Читать книгу The Surgeon's One-Night Baby - Charlotte Hawkes - Страница 10

CHAPTER TWO

KASPAR VAULTED OVER the hedge and through the field. A part of him was glad to be getting away from the girl—Archie, her instructor had called her—with her expression-laden eyes that seemed to see altogether too much. It made no sense and yet even through her obvious fear up there in the plane, every time she had fixed that clear gaze on him he’d been unable to shake the impression that she could see past the façade he’d carefully crafted for a drooling press over the years, and read his very soul.

If he’d actually had a soul. But that had been long shattered. As much by his own terrible mistakes as anything else. Not least the one night that had altered the course of his life for ever.

And yet he couldn’t seem to shake the notion that this one girl—woman—almost knew him. As though she was almost familiar.

He told himself it was just the emotion of the day. Five years since he’d heard Peter had passed away, the closest thing he’d ever had to a real, decent father figure. Who, even as a widower trying to hold down his air force career, had been more of a father and a mother to his son and daughter than either of Kaspar’s own very much alive parents could or would ever have been.

Peter Coates had taught him that the volatile, physically terrifying marriage of his own parents wasn’t normal or right. He’d taught Kaspar to handle his emotions so that he didn’t lose control the way his own father had. The way his own mother had, for that matter.

Hearing about Peter’s death had winded him. Along with the rumour that Robbie had subsequently sold the old farmhouse and emigrated to Australia. Kaspar could understand why. With both parents dead, Robbie, only twenty-five, and with that kid sister of his to look after, it made sense to have a completely fresh start. And yet somehow, knowing the Coates family no longer lived in that cosy, old, sandstone place with its roaring open fires, it had felt like the end of an era.

‘Rick? Mate, can you hear me?’ Kaspar shook the memories off and called out with deliberate cheerfulness as he approached the figure lying on the ground, one eye half-closed and bloodied.

The extent of the blast damage made it almost impossible to recognise the man as Rick, but the man’s build and clothing fitted. There was one way to tell for certain, though. Carefully, Kaspar ripped the man’s shirt sleeve.

A clipper ship stared boldly back.

Rick. But he wasn’t conscious. Pinching the man’s side, Kaspar began a quick examination, surprised when Archie came running up not far behind him. Her intake of breath was the only acknowledgement that the dark shadow was indeed a person.

‘Is it your friend Rick?’

‘Yes. Get a medical crew,’ he instructed.

‘He might have a mobile,’ she suggested hopefully, but Kaspar shook his head.

‘He doesn’t. Claims to hate them. So you’ll just have to hoof it. Can you do that?’

‘Yes.’

‘Good. Tell them to alert the air ambulance and say we’ve got an unresponsive adult male, around fifty, with severe maxillofacial blast injury, including tissue loss of the right eye and nose and unstable maxilla. GCS three and his airway is going to need to be secured immediately.’

She recited it back clearly and competently despite the slight quake in her voice then left. Kaspar turned back to Rick. By the looks of it, the man was mercifully beginning to regain some degree of consciousness.

‘Rick? It’s Kaspar. Can you hear me?’

At least the older guy was making vague groaning noises now, even if he didn’t appear to recognise Kaspar at all. He certainly couldn’t seem to speak, although that was hardly a surprise. Keeping up light, breezy conversation, Kaspar concentrated on the injuries and the potential damage to the man’s airway. If that collapsed, things would spiral downwards pretty damned fast.

Occupied, it felt like it was only minutes later when the helicopter landed and the on-board trauma doctor came racing over.

‘Kaspar Athari.’ The doctor nodded in deference. ‘Your partner said it was you. I’m Tom. What have we got?’

‘Adult male, around fifty years old. Name is Rick.’

‘Rick the food truck guy? You’re sure?’

‘Sure enough.’ Briefly, Kaspar tapped a bold, unusual tattoo on the man’s upper arm. ‘Approximately fifteen minutes ago he was changing a gas bottle on his food truck when it exploded, no witnesses except myself and my skydiving partner but we were too far away to see clearly. He appears to have been projected by the force and hit his face and neck on something, I would guess the vehicle bracket. There’s tissue loss of the right eye and of the nose, unstable maxilla and suspected crushed larynx. Initially unresponsive, he’s now producing sounds in response to verbal stimuli. GCS was three, now four.’

‘And he’s breathing?’

‘For now,’ Kaspar said quietly. ‘But with the soft tissue swelling and oedema there’s still a risk of delayed airway compromise, while haemorrhage from vessels in the open wounds or severe nasal bleeding from complex blood supply could contribute to airway obstruction.’

