Claimed: One Wife

by Meredith Webber

  'It's still not standard treatment,' Grant reminded them.

  'Unless there's a bleeder to be tied off or, as in this case, a build-up of fluid following the insult.'

  'Insult!' Andy said. 'I do love the use of that word. A blood vessel blows apart in someone's brain and we call it an insult!'

  Sally chuckled, pleased to find the atmosphere in Grant's operations was improving.

  'It might be a subject you could pursue, Sally.' Her boss came in on cue, as if her thinking about him had prodded him to speech. 'Pull together some figures on it. Present something to the students.'

  'Right, when I've finished splitting a couple of atoms and building a new pyramid,' she retorted, her voice muffled as she bent over the eyepieces of the microscope and carefully inserted a probe towards the shunt.

  She touched the spring release on the probe and tiny claws opened, allowing her to grasp the shunt and carefully draw it out.

  'We'll flush with antibiotics,' Grant told Andy, 'as soon as Sally has it clear.'

  'Good work,' he added, and Sally felt her skin heat at the praise.

  But it was too good to last—this easing of the tension in the operating theatre, the unspoken truce between herself and the boss. Though why he'd suddenly gone cold again, Sally had no idea.

  Perhaps he hated being called in for emergencies, she told herself late on Saturday night as she stood peering into the microscope while he probed bits of a shattered skull from the soft brain tissue of a road accident victim. Well, she hadn't particularly enjoyed coming straight from the nightclub gig herself, especially as it had meant leaving the boys in the lurch.

  She was handling the light source. Not easy when the waves of coldness emanating from Grant's body made her shiver in the usually overheated theatre.

  It had started in the changing room.

  Could he be back on that mixed changing room campaign again?

  Part of her mind darted through possibilities while she concentrated on what was happening in the work section.

  Grant eased another piece of bone from the soft tissue and dropped it into a dish.

  'Damn fools speeding up and down the highways,' he growled. 'With the road authorities showing graphic pictures of accidents on television, you'd think people would get the message about the damage speed can do!'

  'Maybe we've got to bring speedsters into the operating theatre, or make them spend time in rehab units, to get the message across,' Harry Strutt, who was duty anaesthetist, suggested.

  One of the nurses responded, but Grant dropped out of the conversation. He'd used speed victims to vent a little spleen, but the real cause of his unreasonable anger was standing right beside him, pressed hip to hip, as they shared the microscope.

  He'd finally perfected a means of entering the changing room without his eyes going immediately to Sally Cochrane's usual space, and had even developed a technique for blotting out the sight of her when she came in later.

  But tonight nothing had worked.

  In fact, the arrival of his resident in a minuscule, glittery gold dress and some kind of gold dust highlighting her hair had temporarily stopped his breath and sent rampant messages of desire coursing through his body.

  In fact, rampant was an apt description of his problem.

  His first instinct had been to move closer. See if the excuse for a dress she was wearing was really as revealing as that first glimpse had suggested. His second, when a young intern had come in and whistled loudly to show his appreciation, had been to cover her with a sheet.

  Things had gone from bad to worse when she'd casually stripped off the scrap of gold and revealed not the usual neat white cotton undies but fluffy bits of lace and satin in the same colour as the almost-dress!

  'I understood you were far too busy studying to have a social life!' The terse comment grated from his lips as he made his way out of the room.

  She spun to face him, revealing lusciously swelling breasts above the lace and satin.

  'I understood it was none of your business,' she retorted, then she pulled her theatre top over her head and scattered gold glitter everywhere.

  'Shower that out before you come to Theatre,' he told her, flicking a tiny golden star from his chest. 'What our patients don't need is gold dust in their brains.'

  She glared at him and stomped off to the showers, and that was the last he saw of her until she appeared, fully gowned and scrubbed, in Theatre.

  But if images of a weary but determined Sally Cochrane, bent over her books in the study of the house behind the mango tree, had been bothersome, this new image of Sally Cochrane, dressed to play, was beyond classification.

