The mood of the room had instantly changed—people had become tentative and quiet. Eyes had flashed and flickered over the tops of surgical masks, sending coded messages to each other. Luke Stanley had operated almost silently, his only words being infrequent curt demands for instruments that the experienced scrub nurse had failed to anticipate, and as a result the air was thick with confused tension. People wanted to be sympathetic and understanding, but nothing about Luke Stanley’s demeanour allowed it.
Initially, Chloe hadn’t understood why Luke had insisted she be in the operating room, but it had been utterly hypnotic watching him in action and seeing how those long, strong and competent fingers had freed the thick, scarred adhesions on Made’s neck. He deserved his reputation as a talented surgeon and his skills were restoring little Made’s life to normality. The young boy would once again be able to turn his head, and in time he would once again enjoy playing childhood games.
Although it hadn’t been absolutely necessary to attend the operation to be able to nurse Made effectively, knowing exactly what Luke Stanley had done, seeing from where the skin grafts had been taken and how they had been positioned, did help. She rechecked Made’s analgesia drip and then set about her fifteen-minute routine of observing the skin grafts. Circulation was key and she wanted to see pink, warm skin, not white and cool skin.
‘How’s he doing?’
Surprised, Chloe spun around at the sound of Luke’s deep but curt voice. Just like their first encounter fifteen months ago, she hadn’t heard him enter the ward—only this time her hands were thankfully empty. This time Luke’s face wasn’t open, smiling and cheerful. Instead, gaunt skin stretched over high cheekbones, giving him a haunted look.
‘He’s doing great,’ she said, suppressing a shudder at the pain Luke wore like a greatcoat. Her brain sought for something she could say that could give them a shared connection, which might make him look less formidable and unapproachable. ‘Do you always enter the room panther style?’
His dark brows drew down. ‘What are you talking about?’
She ignored his brusqueness and tried a smile. ‘You have a habit of entering a room silently and surprising me.’
He looked blank and utterly uncomprehending. ‘This is the first time I’ve seen you with a patient.’
She shook her head. ‘Just before you went to France, you walked into this same ward very quietly and gave me such a fright that I covered you in iodine.’
His vivid green eyes finally flashed with recognition. ‘Chloe? Nick’s sister?’ He said the words as if he needed to hear them to cement them in his mind.
‘That’s right. Lucky for you that today my hands are empty,’ she joked.
He glanced down at his scrubs, as if he couldn’t remember what he was wearing, and then shrugged his wide shoulders like it really didn’t really matter anyway. ‘If there’s any change with Made’s grafts, notify me immediately. You have my mobile number?’
She swallowed a sigh. So much for attempting a friendly connection with the man. ‘I do. Are you leaving the hospital now?’
He seemed to stiffen. ‘Yes. I have to pick my daughter up from daycare. They don’t like it when I’m late.’
‘I don’t suppose she likes it either.’
His eyes burned, emitting sparks of green. ‘You think I want Amber in daycare ten hours a day? She doesn’t have a choice and neither do I.’
The loud and terse words slammed into her like a punch to her solar plexus, making her heart race.
Made’s mother startled from her nap in the chair. ‘Apa yang salah?’ Mrs Putu asked anxiously.
Chloe didn’t need to understand the words to know that the mother was stressing that Luke’s raised voice meant something was wrong with her son. She reached out her hand to comfort and reassure the woman.
‘Semuabaik,’ Luke said softly. ‘All is well.’
‘Terimakasih, Dokter.’ The woman visibly relaxed and sank back in her chair.
Chloe turned back to face Luke, surprised at the ease in which the foreign language had rolled off his tongue but furious with him for upsetting Mrs Putu. For deliberately misconstruing her own words. Adrenaline pelted through her, sending rafts of agitation jetting along her veins, and she needed to work extra-hard to appear calm.
Choosing her words carefully, she shepherded Luke towards the door. ‘I’m not judging you about daycare,’ she said, sotto voce, ‘I was talking about the fact your daughter probably doesn’t like it when you’re late either.’
He stared down at her, his jaw tight, his height dwarfing her by a good thirty centimetres, and she caught the scent of his spicy cologne. His eyes, which at times could be bright green, were now a dark moss and filled with so many flickering emotions that it was hard to decode any of them over and above the dominant and glaring pain.
Tall, dark, gorgeous, brooding and tortured.
Her heart did a ridiculous leap, which had absolutely nothing to do with his indignation or her chagrin.
Oh, no, she told herself sternly. The man is grieving and you do not need to rescue him. You’ve just got your own life back on track. You’ve got a dog to love and be loved by.
Shimmering tingles taunted her, spinning through her with their intoxicating call. But it’s been so long…
No way in hell, Chloe! her ever-vigilant internal guard yelled. Keep it simple, remember?
She sucked in a long, deep breath, trying desperately to banish the delicious buzz of addictive warmth. ‘Everything’s fine here, Mr Stanley. Go and get your daughter.’
His eyes widened at her dismissal of him, and he rubbed his forehead with his fingers and his temple with his thumb as if his head hurt. ‘Goodnight, then.’
She watched him turn and leave without giving an apology and she tried not to let it rankle. After all, it shouldn’t bother her one bit because she was used to working with surgeons who believed all should bow down before them and kiss their feet. She also knew that apologies for bad behaviour were few and far between. Only Luke Stanley had always been an exception to that rule.
His reputation for skill and good humour had always meant that people had fallen over themselves to work with him. The nursing and auxiliary staff, from cleaners to occupational therapists, had loved him, and whenever he’d put together a team to go to Asia or Africa for a six-week stint with the foundation, repairing cleft lips and palates, there had always been more applicants than positions.
That man had utterly disappeared when his wife had died.
She wasn’t a stranger to grief, and she understood the pain of it all too well. She’d been lost in the midst of it once, for a year, floundering in the suffocating darkness that had become both enemy and friend. It had been her beloved brother Nick who’d hauled her unwilling teenage mind out of the black and treacherous morass and pushed her back into the light of life.
At the time it had hurt like nothing she’d ever experienced before or since and the battle not to let grief become a toxic legacy had been beyond hard, but she’d done it. Years later, when Jason had told her he wouldn’t marry her because she couldn’t give him a child, she’d teetered on the edge but she’d survived and learned. Today, she knew that even though her life now wasn’t anything like that she’d imagined for herself as a naïve sixteen-year-old, and neither was it the life she truly wanted, it was a life worth living and living well.
You could show him how to do it.