Bitterness surged. Lecturing was hardly going to set the world on fire. The accident had stolen so much from him and was now forcing him to do something that didn’t come naturally, but until he worked out if he was staying in medicine or not, it was all that was open to him. He couldn’t fail. He wouldn’t allow that to happen, especially not in front of his previous colleagues.
He wasn’t afraid of hard work—hell, he’d been working hard since he was fourteen and Mike had challenged him to improve at school so he could stay on the football team. His goals had changed, but his way of achieving them had not—one hundred per cent focus on the job at hand with no distractions from any other quarter. This morning’s trip to SHH had been all about navigating his way around the hospital in preparation for his first lecture. He was determined to show everyone at The Harbour that although his domain had changed and had been radically curtailed, he was still in charge and in control, exactly as he’d been two years ago.
Jared was his sole concession in acknowledging that with driving he required assistance. The fact that Jared had turned up in Perth and refused to leave had contributed to the decision.
‘I’ve got two lectures. One at one p.m. and the other at six.’ Tom hoped he’d hidden his anxiety about the lectures, which had been rising slowly over the last two days. ‘I’ll need you to set up the computer for me both times.’
He heard Jared’s hesitation and his concerns rose another notch. ‘Is there a problem with that?’
‘You know I’d do anything for you, Tom.’
And he did. He’d saved Jared’s life and now Jared was making his life more tolerable.
‘I’ve got a chemistry test at six and I asked the teacher if I could sit it with the full-time students, but that’s the same time as your lecture.’
It had taken Tom weeks to convince Jared to return to school and he wasn’t going to let him miss the test, even though it meant he was going to have to ask for assistance from The Harbour. He swallowed against the acrid taste in his mouth that burned him every time he had to ask for anything. ‘You can’t miss a chem test if you want to get into medicine.’
‘Yeah, but what if someone sets up your computer all wrong?’
Tom gave a grim smile. ‘They wouldn’t dare.’
‘Push fluids!’ Evie Lockheart tried not to let the eviscerating scream of the monitors undo her nerve. She had a patient with a flail chest and she knew without the shadow of a doubt that he was bleeding, but from where exactly she was yet to determine.
‘See this bruise?’ She hovered the ultrasound doppler over her patient’s rigid abdomen.
James, a final-year medical student, peered at it. ‘From a seat belt?’
‘Yes. So we’re starting here and examining the spleen and the liver first.’
‘Even though he’s got a haemothorax?’
‘With his pressure barely holding, we’re looking for a big bleed.’
Everyone stared at the grainy black-and-white images on the small screen. ‘There it is.’ Evie froze the frame. She pointed to a massive blood clot. ‘Ruptured liver, and they bleed like a stuck pig. He needs to go to—’
‘Why the hell isn’t this patient upstairs yet?’
Evie’s team jumped as Finn Kennedy, SHH’s head of surgery, strode into the resus room, blue eyes blazing and his face characteristically taut under the stubble of a two-day growth. His glare scorched everyone.
‘Catheterise our patient,’ Evie instructed the now trembling James, before flicking her gaze to Finn. He looked more drawn than usual but his gaze held a look of combat.
In the past she might have thought to try and placate him, but not now. Not after the night he’d obviously spent with Suzy Carpenter, the nurse from the OR who had the reputation of sleeping with any male who had MD after his name. That Finn had slept with that woman only a few hours after what they’d both shared in the locker room left her in no doubt that she, Evie, meant nothing to Finn.
She lifted her chin. ‘If you want him to bleed out in the lift on the way to Theatre, by all means take him now.’
‘It looks like he’s doing that here.’
‘He’s more stable than he was ten minutes ago when his pressure was sixty over nothing.’
‘Better to have him on the table stopping the bleeding than down here pouring fluids into a leaky bucket.’
‘Five minutes, Finn.’ She ground out the words against a jaw so tight it felt like it would snap.
His eyes flashed brilliant blue with shards of silver steel. ‘Two, Evie.’
‘Catheter inserted, Ms Lockheart.’
‘Excellent.’
‘Packed cells.’ A panting junior nurse rushed in, holding the lifesaving red bags aloft.
‘Check O positive.’
‘Check O positive.’ The nurse stabbed the trocar through the seal and adjusted the flow.
‘Ninety on sixty. Good job, people. James, get the lift,’ Evie instructed, before turning to Finn. ‘He’s all yours.’
‘About damn time.’ Finn kicked off the brakes of the trolley and started pushing it despite the fact that the nurse was putting up a bag of saline. ‘Move it, people!’
A minute later Evie stood in the middle of the resus room with only the detritus of the emergency as company. She could hear Finn barking instructions and knew the nurses and the hapless med student would be shaking in their shoes. The staff feared Finn Kennedy. She had been the one SHH staff member to see a different side of him—the one where she’d glimpsed empathy and tenderness—yet it had been shadowed by overwhelming and gut-wrenching pain.
She swallowed hard as she remembered back to their moment of tenderness in the locker room two weeks ago after one of the worst days of her career. How he’d leaned back into her, how she’d rested her head against his shoulder blade and they’d just stood, cradled together as one with understanding flowing between them. Understanding that life can be cruel. Understanding that some days fear threatened to tear you down. Understanding each other.
Hope had flared inside her, along with flickering need.
And then he’d slept with Suzy.
Don’t go there. She bent down and picked up the discarded sterile bag that had held the intravenous tubing and absently dropped it into the bin. It wasn’t her job to clean up but she needed to keep moving and keep busy because thinking about Finn made her heart ache and she hated that. She wouldn’t allow it. Couldn’t allow it. Letting herself care for Finn Kennedy would be an act of supreme stupidity and if growing up as a Lockheart had taught her anything, it was that being self-contained was a vital part of her life.
‘Move the damn retractor,’ Finn yelled. ‘It’s supposed to be helping me see what I’m doing, not blocking me.’
‘Sorry.’ James
