Daredevil, Doctor...Husband?

by Alison Roberts

  So many buttons could be pushed by memories that could never be erased.

  And she’d actually wanted to kiss him again?

  ‘I’ll give you a hand closing up,’ she heard herself saying to Jay as he picked up her board. She barely glanced over her shoulder. ‘See you later, Zac.’

  CHAPTER THREE

  HE HAD NO one to blame other than himself.

  How stupid had he been?

  Even now, a good twenty hours after the incident, the realisation that he’d kissed Summer Pearson was enough to make him cringe inwardly. Or maybe it was an echo of the flinch his current patient had just made.

  ‘Sorry, mate. It’s just the local going in. It’s a deep wound.’

  ‘Tell me about it. As if it wasn’t bad enough getting bitten by the damn dog, I had to rip half my leg open on the barbed wire fence getting away from it. Bled like a stuck pig, I did.’

  ‘I’ll bet.’ Zac reached for the next syringe of local that Mandy had drawn up for him. ‘Almost there. We can start stitching you up in a minute.’

  ‘You won’t feel a thing,’ Mandy assured him. ‘You’ve got the best doctor in the house.’

  ‘At least he’s a bloke. D’you know, there were two girls on the ambulance that came to get me?’

  ‘Hadn’t you heard, Mr Sanders?’ Mandy’s tone was amused. ‘Girls can do anything these days. Can’t we, Zac?’

  ‘Absolutely. I’d say you were a lucky man, Mr Sanders. Can you pass me the saline flush, please, Mandy? I’d like to give this a good clean-out before we start putting things back together.’

  He took his time flushing out the deep laceration. He’d do the deep muscle suturing here but he had every intention of handing over to Mandy to finish the task. It might do his patient good to realise that girls could be trusted to do all sorts of things these days.

  Like fly around in helicopters and save people’s lives. Not that he’d seen Summer do anything that required a high level of skill yesterday but he was quite confident that she had the capability to impress him. He was looking forward to a job that would challenge them both.

  At least, he had been looking forward to it.

  What had he been thinking on the beach yesterday evening? That because she seemed to be thawing towards him he’d make a move and ensure that she actually had a good reason to hate working with him?

  Idiot…

  Except it hadn’t been like that, had it?

  Zac reached for the curved needle with the length of absorbable suture material attached. He touched the base of the wound at one side.

  ‘Can you feel that?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Okay. Let me know if you do feel anything.’

  ‘Sure will.’

  Zac inserted the needle at the base of the wound and then brought it out halfway up the other side. Pulling it through, he inserted it in the opposite side at the same level and then pulled it through at the base again. This meant he could tie it at the bottom and bury the knots to reduce tissue traction, which would give a better cosmetic result.

  His patient was happy to lie back on his pillow, his hands behind his head, smiling at Mandy, who was happy to keep him distracted while Zac focused on his task.

  ‘What sort of dog was it, Mr Sanders?’

  ‘No idea. Horrible big black thing. Bit of Rottweiler in it, I reckon, judging by the size of those teeth.’

  Zac tried to tune out from the chat. Tried not to think about big black dogs. But the suturing was a skill that was automatic and it left his mind free to circle back yet again to how things had gone so bottom-up on the beach.

  He’d been enjoying himself. Taking pleasure in sitting beside an attractive young woman, sharing his favourite place with someone who loved it as much as he did. Feeling as if he was making real progress in forging a new professional relationship because of the way Summer had been telling him about part of her personal life. Loving the idea of such a faithful bond between owner and dog that a bit of ocean wasn’t about to separate them.

  And suddenly something had changed dramatically. He’d been shoved sideways by the dog and Summer had been looking at him and it felt as if he was seeing who she really was for the first time and he’d liked what he was seeing.

  Really liked it.

  But he didn’t go around kissing women just because he found them attractive. No way. He would never force himself on a woman, either. Ever. Being made to feel as if he had done that stirred feelings that were a lot less than pleasant.

  The needle slid in and out of flesh smoothly and the wound was closing nicely but Zac wasn’t feeling the satisfaction of a job being done well. He was in the same emotional place he’d been left in last night, when Summer had virtually dismissed him and walked away without a backward glance.

  If it wasn’t beyond the realm of something remotely believable, he might have decided that it was Summer who’d initiated that kiss but the way she’d jerked back in horror had made it very clear that hadn’t been the case.

  He felt as if he’d been duped. Manipulated in some incomprehensible way. Pulled closer and then slapped down. Treated unfairly.

  The final knot of the deep sutures was pulled very tight. The snip of the scissors a satisfying end note.

  Okay…he was angry.

  He needed to put it aside properly before it had any chance of affecting his work. At least he was in the emergency department today. He was due for another shift on the helicopter tomorrow but maybe he’d find time to ring the base manager later and ask if he could juggle shifts.

  With a bit of luck, he could find another crew to work with, without having to tell anybody why he couldn’t work with Summer again.

  The call-out had been more than welcome.

  ‘Big MVA up north.’ Her crew partner today was Dan. ‘You ready to rock and roll, Summer?’

  ‘Bring it on.’