‘Okay, so the mask is out, given the damage to his face, supraglottic devices are out because of his jaw, and intubation is out because if the blast caused trauma to the larynx and trachea, any further swelling could potentially displace the epiglottis, the vocal cords and the arytenoid cartilage.’

The trauma doctor ran through the list quickly, efficiently. He was pretty good—something Kaspar always liked to see.

‘One more thing,’ Kaspar noted. ‘There’s a possible cervical injury.’

‘One p.m. So we’ve got a high risk of a full stomach after lunch, which means increased risk of regurgitation and aspiration of gastric contents. I could insert a nasogastric tube or I could apply cricoid pressure, but either of those procedures could worsen his larynx and airway injuries.’

At least the guy was thinking.

‘Yes,’ Kaspar agreed slowly, not wanting to step on anyone’s toes. Ultimately, this was the trauma doctor’s scene. He himself might be a surgeon, but today he was a skydiver on his day off. ‘Still, I’m not confident that his airway will hold without intervention.’

‘Can’t intubate, can’t ventilate,’ Tom mused. ‘Which leaves a surgical airway option. Tracheotomy or cricothyroidotomy.’

‘I’d say so,’ Kaspar concurred, thrusting his hands in his pockets to keep from taking over. The doctor was actually good, but Kaspar knew he’d be faster, sharper. It was, after all, his field of expertise.

It was the one thing that gave him value in this world. Every patient. Every procedure. They mattered. As though a part of him imagined that each successful outcome could somehow make up for his unthinking actions that one night with a couple of drunken idiots. As though it could somehow redress the balance. A hundred good deeds, a thousand of them, to make up for that one stupid, costly error of judgement.

But it never would.

Because it hadn’t been merely a mistake. It had been a loss of control. The kind that was all too reminiscent of his volatile father.

The kind that Peter Coates had tried to teach him never to lose.

The memories burned brightly—too brightly—in his head. It must be why he was feeling so disorientated. He’d thought the jump would help, but jumping with that woman had somehow heightened it all.

A familiar anger wound its way inside him. Even now, all these years later. All his awards, his battlefield medals, the way the media lauded him meant nothing.

In many respects he was glad that Archie woman was gone. She was, for some inexplicable reason, far too unsettling. The way she’d looked at him on that plane. As though seeing past the playboy front and believing he would do the right thing and help her.

He couldn’t explain it, but she didn’t look at him the way almost everyone else in his life looked at him. She didn’t look at him as though calculating what being with him would do for her career, or reputation, or fame. In fact, she’d looked at him with eyes so heavy with meaning he hadn’t been able to stop himself from wondering what it was she’d seen. Why she made him feel more exposed than anyone had in long, long time.

It made no sense. And Kaspar hated things not making sense.

Just as he hated the part of him that had wondered whether, when this was over and the patient was safely on board the air ambulance, he might head back to the fete or the hangar and perhaps buy her a coffee. Or a celebratory drink that night.

For the first time in a long time the idea of a date actually made him feel...alive.

‘Want to do the honours?’

Tom’s voice broke into his thoughts.

‘You’re the on-duty trauma doctor.’ Kaspar hesitated, fighting the compulsion to jump straight in, needing to be sure. Not to protect himself but to protect the hospital. He owed them that much. ‘And you’re good.’

‘I am.’ There was nothing boastful about the way the doctor said it. Simply factual. Exactly as Kaspar might have said it. ‘But you’re the oral and maxillofacial specialist, it’s right up your street and this is a particularly complex patient. I can’t afford to make a wrong move. If anyone is going to be able to stabilise him enough to survive the flight, it’s going to be you.’

‘Fine,’ Kaspar acknowledged. It was all he needed to hear.

He bent his head to concentrate on the job he loved best, and pushed all other thoughts from his mind. He wouldn’t think any more about Archie. He wouldn’t be taking her for a drink that night. And he certainly wouldn’t be attending the charity wrap party.

* * *

The party was in full swing and, predictably, people were crowding around him, from awed wannabe colleagues to seductive wannabe girlfriends.

But there was only one person from whom Kasper couldn’t seem to drag his gaze.

It was ludicrous. So uncharacteristic. Yet it felt inexorable.

He hadn’t been able to eject her from his thoughts since the skydive, however hard he’d tried. And he wasn’t a man accustomed to failure—as a surgeon he had one of the highest success rates—which made it all the more incredible that banishing one woman from his thoughts was defeating him. If anything, with each day that passed she’d become more of a delicious enigma until he’d found himself powerless to resist coming here tonight.

Just on the off chance that he might see her again.

When was the last time a woman had done that to him?

Had any woman? Ever?

