Page 12 of Prognosis So Done

CHAPTER FIVE - 1100 HOURS

Megan, one of the HDUnurses interrupted the end of the meeting. ‘Gill,’ she said, ‘can you review your abdo trauma from last night? He’s febrile and tachycardic. His drain losses are increasing as well.’

‘Damn it!’ Gill muttered as he stood.

Harriet could tell he was already reliving the operation in his head. Going over the possible causes for deterioration. She’d been by his side as he’d spent over an hour picking shrapnel out of the rebel soldier’s intestines. When he’d closed he’d been confident the damage had all been repaired but Harriet knew the chances of missing a little knick somewhere, was always a possibility.

‘Ladies first,’ he said, smiling at Megan, indicating she should precede him.

Harriet rolled her eyes as the nurse turned a pretty shade of pink and beamed back at the sexy surgeon. Her husband.

For another few weeks anyway.

Man, he should be banned from smiling. She couldn’t blame Megan for feeling a little flushed, it made her go positively weak at the knees.

She watched them as they walked side by side and then disappeared into the room that housed the HDU. How was it possible to make a set of plain blue baggy scrubs sexy? She remembered how she had thought him breathtakingly gorgeous that first night in London dressed to impress and later how magnificent he was undressed.

But nothing had prepared her for how perfectly he filled out a set of scrubs. Like blue cotton had been invented just for him.

The minute he donned his scrubs he became Dr Guillaume Remy, surgeon. The sense of authority that he exuded was powerful, virile — almost sexual. The blue theatre cap tied and anchored at the back of his neck just below his hairline made him look even sexier.

If anyone were to ask her in years to come what her fondest memory was of their time together, there would be no hesitation. Seeing Gill in his scrubs and cap, laughing his deep, sexy laugh, oblivious to his innate sex appeal.

Greedily, she stored the memory away. One more day of memories and that was it.

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Harriet and Siobahnwere the only ones of the gathering left lingering when Gill strode back down the corridor ten minutes later. Everyone else had departed for the dining area and another cup of artificial stimulant.

‘We have to reopen the soldier,’ he said.

The soldier. Harriet shook her head. He’d looked no more than sixteen and had refused to give Theire his name.

What was wrong with the world? Babies fighting wars?

But that’s what they did. This was MedSurg’s mission. It didn’t matter how young or old, male or female, civilian or military, goodie or baddie. If you were injured and needed surgery, the doors were always open. There were no moral or ethical judgments — it was just patch ’em up and ship ’em out.

‘There’s a significant amount of free fluid visible on the portable scanner. Megan’s getting him prepped.’

Harriet stood. ‘I’ll alert the others.’

‘Where’s Theire?’ he asked.

‘Making some more calls,’ replied Siobhan as she also stood.

‘I’ll get her to talk to the patient,’ Gill said. ‘I’ll also see Ben about evac’ing him out with the liver. See you both there in five.’

Harriet and Siobhan located the team in all their scattered locations, which wasn’t difficult, given their close confines.

There wasn’t the infrastructure for a paging system so word of mouth was how it usually worked, except in the event of a mass casualty arrival.

In that situation, a hand-operated siren was used by Dr Kelly Prentice, the on-site medical director. It wailed mournfully between the two buildings occupied by MedSurg, spreading its bad news like an involuntary shudder to the furthest reaches of the complex.

MedSurg had set up in an old whitewashed convent that harked back a couple of hundred years to colonial times. Kelly used this building for the medical side of the mission and across the dirt a long, rickety concrete path connected it to the old orphanage building, which was where the surgical side

was housed.

The area had once been a thriving community — now it was just a few buildings in the middle of nowhere on the periphery of a war zone. The buildings had been used until the recent civil unrest as a medical facility. The nearest towns were at least one hundred kilometres in any direction, the nearest hospital at least two hundred and fifty kilometres away.

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