yes, I—’
‘Good, good. Well, I mustn’t hold you up. Perhaps I’ll come by for coffee another time, Sister. I can see you’re busy here with Dr Reynolds.’ He brushed past Kathleen, and the orthodontic miracle of his smile flashed against the rich ebony of his skin. His wink was wickedly conspiratorial.
‘I’m sorry about the coffee,’ she apologised, working hard on her straight face.
‘Forget it—it’s better upstairs, anyway.’
‘Not you, too!’ She turned back to Joe Reynolds and smiled innocently.
He returned the smile warily. ‘I guess I owe you an apology, Sister.’
She let her smile mellow. Poor boy, he had no idea his downfall had been engineered. ‘Think nothing of it,’ she told him. ‘I’ve been doing the job for years, don’t forget. Experience counts for a lot, Joe. OK, what next?’
He opened his mouth, shut it again and grinned sheepishly.
‘Glucagon?’
She waited.
‘Um …’
‘We’ll go through it together, shall we? Then he can go and rest in the day ward for a while.’
The relief on Joe’s face would have been comic if it hadn’t been so worrying. Yet another one she was going to have to watch like a hawk, she thought wearily. Between him and Amy Winship, they were well staffed with idiots at the moment.
Oh, well, it would give her two bodyguards if she didn’t ever let them out of her sight. That way she might have some protection against Jack Lawrence and his hyperactive lips!
It worked till Thursday, but then Amy was on days off and Joe had a cold. Inevitably it meant that she and Jack were in closer proximity, and it threatened to push her sanity over the brink.
Though why it should, lord only knows, she thought. What is it the man has that’s so darned appealing?
Charm, her alter ego told her. Lazy, sexy, masculine charm—bucketfuls of it, coupled with a certain vulnerability that showed every now and then. Unfortunately it was a potent combination, and there was no known cure.
By about two-thirty she had run out of ways of dodging him. They had a patient with multiple lacerations of the face and neck following a fall through a window, and he needed extensive suturing. Never having seen Jack suture, she wondered if she ought to call the fascio-maxillary surgeon over from the Norfolk and Norwich, or if she could, indeed, trust Jack to do a decent job. Their own fascio-max man was on holiday that week or the problem wouldn’t have arisen.
She decided there was only one way to deal with it, and that was directly.
She found him in his office.
‘How’s your suturing?’ she asked without preamble.
‘My suturing? Pretty good—why?’
‘We have a patient with multiple lacerations of the face and neck and our fascio-max is away—I was just wondering if you were good enough,’ she replied bluntly.
He smiled—which was just as well. He could have flipped, having his professional competence challenged like that.
‘I think she’ll be safe with me,’ he said mildly.
‘He.’
‘Even better. I’ll practise on the jaw-line—then if it isn’t good enough, he can always grow a beard to hide it.’
His voice was so bland she really wasn’t sure if he was joking, but having asked and received an apparently satisfactory reply, she decided she had no choice but to go with him.
‘He’s in Cubicle Four.’
Jack nodded. ‘I’ll have a look, but then I think we’ll move him into Ops if I think it’s justified. I’ll need a good work light.’
He went in to the patient, a man in his thirties, and smiled a hello.
‘I was enjoying that cup of tea,’ he said mournfully.
The man attempted a smile. ‘Sorry, Guv. Made a bit of a mess, haven’t I?’
‘Just a shade. Still, soon have you sorted out. I think we’ll move you into a little theatre we have down here for just this sort of thing, OK? I’ll get the nurses to move you and get you comfy, and I’ll have a bit of a wash and change. See you in a tick.’
By the time Kathleen had sorted the patient out and found someone to give his wife a cup of tea and explain what was happening, Jack was back in Theatre, clad from head to toe in green theatre pyjamas, with a J-cloth hat and a mask.
‘Good, ennit? Just like the telly,’ he said to the man, and received a lopsided grin for his pains. ‘You know, you really ought to do something about that razor you’ve been using!’
The man chuckled. Kath knew what Jack was doing, unobtrusively trying to assess the range of movement and any possible nerve damage indicated by loss of mobility in any of the facial muscles.
She relaxed. Already gowned and masked herself, she drew up the lignocaine and opened the suture packs.
Three hours later Jack tied the last suture and stood back to survey his work.
‘Bee-ootiful.’
It was. Oh, the patient looked a mess, but Kath had seen the enormous care that had gone into the alignment of each suture, the meticulous attention not only to the innumerable tiny little muscle fibres, nerves and blood vessels but to laughter lines and wrinkles to ensure that the tissues were realigned as closely as possible to their original position. He sealed the whole area with plastic skin to prevent infection, and then stripped off his gloves and stretched.
‘Thank you, Doctor,’ the patient said a little stiffly. He was going to find it rather difficult to talk for a few days, Kathleen realised.
Jack smiled warmly. ‘My pleasure. I’m afraid you won’t be Miss World again, but you’ll do. All adds character. Come back in a week for a check-up and to have the majority of the sutures out, or earlier if they give you any trouble or get infected. Try and keep them dry, and take the painkillers we’ll give you for the first few days. How did you get here?’
‘My wife drove me.’
He nodded. ‘Good. Well, get her to take you home and look after you. You’ll be off work for a week. Sister will give you a certificate, and you’ll need a follow-up next time you come if you’re still a bit sore. Hopefully you won’t need it.’
With a cheery wave he left them, and Kathleen helped the man to his feet and put him in a wheelchair.
‘Don’t want you collapsing on us—not good for the department’s reputation,’ she joked lightly, and wheeled him round and handed him over to his wife.
She found Jack in his office, leaning on the window with a cigarette in his hand.
‘You
