was leaving the unit, his mind on coincidence and betrayal, when he all but collided with the crib a nurse—the nurse—was pushing out the door.
‘Good grief, you’re the doctor who rescued Joe! What on earth are you doing here?’
‘So your memory’s not all that bad,’ he snapped, as the pique he’d been feeling since she’d failed to recognise him surfaced. ‘I’m one of the new visiting surgeons on Alex Attwood’s team.’
He tapped the ID that was clipped onto his belt.
‘Thank heavens—just who I need,’ Lauren said, ignoring his jibe and smiling happily. ‘You do seem to have the knack of being in the right place at the right time. Jake’s vein’s collapsed and he’ll need a new catheter put in. I’m just taking him through to the procedure room. I’ve asked Jasmine to put out a call for a doctor, but as you’re here, you can do it.’
She manoeuvred the crib into the small room and, though busy reattaching monitor leads to the monitor in there, she continued talking.
‘It would happen when I’ve sent his parents away from the hospital for the first time since he was born!’
Although he knew a collapsed vein wasn’t life-threatening, Jean-Luc’s training kicked in and he washed his hands then bent over the infant, checking his size, seeing the chest scar of a recent operation.
‘Fill me in.’
Lauren was unwrapping a fine-bore cannula, but she responded to his abrupt order without pause. A good nurse…
‘Jake Appleton, coarctation of the aorta. Phil caught the case. He tried prostaglandin to keep the ductus arteriosis open, heart medication, diuretics, but Jake continued to suffer congestive heart failure. Cardiac catheterisation with balloon angioplasty to widen the aorta didn’t work and in the end Phil had to operate to remove the narrowed section. Jake’s been doing well, until this.’
Lauren stepped back, but although her eyes should have been on Jake she found she was now studying the doctor who bent over him, his hands firm but gentle as he lifted Jake’s limbs, searching for a viable vein in the baby’s already over-taxed and -treated body. Every touch assured her this man not only knew what he was doing but had an instinctive rapport with his little patients.
She couldn’t possibly have met him before. His eyes were blue, she knew that now, while as for the rest of his face—well, further scrutiny confirmed the opinion she’d formed yesterday. He was definitely unforgettable!
So presumably she’d met him as Alex had taken him through the unit on a guided tour of some kind. Lauren was aware there were two new staff members, one French—this one, from the accent that curled around his words—the other from South Africa. Both would be working in the unit for six months, improving their skills and no doubt passing on their own expertise to Alex and Phil’s surgical teams.
‘Problems?’
Phil Park, the head of the second surgical team, arrived but Lauren could see the new doctor had already sited the cannula and was reattaching the drip.
‘Collapsed vein,’ Lauren said to Phil. ‘I could see the fluid leaking out beneath his skin. Dr…’
She looked from the man, still bent over Jake, to Phil, then back to the man.
‘I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten your name.’
The newcomer muttered something under his breath and Lauren, who talked quietly to her charges all the time, assumed he was speaking to Jake. She turned to Phil, who answered for her.
‘Fournier,’ he said. ‘Jean-Luc Fournier. Actually, you’ll probably be seeing him around as he and Dr Sutherland, the South African surgeon who is also joining us, will be living near you in the flats at Number 26.’
Satisfied the cannula was sited safely, Jean-Luc had remained bent over the baby, wanting to see the fluid flowing again before he was one hundred per cent certain. With babies’ tiny veins…
But as Phil said his name, Jean-Luc looked up, interested in Lauren’s reaction—hoping to see shame that she hadn’t recognised him the previous day, perhaps guilt that she hadn’t been in touch with him after the typhoon—wanting to see something!
Anything!
But the green-brown eyes that met his held no hint of embarrassed recollection, just politeness as she nodded.
‘Ah, that explains it,’ she said, then turned her attention back to Phil. ‘I met Dr Fournier yesterday—he rescued Joe when he was knocked over on the footpath.’
To Jean-Luc she added, ‘Thanks for coming to the rescue so promptly.’ She smiled. ‘Again!’
Jean-Luc felt his body respond to that smile and knew that responding to her was even more impossible than finding her. How could this be after ten years?
Was it leftover lust?
Not a thought he could pursue when Phil was talking to him, thanking him for stepping in.
‘You’ll be a useful chap to have around,’ Phil finished, waving his hand for Jean-Luc to precede him out of the room.
Jean-Luc swung back towards Lauren, but she was once again fiddling with monitor leads, no doubt detaching them preparatory to taking the infant back to the PICU.
Who was she now?
And why was he wondering?
She was married, with a child—end of story!
Or was it?
Surely something of the woman he had fallen so deeply and desperately in love with still lingered within her.
His thoughts left him so unsettled he wanted to go back in and look at the babies in the unit but he was expected upstairs.
Consultations awaited…
Had some of the love dust landed on her after all that she was going weak-kneed whenever the new surgeon was around? Lauren wheeled Jake back into the big room and reattached his monitor leads, thankful Shelley and Brian had missed the little drama, forcing herself to think of them, not of blue eyes that had looked, almost angrily, into hers.
No, she had to be imagining the anger. He couldn’t possibly be angry that she didn’t remember some chance meeting they’d had earlier, although it could only have been within the last few days—the new team members hadn’t been here all that long.
And her memory wasn’t usually that bad!
It was a puzzle but not one she needed to bother with right now. Although the image of possibly angry blue eyes lingered in her mind and she was distracted as she listened to Brian and Shelley thank her for sending them away, the walk, Brian assured her, having done them both the world of good. Now he would sit with Jake while Shelley had a sleep, and Lauren could go home to sleep herself—No, she couldn’t! It was consultation day. She had to sit in on Alex’s consultations before she could go anywhere.
She sighed but hurried through to the locker rooms to have a wash and run a brush through
