The Surgeon's Meant-To-Be Bride

‘Well, I’m going to say shopping in the high street and the smell of peat fires,’ said Siobhan in her lilting Irish accent.

Harriet and Gill had stayed a few days at Siobhan’s family’s farm deep in the Irish countryside five years ago, and she’d loved the earthy smell of burning peat as well. Harriet smiled fondly at the memory and it took her a few seconds to register that they were waiting for her contribution.

She glanced at Gill and quickly looked away as she met his steady grey gaze. What she missed most about home was the beachfront apartment she and Gill lived in at Bondi, and how they would make love all night and sleep till noon, then stroll along past all the cafés and eat pasta at their favourite Italian one. She missed that a lot.

‘Mangoes.’

She smiled as an unbidden memory of Gill feeding her mango in bed rose in her mind. He had trailed the seed over her breasts and then thoroughly removed the sweet, heavenly juices with his tongue. She blinked. ‘And…um…sun-baking.’

Gill had the same mango image in his mind and felt his mouth water. He looked at her when she mentioned sun-baking and remembered how she liked to go nude on the beach so her olive skin wasn’t marred by white strap marks.

He smiled to himself. Once a hippy, always a hippy. Harriet had been brought up by alternative lifestyle parents who still lived a communal existence in the hinterland of the mid New South Wales coast. They had instilled in her a wonderful sense of justice and fairness and doing unto others, and he knew they had made her the wonderful humanitarian she was today.

And because of this lifestyle he didn’t think he’d met anyone quite as at ease with their body or nudity as Harry. At home she barely wore clothes and every opportunity she got to disrobe she took gleefully. And, dear God, what a body it was. As far as he was concerned, she could be permanently naked. But unfortunately…he’d just signed away any rights to seeing her naked ever again.

Her gaze met his and for a moment he felt as if she was thinking the same thing. No more nudity. No more Bondi. No more mangoes or barbeques or escargots. At least, not together. Did she feel that loss as keenly as he did or had she had time to get used to it? After all, in their year of separation he had never seriously believed that either of them would make it permanent. But she’d obviously thought about it a lot.

‘What are the chances, do you think,’ Katya asked in her accented English, ‘we will get out of here before any more casualties arrive?’

‘Zero,’ said Helmut, pessimistic as always.

The turn in conversation brought Gill out of his trance and he reluctantly broke eye contact with Harriet. Their flight left at 7 a.m. tomorrow morning. It wasn’t unknown to go twenty-four hours without incoming wounded, but it was the exception rather than the rule.

He found himself in a perverse kind of way hoping there would be. Not that he wished any of the locals ill, he just knew from the last two months that the human carnage was showing no signs of abating, the civil war gathering momentum if anything, and that it was never long between skirmishes. If it was going to happen, just bring it on, he thought. He needed to keep busy today so he didn’t have to think about Harriet and the divorce and how badly his life was going to suck without her.

CHAPTER FOUR

1000 HOURS

ON THEIR way to the morning triage meeting, Katya caught up with Harriet.

‘One more sleep, Harry,’ she said.

Harriet laughed. Katya was the youngest of the three nurses that formed their surgical team and had been with MedSurg Aid Abroad for four years. Harriet loved to listen to her talk. Her grasp of the English language was superb and her accent very easy on the ear, adding a husky quality to what she was saying.

She especially liked it when Katya, the most volatile of the group, lost her cool, which happened from time to time in the presence of such senseless carnage. She would slip back into her native Russian every third or fourth word and especially when she couldn’t think of an insulting enough English word.

Katya always said that Russian swear words were much more poetic than English. And listening to her in full flight, Harriet had to admit she was right. It was as if Katya was reciting Tolstoy, the frown on her pretty animated face a reminder that her words weren’t really high literature at all.

‘You do know how happy we all are that you and Gill are back together.’

Harriet’s step faltered briefly. A denial rose to her lips but looking at the joy on her friend’s face she didn’t have the heart to speak the truth. What was the point? Their mission was over tomorrow. Why not part with everyone thinking she and Gill were going to live happily ever after? This fine group of people wanted so badly for them to be happy, for it to be like it had been. They would all know the truth soon enough.

Harriet smiled and nodded. ‘Yes, I do.’

Katya grinned back at her and not for the first time Harriet thought what a good match Gill and Katya would make. In fact, she half suspected that they would have hooked up in her absence. The blonde, petite Russian nurse was very pretty in a perky kind of a way and there had been a time when Katya had first joined their team that she’d had a huge crush on Gill.

Not that Harriet had ever felt threatened by it. If anything, it had been amusing and Katya had been far too young and innocent to take seriously. Gill and the group had been patient and allowed her to get over her hero-worship without an embarrassing confrontation.

But there didn’t seem to even be a whiff of anything having happened. No awkwardness between them, no hushed, secretive conversations, no vibe that they knew each other intimately. Just the same friendly banter that had always existed between them. That the whole team thrived on. That gelled them all together.

