Harlequin Medical Romance March 2016--Box Set 1 of 2 by Carol Marinelli

Author:Carol Marinelli
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781460395318
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2016-05-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVEN

THEY HAD ALL the gear. Malu was as settled as they could make him. The pneumothorax had to be fixed now.

There was one slight problem.

Josh’s right hand shook.

Maddie had cleaned the gash on his arm and pulled it together with Steri-Strips, but it ran almost from his elbow to his shoulder.

He hadn’t lost sensation. There was no reason why his hand should shake.

It shook.

Maddie had prepped and draped Malu’s underarm. She’d used ketamine as an adjunct to the morphine, making Malu dozy but not soundly asleep.

What was needed now was local anaesthetic. It was a procedure that needed care, knowledge and a steady hand. The anaesthetic needed to be infiltrated through the layers of the chest wall, onto the rib below the intercostal space. The needle then had to be angled above the rib and advanced slowly until air was aspirated. The last five mils of the anaesthetic needed to be injected into the pleural space.

Josh knew exactly what to do. He’d done it before. He’d do it again—this was his job, trauma medicine.

His hand shook.

‘Josh?’ Maddie’s voice was a soft whisper. She was holding the torch.

She’d have seen the tremor.

‘I can do this,’ he muttered under his breath, and he closed his eyes and counted to ten, trying desperately to steady himself.

He opened his eyes and his hand still shook.

I can’t. But he didn’t say it. Malu was still sleepily conscious. The last thing Malu needed was to sense indecision in his surgical team. Instead, he glanced up at Maddie, their eyes locked and held...

I can’t.

‘Slight change of roles,’ Maddie said, without so much as a break in her voice. It was like this was totally normal, first cut one toenail, then cut another. ‘Malu, Josh is looking at your ribs and thinking you don’t need his great masculine forefinger to be making a ruddy big hole. Not when we have my dainty digits at the ready. So we’re swapping. Hold on a second, Dr Campbell, while I scrub and glove. It now seems I get to play doctor while Josh plays the lady with the lamp.’

And Malu even smiled.

She was amazing, Josh thought as he took the torch from her. She’d made what was happening sound almost normal. She was stunning.

She was hours after giving birth. How could she?

‘Maddie, can you?’

‘Steady as a rock,’ she said, smiling at him with all the assurance in the world, and she held up her hands to show there wasn’t the hint of a tremor. There should have been. After what she’d gone through. ‘Though we’re hoping Malu’s not rocklike. Malu, if you’ve been working out I might need to get a drill rather than a teeny, tiny needle. Why you guys think you need muscles is beyond me. Give me a guy with a one pack rather than a six pack any day.’

She was still distracting Malu. He was holding the torch—he could hardly help her on with her gloves but she used the backup method—using one sterile glove to tug on another.

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