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His eyes skimmed over the gentle, womanly curves he knew so well and he felt another reaction occur in his body, one which had been all too predictable at one time. Libby’s beauty and femininity had always affected him and little had changed in that respect, it seemed.
‘It all looks very hi-tech in there.’
‘It is.’ Seb dredged up a smile as she turned to him. He couldn’t afford to let her see the effect she still had on him. If she’d decided to end their marriage then he wouldn’t try to make the situation more difficult for her. Even though it wasn’t what he wanted, he wouldn’t stand in her way if it was what she’d decided to do.
It was just too much to deal with that thought right then. He swung round and headed back the way they’d come. ‘So now you know where everything is, don’t you?’
‘Yes. Thanks. I can see why you were so keen to take this job. It’s one of the best-equipped trauma units I’ve ever seen.’
‘It is.’ He elbowed open the swing doors that separated the theatre suite from the rest of the department and held them while she passed through. ‘There’s no doubt that having the best equipment available really helps, but it would be worthless without the right staff. They’re the ones who make the department what it is, and they’re a great bunch of people.’
‘Of course,’ she agreed quietly.
Seb frowned. He couldn’t help noticing that there had been a definite lack of enthusiasm about her response. It appeared that his comment about the staff had struck a chord, although he wasn’t sure what chord that was. He was just about to ask her what was wrong when he thought better of it. There was no point asking questions when he might not appreciate the answers, was there? It was a relief when Jayne appeared to tell him that Ambulance Control was on the phone.
He quickly excused himself and went to the office, his heart sinking when the controller informed him that there’d been a massive explosion out at sea when the tanker had struck the gas rig. Despite everyone’s efforts to evacuate the crews from both the rig and the tanker, there were multiple casualties, the first of which were being flown straight to the hospital.
Seb hung up and checked his watch against the helicopter’s ETA. He had ten minutes to get things moving, ten minutes to get himself moving, too. Somehow he had to set aside this agony he felt about losing Libby and concentrate on what needed to be done.
He headed straight to Resus, knowing that the team would be in there. Nobody noticed him at first, then Gary spotted him and stopped talking and the others realised the time for action had arrived.
‘The first ’copter is on its way in,’ he said crisply. ‘Three men with serious burn injuries. ETA approximately nine minutes now. Marilyn will head up one team, Gary the second and I’ll take charge of the third.’
‘Do we know how many casualties we’re going to have to deal with yet?’ Gary asked anxiously.
‘No. But we’ll think in double figures and that way it will be easier to move up or down the scale,’ Seb replied, moving to the bed nearest to the doors. Cathy and Jayne would be working with him as usual, although if there was a chance that any of the casualties had come into contact with those chemicals, he would make sure Jayne was well away from the danger area. He didn’t intend to put her unborn child at risk.
‘If there’s any sign of chemical contamination, I want you out of here,’ he told her. ‘Understand?’
He sighed when he saw the relief on her face as she nodded. It had been remiss of him not to have made that clear to her before. He’d been too caught up in his own problems to worry about how his staff were feeling and it was an oversight he wouldn’t make again. Mistakes occurred when people were put under too much pressure so he had to forget about everything else and get on with the job.
The doors suddenly opened and he swung round, expecting to see the paramedics bringing in their first patient, but instead he saw Libby come in. All of a sudden he was overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of what was happening. Libby wanted to end their marriage. She no longer wanted to be his wife—she wanted a divorce. Maybe he was guilty of burying his head in the sand, but he had never expected it would come to this!
‘So what do you want me to do?’
She stopped in front of him and his heart suddenly lifted in sheer relief when he heard what she’d said. Was she actually offering to reconsider her decision to leave?
‘What would you like to do?’ he murmured huskily.
‘I don’t mind. Whatever’s the most useful, basically.’ She glanced round the room and shrugged. ‘I don’t mind acting as gofer. You’ll need someone to take blood samples to the lab for cross-matching, and fetch drugs—things like that. I’m happy to do it if it will help.’
‘Right, thanks. I’ll bear that in mind.’