She’d hoped Gill had found the idea of casual sex during their separation as abhorrent as she had. That their separation had devastated him as much as her. That sex with someone else just didn’t rate. But he was a virile man with appetites and she didn’t fool herself for a moment that men and women thought the same way about matters relating to sex.

And a year was a long time. A year of living apart, working apart. Harriet had stayed with MedSurg but had joined another surgical team that had gone to different hot-spots and had worked the opposite rotation to Gill’s. So when Gill’s team had been flying home for a month’s R and R, Harriet’s team had been flying elsewhere to start their two-month stint.

Communication between them had been complicated by their work assignments. The places they went to and the conditions of the local infrastructure often meant phone or mobile contact was not possible. MedSurg comms centre had enough on their plates, dealing with casualties and air evacuations and managing their ground-level programmes, without being a message centre for idle chit-chat. Only emergency calls for staff were allowed.

Email had been their most efficient communication tool. Separation via electronic mail. Harriet had hated it. She wondered now as they filed into the triage meeting if they would divorce via the internet as well. Would they split up their assets, argue about which books, which CDs belonged to whom?

She imagined her email to him when the decree nisi arrived. Dear Gill. It’s official. We are no longer joined in marriage. You should be receiving the paperwork soon. Have a good life. Harriet shuddered. She felt so empty thinking about it, but the alternative Gill had suggested this morning made her emptier.

A part-time father who’d rather fly around the world, fixing other people’s problems, than be with her and their baby. To have to watch his detachment when he came home and live with him, knowing he had one eye on the calendar. Harriet knew as surely as she knew that she loved him that she’d be more miserable with half of Gill than none of him.

‘Oh, great,’ muttered Katya beside her as she slipped into the seat next to Harriet. ‘Just what I needed on my last day. Casanova.’

Harriet smiled to herself. Sitting opposite them was another reason why Gill and Katya would probably never hook up. Count Benedetto Medici the third. Italian aristocracy, wealthy playboy and MedSurg’s newest surgeon. It was standard operating procedure for MSAA to send two full teams to any mission, and unfortunately casualty numbers more than justified it.

The smooth charm of the affluent newbie had well and truly rubbed Katya up the wrong way, her poor-as-dirt background giving her a healthy dislike of men born with silver spoons in their mouths. It was obvious to all but Katya they were hot for each other.

‘Morning, Katya,’ he said across the table, sending her a smouldering smile.

‘Ben,’ she said shortly, and Harriet admired her withering dismissal.

She glanced at Gill, who winked at her, and for a second she forgot that they’d be nearly divorced by the time Gill returned to the team next time. The memory of their joining this morning was still fresh in her mind and for a few seconds she remembered how much she loved him and how their romance, too, had blossomed in the diverse melting pot of an MSAA mission.

Gill also remembered. He’d been entering his fourth year with the organisation and had been a little apprehensive about the new RN taking over from Liesel, who was going back to Sweden to get married. It was always a little stressful when someone new joined an already established team.

Would they fit in? Would they complement the existing members, would the fit be seamless or would their presence cause ripples and potentially be disruptive? Would the unity of the team be irreparably damaged? Did they have a sense of humour? Were they willing to fit in with the routines and procedures of the group?

What had been their motivation to join the organisation in the first place? Was it for a genuine humanitarian reason or were they running away from something or dropping out of society? Gill had been around long enough to see the effect one ill-suited person could have on the harmony of a team.

So all these things had been careening through his mind the night he and the rest of the team had met Harriet at a London restaurant, and had been banished in an instant. She had been gorgeous and had fitted in instantly, and they had both known without a single word being spoken that their destinies were entwined.

When they’d left together a couple of hours later there had been no question of saying goodbye at the door. The only question had been which hotel room—his or hers. They’d settled on hers because it had been the closest. And despite knowing that they were heading into the world’s latest war zone the next day, they had been up all night.

He remembered how Harriet had been worried the next morning about the consequences. How would the rest of the team feel? Would they judge her? Would they resent her? Should they keep it quiet? So they’d agreed to do that but they’d been so besotted with each other it had been hopeless and they’d given the game away within the first week.

And now here they were, seven years later, weeks away from divorce.

‘So,’ said Ben. ‘Shall we begin?’

Gill reluctantly broke eye contact with his wife. Ex-wife. Better get used to that, he thought. Ex-wife. Ex-wife.

The daily triage meeting was held with as many staff present as possible. Obviously if they were operating it was postponed, but otherwise 10:30 every morning—like clockwork.

Triage was a bit of a misnomer, really. Yes, decisions were made on a case-by-case basis as to which patient got the next available helicopter to a major centre, but it was also a forum to debrief, air problems and talk about more mundane things such as supplies, equipment and procedures.

‘Three of my patients stayed in the HDU overnight. The liver lac has priority. His drain losses haven’t slowed and I’d like to get him out of here first,’ said Ben.