Surgeon Of The Heart

Cat bit her bottom lip. ‘No, Sister.’

‘I explained to him that you’d been ill recently, but he soon gave me short shrift. I told him that you were the best nurse I had, but he didn’t seem to be listening.’ The older woman’s eyes were creased with anxiety. ‘Don’t you see, my dear, that if we subject visiting and very eminent professors to situations like that it makes us all look very foolish. It whittles away at our reputation. We are the finest cardio-thoracic centre in the country. Surgeons come here, knowing that. They expect—and they have a right to expect—the very best, and today Professor Rossi did not get it. I’d like to know whether you can offer me a satisfactory explanation for what happened in Theatre today.’

Cat hung her head, shame staining her cheeks. She had never received such a blunt dressing-down in all the time she’d been nursing. It was justified, she knew that, but it didn’t make it any easier to bear.

‘He wants to see you in his office, Catriona. I shouldn’t dawdle, if I were you.’

Cat felt as though she were going to the gallows, and not just because she was about to get a professional scorching—she would have withstood a million of those, anything rather than have to face him, to have to stand alone in the same room with him.

She tapped on the door of his room. The visiting professor was awarded a room that reflected his status, and consequently was very large, well-appointed, and right to the back of theatres. Cat had only been in there once before, when a very amiable American professor had invited them all for drinks on the eve of his departure. An enjoyable occasion, and anything less like the encounter she now anticipated she couldn’t imagine.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.