Reunited With Her Brooding Surgeon

She put out her hand, waiting to see if he would say anything, wanting to know if he would divulge their shared past.

‘Grace... Gibson, is it?’

You know damn well it is, she wanted to say, but the look in his eye stopped her short and made her hold her tongue. Which surprised her. Holding her tongue had never been her forte.

Her hand hovered in mid-air until Marcus’s fingers curled around her palm. Perhaps he was just trying to make amends for his lack of manners but his touch flummoxed her. His tone was cool but his hand was warm. Warm enough to send fire through her fingertips. Her whole arm tingled and set her heart racing. Her breath caught in her throat and she barely remembered to nod her head in acknowledgement of his words.

What was he doing to her? How was he doing it? She was breathless, frozen to the spot, yet her body felt as if it was overheating. The colours around her intensified, making her feel dizzy, and sounds receded. She felt overloaded, as if her body couldn’t cope with too many sensations at once. Marcus’s touch was enough to cope with. More than enough.

What was wrong with her? She wondered if she was having a panic attack or if her system was shutting down. What had he done to her? She never lost her nerve.

She could feel another embarrassing rush of blood beginning to flood her body, only this time it wasn’t in her face. This time it was starting somewhere south of that but she knew her face would soon be bright red also. She pulled her hand away, severing the contact.

Her hand was trembling. She was trembling.

She stuck her hand in her pocket to disguise her tremor and looked at her feet, unable to maintain eye contact.

If Marcus had been daring her to say something, he’d won the dare. She was completely tongue-tied.

Elliot was still talking, apparently oblivious to the feelings that were raging through Grace and completely unaware of the electric undercurrents flowing between her and his new colleague.

Perhaps it was all in her head, she thought, but she didn’t really believe that.

‘You’ve read the patient histories?’ Elliot asked, and Janet and Marcus nodded. ‘Janet, I thought you could perform the kidney removal on Rosa. I will assist and, Marcus, you are more experienced, you can observe that surgery and then you will perform the transplant later.’

Grace had decided not to be such a coward and had lifted her eyes again now that the attention was off her and she saw Marcus’s small double take. He looked surprised by Elliot’s words—had he not been expecting that?

Elliot continued speaking. ‘Grace will have any other information you might need pre-op. If there’s anything more you need, you can liaise with her. I will do the other transplant, with Janet assisting, and Andrew Murray will take care of the second organ retrieval. Your patients were admitted first thing this morning—’

‘Already?’ Marcus interrupted.

Grace knew it was unusual. Normally patients were admitted as late as possible, sometimes only on the day of surgery, mostly as a cost-saving exercise, but she’d advocated strongly that admission be brought forward.

Elliot nodded. ‘Grace thought it would be prudent to get them admitted early to avoid the media circus that we’re anticipating, and I agreed. We don’t want to increase their stress levels by having reporters jostling for a comment as they arrive, and this also means we don’t have to worry about traffic delays and other things that might be out of our control tomorrow.’

Marcus looked at Grace. She thought he might be about to say something and she wondered if it would have been complimentary but his expression remained guarded. Janet had no reservations. ‘Great, I’ll go and introduce myself to Rosa.’

Elliot moved away and Janet and Marcus followed him without a backward glance. Grace stood and watched them go. Had he forgotten about her already?

She watched as his long strides quickly put distance between them. Her legs were incapable of moving. Her knees were still shaky and she felt light-headed. She stood still and took a couple of deep breaths, getting the air back into her lungs, remembering to breathe as she sorted through her mental list of tasks ahead of her.

She had plenty to do before tomorrow. Final physical checks of their patients had to be co-ordinated, she had to confirm the courier arrangements and continue discussions with the other renal co-ordinators in Brisbane, Melbourne and North Sydney hospitals. She had a lot of balls in the air and she couldn’t afford to drop any. She couldn’t afford to worry about Marcus Washington and about what he was thinking or where he’d been for the last twenty years. There were far too many more important things waiting to occupy her time.

But that didn’t stop her from immediately racing back to her office and checking her emails. There must have been one announcing the three-month appointment of Janet and Marcus. She couldn’t believe she’d missed it. She typed Marcus’s name into the search function and hit enter. An email from a month ago popped up. The heading gave no clue as to who the doctors were, and she was certain that if it had included his name that would have caught her eye. It was also in amongst dozens of emails relating to the paired kidney exchange, which would explain why she’d skimmed over it without even opening it.

She opened it now. She was eager to see what information it gave her.

She ignored Janet’s CV and clicked on the file pertaining to Marcus. He had graduated from university in Western Australia. Had he moved there from Toowoomba? Why? Who had he gone to? Had his mother moved there? Was she alive? But if she was, why hadn’t she taken him years before? Grace had more questions than answers.

She continued reading. He had spent some time in the US during his speciality years, returning to work in Perth. And now he was here. His career history was brief and, of course, there was no personal information included. Nothing to tell her if he was married, engaged, straight, gay—although she was pretty sure he was straight—or if he had a wife and kids back home in Perth.

She closed her email down. She didn’t have time to do a wider search on him. She had all the final pieces of the transplant puzzle to put in place. She had dozens of phone calls to make, she needed to check in with the other hospitals to make sure that all their patients were still well enough to undergo surgery and that no one had changed their minds. One hiccup could ruin the whole exercise.

