The Surgeon's Convenient Fiancée (Medical Romance) (19 page)

Mungo and Fleur already knew that their granny had made Deirdre their legal guardian for the future, if need be. They also knew that the lawyer had advised that her chances would be better if she were married, should Jerry make trouble. Nothing was assured. They accepted it with the stoic matter-of-factness of the young. They had to be with someone; they had to be taken care of until they were in a position to take care of themselves, to earn a living. These days, the higher education process was lengthy.

* * *

‘Mark’s coming round here tomorrow,’ Mungo said. ‘Is it all right if we talk about it to him? I want to know what he thinks.’

‘That’s all right. Shay’s already discussed it with Mark,’ she said.

‘Go for it, Dee,’ Mungo said quietly. ‘He’s a great guy.’

‘I agree,’ Fleur said.

Deirdre smiled.

Later that night, when the kids were in bed and Deirdre sat on the floor of the sitting room in front of the gas fire, she tried to collect her thoughts. Absently, she stroked the purring cat. Uppermost in her mind was happiness, a strange contentment, as the love she felt for Shay seemed like a miracle that she could never have dared hope for. Although she wanted to call him and accept, she knew that she must think things through first, all the practical things—where they would live and so on, and the fact that her love for him was not reciprocated in the same way. Of course, he cared for her—that much was obvious when they were together—but it seemed to have more to do with a strong physical attraction.

‘Ah…’ She stretched out her legs in front of her on the carpet, her feet towards the fire. It was good to have the weekend ahead of her, not to be on duty. A steady rain pattered on the roof, while strong gusts of wind buffeted the house from time to time, making the inside feel secure and safe.

To add to her feeling of strange happiness
was a letter from her parents that had been waiting for her when she got to the house, to say that they were planning to come home very soon. They missed her very much and needed to come back. She still needed her parents, their wisdom and advice, their love. It had seemed very odd to her not to have her family around her, although Fiona and the kids were like family. In times of crisis you needed the people you loved, who loved you in return, unconditionally.

As though on cue, her mobile phone rang.

‘Hi, sweetheart,’ Shay said, his voice tired. ‘I was hoping I’d find you still up. How are you?’

‘All right,’ she said huskily.

‘I’m on call, have just finished an emergency repair of ruptured spleen about an hour ago,’ he said. ‘The patient’s stable, nothing else doing right now, so I wanted to hear your voice.’

‘I’m missing you,’ she said, smiling.

‘Can’t live without me?’ There was laughter in his voice.

‘It seems like that,’ she said.

‘Good,’ he said.

‘Shay…could we become engaged?’ she said impulsively, having only just thought of it. ‘I like the idea of being engaged. It’s a promise of sorts. I think I’m a traditional woman, in the best sense, I hope.’

Shay laughed. ‘I think it’s a great idea. Why didn’t I think of that? Do you fancy throwing a ring in my face if you decide against marrying me?’ he said.

‘It’s an idea,’ she said, laughing. ‘Although I don’t think I want a ring. At least, not the usual diamond or other precious stone ring. Maybe silver and amber, something chunky but not expensive. Just so that I can remind myself what I might be letting myself in for when I look at it.’

‘We’ll look for one,’ he said.

‘P
ASS ME TWO
of the long Debakey clamps, please, Deirdre,’ the surgeon said to her, not looking up as his hands were in the abdominal cavity of their patient on the operating table. ‘Then I’ll have a piece of tape for retraction, mounted on one of those long, angled clamps.’

‘Yes,’ Deirdre said, looking at her array of instruments on one of her wheeled tables that stood beside the operating table. She was the scrub nurse and had everything laid out neatly in rows and types of instruments, so that she knew exactly where everything was, and could put a hand on what was needed immediately.

It was late morning and the routine operating list of elective cases had been temporarily suspended in room one while an emergency case took precedence. They had been told
that a man with a dissecting aortic aneurysm was coming in by ambulance, and the case would be theirs as they had just finished a procedure. They had rushed around getting the room ready for this emergency in which, if the aneurysm ruptured, the patient could bleed to death in minutes.

