The Italian Surgeon Page 4

  The words hit against her skin like sharp stones, but with the entire team looking at her with varying degrees of interest or concern, depending on how long they’d known her, she could hardly throw a tantrum and refuse Alex’s request. Especially as he wouldn’t have asked if there’d been any alternative! She’d be here, she knew his work, she knew exactly what the baby would be attached to when he left Theatre—so who better to explain?

  ‘No worries,’ she said, using a phrase she’d heard repeatedly during her time in Australia. And if her voice was hoarse and the words sounded less convincing than when an Aussie said them, that was too bad. It was the best she could do under the circumstances.

  With duties handed out, the meeting broke up, though Alex signalled for Luca and Rachel to stay.

  ‘Luca, if you wouldn’t mind having dinner with Annie and me tonight, I’ll give you a run-through of how we do the procedure. Actually, Rachel, you should come too if you can. I’ll give Annie a quick call to let her know she has extra mouths to feed, then, Rachel, can I see you privately for a moment?’

  Rachel nodded glumly, and watched him walk behind the partition that provided the only bit of privacy in the big room.

  Luca turned to her.

  ‘Did I imagine something going on there, a tension in the air? Is Alex perhaps aware you don’t like to get involved with patients? If so, why is he asking you to do this?’

  Luca’s dark eyes scanned her face and the sympathetic anxiety in them, and in his voice, weakened the small resolve Rachel had built up during a kiss-less day.

  ‘He’s asked because there’s no one else, and he wants to see me privately to give me a hug and say he’s sorry he had to ask.’

  ‘You know him so well?’

  Rachel smiled at Luca’s incredulity.

  ‘On Alex’s team we’re a bit like family—a grown-up family that doesn’t live in each other’s pockets—but we’ve shared good times and bad times and we stick together through them all.’

  Alex appeared as she finished this explanation and Luca politely left the room, though the scene panned out exactly as Rachel had foretold.

  ‘I’m sorry to ask you to do this,’ Alex said, giving her a big, warm hug.

  ‘That’s OK,’ Rachel told him, and though, deep in her heart she wasn’t at all sure it was OK, she was also beginning to think it was time!

  ‘You’ll be all right with it?’

  She stepped back and looked at the man with whom she’d worked for a long time.

  ‘And if I’m not?’ she teased, then was sorry when she saw him frown.

  ‘Of course I’ll be all right,’ she hurried to assure him. ‘Quit worrying.’

  He hugged her once again, but she doubted he’d obey her last command. Alex worried over the well-being of all his team.

  She’d just have to prove herself tomorrow.

  Or maybe she shouldn’t, because she certainly didn’t want this patient-contact stuff to become a habit…

  Luca was waiting for them outside, and, though she could practically hear the questions he wanted to ask hammering away in his head, he said nothing, simply falling in beside her as they walked to the elevator, and staying close in a protective way that should have aggravated Rachel, but didn’t.

  He held her jacket for her before they walked out into the cool spring air, and brushed his fingers against her neck. His touch sent desire spiralling through her, although she knew it was a touch of comfort not seduction.

  This was madness. It was unbelievable that physical attraction could be so strong. And as surely as it fired her body, it numbed her mind so she had difficulty thinking clearly—or thinking at all a lot of the time!

  So she didn’t. She walked between the two men, and let their conversation wash across her, enjoying the sharp bite of the southerly wind and the smell of smoke from wood fires in the air.

  Annie greeted them as if she hadn’t seen them an hour or so earlier, and introduced Luca to her father, Rod, and Henry, her dog.

  Henry, Rachel noticed, seem to approve of Luca, bumping his big head against Luca’s knee and looking up for more pats.

  There’s no scientific proof that dogs are good judges of character, she told herself, but that didn’t stop her feeling pleased by Henry’s behaviour.

  Which brought back thoughts of brain transplants…

  Annie ordered them all to the table, already set with cutlery, plates and thick slices of crunchy bread piled high in a wicker basket in the middle. She then brought out a pot only slightly smaller than a cauldron, and set it on the table.

