“It’ll take another ten minutes for the leukocyte count to come back, but it’s a formality. We should start prepping the surgical suite.”
Another glance confirmed he’d gotten stuck in...what? The past? A desire to run? Dealing with the juxtaposition of seeing her again over a heavily pregnant belly when the last time he’d seen her she’d been carrying his own child?
“Dr. Nikolaides?” Jacinda’s voice contained enough alarm to reclaim all Eri’s focus. “Your hand is shaking.”
Damn. She smiled at Jacinda, even if it was a dodge in order to keep from talking about the fact that her focus was split. It shouldn’t be split. And it wouldn’t be. This event would pass—she’d force it down and contain it.
“It’s just a need for coffee.”
“Not because you’re worried for the baby?”
That she could be truthful about. “You’re far enough along that anesthesia is safe for both of you, and we’re going to take the very best care of you and your baby. I don’t want you to worry.”
She let go of Jacinda’s hand and got her coffee again, tipped it to take a big drink with a hand she willed steady by mentally playing through the steps of the coming procedure. Force of will and work always saved her.
Ares finally started moving and stepped around the table to the right of Erianthe. She eased higher up, to keep plenty of space between them, but despite that she still felt him enter her personal bubble, as distinctly as the whiff of ozone in the first minutes of a hard summer rain.
“Where is the pain?” he asked Jacinda, and then followed that up with all the other questions he needed to ask in order to make his own assessment.
Not a criticism, she reminded herself. Any good doctor would do the same. And Dr. Stevenson would’ve handled it far more condescendingly.
She stayed largely silent and focused on Jacinda. If she wanted to stay with her patient during the surgery, she and Dr. Xenakis needed to get over this. Be completely professional and in the present. Be strangers.
The way he looked, she could almost believe it. Ten years was a long time—they practically were strangers. Or at least she was a stranger to him. Even the strongest woman couldn’t go through all that and come out unchanged.
“It’s hurting too far up,” he said, somewhat quietly. “It’s not appendicitis.”
No accusation—just a statement. But it was an incorrect diagnosis on his part.
“In the third trimester,” she said, surprising herself by how level her voice stayed, “the appendix gets shoved out of the pelvic cradle by the growing baby.”
Both patient and husband turned their gaze to Ares, and his silence forced her to look once more at him.
She ignored the pang that turned to a swirling in her insides when she looked into his beautiful eyes.
Now he’d got past that brick wall his words had run into upon seeing her, the set of his mouth in that Wildman beard proved he felt the strain of their reunion as well.
“I assure you that I’ve seen this condition several times, Dr. Xenakis.”
He didn’t simply watch her now, and his frowning stare could mean lots of things—but none of them were good. Most likely his frown meant he was questioning her diagnosis.
Shoving his hand roughly to the back of his neck, he rubbed like it was on fire. “Would you come with me to brief our anesthesiologist, Dr. Nikolaides?”
No.
Her body shrieked the word along every nerve ending, and she knew she’d gone pale by the funny looks she was receiving. So much for trying to remain calm and appear as though there was no liquid panic rushing through her veins.
She nodded—an act of will—and once that domino fell, others followed.
Everything was fine. She should be happy they had an anesthesiologist. Relief was the only acceptable emotion right now. Forget the rest.
“I’d like Cailey to stay with them,” she managed to say, and waited for Ares to fetch her soon-to-be sister-in-law, giving her a moment to reassure her patient again and project the confidence she would surely start to feel any second now.
Cailey brought the lab results with her, and Erianthe peeked at three numbers before giving a couple of quick instructions, then following Ares.
Just another room. Just another doctor. Everything was normal. This walk didn’t lead to a gas chamber. Just to a conference with another colleague.
Having never come to the clinic before, there was nothing for her to do but follow Ares to the anesthesiologist’s office.
At the end of a short corridor, he opened a door and held it for her.
Polite. Common courtesy. Normal.
She stepped in.
Tension in her shoulders spread to her chest as she scanned the unlit room. No desk. No people. Two bunk beds.
Not an office.
This must be the on-call room for the doctors. Her thought train derailed there. Rounding on him, she reached for the doorknob, her body registering her unease before she thought of a rational response.
“Erianthe?”
“There’s no anesthesiologist,” she blurted out.
He stood in her way, and that was enough to make her draw back from the door and her only escape route.
“I’ve never done an appendectomy on a pregnant woman. You want me to go with your diagnosis—I get it. She’s in a lot of pain, and her appendix could rupture before we get her to Athens. But—”
“Where is the anesthesiologist?” she interrupted, cutting her hand through the air to make him focus, because knowing he wasn’t about to attack her didn’t make being alone with him feel any less dangerous.
“Not here. They called him in already. He’s on his way. Before he gets here, tell me exactly how many of these surgeries you’ve been involved in. I’ve performed emergency appendectomies, but none where the appendix wasn’t in the lower right quadrant. We don’t have a CT scan to work from, so we don’t have a lot of options, but if your diagnosis is incorrect, this is unnecessary surgery. It puts her and the baby at risk. And the weight of that call is on me.”
There it was—the elephant in the room, its neon hide impossible to ignore. Words flew out of her. “Do you really think that I, of all people, would put a baby in needless danger?”
The color drained from his cheeks, confirming that her words had struck right where she’d intended. He stepped back from her, opening up a space that had suddenly become tight and toxic.
“No.” It took him several seconds to make that one-word answer, and in this small room she couldn’t help but look at him, watch him, try to read him—not that she’d done so well in reading him when she’d been young and foolish enough to trust him.
THE SATISFACTION OF seeing Ares blanch came and went in a single sluggish heartbeat. Fighting about the past wouldn’t do anything to help this situation, and Jacinda and her baby deserved one hundred percent of their focus and attention. Now wasn’t the time to talk about their own child.
Erianthe tried again. “I’ve assisted before in this type of surgery twice. I’ve observed another couple times. I’m not a surgeon, but I perform C-sections and I’ve done surgery rotations. If we had any other option, then I’d say send her off the