Date with a Surgeon Prince(23)

She’d stripped off the abaya and was wearing jeans and a loose shirt, and just the sight of her stirred thoughts he shouldn’t be having right now.

‘I suppose the infection can’t be anywhere but in the graft?’

Marni had caught up and was walking beside him, but apparently her mind was still firmly fixed on Safi. Gaz swung his mind back that way, determined to concentrate no matter how distracting he found his colleague.

‘The site’s red and swollen and obviously painful. The nurse who changed his dressing this morning should have noticed and alerted someone.’

‘I wondered,’ Marni said, ‘but I didn’t like to touch it.’

‘You did enough, cooling him down and alerting the staff. Without you—’

He stopped, so angry, so upset for the little boy he needed his own language—and bad words from it—to release his rage.

But not at Marni!

‘Thank you for being there—for caring enough to call in to see him,’ he said, and lifted his hand to touch her on the shoulder. ‘From me and from Safi!’

She didn’t move away from his touch but turned towards him, the slight frown he’d seen before creasing the smooth creamy skin of her brow—and even a frown caused inappropriate reactions.

‘But he’s been on antibiotics since the operation—I saw that on his chart—and you’ve started stronger antibiotics—would they not work in time?’

Gaz shrugged.

‘I daren’t take the risk. Yes, there’s risk involved operating when he’s harbouring something bad, but…’

He sighed, before adding, ‘I thought because our hospital is so new we’d avoid things like this for a few more years. The problem is that so many of the bad ones target bone, and the grafted bone is likely to be badly compromised.’

The crease in his companion’s forehead deepened.

‘So you’ll take the graft out, then how long before you could do another one? You’d have to clear the infection first, and where could you harvest the bone? His other hip?’

Her mind was obviously more focussed than his had been—no inappropriate reactions for Marni!

‘I’ll take it out, that’s enough for Safi today. Later, when we know he’s clear of infection, yes, I’ll have to harvest some new bone and, yes, probably from his other hip. Poor lad. He’s been through so much and bears it all so bravely. I’d have done anything to have saved him from this.’

They’d stopped in the corridor outside the theatre changing rooms; the orderly and nurse pushing Sufi’s gurney moved on and through the theatre’s swing doors.

‘Will he be able to go home to his family before the next op?’

Gaz studied her for a moment, so aware of her as a woman it was hard to concentrate on the question she was asking.

‘And why do you wish to know?’

A faint colour rose in her cheeks.

‘Well, if you must know, although I genuinely care about Safi and want what’s best for him, I’m so darned confused about all that’s happened today, and then walking along beside you as if nothing had happened, well, it seemed best just to keep talking about practical things rather than have a fit of hysterics in the hospital corridor.’

Her cheeks grew pinker and her eyes dropped to study the floor between their feet, and he felt an overwhelming urge to give her a hug—a big hug, a warm hug, a non-sexy hug, although how long the non-sexy part would last was a moot point.

‘Me too,’ he said, ignoring the urge. He touched her lightly on the elbow and waved her through the door into the changing rooms.

He’d obviously made good use of his time during his trip from the palace to the hospital, for an anaesthetist Marni had worked with before was already attending to Sufi, talking quietly to him as he set his drip on a stand and prepared to give him a pre-op sedative.

Jawa was also there and greeted Marni warmly, although she did raise her eyebrows.

‘But you’re off duty,’ she murmured.

‘And doing me a favour.’

It was Gaz who answered for her, coming into the theatre behind her.

‘It is Marni who found Safi so ill,’ Gaz added, causing Jawa to look from him to Marni, so many questions in her beautiful dark eyes Marni knew she’d have some explaining to do later.

Personal explaining, for all it might go against the local custom!

Three hours later, Safi was wheeled away to Recovery, the open wound where the graft having been cleaned out and left with a drain in it to leach out any more of the poison. Marni felt tears prick at her eyelids and knew it was tiredness—well, tiredness and the stress of the totally bizarre day, and her heartache for little Safi, who had already suffered so much, and underlying it all her worry over Pop…