and her heart went out to him.
‘It’s OK,’ she said, taking pity on them. ‘It’s a lot to take in now but you’ll soon get the hang of it.’
It didn’t seem to help. None of them looked convinced so she kept them moving back out to the main corridor.
‘There are ten operating suites. Two are usually kept free for emergency operations. Today that’s Theatres Eight and Ten. This afternoon in the other suites we have three general surgery lists, two orthopeadic lists, an ENT list, one Caesar list and one gynae. Tomorrow you can go in and observe cases.’
Beth noticed the lights ablaze in the tenth suite as she approached. ‘This is not acceptable,’ she muttered as she strode towards it. ‘I try to run these theatres as efficiently as possible. These big theatre lights are hellishly expensive to run,’ she lectured. ‘Lights must always be out if the suite is not in use.’
Beth entered the anaesthetic area, making a mental note to talk to Tom, the head theatre orderly, about it. It was the orderly’s job to do end-of-day cleaning and that involved turning the lights off.
She veered to the left and shoved the double swing doors open with a shoulder, the students following close behind.
Gabe looked up at the interruption to his concentration. He’d been engrossed in a particularly tricky vessel dissection and was annoyed at the intrusion. Especially as it was thoughts of the woman in front of him that had made it difficult for him to get into it in the first place.
‘Oh.’ Beth stopped abruptly.
Neither of them said anything for a moment.
‘I’m sorry, Dr Fallon, I didn’t realise you were in here.’
Gabe gritted his teeth at her formality. Despite agreeing to the necessity for it, he longed to hear her say ‘Gabe’ again, like she had that night. ‘That’s quite all right, Sister Rogers. I was just working on the Fisher case.’
Beth nodded. ‘I’m showing some student nurses around. They’ll be with us three days a week for the next six months.’
‘Ah,’ Gabe said, loosening a little. He never missed an opportunity to teach. ‘They might be here when we separate the twins.’
‘The Fisher twins?’ Joy, one of the students, asked.
Gabe smiled at her. ‘Yes. Come over here. I’ll show you the scans.’
Beth stood back a little while Gabe explained the unusual anatomy and answered the students’ eager questions. A little too eager, Beth thought. If the girls batted their eyelashes any more they were bound to fall out. Not that she could blame them. The combination of his well-modulated voice with his touch-of-class accent was hard to resist. He should have been working for a phone-sex hotline. His voice stroked all the right places.
‘How often are you practising?’ David asked.
‘I try to do a little each day,’ Gabe said. ‘But we’re having our first multi-disciplinary practice here on Saturday.’
He looked at Beth and she gave a brisk nod. Not something she was looking forward to. Seeing him every day was hard enough, without having to spend hours in his company on what should have been a day off.
‘We’re starting at eight,’ she confirmed.
‘And what does the practice entail?’ David asked.
‘Saturday is mainly big-picture stuff,’ Gabe said. ‘The logistics of the amount of people involved. Trouble-shooting and contingencies if things don’t go according to plan. We have a weekly case conference starting Monday to discuss the intricacies.’
‘How many staff will be required on the actual day?’ Joy asked.
Beth almost rolled her eyes at the way the student nurse was preening in front of Gabe. She was a pretty redhead with a cute nose and an even cuter spray of freckles across it. Gabe shot her a smile and Beth couldn’t suppress the frown that wrinkled her forehead.
‘The cases I was involved with in the UK had about thirty personnel helping in one way or another during the separation process.’
Beth could tell each of the students was hoping to get a look-in. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said to them, ‘only the most experienced staff will be on the team.’
Gabe nodded. ‘Sister Rogers is right. With so many variables, so much potential for disaster, we need to have only the most skilled people.’
The students asked a few more questions. ‘OK, I think we need to let Dr Fallon get on,’ Beth broke in, checking her watch. ‘We’ll continue our tour.’ She paused at the door, looking back over her shoulder. ‘Don’t forget the lights when you’re done, Dr Fallon.’
Gabe’s gaze met hers. Business as usual. ‘I won’t, Sister Rogers.’
Beth shook off the intensity of his gaze as she took the students to the recovery unit next, explaining the set-up and routine post-op monitoring. She didn’t get too detailed. There would be more for them to see and learn next week and she could tell they had already overdosed on information. Before sending them on their way, she handed out their workbooks and briefly explained the competencies they’d be expected to achieve while here.
It was nearly five o’clock when Beth sat back down at her desk. All the lists except for Theatre Three’s had finished for the day and Recovery was emptying. She should have gone home an hour ago but she was due at John and Penny’s place for the regular weekly Winters family meal and decided she’d work on the roster for an hour and go straight from work to tea.
The roster was the worst part of her job. With ten theatres to staff and eighty nurses to appease, someone was bound to miss out on their requests. She always tried to be fair with the weekend and on-call shifts but invariably she managed to alienate some of her staff.
There was a knock on her door. ‘Come in,’ she called, not bothering to look up from the spreadsheet on her computer screen.
‘Have you got a moment?’
Beth’s head snapped up. She hadn’t expected it to be Gabe. How was it that the man even made a pair of plain cotton theatre scrubs look good? ‘Certainly, Dr Fallon.’
Gabe’s brow wrinkled. ‘Really, Beth, is it necessary to continue with such formality when we’re alone? I have seen you naked, remember?’
Beth gasped. ‘Do you mind?’ She got up from her desk and shut the door as images of a naked Gabe filled her mind. ‘Yes, it is necessary, Dr Fallon. At work, it’s imperative.’
The truth was, Beth was scared stiff that if she called him Gabe, everyone would know they’d slept together. That there would be a betraying catch in her voice that would give her away. ‘Gabe’had been what she’d called him when he’d been inside her. ‘Gabe’ had far too many intimate connotations for her to bandy it around with any ease.
‘And I would appreciate it if you didn’t use “naked” in any sentence when talking to me.’
Gabe sighed as he lowered himself into a chair opposite her desk. Beth’s office smelled of her. The same fragrance that had stayed with him since they’d first met. Like cinnamon doughnuts and a citrus orchard. Whatever it was, it overrode the pervasive antiseptic smell that invaded the operating suites.
‘OK then, Sister Rogers…no “n” word. Whatever. I was wondering if you’d given any thought to rostering the nursing team for the big day.’
Beth was relieved he’d dropped the subject and had gone straight to talking shop. Her heart was still galloping madly as she tried to follow his train of thought. ‘I was going to look at that on Saturday. I know who we need, it’ll be a matter of who’s available when the date’s chosen.’
Gabe nodded. ‘I’m thinking we should set a tentative date. That will help with staffing in all departments.’
‘Even