She was glad she’d made arrangements for her patients to be admitted early. As Elliot had outlined, her reasons were valid. There were enough other logistical arrangements to be made once the kidneys had been harvested, without adding to the complications with things going haywire prior to the surgeries. It would only take one problem to snowball and potentially disrupt all the surgeries, and she wanted everything to run smoothly.

By the time she ended her final call to one of the Melbourne hospitals it was dusk outside. She should have clocked off but there was still more to do. Her schedule didn’t stick to regular nursing shifts any more, not since she’d become the renal co-ordinator. Her shifts supposedly ran from nine to five but it was not often that she stuck to those hours. Transplant patients could receive news day or night and she was often called back into the hospital to speak to the families of donors and to the transplant recipients. Plus, she had no reason to race out the door at the end of the day. She had nothing to race home for. No significant other, no children, no pets. If it wasn’t for work, her life would be a bit empty.

She switched off her office lights but, still in no hurry to leave, she thought she’d check one last time on the four patients waiting for surgery.

She got two patients with her first visit.

‘Gentlemen, how are you feeling?’

She greeted Rob and Paul, two brothers, one a donor, the other a recipient. Rob’s donated kidney was going to Brisbane in exchange for a kidney for his brother, as unfortunately their tissue types didn’t match. They were sitting together, chatting, when Grace entered Paul’s room. They seemed quite relaxed but Paul had been through this before so it was nothing new for him. His first kidney transplant, from a deceased donor, had lasted twenty-five years but was failing now. It was wonderful to think that the paired exchange programme could hopefully give him another shot at a successful transplant.

As Grace chatted to the two men she quickly revised her opinion of how they were feeling. Paul seemed far more relaxed than Rob.

‘Are you ready for tomorrow, Rob?’ she asked gently when Paul went to the bathroom, leaving the two of them alone for a moment.

‘I was told that the research shows that kidney disease most commonly affects both kidneys, is that right?’

‘That does seem to be the case. You’re worried about your remaining kidney?’ Rob’s nerves were not unusual in Grace’s experience. The donor was often more on edge than the recipient. Grace didn’t know if it was fear of the unknown or a lack of experience with hospitals or the fact that the donor wasn’t actually sick but was giving up a perfectly healthy organ. Rob was going from being a healthy, intact individual to one who would be minus an organ. Granted, he could do without it but that was assuming his remaining kidney continued to function normally. Hence his question. She knew he’d heard these answers before but her role as co-ordinator was often as much about counselling as co-ordinating.

‘We don’t anticipate problems, Rob,’ she reassured him when he nodded. ‘We wouldn’t let you do this if we thought it could create problems for you down the track.’

‘There’s no way I’m backing out,’ he emphasised firmly, ‘and my kidney only has to last long enough to see me out.’

‘Okay. Get some rest and I’ll see you in the morning.’

Grace made her way to Rosa’s room across the hall next. Rosa’s kidney would be going to Paul, not that either of them were privy to that piece of information, in exchange for a kidney for Rosa’s son in Melbourne. Despite being across the corridor from each other, Paul and Rosa wouldn’t meet.

Rosa was sitting beside her bed, knitting, the television on low volume. She was a widow with just the one son living interstate and Grace knew she was used to spending quiet nights alone. She’d told Grace she was fine as long as her hands were busy and she liked to knit. She seemed calm and only had a couple of questions for Grace, both of which had to do with her son’s prognosis. Rosa wasn’t worried about herself at all.

‘We have excellent results with kidney transplants,’ Grace told her again, happy to answer her questions. ‘Especially with living organ donors. Most kidneys will last ten years and some as long as twenty-five.’ She wished she could tell Rosa that her kidney was going to Paul and that he was one of the people whose first transplanted kidney had lasted twenty-five years but she couldn’t divulge that information, even though she knew it would make Rosa feel better. She said goodnight before popping into Connie’s room, her last stop for the evening.

‘Hey, Connie.’

Connie was the recipient of the spare kidney and even though in testing it had proved to be a good match there was a little bit of the unknown associated with this one, given the unexpectedness of the windfall, and Grace knew Connie was nervous.

Connie had moved to Sydney from the country eighteen months ago to have regular dialysis. She suffered from autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease and Grace knew she was finding things difficult. She was only able to work part time and her support group of friends and family were not close by.

Because of her illness and medical appointments her social life was limited and Grace knew that this transplant would make a huge difference to her quality of life. Grace’s sister-in-law had suffered from the same disease and had undergone a transplant five years ago, so Grace knew from personal experience how different Connie’s life could potentially be. Connie was only twenty-seven, the same age as Grace, and because of that and her circumstances Grace felt a deeper affinity for her than for some of her other patients.

‘Where is everyone?’ Grace asked as she looked around. Although they weren’t compatible donors, Connie’s family were providing support to her in other ways, and when Grace stepped into the room she was surprised to find that Connie didn’t have company. She knew her parents had come to the city to be with Connie for the surgery and the recovery.

‘Mum and Dad will be back later, they’ve just gone to get some dinner.’

‘How are you doing?’ she asked as she flicked through Connie’s chart, pleased to see everything looked stable and normal.