  ‘Lamb shanks braised with onions and cranberries,’ she announced. ‘Help yourselves, and take plenty of bread to mop up the juice.’

  Discussion was forgotten as they tucked into the appetising meal, and it was only when they were all on second helpings that Alex began to explain exactly what the upcoming operation entailed.

  ‘It is the same procedure I use,’ Luca told him, when Alex had finished speaking. ‘I’m confident I can explain it well to the parents. I’ve seen you in action with explanations, remember, and I know you always tell the families of the problems that can arise during an operation, as well as the hoped-for outcomes.’

  Alex nodded.

  ‘We talk about “informed decisions”,’ he said, ‘but I fail to see how parents can make informed decisions if they aren’t aware their child could die, or suffer brain or liver damage, during open-heart surgery. And it is equally important they know they will still have a very sick child after surgery, and be prepared to care for that child for however long it takes.’

  ‘In your experience, do most parents accept this?’ Luca asked. ‘Have you had parents who opted not to let you operate?’

  Alex hesitated, his gaze flicking towards Rachel.

  ‘Many of them over the years,’ he admitted. ‘And I have to respect their decision, though in some cases I was sure the outcome would have been good. But family circumstances come into play as well. Not all families can afford a child who will need a series of operations and constant medical attention for the rest of his life, yet this is all we can offer them in some cases.’

  ‘It is a terrible choice, isn’t it?’ Luca said.

  ‘It is, but I refuse to end a pleasant evening on such a gloomy note,’ Annie declared. ‘Dad, tell us some murder stories—that’s far more fun.’

  Rod, an ex-policeman who now wrote mysteries, obliged with some tales of bizarre and intriguing true-life cases from long ago.

  ‘Rod’s stories might not have been ideal dinner party conversation,’ Luca said, as Rachel guided him on a short cut home across a well-lit park, ‘but they got us away from that depressing conversation.’

  He spoke lightly, but he’d been sitting beside Rachel at the dinner table and had felt her tension—which had begun back when Alex had asked her to speak to the patient’s parents—escalating during the meal. There was a story behind it and much as he wanted to know more, he was reluctant to ask, fearing it might break the fragile bond he believed was developing between them.

  He glanced towards her. She was walking swiftly, her hands thrust deep in her jacket pockets, her head bent as if she had to concentrate on the path beneath her feet, but the unhappiness she was carrying was so strong it was like a dark aura around her body.

  This was not the Rachel he knew, she of the glorious hair, and the sunny smile, and the smart remark. This was a person in torment, and her pain, unexpectedly, was reaching out and touching him. He could no more ignore it than he could refuse to help a child in trouble.

  He put his arm around her and guided her to a seat in the shadow of a spreading tree. Her lack of resistance reassured him, and once they were seated he tucked her body close to his and smoothed his hand across her hair, holding her for a moment in the only way he knew to offer comfort.

  ‘Will you tell me what it is that hurts you so much? Why Alex had to give you a hug?’

  She turned and looked at him, studying his face
as if he were a stranger, then she looked away, back down at the ground, her body so tight with tension he was sure he could hear it crackling in the air around them.

  Then she nodded, and he held his breath, wondering if she’d tell the truth or make up some story to stop him asking more.

  But when it came he knew it was not make-believe, because every word was riven with raw pain.

  ‘Years ago, I was going out with this man. I found I was pregnant, we got married, the pregnancy was normal, the scans showed nothing, but the baby was early. I was staying with my parents at the time and had the baby in the local town hospital. He was diagnosed with HLHS, which was ironic considering I was working even then with Alex. Yet I hadn’t given having a baby with a congenital heart defect more than a passing thought. I haemorrhaged badly during the birth, and had blood dripping into me, and drugs numbing my mind, so the paediatrician spoke to my husband, explained the situation, told him to talk to me and think about the options, which included transferring the baby to Alex’s hospital. But that didn’t happen. My husband made the decision not to operate.’

