filled the doorway.
Lexi felt her stomach hollow out and her heart did that hit-and-miss thing all over again. Could this really be happening to her? What twist of fate had led Sam to be her sister’s surgeon? She’d thought he’d planned to be a renal transplant surgeon. She hadn’t for a moment suspected he would be Bella’s doctor. It would be even harder to avoid him now. There would be ward rounds and consultations in his rooms, follow-ups if the surgery went ahead. Lexi was the one who mostly ferried Bella around. How was she going to deal with being confronted with the pain of her past on such a regular basis?
‘Bella,’ the nurse said cheerily. ‘This is Mr Sam Bailey, the heart-lung transplant surgeon newly arrived from the US. We’re very lucky to have someone of his calibre working for us. And lucky you, for you are his very first patient at SHH. Mr Bailey, this is Bella Lockheart.’
Sam held out his hand to Bella. ‘Hello, Bella,’ he said. ‘How are you feeling?’
Bella blushed like a schoolgirl and her voice was nothing more than a soft mumble. ‘I’m fine, thank you.’
‘And this is Lexi Lockheart,’ the nurse continued with a beaming smile as she turned to where Lexi was standing. ‘You’ll see a lot of her around the place. She’s a tireless fundraiser for SHH. If you have spare cash lying around, watch out. She’ll be on to you in a flash.’
Lexi cautiously met Sam’s gaze. How was he going to play this? As strangers meeting for the first time? Surely he wouldn’t acknowledge their previous relationship, not in a place like SHH where gossip ran as fast as the wireless broadband network, sometimes faster. His professional reputation could be compromised if people started to speculate about what had happened between them in the past.
He put out his large, capable hand, the same hand that had once cupped her cheek as he’d leant in to kiss her for the first time, the same hand that had skimmed over and held each of her breasts, the same hand that had stroked down to that secret place between her thighs and coaxed her into her first earth-shattering orgasm. Lexi slowly brought her hand to his, trying to ignore the way his warm palm sent electric zaps all the way to her armpit and back.
‘How do you do?’ he said in his deep baritone voice.
So it was strangers, then. ‘Pleased to meet you, Mr Bailey,’ she said, keeping her expression coolly polite. ‘I hope you settle in well at SHH.’
‘I’m settling in very well, thank you,’ he said, his eyes communicating with hers in a private lock that made her flesh tingle from head to foot.
She slipped her hand out of his and stepped back so he could speak to Bella. Her hand fizzed and tingled and she shoved it behind her back as she watched as he interacted with her sister with a reassuring mix of compassion and professionalism.
‘I’ve been going over your history in a lot of detail, Bella,’ he said, ‘especially your lung function over the last couple of years. I guess I don’t have to tell you that there’s been significant deterioration.’
Bella’s grey gaze looked shadowed with worry. ‘Yes, I’ve been admitted to hospital more often with chest infections and it takes longer and longer to clear things up. I’ve only just started to improve and I’ve been in here almost three weeks.’
Sam gave an understanding nod. ‘I’ve looked at your latest CT scans and lung function studies. The lungs are very scarred. That’s making them stiff, so it’s no wonder you’re struggling to breathe when you exert yourself or when you get even a minor infection.’
Bella bit her lip and dropped her gaze to the magazines on her tray table. It was a moment before she looked up at Sam. ‘Am I getting to … to the end? How much time do I have left?’
Sam gave her thin shoulder a gentle squeeze. ‘We’re getting to the stage of needing to do a lung transplant within the next couple of months. I’ve started the active search for a matching transplant donor. If we find one we need to move straight away before you get another bout of pneumonia. We could find a donor in a day, a week or a couple of months. I’m afraid that longer than that and the chances get worse of keeping you well enough to survive the surgery.’
Lexi listened with dread, feeling like a ship’s anchor had landed on the floor of her stomach. It was such a massive operation. What if it didn’t work? What if poor Bella died on the operating table or soon after? So much of it seemed up to chance: the right donor; whether Bella was well enough at the time to be the recipient; whether she would survive the long operation. So many factors were at play and no one, it seemed, had any control over any of it, least of all Bella.
Bella must have been thinking the very same thing as she said, ‘What are my chances of coming through the operation?’
Sam was nothing if not professional and knowledgeable and encouraging in his manner. ‘With modern anti-rejection therapy there’s better than an eighty-five per cent chance that you’ll survive the surgery and live a good-quality life for the next ten years. After that there’s not much data, but expectations are that anti-rejection management will continue to improve and that you could end up living a fairly normal life.’
‘You’re in good hands, Bella,’ the nurse said. ‘Mr Bailey is considered one of the world’s leading heart-lung transplant surgeons.’
Sam acknowledged the nurse’s comment with a quick on-off smile as if he was uncomfortable with praise. Perhaps he was worried about operating on someone to whom he had a connection, Lexi thought. Not that he had ever met Bella before, but he had been intimately involved with Lexi. Clinical distance was paramount in life-and-death surgery. A surgeon could not afford to let the pressure of a relationship, no matter how distant or close, interfere with his clinical judgement. She hoped her involvement with him in the past wasn’t going to complicate things for Bella.
‘I’ll keep you informed on things as we go along, Bella,’ Sam said. ‘You’ll stay in the medical ward until your health improves. If a donor becomes available and you’re healthy enough, we’ll move you across to the transplant unit. Otherwise we’ll send you home until something comes up.’
‘Thanks for everything, Mr Bailey,’ Bella said blushing again. ‘I really appreciate you taking me on.’
Sam smiled and gave Bella’s shoulder another gentle touch. ‘Hang in there, Bella. We’ll do all we can to get you through this. Just try and keep positive.’
He gave Lexi a brief impersonal nod as he left with the nurse to continue his rounds.
Lexi didn’t even realise she was holding her breath until Bella looked at her quizzically. ‘It’s not like you to be so quiet when there’s a handsome man in the room,’ she said.
Lexi felt her face heating and tried to counter it with an uppity toss of her head. ‘He’s not that handsome.’
Bella raised her brows. ‘You don’t think? I thought you had a thing for tall muscular men with dark brown eyes.’
Lexi gave a dismissive shrug. ‘His hair is too short.’
‘Maybe he keeps it short for convenience,’ Bella said. ‘He’s in Theatre a lot. Any longer and it would get sweaty under the scrub hat during long transplant operations.’
Lexi made a business of folding each sheet of the tissue paper into a neat square, lining them up side by side on the bed.
‘He’s