  He forced himself to concentrate on extracting pieces of the depressed fracture. He shouldn't have offered to take Daniel's calls this weekend, though the idea of Daniel seeing Sally in—and out of—the gold dress only made him feel worse.

  'That's it! Flush it well then we'll see if we can patch the depressed section back in.'

  'The chips of bone have done a lot of damage,' Sally remarked, as she used a saline and antibiotic solution to flood the area.

  'Speed kills!' Grant reminded her. 'He's lucky not to be dead. You close him up. I'll check on what's happening next door.'

  He walked away, knowing the initial count in the accident had been four badly head-injured victims. They'd operated on this lad first, as his injuries, apart from cuts and contusions, had been confined to his head. In the theatre next to theirs, thoracic surgeons were battling to seal a torn aorta, and it would only be if they succeeded that the neuro team would have a second patient.

  The other two, once broken limbs were pieced back together, would be observed overnight. Closely observed. Cracked skulls often healed themselves, but at the first sign of increased pressure or a change in the patient's status, emergency surgery would be needed.

  He stripped off his mask, gown and gloves, washed his hands, then walked down the corridor.

  'Still working on him,' Abe Coulter told him when Grant poked his head into Theatre Five.

  Grant nodded and backed out. Time for a cup of coffee. He'd make a pot, as the rest of the team would hit the tearoom before too long.

  He was fossicking in the cupboard for a new packet of biscuits when Sally and the intern arrived.

  'No patient yet?' she asked, as if totally unaware of any tension between them.

  'They're still trying to stop the bleeding in his chest.'

  'Why do they get the first go?' Paul Adams asked. He was young and keen but his enthusiasm for work, especially at two in the morning, made Grant feel tired.

  'Not much use our saving his brain if they can't get blood to it,' Sally told the intern. 'We use brain death as a marker of exactly when a person dies, but without the oxygen carried by the blood the brain can't function.'

  'So—'

  Whatever Paul had been about to say was interrupted by the arrival of a large, hearty male. He bounded into the room, and gave Sally a hug, then nodded genially to the other two men.

  'Uh-oh, the vultures are gathering,' Sally said, extricating herself from the man's arms with a slowness Grant found infuriating. 'When did you get back?'

  She addressed the giant, who flashed a smile her way.

  'Miss me, did you?'

  'No,' Sally told him, 'but I think Dr Hudson's new since you departed for foreign parts. David Phillips, meet Grant Hudson.'

  'New neuro boss?' the man called David said, extending an oversized paw towards Grant. 'Lucky you, having Sally on your team. I tried to talk her onto my team but would she listen? Silly woman has some idea that waiting around for someone to die casts a shadow over transplants.'

  'Who's going to die?' Grant asked, surprised to find himself in total agreement with his resident.

  On this issue, at least.

  'Chap with the blown aorta, I'd say. Wouldn't you?'

  David had helped himself to coffee by now, and put his hand, unerringly, on the fresh packet of biscuits.

 
; 'Not necessarily,' Grant told him. 'In fact, Abe seems to think they've plugged the leak.'

  That wasn't quite true, but Grant suddenly felt a proprietorial interest in the patient in Theatre Five. He wanted him to live.

  And recover.

  'We can help so many people these days.' David settled into an armchair as he spoke and Grant knew he'd sensed the atmosphere in the room and was trying to ease things over. 'I mean, one liver can ease the suffering of maybe three children. Corneas restore sight. Tonight we have a myocardopathy patient, a young woman barely thirty, standing by—'

  'But if the aorta's torn, can you use the heart?' Sally asked him. 'A torn aorta is usually a seat-belt injury. Wouldn't the force of a collision that does such damage also cause tears or ruptures in the heart?'

  'Not in this heart, dear heart,' David assured her, reaching out and patting her on the arm. 'Scan shows it's in A1 condition.'

