The Surgeon She Never Forgot. Melanie Milburne

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      ‘How many non-surgical patients do you currently have in ICU?’ Lewis asked.

      ‘Seven.’

      ‘How many of them are on ventilators?’

      ‘Two.’

      ‘Then why can’t those other five patients be transferred somewhere else and free up ventilated beds?’ he asked.

      She appeared to think about it for a moment. ‘That would take a hell of a lot of organisation, transferring patients between ICU units in different hospitals. There would be issues, infection control for a start. But I doubt if Admin would come at the transfer costs, even if we could find other non-surgical ICUs willing to take patients.’

      ‘There are private hospital ICU beds elsewhere. Non-ventilated beds could be leased there to free up post-op beds here,’ he said.

      She put her coffee cup down. ‘That’s something that would have to be dealt with by the powers that be. I can only do what I can to make room in my own department.’

      ‘Mikki, I would really appreciate if we could somehow just do this,’ Lewis said. ‘I have a thirty-five-year-old mother of three who has already had a subarachnoid bleed from an aneurysm. If she has another bleed, for which she’s got a worse than fifty per cent chance in the next day, she won’t make it—three kids with no mother. The other urgent patient has an astrocytoma on the verge of coning. If I don’t debulk the tumour asap it’s not going to be worth doing. And I think the new regime of intracranial chemo and radical radiotherapy has a real chance of eradicating this tumour. Twenty-one years old. Think about it, Mikki. This young guy hasn’t even started life and he’s staring down the barrel of it ending if I don’t do this operation. I’m not being difficult just for the heck of it. I really want those cases done. This is what I’ve spent the last decade training to do, and because of some dumb administrative lethargy I’m being told I can’t treat these people.’

      Her slim throat rose and fell. ‘I understand the urgency. I always try and accommodate the high-priority cases. But I’m up against a limit here. I’m not the head of the department. Jack French is.’

      ‘But he’s currently on leave. Surely you can take charge here, can’t you? Someone has got to.’

      ‘Yes, I know.’ She gave a sigh of resignation. ‘I’ll see who I can possibly move but I’m not making any promises.’

      ‘That’s my girl,’ Lewis said.

      ‘Not any more,’ she said with a little hoist of her chin as she moved past him. The door closed behind her, the click of the lock adding a measure of finality to her statement.

      Lewis had to fight his primal response to go after her. His reaction to seeing her again was something he had been preparing himself for ever since he had been approached about the position at St Benedict’s. It had been one of the reasons he had taken the post. He wanted to prove to himself he had moved on. He had known it would be difficult, seeing her. He had known it would stir up old hurts and disappointments. But he hadn’t expected to feel the same level of attraction after all this time. It had caught him totally off guard, which was foolish of him now that he thought about it. Over the last seven years, whenever he had thought of Mikki and their short and passionate time together he had felt a deep aching sense of loss at how it had ended. He had been in and out of other relationships before and since but he had never felt anything when he thought about them or even when he occasionally ran into them. But with Mikki it was like a punch to his gut, a deep, cruel punch that ached and throbbed for hours afterwards. This posting was supposed to change all that. To desensitise him, but so far it was doing the opposite.

      Normally he was good at locking away his feelings. Since his brother’s death twenty years ago, feelings had been off limits. Feelings equalled vulnerability. And the one thing he hated to show was any sign of vulnerability. Mikki had walked out on him, so showing any sign of hurt, betrayal or disappointment had been the last thing he had been prepared to do. But somehow seeing her again had triggered something deep inside him and he couldn’t seem to turn it off. It niggled at him, like an annoying itch he couldn’t reach to scratch. She evoked feelings in him he had never expected to feel for anyone again. He didn’t want to need her. He didn’t want to want her. He had never wanted to want or need her or anyone. But just as she had come into his life in the past she had changed his black and white to vivid vibrant colour with her sparkly personality and endless cheerfulness. He had seen very little of that vibrant personality since he had come back. Had he done that to her with his clumsy handling of their relationship?

      He felt the bone-deep ache of desire when he was with her, a physical need that no other woman incited in him. Somehow standing within touching distance of Mikki made him want to pull her into his arms the way he had had all those years ago and feel her body nestle up against his as if she had finally found her way home. He had not felt that with anyone else. It annoyed him that he hadn’t moved on as far as he had thought. Was it the fact that she had ended their relationship and not him? Hadn’t she just reminded him of it with her pert response?

      She was no longer his girl.

      She was no longer his lover.

      She was no longer his fiancée.

      He didn’t matter to her any more. That was what hurt the most. It was the one thing he couldn’t move on from. He was a part of her past she clearly wanted to forget. The fact that she hadn’t mentioned it to anyone suggested she was ashamed of it. That hurt. That really, really bugged him. What they’d had together had been good, better than good. They’d had the chance to have a wonderful partnership and she had thrown it all away. How could she have professed to have loved him so passionately way back then but feel nothing for him now?

      It shouldn’t matter what she felt now, but it did. And that was perhaps the thing that annoyed him most. He wanted her to still feel something for him, anything but that cool professional show-no-emotion ice-princess thing she had going. He was determined to break through it. He would chip away at that icy barrier until he found the warm-hearted, spontaneous girl he had fallen in love with seven years ago.

      He just hoped she was still there…

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