Marion Lennox - Stormbound Surgeon

Iluka Base Hospital. It had a good ring to it.

It had a crazy ring. He was trying to think about something other than the way Malcolm’s hand was gripping Amy’s.

He was losing his mind!

ONCE back at the nursing home they concentrated on medical matters-much to Joss’s relief. He could function as a doctor. It was this interpersonal stuff that he couldn’t handle.

It was the way he felt about Amy!

The inmates of the nursing home were back in medical mode as well, and Joss looked at his crazy medical team and saw that they were really enjoying this. The drama had lifted them all out of themselves. Maybe next week they’d go back to being senior citizens but for now they were needed and useful, and they’d never been happier. They helped Malcolm out of the police van with the same expertise as they’d unloaded Charlotte two days ago.

Marie even put a detaining hand on Joss’s arm and said, ‘Doctor, you’re dripping blood. You come with me and I’ll dress it before you start looking after anyone else.’

Bemused by the old lady’s starched efficiency, he let her apply a fast dressing-enough to stop blood staining the carpet-and then he followed Amy to where she’d organised X-rays.

This place was running like a well-oiled machine and he thought, What a waste for it to turn back into a nursing home… For now, however, it was an acute-care hospital and he could treat it as such. He turned his attention to the X-rays.

Much to Joss’s relief, the contusion on Malcolm’s forehead didn’t match a skull fracture. The skull was fine. There was only the hip. Which was bad enough.

To Joss’s huge relief there was little bone damage. The force of the impact on the rocks had punched Malcolm’s femur out of the rim of the cup, but the cup itself was intact. There’d be nerve damage, Joss thought as he studied Amy’s pictures. The sciatic nerve would be traumatised and that could well mean months of pain before it resettled. But for now there was only the matter of getting the femur back in place before the hip was irretrievably damaged.

‘Can we organise helicopter evacuation?’

‘Kitty checked while you were doing your hero stuff,’ Amy told him. ‘The weather reports are saying the wind’s dying and the rain has cleared. The place where they’ve landed before is deep mud but Jeff’s organising gravel to be laid now. It should be possible to bring in a machine by this evening.’

‘Not until this evening?’ He winced, staring at the X-ray. ‘This won’t wait.’

‘Can you do it?’

‘With your help. Are you willing to do the anaesthetic?’ It wasn’t fair to ask her but he must.

Her gaze was untroubled. ‘Yes. It has to be easier than Charlotte. Doesn’t it?’

He gave her a faint grin of reassurance. ‘Yes, it does. But contact the helicopter people and tell them we do need an evacuation, even if it’s late. With a hip dislocation there may well be nerve damage. He’ll need specialist assessment for long-term care. But the first thing to do is get the ball back into the socket. I’ll ring the orthopod at Sydney Central and run this by him, but I think he’ll tell me what I’m already guessing. This can’t wait until this evening. We need to do it now.’

Amy gave the relaxant anaesthetic almost without guidance. She was getting to be an expert, she thought grimly. Joss was setting himself up for the procedure ahead and, while Malcolm slipped under the anaesthetic, she had a moment to think.

What on earth was Malcolm doing here? This was so out of character for him that it was crazy.

It didn’t make sense-but a moment’s thought was all she had. Joss was ready.

‘We’ll administer suxamethonium as well,’ he told her. They’d stripped off their outer gear and scrubbed, but there was time for no more. ‘The muscle will have seized up as the hip wrenched out of place.’

Mary was in Theatre as well this time, so he had two trained nurses-or rather, two trained nurses under eighty, with Marie and Thelma still acting as back-up. Mary was beginning to think she’d missed out on the excitement of Charlotte and if there was any more excitement to be had she’d like a hand in it, too, please. From nurses who’d been willing for Amy to shoulder total responsibility, she and Sue-Ellen were now both actively looking for ways to help.

The hospital was seeming more and more an acute-care facility and all the staff were stepping up a notch in their expectations of themselves.

Amy could only be grateful. Her hand might be rock steady as she administered the anaesthetic, but inside she was jelly.

This was Malcolm.

Or…maybe it wasn’t just that. Maybe part of it was reaction. To watching Joss haul himself up those damned rocks. To seeing the water wash over him…

‘Ready?’ Joss asked and she took a deep breath.

‘Ready.’

