Page 56 of Prognosis So Done

Katya held out a kidney dish and Gill discarded the twisted

flesh. It looked alien, so removed from its actual function and too damaged to do it anyway.

‘Keep it,’ he said to Katya. Maybe Harriet would need proof, justification as to why he hadn’t tried to salvage it. Maybe for her grief process she’d need to see it with her own eyes.

She looked at him for a long moment. ‘Da.’ She nodded and indicated to Siobhan to get her a specimen container.

‘Pressure rising. One hundred systolic,’ Helmut said.

An enormous weight lifted from Gill’s shoulders, the cramp in his neck and the tension along his jaw, dissipated. They had done it. He had controlled the bleeding and Joan had replaced Harriet’s blood loss and stabilised her blood pressure.

As he sutured Harriet back together, Gill’s mind began to

wander and he forced himself to push the thoughts away and

concentrate. He would have time later to think about how close

he’d come to losing her, about all the blood and how he’d taken from her the one thing she’d asked him not to.

And that Harriet had been pregnant with his child. A child that he hadn’t even known he’d wanted. Until tonight.

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