  It was very unfortunate for the people in the vehicles that had collided head-on at high speed on an open road, but Summer had been suffering from cabin fever for several hours by now. She needed action. Enough action to silence the internal conflict that seemed to be increasingly loud.

  The usual distractions that a quiet spell provided hadn’t worked. She should have made the most of the time to catch up on journal articles or do some work on the research project she had going but, instead, she’d paced around. Checking kits and rearranging stock. Cleaning things, for heaven’s sake.

  A bit like the way she’d acted when she’d got home last night and couldn’t settle to cook or eat any dinner because she kept going over and over what had happened on the beach.

  Trying to persuade herself that that kiss had been all Zac’s idea. That she hadn’t felt what she had when his lips had touched hers.

  She was still experiencing those mental circles today and, if anything, they were even more confusing, thanks to that conversation she’d had with Kate late in the evening.

  Of course he’s charming. Why do you think Shelley fell for him so hard?

  But it was more than a surface charm designed to lure women into his bed on a temporary basis.

  Zac cared. About elderly patients. About small boys who might have been washed off a rock and drowned.

  Small boys. Children. Presumably babies. And if he cared about other people’s children, it just didn’t fit that he’d abandoned his own. The story was getting old now. Maybe she hadn’t remembered the details so well. Kate had been happy to remind her.

  Yes…of course he knew Shelley was pregnant. That was why he tried to push her down the stairs.

  So why hadn’t Shelley pressed charges or demanded paternal support?

  She was too scared to have anything more to do with him. And she planned to terminate the pregnancy, remember? Only, in the end, she didn’t…

  And Zac had been on the other side of the world by then. And Shelley had had one health issue after another. Always at the doctor’s or turning up at the Hamilton emergency department Kate still work
ed in. Things hadn’t changed much, either—except now it was her son who always seemed to be sick or getting injured. The whole family had to focus on supporting Shelley and little Felix and sometimes it was a burden.

  ‘Are you going to tell Shelley?’ she finally had to ask.

  God, I don’t know…I might have a chat to her psychiatrist about it. The new meds seem to be working finally, at the moment. It might be bad news to throw a spanner in the works…

  It had been Summer who’d thrown the spanner. Not only at Kate but, potentially, at Zac, too. What if Shelley was told? If she took legal action of some kind and demanded a paternity test and back payment of parental support? Or, worse—if she went public with accusations of physical abuse? It could ruin the career Zac was clearly so passionate about. She would not only be responsible for things hitting the fan but she would be stuck in the middle having to work with him.

  Why hadn’t she just kept her mouth shut? It wasn’t as if she saw Kate much these days and she hadn’t seen Shelley since that night at the hospital.

  But—if it was true—didn’t he deserve to face the consequences?

  That was the problem in a nutshell, wasn’t it?

  If it was true. She had no reason to believe it wasn’t.

  Except what her gut was telling her.

  Thank goodness she could stop thinking about it for a while now. She had a job to focus on. A huge job. She could see the traffic banked up in both directions below them now. A cluster of emergency vehicles. She’d heard the updates on the victims. One patient was dead on scene. Another two were still trapped and one of them had a potential spinal injury. The other was having increasing difficulty breathing.

  ‘He was initially responsive to voice,’ the paramedic on scene told Summer. ‘But he’s become unresponsive, with increasing respiratory distress. We’ve got a wide bore IV in and oxygen on.’

  ‘The passenger?’

  ‘She’s not complaining of any pain but she can’t move her legs and they’re not trapped. She’s got a cervical collar on and someone holding her head still while they’ve been cutting the roof off.’

  ‘And the van driver’s status zero?’

  ‘Yes. He was dead by the time we arrived, which was…’ the paramedic checked his watch ‘… twenty-two minutes ago.’

  The next few minutes were spent on a rapid assessment of the driver, who was the most critically injured. Summer took note of the jagged metal and other hazards as she went to lean into the car’s interior.

  ‘Any undeployed airbags?’ Summer had to raise her voice to be heard over the pneumatic cutting gear the fire service were still using to open the badly crushed car.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Is the car stable?’

  ‘Yes. We can roll the dash as soon as you’re ready and then you can get him out. Passenger should be clear for extrication now.’

  ‘Dan, can you coordinate that? I might need you in a minute, though. I’m going to intubate and get another IV in before we move the driver.’

  He was already in a bad way and she knew to expect a clinical deterioration as soon as they moved him, even when it was to an area where it would be easier to work. Due to his level of unconsciousness, she didn’t need any drugs to help her insert the tube to keep his airway safe. By the time she’d ensured adequate ventilation and got both high flow oxygen and some intravenous fluids running, Dan and his team had extricated the passenger and had her safely immobilised and ready for a slow road trip to the nearest hospital by ambulance.

  Summer coordinated the fire crew to help lift the driver from the wreckage and get him onto the helicopter stretcher but she wasn’t ready to take off yet. She crouched down at the foot of the stretcher so that she could see his exposed chest at eye level.

  ‘Flail chest,’ she told Dan. ‘Look at that asymmetrical movement.’

