Picking up the Pieces

She ran her eyes over his jeans and cotton sweater, and shook her head, setting the pale gold hair dancing again. Her smile was warm and welcoming, and he felt the loneliness recede a little. ‘You’re fine. Come as you are.’

And so he found himself in the bar, shaking hands, forgetting names almost before they were spoken, smiling and laughing and telling jokes, yelling above the increasing din, until at a quarter to twelve Cassie found him again, her face worried.

‘Have you seen Trevor Armitage?’ she yelled.

He frowned. ‘Rings a bell. I don’t know — what does he look like?’

She grabbed his arm and dragged him out of the noisy bar into the corridor.

‘That’s better. He’s short, fair hair, moustache — he’s the other orthopaedic reg. There’s a whole scad of RTAs out there and we need him, but he isn’t answering his bleep — oh, damn, this is typical.’

‘Er — I think I saw him headed for the loo — let me go and check.’

Nick turned back into the cacophony of the bar and made his way across the crowded floor to the gents’.

There, sprawled across the floor with a sickly smile on his face, was a man with fair hair and a moustache.

‘Are you Trevor?’ Nick asked him.

‘Might be … Who wansh to know?’ he slurred.

Nick straightened. ‘Forget it, friend, you aren’t doing anything tonight.’

He headed back out and found Cassie waiting for him by the door.

‘Well?’

‘Out for the count.’

‘Oh, damn — what are you doing for the next few hours?’

He grinned in defeat. ‘Operating?’

‘Are you sober?’

Nick nodded. ‘Better than him — I’ve been on mineral water since ten, and I only had two drinks before that.’

Cassie’s face lit up. ‘Great. Come on, the team’s waiting. When does your contract start officially?’

Nick glanced at his watch. ‘In about six minutes?’

‘Perfect.’

‘Oh, my … He is gorge-ous!’

‘Hmm?’

Cassie tried to drag her eyes away from the mirror and her inch-by-inch inspection of Nick, scantily clad in theatre greens, the short sleeves amply displaying his lean, well-muscled arms with their dark scatter of hair; there was more of the same hair clustered at the base of his throat, curling slightly against the edge of the V. It looked impossibly soft. She wondered how it would feel ——

‘Ah-hem.’

‘What?’ She jumped guiltily and blinked at her colleague. ‘Sorry, Mary-Jo, did you say something?’

Mary-Jo chuckled. ‘Pardon me for interrupting! I said, he’s gorgeous. Six feet of solid M-A-N — whoo-whee!’

Oh! Well, I suppose so, if he’s your type…’ Cassie hastily stuffed her hair under her cap and skewered it with grips, and tried to ignore Mary-Jo’s soft laughter behind her.

‘Oh, yes, he’s my type … I wonder if he’s single?’

‘Haven’t got a clue.’

‘I’ll have to find out.’ Mary-Jo practised her smile in the mirror beside Cassie, and then winked at her. ‘We can’t have all that testosterone going to waste — criminal!’

Cassie laughed. ‘You’re disgusting.’

‘No, I’m realistic. It wouldn’t hurt you to be exposed to a little testosterone every now and again. In fact, I’ll be generous. As a seasonal gesture of goodwill, I’ll let you have him — how about that for a New Year present?’

‘Wasted,’ Cassie said drily.

Mary-Jo shrugged. ‘Oh, well, don’t say I didn’t offer, but there’s a limit to my generosity, and he is quite spectacularly gorgeous …!’

Gorgeous? Gorgeous didn’t even begin to touch it, Cassie thought. All afternoon she’d noticed him, carrying stuff in and pottering in and out of his room, and then their meeting — well! Crashing into his chest was just calculated to do unbelievable things to her blood-pressure, but surely to goodness it should have settled down by now!

And she was going to be working with him, though how she had no idea. Every time she looked up, he seemed to fill her vision, and her heart seemed to have acquired a unique rhythm all of its own tonight.

Lord knows what’s so special about him, she thought. He wasn’t particularly tall — maybe six feet, certainly not much more — not particularly broad, although what she could see of him was beautifully put together; all in all, he was pretty average, really, except for those eyes. That was it, the eyes, that amazing, shatteringly clear blue — or was it the way that oh, so soft dark hair flopped over his eyes, or the little-boy grin, lop-sided and appealing?

She shook her head hard to clear it, muttering under her breath, and jumped when his soft, husky voice sounded in her ear.

‘OK?’

She swallowed, forced herself to meet those beautiful eyes in the mirror and nodded. ‘Yes.’

‘Let’s go, then. The patient’s up here.’

She had already introduced him to the rest of the team, and now she watched as he quietly took charge as soon as the anaesthetist handed over.

He had studied the X-rays and decided to use an external fixator on the shattered tibia exposed by the sterile drapes.

‘Circulation’s a bit iffy — I want to see if I can improve that. Maybe when the bones are realigned the pressure might ease.’

After cleaning the wound and manipulating the bones back into approximate alignment, he concentrated for a while on the blood vessels, and Cassie was fascinated to watch him. He worked swiftly and economically, causing as little disruption to the tissues as possible.

She had seen other surgeons clearing such a large area of skin away from the field that the skin subsequently died and had to be replaced with grafts.

Not so with Nick. He was steady, thorough and absolutely meticulous, completely absorbed in his task, and Cassie found herself able to anticipate exactly what he needed and have it ready to give him at the precise second he needed it. As the operation proceeded, they found their minds and hands meshing in a carefully orchestrated dance, as if they were one.

It was exciting, totally absorbing, and she felt as if they’d been working together for years. There were no hitches, no hold-ups, no words needed bar the absolute minimum.