Sheikh Surgeon, Surprise Bride

‘Keen and eager?’ he asked her, as he strode along beside her towards the theatre they’d been allocated that morning, but she was certain that somehow he knew that it was nerves that had brought her in this early.

‘Looking forward to getting on with the job,’ she agreed, wishing she dared cross her fingers for luck. Although she had a feeling that luck wouldn’t be enough to take her through this first operation. She was going to need to demonstrate every bit of the skills she’d learned so far, while learning everything she could from the man who had so much expertise to impart.

And the first thing she learned was a lesson in simple humanity.

Their patient had stuck in her mind from their meeting yesterday, soon after her admission to the orthopaedic ward.

Cicely Turner wasn’t a very tall woman, and she weighed hardly more than a sparrow, which was probably the only reason why she’d managed to keep going as long as she had on hips that were so damaged it was a wonder she was still able to stand, let alone lead a full and active life with dozens of grandchildren and children around her.

‘My mother’s hip replacement was a success but my father’s was a disaster,’she’d told them bluntly when the two of them had invited her into Razak’s office to review her case notes, the X-rays prominently displayed on a view box. The whole procedure had then been discussed with her in detail before she had been asked whether she had any questions.

‘Not really, no, thank you very much,’she’d said politely. ‘I’m certainly not expecting to be able to run a marathon when you’ve done it. I just want you to promise me that you’ll take the pain away so I can help my children out by doing a bit of babysitting now and again. I do love getting my hands on the babies,’ she confided in an aside to Lily. ‘Luckily, by the time I couldn’t have any more of my own, my children had started producing their own, so I’ve always had plenty to cuddle.’

Razak had pointed out, quite properly, that he couldn’t guarantee the success of any operation. ‘All I can guarantee is that we’ll both do our very best,’ he’d said seriously.

And that morning, before the anaesthetist had put her under, he’d made a point of going through to hold her hand and tell her that he hadn’t forgotten his promise.

The smile of relief on the woman’s face wasn’t something that Lily would forget in a hurry, neither was the fact that Razak had understood just how frightened Cicely would be in such an alien situation. It was proof of something special in the man that, despite the time constraints on their limited theatre hours, he had sacrificed a couple of those precious minutes to put her at ease.

The operation itself was textbook perfect, as was the meshing of their skills as the procedure unfolded.

The joint was badly worn, their first view of it once it had been disarticulated confirming Razak’s diagnosis that this patient would be requiring a complete prosthetic replacement for both components of the ball-and-socket joint.

‘I still think the Exeter will be the best choice for her,’ Razak murmured, with another long look from the open joint in front of them to the most recent X-rays displayed on the wall.

‘One of the earliest designs and still the best?’ Lily suggested, wondering if he could tell that she was smiling behind her mask. ‘I believe it got its name because the man who designed it worked at Exeter University in the engineering department.’

‘That’s probably why it has stood the test of time with so few modifications, then—because it was designed to stand up to the stresses to which it would be subjected, rather than to look pretty,’ he commented, even as she saw him checking his measurements to ensure the finished leg length would match its opposite number.

It was strange how, as soon as she’d touched the scalpel to the woman’s prepared flesh, all hint of nerves disappeared. She was still overwhelmingly aware of Razak standing just inches away from her as she dissected her way through the layers of skin and muscle but when his hands came into the operating field it wasn’t as an intrusion into what she was doing but rather as if she’d somehow grown another pair of hands to help her to complete the task.

‘Ready to close?’ he asked, when the cement that had been specially developed to hold the prosthesis to the bone had set properly and the smooth new ball of the joint had been relocated in the relined socket. Lily had been concentrating so hard that it seemed that just moments had passed since the initial incision. A quick glance up at the clock hung prominently on the theatre wall showed that, in fact, the patient had been under anaesthetic for nearly three hours. ‘Are you happy with everything?’ Razak added, almost as an afterthought.

For just a second she wondered if the question was some sort of test and she began to doubt herself, but a quick inspection of the operating site told her that all was exactly how it should be.

‘I’m happy,’ she confirmed, and held out her hand for the first of the absorbable sutures that would be buried deep inside the muscles of the thigh.

Her technique was flawless, Razak mused as he stood aside to watch Lily closing the final layers of the wound with the neatest row of stitches he’d seen in a long time.

Her requests and comments to the other staff had been calm, clear and concise and her concentration…probably better than his own, he admitted with a wry smile behind his mask. Particularly today when his focus had continually been interrupted by an awareness of the soft floral scent that had drifted around him from her skin.

This strange sensitivity towards a work colleague had never happened to him before, even though he’d been surrounded by women in every operating theatre he’d worked in.

Was it just her perfume? That was unlikely. The human sensory system was designed to be able to switch off such input after a relatively short time.

