between them had been complicated by their work assignments. The places they went to and the conditions of the local infrastructure often meant phone or mobile contact was not possible. MedSurg comms centre had enough on their plates, dealing with casualties and air evacuations and managing their ground-level programmes, without being a message centre for idle chit-chat. Only emergency calls for staff were allowed.
Email had been their most efficient communication tool. Separation via electronic mail. Harriet had hated it. She wondered now as they filed into the triage meeting if they would divorce via the internet as well. Would they split up their assets, argue about which books, which CDs belonged to whom?
She imagined her email to him when the decree nisi arrived. Dear Gill. It’s official. We are no longer joined in marriage. You should be receiving the paperwork soon. Have a good life. Harriet shuddered. She felt so empty thinking about it, but the alternative Gill had suggested this morning made her emptier.
A part-time father who’d rather fly around the world, fixing other people’s problems, than be with her and their baby. To have to watch his detachment when he came home and live with him, knowing he had one eye on the calendar. Harriet knew as surely as she knew that she loved him that she’d be more miserable with half of Gill than none of him.
‘Oh, great,’ muttered Katya beside her as she slipped into the seat next to Harriet. ‘Just what I needed on my last day. Casanova.’
Harriet smiled to herself. Sitting opposite them was another reason why Gill and Katya would probably never hook up. Count Benedetto Medici the third. Italian aristocracy, wealthy playboy and MedSurg’s newest surgeon. It was standard operating procedure for MSAA to send two full teams to any mission, and unfortunately casualty numbers more than justified it.
The smooth charm of the affluent newbie had well and truly rubbed Katya up the wrong way, her poor-as-dirt background giving her a healthy dislike of men born with silver spoons in their mouths. It was obvious to all but Katya they were hot for each other.
‘Morning, Katya,’ he said across the table, sending her a smouldering smile.
‘Ben,’ she said shortly, and Harriet admired her withering dismissal.
She glanced at Gill, who winked at her, and for a second she forgot that they’d be nearly divorced by the time Gill returned to the team next time. The memory of their joining this morning was still fresh in her mind and for a few seconds she remembered how much she loved him and how their romance, too, had blossomed in the diverse melting pot of an MSAA mission.
Gill also remembered. He’d been entering his fourth year with the organisation and had been a little apprehensive about the new RN taking over from Liesel, who was going back to Sweden to get married. It was always a little stressful when someone new joined an already established team.
Would they fit in? Would they complement the existing members, would the fit be seamless or would their presence cause ripples and potentially be disruptive? Would the unity of the team be irreparably damaged? Did they have a sense of humour? Were they willing to fit in with the routines and procedures of the group?
What had been their motivation to join the organisation in the first place? Was it for a genuine humanitarian reason or were they running away from something or dropping out of society? Gill had been around long enough to see the effect one ill-suited person could have on the harmony of a team.
So all these things had been careening through his mind the night he and the rest of the team had met Harriet at a London restaurant, and had been banished in an instant. She had been gorgeous and had fitted in instantly, and they had both known without a single word being spoken that their destinies were entwined.
When they’d left together a couple of hours later there had been no question of saying goodbye at the door. The only question had been which hotel room—his or hers. They’d settled on hers because it had been the closest. And despite knowing that they were heading into the world’s latest war zone the next day, they had been up all night.
He remembered how Harriet had been worried the next morning about the consequences. How would the rest of the team feel? Would they judge her? Would they resent her? Should they keep it quiet? So they’d agreed to do that but they’d been so besotted with each other it had been hopeless and they’d given the game away within the first week.
And now here they were, seven years later, weeks away from divorce.
‘So,’ said Ben. ‘Shall we begin?’
Gill reluctantly broke eye contact with his wife. Ex-wife. Better get used to that, he thought. Ex-wife. Ex-wife.
The daily triage meeting was held with as many staff present as possible. Obviously if they were operating it was postponed, but otherwise 10:30 every morning—like clockwork.
Triage was a bit of a misnomer, really. Yes, decisions were made on a case-by-case basis as to which patient got the next available helicopter to a major centre, but it was also a forum to debrief, air problems and talk about more mundane things such as supplies, equipment and procedures.
‘Three of my patients stayed in the HDU overnight. The liver lac has priority. His drain losses haven’t slowed and I’d like to get him out of here first,’ said Ben.
Gill nodded. He had two patients they hadn’t been able to evacuate last night and neither would take priority over the liver. One had been lucky and had taken minor shrapnel damage to his gut and the other had a penetrating eye injury that, while serious, was not life-threatening.
These were the decisions they made every day. Who couldn’t wait, who had to. Patients triaged in the field as requiring medical or surgical intervention were choppered to the MSAA facility. The objective of the surgical teams was to operate so the immediate threat to the patient’s life was alleviated and then evacuate as soon as possible to the most appropriate major centre.
Usually there were a couple of cases that, due to stretched resources, had to stay behind post-op. In this situation the least critical stayed and were nursed in their limited high-dependency unit. This had five beds and two nurses, with back-up from the surgeons and anaesthetists.
‘Comms from HQ this morning has confirmed they can evac everyone,’ said Ben.
‘Good.’ Gill nodded. ‘We’ll do your liver first then the three abdo traumas then the eye.’
Harriet watched as everyone nodded in agreement. No one batted an eyelid that the patients were recognised by their body parts rather than their names. This had been the hardest thing for her to come to terms with in this field of medicine. Maybe it was the nurse in her but it just didn’t seem right to not know a patient’s name.
To be fair, a lot of this had to do with the language barrier and the fact that the majority of their patients were in no condition to divulge their names. Seventy-five per cent of their workload were unconscious, and with no IDs their names were impossible to know. But surgeons did have a nasty habit of referring to their patients as a bunch of body parts and it was so dehumanising Harriet knew it was one part of this job she wouldn’t miss. But, then, nothing was more dehumanising than war.
‘I have an update on yesterday’s casualties,’ said Theire, the translator, in her soft, heavily accented voice. Now, that was something she would miss. The accents. Every working day she was surrounded by the music of other languages. From the people she worked with to the locals who were unfortunate enough to end up on their operating tables, it was like living in an opera composed by the UN.
She