He tipped his head in consideration, finally allowing himself to give in to impulse.

Archie was stunning. Not necessarily in looks, although she was certainly very pretty, from her sexy pair of look-at-me heels to legs that seemed to go on for ever before they finally slipped beneath a short, Latin-inspired, tasselled dance dress number, showing off perhaps the shapeliest pair of legs he ever recalled seeing. He couldn’t seem to help himself, but he practically imagined her wrapping them around his body as he sank into her, so deep that she wouldn’t know where he ended and she began.

His body tightened just thinking about it.

Him. Kaspar Athari.

He had never wanted any woman quite like this.

He’d never wanted quite like this.

He’d had enough women throwing themselves at him on practically a weekly basis that he’d never had to lust after any woman quite so...helplessly. Not the most stunning supermodels, or the most worshipped Hollywood starlets. But he was lusting after this perfectly pretty, perfectly cheeky, perfectly ordinary woman. Who, it turned out, was to him most extraordinary.

A little like the woman who had been too frightened to do the static line jump but who, when steering the tandem jump chute with him, had displayed a skill and eagerness that had belied his initial conclusion that she was a novice.

Against all logic, Kaspar found himself fascinated.

There was a story there. But what? And why did he even care?

Sexual attraction was one thing. But this was something else. Something...more. Certainly more than the physical. She possessed a magnetism in the aura she gave off and the way people gravitated towards her. Especially—and Kaspar gritted his teeth at the thought—the other men on the dance floor. Was he the only one to notice how she danced and twirled, shaking and shimmying quite mesmerisingly, and yet all the while deftly kept her friend between herself and any would-be suitors?

As if the intensity of his stare had finally reached her, she lifted her head, met his gaze and froze. Even from this distance, in this light, he could see the sweetest bloom staining her cheeks and down the elegant line of her neck, her chest rising and falling rapidly in a way that had nothing to do with the fact she’d been dancing. Or perhaps it was just the vividness of his imagination. Remembering the way she’d flushed in the plane the other day.

Either way, he was certain she was consumed by the same greedy fire as he was. The fire that had brought him here tonight, against every shred of logic.

And then she moved, heading off the floor and away from him. His stomach lurched in a way that was all too alien to him and before Kaspar knew what he was doing, he had set his untouched drink down on the bar behind him and was shifting his feet, ready to move. Not prepared to lose her.

Abruptly, her friend caught her and pulled her back. He kept waiting for them to glance in his direction, maybe share a giggle, which he’d seen from women time and again. A part of him almost welcomed it. It might help to topple her from whatever invisible pedestal on which he’d set her, help remind him that she was a woman like any other.

But it didn’t happen. If anything, Archie studiously avoided meeting his gaze again, and had clearly omitted to mention him to her friend, and her dignified discretion only seemed to add to her allure. Especially when she resumed dancing, only to be a little more self-conscious, a fraction stiffer than she had been before. It was the tell he needed, knowing now she was indeed equally attracted to him.

It should concern him more that it felt like such a victory.

Alarm bells were sounding but too faint, too distant to have the impact he suspected they should have had. To jolt him back to reality. To warn him that she didn’t look like the kind of woman who did one-night stands. She looked like the kind of woman who did walks along beaches, and romantic meals, and talking until dawn. Relationships. Love. It was such bull.

He’d seen first-hand the toxic depths to which such emotions could plunge. His parents’ explosive marriage had been equalled only by their acrimonious divorce. And him, in the middle of it all his life. Their pawn. The tool they’d used to goad and taunt each other. The burden they’d each tried to make the other one bear.

And not just his parents. What about his own explosiveness? That out-of-control side of him that had only had to emerge once to completely ruin someone’s life. He’d sworn it would never happen again, and it hadn’t. Some might call him emotionally detached, or unavailable. He wasn’t. Where his patients were concerned he felt as much empathy as he could, for patient and family, without it impairing his ability to do his job. It was only in his personal life where he exerted such emotional...discipline.

So he did sex. He did fun. He did mutual gratification.

He didn’t do intimacy and he didn’t do complications.

Something told him that this Archie woman was both, and the best thing he could do, for both of them, would be to stay away.

Turning back to the bar, Kaspar picked up his drink and tried not to be irritated by the group of preening, simpering women who had begun to cluster around his part of the bar. It was about as easy as pretending he wasn’t searching out blonde hair and a metallic shimmer in the reflection of the mirror behind the glasses.

Apparently, his skydiving butterfly was now edging her way off the opposite side of the dance floor. About as far away from him as she could get.

He didn’t give himself time for second-guessing. For the second time that evening, he set his untouched drink down and gave in to temptation.