Charlotte had nothing other than a microphone clipped to the lapel of her jacket. From the way her heart was pounding and how exposed She felt, she could have been standing here stark naked.
She tried to smile at the group but failed. She did, however, manage to introduce herself and apologise for the delay in starting.
‘I’m sure you’ve all heard by now of the reason why I was delayed and you, more than most, will understand that emergencies happen.’
Oh, help. Charlotte could hear the sound of her own voice, magnified by the loudspeaker system. Where was the calm, professional tone she always used in public?
What would her grandmother think of this? The niggling worry that there was something wrong that her grandmother wasn’t telling her couldn’t be allowed to surface until this was all over but it was impossible not to have a flash of shame that the pride her only living relative had taken in her achievements was going to be dented.
‘Ah…’ Charlotte stared at the group, totally at a loss for what she could say next. Please, God, let the ground open and swallow me up, she thought.
The ground didn’t open but the door of the conference room did, to admit a latecomer. Everybody’s head turned at the interruption but Charlotte’s gaze had got there first and now it was stuck.
The worst moment of her life had just taken a dive to a new low.
How on earth could Nicholas Moretti have the nerve to show up here, knowing he’d ruined her preparation for this talk? He’d already revealed his disbelief that she was who she said she was. Did he now want to see if she was going to make a fool of herself and confirm that disbelief?
He was about to get what he came for, then, wasn’t he?
Nico gave a very European hand gesture, apologising for his interruption as he took the empty space at the table. His body language conveyed complete confidence that he had the right to be here, though. That he was, in fact, eager to take part in the proceedings. And then his gaze locked with Charlotte’s and that weird spinning sensation in her gut seemed to catch fire.
Anger?
Quite possibly.
Charlotte Highton wasn’t about to let the actions of a man even threaten to destroy her.
Not again.
She took a deep breath, jerking her gaze away from Nico and vowing not to let it return to that section of the table until she was finished. In a way, he’d done her a favour. His entrance had covered her stumble and now she was fired up. Whether it was from anger or desperation was immaterial.
‘Some of you might be asking whether I should have let myself become involved in that emergency situation, especially when the result has deprived you of the audiovisual accompaniment you were supposed to have this morning.’
A ripple of sympathy went through the gathering.
‘It’s a fair question,’ Charlotte continued. ‘How far should any of us go in getting involved? How far should we go as emergency medicine specialists? Out in the field or in our own departments?’
Her words were clear and her tone as professional as ever now. Everybody was listening. Looking at her. She could feel one gaze in particular so strongly that she knew exactly who it was coming from. Good. Let him watch and listen. Let him see who Charlotte Highton was now.
‘We can do so many things that can be done in an operating theatre in our emergency departments or out in the field. Burr-holes, tracheotomies, amputations, thoracotamies, Caesareans.’ Charlotte paused for effect. ‘Extreme measures in desperate circumstances. How many are justified? Does the weight of evidence suggest we’re performing miracles? Or guilty of performing mutilations?’
Another pause. This was the moment that would make or break this talk.
‘I had a presentation that was full of statistics about these kinds of extreme procedures and graphics to show you the controversial relationship between patient outcomes and cost-effectiveness. Obviously it’s not possible to do those facts and figures justice from memory, so instead…’ The solution to this problem came to her in a flash of inspiration. ‘I’m going to present a case history.’
Nico sat back in his chair.
He could feel the surprise of the people around him. What was this? They were all intelligent people who were hungry for new knowledge. They wanted to be presented with the results of cutting-edge research that they could use to improve what they did for a career. But they were going to be told a story?
‘The man I’ll call Bernie was forty-three years old,’ Charlotte was saying. ‘He went to the corner shop very late one night, because his pregnant wife had a craving for chocolate ripple ice cream. The timing was unfortunate. The shop was held up and Bernie got stabbed. A small knife with a short blade was buried to its hilt in his chest, deflected by the sixth rib, maybe five or six inches to the left from the midline.’
Nico could sense the interest picking up around him. The injury had been dangerously close to the man’s heart.
‘The ambulance crew knew not to remove an impaled object. Bernie’s still conscious when they arrive but his blood pressure’s dropping. Fortunately, this corner shop is only about two minutes’ drive from St Margaret’s hospital. They put a doughnut dressing around the knife to stabilise it, give Bernie some oxygen and load and go. They establish IV access en route.’
The way Charlotte had changed to the present tense drew them all into the urgency of this case. Clever. Or were they all drawn in, as he was, by the sound of her voice? Soft, but as clear as a bell. As under control as her hair was again, all scraped back into that complicated knot thing.
Nico had preferred it the way he’d seen it after that resuscitation scene, with enough loose wisps to suggest that the whole knot could be released if you buried your fingers in it, wiggled them and then dragged them gently through the length of the hair. How long was it when it was loose? he wondered. And then he sharply dismissed the errant speculation and concentrated again on what she was saying.
‘By the time Bernie comes through our doors, he’s lost consciousness. His BP’s unrecordable. His cardiac rhythm goes from SVT to VF to asystole within thirty seconds of my team getting him hooked up to the monitors.’
Nico was really listening now. So this was a case that Charlotte herself had managed? He could imagine her there, in the emergency department of St Margaret’s. Wearing scrubs, probably, with a white coat over them. No…she’d been expecting a major trauma. She’d have a plastic apron on. And gloves. And a head covering that probably had a plastic face shield to protect her from blood spatter. She would have been in charge. In control. Her voice might have been louder than it was right now but just as clear.
‘We know our protocols inside out but how do we start CPR? This man’s got a knife in his chest that’s probably punctured his left ventricle. He’s bleeding out. We can pull the knife out and push fluids but there’s a hole in his heart so that would be futile.’
Nico was holding his breath without realising it. Everybody here knew that the only option was to do one of the most invasive procedures that could ever be done out of an operating theatre. Cracking open this man’s chest and getting to the heart of the problem, so to speak.
‘He’s dead already unless we do something major and do it fast.’ Charlotte’s tone told them she agreed with the conclusion they’d all reached. ‘A thoracotomy is the only option but I know as well as everybody else in the team what the odds are for a successful result. Virtually nil. But, hey…we have to try, don’t we? This man is about to become a father. Right now, his pregnant wife is probably wondering why it’s taking him so long to get back with her ice cream.’
Charlotte seemed to straighten