Chapter 4
This was not his problem.
Okay. Someone had obviously done a number on Kate Graham and made her afraid of men.
But it wasn’t him, dammit, so it had been totally undeserved to have her look at him like that. As if he was some kind of monster, for God’s sake, like a murderer or rapist.
Well, he wasn’t going to let it happen again.
It had been easy enough to avoid her at work in the last few days since that fundraising fancy-dress ball.
She didn’t have to work most weekends and he’d kept strictly to his expected areas of the hospital since then.
His path had crossed with Bella’s up in the theatre suite but that hadn’t been a problem.
He’d simply avoided talking to Kate’s niece as well.
Apart from that he’d attended an outpatient clinic or two and spent the rest of his time in the wards.
He was heading for one of those wards right now to see thirteen-year-old Estelle Montgomery, who’d been admitted after breaking her leg very early that morning.
Tall for her age, Estelle had the tanned skin and bleached blonde hair of someone who spent more time on a beach than anywhere else. Her mother was also in the room and they were both flicking through a magazine. The pages seemed to be a feature on bikinis.
Nice. Connor stopped himself from making any appreciative sounds, however. Instead he smiled.
‘Hi. I’m Connor Matthews.’
‘Oh…’ The magazine slid from her hands and Estelle’s mother swallowed visibly. ‘You’re the orthopaedic surgeon Stella’s been admitted under.’
Connor nodded. ‘I’m sorry I haven’t had a chance to say hello before this but I hope my registrar and the rest of the staff have been looking after you well?’
It was Estelle who nodded. ‘Everyone’s been cool. I asked if I could get a proper cast on and go home but they said I had to wait for you to come and see me.’
She glanced towards the window of her room. ‘It’s a great day. I know it’ll be a few weeks before I can get wet but if I got out now and didn’t have to go to school, I could at least go and watch the others.’
Her chin wobbled slightly as she looked at her mother. ‘Couldn’t I? You wouldn’t mind an hour or two on the beach, would you, Mum? Shane’s practising for the competition next weekend and…’
Her mother’s smile was strained. ‘Let’s see what Dr Matthews has to say first, Stella.’
Connor was looking at the long, tanned leg, which had been left free of the bed cover. Cradled in a plaster shell, the malformation of the fracture was clearly visible halfway down the shin.
‘How’s the pain?’
Estelle shrugged. ‘It’s fine if I don’t move.’
Her mother sighed. ‘She doesn’t admit to anything that might stop her getting near the sea. She dislocated her elbow a couple of years ago and still went back to catch another wave.’
Connor smiled at Estelle. ‘Surfing, huh?’
Estelle’s face lit up. ‘I won the thirteen and under section that year. That’s why I was up so early today. The waves are always good at dawn and I’m practising for this year’s competition.’
‘Wow.’ Connor shook his head. ‘The longest I’ve managed to stay upright on a surfboard was about ten seconds.’
‘It just takes practice. And good balance. Learning to dance helps. I started when I was about three and I still do classes whenever I can. Can you dance?’
‘Stella!’ Her mother sounded shocked. ‘You can’t ask Dr Matthews that sort of thing.’
Connor grinned. ‘Of course she can. And, yes, I like dancing.’
He’d always liked dancing but it hit him suddenly that he might not like it as much from now on. The way he’d felt dancing with Kate had been like nothing he’d ever experienced before, and he had this curious certainty that he never would again.
The way she’d felt in his arms.
That connection.
The sheer power of something sensual that was so big Connor couldn’t recognise it. So alluring he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about it since. He’d tried to tell himself he’d imagined it, but what if he hadn’t?
What if there was something he hadn’t known was missing from his life because he hadn’t even known it existed?
And what if it only existed because the other half of the equation had been Kate?
Connor actually shook his head again to clear the fleeting distraction. Estelle’s mother noticed the subtle movement and drew in an audible breath.
‘There’s something wrong, isn’t there? That’s why Stella couldn’t just get plaster on her leg and go home?’
Connor had been planning on introducing himself, examining Estelle and then taking her mother somewhere for a private conversation. Both mother and daughter were staring at him now and then they looked at each other.
‘I don’t want you talking behind my back,’ Estelle said firmly. ‘It’s my leg and I want to know what’s wrong with it.’
