Beth nodded. ‘Four. No fraternising outside work—’
‘Look, Beth, let me spare you the rest of the list,’ Gabe interrupted. ‘I happen to agree. Relationships at work should be avoided.’
Not that it was a strict rule for him. He’d had relationships with colleagues before but they’d always known the score. Relationships with women who didn’t, women like Beth, were to be avoided at all costs.
‘I have no intention of continuing where we left off. I live on the other side of the world. I’m here for seven months only. There would be very little point.’ Except for the pretty amazing sex, of course. ‘You have no need to fear. I will be nothing but professional.’
‘Good.’ Beth held her arms up under the tap and let the water run down them from her fingertips to her elbows, sluicing the soap off. ‘We’re both on the same page, then.’
She shut off the taps with her elbow and waited for the excess water to drip off her arms squashing the traitorous flutter of disappointment at his easy capitulation. She flapped her arms, briskly to dispel it altogether, keeping her arms bent. And then she turned on her heel, her now sterile arms held out in front of her.
Gabe watched her go, pushing open the theatre doors with her shoulder, her green theatre scrubs accentuating the length of her thighs and the slimness of her hips and bottom. He shook his head as he watched the last drips of water fall from his elbows.
That morning Beth had been thrown but this afternoon she’d been back in control. All business. Where was the woman who had struck such a chord with her sad eyes on Friday night? Who had come apart in his arms? Who had wept as she had come down from the heights they’d climbed?
Something had been up with Beth Rogers on Friday night. Maybe it had been his own recent grief that had made him sensitive to her inner turmoil but something had made her act completely out of character. Impulsively. As had he.
He’d known after about five minutes in her company that she wasn’t the type to sleep with a virtual stranger. And yet after her initial shock she had followed him willingly—surprised the hell out of him—and given him everything she had.
He could still hear the gut-wrenching quality of her sobs as she had curled herself into a ball beside him. There had been such misery in her outpouring. Heartbreak and sorrow and grief. It had come from something buried deep inside. And, with his own emotions still a little raw, it had affected him more than he wanted to admit.
Beth Rogers was certainly a conundrum. Not that he had the time or the inclination to find out what made her tick. She was right. They were colleagues and he didn’t need any complications messing with his burgeoning career. Separating conjoined twins was complicated enough.
He flicked off the taps and drew a mental shutter on their one-night stand. He had an aneurysm to clip.
CHAPTER TWO
TWO weeks later, Gabe was staring down at the eight-month-old Fisher twins, lying back to back in their pram, fused occipitally. He was still amazed at the rare phenomenon. One in two hundred thousand live births. And craniopagus? Only two per cent of Siamese twins were joined at the head.
Most doctors could go a whole lifetime and never see this condition but in his relatively young career he’d now seen three sets of craniopagus-conjoined twins and had successfully separated two of them. Consequently, he was one of the world’s foremost experts.
As the late, great Harlan Fallon’s son, the world had expected big things of him, and fate, it seemed, had intervened to ensure that Gabe’s career was just as stellar as his father’s had been. A tremor of excitement ran through him. In approximately four months he could give these precious babies separate lives.
He hoped. Gabe was aware, more than anyone, of the pressures that were being put on him to ensure a third successful operation. With two positive outcomes under his belt and the Fallon reputation at stake, failure wasn’t an option—despite the enormous odds against him. But he’d faced long odds twice already and won. Looking down at the girls now, he hoped his luck wasn’t about to run out.
Bridie babbled away while her sister slept. She smiled a dribbly smile at him and he offered her his finger, which she grasped willingly.
‘She likes you,’ June Fisher commented.
‘Well, I do have a way with women,’ he joked as he allowed Bridie to suck his finger.
‘Oh, yeah, you’re real big with the babes.’ Scott Fisher grinned.
Gabe laughed and they chatted some more about the op. ‘As I explained earlier, the most important thing we can have on our side is time. We’d like to wait until Bridie and Brooke are at least ten kilos before we operate. It’s a big operation and we want them to be as strong as possible. Brooke is almost there but her sister…’ He stopped and smiled down at Bridie ‘…is still lagging behind. We’ll get the dietician involved and hopefully she should be bang on target for her first birthday.’
‘That’d be a great birthday present for them,’ a teary June said. ‘To be able to see each other for the first time.’
Gabe repeated his warning that while they would do everything they could, it was a long, risky operation and there were no guarantees. They could lose one or both of the girls. Or even if they both survived the rigours of the operation, one or both of them could have brain damage. He was particularly worried about Bridie. Her sluggish weight gain indicated she wasn’t as strong as her twin.
‘The team’s going to be spending these next four months practising every step of the operation. I have all the scans, the MRIs and the angiography, and we have 3D images as well as several plastic models of the girls’ heads we’re working with so when we come to operate, every step will have been rehearsed.’
Gabe had been consulted in the Fisher case since their birth and, thanks to the wonders of the internet, had been involved with the planning right from the start.
‘I want you to come along to the weekly case conferences we’ll be having. It’s important to me that the whole team meets both you and the girls so we can all get to know each other. It’ll be a good forum for any questions you may have too.’
Scott nodded. ‘Of course. We’d love to get to know the people who are going to be involved in the girls’ separation. Thank you for involving us. You’ve been great, disrupting your life and career in the UK. We can’t thank you enough, Gabe.’ He gave his wife’s hand a squeeze.
Gabe smiled. ‘Don’t thank me yet. The other thing we need to think about is that, despite everything, we may have to go for an emergency separation if something unforeseen happens.’
‘Yes, we’ve been told that’s a possibility,’ Scott said.
Gabe nodded. ‘It’s obviously something we want to avoid. We want to be able to control as much of the situation as possible so the girls get the best outcome possible. If we have to go for an emergency separation it’ll be because one or both of the girls’ health is failing, and that’s not an optimal condition to be operating under. So keep doing what you’re doing. Feed them up and keep them healthy.’
Gabe chatted with the Fishers for a little while longer and then held open his office door as June manoeuvred the pram out. He waved at them as they walked away, shutting the door as they disappeared round a corner. Two lovely people, parents who would go to the ends of the earth for their children—he hoped he didn’t let them down.
He stood looking at the scans illuminated on the viewing box. The enormity of the task ahead was staring back at him. Two separate but fused brains, tethered together by networks of wispy fibres.
It would take hours, at least twenty if everything went successfully—many more if it didn’t. And involve a team of about thirty people. Several other neurosurgeons, plastic surgeons, vascular surgeons, anaesthetists, radiographers and nurses.
And that didn’t take