempting took as much strength as skill, and it wasn’t a job for weaklings. He needed Amy to do this. In truth, he needed another strong male, but once again Amy was the best that he had.

  ‘Here?’

  ‘Yes. Right. Both hands flat and push as hard as you can. Mary, take over the monitor for a moment. Right, Amy. Now!’

  She pushed. Joss pulled, smoothly but sharply and with all his force.

  The joint slid back with a sound somewhere between a dull pop and the clunk of two pieces of wet timber being knocked together.

  The thing was done.

  ‘Fantastic,’ Joss said. He climbed off the table, found a chair and put his head between his knees. And stayed there.

  Amy stitched Malcolm’s leg-and then she stitched Joss.

  ‘Because the doctor’s leg really needs stitches, Amy,’ Marie had started scolding the minute they came out of Theatre. ‘If you don’t do it,’ the old nurse added, ‘then I will, and my eyesight’s not all that good.’

  So while Mary supervised a recovering Malcolm, Amy took Joss into her office, closed the door and demanded he remove his still damp clothes. When he demurred she simply pushed him into a chair and removed his trousers for him. Plus the rest of his wet clothes. She handed him a hospital gown and barely waited for him to be respectable before she hauled off Marie’s makeshift dressing over the gash on his leg.

  ‘I’m a grown woman,’ she told him. ‘Plus I’ve been a trained nurse for years. There’s nothing I haven’t seen so let’s get on with it. Modesty’s for sissies.’

  ‘I’m not-’

  ‘Moving. No, you’re not. If you try, I’ll fetch half a dozen senior persons and we’ll tie you down.’

  ‘Amy…’

  ‘Shut up and let me do what has to be done.’

  It was a jagged tear, not so deep as to be serious but ragged enough to definitely need stitches. Joss sat on the day-bed in her office while she applied local anaesthetic, cleaned and debrided the edges and then set herself to the task of sewing him up.

  It was a weird sensation, Joss decided as he sat and let her suture. It was a sensation of being completely out of control.

  It was a feeling to which he was growing more and more accustomed.

  ‘What do you reckon Malcolm was trying to do?’ he asked, more to keep his mind off what she was doing than anything else. He could feel her pulling his skin together but it wasn’t the feel of her stitches that was the problem. It was the feel of her, period. Her touch against his skin. The way her braid fell forward over her shoulder while she worked. The way those two little concentration lines appeared on the bridge of her nose and her tongue came out-just a peek. She was concentrating.

  She was gorgeous!

  Yeah, right. The lady might be gorgeous but she had a fiancé who was recovering in the next room. Her fiancé was a man who’d risked his life to see her.

  Dopey git!

  And Amy’s words echoed his thoughts.

  ‘It does seem a little over the top.’

  He agreed entirely. ‘Even Romeo wouldn’t have been so daft.’

  She thought about that and applied a couple more stitches. ‘Romeo was pretty daft.’

  That pleased him. He wasn’t quite sure why, but it did. ‘You mean your own personal Romeo’s act of devotion doesn’t meet with your unqualified approval.’

  ‘He could have picked up the telephone and called with much less dramatic effect.’

  ‘Where’s the romance in that?’

  ‘The ra
in’s almost stopped and the forecast is for decent weather at last. The ferry may well be up and running by tomorrow. Surely he could have waited.’

  ‘So you’re going to be…how sympathetic?’

  Amy thought about it. ‘I guess I’d better be a bit sympathetic. Though if he thinks I can help with the repayments on a splintered speedboat…’

  ‘It was his speedboat?’

  ‘Yeah, but he only uses it on the river. I’ve never known him to take it out to sea. It just doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘He must be missing you enormously.’

  ‘And that doesn’t make sense at all.’

  ‘Why not? Isn’t the man in love?’

  She thought about that. She looked like a sparrow, Joss thought, with her head to one side, thinking while concentrating at the same time. She was using tiny stitches-this would be the prettiest scar known to man.

  He’d be able to look at it and remember Amy…

  And that was truly ridiculous.

  ‘I guess he must be,’ she said, and he had to think about what he’d asked. Right. Isn’t Malcolm in love?

  Of course. He had to be.

