Tempted by the Rebel Surgeon
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JC Harroway
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16
CHAPTER ONE
LAUREN HARVEY EXPECTED the same promptness in others that she herself practised. As a consultant in the busy Emergency Department of Auckland’s Gulf Harbour Hospital, she was rarely disappointed. Typical that today of all days, when she’d struggled to set aside her personal troubles, the minute she arrived at work brought one of those rare occasions.
‘Have the surgeon paged again, please, Grady,’ she said to her good friend and the ER’s most senior nurse, then inserted an intravenous cannula into the sixty-six-year-old man’s arm and attached an infusion of intravenous antibiotics.
The monitor displaying the man’s vital signs—heart rate, blood pressure, oxygen saturations and respiratory rate—emitted an eardrum-popping alarm, telling Lauren what she’d already deduced. This man was seriously ill and needed to be admitted for an urgent laparotomy.
She needed the on-call surgeon. Now.
Grady silenced the monitor alarm and adjusted the rate of oxygen flow to the patient’s mask and then ducked out of the curtained-off bay.
Lauren pulled up the erect abdominal X-ray on the computer screen in order to confirm her diagnosis: an intestinal perforation. Breathing through her frustration with the lack of response from the paged surgical registrar, she completed the required paperwork. She understood the clinical pressures of this job and shouldn’t take out her volatile mood on her junior colleagues. As one of life’s planners, she simply liked to run an efficient and reactive department.
Her mind wandered again to the reason for her distraction. Ben, her younger brother, had left home for university in Wellington, not flown a solo mission to the moon. He’d be back for visits. They would speak on the phone. She was overreacting. It was just that she’d been his only maternal figure since he was eight and she was eighteen; it was hard to switch off the caring gene.
Glancing again at the time, Lauren typed up the patient’s clinical history and her observations at the man’s bedside. She ordered a second raft of blood work, pre-empting investigations the surgical team would likely require. She would give the on-call registrar two more minutes to show up. Then she would place a personal call to them through the hospital switchboard. That should reset their priorities in line with how she ran the department. All junior staff quickly learned that Lauren Harvey ran a tight ship. She was fully aware of her reputation as something of a severe taskmaster, but she was fair and dedicated to patient care. Second to her little family, which comprised her father and Ben, her job was her life.
With her back to the entrance of the treatment bay, she registered a swish of the curtains and breathed a sigh of relief. The flash of green surgical scrubs in her peripheral vision, the vague impression of a tall manly shape confirmed that the on-call registrar had finally graced them with his presence. For now, she’d bite her tongue in front of their patient, but later, in private, she’d have a word with the surgeon about his laid-back timekeeping.
‘Glad you could join us,’ she said without turning away from the monitor. ‘This is Mr Ellis.’ She smiled at the patient and began reeling off the pertinent facts required to hand over the patient to the care of the surgical team. ‘He’s a sixty-six-year-old man with a history of peptic ulcer disease, well-controlled diabetes and ischaemic heart disease.’
She’d fully worked up Mr Ellis for admission. All the registrar would need to do would be to consent the man for Theatre and wield the scalpel. Clicking through the images on the screen, she located the relevant X-ray and continued. ‘He presents with symptoms of peritonitis and has signs of perforation—free air under the diaphragm.’ She pointed to the X-ray displayed overhead. ‘He’s tachycardic and hypertensive.’
She sensed movement behind her and, still without glancing his way, stepped aside so the newcomer could access the computer monitor, which displayed the relevant blood test results.
‘Mr Ellis,’ she addressed the patient, her hand on his shoulder, ‘the surgical team are going to take over your care from here. Are you feeling more comfortable?’
At the patient’s nod and muffled, ‘Thanks, Doctor,’ she adjusted the blanket over his shoulders.
‘Our Clinical Nurse Specialist, Grady, is going to insert an NG tube for you,’ she continued to address the unusually silent surgeon. The specialty was renowned for attracting doctors well versed in taking control of any situation. ‘And we’ll keep the patient nil by mouth, although he denies eating today.’
She finally turned to face the surgeon, expecting thanks.
‘Mason!’ The name flew from her lips before she could stop it, before she had a chance to dampen her shocked reaction at seeing her ex standing there in all his jaw-dropping glory. He was dressed like any other surgeon: green surgical scrubs, a theatre hat covering his dark unruly hair, a stethoscope slung around his neck, but as well as the last man she thought she’d see standing in her department, he was surely the sexiest doctor to have ever existed.
