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The air shimmered between them, only this time it had nothing to do with the food being prepared.
He recognised only too well the way that she pulled her mouth a fraction to one side. He just didn’t know what it meant.
Had his stirring up of old memories somehow spoiled what had otherwise been a pleasant—more than pleasant—day? Ruining things between them?
Just like you did last time.
The smug voice came out of nowhere, its almost triumphant tone echoing around his head. A voice which, Liam considered abruptly, sounded remarkably like his father’s voice.
He stared around the square, almost as though he expected the old man to materialise at any time. But this wasn’t Duke’s, or even North Carolina, where Donald Miller seemed to haunt his every move, even though he’d learned long ago that he had to cut all ties to such a toxic old man.
No, this wasn’t back there—a place he didn’t even think of as home. This was St Victoria, a Caribbean island so far from home that it felt like a whole other life. And maybe here, Liam realised with a jolt, he could be someone different. Someone other than the man whose every decision in life had to make up for the way his mother had lost hers.
Just for a while.
He turned to Talia, but whatever he might have been about to say next froze on his lips as he caught sight of a kid racing straight towards Talia. The language was partly patois, but Liam caught enough to know that a man had been hit by a car in a nearby street and a neighbour, having seen Talia at the market earlier, had sent the boy to find her.
Neither of them waited to hear any more. Almost in unison, they both instructed the boy to lead the way, hurrying behind the kid without a word needing to be spoken. Slipping back into that old working harmony they’d once shared, as if it was an old friend.
By the time they arrived, an ambulance—one of the four new highly equipped donations from The Island Clinic—was already on scene, and it took Liam and Talia little time to ascertain that the man had indeed been involved in a car-versus-pedestrian collision, with the man having been anaesthetised before for transport. However, before he had been able to be loaded onto the ambulance, he’d gone into cardiac arrest and the team had pushed fluids into him via a drip, as well as beginning CPR, with no response.
Watching another round of CPR being carried out, Liam was all too aware that time was running out for the patient, and although it was a great effort by the team already on scene, if they were unable to get his heart restarted there would be little point in loading him into the ambulance for St Vic’s.
‘What are you going to do?’ Talia placed her hand on his arm as he stepped forward through the crowd.
He dropped back, lowering his head so no one could overhear. No use in panicking anyone else around.
‘If they can’t resuscitate him this time then there’s only one other option I can think of...’
‘You’re going to open him up here? On the street?’ Talia nodded. ‘Massage his heart to try to get it to beat again?’
‘It’s a bit of a Hail Mary, and the chances of success aren’t good,’ he admitted, ‘but we have to at least try to manage any internal injuries and get his heart restarted.’
Biting her lip, she offered another short nod then stepped after him, pulling aside one of the senior paramedics to introduce Liam as The Island Clinic’s cardiothoracic surgeon. He would have had to have done it without her, if she hadn’t been around, but there was no doubt that Talia’s established relationship with the existing team helped them to accept his solution quicker. And, for this patient, every second counted.
As hastily as he could, Liam sterilised himself and the patient while Talia worked with the paramedic to pull together as much kit as possible, and then he opened up the man’s chest and went to work.
Later, much later, he knew he would reflect on how easily and naturally he and Talia had worked together, managing to stem the significant internal bleeding and massaging the man’s heart back into rhythm within a matter of mere minutes.
But for the moment all Liam could concentrate on was the patient in front of him, the familiarity of the procedure, despite the circumstances, seeming familiar and oddly soothing.
This part of the heart—the actual p
hysical manifestation of the muscular organ in the human body—was what he could deal with. It was what he understood best.
A world apart from the other, less tangible role of the heart—the emotions and connotations it raised. And those thoughts that had churned through his head earlier—the idea of trying to be someone different from the man he was back in North Carolina—were stronger now.
Life was so short, and so very precious, something he should know more than most. He’d thought he was living his best life being a successful surgeon. Emotions were a weakness, and meant for other people. The effect Talia’s leaving had had on him, three years ago, had proved that.
Only now...he wasn’t sure it had proved anything of the sort. Now, suddenly, he knew he wanted something else. Something...more.
He just didn’t know what he was supposed to do with that knowledge.
CHAPTER EIGHT
‘SMALL YOURSELF UP, Talia.’ Nyla squeezed past her at the desk and reached for a bag that had been stuffed underneath. ‘Now we finally have a full shift together, I’ll show you what my eldest granddaughter brought home the other day, thinking that she was going to wear it.’
Squeezing in to let her colleague pass, Talia welcomed the distraction. Once again, she felt the need to get out of her own head. To get some distance from the questions that were chasing around her brain. Like her island tour with Liam a few days previously.
