Free The Army Doctor's New Year's Baby by Helen Scott Taylor Page B

sleep, but he mustn't.
For Kieran it was deadly serious. Daniel owed his patient absolute
concentration.
    He headed
along the corridor towards the operating room. He scrubbed up and a nurse
helped him into his gown and gloves, then held the door open for him.
    Kieran lay
on the operating table with machinery beeping around him. His nervous gaze
found Daniel.
    "Hello,
Kieran. This won't take long. I'll have you back with your mum very soon. Are
you feeling okay?"
    The boy
nodded and Daniel smiled in return.
    "Ready,
sir," the young anesthetist said. Naomi Gray was a captain recently
graduated from the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. In the past, Daniel would
have been charmed by her blonde hair and green eyes, but he didn't feel even a
fleeting moment of attraction. Megan swamped every one of his brain cells, leaving
no room for other women.
    Daniel held
Kieran's gaze with a reassuring smile as Naomi injected anesthetic into the
cannula in the back of the boy's hand. "Count backward from ten for me,
Kieran," she said.
    The boy's
voice came out as little more than a whisper, fading away at four. Daniel
waited while the captain checked some readings.
    "Okay,"
he said. "Let's get started."
    Duncan came in masked, but not gloved. "Just going to watch, if that's all
right."
    "Be my
guest." Daniel liked an audience. He actually performed better when he was
under scrutiny.
    A nurse
fitted on his eye loupes. He held out a hand for a scalpel, then carefully
pared away the damaged tips of the two fingers, debriding the necrotized tissue
to prevent gangrene. The nail had come off the smallest finger as he predicted.
He doubted it would grow back. But the nail on the ring finger was intact. When
he reached healthy tissue, he stitched the wounds, keeping the stitches small
so the scar would be smooth and neat.
    He turned to
the thumb and cut away the blackened dead flesh and bone.
    "Poor,
lad," Duncan said.
    "He'll
be fine." Daniel glanced over his shoulder. "I won't leave him
without a thumb."
    He picked up
the surgical stainless steel bone screw from the dish a nurse offered him. He
drilled a hole in the metacarpal bone and cemented the post in, taking care to
ensure it was the right length.
    He had
marked out a rectangle of tissue on the boy's forearm before he started. Now he
cut it away with the ease of experience, folded it over the metal post and
stitched it in place, working to form it into a thumb shape that would match
the other hand.
    When he'd
finished, he lifted the hand by the wrist and turned it, checking his work from
all angles. "I think that's acceptable." He glanced over his shoulder
at Duncan. "All right with you?"
    Duncan's eyebrows rose. "Excellent result. Well done."
    "Dress
the wounds, please." With a nod to the team, Daniel headed back to the
scrub room, Duncan at his side. As soon as they were alone, Duncan tossed his
mask in the bin and shook his head. "You're killing me here, Fabian. I've
been doing this for five years. You started a few weeks ago, and your work is
so fast and neat you make me feel like an amateur. I'd have taken twice as long
and not produced such a good outcome."
    Daniel
stripped off his gloves and dumped his gown in the laundry bin. "I've
heard it said that if you do anything for ten thousand hours you become an
expert. I'm not sure I've spent that long performing surgery, but working in my
father's clinic gave me the opportunity to operate more often than you will
have done here, and the procedures were far more complex and challenging than
Kieran's hand."
    Daniel
pushed open the door and led the way into the corridor. Even as he talked to Duncan, in the back of his mind he was counting down the minutes until he could leave to
see Megan. "I've just had more practice than you."
    "You're
also very diplomatic." Duncan laughed wryly. "Me and my big clumsy
fingers aren't really cut out for surgery. I'd better get some paperwork done.
See you later."
    Daniel
headed for his office, stepped inside,