Harlequin Medical Romance April 2016, Box Set 2 of 2 by Emily Forbes

Author:Emily Forbes
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781460396292
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2016-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVEN

TOMAS WAS NO better the next morning. The drugs Max had prescribed had had to be topped up in the small hours and when Max saw him at eight, he was starting to slip into an abyss of pain.

‘Enough,’ Max told him. ‘If it’s okay with you, Tomas, we’re going in. I’ll operate. Sam will do the anaesthetic.’

‘And Hettie will be there, too?’ Tomas demanded. Hettie had come into the ward with Max and was standing at his side, waiting for orders.

‘I’m not much use,’ Hettie told him. ‘I just get to stand around and watch the doctors do their thing.’

‘Yeah,’ Tomas growled. ‘Like we know that’s true. There’s no one on this island we’d rather have than Hettie in an emergency,’ he told Max. ‘We’re limited in doctors. The number of times she’s had to step in, stitch people up, help mums with bubs, cope until a doc can get here... She ought to be a doctor, our Het. Some of us reckon she already is.’

‘Hush,’ Hettie told him. ‘Don’t give him any ideas. If you think it’s fun to chop people open...’

‘I reckon you could do it if you had to,’ Tomas said stubbornly, and Max glanced at Hettie and saw her blush, and thought he wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if Tomas was right.

‘So you want Hettie there in case Sam or I fall over?’ he asked, and Tomas managed a weak grin.

‘That’s the one. With Hettie I know nothing will go wrong.’

She’s that sort of woman, Max thought. Though the weird fantasies of last night had slipped back where they belonged, into the realms of tired night dreams that could be safely ignored, it still gave him curious comfort to think that when he left the island Hettie would stay on. It was as if the island was safe in her hands.

His daughter intended to stay here. Maybe in time Hettie could even deliver her babies. She could be here for her.

As he couldn’t? Because he could no longer do family?

Enough. He turned to the drug chart and started writing up pre-meds.

He had a patient to operate on. Medicine.

He needed to concentrate on practicalities, not emotion.

* * *

How many appendectomies had he performed in his working life? Max had lost count. He should be able to do this in his sleep, and yet enough had presented challenges over the years for his adrenaline levels to rise as he stepped into the theatre.

This place didn’t have back-up, either. It had no highly equipped intensive care unit and no specially trained theatre staff.

It shouldn’t matter. He’d already figured that Sam Taylor was extremely competent. A fly in, fly out surgeon and anaesthetist came once a month, but in the interim Sam and Keanu did most of the low-key surgery, even though they weren’t specifically surgically or anaesthetically trained. Sam surely knew what he was doing now. He discussed the levels of anaesthesia with a calmness that spoke of years of practice.

And Hettie was good, too.

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