The Legendary Playboy Surgeon. Alison Roberts

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СКАЧАТЬ aware that Kate was still there and that she’d heard every word of that emotional exchange. Surely she couldn’t have missed the undercurrent? The reason why Connor had been prepared to break so many rules here?

      She hadn’t. He could see it in her face, which had gone a shade paler. And in the way her eyes seemed to have grown a lot bigger. He hadn’t noticed how blue they were before.

      ‘I … I don’t know what to say,’ she stammered awkwardly.

      ‘Don’t say anything, then,’ Connor advised wearily. He had to get away. If he was going to cry, it had to be out on the motorway where the moisture could be attributed to the wind getting in his eyes.

      He got the motorbike moving again with a jerk. Kate was still standing there, opening and closing her mouth as though she really wanted to say something but couldn’t think what. She looked like a stranded fish.

      And she was still giving off a disapproving vibe. Maybe she still intended to do something about his misdemeanour. Connor felt sandwiched between the constraints of the establishment she represented, with its inability to do enough for someone like Liam, and the weight of grief he could feel emanating from that private room down the end of the ward where a mother would be cradling her dying child.

      He had to push back against one of those barriers or he wouldn’t be able to breathe.

      ‘You know what?’ Connor shook his head. ‘You need to get a life. You’re about as buttoned up as that ridiculous coat you’re wearing.’

      Her coat?

      What was wrong with her coat?

      Kate collected the samples that needed urgent testing to see whether a two-year-old girl had meningitis. The nurse who handed them over had clearly been crying very recently. Other staff members were huddled at the central station, clutching handfuls of tissues. One took a sheet of paper emerging from the printer in the corner and held it up. Someone else stifled a sob.

      Kate craned her neck a little to see what they were looking at. It was a large copy of a photograph. A small boy, his head almost obscured by the oversized helmet he was wearing so that what jumped out at the viewer was his grin. And what a grin. Bright enough to make anything else in the image irrelevant, even the tangle of IV lines that were coming from the central line just under his collar bone.

      She turned and walked away with something close to panic nipping at her heels. The emotions were so raw here but what was she hurrying towards? Something even worse?

      Arriving at the pathology department, Kate delivered the samples.

      ‘Do them immediately,’ she instructed. ‘Phone through the results but make sure a hard copy goes straight to the ward.’ She eyed an empty slot at the bench. ‘Maybe I should do it myself.’

      ‘They’re waiting for you downstairs.’ The lab technician’s grimace conveyed sympathy. They all knew what was waiting for Kate this afternoon. What they didn’t know was how unbearably difficult it was going to be.

      ‘I don’t think I can do it.’

      The head of the pathology department, Lewis Blackman, said nothing for a moment. He gestured for Kate to sit down in the small, windowless office.

      In his early sixties, Lewis was a quiet man. Overweight, silver-haired and thoughtful.

      ‘Remind me why you chose pathology as a specialty, Kate?’

      Oh … Lord … was he going to tell her she wasn’t suitable? Everybody expected her to take over as HOD when Lewis retired in a few years. She expected it herself but how could she if she couldn’t handle the downside of what this job entailed?

      Lewis was waiting patiently for a response. Kate’s thoughts travelled back in time. To when she’d been a nurse and had hated the frustration of being on the sidelines. Being treated as a lesser being by those who got to make the diagnoses and then treat the patients. She thought of how hard she’d struggled to support herself by doing killer night shifts while she’d put herself through medical school. Then she remembered what it had been like being a junior doctor. She’d probably had more respect than others, being a little older and more experienced in the world of medicine, but she’d still felt as though she was on the outside somehow.

      ‘I saw pathology as being the lynchpin in almost every critical case. Every doctor, no matter how skilled they are, can’t do their job unless they know what they’re dealing with. Sometimes they’re holding their breath for what we can tell them, like when they’re in Theatre, waiting for the result of a tumour analysis.’

      Unbidden, her thoughts flashed up an image of Connor Matthews. Not in Theatre, with his scalpel poised waiting for word from the pathology department, though. Oh, no, she could picture him dressed in his leathers. Dark and disreputable and prepared to break any rule in the book to grant a wish for a dying child.

      She sucked in a slightly ragged breath.

      Lewis was nodding. ‘True enough. But you could stay in a laboratory to do all that. You could avoid being anywhere near the morgue and you’d never have to do an autopsy.’ Kate ‘s heart took a dive. ‘But that can be the most exciting part of this job. Finding out what went wrong … so … so it doesn’t happen again. It can be like putting together the most challenging jigsaw puzzle in the world. Finding the piece that maybe nobody even knew was missing.’

      Lewis smiled, nodding. ‘Satisfying, isn’t it?’ He eyed Kate. ‘You do the neatest, most thorough autopsies I’ve ever seen and I’m including my own. You could have been a brilliant surgeon, you know.’

      ‘I’m happy where I am. I have my life exactly the way I want it.’

      Lewis merely quirked an eyebrow. What was he thinking? That she was thirty-five years old and single? That she lived alone and had a passion for things in test tubes or on microscope slides or, worse, for dead bodies? That she was a freak? Someone to be pitied?

      ‘You need challenges, though, don’t you? Something to keep that sharp mind of yours intrigued? Isn’t that why you want to take over the forensic specialty?’

      Kate had to nod but her teeth were worrying away at her bottom lip as she did so.

      ‘Coroners’ cases are often about an unexplained death that has a medical cause or trauma that’s come from an accident, but some of the most important cases are crime related and the detail we can give can make a difference to whether the perpetrator of a crime is punished. Our report can be essential for making sure a murderer or rapist or child abuser can’t do any more harm out there.’

      Kate was still nodding. She knew that. She had also had a taste of the kind of excitement that came from unravelling the totally unexpected. Of not knowing what could come through the door, disguised in the heavy latex of a body bag. Sometimes the victims came directly from the scene of the crime. Often, though, they made it to hospital and lived for a short time. Occasionally, there was the added trauma of someone having to make the decision to turn off life support. Like today’s case.

      Lewis was looking somewhere over the top of Kate’s head now. ‘You’re a clever woman, Kate. Do you know, it took me over a year to realise that you were actively avoiding any case that involved young children? You always had such a good reason for not being available but eventually I began to see the pattern and when you took the first sick day I’d ever known you to have, I understood what was going on. СКАЧАТЬ