Seb dredged up a smile but he could feel it inching its way out of his boots. He knew that all they were doing was putting off the inevitable. She wanted a divorce and all she had to do now was to tell him that.
The doors crashed open again and this time it was the paramedics with their first patient. Seb told them to bring the trolley over to him. It took just a few seconds to transfer the man onto the bed and a couple more to set things in motion. This was the easy bit, of course, doing the job he’d been trained to do. The hard bit would come later, after his work here was finished.
Pain lanced through him once again. Nothing he’d ever learned had prepared him for the agony of losing Libby.
CHAPTER FIVE
Friday: 7 p.m.
‘I NEED another line putting in, stat! Libby…?’
‘Got it.’
Libby reached for a fresh cannula and ripped open the package. She swabbed the patient’s arm then swiftly inserted the needle into a vein. His whole system was closing down as shock from the injuries he’d suffered took its toll, but the needle slid into place at her first attempt. She smiled to herself. It was good to know that she hadn’t lost her touch in a crisis.
‘Thanks. Now squeeze that fluid through as fast as you can go. We’re going to lose him if we’re not careful.’
Seb barely glanced at her as he carried on removing a sliver of metal from the injured man’s throat, but she didn’t need mollycoddling. Far from delegating her to the role of helper, he had involved her at every stage and she had to admit that it felt good to be able to use her old skills again. She began rhythmically squeezing the bag of saline, knowing how important it was to get the life-giving fluid into the man’s system so that it would help to compensate for all the blood he was losing.
‘Damn!’ Seb cursed softly as the razor-sharp sliver of metal slid through the forceps he was using. She could see the frustration on his face when he looked up ‘There’s so much blood about that I can’t get a grip on it.’
She saw him take a deep breath before he returned to the task, and smiled to herself. She couldn’t count the number of times she’d seen that happen. Seb was incredibly tenacious when presented with a seemingly hopeless situation. He never gave up and would fight, tooth and nail, if he thought there was a chance of saving a patient’s life. If anyone could save this man’s life, it would be Seb.
‘Got it!’
He let out a little whoop as the lethal sliver came free. Cathy quickly swabbed the area before he set to work again—sewing up the severed artery with a skill that many surgeons would have envied. He’d had his choice of specialities after he’d qualified and could have gone into any number of disciplines, including surgery, but he’d always loved the pace and uncertainty of trauma care. Seb thrived on the unknown and the risky, whereas she preferred the familiar and the routine. It was another area in which they differed greatly.
Libby hurriedly pushed that thought to the back of her mind because she didn’t want to think about things like that at the moment. The bag of fluid had almost run through but before she could change it, Sarah, their haematologist, arrived with a supply of whole blood. Libby had to admit that she was impressed by the speed with which things moved in the unit—bloods were cross-matched seemingly in minutes, X-rays ready to be viewed in seconds. Compared to the last A and E department she’d worked in, it was another world and she could understand why Seb had been so enthusiastic when he’d been offered the post as consultant here.
‘Right, that’s all I can do for him. It’s up to the surgical team now. Can you give them a call, Jayne, and tell them we’re sending another one up to them?’ Seb stripped off his plastic apron and gloves then glanced across the room. ‘How many is that so far? I hope someone is keeping count.’
‘Too right we are,’ Marilyn piped up from the next bed. ‘Young Gary and I have a bet on as to how many folk we get to patch up tonight. My guess is fifty, although junior here reckons it’s going to be nearer the hundred mark.’ Marilyn shook her head. ‘That’s the trouble with these young guys. They overestimate the size of everything!’
Everyone laughed, even Gary. Libby smiled, too. There was a wonderful rapport between the members of the team and that undoubtedly helped them work so well together. She couldn’t help comparing it to the stuffy approach of her colleagues in the practice where she worked. There was very little camaraderie there, sadly.
‘I think we’ve earned a break before the next batch arrive.’
She looked up in surprise when she realised that Seb was speaking to her. ‘I’m quite happy to stay on here if someone else needs a break.’
‘Thanks, but that’s not the way we do things.’ He glanced at the two nurses. ‘I want you both to take a break now. The canteen is open so make sure you get something to eat.’
