‘Follow me.’ Neil reached for her hand, his arm knocking the tray of slides on the bench beside her. It tipped, sending some of the precious samples Kate had collected over many years into a puddle of broken glass.
There were so many people moving now. Lewis was trying to marshal everybody to leave in an orderly fashion but some were desperately trying to finish or pause the tests they were running and others were moving equipment or samples to protect them in case the overhead sprinklers came on. Many of her students were stuffing notes into satchels and trying to find their other personal items. Lewis was looking in her direction. He looked pale, Kate noticed, and he was rubbing the top of his left arm as if it hurt.
‘Leave everything,’ Kate ordered. She could smell the smoke herself now. ‘There’s no time.’ She waited by the door to make sure everyone got out of the department, including Lewis.
‘Are you all right?’ she asked her boss as he joined the people filing through the door.
‘I’m fine. Let’s get going. It’s probably only some burnt toast or something but we can’t take the risk.’
They were all hurrying now. Kate heard a crash and the tinkle of more broken glass as something else was knocked over. More of her collection of slides? She could also hear the faint wail of sirens coming from a distance.
With her heart sinking, Kate followed her colleagues to the evacuation point. Her day had just officially turned to custard.
* * *
Connor was taking his time, scrubbing in with meticulous attention to detail.
His hands were already red from the pressure of the soap-impregnated bristles and now he was concentrating on the points between his fingers. He could hear the familiar sounds of the operating theatre being set up – trolleys being wheeled into position, the clink of metal instruments being laid out.
Those sterile instruments would include a bone saw that Connor desperately hoped he wouldn’t have to use to remove the lower part of Estelle’s leg, but the MRI scan had been inconclusive. He’d been hoping to see a well-defined margin to the tumour that would indicate that it had been slow-growing enough for the bone to respond to its presence. If it had been there he could have been virtually certain that they were dealing with a benign growth and he could have gone into this surgery with justifiable optimism.
Instead, he had a gnawing anxiety that was uncharacteristic.
‘Hey, Connor.’ A nurse had his sterile towel ready for when he’d rinsed the soap from his hands and forearms. ‘I saw you the other night. You make a great pirate.’
Connor merely grunted, angling his hands under the stream of warm water. He didn’t want to talk about the other night. He was having enough trouble trying to stop thinking about it as it was.
Part of it, anyway.
The way Kate had looked at him. He’d been shocked, that’s what it was. One minute she was in his arms and he’d been encased in an extraordinary sensation of… of…
Connor sighed, reaching for the towel. No. He still couldn’t define what that feeling had been. It had held a warmth that had been pure comfort but also a thrill that had been a precursor of ecstasy. Above all, there’d been a feeling of something being completely… right. As if the last piece of the world’s most complicated jigsaw puzzle had been slotted into place. He couldn’t summon up the sensation again so it had become even more elusive. Unattainable.
And ultimately desirable.
Not that there was any point in even thinking about it. It might have been there, but when Kate had pulled away and given him that look of horror, it had been doused as effectively as if someone had dumped a bucket of icy water on his head.
Had she felt it too?
But why would you run away from it?
Connor simply didn’t understand. Just like he couldn’t understand the random bad luck that a thirteen-year-old girl who lived to surf and dance might have to lose a part of her body that made it possible to live her dreams. The knot in his gut tightened a notch or two. He could only hope for the best. And do his best for Estelle. The technician from the pathology lab was already standing by, looking nervous in the corner of the theatre. Well, she’d have to wait for a while to collect the specimen. If Connor had been meticulous about scrubbing in, it was nothing compared to how he was about to tackle this potentially life-altering surgery.
He’d be sending a message that the most senior pathologist available needed to examine the specimen, too. He would remove as much of the tumour as he could but the pathologist would have to X-ray and then thinly section the specimen to identify the lesional tissue. It would be Connor’s turn to stand by then, in case the pathologist needed a bigger sample. If there was any chance of a diagnosis that this was a benign osteoid osteoma, Connor was more than prepared to wait as long as it took. It was a damn shame they were still dithering about finding the funding to have a permanent pathology area up and running right here in the theatre suite so that samples could be processed faster.
Mind you, if they did, they would have a pathologist in the department for every case like this and he might find himself working a lot more closely with Kate.
Would he want to see her almost every day?
No.
Yes.
Maybe.
Some time later, Connor decided he would be prepared to deal with having Kate close by for the convenience factor. Waiting for the result took far too long. Apparently there’d been a fire alarm in the basement area of St Pat’s because some idiotic kitchen hand had left a stack of tea towels on top of a glowing element on a stove. Even after taking his time to remove the specimen, it had been a forty-five-minute wait to get the result phoned through.
And it didn’t take nearly long enough because when that result came through, it was the worst possible outcome. Estelle had an aggressive osteosarcoma and it extended beyond the margins of the bone already removed.
