Half of her hoped so. The other half tried to blot it from her mind.
‘Hey, Miss Leigh, are you ready?’ Nancy, the OR assistant, called through the door. ‘We’re going in now, the surgeon’s here.’
And she so hadn’t needed to hear that. ‘Just a second, I’m almost there.’ Okay. Breathe. Deeply. In. Out. In. Out. You can do this. It was just a case of mind over matter. She was in control of this.
She didn’t know what she was dreading most: the red stuff or the man she’d had the dirtiest dream about last night. The man she’d almost grabbed in the lift and planted a kiss on those too smug lips of his. Who she’d spent an hour trying to describe to her flatmate and had ended up with annoyingly sexy.
So, yes, she thought he was sexy. Just as Becca did, and, frankly, the same as all the women in the hospital did. So she was just proving she had working hormones—nothing else to see here, move right along. The man who was out to make her look a fool but, God knew, he might not need to try too hard, because if things didn’t go as planned she’d be managing that quite well all on her own.
Popping two more herbal rescue sweets into her mouth and sucking for all she was worth, she took a couple of extra-long deep breaths and steadied her rampaging heart. Give her a sticky mediation case, two ornery barristers and an angry, justice-seeking client any day. Words … that was her thing. Words, debate, the power of vocabulary. Not medicine. Not blood. Not internal stuff. Exactly why she hadn’t followed in her mother’s footsteps.
Here we go.
The smell hit her first. Sharp, tangy and clinical, filling her nostrils, and she thought it might have something to do with the brown stuff a man in scrubs and face mask was painting onto the abdomen of an anaesthetised woman. Then the bright white light of the room hit her, the noise. She’d thought it would be silent—remembered only a quiet efficiency from those endless surgeries, but someone had put classical music on the speakers. It was the only soothing thing in the place.
So much for the rescue sweets. Her heart bumped along, merrily oblivious to the discomfort it was causing her, and now her hands were starting to sweat too. Someone sat at the head of the woman and fiddled with tubes. The anaesthetist, Ivy knew. She had enough experience to be able to identify most of the people in here. Another woman smiled at her and bustled past with a tray of instruments that looked like torture devices … hooks and clamps. Ivy shuddered and hovered on the periphery, not knowing what to do and feeling more and more like a spare part. Should she stand closer? But that would mean she’d get a bird’s-eye view of the action.
The man painting the brown stuff raised his head and she realised it was Matteo. Matteo—she’d got to thinking of him like that. Not Mr Finelli. Not something over there and out of reach. But someone here … someone personal. Matteo. Someone she’d almost kissed, for the first time in what felt like a thousand years. All she could see of his face were those eyes, piercing, dark and direct as he looked at her. ‘Ah. Miss Leigh. You’re here. Come closer, please. Glad you could tear yourself away from your paper pushing.’
‘Good to be here.’ Liar.
‘Nancy got you some scrubs. Good. We don’t want to get your lovely office suits messed up with bodily fluids. Do come and get a better view of the procedure, my team will make space for you. I’m sorry we didn’t reserve the gold-tier seating. And it’s a little crowded as I need to teach as well as operate. Perhaps one day you’ll be able to help us raise money for a decent viewing room? That would make all of our lives easier.’
She gave him a sarcastic smile, which she knew he couldn’t see behind her mask so she stuck her tongue out instead. Then levelled her voice. ‘You know very well that I’m a lawyer, not a fundraiser. However, I’ll add it to your wish-list. Which is getting longer by the day.’
‘I know. We surgeons are so demanding, yes? You’d think we were wanting to save lives or something.’ For a moment he regarded her with humour, but it was gentle and not rude, and then he became very focused and professional. ‘Okay. This patient is Emily. She’s donating her left kidney to her daughter, who is twelve years old and suffers from polycystic kidney disease. Emily is a perfect match in tissue type and blood type. She’s a very active lady with no medical history of any note. With one kidney she is giving her daughter the chance to have a normal life. That is, of course, as long as her body doesn’t reject it, although live donors are generally better tolerated than cadaver ones. Once the kidney has been removed, I, and a team of other surgeons, will …’ He paused and looked over at Ivy. ‘Are you okay, standing there?’
‘Yes, thanks. I’m fine.’ Shifting the weight from her left foot, she eased more heavily onto her right. And then realised he was still watching her.
His eyes flicked to her feet and then back to her face. ‘This is a long procedure—in fact, it’s going to be a long day. Would … er … anyone like a seat?’ His voice, she noted, had softened, the jokey teasing quite gone. Which was not what she wanted or expected from him. He must have noticed her limp. Goddamn. When had that been? She didn’t want anyone’s pity; she could hold her own as well as the next person. He called out to the orderly, ‘Eric …? Do we have any chairs?’
And look weak in front of all these people. In front of her colleagues? Him? No way. She shook her head vehemently.
Matteo paused with a large green sheet in his hand. ‘If you’re sure? Everyone?’ But she knew he meant just her. ‘This is your last chance. We’re going to start imminently and then we all need to concentrate.’
Oh, God. Objection! she wanted to shout. Stop! But instead she fisted her fingers into her palms, dug deep to distract herself from her raging heartbeat. ‘I’m fine. Please, just do the operation.’
‘As you like.’ He nodded to her, the scalpel now in his hand catching the light and glinting ominously. ‘Here we go, everyone. One laparoscopic donor nephrectomy begins.’
An hour later and Ivy had run out of places to look other than at the patient and risk the chance of seeing blood. She knew the right-hand corner of the room intimately now and could have recited the words on the warning sign above the electrical sockets blindfolded. The ECG monitoring machine bleeped and she focused once again on the LED display. Lots of squiggly lines and numbers. A niggly pain lodged in her lower back and her legs were starting to ache. She didn’t even have anything to lean against—that would have been helpful. So she stood rooted to the spot, trying to blot out the chatter, the music, the smell. Words like tubular … renal ligament … haemo … blood. She knew that. And sorely wished she didn’t.
But while her heartbeat was jigging off the scale it was clear that Matteo’s wasn’t. As he worked three probes jutting out from the woman’s abdomen while watching his handiwork on a large TV screen, his voice was measured and calm. For all his macho Italian remonstrating, the man was a damned fine surgeon, she’d give him that. He was also a decent teacher, taking time to explain to everyone exactly what he was doing—which really was amazing. Keyhole surgery was detailed, precise and very, very clever.
Okay, so she’d misjudged him. He was not narcissistic when it mattered, he was giving of himself to his patients and to the assistants. But he was still annoying. And sexy. And had she mentioned annoying? ‘We need to divide the adrenal vein so it is the optimal length for transplantation …’
She focused on the music because his running commentary was making her feel slightly woozy. Or maybe it was the heat in the room. Her gaze drifted over to him again, down his mask-covered face to his throat. The V of skin visible on his broad chest was suntanned, his forearm muscles contracting and stretching as he worked.
He stopped and arched his back, checked the screen, and, as he dipped his head to resume his work, he caught her eye. She could tell by the crinkles at his temples that he was smiling—what kind of a smile it was, she didn’t know. She didn’t want to. Just one look at those eyes made her gut contract in a sizzling, heat-filled clutch. She wondered what it would be like to wake up to those eyes, that skin … Or what