‘He’s not answering his pages. It’s you, Hayley.’
Brain surgery. A million thoughts tore around her mind driven by fear and ranging from whether she could actually do the surgery without damaging the patient to possible law suits against her. She was in Sydney, NSW, not Africa. This lack of appropriate surgeons shouldn’t have happened here and yet circumstances had contrived to put her in this position. To put her patient in this position.
She stared at the scan again, but it didn’t change the picture. The brain fitted snugly inside the bony protection of the skull and the design didn’t allow for anything else. No extra fluid, no blood, no extra growths. Nothing.
She was between a rock and a hard place. If she didn’t operate, the woman would die. If she did operate, she risked the life of her patient and her career. She could just see and hear the headlines of the tabloid papers and the sensational television current affairs programmes if something went wrong.
‘Evie, it’s so damn risky, and not just for the patient.’
The ER doctor’s hand gripped her shoulder. ‘Believe me, if there was another option, I would have taken it. Pretend we’re in Darwin, Hayley. All emergency neurosurgery up there is done by general surgeons.’
She shook her head. ‘That doesn’t reassure me.’
The scream of sirens outside muted as Hayley forced herself to block out everything except the task at hand. Slowly the chaos that Evie’s request had generated started to fade and her thoughts lined up in neat rows—problem, options for best outcome, solution.
Tom.
The thought steadied her. There was a neurosurgeon close by. Now wasn’t the time to think about what had happened the last time they’d met. About his completely unambiguous rejection of her. This was a medical emergency and the stakes were life and death. All personal feelings got set aside. Must be set aside no matter how hard.
‘Evie, go grab a taxi and send it to the Bridgeview Building.’ She grabbed the phone on the wall and punched 9 for the switchboard. ‘It’s Hayley Grey. Connect me to Mr Tom Jordan, now. It’s an emergency.’
The shrill ring of the phone on Tom’s bedside table woke him with a jerk. Once he’d always slept lightly, used to being woken at all hours by the hospital, but two years on from the last time he’d worked as a surgeon and his body clock had changed. Now the only thing that woke him at three a.m. was his own thoughts.
Completely out of practice, he shot out his hand and immediately knocked into the lamp. He heard the crash and swore before reaching the phone. Hell, this had better not be a wrong number or he’d just sacrificed a lamp for nothing. Not that he technically needed it. Hating not being able to read caller ID, and not recognising the ringtone, he grunted down the phone. ‘Tom Jordan.’
‘Tom, it’s Hayley.’
This time he instantly recognised her sultry voice and his gut rolled on a shot of desire so pure that it couldn’t be mistaken for anything else. He immediately chased it away with steely determination. The sort of single-mindedness that had driven him to become the youngest head of neurosurgery, and now drove him to master braille and attempt echolocation so he could be as independent as possible. He wouldn’t allow himself to want Hayley. It would only make him weak.
She wanted you. He sighed at the memory and now it was the middle of the night and a week since he’d been beyond rude to her to keep her away from him. Was this a drunken booty call or a drunken ‘how dare you reject me?’ call? Either way, he didn’t need it. He ran his free hand through his hair. ‘Hayley, don’t say anything you’re going to regret in the light of day.’
‘I need you, Tom.’
And she’d just gone and said it. ‘Look, Hayley, I tried to make it clear the other day that—’
‘This is nothing to do with the other day.’ The cutting tone in her voice could have sliced through rope. ‘Just listen to me. There’s a young woman in ER with a brain tumour and an associated bleed. There isn’t a neurosurgeon available between here and Wollongong and I have to operate. Now. I need you in Theatre with me, Tom. I need you to talk me through it. Be my guide.’
He heard the fear in her voice and it matched his own. There was a huge difference between being able to see the operating field whilst guiding a registrar through the procedure and depending on Hayley telling him what she was seeing so he could tell her what to do next. ‘Can dexamethasone reduce the swelling enough to hold her until the guy from Wollongong arrives?’
‘No.’ Her tone softened slightly. ‘Believe me, Tom, if I had any other choice I would have taken it but there isn’t one. We are this girl’s only chance.’
He swung his legs over the side of the bed. ‘Hell, she’s having a really bad day, then.’
‘She is.’ Hayley’s strained laugh—the one all medical personnel used when things were at their darkest—vibrated down the line, bringing with it a camaraderie that called out to him.
‘I’ve sent a taxi, which is probably arriving any minute. I’ll see you at the scrub sinks, Tom.’
The line went dead.
The scrub sinks.
She’d rung off, leaving him with no option.
He was going back to Operating Room One. Going home. Only home was supposed to be a place of sanctuary and safety and this felt like walking off a cliff.
‘You didn’t shave off all her hair, did you?’
Tom sat on a stool behind Hayley, noticing the varied array of smells in the operating room that he’d never noticed when he’d been sighted. Disinfectant mixed in with anaesthetic gases and blood, plus a couple of other aromas he couldn’t quite identify and wasn’t certain he wanted to. But no matter how pungent the odours, Hayley’s perfume floated on top of them all in a combination of freshness, sunshine and summer flowers. He wanted to breathe in more deeply.
‘No, we only shaved off half her ponytail.’
‘Good. Neurosurgery is a huge invasion and I always make it a point to shave the bare minimum out of respect for the patient.’
Made it a point. You’re not operating any more.
Being back here felt surreal—he was in his theatre that wasn’t his any more, part of a team rather than leading it. He wasn’t scrubbed. Hell, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d been in the OR and not scrubbed. Probably when he’d been a med student. He interlocked his fingers, keeping his hands tightly clasped together in his lap.
He heard Hayley murmuring to the anaesthetist and then she said, ‘Tom, I have Theo scrubbed in, David’s the anaesthetist, Jenny is scouting and Suzy—’ she seemed to hit the name with an edge ‘—is assisting David.’
He and Suzy had shared a fun night three years ago after one of the OR dinners, but he’d never called her. He’d never called any woman because work and patients had always come first and he would never allow anyone to derail him from his goal of staying on top and keeping the demons of his childhood at bay.
He could feel the gaze of many on him and then came the chorus of ‘Hello, Tom’, just as it had
