pressing engagements?’
So he was still annoyed with her for rejecting him, Amelia mused as she lifted her chin. ‘I am here, as you see,’ she said.
He held her defiant look for a moment before turning to the anaesthetist. ‘Carlo, you can start the heparin now, one milligram per kilo heparin, and we’ll monitor the clotting profile every half-hour as we go through in the protocol.’
‘Right,’ Carlo said, beginning the IV heparin infusion.
Amelia watched from the head of the operating table as the patient was prepped and draped by Alex together with the cardiac registrar and the scrub nurse.
Alex made a midline incision over the sternum, and, using the powered bone saw, completed a median sternotomy, his deep, calm voice taking the theatre staff through each step. As Alex and the registrar opened the chest, Dr Morani harvested the left long-saphenous vein in the patient’s left leg to be used for the bypass.
Alex then took the team step by step through the moving-heart bypass procedure, taking special care to show how the vessel stabiliser was used to reduce movement of the vessels to be sutured during the movement of the heart.
‘As you can see, Dr Morani, the vessel stabiliser must be adjusted so as not to leave too much coronary artery exposed, otherwise movement is not damped enough, and getting a good quality anastomosis becomes a real struggle,’ Alex explained.
‘Yes, that appears the hardest bit to get right,’ the surgeon agreed. ‘That’s much clearer now—even I could do the anastomosis now that you’ve set it up.’
‘I’m sure you could do as good a job as me, Doctor, but I’d like to do the first anastomosis to show you a couple of tricks to damp down movements between the instruments and the heart.’ He flicked a glance from above his surgical mask in the direction of Amelia. ‘What do you think of the procedure so far, Sister Vialli?’
‘You are obviously well practised in working with the heart,’ she answered.
‘You have to have an intuitive feel for the heart in this type of surgery,’ he said, then, addressing the senior cardiac surgeon beside him, added, ‘Now it’s your turn, Dr Morani. We’ll set up the vessel dampening clamps for the LAD and you can do the second anastomosis.’
Under Alex’s guidance, the fellow surgeon sutured the freed-up internal mammary artery to the LAD distal to its stenosis. Finally, using the Doppler flow meter, Alex was happy that blood flow into the bypassed coronaries was satisfactory and left the senior surgeon and the registrar to routinely close the chest.
As Alex stripped off his gloves and gown he turned from the laundry bin to see Amelia staring at him, and folded his arms across his chest, his dark eyes narrowing and hardening as they met hers. Are you by any chance waiting to speak to me, Sister?’
‘No…no, I was just leaving.’
‘Don’t let me keep you. I’m sure you have plenty of things to do on the ward.’
She wanted to stare him down, but in the end she had to push her pride to one side. ‘Actually I would like to speak to you if I may.’
‘I’ll have to check my diary to see if I can squeeze you in.’
‘I would appreciate it…thank you.’
‘Dr Hunter, there’s a phone call on line one for you,’ one of the scout nurses informed him. ‘It’s a young woman. She wouldn’t give me her name.’
Amelia saw the flicker of something in his dark eyes before he turned away to address the nurse. ‘Can you put it through to the office next door?’ he asked.
By the time he turned back to Amelia she had a cynical set to her mouth. ‘It hasn’t taken you long to find a replacement, has it?’ she said in an undertone.
‘Last time I checked I was a free man,’ he returned coolly. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me I’d better take that call.’
Amelia watched as he shouldered open the theatre change-room door, his arms now stiffly by his sides.
‘There’s a message for you, Amelia,’ Lucia informed her as soon as she returned from her afternoon tea break later that day. ‘Signora Gravano wants you to call on her this afternoon after your shift finishes, as if you haven’t got enough to do.’
‘It’s all right,’ Amelia said, wondering if the old woman had had another fall and reopened her leg wound. ‘She’s lonely with her daughter living abroad. I’ll go straight there after I finish.’
Once her shift was over Amelia left a message for Rico at the front desk in case he arrived to pick her up before she got back, and made her way to the old lady’s house.
There was no sign of movement at Alex’s cottage although it appeared as if he or someone had done some preliminary work in the garden. The brambles had been trimmed back and the sweet smell of newly cut grass filled her nostrils on the way past.
Signora Gravano didn’t really need her leg redressing but seemed in want of a chat, so Amelia sat with her for a while, all the time trying not to glance at the clock on the wall. Rico wasn’t the most patient of young men and she knew if she didn’t come out on time he would leave without her. There was a bus that took her as far as the turn-off to the cottage, but that still meant a walk of at least five kilometres.
‘I have heard some disturbing rumours I think you should be informed of if you haven’t already heard them,’ Signora Gravano said just as Amelia finally made a move to leave.
‘Oh?’ she said, wondering why the old woman had waited until now to state the real reason for her request to see her. ‘What rumours are they?’
‘People are saying that Prince Alessandro is not dead after all,’ Signora Gravano informed her.
Amelia hoped her face wasn’t showing the panic and dread she was feeling. ‘That seems rather far-fetched,’ she said. ‘I mean, the child’s grave is at the palace for anyone to see.’
‘I know, but there could be another explanation for that—some other child put in his place, for instance.’
‘I suppose that’s a possibility, but you know what these rumours are like. They come and go and are best ignored,’ Amelia said.
‘I have heard the king’s medical advisors noticed a startling similarity to Antonio Fierezza when they were researching the new technique Dr Hunter is pioneering. Dr Hunter’s photograph was in the medical journal they had researched and they began to wonder if he was in some way related to the family.’
Amelia sat back down, not because she wanted to but because her legs were threatening to give way. ‘Is that why he received a royal summons?’ she asked.
‘It makes sense, does it not?’ the old woman said. ‘The king does need heart surgery, of course, but this was a way of bringing Dr Hunter to Niroli to see if the likeness was something that needed further investigation by the royal officials.’
‘It is said we all have a double somewhere in the world,’ Amelia said, trying to put some rationality in place. ‘It’s just one of those things.’
‘Perhaps,
