“She’s going to do it?” Doubt sounded in every word.
“She’s highly trained and she can certainly do this procedure under my guidance.” Lucas’s calm voice flowed through Frankie. She could only hope it was having the same effect on Ben.
“Right, you’re going to find the mid clavicular line and feel downwards from here to find the second intercostal space. Have you got that?”
A self-assured manner would help Ben. This wasn’t the time for thinking or hoping she’d got it right. She felt the second rib then the third to find the right area. “Yes, I’ve got it.”
“Swab the area.”
Frankie prepped the area and took hold of the needle.
“Ninety-degree angle, in you go, listen for a hiss as you hit the pleural space.”
Frankie leant forwards as she inserted the needle into Ben’s chest. Hearing a hiss, she knew she’d hit the right place. She threaded the catheter off and secured it with tape. “Done.”
She didn’t know who was most relieved—her or Ben.
“Thank you.” Ben pulled in a breath. “That feels easier already.”
“That’s my girl.” Lucas’s eyes found hers and, despite his earlier assertions that he didn’t want anything serious with her, she could see deep emotion.
“Your girl?”
His mouth twisted. “My girl. Who I trained. My assistant.”
“Uh huh.” Frankie ignored his words, choosing instead to remember the expression on his face moments earlier.
Because there’d been nothing professional in the look he’d given her. It’d been full of pride, but not in a doctor-nurse way. Definitely not in a colleague way. It was personal.
“I think I’m going to leave you two men here to bond while I go see what else I can do.”
“Don’t forget about me.” Frankie’s foolish heart soared until she turned back to Lucas. He struggled as though trying to free himself. “I can’t do any good stuck down here. I need to be out from this rubble and helping.”
“You’re a yellow casualty, Lucas. When it’s your turn, you’ll know.”
She hurried over to the next patient. Words were easy. Convincing her heart she meant business was something she’d work on later.
#
The night had already begun to fall before the rubble trapping Lucas was removed. A portable X-ray, unearthed from God-knew-where confirmed what they already suspected—his left leg was broken.
After his leg had been splinted, Frankie got to work stitching his head wound.
“Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”
Frankie grinned at his teasing tone. “Absolutely. I’ve seen this done so many times before.”
“No, wait.” He caught hold of her wrist. “You’ve only watched in the past? I don’t want an ugly scar spoiling my good looks.”
Frankie’s face froze at his words. Eventually her mouth moved but no words came out.
“I’m joking. You can hardly make the left side of my face any worse than it already is, can you?”
“You shouldn’t joke about things like that,” she admonished. “You know you’re a good looking man, a few scars don’t change that. Not to me, anyway.”
“I have to make light of it, make jokes at my own expense. Otherwise all of this—” He swept a hand around the room. “—is just too hard to bear.”
“I wondered how you managed disaster zones.” Frankie inserted the needle to numb the area around where she needed to stitch. “How you get through a day so in control of yourself. Especially when there’s chaos all around.”
If only she knew how he struggled with his feelings, with his own experiences, and never more so than that day. “I need to remain slightly detached otherwise it’s impossible.”
“And your own accident, that helps you emphasise with patients?”
“I guess,” he answered. They were getting onto rocky ground now and he really didn’t want to answer questions about himself, about his accident. Those emotions had been put back in their box and he didn’t want to take the lid off, especially in front of Frankie. “Though it was a long time ago. I deal with it.”
“You do not,” she retorted. “I was with you last night, so I know you don’t deal with it. If you had, you wouldn’t still be having nightmares.”
“I didn’t have a nightmare.” He hoped the force he’d put into his words would be enough to stop her.
“Yes, you did. I was there, Lucas. If only you’d share, if not with me then with someone else, it’d help. I’m sure of it. Maybe your mother…”
“No, my mother should never be burdened with this stuff. I’m a walking, talking reminder of the fact her son and husband are dead.”
“Your father died in the same accident?”
He wanted to tell her to go see to someone else, but Jeremy had refused to allow him to treat anyone until his leg was splinted, he had crutches, and his head wound had been stitched. Two out of three was not going to get him back into commission.
“No, my father died years later.”