A month later the only thing Razak could be certain of was that his belief in Lily’s surgical skills had been well placed.
She’d risen to every challenge he’d thrown in her path and mastered it, and he couldn’t be more delighted…well, that was a lie, but the chance of her delighting him by agreeing to a private conversation seemed as remote as ever.
He looked out of his office window at the patch of blue sky that had been widening all morning and suddenly felt the need to get out of the hospital. He was due for a few hours off duty and the chance to take stock of how far he’d come.
Even in his wildest dreams he hadn’t imagined that the new system would go so smoothly, and while there had been some initial grumbles from the nurses in the post-op and surgical wards about their increased workload, that had quickly faded as they’d discovered a new enthusiasm for their work. With his waiting list shrinking by the week, it was amazing what a difference it made to have patients who weren’t bitter about the length of time they’d had to wait and this had rubbed off on the nurses taking care of them.
He was certain it also had an effect on the patients’ recovery time, with the latest batch all doing well, some of the minor cases already at home with instructions to return for sutures to be removed.
The sign for the town he was entering read ‘Ditchling’ and rang a bell in his mind. One of his earliest personal referrals had been from the GP there and in his more desperate sleepless hours he’d actually wondered whether he might stand a better chance with Lily if he applied to extend his contract and contacted all the practices in the towns around the hospital to build up the referral side of his work. Even when he’d completely got rid of his waiting lists there would always be some patients who wanted to go private for their surgery, and a personal contact with the GPs would hopefully put him to the forefront of their minds if they were asked for the name of a surgeon.
Before he had time to change his mind, there in front of him was the neat building that housed Ditchling’s health centre and he pulled into an empty parking slot.
‘So, I will go in and introduce myself,’ he said aloud, in the confines of the car, hoping he wouldn’t seem too much like a cold-calling salesman to Dr Willmott.
‘Mr Khan,’ the GP said with a smile as she entered the reception area. He straightened up from his inspection of the toys in the children’s corner and as he returned her smile with one of his own he was able to put aside his fear that she would resent his unexpected visit.
‘Please, if it would not offend you, you could call me Razak,’ he invited, liking this softly spoken woman at once.
‘And I’m Kat,’ she responded, offering him her hand, and he marvelled that he felt not a tremor at the contact with her soft skin, so unlike his reaction to even the slightest contact with Lily.
‘Cat, like the animal?’ he enquired with a blink of surprise.
‘No.’ She chuckled. ‘Kat, short for Katriona. Would you like to take a seat? I’m sure Rose wouldn’t mind making us some coffee.’
He grinned at the motherly Rose, who had spent the entire time he’d been waiting for Kat to appear grilling him about himself. If he didn’t miss his guess, that was definitely a matchmaking gleam in her eye.
‘No coffee, thank you. I was driving in this direction, exploring your beautiful country, and decided to call into your surgery when I recognised the address. I don’t want to take up too much of your time,’ he added easily. ‘Your Rose has already told me how busy you are with your son in hospital. It is good news that his operation has gone well.’
‘The best,’ Kat agreed wholeheartedly. ‘Unless you’ve gone through something like that, knowing that there’s a danger that your child is going to be seriously disabled by an operation but that if he doesn’t have the surgery he’ll probably die…’ She shook her head wordlessly, and although Razak hoped he would never know such torment personally, he had seen it all too often and could empathise with her.
‘My patients aren’t usually in that life-or-death situation,’ he admitted self-deprecatingly. ‘Mostly, they are just pleased to be out of pain at last, those who have replacement joints, like your Mr Aldarini.’
‘I did wonder if he was why you were here. Has there been a problem that you needed to come here in person?’
‘No problem at all,’ he reassured her. ‘Mr Aldarini is only partly why I am here. He is recovering well, in spite of the fact he delayed having the operation for far too long. Mostly, I wanted to tell you that, with the tandem system trial at the hospital, we are managing to do many more operations than before, but I will only be here for a few more months before I return to my own country to set up a whole new department. So I will need all the practice I can get and I wanted to let you know that if you have any more patients who are in a similar position or whose operations have been delayed unnecessarily, I would be willing for you to refer them to me directly.’
He saw her blink in surprise at the suggestion, knowing that the old system at the hospital called for patients to be referred to the department with little or no input as to which of the orthopaedic surgeons would eventually do the operastion—hopefully, the one with the shortest list.
As a result of the publicity in the paper when the new theatre suite had been opened, she had actually contacted his receptionist directly, probably in the hope that he hadn’t already inherited an enormous back list of people waiting impatiently for their operations to take place.
‘Won’t your superiors have something to say about that?’ she queried warily, no doubt conscious that she was going to have to continue to deal with the orthopaedic department long after he had returned to his own country. He could appreciate that she couldn’t afford to put anyone’s nose out of joint.
‘It will not be a problem,’ he reassured her easily. ‘They still work in their old way and have more patients waiting than they can manage, with waiting lists that stretch…’ He demonstrated with his arms spread, almost like a fisherman describing the one that had got away.
