Kate wondered in the distant part of her brain not focused on the job.
Feeling carefully, she found the space between his thyroid cartilage and the cricoid cartilage. The scalpel blade bit cleanly, a cut barely half an inch deep, and she slipped her finger into it to open it, before sliding the tube into place.
Ignoring the muttering going on around her and the distant yowling of an ambulance, she bent low and breathed into the tube. Two quick breaths, pause, another breath, pause …
The man’s chest was rising so she’d got the tube in successfully, but he needed treatment—epinephrine to combat the shock, hospitalisation for at least twenty-four hours, and minor surgery to repair the gash she’d made in his throat.
Somehow she didn’t think she’d have to worry about Billy missing Tippy. These people would want nothing more to do with the Andrews family.
The ambos, once they’d given the patient an epinephrine injection in his thigh, were audibly impressed by her efforts.
‘Learnt about it, of course,’ one said, ‘but never had to do it.’
‘I’m an ER doctor,’ Kate explained, as they expertly attached monitors to their patient, then lifted him onto the stretcher. ‘Though I’ve only had to do it once before so I was a bit shaky.’
‘ER doc?’ the second man said, when he’d strapped Fareed onto the stretcher. ‘Don’t suppose you’d come with us—sit with him just in case.’
‘I think that would be an excellent idea,’ Ibrahim said, and to emphasise the point he actually nodded towards the man who’d held the gun.
Or maybe that was her imagination running riot after the little bit of drama!
Whatever! Someone would have to sit with him to hold the plastic tube in place and it might as well be her. She climbed into the back of the ambulance beside Fareed, who was breathing, somewhat raspily, through the hole in his neck. His eyes opened, the drug taking almost immediate effect, and his hand lifted to feel his neck.
Kate caught the hand before he could dislodge the tube, and held it in hers so it could do no harm. It was a strong hand, with long, lean fingers that fought against her hold—a manly hand …
She put the distraction down to her own shock—and disappointment.
‘You’ve suffered anaphylactic shock. You’ve got a tube in your throat so you can breathe and you’ve had an injection of epinephrine, which will combat the shock. Now you know you’re allergic to bee stings, you should carry a pen with the drug in it wherever you go.’
The disdain she’d read in his eyes earlier returned, so blatant she wanted to turn away.
And let him get away with it?
‘Not that I expect gratitude or anything for saving your life, but a smile wouldn’t hurt! ’
Fortunately, before she could let off any more steam, which she knew was nothing more than a release of her own tension, they drew up at the hospital.
A woman was beside him—a woman in big glasses and flaming red hair she hid in a plait, but nice skin—creamy skin, skin you’d like to touch but preferably when she wasn’t going on and on at him. Fareed closed his eyes and tried to clear his head.
She was holding his hand.
He must know her.
She looked angry, but, then, he knew any number of angry women, though none he could remember with plaited hair. Her glasses magnified pale green eyes. Beautiful eyes, he rather thought—even angry, they were special. But the glasses were appalling, although the frames were the same colour as the little freckles sprinkled over her nose.
He was reasonably sure he didn’t know any woman with freckles on her nose—well, not freckles that she left on show for everyone to see.
Men’s voices and a door opening somewhere near his feet brought memory of what had happened rushing back. He tried again to feel his throat but the woman stopped him.
‘You’re at the hospital now. You’ll be okay, you’ll be fine. They’ll want to keep you overnight, to check you haven’t had a reaction to the drug, and they’ll stitch up the hole I made in your neck, and—’
He freed his hand and put it up to touch her lips, to quiet her, then he smiled to show her he’d understood.
She looked so surprised—by his smile?—his next smile became a genuine one.
After all, she had saved his life!
Kate alighted from the ambulance, shaken by what was nothing more than a stranger’s casual finger touching her lips. Before she could analyse the reaction, she realised that Ibrahim and his entourage were already there. The older man was watching anxiously as the ambulance men rolled the stretcher out, set it on its legs and began to wheel it away.
He walked beside it, talking to Fareed, obviously concerned about his health, asking questions of the nurse who appeared, giving orders to his men—a caring man.
A sultan?
The word was redolent of fairy stories from Kate’s youth—men with golden turbans and casks of glowing jewellery. Did the world still have sultans?
Although it wasn’t stature but money that had everyone running around after him, she decided less than an hour later when a specialist ear, nose and throat surgeon arrived from Sydney, helicoptered in to the helipad behind the hospital.
‘I’m under orders to stay until the tube comes out and I’m sure he’s breathing safely without it—which is now—and then to fix the hole you made,’ the man said to Kate after he’d seen the patient. ‘My mother could have fixed the hole with one of her embroidery needles. Who is this bloke?’
Kate shrugged.
‘He came with Sultan Ibrahim to see one of my mother’s horses, that’s all I know. They must have got on to someone at their consulate and arranged to have you flown here.’
She hesitated, not sure whether to tell the surgeon about the gun. Decided not to. He’d see it for himself if he displeased the entourage in any way.
‘Well, now you’re here I’ll leave him in your expert hands and go home,’ she said, then smiled. ‘A top ENT man sitting in a country hospital watching a patient recover from anaphylactic shock—that must be a change for you!’
He smiled back.
‘Actually, it’s all in a good cause. They bribed me with the offer of a very handsome donation to my favourite research programme.’
‘Fair enough,’ Kate said, aware the man had expected her to ask what it was and to stay for a chat, but she was suddenly overwhelmingly tired and had yet to work out how she was going to get home.
One of the sultan’s men sorted that problem, emerging from one of the limos as she came down the hospital steps and opening the rear door for her to get in.
He’s either going to kidnap me or take me home, and right now I’m too tired to care, she thought as
