that now Frankie was a free agent. Would that make life easier between them? He sighed and flung the pencil back on the worktop as he strode out of the room.
* * *
It was Friday afternoon and Jack was scrubbing up in the little anteroom off the small clean theatre in A and E. His patient lay with eyes closed in a face so battered it was hard to tell what sex it was. The cheeks and eyes were swollen, as were the lips, bloodied and twice normal size. Her head had been raised so that there would be the least tension possible on her face.
‘Thanks for helping me out, Frankie,’ said Jack.
‘No worries. We’re reasonably quiet now,’ Frankie replied.
She started to scrub up beside him, lathering the soap well up to her elbows, massaging it between her fingers, trying to ignore the fact that she and Jack were so close together. Uneasily she had to admit that she had begun to think of Jack in a different way since that brief episode in the staff kitchen. Up until now Damian had been the only man who’d attracted her, but now she realised, that far from being a man she’d thought of more as a brother than anything else, Jack was extremely sexy in a quiet and restrained way. She gazed at her troubled face in the mirror above the basin. Her instinct was to keep out of Jack’s way as much as she could, but in a busy A and E department that was impossible.
She pulled a paper towel out of the slot and started to dry her hands briskly. She couldn’t understand the sudden attraction she felt for Jack—was it a case of off with the old and on with the new? She threw the paper towel in the bin and told herself that it was a reaction to Damian breaking off the engagement. The last thing she wanted now was to start looking for another man in her life.
‘Mr Caulfield, the plastic surgeon, is tied up with a complicated operation and we need to close up these wounds on Mrs Casson’s face and arm as soon as possible before a risk of infection sets in,’ Jack continued, looking at her over his mask.
Frankie nodded, hoping those piercing blue eyes couldn’t see her thoughts inside her head. ‘Poor woman. We don’t want to have to open them up later and risk scarring. What on earth happened to her?’
‘Some charming youths relieved her of her purse while she was shopping,’ he replied grimly. ‘I only wish I could use my scalpel on them in a place they won’t forget.’
They made their way over to the patient. Mrs Casson’s eyes were opened now, fearful and apprehensive. ‘What are you going to do?’ she whispered.
‘We’re going to take care of you, Mrs Casson,’ said Jack in his calm, firm voice. ‘You’re in safe hands. We’ll do a bit of stitching and clean up these wounds. It’ll take some time for the swelling to go down, but in a few days you’ll be back to normal.’ He grinned down at her and patted her shoulder. ‘Don’t worry, we’re brilliant at embroidery.’
The woman attempted a stiff little smile at Jack’s reassuring manner and joke, visibly relaxing, and Jack was able to assess to a small degree the range of movement Mrs Casson had in her face.
Corey had been checking the instruments in the tray. She swung the overhead light so that the beam was fixed on the patient’s face and said, ‘Mrs Casson’s had an injection of Valium, just to keep her relaxed, and an anti-tetanus jab.’
‘Good—then we’ll make a start.’
The woman turned slightly towards Jack and said thickly, ‘Will this hurt?’
Jack smiled at her kindly. ‘Don’t worry, Mrs Casson. I know it probably feels pretty awful at the moment, but we’re going to give you some local anaesthetic and we’ll stitch these deep cuts on your face—you won’t feel anything—then you’ll go for a scan to make sure you’ve no internal head injuries.’
Mrs Casson muttered something that sounded like, ‘They were horrible!’
‘I couldn’t agree more. Did you manage to get a description of the yobs that did this to you?’
‘They were all wearing hoods,’ Mrs Casson mumbled. ‘They reeked of drink.’ A tear rolled out of her swollen eye and coursed down her cheek. ‘I had all the money from the old folk for their shopping…I didn’t expect anyone to do this in a supermarket….’
Her voice trailed away, and Frankie’s and Jack’s eyes met over their masks in sympathy. ‘If it’s any comfort, I believe that the police are holding three youths,’ said Jack. ‘But first things first—we’re going to do our best to make you look as beautiful as you did before.’
‘If you can make me look better than I did before, that would be good,’ she whispered.
Corey held Mrs Casson’s hand as the doctors began to work on the woman’s face. It was a kindly gesture that always made the patient feel less isolated: it was important for her to feel the comforting contact with one of the nursing staff.
Frankie swabbed the wounds with a saline solution and Jack carefully inserted a fine-bore needle in the woman’s lower cheek to numb the area to be repaired then both doctors bent over the cuts they were going to suture. Jack concentrated on the long gash in Mrs Casson’s cheek, while Frankie worked on a deep cut in the woman’s arm. The Valium was doing its job—the patient lay calmly, sad eyes watching them, her muscles relaxed, making it easier to work on the wounds. They used fine-filament gut which Corey passed them in threaded needles.
The gash in the arm only took a few minutes to close, but the cheek wound took longer. It was a delicate job to close the muscle and ensure that there was no pulling which could cause facial distortion. Jack worked quickly, but it was still a lengthy and finicky business. His face frowned in concentration as he matched the opposite sides of the wound to each other, careful to stitch it without stretching the skin.
Frankie and Corey watched silently, both admiring the deftness Jack showed in such a precise exercise. It was weird, working with Jack once more, reflected Frankie, looking at the way his hair was cut rather raggedly on the nape of his neck. She’d never thought she’d see him again after his abrupt disappearance, but now they seemed to have slotted back into much the same routine they’d had before except for one thing—now she was aware of him as a man with an intriguing aura of sexual attraction. It frightened her, and because she was frightened she couldn’t stop thinking about it, playing with the idea of being attracted to him, as one touched a spot on one’s face to see if it had disappeared.
‘That’s that. All done, Mrs Casson,’ he said, standing up and stretching to unstiffen his back. ‘You’ll just go to the recovery room until they come to take you for a scan. In a few days that swelling should go down, and hopefully you’ll begin to feel a lot better.’
‘Thank you,’ whispered Mrs Casson.
‘She may feel physically better in a few days,’ remarked Frankie as Mrs Casson was taken away by Tim Mackenzie, one of the porters, to the recovery room. ‘But it’ll be a long time before she recovers mentally from a horrible experience like that.’
Jack flung his latex gloves into a bin. ‘I’d like the idiots who did it to see what they’ve done to her,’ he said grimly. He flicked a look at his watch. ‘I could do with a cup of strong tea,’ he remarked. ‘How about you?’
‘Sounds a good idea. I’ll be there in a minute when I’ve written up Mrs Casson’s notes.’
Frankie scribbled in the drugs dosages they’d given Mrs Casson and the procedures she’d undergone, slipping the paper into the patient’s folder and putting it in the tray to be filed away later. It was quiet in the unit at the moment. She could hear Sister Kenney in the office instructing Cindy Wallace, the junior nurse, on how to administer injections, and at the end of the corridor a cleaner was polishing the floor. Suddenly Frankie wasn’t sure about being in the kitchen alone with Jack—then she felt a surge of annoyance with herself. Surely it hadn’t come to this, that a few days after meeting the man again she was so frightened of her feelings towards him that she couldn’t have a cup of tea with him? Purposefully, she turned towards the kitchen and