Lewis scraped a hand through his hair in frustration. He didn’t like being the ogre with nursing staff but his first week and a half at St Benedict’s hadn’t gone as smoothly as he would have liked. His office and consultation room were still being painted and fitted out, even though he had been promised they would be ready by the time he arrived, and now half his operation list had been cancelled by his ex-fiancée. Was she deliberately putting him in his place or was there a genuine bed crisis?
He went down to the unit but Mikki was nowhere in sight. He asked one of the registrars on duty, who informed him she had gone to the doctors’ room on the fifth floor for a coffee break.
Lewis took the stairs two at a time and shouldered open the doctors’ room door to find Mikki waiting for some fresh coffee to brew in the percolator on the bench next to a microwave and toaster. ‘Just the person I want to see,’ he said, pressing the door with the flat of his hand so it clicked shut.
Her tawny-brown eyes widened a fraction. ‘I take it this is about your list?’ she said.
‘I have four ill patients I need to operate on tomorrow,’ Lewis said. ‘What am I supposed to say to them now you’ve cancelled the surgery on half of them?’
‘We haven’t got the beds,’ she said. ‘The two we’ve given you don’t need ICU beds post-op. Didn’t Theatre Management tell you?’
‘Find the beds,’ he said, locking gazes with her, his mouth set in an intractable line. ‘I want those two operations to go ahead as planned.’
‘I can’t do that. The unit is full. We had two unexpected admissions from private overnight. That’s the two post-op beds gone. I’m sorry, but that’s just the way it is.’
‘Mikki, this is ridiculous,’ he said. ‘Surely there is a better way of managing this? Those two beds should have been earmarked for neurosurgical post-op. The private hospital should have sent their patients elsewhere. Aren’t there any patients you can transfer to another ICU somewhere else? Is there not one patient here you can wean off a ventilator?’
‘I can’t turn people’s ventilators off just because you need the beds,’ she said with a spark in her eyes.
‘I’m not asking you to do any such thing. There should just have been better communication over this, especially with me.’
‘Look, Lewis, the system is overstretched here. They should have told you that before you took on the position,’ she said. ‘It’s like this just about every week with every surgical speciality in need of high-dependency beds. There just aren’t enough ICU beds for every specialty. People have to be postponed, especially, it seems, public patients.’
‘Mikki, you know neurosurgical patients are nearly always high acuity,’ he said. ‘Surely I don’t have to bargain for beds every time I’m scheduled to do a list?’
Her eyes moved away from his as she poured her coffee. ‘Take it up with the hospital management,’ she said. ‘It’s not my problem.’
‘Have you even thought about a way to manage this better?’ Lewis asked.
She turned her defiant brown gaze on him. ‘It’s my job to keep critically ill patients alive. I don’t have the time to brainstorm on how to manage the hospital better. That’s Administration’s job.’
‘How many non-surgical patients do you currently have in ICU?’ Lewis asked.
‘Seven.’
‘How many of them are on ventilators?’
‘Two.’
‘Then why can’t those other five patients be transferred somewhere else and free up ventilated beds?’ he asked.
She appeared to think about it for a moment. ‘That would take a hell of a lot of organisation, transferring patients between ICU units in different hospitals. There would be issues, infection control for a start. But I doubt if Admin would come at the transfer costs, even if we could find other non-surgical ICUs willing to take patients.’
‘There are private hospital ICU beds elsewhere. Non-ventilated beds could be leased there to free up post-op beds here,’ he said.
She put her coffee cup down. ‘That’s something that would have to be dealt with by the powers that be. I can only do what I can to make room in my own department.’
‘Mikki, I would really appreciate if we could somehow just do this,’ Lewis said. ‘I have a thirty-five-year-old mother of three who has already had a subarachnoid bleed from an aneurysm. If she has another bleed, for which she’s got a worse than fifty per cent chance in the next day, she won’t make it—three kids with no mother. The other urgent patient has an astrocytoma on the verge of coning. If I don’t debulk the tumour asap it’s not going to be worth doing. And I think the new regime of intracranial chemo and radical radiotherapy has a real chance of eradicating this tumour. Twenty-one years old. Think about it, Mikki. This young guy hasn’t even started life and he’s staring down the barrel of it ending if I don’t do this operation. I’m not being difficult just for the heck of it. I really want those cases done. This is what I’ve spent the last decade training to do, and because of some dumb administrative lethargy I’m being told I can’t treat these people.’
Her slim throat rose and fell. ‘I understand the urgency. I always try and accommodate the high-priority cases. But I’m up against a limit here. I’m not the head of the department. Jack French is.’
‘But he’s currently on leave. Surely you can take charge here, can’t you? Someone has got to.’
‘Yes, I know.’ She gave a sigh of resignation. ‘I’ll see who I can possibly move but I’m not making any promises.’
‘That’s my girl,’ Lewis said.
‘Not any more,’ she said with a little hoist of her chin as she moved past him. The door closed behind her, the click of the lock adding a measure of finality to her statement.
Lewis had to fight his primal response to go after her. His reaction to seeing her again was something he had been preparing himself for ever since he had been approached about the position at St Benedict’s. It had been one of the reasons he had taken the post. He wanted to prove to himself he had moved on. He had known it would be difficult, seeing her. He had known it would stir up old hurts and disappointments. But he hadn’t expected to feel the same level of attraction after all this time. It had caught him totally off guard, which was foolish of him now that he thought about it. Over the last seven years, whenever he had thought of Mikki and their short and passionate time together he had felt a deep aching sense of loss at how it had ended. He had been in and out of other relationships before and since but he had never felt anything when he thought about them or even when he occasionally ran into them. But with Mikki it was like a punch to his gut, a deep, cruel punch that ached and throbbed for hours afterwards. This posting was supposed to change all that. To desensitise him, but so far it was doing the opposite.
Normally he was good at locking away his feelings. Since his brother’s death twenty years ago, feelings had been off limits. Feelings equalled vulnerability. And the one thing he hated to show was any sign of vulnerability. Mikki had walked out on him, so showing any sign of hurt, betrayal or disappointment had been the last thing he had been prepared to do. But somehow seeing her again had triggered something deep inside him and he couldn’t seem to turn it off. It niggled at him, like an annoying itch he couldn’t reach to scratch. She evoked feelings in him he had never expected to feel for anyone again. He didn’t want to need her. He didn’t want to want her. He had never wanted to want or need her or anyone. But just as she had come into his life in the past she had changed his black and white to vivid vibrant colour with her sparkly personality and endless cheerfulness. He had seen very little of that vibrant personality since he had come back. Had he done that to her with his clumsy handling of their relationship?
He