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‘Fine. I know how important it is to Nate and his team to have you on this case. I can assure you that I’ll be at the hospital from tomorrow onwards, and there will be no need for our paths to cross again.’
She stopped abruptly and the bleak look in her eyes did little to dissipate the churning sensation lo
w in his gut.
He lost sense of time, unsure how long they remained where they stood across the room from each other, neither of them saying a word. The silence seemed to grow heavier with each passing moment, pressing on them like the heat that wrapped itself around the inhabitants of St Vic just before the storms she had once told him so much about.
Hotter, and tighter, the closer the turbulence drew, and he couldn’t help hoping that if he just stayed still, it would pass over them both.
Finally, he felt as though he’d regained some sense of equilibrium and he just about offered a curt dip of his head.
‘I’d appreciate that,’ he bit out.
And before Talia could answer, he was gone. The door closed softly on its dampeners behind him, doing nothing to diminish the disdain that swirled around him in the wake of his words.
CHAPTER FIVE
IT COULDN’T REALLY have gone much worse with Liam, Talia decided miserably the next day as she counted the instruments ready for the next surgery.
Ten sponges.
The confrontation yesterday had been so unsettling. She should have known he would want to arrive early to give himself a chance to familiarise himself with the clinic and his patient. Typical Liam pragmatism. She was a fool to have taken it personally, letting even a tiny part of herself think that he had come down specifically looking for her.
Six needle-holders.
Still, she and Liam now had four days working in the same clinic where they were bound to run into each other. Perhaps starting over would be a good move?
Two curved forceps.
Not even that morning’s procedure—a Nissen fundoplication to help a patient suffering from gastroesophageal reflux disease—had been enough to stop her from thinking about Liam. She suspected she was going to replay the same doomed conversation—and impossibly hot encounter—over and over in her head for the next month.
Certainly until he left St Victoria.
‘Ready, Talia?’
Talia blinked as two of her colleagues entered the sterile area, prepped for surgery. She glanced around the OR and gave a satisfied nod. At least, even with her head filled with thoughts of Liam, she’d completed the pre-surgery routine quickly and systematically.
‘Ready,’ she confirmed.
But now she had to get her brain straight. Her high level of training meant that while she might be able to get away with a degree of being on autopilot for the prepping, and while this morning she’d been the circulation nurse, this afternoon she was the scrub nurse. Blood clots, bleeding, infection and problems with anaesthesia were all risks associated with the procedure, and as her patient’s best advocate in the OR for the next few hours, she could not afford to be distracted by thoughts of her personal life.
Besides, she loved her job, and prided herself on the skills she brought to her role.
Olivia, the surgeon, stepped through the door and Talia concentrated on helping her gown up, and then for the next few hours Talia sank into her role of assisting.
It was lunchtime by the time she was finished and yet the moment she stepped back outside, it was Liam who was on her mind once again.
The last thing she expected was for him to be waiting for her in the corridor.
‘Talia, can I have a moment?’
Her heart thumped hard against her chest wall, but she restrained herself to a mere nod of her head as she wordlessly followed him down the corridor and back to his temporary office. It was useless trying to block out the events of the previous day but she tried all the same.
‘Yesterday should never have happened,’ he began curtly—his version of an apology. ‘Call it jet-lag, or shock at seeing you again, or sheer lack of control, but I shouldn’t have let it get that far.’
She twisted her mouth ruefully. They were all plausible excuses for his behaviour, but what about her? She couldn’t really claim shock, she’d had been preparing herself for the possibility of seeing him again—however much she’d tried to pretend that transferring to St Vic’s would negate that—for weeks. She certainly couldn’t blame jet-lag. That only left sheer lack of control. And what did that say about her?
Or either of them, for that matter?