  Grant saw Sally shudder at the seemingly callous conversation, but she hadn't pulled her hand away from the man's touch.

  Was there something going on between them?

  She claimed she had no time for a relationship, but if the man had been away...

  'How's Cherry?'

  Sally's question startled Grant out of his muddled thoughts, and the smile on David's face told him the rest. The man was a toucher. One of those people to whom physical contact was important. As he described what must be his wife's advancing pregnancy, his face aglow with pride and excitement, Grant felt a sense of loss.

  Maybe it was time to think seriously of marriage and a family.

  Though leaving Jocelyn to get a cab home after dinner, earlier this evening, hadn't advanced his project of establishing a sensible partnership!

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  And his body's reaction on seeing a gold-wrapped rear end poking out from under the bonnet of a car a little later threw another set of doubts into the concept.

  'Trouble?' Grant asked, coming to stand beside Sally and peer ineffectually at the mechanical bits surrounding the engine of her car.

  'Bloody clunker!' she growled. 'I swear this is the last time. I'm going to get myself a decent car if I have to sell my soul to do it.'

  She turned as if uncertain who'd joined her in the early dawn light of the car park.

  'And to make matters worse, the one time I really needed them, I didn't have a change of clothes in my locker, so I'm not only prancing around the hospital in cloth of gold but I've got oil on the damn dress.'

  She stood up and indicated a dark streak running across her flat stomach.

  'It'd be different if they paid me,' she muttered, but before Grant could question this bizarre statement, issued in conjunction with the sexy dress, she slammed down the bonnet and strode determinedly towards the street.

  He hurried to catch up.

  'Where are you going?'

  She turned and looked at him, frowning slightly as if only now realising who he was.

  'To hail a cab. I'm getting out of this place. The car can stay there. With any luck Security might tow it away and I can report it stolen and claim the insurance.'

  She spun away and continued on her chosen path, a direct route to the main road beyond the hospital walls.

  Once again it took Grant a moment to get moving so once again he had to lope after her.

  'I'll drive you home,' he said, grabbing her by the arm so she couldn't escape again. 'I'm going that way.'

  This time the look she gave him was more wary than puzzled.

  'I don't bite,' he said, and suddenly she smiled.

  'I'm sorry. I was rattled. First of all losing that lad—right there on the table after the thoracic boys had done such a good job of patching his aorta. Then not having any decent clothes to put on. I probably flooded the engine because I was anxious to get away.'

  He heard a weariness that was close to defeat leaking into her voice, and was startled—and deeply affected—by it. Everything he knew of Sally Cochrane told him she was a fighter. Though losing a patient they'd fought so hard to save affected everyone, himself included.

  'Come on,' he said gently. 'I'll take you home.'

  Taking her by the arm, he led her to his car, unlocking it with the remote, then opening the passenger door and settling her into the soft leather seat, leaning across her slim body to fasten the seat belt.

  He smelt the hint of flowers, that so light and elusive fragrance she wore, and saw the streak of black oil on the gleaming gold. Touched it with his fingers.

  'Will it wash out?' he asked.

  She lifted her head and their eyes met. Her lips were so close it was all he could do to not drop a kiss on them.

  Then she smiled, and warning signs flashed in his head.

  'I guess so,' she admitted. 'And the car will start tomorrow, and we'll save the next young man who tries to kill himself in a speed machine.'

  'That's better,' he told her, then he did drop a kiss, very lightly, on her lips.

  'What did you go and do that for?' Sally demanded, when she'd regained enough breath for speech, her palpitations had settled slightly, and Grant had taken his seat beside her.

  'It was comfort, nothing more,' he told her, fiddling the key towards the lock and staring straight out through the windscreen. 'You were upset. Your lips were there.'

  'You can't go around kissing lips just because they're there,' she told him. 'You'll get into all kinds of trouble.'

  He didn't reply, merely starting the engine, with a gentle purr not a cough and splutter, then selecting 'drive', releasing the brake and steering the car smoothly towards the road.

