The Surgeon's Engagement Wish. Alison Roberts

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      Beth handed Mike a new wide-bore cannula and was ready with the luer plug and flush moments later.

      ‘Any word from Sally?’

      ‘Sorry.’ Beth shook her head. This was the kind of thing she hated about starting a new job. ‘I don’t know who Sally is.’

      ‘She’s one of our paramedics,’ Maureen supplied. ‘The ambulance got called not long after Jackal’s mates took off from here.’ Her brief smile was intended to be reassuring for Beth. ‘Police back-up got activated at the same time.’

      Beth nodded, pleased to find her hands steady as she completed the fiddly task of screwing the luer plug into place on the cannula hub. She was injecting a bolus of saline to check that the IV line was patent when the radio on the main desk crackled.

      ‘Ambulance to ED. Do you copy?’

      ‘Shall I get that?’ Chelsea queried.

      ‘I’ll do it.’ Mike stripped off his gloves and then glanced at Beth. ‘Can you get some more fluids up?’

      ‘Sure.’

      Beth taped the cannula securely in place, having flushed the line. Then she reached for a giving set and a new bag of saline. The task was automatic enough not to distract her from listening to Mike as he reached for the microphone next to the radio set.

      ‘Mike here, Sally. Receiving you loud and clear. What have you got?’

      ‘Status one patient. Car vs pedestrian.’

      ‘Roger.’ Mike shook his head slowly as he pulled a pen from his shirt pocket. They all knew how unlikely this was to have been any accident. ‘Vital signs?’

      ‘Heart rate of 130. Respiration rate 36. Oxygen saturation down and blood pressure unrecordable at present. GCS of 8. Head and chest injuries. Multiple fractures.’

      Sid and Dennis looked at each other again. They didn’t need medical training to know that this patient was seriously unwell. Neither did they need the ambulance officer’s confirmation that this was another code yellow patient.

      The ETA of the ambulance was ten to fifteen minutes and any calm in the small emergency department vanished.

      Extra staff began arriving as Beth and Chelsea were assigned the task of setting up Resus 2 in preparation for the new arrival.

      ‘Have an intubation trolley ready,’ Mike instructed. ‘And a chest decompression kit.’

      ‘What happens with serious chest injuries here?’ Beth queried, pulling the crumpled sheet from the bed. ‘We don’t have a cardiothoracic surgeon, do we?’

      Chelsea shook her head. ‘We stabilise them and then chopper them to Wellington.’ She flapped the clean sheet to spread it over the mattress. ‘Same with head injuries. We don’t run to a neurosurgeon either.’

      Chelsea told Beth who the staff members were as the level of activity in the department steadily increased.

      ‘That’s Kelly—she’s a radiographer. Seth is the house surgeon on call. Looks like Rowena’s coming in to help as well. She’s a midwife.’

      The names flowed right over Beth’s head. These people were all still strangers and this was no time to start even trying to remember names.

      ‘And there’s Luke.’

      Beth flicked the laryngoscope she was checking shut to turn off its light. Despite herself, her head turned sharply at that familiar name but any view of the latest newcomer was blocked by the large figure of Dennis, the police officer.

      ‘The ambulance is here,’ he told them. ‘I’m going to see if they need any help.’

      Two other members of the local police force had accompanied the ambulance but the paramedics had been in no danger from the hit-and-run victim they were transporting.

      ‘Breath sounds absent on the left side now.’ A blonde woman had her stethoscope on the exposed chest, between ECG electrodes. ‘GCS has been dropping steadily. I’ve already done a decompression on the right side.’

      ‘Bring him straight in here.’ Mike pointed to the available resuscitation area and Beth stepped back as the stretcher moved swiftly towards her. Then she reached to help transfer the patient to the bed.

      ‘On the count of three,’ Mike directed, holding the patient’s head and neck still by supporting the cervical collar. ‘One…two…three!’

      ‘We think he was hit at a speed of at least sixty kilometres an hour,’ the paramedic informed Mike. Apparently he was airborne for twenty to thirty metres.’

      Maureen handed Beth a pair of shears. ‘See what you can do to get rid of the clothing.’

      Beth was aware of more people pressing into the resus area to assist. ‘Tension pneumothorax on the left,’ Mike confirmed tersely. ‘Someone get me a decompression kit, please?’

      ‘I can do that.’

      The calm voice should have eased some of the tension but the shears in Beth’s hands closed with an uncontrolled snap. Her gaze shifted just as emphatically to the speaker and for a split second she actually forgot what she was supposed to be doing.

      Luke.

      It couldn’t be.

      But it was.

      Luke Savage.

      At Ocean View hospital?

      If Beth had tried to think of the last possible place on earth she would expect to see this man again, a smalltown hospital would have been way up on the list. A prison cell might have beaten it to top spot, of course, but not by much.

      He hadn’t noticed her. The surgeon was completely focussed on the task of inserting a needle between the victim’s ribs to release air trapped in his chest, which was preventing his lungs from functioning.

      ‘Pelvis is unstable.’ Mike was doing a survey for other major injuries while Luke was attempting to establish adequate breathing.

      The consultant’s statement was enough to start Beth’s hands moving again, her momentary lapse unnoticed. She peeled leather trousers clear of the deformity on the right thigh.

      ‘Open fracture of the femur,’ she advised.

      ‘Cover it,’ Mike responded. ‘We can’t deal with that just yet.’

      Beth reached for a large gauze dressing and tried to concentrate on squeezing a sachet of saline onto the pad to dampen it, but she simply couldn’t help glancing back towards Luke.

      Had Luke recognised her voice as easily as she had recognised his?

      Apparently not.

      ‘Oxygen sats aren’t climbing.’ Luke was staring at the monitor above the bed. ‘We’ll have to intubate.’

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