  But Amy was still considering. ‘It’s so out of character.’

  ‘He’s not prone to over-the-top declarations of passion?’

  ‘He’s sensible.’

  ‘Well, what he did today wasn’t sensible in the least.’ He felt peeved, he thought, and he couldn’t figure out why. She’d tied off the last stitch and had lifted a dressing from the tray. ‘Leave this,’ he told her. ‘I’ll do it.’

  ‘I-’

  ‘You go back to Malcolm,’ he said, and if he still sounded peevish he couldn’t help it. ‘He needs you.’

  ‘Nope.’ She had herself back in hand. ‘I’ll dress this and then I’m putting you to bed.’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘You’re having a sleep.’

  ‘I am not.’

  ‘You’ve risked life and limb, your leg’s sore, you’ve got half a dozen nasty bruises that I can see, and if I peered closer I bet I’d see more.’

  ‘You would not.’ He hauled his hospital gown closer.

  ‘And don’t tell me you didn’t nearly pass out in Theatre.’

  ‘I didn’t.’

  ‘Marie, Mary and I all reckon you did. That’s three against one. And we hold the ace.’

  ‘I beg your pardon.’

  She swooped and lifted the bundle of still damp clothes from where he’d dropped them. ‘I’ll take these to the laundry, so if you’re going anywhere you go in your hospital gown. And I’d check the mirror for your view from behind before you take that option. You’d be shocked to the core! Meanwhile…’

  ‘Meanwhile?’ He sounded stunned. He felt stunned.

  ‘Meanwhile, we’ve put Malcolm in the bedroom at the end of the hall. It’s a double room with a spare bed. You take yourself down there and get between the covers. Marie’s asked Cook to make you an omelette and a cup of tea and then the order is to sleep for the rest of the afternoon.’

  He was eyeing her cautiously. She was one bossy woman and he was a man who didn’t like to be bossed. By anybody.

  But this was Amy and she was laughing at him, and he was…

  Damn, she was right. He was shell-shocked. He’d thought it was just his emotions but it was more than that. He tried to stand but his legs felt distinctly odd.

  Maybe he quite liked to be bossed.

  Maybe the order was changing.

  ‘You’ve had enough,’ she said, and she moved to support him. His arm came around her and he held on.

  He held on for too damned long-but neither wanted to let go.

  This was crazy. She was engaged!

  ‘I’ll go,’ he said at last.

  ‘You’d better,’ she whispered, and they both knew what she meant by that.

  He’d better-or they weren’t prepared for the consequences.

  Lunch-or maybe it was dinner, it was halfway between the two-was great, but by the time he’d finished eating his head was heavy on his shoulders and he was prepared to concede that Amy knew what she was talking about.

  Mary was watching over Malcolm, who lay in the bed beside him. Damn, why wasn’t it Amy? It wasn’t and he had to be content with Mary clearing his plate and tucking him in. Like he was a four-year-old.

  ‘Now, you sleep,’ she said sternly-and, like it or not, he slept.

  When he woke it was dark and someone was in the room.

  For a moment he was confused, trying to remember where he was. The room was in darkness. A nightlight was shining from under the bedhead, and he could just make out someone framed in the doorway.

  A woman?

  Charlotte.

  What was Charlotte doing here?

  He opened his mouth to speak but her whisper cut across the room. This must be what had woken him.

  ‘Malcolm?’ It was an urgent whisper and brought a whisper in response.

  ‘Charlotte.’

  Charlotte glanced at Joss but he didn’t stir. As far as she was concerned, he was one of the several old men in the nursing home, settled down early for his routine bedtime.

  Joss wasn’t settled at all. Charlotte knew Malcolm?

  The plot thickened…

  He fixed his eyes firmly shut, told himself to ignore the itch on the end of his nose-itches only seemed to happen when you had to be still-and strained to listen.

  ‘Are you OK?’ She was shuffling forward. She’d only been out of bed a couple of times since the Caesarean and her stitches would be pulling. She moved awkwardly forward with another nervous glance toward Joss.

  Joss tried an obliging snore and wuffled a bit, like he was eighty.