Her mother caught Connor’s gaze. ‘Stella’s thirteen, going on thirty,’ she said with a wry smile. ‘There’s no point hiding anything. And it’s just the two of us. Stella’s dad died when she was a baby.’
With a slow nod Connor took an X-ray from the folder he was carrying. He held it up so that the light from the window shone through it.
‘You know you’ve broken your tibia, which is the bigger of the two bones in your lower leg.
The fracture itself isn’t that serious, although it’s bad enough to need a pin to stabilise it.
What worried the doctors in the emergency department initially was that it hadn’t been caused by any trauma.
You were just climbing some steps, yes?’
Estelle nodded. ‘I heard it snap. It was really gross.’
‘You hadn’t had a knock from your surfboard or anything before that?’
‘No.’
‘It’s not brittle bones or something, is it?’ her mother asked. ‘It can’t be, surely. She gets knocked all the time. That surfboard is bigger than she is and she goes out in some wild waves sometimes.’
‘For a bone to break without trauma being involved means there’s something wrong,’ Connor agreed.
‘And when this X-ray was taken it showed a mass in the tibia. Can you see the way the line of the bone isn’t straight on the edge there?
And how much wider the whole bone is in that spot than above and below it? ’
‘A… mass?’ The word from Estelle’s mother was a horrified whisper.
‘What’s a mass?’ Estelle queried. She was staring at her mother. ‘Oh, my God… you mean, like… cancer?’
Connor’s heart sank at the fear in their voices, but he couldn’t be any less than honest. ‘A mass is when cells are growing and dividing in a manner that isn’t normal.
A collection of abnormal cells like this is called a tumour.
We don’t know yet whether the tumour is benign or cancerous.
Given your history, Estelle, and what we know of your general state of health so far, the chances are very good that this tumour is benign. ’
‘You’ll do a biopsy, right?’ Estelle was nodding. ‘I’ve seen it on telly.’
‘We’ll certainly do a biopsy and find out exactly what we’re dealing with. Because you already need surgery to pin the fracture, that’s when we’ll do the biopsy. I’m going to send you for an MRI first, though.’
‘Why?’
‘It’s an advanced test that can show better detail of not only the bone but all the soft tissue around it, including tendons and nerves and muscles and things. It can show us whether this tumour is confined to the bone.’
Connor paused for a moment, letting the implications sink in.
‘Normally, we’d do a biopsy and if we didn’t like the kind of cells we found we’d look at a course of chemotherapy or radiotherapy to shrink the tumour before surgery.
Depending on what we find, the better course of action may be to remove the tumour during surgery and use chemo later if it’s necessary. ’
‘How much of the bone do you have to remove?’ Estelle’s mother asked quietly.
‘That will depend on what we find. If it’s benign, only enough to allow your leg to continue growing as normally as possible. If it’s cancerous, it will depend on both the type of cancer and whether it’s spread.’
Connor didn’t want to go into details about the more aggressive types of bone cancer unless he had to when the diagnosis was confirmed.
He gave Estelle’s mother a steady glance.
‘I know it’s a big ask but right now the consent form you need to sign allows me to take what I consider the best course of action depending on what we find during surgery. ’
Estelle was gripping a fold of her sheet in her hands. ‘I thought I was just going to have to stop surfing for a few weeks and that I’d have crutches and a cast that the kids at school could write stuff on. That was bad enough but I could deal with it.’
The fold of sheet twisted in her hands and she gave a huge sniff. ‘I’m scared, Mum…’ she sobbed. ‘I’d rather die than have my leg cut off.’
‘Don’t say that.’ The older woman was close to tears herself now as she reached to hold her daughter in her arms.
Connor couldn’t deny that amputation was a possibility and it was something they needed to talk about.
He had a dozen things to get sorted before slotting this emergency case into his surgery schedule for the day but there was no way he could leave until he had provided enough reassurance to reduce some of his patient’s fear.
The possibility was extremely remote that Estelle would have to lose her leg but if that was what it would take to save her life, that was what Connor would have to do.
He perched a hip on the end of the bed and settled in to talk for as long as it was going to take.
At least it was still early in the day. Some people wouldn’t have even started work yet. People who had cushy jobs, maybe.
Like pathologists?