down the children’s ward to visit Safi, that she was pleased, she just had to convince herself of the fact. But the sadness in the little boy’s eyes as she entered his room banished all other thoughts. She sat beside him, took his hand, said ‘Hello’ then ‘Salaam’, one of the few words she’d managed to remember from Jawa’s language lessons.
Safi smiled and repeated the word, then rattled off what might have been questions, although Marni didn’t have a clue. Instead she opened up the folder of pictures she’d printed off the internet, showing Safi a map of Australia and pointing to herself, then one of Ablezia. Using a cut-out plane, she showed how she’d flown from Australia to Ablezia.
The little boy took the plane and pointed from it to her. She nodded. ‘Aeroplane,’ she said. ‘A big jet plane, from here…’ she pointed again ‘…to here.’
Safi nodded but kept hold of the plane, zooming it around in the air.
Marni flipped through her folder, bringing out pictures of a koala, a wombat and a kangaroo. She put them all on the map of Australia and when Safi picked up the picture of the kangaroo, she hopped around the room, delighting the little boy, who giggled at her antics.
‘Kangaroo,’ she said, hoping the books and toys she’d ordered would arrive shortly—she’d paid for express mail. She’d actually found a female kangaroo with a joey in its pouch among the soft toys for sale, and had made it her number-one priority.
Safi was jumping the picture of the kangaroo on the bed now and pointing towards her, so Marni obligingly jumped again, her hands held up in front of her like the kangaroo’s small front paws. Unfortunately, as she spun around to jump back past the end of the bed, she slammed into an obstacle.
A very solid obstacle!
Stumbling to recover her balance, she trod on the obstacle’s feet and mashed herself against his chest, burning with mortification as she realised it was the surgeon—Safi’s surgeon—the man called Gaz.
‘S-s-ir!’ She stammered out the word. ‘Sorry! Being a kangaroo, you see!’
Marni attempted to disentangle herself from the man.
He grasped her forearms to steady her and she looked up into eyes as dark as night—dark enough to drown in—felt herself drowning…
Fortunately he had enough presence of mind to guide her back to the chair where she’d been sitting earlier and she slumped gratefully into it, boneless knees no longer able to support her weight.
He spoke to Safi, the treacly voice light with humour, making the little boy smile and bounce the picture of the kangaroo around the bed.
‘I am explaining to him you come from Australia where these animals are,’ Gaz said, turning to smile at her.
The smile finished her demolition. It lit fires she’d never felt before, warming her entire body, melting bits of it in a way she didn’t want to consider.
‘Well, well, well,’ he said, so suggestively she had to wonder if he’d read her reaction to him. Surely not, although the smile playing around his lips—gorgeous lips—and the twinkle in his eyes suggested he might have a fair idea of it.
‘You’re the new surgical nurse.’
A statement, not a question.
‘Marni Graham,’ she said, holding out her hand then regretting the automatic gesture as touching him, even in a handshake, was sure to cause more problems.
You’ve fallen in lust! Twenty-nine years old and you’ve finally been hit by an emotion as old as time.
‘It’s not lust,’ Marni mumbled, then realised she’d spoken the words, although under her breath so hopefully they hadn’t been audible to the surgeon, who was bent over Safi, examining the site of the operation and speaking quietly himself in the soft, musical notes of the local language.
The little boy appeared to know the man quite well, for he was chatting easily, now pointing to Marni and smiling.
‘You have visited him before?’ Gaz asked as he straightened. ‘For any reason?’
‘Should I not have come? Is it not allowed?’ The man, the questions, her silly reactions all contributed to her blurting out her response. ‘Jawa said it would be all right, and the nurses here don’t have a lot of time to spend with him.’
The tall man settled himself on the bed, his knees now only inches from Marni’s, although she could hardly push her chair back to escape the proximity, tantalising though it was.
They’re knees, for heaven’s sake!
Marni forced herself to relax.
‘Of course you are welcome to visit. Safi appreciates it and looks forward to your visits, but I wondered why you come. You are a stranger here, are you not being looked after? Have you not made friends that you spend your spare time with a child?’
The man had obviously painted her as pathetic.
‘Of course I’ve made friends, and everyone has been very welcoming, and I’ve done a lot of exploring, both on my own and with others, but…’
She hesitated.
How to explain that while she loved theatre nursing, the drama of it, the intensity, she missed patient contact?
He was obviously still waiting for an answer, the dark eyes studying her, his head tilted slightly to one side.
‘Like most nurses,’ she began, still hesitant, ‘I took it up because I felt I could offer something in such a career. I enjoyed all the facets of it, but especially nursing children. Early on, I thought I’d specialise in paediatric nursing, but then I did my first stint in Theatre and I knew immediately that’s where I really wanted to work. But in Theatre a patient is wheeled in and then wheeled out and somehow, even with the good surgeons who use the patient’s name, they don’t become real people—there’s no follow-up to find out if the operation was a success, there’s no person to person contact at all—’
Aware she’d been babbling on for far too long, she stopped, but when her companion didn’t break the silence, she stumbled into an apology.
‘Sorry, that sounded like a lecture, sorry.’
He reached out and touched her lightly on the knee, burning her skin through the long, loose trousers she was wearing.
‘Do not apologise for showing humanity. It is all too rare a trait in modern medicine where everyone is under pressure to perform and seek perfection in all they do, so much so we have little time to think about those under our care as people rather than patients. In this hospital we allow the families to stay, so our patients have them to turn to, but children like Safi, who have come from a neighbouring country, often have no one.’
‘Except you,’ Marni pointed out. ‘The nurse told me you’d been in earlier and that you stayed with him that first night.’
‘I was worried he’d be afraid, alone in a strange place, and I’ve learned to sleep anywhere so it was no hardship.’
Not only gorgeous but nice, Marni thought, and she smiled at him and told him so—well, not the gorgeous bit.
‘That was very kind of you,’ she said, ‘but have you done it every night? Surely that would be too much if you’re operating every day?’
Gaz returned her smile, but it was absent-minded, as if it had slipped onto his lips while he was thinking of something else.
‘Not every night, no, but an old friend of mine comes in now and stays with him. It was she who heard the story of a foreign woman visiting.’
‘So you came to check?’ Marni asked, not sure whether to be pleased or put out. Pleased to have seen him again, that was for sure…
‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Not because I doubted your good intentions, but to see who it was willing to put herself