So, was it Lily herself? It certainly seemed that way, although he had no idea what it was about the woman that was affecting him this way. There was something about her that was different to every other woman he’d known but…was she that different that she could interfere with his usual level of concentration?

He suddenly realised with a frown of concern that he might be in a different sort of trouble if his scheme didn’t get the go-ahead.

At least with Lily working in the other theatre, prepping and closing each patient in turn, he wouldn’t be working beside her. It might be the only way he’d be able to demonstrate that the scheme worked, and that was so important to him when he had much less than a year left before he returned to his own country at the end of his contract. After all, it was exactly this sort of system that he was hoping to instigate when he returned home and he needed a success here to silence any doubts.

And still he couldn’t help watching her as she straightened up from applying the final wound dressing, taking in the way she ran a smoothing hand over the supportive anti-embolic stockings that Cicely had been helped into before the operation. They would be removed and replaced twice a day for skin inspection and hygiene purposes.

Then he saw her checking that the notes specified the correct doses of post-operative pain relief and that the antibiotic prophylaxis that had commenced preoperatively would continue until healing had taken place. The last thing any of them needed was for their patient to suffer a deep vein thrombosis or develop a post-operative infection that could destroy their work.

‘Good,’ he said quietly, when she finally stepped back and the trolley was wheeled through to the post-operative ward where Cicely’s recovery from the anaesthetic would be closely monitored. ‘That went very smoothly. I am pleased.’

He could see from the way her eyes lit up that she was smiling, even though her expression was still largely hidden behind her mask. He’d had years of discovering how much a man could learn about a woman when he could see little more than a pair of expressive eyes, but for the first time was discovering just how much physical effect they could have on him.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw her strip her bloodstained gloves off, the way she automatically tucked one inside the other without having to watch her hands performing the manoeuvre a testament to just how many times she’d done it. Her aim into the bin was equally accurate.

Only then did she pull her mask down around her throat to show him that her smile was every bit as wide and just as delighted as he’d imagined.

‘Really? You’re pleased with the way I…it…?’ She stumbled to a halt, an endearing hint of pink darkening that creamy skin. He took pity on her.

‘Yes, I was pleased with the way the operation went and, yes, I was most definitely pleased with your technique,’ he said firmly. ‘Now, let’s get out of here so the staff can get everything ready so we can do it all over again.’

He gestured for her to precede him out of the room, ironically looking forward for the first time to wasting some of their precious theatre time drinking tea with her and rehashing the recently completed procedure.

It was only as she strode ahead of him and his eyes slid down the long slender length of her legs that he noticed that where other theatre staff had written their names or initials on the clogs they wore in Theatre, Lily had drawn a simple stylised picture of the flower she had been named after. The unexpected touch of whimsy suddenly made him realise that there could be far more to this woman than the fact that she was a talented junior surgeon.

The second procedure, a debridement and removal of osteophytes from an osteoarthritic knee, went every bit as smoothly as the first and his heart lifted with the realisation that, whether he had intended it or not, Reg had certainly chosen a perfectionist to be his junior.

His only lingering concern as they reached the end of their shift was whether someone so slender would have the stamina to keep up that standard over the longer operating sessions he wanted to instigate, and neither of them would know the answer unless or until they were given a chance to find out.

‘Dr Langley. A word, please,’ Reg Smythe said pompously as she was just about to leave the orthopaedic department at the end of her shift.

Lily glanced swiftly at her watch, delighted to see that she really didn’t have time to find out what he wanted to say. She had a strong feeling that he wouldn’t have used the same unpleasantly autocratic tone if she’d been a man and her respect for the head of department took a further dip.

‘I’m sorry, Mr Smythe, but I’m going to be late for an appointment.’

‘An appointment?’ he echoed superciliously, as though nothing could be more important than his request.

Lily didn’t want to give the man any more excuses to dislike her. ‘With someone in the administration department,’ she added helpfully.

‘The administration department?’ he repeated impatiently.

‘That’s where they sort out contracts and tax codes and things, isn’t it?’ Lily elaborated blandly. She certainly didn’t want to give him a hint that it was the senior administrator’s office that was her destination. It would be better if he didn’t know what she hoped to accomplish that evening.

‘Ah, yes. Probably,’ he said dismissively. ‘I suppose you’d better run along, then. I’ll have a word with you later.’

Not if I see you first, she said to herself as she hurried away from him, hoping she didn’t look half as guilty as she felt, but until she knew what the chairman of the committee wanted to talk about, she wasn’t going to risk any conversation with Razak’s nemesis. For all she knew, the man who was one of the hospital’s most senior administrators did want to talk to her about her tax code or her pay scale, unlikely though that might be for a man of his status. His message had given her no reason to think that it could be anything to do with the proposed change in operating methods.