‘Dr Harvey,’ Mason replied with a twitch of his lips and a smile in his piercing grey-blue eyes. The look, which could have lasted a split second or a hundred years, somehow conveyed everything that they’d once been to each other, every intimate moment and whispered promise. But Lauren must surely have imagined those things, because on second glance she only saw polite recognition, as if they were total strangers, which of course they were now. It had been six years, after all.
Lauren swallowed, relieved to find that her mouth wasn’t hanging open. What was he doing standing in her ER without explanation, resembling a surf bum not a doctor, all tanned and relaxed as if he’d just strolled in from the beach?
‘What are you doing here?’ she asked automatically, her feelings bruised and her mind abuzz with questions. But now wasn’t the time or the place for an in-depth reunion. Despite what they’d once been to each other, he was just the registrar she would need to put in his place for keeping her and Mr Ellis waiting.
Relaxed, in control and in no way surprised to see her, Mason moved to the patient’s bedside. ‘You called me,’ he said in an obvious and reasonable answer while mirth danced in his eyes. ‘I’m the locum on-call surgical registrar.’
Fresh annoyance bubbled in her veins. He must have known that she still worked at Gulf Harbour. He would have been prepared for their paths to cross when he took the locum position. Why hadn’t he called, warned her that he was back? Had she meant so little to him that he hadn’t given her a single thought?
Lauren cleared her throat, trying to gather her composure while her face burned with embarrassment. Thinking only of the patient and not her confusion and Mason’s obvious indifference to her, she made introductions. ‘Mr Ellis, this is...um... Dr Ward.’
Even saying his name made her throat scratchy with long-repressed emotion for that part of her past. Fortunately she’d had her family and her job to focus on after their break-up. And, over the years, she’d forced herself to shut down any painful and pointless moments of weakness and curiosity for Mason’s well-being and whereabouts.
After medical school, despite planning to travel to Europe together, they’d gone their separate ways. Lauren had stayed in Auckland, lived in her family home and helped her widower father to care for her younger brother while she’d worked her way up the career ladder here at Gulf Harbour, the very hospital where she herself had been born.
And Mason? After his first job in outback Australia, she’d heard a rumour that he’d joined Medicine Unlimited, an international non-profit organisation that provided medical care in countries affected by conflict or natural disaster. She’d forced herself to deliberately lose track of which war-torn country he’d travelled to, which international medical emergency he had followed and finally grown accustomed to the fact that she would never see him again.
Now, for some reason, he was back at the hospital where they’d both trained, his diverse and comprehensive experience and confidence written all over his outrageously handsome and mature face.
In contrast to her shocked and fumbling introductions, Mason calmly and professionally took charge, the way she would have expected from a surgeon.
‘I understand you’ve had some abdominal pain,’ he said to Mr Ellis, taking the man’s pulse.
Mr Ellis nodded, seemingly unaware of the tense currents swirling between the reunited ex-lovers. Lauren could barely breathe for the pressure those currents exerted on her lungs.
She took a shaky breath, blaming her temporary fragility over Ben’s leaving home. It had nothing to do with her ex rocking up looking better than ever, a feat she would previously have deemed impossible. The younger Mason had made her insides quiver, but she was no longer that awed young woman who had struggled to see what outgoing, popular golden boy Mason Ward could have possibly seen in quiet, studious and responsible Lauren Harvey.
In fact, the only thing they’d had in common back then was the mutual absence of their mothers—Lauren’s deceased from colon cancer and Mason’s had abandoned him the year they’d met, moving to Australia after divorcing his father.
She snapped herself out of it, using her usual rational brain to deal with Mason’s sudden reappearance. Yes, she felt ambushed, irrelevant, annoyed that he could resume that professional façade so quickly and act as if they barely knew each other, as if they hadn’t known each other intimately, when for the last three years of med school they’d been an item. But this was her department, her hospital. She even had seniority, a fact she would reiterate as soon as she could get Mason alone.
Her body heated from head to toe at that idea.
Disgusted with her own weakness, and cursing that, at thirty, she wasn’t happily married or living with the man of her dreams, she tore her eyes away from the broadness of Mason’s back and shoulders, which were more manly, more defined than she recalled. She had once known everything about him, physically and emotionally, as close as they’d allowed themselves to become, anyway. Two troubled students with nothing in common beyond the pressures of their demanding course and their rampant physical attraction.
