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‘Okay, give me your mobile number and I’ll call you back on it. And I’ll send you an image showing the standard position of burr holes, which you’re going to need to modify depending on what the Infrascanner shows.’
He grabbed a pen and jotted down the number she gave him, replaced the department phone and headed for a quiet room as he sent her the image.
He called her back.
‘Tak?’
She picked up on the first ring, her nerves controlled but nonetheless evident. He didn’t blame her.
‘You’ll be fine.’ He kept his tone as brisk as he could. ‘I’ll talk you through it as we go, but here’s a summary. You’re going to need to shave about a five-centimetre strip of hair. Then you’ll mark a three-centimetre incision and clean the area, preferably with chlorhexidine. You’ll make an incision right down to the bone, controlling any bleeding with direct pressure.’
‘Understood.’
She had to be nervous but she was mastering it, which boded well for the casualty. His respect for Effie hitched up yet another notch.
‘You’re going to need to use either the knife or a swab to push the periosteum off the bone, and ideally this is when you’d insert the self-retaining retractor. Or whatever it is you’ve got.’
‘Right,’ she confirmed.
‘Now comes the hard part. The drill must be perpendicular to the skull, and you’re going to need one of your paramedics to hold the casualty’s head and apply saline as you drill. Effie, you’re going to have to push down hard, and once you’ve started drilling keep drilling until the drill bit stops spinning. If you stop too soon it’s going to disengage the mechanism and make it that much harder to start again.’
‘Understood,’ she said again.
Her grim tone crackled over the connection, and he could imagine she had swallowed. Pretending she didn’t feel sick with adrenalin as it coursed wildly around her veins. She needed it to. There was no way she was going to get through this unless she was fired up enough.
But still, as he outlined the rest of the procedure and then waited for her to ensure everything was in place before beginning to talk her through it step by step, it occurred to Tak that there was no other doctor he would rather have on the end of the line right now. No one else he would trust to perform such a procedure whilst they waited for either a road ambulance to get to them or for clearance to fly the heli out with the patient.
This was so much worse than just a physical attraction. It seemed he liked and admired Effie, too. When had anyone ever got to him like this? When had this constant awareness ever shot through him? It was an awareness which flared into something infinitely more palpable—more forceful—every time he saw her. Even spoke to her.
The woman’s nature was as fiery and captivating as her glorious red hair.
Just like that, an image locked itself in his mind. So detailed that she might as well have been standing right in front of him. Her lilting voice, her delicate fragrance, the way her skin felt so soft and yet so electric beneath his fingers. And as for the way she’d tasted when his mouth had plundered hers...the way she had given herself up to him as though they had been the only two people to ever to kiss that way in the history of the world...
It made no sense.
Neither did the way his whole body combusted at the mere memory. As though he was the untried, untested boy of his youth rather than a man who had enjoyed his fair share of sexual encounters.
It was bizarre. But not altogether unpleasant.
Although it was inconvenient.
Which could mean only one thing. He really was in deep trouble.
CHAPTER SEVEN
‘WHAT ARE YOU doing here?’ she asked testily, thirteen hours later, as he found himself hammering on her apartment door.
His gaze swept down, taking in her multip
le layers of jumpers, and the expression in his eyes hardened.
‘The boiler hasn’t been repaired at all. You lied to me.’
She bristled instantly. ‘I did not lie.’
‘You told me it was repaired.’
‘No, I told you it was in hand. Which it is.’