  ‘Here’s his driver’s licence.’ A police officer handed it to Dan. ‘His name’s Brian Tripp. He’s forty-three.’

  They already had that information from his wife. There was paperwork the paramedics on scene first had completed. Summer had more important things to deal with. She could hear more clearly with her stethoscope now and she wasn’t happy with what she could hear.

  ‘I’m going to do a bilateral chest decompression before we fly,’ she decided. ‘Can you get the ECG monitor on, Dan? And start fluid resus.’

  The only procedure Summer had to deal with a build-up of air in the chest that was preventing the lungs from expanding properly was to insert a needle. It was a temporary measure and it didn’t help a lung to re-expand. It also didn’t help a build-up of blood instead of air.

  And that was the moment—in the midst of dealing with something that was taking her entire focus—that she thought about Zac again.

  If only he’d been on board today instead of yesterday. He could have performed a much more useful procedure by actually opening the chest cavity. Not to put a drainage tube in, because that would take too much time, but it was the same procedure and left an opening that would be of far more benefit than the tiny hole a needle could make.

  One that could—and did—get blocked when they were in the air only minutes later, even though Monty was keeping them flying low to avoid any pressure changes that could exacerbate the problem.

  It was touch and go to keep her patient alive until they reached Auckland General and Summer was virtually running to keep up with the stretcher as they headed for Resus in the ground floor emergency department.

  Who knew that Zac Mitchell would be leading the team waiting for them? The wave of relief was odd, given that she had yet to see how this doctor performed under pressure, but there was no denying it was there. Instinct again?

  Was it Zac’s expression as he caught her gaze? Focused. Intelligent. Ready for whatever she was about to tell him. Not that there was any time for information about what they’d found on scene—like the amount of cabin intrusion that had advertised a potentially serious chest injury. Even the name and age of their patient would have to wait.

  ‘Tension pneumothorax,’ she told Zac succinctly. ‘Came on en route. He went into respiratory arrest as we landed.’

  Within seconds, Zac was performing the exact procedure she had wished he’d been there to perform on scene. And he was doing it with a calm efficiency that—along with the evidence that her patient was breathing for himself again—made Summer even more relieved.

  Her instincts about his skill level had not been wrong.

  She wanted to stay and watch the resuscitation and assessment that would, hopefully, result in a trip to Theatre to have the major injuries dealt with but another call took her and Dan away with barely enough time to restock their gear.

  This was a winch job to collect a mountain biker with a dislocated shoulder who was on a track with difficult access. A road crew were there to take over the care and transport of the patient so there was no return trip to hospital that would have given Summer the chance to find out what had happened to Brian.

  She would have been happy to wait until tomorrow. Zac was due to fly with them again and they could have discussed the case. But the base manager, Graham, caught her when she was getting changed at the end of her shift.

  ‘What did you do to Zac yesterday?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I had a call. He didn’t come out and say it directly but he seems to think it might be better to be attached to a different shift. I told him there weren’t any other slots and he said that was fine but…’

  Monty was in the locker room at the same time. ‘Summer doesn’t like him.’

  Graham gave her an odd look. ‘What’s not to like? He’s got to be one of the best we’ve been lucky enough to have on board. What did you say to him?’

  ‘I didn’t say anything.’

  ‘You didn’t exactly roll out the welcome mat, Summer.’ But Monty was smiling. ‘And it’s not like you to be shy.’

  ‘It’s got nothing to do with that.’
>
  ‘What has it got to do with, then?’ Both men were looking at her curiously.

  What could she say?

  That she knew things about Zac that they didn’t know? She’d already caused disruption in other people’s lives by telling Kate that he was back in town. How much more trouble would she cause by telling her colleagues? Word would get around in no time flat. She’d never been a troublemaker. Or a gossip, come to that. And it wasn’t really any of her business, was it?

  Or could she say that she’d met him on the beach last evening and ended up kissing him? That he was possibly so appalled at how unprofessional she’d been that he couldn’t see himself being able to work with her again?

  Things were getting seriously out of control, here.

  ‘It’s nothing,’ she snapped. ‘Leave it with me. I’ll sort it.’

  The excuse of getting an update on a major case was a good enough reason to pop into the emergency department on her way home.

  Normally, it would be something to look forward to. A professional interaction and discussion that could well be of benefit in her management of similar cases in the future.

  But what really needed discussing had nothing to do with her patient from the car accident. It was at the other end of the spectrum of professional versus personal. It felt like a minefield and it was one that had been created because she knew too much.

  Or maybe not enough?

  Summer felt ridiculously nervous as she scanned the department looking for Zac. He was at the triage desk, looking over Mandy’s shoulder at something on a computer screen. When he glanced up and spotted Summer, he smiled politely.

  She sucked in a breath. ‘You got a minute?’

  She looked different.

  Maybe it was the clothes. He’d seen her in her flight suit and he’d seen her virtually in her underwear, given what that bikini had covered.

  Even now, as he ushered her into his office, the memory gave him a twinge of appreciation that could easily turn into something inappropriate. Something to be avoided at all costs, given the way she had dismissed him so rudely on the beach last night.