‘Any vomiting?’ Mason asked the patient, the epitome of composed professionalism.
Another nod from Mr Ellis. ‘Just once, Doctor.’
With that, a subdued-looking Grady re-entered the bay carrying a treatment tray for inserting a nasogastric tube. Mason flicked him an easy smile and then laid a large, capable-looking hand on Mr Ellis’s rigid abdomen. Lauren shivered, discomposed by the sight of his tanned hands—elegant fingers, square nails, a smattering of dark hair across his knuckles—a part of him she’d always found insanely attractive. Especially when the touch of those hands had been directed at her.
She looked away. The last thing she needed to add to today’s emotional milieu were hormones. How dare Mason be so unaffected, so blasé and arrogant as to swan into the department after being twice summonsed and act as if they’d never met before, as if he hadn’t cared one jot for her, as if he hadn’t moved on and never looked back. Not that Lauren herself had confessed any of her own feelings at the time. Then, like now, she’d had no desire to admit to anything so fragile as emotional vulnerability. She was a doctor, had responsibilities. She needed to be strong.
Reasserting her presence back into the consultation, Lauren interjected, ‘There’s been no history of haematemesis, but Mr Ellis reports two days of melaena suggestive of an upper GI bleed.’
She consciously slowed her breathing, battling the absurd irritation she felt that Mason Ward had disrupted her morning and her ER by simply showing up. She was a mature professional woman, despite the silly misplaced excitement or curiosity or whatever it was fluttering in her chest. Far too busy to have time for any sort of game-playing with this man from her past.
Staying in the hospital where they had been medical students might not have been the most daring or adventurous thing to do, but she’d had other responsibilities, to her family, to the memory of her mother.
Not everyone could run away from their problems the way he’d done.
Mason turned his perceptive eyes on her—a jarring shock that catapulted her back in time—as if he’d heard her uncharitable and unfair thought. She’d understood why he’d had to leave Auckland, just like he’d said he understood why she needed to stay.
‘Cardiac markers?’ he asked, tugging his stethoscope from his ears, as if he was used to barking out requests from juniors, as if she were subservient and he were the consultant.
Lauren tore her stare from his sculpted mouth, pressed her own lips together, lips that recalled his kisses all too well.
Forget kissing, where was his deference, his respect, his decency? Had he lost those traits on his world travels? The younger man she’d known had a reckless streak, was driven but always polite.
Now he seemed far too laid-back, self-assured and indifferent to Lauren for her liking.
She reached for her own stethoscope where she’d left it on the foot of the bed and looped it around her neck. She wouldn’t show him how much his appearance had dismantled her, nor would she berate him in front of the patient.
But he could rest assured that there would soon be a reckoning.
‘Cardiac markers were negative,’ she said, her own tone curt. ‘Blood sugars, electrolytes and renal function also normal.’
Regaining control of herself and her emotions, she prepared to exit. ‘I’ll leave you in Dr Ward’s capable hands, Mr Ellis.’ She smiled reassuringly at the man who would soon be under Mason’s knife. She could only hope that he was a good surgeon, that he’d worn away the chip on his shoulder that came from him being a part of a famous and infamous surgical family. In Lauren’s opinion, he certainly had some work to do as a junior doctor in this hospital.
She might no longer know more about him than how his kisses, his touch, his whispered nothings had once, when she’d allowed her guard down long enough for feelings to escape, made her feel as if he was the centre of her universe, but she knew that with his confidence and hint of arrogance he’d more than likely made a name for himself overseas.
Too bad she’d have to take him down a peg or two, set him straight on how things worked in her department. Despite their past, he was just like all the other registrars in this hospital. Nothing special.
She swished aside the curtain, paused before leaving, settled her eyes on Mason, her heart beating like a rabbit’s because, no matter what she told herself, her body seemed intent on reacting to the delicious sight of him. ‘Please find me once you’ve admitted Mr Ellis. I’d like to welcome you to Gulf Harbour properly, elucidate you on the ER’s protocols and procedures, now that you’re back.’
With her missive delivered in what she hoped reflected cool, in-command professionalism, she turned on her heel and went in search of her next patient.
Every step away from his unsettling presence grew more sure-footed, the memories of them together fading. This was her turf. Mason Ward and the intense connection of their past were irrelevant, despite the fact that, physically at least, he appeared to still possess the skills to be utterly distracting.