  ‘No.’ That was Malcolm from the next bed and Joss could hear the pain in his voice. ‘I’m not OK. Hell, it hurts. I damn near killed myself. Of all the…’

  ‘Why did you come?’

  ‘I had to see you, of course. I wanted to make sure you didn’t tell…’

  ‘Didn’t tell Amy?’ Charlotte’s voice broke on a sob. ‘Of course. I was stupid to think you must want to see me.’

  ‘I did.’ Joss could hear him making an effort to placate her and he could imagine the man putting a hand out to touch the woman as she reached his side. They were so close…

  He could just reach out and tweak the curtains…

  The curtains around the beds gave an illusion of privacy. Behind them the two could imagine they were alone. As they did. Maybe Malcolm didn’t know he was here, and Charlotte believed that he was asleep.

  ‘I wanted you so much,’ she was saying.

  ‘So I came.’

  ‘You almost killed yourself.’

  ‘Yeah, I was a fool. But I wanted to see our daughter.’

  ‘Not a fool. Oh, Malcolm…’

  Yeah, he’s a fool, Joss felt like saying, but he showed great forbearance and didn’t. Sheesh, the weather was easing! The ferry could be up and running by morning. He’d needed to see his daughter, so he’d risked her being fatherless?

  He’d risked Joss being lifeless!

  And… Malcolm was the baby’s father?

  But something else was bothering Malcolm. ‘You didn’t tell Amy?’ The guy was in deep pain, Joss thought, listening to his voice. He should pull back the curtain and check his obs and give him pain relief.

  Not yet.

  ‘I didn’t tell Amy,’ she repeated dully. ‘I wanted to. That was why I came here in the first place. I was sitting outside her house, waiting for her to come home. I knew, you see. I asked at the post office and they said she knocked off at two and came home for a couple of hours. I’d come too early so I had to wait, because I wasn’t brave enough to come here. Only then I went into labour and panicked and tried to drive home. And I crashed. Then…when I was here and Amy was so nice…I couldn’t tell her. I tried to but I couldn’t. I’d thought…if I could only get her alone, I could explain.’

  ‘Explain what?’

  ‘That we’
re in love,’ Charlotte whispered. ‘That I was carrying your baby. That we want to marry.’

  ‘But we don’t want to marry. We can’t. Not yet.’ It was an urgent demand. Charlotte must have completely forgotten that there was someone in this bed-or else she didn’t care-and Malcolm surely hadn’t realised.

  ‘Of course we want to marry. You have a daughter. Surely you want to acknowledge her. And you don’t love Amy.’ She was verging on hysterics.

  ‘Charlotte, remember our plans. I’m engaged to Amy and it’d be stupid to break it off. I’m all she has.’

  ‘But you love me.’

  ‘I can’t break off the engagement with Amy. You must see… That’s why I came the way I did. I thought no one would be at the harbour mouth in this weather. I’d park the boat by the old moorings and come in when Amy wasn’t around. Sunday afternoon there’s always so many old folk visiting I wouldn’t be noticed. I could avoid the staff and just ask one of the oldies where you were. I had to stop you from being stupid.’

  ‘Stupid-to tell her we’re in love?’

  ‘Charlotte, no.’ The intensity was too much for Malcolm, Joss thought. He could hear the desperation in the man’s voice. He should get up and stop this-tell Charlotte that Malcolm was in no state for visitors.

  He did no such thing. Not yet. He waited.

  ‘It’s the money,’ Charlotte said flatly, and Joss heard Malcolm draw in his breath. The money. Of course. ‘You still think she’ll marry you and then you’ll get a share of all the money she inherits. That’s why you panicked and rode that damned speedboat into the rocks. You didn’t trust me to be quiet. When you rang last night and I was so upset… I might have known you’d do something stupid.’

  ‘You weren’t being logical last night,’ he told her wearily. ‘You weren’t making sense. Charlotte, this is all about our future. Our baby’s future. Amy’s worth a fortune and if I marry her, if I support her for the time she’s trapped in Iluka… Charlotte, it’ll set us up for life. Even if I only get my hands on ten per cent of what she’s worth, it’ll be enough. It’s only at weekends. You know she can’t leave Iluka. During the week we can be together, like we always have been.’