‘This is Mrs Khan,’ Keren began the introductions. ‘And this is Dr Emily Livingston, who is working with Mr Khalil. She would love to see how strong and straight your arm is, Ameera.’
The interpreter had slipped into the room almost unseen behind the woman and child and, as Keren spoke, translated her words into a mixture of incomprehensible sounds that sounded almost like spoken music.
Without any hesitation, the little girl tugged her sleeve up to reveal a scar so neat that, in time, it would probably become almost unnoticeable.
It didn’t take long for Emily to gain her trust, especially when she discovered that the youngster was ticklish, and it was very satisfying to note that every test she performed confirmed that the prognosis was excellent.
‘It is good, yes?’ her mother asked, clearly worried about her daughter.
‘Yes. It is good,’ Emily confirmed with a broad smile. The flaking skin that was the result of the time spent in a cast would soon disappear, and the way Ameera eagerly completed every task Emily had set her spoke well for her regaining her full range of motion in time, even if structured physiotherapy wouldn’t be available once she returned to her own country. ‘I just wish I could take another photo to put in the file.’
‘But you can!’ Keren exclaimed as she hurried across to a cupboard at the other side of the room. ‘I’m sorry, but I completely forgot to give you the camera.’
‘Ah!’ the little girl exclaimed when she saw what Keren was fetching. She obviously knew what was expected of her and pulled her sleeve up again, this time proudly showing off her straight arm with a broad smile.
‘Thank you so much,’ her mother said, her dark eyes glittering with the threat of happy tears. ‘Everybody. Thank you so much for Ameera arm.’
‘You’d better go away before you make us all cry,’ Keren said, and when the interpreter translated what she’d said, everybody gave a watery laugh.
‘It’s a good job I didn’t have time to put any mascara on after my shower,’ Emily muttered wryly after the door closed behind them. ‘If they’re all going to be like that one, I’d have ended up with a bad case of panda eyes.’
‘Maid, that’s why mine is waterproof,’ Keren confided. ‘If it isn’t the successes like Ameera tugging at your heartstrings when you see them put right, it’s the parents arriving with their kids, terrified that no one’s going to be able to do anything to help.’
Emily suggested that she show the next patient in, suddenly conscious that being close to Beabea wasn’t the only reason why she wanted Zayed Khalil to confirm her position on his team.
In little more than half a day she’d been allowed to assist in an operation that would change a tiny child’s life expectation and had seen a little girl’s hopeless expression change to one filled with the joys of being alive. And neither would have been possible without the unit to which she was now attached, and the man whose determination had driven its inception.
CHAPTER THREE
SHE’D been wrong about the hair on his chest, she thought as she drove towards Penhally that evening, grateful that she hadn’t been asked to be on duty this evening.
She hoped that Mr Breyley had explained the special circumstances that had led him to absolve her from staying within easy reach of the hospital while her grandmother was so ill, but she certainly hadn’t felt up to discussing the matter with her new boss—at least, not until she’d sorted her head out and relegated her crazy awareness of the man to its proper place.
A blush heated her cheeks at the realisation that she’d actually been…what was the current term?…checking her new boss out while he’d been bending over Abir’s head on the operating table.
That was something she’d never done before, never been interested in doing, if the truth be told, but when Zayed Khalil had leant forward over Abir and the V of his top had gaped forward…
‘Well, I could hardly help seeing, unless I closed my eyes,’ she muttered defensively, and even that wouldn’t have erased the image once it had been imprinted on her retinas.
She’d wondered about his chest when she’d seen the hint of dark hair at the opening of his shirt, and had speculated about the amount of body hair he would display if she were ever to see him naked.
‘Well, it certainly isn’t a mean scattering of wiry hairs,’ she said with a strange sense of satisfaction, even as her body sizzled with heat at the idea of seeing the man totally naked. Mean was the last word she would use to describe the thick, dark pelt that had covered him as far as she could see down the front of his scrub top. As for whether it was wiry… She snorted aloud at the thought that she might ever have the opportunity to find out.
‘As if!’ she scoffed at the idea of ever becoming familiar enough with the man to run her fingers over the dark swells of his pectorals, trailing them through the thick silky-looking strands until she found the flat coppery discs of his male nipples and—
‘Enough!’ she snapped into the privacy of her little car, and leant forward to flick the radio on, loudly. ‘The last thing I need is to arrive at the home looking all hot and bothered.’ Her grandmother may be just weeks away from the end of her life but she certainly hadn’t lost her keen eyesight or her unfailing instinct for when there was something on Emily’s mind.
‘So, how’s the job going?’ Beabea asked, almost before Emily had settled into the chair beside her bed. ‘Are you still enjoying it as much as you thought you would?’
Emily smiled wryly at the fact that her grandmother had picked the one topic that she would rather not have talked about, at least until she’d banished those strange new feelings of awareness that were plaguing her.
‘By the time I got to work this morning, Mr Breyley was on his way to New Zealand,’ she announced, hoping that the ramifications of her side-tracked job would fill the time until Beabea’s next round of medication made her too drowsy to pick up anything untoward.
The story of the consultant’s concerned dash to the other side of the world so that he and his wife could be there for their daughter and new grandchild was like meat and drink to a woman who knew almost everything that happened within a fifty-mile radius of Penhally. It was testimony to the fogging effect of the analgesics that it was some time later before she suddenly realised what a disastrous effect it might have on her granddaughter’s employment.
‘But your job!’ she exclaimed breathlessly. ‘If he’s gone away, does this mean that you’re going to have to move away? Oh, Emily! And you’ve only just moved back, and I was so enjoying being able to see you each day…’
‘Hush, Beabea, it’s not a problem,’ she soothed, squeezing her grandmother’s hand gently, almost afraid that she might shatter the delicate bones. ‘Before he left, Mr Breyley organised another job for me in the interim, until he comes back.’
‘What sort of job? There can’t be two posts for the same work, surely?’ She was still fretting.
‘Not exactly the same, no,’ Emily conceded. ‘But I’ve certainly fallen on my feet with the new post. It’s paediatric orthopaedics and I went into Theatre this morning and the consultant actually let me assist.’
‘On your first day in the job?’ Beabea was understandably amazed. She’d had to listen patiently at the beginning of Emily’s time on Mr Breyley’s firm while she had moaned about wanting to do more than observe and do endless paperwork and legwork.
‘On my very first day,’ she agreed with a triumphant grin. ‘It was an operation on a little boy. The bones of his skull had fused too soon and we had to—’