  Rachel’s voice had grown so faint Luca barely heard the final words, and he was repeating them to himself—and feeling something of the horror and loss Rachel must have experienced—when she spoke again.

  ‘It didn’t matter, as it turned out,’ she said harshly. ‘The baby died that night, before he could have been transferred.’

  Dio! Luca thought, drawing the still-grieving woman closer to his side and pressing kisses of comfort, not desire, on the shining hair.

  ‘Oh, Rachel, what can I say?’ he said, and knew the emotion he was feeling had caused the gruffness in his voice. ‘You are a very special person. I knew this from your work, but to know your sorrow and see you helping other people’s babies, assisting them to live—that shows more courage than I would have. More than most people in the entire world would have.’

  He felt the movement of her shoulders and knew she was shaking off his praise, and perhaps a little of her melancholy. Something she confirmed when she straightened up, moving away from him, and said, ‘It was four years ago. I don’t usually crack up like this. I guess Alex asking me to talk to the parents brought back memories I thought I’d put away for ever.’

  ‘No matter how deeply you might bury it in your brain, I doubt you could ever put the loss of a child completely away,’ Luca told her, hearing in his voice the echoes of his own buried memories.

  She stood up and looked down at him, and even in the shadows he could see the sadness in the slow smile she offered him.

  ‘Maybe not,’ she said, ‘but you do get past thinking of it every minute of every day, so maybe now it’s time for me to get past seeing other babies who are ill, and thinking of my Reece.’

  Luca stood up too, and took her hand, the clasp of a friend.

  What happened to your husband? he wanted to ask. Her name was her own, he knew that, and she wore no ring. Had she divorced the man who’d made the decision not to try to save her baby? Because of that decision?

  But surely, with his wife so ill as well, it could not be held against him, especially as the baby died anyway!

  ‘My husband visited me in hospital the next day,’ she said suddenly, making Luca wonder if he’d asked his question out loud. ‘He brought his girlfriend and explained that she, too, was pregnant, and he’d like a quickie divorce so he could marry her.’

  She stopped again, and this time, in the light shed by a lamp beside the path, he saw mischief in the sadness of her smile.

  ‘I threw a bedpan at him. Best of all, I’d just used it. The pan hit him on the nose—I’d always been good at softball—but she didn’t escape the fallout. Petty revenge, I know, but it sure made me feel better.’

  Luca put his arms around her and hugged her tight.

  ‘Remind me never to upset you when you have a scalpel in your hand,’ he teased.

  Then they continued on their way, friends, he felt, not would-be lovers.

  Not tonight!

  CHAPTER FOUR

  IT WAS both better and worse than Rachel had thought it would be, walking into the room where two anxious parents sat beside their infant son. Better, she had to admit, because Luca was there, not holding her hand but standing shoulder to shoulder with her, as if he knew she needed some physical support.

  Worse, because the baby was so beautiful. She tried so hard not to look at whole babies, preferring to concentrate on the little bit of them left visible by the shrouding green drapes of the theatre.

  But this baby drew her eyes and she looked at him while Luca introduced them both.

  She shook hands automatically, her attention still on the physical perfection of the tiny child. Smooth soft skin, downy fair hair, rosebud mouth and dusky eyelashes lying against his cheeks. A chubby baby so outwardly perfect her arms ached to hold him and hug him to her body.

  The perfection, however, was spoilt by the tube in his nose, and the hum of the ventilator, and the drip taped to his fat little starfish hand.

  ‘He’s wonderfully healthy,’ Luca said, examining the baby boy.

  ‘Apart from his heart,’ the father said.

  ‘Yes, but some babies with the same problem have not done well in utero,’ Luca told them, ‘so they are very fragile even before we operate. Your…’ He hesitated momentarily and Rachel filled in for him.

  ‘Bobbie.’

  Luca smiled at her, a special smile that started the faintest whisper of attraction happening again.

  Damn, she’d thought she’d got rid of that last night!

