The Surgeon's Convenient Fiancée (Medical Romance) by Rebecca Lang Page B

confidence had risen a few notches as Shay had referred to her qualification—it had been a long time since anyone had introduced her as an RN.
    ‘You’ll be wanted. Darlene’s in her office, so you’d better grab her before she disappears. This has been a hectic day so far.’
    They went through the same process with the head nurse in her office. Darlene Reade could have been anywhere from forty-five to over sixty, Deirdre thought, viewing the tired, pale face of the head nurse who nonetheless looked cheerful and welcoming, if harried.
    ‘You go ahead, Shay,’ she said, aftershaking hands with Deirdre. ‘I’m pretty well tied up here. We’ve had more than our fair share of emergencies.’ When one of the office telephones shrilled, Shay took Deirdre’s arm and they left.
    ‘Put your mask on,’ he said, ‘then we can be anonymous. At least, you can. I’ll show you around generally, we won’t go into any rooms where there’s an operation in progress.’
    When she tied on the rather stiff paper mask, her hands felt clumsy with a certain nervousness, not least because she found that she wanted very much to impress Shay, but feared that she was out of touch and would need a refresher course.
    He showed her everything—the stockrooms, the clean instrument room where trays of instruments were packed and sterilized for specific operations, the dirty instrument room where used instruments were washed and sterilized by specially trained staff. The central supply unit was thus part of the operating suite, yet separate from it. Then they went on to the operating rooms themselves, each with a scrub area outside,of sinks where the surgeons and the nurses scrubbed before an operation.
    ‘I do mainly general surgery,’ he informed her. ‘And this room, number one, is where I usually operate on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.’
    ‘I see,’ she said, looking through a small communication window off the scrub area so that she could see inside the room where an operation was in progress. ‘It’s so nice to be back in an operating room. Is that a gut resection they’re doing?’
    Shay moved up close behind her to look over her shoulder, so that suddenly she was acutely aware of his physical presence just inches away from her. Swallowing nervously, she stared straight ahead. ‘It looks like it,’ he said. ‘There’s an operating list over here.’
    Beside the entrance door to each operating room, the operating list for the day was posted on the wall. Shay ran his finger down it. ‘Yes…look,’ he said, putting a hand on her shoulder and drawing her over beside him to view the long list of operations that were on the agenda for that day, many of which had already been done. ‘It is a gut resection.’
    Aware of nothing other than his touch, Deirdre stared blindly at the list. Then he dropped his hand, having touched her for no longer than a few seconds, not long enough for it to be suggestive or offensive had she not liked him. He was simply being attentive and kind, Deirdre knew, and it was having a devastating effect on her, starved for affection and attention as she was. Hoping that wasn’t too obvious, she searched her mind for something to say.
    ‘Well…you certainly get through a lot of work here,’ she managed to get out.
    All too soon the tour was over and they were back at the main entrance. ‘Thank you so much,’ she said. ‘I like the atmosphere of the place.’ All along, other members of the staff had spoken warmly to Shay and had greeted her warmly also when introduced. Her first impressions were that this department was very professional, very efficient, very busy and a good place in which to work. ‘There seems to be a good team spirit.’
    ‘There is,’ he agreed. ‘Would you like a cup of coffee? We could get one in the main lobby. There’s a coffee-lounge up here in theOR, but the coffee at this time of the day leaves something to be desired. I’m parched myself.’
    ‘I’d like