Harlequin Medical Romance December 2015, Box Set 2 of 2 by Louisa George

Author:Louisa George
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Harlequin Medical Romance
ISBN: 9781459293694
Publisher: Harlequin

CHAPTER SEVEN

THE SCRUB NURSE greeted Heath as he prepared for the first patient.

‘Abby, we have Phoebe Johnson, a podiatric surgeon from Washington, joining us this afternoon,’ Heath announced as he turned off the tap with his foot and shook the water from his hands into the scrub room trough.

‘Hi, Phoebe, welcome aboard.’

‘Pleased to meet you, Abby.’

Phoebe slipped her freshly scrubbed hands inside some surgical gloves. Her long dark hair was in a flat bun and neatly secured inside a floral cap, and like the other two she was already dressed in sterile blue scrubs. They entered the theatre just as the patient was drifting off under anaesthesia.

‘So, today’s patient is a thirty-five-year-old professional skateboarder. He’s here for a lateral ankle ligament reconstruction. The ankle has not responded to non-surgical treatment and has been unstable for over six months,’ Heath informed the surgical team, including two observing third-year medical students as he began marking the stained sterile area. ‘Would you like to lead on this one, Phoebe?’

Phoebe was both flattered and pleased to be asked. Heath was a complex man, but a man who treated her as his equal, not only in words but in actions.

Quietly she declined. ‘I’d prefer to assist today. We can switch it around another time, perhaps.’

‘Certainly.’ Heath looked over his surgical mask at Phoebe for slightly longer than required before he averted his eyes back to the patient. ‘I routinely use the modified Brostrom procedure.’ He confidently made a J-shaped incision over the outside of the patient’s left ankle with his scalpel, identified the ankle ligaments and began the process of tightening them, using anchors that he placed on to the fibula bone.

Phoebe appreciated the way he led the students through the procedure by describing the steps clearly and precisely.

‘I’m stitching other tissue over the repaired ligaments to further strengthen the repair,’ he said as he continued, with Phoebe holding the incision open with forceps.

Phoebe had done many of these operations over the years. ‘That looks great, Heath. Very clean and tidy. I’ve had a few when I’ve needed to use tendons to replace the ligaments. I’ve woven a tendon into the bones around the ankle and held it in place with stitches, and occasionally a screw in the bone. I’ve utilised a patient’s own hamstring tendon before. But it made it a much longer operation as I had to take the hamstring tendon through a separate incision on the inside part of the knee.’

Heath nodded in agreement. ‘On more than one occasion I’ve needed to use a cadaver tendon and had to weave it into the fibula bone. There’s many ways to solve a problem like this, and as we know each has its merits.’

Phoebe and Heath worked together as if they had been operating as a team for years—or at the very least months. Their effortless collaboration would be deceptive to any external observers, who might not think that this was their first time together in the operating theatre. Phoebe was able to pre-empt Heath’s next move, and neither of them could deny their natural synchronisation.

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