The Neurosurgeon's Unexpected Family by Deanne Anders

Author:Deanne Anders
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2021-02-02T15:56:31+00:00

CHAPTER NINE

LEAVING THE OPERATING ROOM, Hannah all but danced. She had passed the test required by the hospital to allow her to assist William in the OR and she couldn’t wait to get back to the office to tell him. Her phone vibrated in the back pocket of her scrub pants and she pulled it out to see a text from William asking how it was going.

Done and passed! she typed. Her phone rang immediately.

“Meet me in the emergency room,” William said, his words clipped, cold. She knew the tone only too well now. There was a critical patient who was not doing well.

“I’ll head there now,” she said as a bit of the adrenaline from her excitement drained from her.

While she understood why William internalized his feelings during surgery and when dealing with a patient that needed emergency care, she wondered how healthy it was for him to hold it all inside. It seemed that underneath all that control lay the root of whatever it was that made him think he needed to go through his life alone.

She’d only recently realized that even all of his hobbies were solitary. Had he spent so much time alone in the house his father had built that he didn’t know how to live life any other way? Of course, his life was changing now with Avery. Whether within his comfort zone or not, he would be joining the rest of the world.

She spotted William’s tall frame and brown hair above a group standing outside one of the trauma rooms and joined them. She also spotted a couple of officers, which sent shivers through her. Their presence meant that the patient was likely either a crime victim or a suspect.

“Excuse me,” she said as she pushed past an X-ray technician leaving the crowded space.

Then she saw her.

Her arm still wrapped in the Velcro splint she’d been wearing the last time Hannah had seen her, there was now an ugly scar above her eye, the greenish hue of old bruises standing out against her pale face.

Jeannine Jones had been intubated and a respiratory tech was quickly setting up the ventilator. Grabbing a pair of gloves from the dispenser, Hannah made it to the side of Jeannine’s bed. She carefully pushed the woman’s hair back from the side of her face to assess her swollen, bloody eye.

“Orbital fracture?” she asked as William joined her.

“No, thank God. The blow knocked her back and she hit her head against a fireplace hearth. CT shows a cranial fracture with a subdural hematoma that I’ll have to fix in the OR once she’s stabilized.”

He showed no emotion to the outside world, but Hannah knew him now and he didn’t have to raise his voice for her to see how angry he was that they hadn’t been able to save this woman. Did he look at her lying so lifelessly and see the body of his mother? she wondered.

“Where’s her husband?” Hannah asked the officer taking information from the emergency doctor.

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