An aneurysm was an abnormal ballooning out of a small section of an artery. When it was ‘dissecting’, this weak area was gradually splitting open and leaking blood. Because the artery had to be clamped during the operation, cutting off the blood supply to the lower part of the body, they had to work quickly, methodically and efficiently.

Deirdre passed the clamps, then the piece of thin cotton tape used for retraction. Shay smiled at her briefly, his eyes lighting up behind his protective goggles and mask. He had been pressed into being an assistant to the vascular surgeon for this emergency, as his operating room had been taken over anyway and he could not proceed with his own operating list.

Deirdre smiled back, glad he was there, then her eyes scanned her instruments and
equipment again, memorizing where everything was placed.

There was a quiet tension in the room; no one spoke unless absolutely necessary. The vascular surgeon would cut open the aneurysm with a vertical incision, now that the artery had been clamped above and below it, then a graft of synthetic material would be sewn to either end of the damaged section of the artery, to form, essentially, a new blood vessel. The walls of the aneurysm would be trimmed and sewn over the graft to protect it. They would use a very fine suture needle and a fine silk or nylon suture that was also very strong, as it had to withstand the pressure of the blood flowing through the artery.

There could be complications in this operation, as the blood supply to the lower part of the body was cut off while the major artery was clamped. Deirdre’s mind ranged over these possibilities, as she prepared for the next move.

‘I’ll take the Dacron graft now, please,’ the surgeon said, after a while. ‘Give me a medium-sized one.’

The circulating nurse dropped the graft,
in its sterile package, onto Deirdre’s instrument table.

The operation went on steadily, as it should, with Deirdre mounting the tiny suture needles onto suture holders for the surgeon to use in sewing the graft to the cut end of the artery. When the graft was securely sewn into position and the cut portion of the artery sewn over to protect it, the moment of reckoning would come when the surgeon released the two clamps on the large artery to allow the blood to flow once again, this time through the artificial vessel. It was a tense few moments, when they had to be sure that there was no leakage of blood from the graft. If there was leakage, it meant more sewing. Sometimes blood leaked out later, in the recovery period, in which case the patient had to be subjected to another operation to correct it. So they took great pains to assess the handiwork of the surgeon before he closed the abdominal cavity. She kept careful count of the large gauze sponges, blood-soaked, that came out of the abdominal cavity.

Just before the end of the operation, the
internal telephone rang, and was answered by the circulating nurse.

‘Excuse me, Shay,’ she said quietly, having come over to stand near Shay. ‘That’s the front desk to say there’s an outside call for you from your son. He doesn’t want to leave a message.’

It was impossible for Deirdre not to hear what the nurse had said, as she was standing at the side of the operating table directly opposite Shay. Her heart gave a sickening lurch. Every parent dreaded getting a personal call at work from a child, as it so often was not good news.

She looked at Shay sharply, noting the sudden stillness in him for those few seconds during which he contemplated the message.

‘He’s still on the line?’

‘Yes.’

‘Please, get a number—it should be his mobile phone—and I’ll call him back in about fifteen minutes. If it’s an emergency, he will have to leave a message.’

‘All right, Shay.’

So Mark was calling his father because something serious had happened. Family
members knew not to call the hospital for any other reason. Deirdre felt frightened, her concentration on the job momentarily broken. Mark had become almost like a son to her, which he would be if she were to marry Shay. She liked him, felt protective towards him, in spite of his veneer of sophistication beyond his years, and felt a delicate maternal love flowering within her where he was concerned.

In the month that had passed since Shay had asked her to marry him, she and Shay, plus the three children, had spent a lot of time together, often sharing an evening meal at one place or another. After each occasion, it seemed to her, they felt more and more like a family.

As for Jerry, he had been away for long periods, only passing through for one or two nights. Deirdre had carefully told him nothing of her plans, of her relationship with Shay, and had asked the children not to mention it to him. As for her new job, he seemed unconcerned. So long as everything carried on as usual for him, he was not interested. If not for the fact of Moira’s money, he no doubt
would have sold the house, left the children with her or their grandmother, where they belonged anyway, and disappeared from their lives. Deirdre had long ago decided that she could tolerate the status quo so long as Fiona remained well.