  ‘Your Bobbie,’ Luca was saying, ‘is so well, we will not hesitate to operate unless you decide otherwise.’

  He went on to explain exactly what the team would do, how long it would take, and what would lie ahead for the family.

  ‘You will have been told,’ he said, ‘that with hypoplastic left heart syndrome, this will be the first of three operations to rebuild Bobbie’s heart into a properly functioning mechanism. This first, which we call the Norwood, is the most complex, and carries the most risk, and Bobbie will have the longest recovery time from it. Maybe three or four weeks in hospital. Then, when he’s four to six months old, we do the second stage, a Glenn, and finally when he is two or three, we will do an operation called a Fontan. These operations are usually called after the surgeon who first performed them, which is why they have strange names.’

  ‘And then? After three operations?’ the mother asked.

  ‘He will still need constant monitoring and regular visits to the cardiologist, but the outlook is quite good,’ Rachel said, knowing it because she’d read up on all the outcomes for the operations they did—and practically knew the stuff on HLHS by heart. ‘He won’t have any significant developmental delays—apart from those caused by frequent hospitalisation during his first few years. He’ll be able to play sport, though he shouldn’t undertake really vigorous exercise.’

  ‘So these operations won’t make him totally better? They won’t make him normal?’

  It was the mother again, and Rachel, though she doubted anyone could define ‘normal’ satisfactorily, understood her concern.

  ‘No. We can remake his heart so it works, but it will never be a so-called normal heart,’ she said, then she glanced at Luca.

  He must have read her thoughts for he nodded.

  She turned back to the worried parents.

  ‘Look, you two have a lot to think about. Why don’t you talk about it? And when you want more answers, or want to know more about the operation or Bobbie’s post-op state, ask the sister to page us and we’ll come straight back. We’ll just be in our office on the other side of the PICU.’

  Bobbie’s parents looked relieved, so Rachel ushered Luca through the door.

  ‘We tell them too much at once,’ she said to him, upset and frustrated because she could sense the parents’ doubts. ‘I know we have to explain it all to them, because otherwise they can’t make an informed decision, b
ut it’s hard for people to assimilate all the medical terms and the possible outcomes when they’re worried sick about their baby to begin with.’

  Luca nodded. ‘I sometimes think it is the worst part of my job—that, and telling parents I could not save their baby.’

  His choice of words startled Rachel.

  ‘Do you say “I” or “we”?’ she demanded, only realising how strident she must have sounded when Luca turned to her in surprise.

  ‘I say “I”,’ he responded.

  ‘But that’s taking all the responsibility on yourself, and that puts more pressure on your shoulders. It’s a team effort. You should say “we”.’

  Luca smiled at her.

  ‘I’m serious,’ Rachel told him, ‘You’re operating on tiny human beings. There’s enormous pressure on you anyway, so why add more?’

  He touched her lightly on the shoulder.

  ‘I am not smiling because I think you are wrong, but because of your passion. It tells me much about you.’

  His words slid like silk across her skin and she shivered in the warm hospital air. Last night she’d thought friendship was replacing the attraction she’d felt for Luca, yet one word, huskily spoken in his beguiling accent, and her nerve-endings were again atwitter while her body hungered for his touch.

  Passion!

  She wasn’t entirely sure she understood exactly what it was. But unless she found something else to put the brakes on what was happening, she might soon be finding out.

  Back at her desk, Rachel took a cautious sip of coffee, sure it would be too hot, then glanced at Luca as he fished in his pocket.

  ‘I had my pager set to vibrate rather than buzz. It seems the parents have talked and we’re needed again. Only this time it will be your turn.’

  He looked anxiously at her, banishing her thoughts of passion, which, contrarily, made Rachel angry.

  ‘I didn’t tell you stuff last night to make you feel sorry for me, but because I thought you should know. I’m a professional—I’ll do my job in there.’

  ‘I know you will,’ he said, ‘but do not tell me what to feel in my heart.’