that spoke of infection, and the husband spoke of having worn his wife down and made her come to the clinic after a night of increasingly unbearable pain.
“Who is our surgeon?” Erianthe would be happy when she got up to speed well enough to keep from alarming her patients by questioning the treatment options available here.
“Dr. Xenakis has the most experience,” Cailey answered.
As hard as Erianthe had worked to know as little as possible about Ares, she did at least know his specialty was emergency medicine, not surgery.
She leaned in to speak quietly to Cailey. “No general surgeon on the staff right now?”
“Ares has a great deal of experience. He got it in the field, with that unit he’s with. The one that travels to isolated areas to help people.”
Something she hadn’t been aware of. Ares was with an outreach charity? That didn’t strike her as fitting his always larger-than-life personality.
“Is he here?”
As if she didn’t know...
“He is. Let’s get Jacinda into a room,” Petra interjected, once again taking charge. “I’ll send him in. Dr. Nikolaides, do you want to change your clothes? We have extra scrubs in the corner cabinet there. Just close the door after us and change. We’ll be in the rear examination room.”
Not exactly the way she’d pictured her first day back. She had planned to say hello and tell her brother that because she felt weird about interrupting his new love nest with Cailey she was going to stay elsewhere, all the while carefully avoiding seeing Ares with the ninja-like sneaking skills she possessed only in her delusional imagination.
Now she was going into surgery with him. Another perfect point to her first day.
“You’re going to get her into CT?” she asked, snapping back into motion before Cailey could escape.
Cailey paused, the expression on her face reticent, regretful. “We don’t have a working CT scanner at the moment. Ours is on the fritz after the earthquake. I figured you’d want a CBC to check for infection?”
She waited for Erianthe to answer, but Petra kept going with Jacinda.
The CT scan wasn’t absolutely necessary—doctors had been correctly diagnosing appendicitis decades before imaging became available—but it was like a safety net. And today they would be working without a net.
“Yes to the blood panel,” she answered, weighing her options.
Flying in and out of the island was still difficult, and time was of the essence with appendicitis. She’d consult with Ares, then make the call.
Ares.
She didn’t need the warning flares her body was sending up to remind her how emotionally loaded his name was. She couldn’t even think it without those feelings of outrage and heartbreak rushing into her mouth, metallic and bitter.
Dr. Xenakis was safer. Easier on her fraying nerves.
Having something to do would help her, as it had always helped her. And helping her first patient on Mythelios would be even better. Filling up the hole that had opened in her chest with honorable duty.
The cabinet’s supply of extra scrubs needed restocking, and she made a mental note to see if an order had been made. They’d probably been hit hard in the days after the quake, when patient clothing had been ruined either in accidents or during emergency treatment and scrubs had been given out to wear instead.
She found a set of bottoms she could wear, due to the horrors of a drawstring waist, paired it with a tentlike top, then hit her suitcase for better shoes, a hairband and a stethoscope. Scrubs weren’t meant to flatter a person, and she hadn’t come home to win some kind of fashion award.
Later she’d let herself feel guilty for being glad someone needed her help. Having any kind of focus would let her meet Ares on a professional front, put all that personal stuff away—or at least make it clear to her brain what was important to the Erianthe of today: work. Personal emotional wounds, no matter how grievous, couldn’t bleed out or cause sepsis.
She’d worked cordially and professionally with both lukewarm ex-boyfriends and jerks she’d rather kick in the face than speak to, and she had never lost her cool with them. Even when there had been good reason to lose her cool. This would be no different. He was no different from any other colleague.
Closing the office door, she headed the way she’d been directed, grabbing her coffee and snack in transit, and practically inhaling half before she arrived at the patient’s room.
She reached for the knob of the exam room door, but before her hand closed on it Theo appeared at her side and immediately grabbed her in a quick hug that required she hold her arms out in a wide V to avoid dousing him in coffee.
Ever affectionate, even after the years of absence and neglect she’d forced on them both by staying so far away that his only choice in seeing her had been to come to her, this small display of affection when she was already worked up caused her throat to constrict. There was nothing she’d have liked better than to take shelter in the arms of someone she knew would always have her back. If she ever let herself ask.
It galled her how close to the surface those old feelings had risen since she’d gotten off the boat.
Turning her head, she kissed his cheek—something she could do—then stepped abruptly back. “Careful—you’ll end up with coffee down your back.”
“Glad you’re here,” he said, in that laughing way of his. “We’ll catch up after, shall we? Are you up to seeing her? Do you need anything from me?”
He was worried about her—and probably the patient too. Theo always worried about her, and one thing she hoped to accomplish by coming home was relieving that worry without burdening him with the secrets she’d hidden from everyone. Seeing this first patient to the best possible outcome would be a good start.
She smiled, but then it wasn’t hard to smile at her almost inhumanly good-natured brother. “I didn’t walk here, or cross loads of time zones. I’m completely fine. I’m waiting for the blood work to get back to call it officially, but I’d be very shocked if there are no signs of infection. If she needs surgery, then I’m assisting.”
He considered her for the swiftest second, then nodded. “Whatever you say. You’re the only obstetrician on the island since last spring, so you’re automatically picking up a full load of patients. We stay pretty busy, and we’re always looking for more people, but you’re going to need to hire a midwife and nurses. We’ll talk about that later.”
More bits of information to file away for later. Good. All good things. Fill her head with work—best thing for her.
Work had always saved her—or had done since the convent. The shock to her system from being sent away from everything and everyone she knew had helped kill the rebellious bent of her teenage years, but it had been the desire to provide for her child that had turned her life and her attitude around. And afterward study had been the only thing she’d had to cling to. She’d developed steady hands, a steady voice and eventually steady thoughts.
But