  All of which annoyed Sally even more. Particularly as his profile, which was all she could see of his face, revealed no trace of emotion. It might as well have been carved in stone.

  'And you don't believe in fraternisation among your team,' she reminded him. 'What's a kiss if it's not fraternisation?'

  Ha! That got him. He shot a fulminating glare her way and swung right onto the dawn-deserted street.

  'It was comfort, that's what, and I'm damned if I know why I did it. But I sure as hell regret it since you're now being a typical woman and making a federal case out of it.'

  'I'm being a typical woman?' Sally demanded, sure her voice had gone shrill with outrage. 'Well, in case you hadn't noticed, I am a woman, and pretty typical at that, so don't use it as a put-down, Grant Hudson. Just because you don't like women very much!'

  The car lurched to a halt at the side of the road, and the driver, his hands clenched whitely on the steering-wheel, turned to face her.

  Uh-oh!

  'Where did that remark come from?' he demanded, scowling so fiercely his eyes seemed to shoot blue sparks. 'What makes you think I don't like women? You barely know me, Sally Cochrane, so what makes you such an expert on my likes and dislikes?'

  Sally straightened in the seat. So she might have gone too far, but there was no way this man going to browbeat her.

  'This fraternisation thing!' she pointed out. 'What's that but an excuse to not get involved?'

  'That really bothers you, doesn't it?' Grant said, dangerously quiet now. 'Why? Would you like to fraternise, Sally?'

  He leaned closer, and Sally knew the heat sweeping through her body would show itself in her skin any moment.

  'Not with you,' she muttered, denying the physical messages and relying on an instinct which told her it was dangerous to play with fire.

  'With Daniel perhaps?'

  The question was so surprising it startled her out of a moment of weakness when fraternisation had seemed like a good idea.

  She squirmed back against the window, to get her body a little further away from the force field of Grant's.

  'Most definitely not! He's married, and I happen to believe that women should stick together. Carrying on with another woman's husband is not my idea of female solidarity.'

  The words struck Grant with such force he sat back in his seat and wondered what on earth he'd been doing to let this wo
man get to him. He'd stopped the car, intending to either strangle her or kiss her, and suddenly they were discussing marital ethics.

  'I must be mad!' he muttered, rubbing his hands over his face in an effort to restore his senses.

  Then he turned towards his passenger as he restarted the engine.

  'How come you always manage to rile me in some way?'

  She frowned as if she didn't understand the question, then she shrugged, physically pushing it away.

  Physically moving those swelling breasts above the shiny gold dress.

  And finally, as he swung the car back into the traffic lane, she answered him, a cheeky smile on her lips and the gold lights dancing again in her eyes as she said, 'Perhaps because you don't like women very much?'

  Grant shook his head, held his breath for a minute so he wouldn't explode, then said, very calmly for a man battling a multitude of emotions, 'If I wasn't too tired to think through the consequences, I would stop this car again and show you just how much I don't like women.'

  Which shut Sally up for the rest of the short drive home.

  'Thank you for the lift,' she murmured when he pulled up beneath the overhanging branches of the mango tree. Then she was out of the car, and through the gate, whisking away as if a thousand devils were on her tail.

  He sat there in the quiet stillness of the early morning, peering through the paling fence, hearing her light footfalls on the steps, across the verandah, a key fitting into a lock, then a door opening.

  And closing.

  What on earth had made him say the things he had? His head pounded with regrets and tiredness as he drove under the railway line and up towards his home. Was it because she'd taunted him with words, or because he couldn't handle his reaction to the sight of her in the sexy gold dress?

  It was Tom's fault. All his talk of love and marriage must be having a twin effect on his, Grant's, psyche.

  And libido!

  Sally tiptoed through the house, seeking refuge in the bathroom where she stripped off her clothes and stood under the shower until it ran cold. The water would heat again before the boys were out of bed, and right now she needed the comfort, the warmth, of water streaming over her.