He left not long after to make his leisurely way back to the hospital, pleased that he’d called on her. She was an intelligent, sympathetic GP and now that he’d explained his aims, he was guessing that she was probably already planning to go through her patient list to find the names of those who would benefit from an operation sooner rather than later.
‘And if she spreads the word…’ he murmured as he waited at a set of lights, eager to be on his way again, then laughed at what he was saying. ‘Fool! The hospital’s already got more patients on its lists than it can cope with. At least give the new system a few more weeks to whittle away at the numbers before you start inviting more for their initial consultation.’
Still, there was definitely a feeling of satisfaction that it wouldn’t be long before he could offer them a date for their surgery that wasn’t an insult to their level of pain and disability and it was one that Kat had clearly shared.
She was a nice lady, he pondered as he set off again, and there had been the same idle appreciation for a good-looking member of the opposite sex in her eyes as she’d met him, but it had been easy to tell that there hadn’t been a single spark in either direction.
Unlike the first time he’d met Lily when every nerve ending in his body had seemed to fire simultaneously, brought to life by nothing more than a pair of blue-grey eyes and that indefinable something that had never happened to him before.
Suddenly a leisurely trip back wasn’t nearly fast enough and he found himself pressing just a little harder on the accelerator, anxious to get back to the hospital just so that he could be closer to Lily.
Lily held her breath and counted to ten as Razak shouldered his way through the doors, then blew the breath out slowly and deliberately behind her mask.
It was a stupid ritual, but concentrating on it was the only thing she’d found that could help her to control her body’s instant reaction to his presence.
When was it ever going to start fading?
It had been many weeks since their trip to visit Razak’s father and it seemed as strong as ever. The only thing she could say was that she’d learned the hard way how to focus on what needed to be done. She’d had to, because the only other alternative would have been to hand in her resignation, and that definitely hadn’t been an option. It had taken her too many years and too much sacrifice to get this far, and with the many hours of experience she’d gained since they’d started the dual-theatre system, her surgical skills had improved exponentially.
Honesty made her admit that her rapid progress had been due in large part to Razak’s unselfish tutoring. It was almost as if he’d read her mind and discovered her intention to absorb everything she could from him before he left, because he seemed to be equally intent on helping her every step of the way.
Today was a prime example of what he’d been doing, with the most interesting, unusual or complex case of the day reserved for last so that he could treat it like a teaching session. In the early days she’d done little more than watch and provide a second pair of hands when necessary, but as the weeks had gone on he’d entrusted her with more and more, and always with that sexy husky voice murmuring instruction, encouragement and praise.
He was so good at his job and so unendingly generous towards her that it made it difficult to find even a shred of lingering anger inside her. In fact, if anything, her love had just kept right on growing, in spite of the fact that she knew there was no possibility that it would ever be returned.
In the quiet misery of the night, she’d sometimes even thought that it might be worth trying to change his mind about going to bed with her just one time. At least then she would have the memory of a night spent in the arms of the man she loved to carry with her for the rest of her life.
The idea never got past the impossible daydream stage. All she had to do was remember the way he’d rejected her to know that he wouldn’t be changing his mind about her any time soon, even though those dark, dark eyes still followed her every move with something in their depths that made her shiver in response.
‘That’s looking good, Jazz,’ he said quietly, still stubbornly using the nickname he’d given her in spite of the fact that the first day she’d returned to the hospital after their trip she’d taken her music away and completely stopped using all her jasmine toiletries. She knew he’d noticed because he’d nearly broken her heart all over again on her birthday when he’d given her an exquisite cut-glass bottle of the most perfect jasmine essence she’d ever worn.
And she had worn it, just once. She hadn’t been able to resist. But when the perfume had surrounded her and brought back all the happier moments between them, she’d had to scrub it off and had known she wouldn’t be wearing it again.
But even though she’d stood for ages under a hot shower and had used copious quantities of soap to eradicate the last trace of it, the next time she met Razak’s eyes it was as if he had known that she’d worn his gift on her skin, as if he had known every one of the pulse points she’d anointed with it and imagined tracing them with his lips the way he had that night…the inner curve of her elbows, over the frantically beating carotid pulse in her throat, between her breasts…
‘Ready to re-articulate that joint?’ he prompted, and she flicked the switch inside her head that brought her steely concentration back to the fore.
Silently, she positioned the new ball joint against the relined socket in exactly the way he’d shown her and with the minimum of effort it clicked straight into position, completely giving the lie to those like Reg who still thought orthopaedic surgery wasn’t a suitable choice of specialty for women because they didn’t have enough upper-body strength.
‘Technique rather than power, yes?’ Razak said, and she shivered at the uncanny way he always seemed to be able to tap into her thoughts.
His husky voice continued to stroke over her nerves. ‘One of the surgeons I worked with in America had to stand on a step-up to reach the table properly and weighed so little that she probably had to run around under a shower to get wet, but she was a brilliant surgeon.’ And when she heard the admiration in his voice Lily instantly hated the woman, hated any woman who could put a smile on his face when she couldn’t.