Quickly she pulled her thoughts back to the job in hand, checked what she had to hand next to the surgeon. There would be time later for Shay to tell her what was going on with Mark. Nonetheless, the feeling of anxiety remained with her.

‘I’ll need a vacuum drain, Deirdre,’ the surgeon said.

‘Yes,’ she acknowledged, picking up the drain that was on her table—it consisted of a plastic box that could be compressed to create a vacuum and form a suction when attached to tubes. One of the tubes would be placed inside the abdominal cavity through a small incision made for the purpose. This drain would siphon off excess fluid and any blood that accumulated in the cavity.

When they were about to sew up the abdominal cavity, bringing the operation to an end, the surgeon spoke quietly to Shay.
‘Thanks a lot for your help, Shay. Much appreciated. If you want to leave now, we can manage from here.’

‘Thanks, Doug,’ Shay said, backing away from the operating table. ‘I appreciated the opportunity. It’s been a while since I’ve seen a dissecting aneurysm.’

In seconds he had taken off his bloodstained latex gloves, the nurse had undone his surgical gown for him, he had stripped it off and left the room.

Deirdre felt her anxiety level increasing, as she hoped he would come back at the end of the operation to tell her what had happened. It would be a while before she could get away herself for a late lunch. Now she was conscious of being very hungry, desperate for a cup of coffee, and had already decided to go to the hospital cafeteria for a proper meal.

There was still a lot for her and the circulating nurse to do before either of them could leave to get something to eat. In a major operation like this, with the abdominal cavity open, all the sponges, instruments and suture needles that were on the sterile set-up had to be counted twice. Before Shay departed they
had completed one count; now they had to do the second count.

When Deirdre looked at the clock, she was surprised to see how much time had elapsed since she had last checked. At this rate, she would be working late, staying on to help the evening shift nurses, who were due to check in for duty at a quarter past three.

When the second count was completed, she passed the surgeon the first suture for the sewing up. The circulating nurse gave her the thumbs-up sign, signalling that she had done a good job. It had been a long time since she had last assisted with a ruptured or dissecting aneurysm. The little knot of anxiety that had seemed to settle in the pit of her stomach at the start of the operation, over whether she could cope, dissipated now that she was on firm territory. It was replaced more clearly by a worry about Mark.

When the operation was over and the patient wheeled out on a stretcher to go initially to the recovery room, from where he would go on later to the intensive care unit, Deirdre stacked her used instruments in a bowl of water. All would be wheeled by her out
to the dirty prep room, where they would be cleaned and sterilized. Now that it was finished, her concentration over, she felt fatigued. Her back ached, as well as her feet. The longing for a cup of good coffee, which she had felt for the last hour or two, translated itself into a craving now.

‘Shall I go on for a lunch-break now?’ she called to the circulating nurse as she wheeled her used instruments on a bowl-stand through the door.

‘Sure, Dee. You must be starving. I’ll set up here for Shay’s next case.’

Having divested herself of the dirty instruments and other equipment, Deirdre washed her hands at the scrub sinks, took off her paper hat, ran her fingers through her hair and put on her white lab coat over her scrub suit. She would go to the locker room to change her shoes, then go down in the elevator to the lobby and on to the cafeteria.

There were several other people in the elevator, no one she knew, and they all got off
en masse
in the lobby. Deirdre found herself pushed forward with the small crowd, and as she turned to cross the lobby in the direction
of the corridor to the cafeteria, she saw Shay crossing the lobby ahead of her. Her face lit up with a welcoming smile.

He did not see her, his face intent and serious as he strode towards the main entrance. From where she stood, watching him, Deirdre saw him go up to a woman who was waiting just inside the main doors. Then the welcoming smile that she had prepared for him froze on her face as she watched him take the woman in his arms and give her a hug.