In the end it was fast. Joss had done this once before as a surgical registrar, but he’d done it then under supervision. It wasn’t the same as doing it alone. More than anything, he wanted a skilled orthopaedic surgeon to be present-but it was himself or no one.

What was the old adage? See one, do one, teach one? If that was the case, he’d be ready for a teaching job tomorrow. With that wry thought he started.

The moment the muscle relaxant took hold, Joss placed his knee up on the table to give him greater leverage. Once in position he took hold of Malcolm’s upper thigh. While the two nurses watched in astonishment-this wasn’t like any surgery they’d ever seen-he lifted his other knee until he was kneeling completely on the table. Now he was gripping Malcolm’s right leg, the lower leg at ninety degrees to the upper.

This didn’t look like any operating scene you’d see in the movies, Amy thought, stunned. This was a real manipulative nightmare, where what was called for was a mixture of brute strength and skill. And courage.

‘Can you lean in and push down on each side of the upper pelvis?’ Joss demanded. He was breathing hard-what he was attempting took as much strength as skill, and it wasn’t a job for weaklings. He needed Amy to do this. In truth, he needed another strong male, but once again Amy was the best that he had.

‘Here?’

‘Yes. Right. Both hands flat and push as hard as you can. Mary, take over the monitor for a moment. Right, Amy. Now!’

She pushed. Joss pulled, smoothly but sharply and with all his force.

The joint slid back with a sound somewhere between a dull pop and the clunk of two pieces of wet timber being knocked together.

The thing was done.

‘Fantastic,’ Joss said. He climbed off the table, found a chair and put his head between his knees. And stayed there.

Amy stitched Malcolm’s leg-and then she stitched Joss.

‘Because the doctor’s leg really needs stitches, Amy,’ Marie had started scolding the minute they came out of Theatre. ‘If you don’t do it,’ the old nurse added, ‘then I will, and my eyesight’s not all that good.’

So while Mary supervised a recovering Malcolm, Amy took Joss into her office, closed the door and demanded he remove his still damp clothes. When he demurred she simply pushed him into a chair and removed his trousers for him. Plus the rest of his wet clothes. She handed him a hospital gown and barely waited for him to be respectable before she hauled off Marie’s makeshift dressing over the gash on his leg.

‘I’m a grown woman,’ she told him. ‘Plus I’ve been a trained nurse for years. There’s nothing I haven’t seen so let’s get on with it. Modesty’s for sissies.’

‘I’m not-’

‘Moving. No, you’re not. If you try, I’ll fetch half a dozen senior persons and we’ll tie you down.’

‘Amy…’

‘Shut up and let me do what has to be done.’

It was a jagged tear, not so deep as to be serious but ragged enough to definitely need stitches. Joss sat on the day-bed in her office while she applied local anaesthetic, cleaned and debrided the edges and then set herself to the task of sewing him up.

It was a weird sensation, Joss decided as he sat and let her suture. It was a sensation of being completely out of control.

It was a feeling to which he was growing more and more accustomed.

‘What do you reckon Malcolm was trying to do?’ he asked, more to keep his mind off what she was doing than anything else. He could feel her pulling his skin together but it wasn’t the feel of her stitches that was the problem. It was the feel of her, period. Her touch against his skin. The way her braid fell forward over her shoulder while she worked. The way those two little concentration lines appeared on the bridge of her nose and her tongue came out-just a peek. She was concentrating.

She was gorgeous!

Yeah, right. The lady might be gorgeous but she had a fiancé who was recovering in the next room. Her fiancé was a man who’d risked his life to see her.

Dopey git!

And Amy’s words echoed his thoughts.

‘It does seem a little over the top.’

He agreed entirely. ‘Even Romeo wouldn’t have been so daft.’

She thought about that and applied a couple more stitches. ‘Romeo was pretty daft.’

That pleased him. He wasn’t quite sure why, but it did. ‘You mean your own personal Romeo’s act of devotion doesn’t meet with your unqualified approval.’

‘He could have picked up the telephone and called with much less dramatic effect.’

‘Where’s the romance in that?’

‘The rain’s almost stopped and the forecast is for decent weather at last. The ferry may well be up and running by tomorrow. Surely he could have waited.’

‘So you’re going to be…how sympathetic?’

Amy thought about it. ‘I guess I’d better be a bit sympathetic. Though if he thinks I can help with the repayments on a splintered speedboat…’

‘It was his speedboat?’