Cathy and Jayne didn’t quibble as they left Resus together. Libby frowned as she glanced at the other teams who were still working on their patients. ‘Don’t you want to give them a hand first?’
‘There’s no need. They know what they’re doing and they’re more than capable of doing it, too.’
Seb urged her out of the door, sighing when he saw how reluctant she was to leave. ‘Trust me, Libby. I know what I’m doing. A major incident like this is extremely stressful for everyone concerned, so you need to recharge your batteries whenever you get the chance. This could go on throughout the night and we need to be able to treat the patients with the same degree of care and attention whether they’re the first to arrive or the last.’
‘You really think it will go on for that long?’
‘Yes, I do. This is just the tip of a very big iceberg so let’s prepare ourselves for the long haul, shall we?’ He led her to the lift then grinned at her. ‘I don’t know about you but I’m starving.’
‘I wouldn’t mind a cup of coffee,’ she admitted.
‘I thought so. What time did you leave Sussex today? It must have been around lunchtime, I imagine.’
‘I set off straight after morning surgery finished. I had a half-day owed to me and decided to take it today so I could drive up here.’
Libby stepped into the lift, feeling suddenly nervous. There had been too much going on before to talk about the reason for her visit, but now it seemed that they had some time to themselves.
‘You made very good time. It’s a long drive, especially on a Friday when there are so many people trying to get away for the weekend.’
Seb pressed the button for the sixth floor then leant against the wall. His eyes were hooded, making it difficult for her to guess what he was thinking. Was he waiting for her to bring up the topic uppermost in both their minds, or did he prefer to make small talk until after the emergency was over?
It was impossible to decide so in the end she took the coward’s way out. Maybe she should have got it over with while she had the chance but she couldn’t quite bring herself to say the words that would effectively end their relationship. It seemed too cold and too clinical to talk about it here in the lift so she would wait until later.
‘The motorway was really busy but the traffic wasn’t too bad once I left it.’ She shrugged, hoping that he would follow her lead and let the subject drop for now. ‘Thankfully, I’d just got here when the storm broke otherwise that would have delayed me.’
‘It’s been a bad one,’ he agreed, straightening up as the lift came to a stop. He put his hand on the small of her back when she hesitated after they got out. ‘The canteen’s this way.’
Libby didn’t say anything as he guided her along the corridor but she was absurdly conscious of the pressure of his hand on her back. Her cotton blouse provided very little protection. She could feel his strong fingers resting against her flesh and a tide of heat suddenly rose up inside her as she recalled all the other times when she had felt them on different parts of her body…
‘Here we are.’
Seb let her go so he could open the door to the canteen. Libby scurried through it as though pursued by a horde of demons. She could feel her pulse racing as the blood surged though her veins and she bit back a groan of dismay. It had been ages since she’d reacted this way around him. The physical side of their relationship had gone the way of the rest and it had been months since they’d made love. How ironic it was that today of all days she should suddenly remember how wonderful their sex life had been!
‘What can I get you?’
Seb waited while Libby sat down at a table in the corner he had chosen for them. It had been a deliberate decision to sit there because it would afford them some privacy.
‘Just coffee will be fine, thanks.’
‘Are you sure?’ He drummed up a smile, determined not to let her know how difficult this was for him. He didn’t want to talk about getting divorced, today or any other day. Although he knew how far apart they had grown in recent months, he’d always assumed that they would be able to work through their differences somehow or other, the ‘other’ being that Libby would decide to move north to be with him.
Now he could see that it had been his biggest mistake. He shouldn’t have let matters lie, let them fester. He should have told her that he loved her and wanted her, but instead he’d allowed his pride to get in the way. Now he was going to pay the ultimate price for his arrogance and he could only hope that he and his pride would be very happy together.
‘How about a sandwich to go with that coffee?’ He managed to hold the smile, although it felt as though his emotions were being forced through a shredder and spat out at the other side. ‘It’s going to be a long night, and if you’re serious about staying on here to help then you’ll need something to sustain you.’
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