LITMIR.BIZ

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it!’ he exclaimed, interrupting her offer before it had been made. ‘It was a transverse lie and the poor little thing had been squashed by its sisters trying to get out.’

      Even as he was speaking he was lifting the tiny scrap out of its mother’s body, and Leah’s heart clenched when she saw the state the infant was in.

      ‘He’s terribly floppy!’ she exclaimed, already reaching out to take the precious burden. ‘Is he breathing?’

      She didn’t really want to pass the tiny being over, all her protective instincts demanding she take care of it herself, but with Ashraf’s renewed warning that they needed to finish the operation as soon as possible, all she could do was relinquish her into Sally’s waiting hands, knowing that her colleague would do everything she could.

      In the meantime, there were now three placentas to remove and check for completeness before the incisions in both uterus and skin could be closed—and all with the clock ticking ominously.

      ‘Damn! Where is all that blood coming from?’ David swore suddenly. ‘Leah, suction! I can’t see what’s going on…’

      ‘Hurry up, guys,’ Ashraf warned. ‘We’re going to lose her.’

      ‘Not without a fight,’ David countered fiercely. ‘Get some more fluids into her as fast as you can,’ he directed as he peered into the gaping wound. ‘Damn it, the uterus is paper thin. It’s almost shredding as we look at it.’

      ‘You’ll have to do a hysterectomy,’ Leah said, hoping she sounded calmer than she felt. ‘With blood loss this rapid there isn’t time for any sort of repair, not if she’s going to be around for those babies.’

      David met her eyes for the briefest moment and she knew that they’d both come to that same decision.

      She’d thought she’d seen him working quickly before, but it was nothing to the speed at which he excised the life-threatening tissue in a room filled with the din of shrilling monitors warning of imminent disaster.

      ‘She’s going to crash!’ Ashraf called, and out of the corner of her eye Leah could see his hands flying from one control to another as he tried his best to support their failing patient.

      ‘Thirty seconds, Ashraf!’ David growled, without pausing for a single one of them in his determination to cheat death. ‘Just keep her going for another thirty seconds.’

      ‘I’ll do my best, but I can’t promise you’ve got even that long,’ the anaesthetist warned as the monitor told them that their patient’s heart was beating almost out of control in an attempt to circulate the remaining blood, but David didn’t even falter.

      Leah was aware of a strange feeling that was almost exhilaration as she assisted in one of the most frantic operations she’d ever witnessed. For the first time ever in an operation, the lead surgeon didn’t even need to say what he wanted. Somehow she just knew and was there ready with the next clamp or the diathermy to seal off another bleeding blood vessel.

      ‘Bowl,’ David said, even as Leah was holding it out to him. He finally glanced towards Ashraf. ‘How is she doing?’

      ‘Holding her own—just,’ he said cautiously, and checked all his monitors again. ‘We’re actually managing to get some volume into her, now that she’s not leaking like a sieve. Her heart rate is coming down and her blood pressure’s coming up.’

      ‘In that case, Leah, would you like to close?’ He raised one dark eyebrow but she was more interested in the expression of relief she detected in those beautiful eyes.

      ‘Oh, yes. Of course,’ she floundered, feeling like a fool for standing gazing at him like that. What on earth was going on? She’d never behaved like this before. Imagine—standing in the operating theatre in the middle of a procedure and thinking that the new consultant had beautiful eyes!

      Whatever next? she demanded silently as she did a final check to make sure that nothing was bleeding any more, then carefully sutured the abdominal musculature layer by layer.

      ‘Nice neat job,’ David murmured at her elbow, but she’d known that he was watching, every nerve seeming to recognise his proximity even though she couldn’t see him.

      ‘Thank you, sir,’ she said with a mock curtsey, then stepped back to allow others to take over the application of protective dressings before their patient was taken through to Recovery.

      ‘And may I return the compliment, in spades,’ she continued, when they’d made their way out of Theatre to divest themselves of their liberally splattered clothing. Sudden nervousness at the thought that he was about to see her in nothing more than her underwear made her chatter. ‘I’ve never seen anyone work that fast or that accurately, and I’ll be eternally grateful that you agreed to come in tonight. I know I could have delivered the babies, but I doubt whether I’d have been able to save the mother when it all went pear-shaped so quickly.’

      Suddenly confronted by the tanned width of his naked chest, her tongue stopped working, her jaw all but hanging open. Had she thought he was too thin? She could obviously blame his tailor because there was nothing wrong with the body she was seeing in front of her…close enough to touch if she just reached out…

      ‘You’ll be surprised what you can manage to do when there aren’t any other options,’ he said quietly, jerking her out of that dangerous line of thought, then a glint of mischief lit his eyes. ‘And I like the sound of eternally grateful. Does that translate into fetching cups of coffee?’

      ‘In your dreams!’ she retorted, grateful that he hadn’t noticed the way she was eyeing him and surprised that he felt at ease enough to tease. The rather solemn man she’d met the other day hadn’t looked as if he had a single joke in him.

      ‘But you’d join me in one?’

      She glanced up at the clock and pulled a face.

      ‘I may as well,’ she agreed. ‘It certainly isn’t worth going back to bed now, and I’m going to need plenty of it, strong and sweet, if I’m going to stay awake today.’

      ‘Well, shall we agree that the first one out of the shower pours the coffee?’ he suggested. ‘How do you like yours, exactly?’

      ‘You’re making the assumption that you’ll finish first,’ she pointed out sweetly. ‘I like mine strong but white with just a dash of sugar—how do you take yours?’

      ‘White. Without,’ he said, then grinned. ‘I’ll see you in a few minutes, then. Your coffee should have cooled enough to drink by the time you get there,’ he added in what was clearly a challenge.

      David tensed when he heard the door open behind him, wondering how he could possibly know that it was Leah who had just entered.

      He was surprised to see that there was a slight tremor to the hand that was pouring the coffee when it had been perfectly steady in the life-and-death situation just a few minutes ago in Theatre.

      ‘Drat!’ he heard her say, and knew that it was in response to the fact that he’d beaten her.

      He quickly stretched a triumphant smile over his face and turned to face her with a coffee in each hand, and nearly dropped both of them.

      He certainly wouldn’t have expected her hair to be that long, and to see it hanging all the way to the middle of her back, still dripping with water, sent his imagination into overdrive…until he hastily put the brakes on it. He was still having difficulty trying to forget the sight of her elegant curves clothed in nothing more than creamy lace underwear as she’d stripped off after surgery.

      Now was not the time for mental images of Leah in the shower, slick, wet hair flowing over her naked body, not while she was standing in front of him with her hand held out for the coffee he was clutching like a lifeline.

      ‘All right, I concede,’ she said. ‘But under duress. If I cut my hair as short as yours I’d be able to—’

      ‘Don’t!’

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