understand that Mr Breyley told you about me before he left for New Zealand. I’m Emily Livingston, the new member of your team,’ she said, and to prove just how scrambled her brain had become in his presence, she completely forgot about infection control and held her hand out to him.
CHAPTER TWO
ZAYED blinked at the announcement that this was his newest colleague, so startled that he only just remembered in time not to reach for the slender hand hovering in mid-air.
One half of his brain was wondering whether anyone had remembered to tell her how strict he was about maintaining hygiene around his patients.
‘You should be a man!’ he exclaimed, while the other half of his brain busied itself with taking in the perfection of her barely sun-kissed, peaches-and-cream complexion and the blonde hair wound tidily away in an attempt to make her look professional. Then there was the lushness of her gently rounded body clad in the simplest of clothing that struck the first spark of sexual interest he’d felt in far too long.
Not that he would ever do anything about it. He couldn’t.
‘My secretary took down the details,’ he continued, forcing both halves of his brain to work together so that his voice came out far more harshly than he’d intended.
‘I know,’ she said calmly, and an intriguing hint of a smile hovered at the corners of a mouth that didn’t seem to have a trace of artifice deepening its soft rose colour. ‘She’d left the “y” off the end of my name and added it to my chromosomes.’
He almost chuckled at the clever play on ideas, strangely delighted when he realised that there was more to this woman than met the eye, but he ruthlessly subdued the unexpected impulse. Any attraction that he felt for her would be nothing more than a momentary aberration…it could never be more than that, not since…
‘Well, if “xx” is willing to work as hard as “xy”, I will have no cause for complaint,’ he said shortly, the old pain and the never-ending guilt gripping him anew even as he tried to banish the bitter memories from his mind.
‘In that case, where do you want me to start?’ she offered, and he felt a strange sense of disappointment when he saw the way she’d deliberately switched off any warmth in her expression, but what else did he expect when he’d been so cold with her?
A demanding cry behind him drew his attention before he could answer her question.
‘Come and meet Abir,’ he invited, and was puzzled by the arrested expression on her face, those startling green eyes of hers wide with what looked almost like surprise as they travelled from his mouth to his own eyes and back again.
He frowned, wondering what on earth was the matter with the woman as he gestured towards the child in the plastic isolette.
‘He was delivered by emergency Caesarean when his mother went into full eclampsia, but there were no adverse after-effects. Both mother and child were doing well…until she noticed that his head was not like the heads of the babies of her friends.’
By this time they’d reached the isolette and he broke off to murmur a few soothing words to the fractious infant before he continued.
‘Her doctor was not really sure what was the matter with the child, and there was no paediatric specialist nearby, so as she was the sister of a…friend…’ he prevaricated, avoiding specifying the real connection between Abir’s family and his own, ‘I was asked to see the child.’
He ran his hand over the child’s head, mourning the fact that all this silky dark hair would be gone in a matter of minutes now, as he was prepared for the life-changing surgery. He refused to let himself remember cradling another little head, little knowing just how short that precious life would be.
Abir had settled under his touch, his big dark eyes gazing up at the two of them with that strange solemnity that he sometimes saw in these little ones.
‘If you would like to clean your hands, you could make an examination of Abir,’ he invited, and stepped aside slightly to gesture towards the child, inviting Dr Emily Livingston to make her own assessment of Abir’s condition.
‘I used antibacterial gel on my hands just before I stepped inside the room,’ she said, then startled him by blushing softly. ‘And apart from trying to shake hands with you, I haven’t touched anything since then.’
‘So…’ He repeated his gesture towards the infant, who seemed almost as captivated by the woman’s blonde hair as he was.
‘Hello, Abir. Haven’t you got beautiful big brown eyes?’ she crooned as she bent down to bring her head almost to the same level as the child’s. She reached out a slender hand to stroke a gentle finger over the back of a chubby little fist and smiled when the little one immediately grabbed it and held on tightly.
‘That’s a clever boy,’ she praised as she began to stroke her other hand over the silky dark hair covering the unusually shaped skull, her voice taking on an almost sing-song quality that clearly mesmerised the child.
The tone of her voice stayed the same as she continued speaking softly to the little one so that it was a couple of seconds before Zayed realised that she was now speaking to him.
‘Without seeing any X-rays, I’m assuming that this is craniosynostosis, with some of the cranial sutures fusing before birth,’ she said with an air of steady confidence in her diagnosis that impressed him no end. Her fingertips were gently tracing the lines where the joins between the plates of the skull were already showing pronounced abnormal ridges. ‘Is there a genetic component here— any history of Crouzon or Apert in the family, for example?’
‘An uncle and a cousin,’ he confirmed. ‘But we only found that out when we started questioning the rest of the family. As neither of the affected members has survived, their disfigurement meant that they are rarely mentioned any more, and especially not in front of a pregnant woman.’
‘For fear her baby will “catch”the problem?’ she asked with a smile in the baby’s direction that had him gracing her with an answering open-mouthed, gummy grin.
‘That sort of superstition still lingers in some of the more remote villages in Cornwall, too,’ she continued, this time smiling directly up at him as though sharing a particularly delicious secret as she added, ‘At one time, it even included redheads being banned from visiting.’
‘And what would be your preferred treatment modality?’ He wouldn’t allow himself to be beguiled by a pair of sparkling green eyes. There was no point.
‘Surgery, of course, to excise the affected bone,’ she answered, so promptly that he wasn’t sure whether it was her own decision or one based on the fact she’d already been told about the impending surgery.
‘Because?’ he probed with unexpected intensity, suddenly needing her to be able to justify her assertion, although he had no idea why.
‘Because otherwise the fact that the bones had already fused before he was born will mean that there’s no room for expansion and his brain will end up terribly damaged. If I remember correctly, a linear craniotomy and excision of the affected sutures is most effective when performed in the first three months of life,’ she added.
She