But his admiration for that past colleague also fired her determination that one day he would say to one of his colleagues, There was this surgeon I worked with in England… The only trouble was, she wouldn’t be there to hear it.
CHAPTER TEN
‘YOU’VE got to go, Lily,’ Tim said firmly.
Before she could even voice the belligerent ‘Why’ that rushed to her lips he was spelling out what she already knew.
‘You know what this place is like for gossip,’ he said wryly. ‘And you’ve been working with the man for months. How could you not accept his invitation when the rest of us are all going, especially when the trip’s all expenses paid?’
Lily wanted to cry that there was no amount of money and no threat of gossip that would make her travel back to the place where her heart had been so comprehensively broken, but then a fatalistic little voice in the back of her head joined in the persuasion.
You’ve got to go there, it said. You’ve got to see it happen with your own eyes or you’ll never be able to draw a line under it and get on with your life.
The trouble was, she knew that Tim and the little voice were both right. She’d been hiding her head in the sand over the recent weeks and months, deliberately ignoring the fact that with each patient treated and each new skill mastered, her precious time with Razak was slipping past, that the day was drawing near when he would be gone from her life for ever.
The team had been working to capacity for several months now. With two theatres in use simultaneously, they’d easily managed to cope with two or three major operations and four or five minor ones in a single five-hour session.
The first time they’d actually managed to do six joint replacements in that time they’d all come out of Theatre on an adrenaline high.
It was going to be deadly dull if she had to go back to the time-wasting pedestrian pace of the other surgeons in the department…not that she knew that was what was going to happen because she hadn’t even heard a whisper about Razak’s replacement being appointed.
All she did know was that time was running out, and to add to that heartache was the invitation Razak had extended to the whole of his team to join him for an all-expenses-paid trip at the end of his contract to visit the new department he would be heading on his return home.
‘Lily?’ Tim said, and his tone told her it wasn’t the first time he’d tried to attract her attention.
‘Sorry Tim. I must have been wool-gathering,’ she apologised, resigned to the fact that there really was no way she was going to be able to get out of it.
‘I was just wondering why you never said anything about Razak’s family when you came back last time,’ he said, voicing a comment several had made when they’d discovered just which family Razak was related to. ‘It can’t be every day that you stay in a palace and talk to royalty.’
‘Tim, I must be particularly dim, but I never even realised they were so important.’ She shrugged, hoping no one would ever guess how astounded she’d been when she’d realised the truth. She could hardly believe that she’d actually contemplated having an affair with a man so far above her own humble origins. The Razak she knew and loved was a superbly skilled orthopaedic surgeon, not an all-important heir of an ancient dynasty. ‘Ok, the house seemed big and old and sprawling and had some beautiful things in it,’ she conceded, when Tim threw her an exasperated look, ‘but I was more interested in visiting the new orthopaedic centre and finding out about Razak’s plans for the running of it.’
Tim rolled his eyes. ‘Well, this time you’ll have to take more notice because we’ve been specially invited to the formal opening ceremony of the new department, followed by a private family celebration. We’ve all been warned to bring our best bib and tucker with us
for that one.’
And Lily hadn’t needed a reminder. She could still hear Razak’s mother’s delight when she’d informed the English nobody that Razak would be marrying his perfect bride as soon as he returned home. Every time she thought about witnessing the moment when she lost him for ever the pain tightened around her heart a little more, but she didn’t really have any other option than to be there.
‘you’re right, Tim,’ she said on a resigned sigh. ‘We’ve all worked our cotton socks off for the man and helped him to prove that this system is the best cure for ludicrously long waiting lists. It’s extraordinarily generous of him to invite us all to visit him for a week, and I promise that I shall go looking for something smart to wear so I don’t let the department down.’
She managed to throw him a smile that finally wiped the worried frown off his face, though he seemed to understand just how much she wanted to refuse to go. There really wasn’t any way that she could, not when she was going to have to work with all these people when they returned.
Tim was apparently more perceptive than most about the atmosphere between Razak and herself, but she was certain that no one other than the two of them knew about their near-miss all those months ago. There had been no gossip about the two of them so far, and that was the way she wanted it to stay.
‘Oh, wow! Look at this place!’ whispered Fliss Timmins, the circulating nurse in Theatre A, as she gazed around at the marble entrance hall. ‘You could fit both our new theatres in here with room to spare.’
‘I can’t wait to see what the rest of it’s like,’ said one of the scrub nurses, her eyes equally wide. ‘This is worth every extra minute I’ve spent on my feet since the new suite opened.’
‘Welcome, everyone!’ Razak said as he appeared at the other end of the room, closely followed by a whole phalanx of uniformed staff. He’d travelled out a day earlier than the rest of them to make certain that all the arrangements were in place and the busy hospital had felt strangely empty to Lily, knowing he would never work there again.
Sheikh Surgeon, Surprise Bride Page 14
