‘Okay.’ Bella seemed oddly pleased that Kate was planning to work late.
Kate took another glance around the busy corridor in the theatre suites.
‘He’s not here,’ Bella said.
‘Who?’ Was she still bothered about her run-in with Oliver Dawson?
‘Connor.’
‘What on earth makes you think I was looking for him?’ Kate gave her words a warning edge but Bella merely shrugged.
‘Just in case you were. He’s not here. He got sent home.’
He was sick? The clutch of concern took Kate by surprise, but she didn’t say anything. She couldn’t. The ferocity of that concern was disturbing enough to render her speechless for a moment.
‘Apparently he did a bone-marrow donation yesterday morning. Can you believe that? For a little girl who’s got leukaemia.’
Still Kate said nothing. Of course she could believe it. And why he would go to such extraordinary lengths to help a little girl and her family. That had been the final push to falling completely and utterly in love with him.
‘He got it done under local and came back to work this morning, but he was still really sore so he got sent home to rest.’
‘I… imagine it would be a fairly painful procedure.’
‘Mmm…’ Bella seemed to be watching her more closely than Kate felt comfortable with.
‘I’ll see you later, then,’ she said, edging away.
Kate planned to keep herself as busy as possible for the rest of the day, inventing extra work if necessary, because that was the only way to stop herself thinking about Connor. Worrying about the possible complications that might come from having holes drilled in your pelvis. Worrying that he might be trying to be far too macho and avoiding taking any kind of pain relief.
As it turned out, Kate didn’t have to find any extra work. It found her, in the form of a forensic examination of a suspicious death. Lewis Blackman was back on deck and claimed he was feeling better than ever, but Kate didn’t want him overdoing things.
‘I’ll do it,’ she told him. ‘You can supervise.’
A forensic examination was far more detailed than an ordinary autopsy. Right from the start, when the body bag was opened, photographs had to be taken and every detail recorded to appear in the paperwork. This was quite clearly a homicide so the hands of the victim were encased in plastic bags. When they were opened, scrapings from under the fingernails had to be collected, labelled and stored. Every item of clothing had to be documented before being removed and it was only then that the medical examination could begin. Wounds could be examined and photographed and then, after the body was cleaned, they could start to look for the actual cause of death.
In this case, it was a matter of determining which, out of many, of the stab wounds had been the lethal blow and it was time-consuming because the angle and depth of each injury needed to be measured. The whole procedure took several hours and it would take at least another hour to do the paperwork involved. Lewis offered but Kate shooed him home.
‘You look tired,’ she said. ‘And it’s getting late. I was planning to do some office work for a while anyway.’
When Lewis left, the department was curiously empty. A technician had gone on blood-testing rounds and the others must have gone for a meal break. Not that Kate minded the solitude. It meant that she didn’t need to shut the door of her office or close the venetian blinds on the windows that looked out into the lab. She did jump when she heard the rapid footsteps of someone approaching. She went out of her office to see who it was and then stopped in astonishment.
‘Bella! What on earth are you doing here? I thought you would have gone home long ago.’
‘Um… I came to see you.’ Bella smiled brightly.
‘I’m kind of busy.’
‘Oh… well, I might have a look around, if that’s okay. I’ve never been down here before. What’s that machine for?’
‘It measures the oxygen level in arterial blood.’
‘Cool. And that one?’
‘It’s an X-ray for checking biopsy samples before we slice them up. Look, Bella, I really do have work to do.’
Bella glanced over her shoulder. She bit her lip. She looked at her watch. ‘Fine. I’m going…’
Except she didn’t. She loitered for another minute or two, staring around as if she was fascinated by everything she could see. And then there was the sound of another person approaching and when the figure filled the doorframe, Kate felt the blood drain from her head, leaving her feeling faintly dizzy and rather ill.
