The Surgeon's Fatherhood Surprise by Jennifer Taylor Read Free Book Online

merely nodded when Alex told him that she would leave him to get on with it. Although it was a compliment to his skills not to be supervised at every step, he wouldn’t have expected anything less. He was good at his job, and the people he worked with soon realised that.
    ‘Can I have some more saline over here?’ he asked, glancing at the circulating nurse. He nodded when she washed away the minute particles of grime that he had removed from a cut on Becca’s forehead. ‘Thanks.’
    ‘You’re welcome.’
    Jack saw her eyes crinkle above her mask and smiled back. He believed in fostering a good working relationship with the other members of the team and was pleased that they seemed so willing to accept him. ‘I hope you still feel like that in a couple of hours’ time,’ he joked, and everyone laughed.
    ‘Don’t worry, Mel will soon let you know if you’re in her bad books,’ the anaesthetist, Parkash Patel, informed him. ‘Take it from me, Mel has her own highly effective way of making her displeasure felt!’
    ‘That sounds ominous. I must try really hard not upset her.’ Jack chuckled when Mel grunted loudly to indicate her displeasure at being so unjustly criticised. ‘Whoops! Looks like I’ve just earned my first black mark.’
    He bent over the table again, feeling himself relax as he carried on. Surgery was the only thing he had ever wanted to do. However, when he had discovered the difference he could make to people’s lives through plastic surgery, he’d known he had found his true calling.
    Plastic surgery improved both the function and the appearance of a patient’s body. Although some surgeons were sniffy about the value of cosmetic plastic surgery, Jack believed in that too, especially when it was used to rectify the devastating effects caused by an illness or an accident. His long-term goal was to have his own clinic, where he could help people regain their lives by restoring their looks as well as the functionality of their bodies. It was very much in the future at the moment, but it was what he was aiming for.
    Fired up by his belief in what he was doing, Jack lost himself in his work. Once he was sure all the dirt had been removed he began the delicate task of stitching the cuts. Lilian, the SHO, watched entranced as he used the tiniest stitches to bring the skin together.
    ‘I don’t know how you know where it all fits!’ she exclaimed. ‘It looks such a mess that I wouldn’t know the best place to start.’
    ‘It’s really quite simple,’ Jack said, easing a tiny flap of torn skin back into its rightful place. ‘You find the places where the skin seems to fit the most easily and join them together first. After that, the rest should fall into place. Theone thing you must be careful about, though, is that you don’t cut away too much tissue when you are debriding an area or you’ll never be able to match things up.’
    ‘Why are you using interrupted sutures? Continuous ones would be a lot quicker.’
    ‘Yes, but they don’t give as good a result. It’s not speed but the quality of your work that will determine the outcome for this patient for the rest of her life. Cut conservatively, match with care and use the smallest stitches, and there’s a very good chance she will thank you for it in later life and not blame you.’
    ‘I don’t think my suturing will ever be that neat,’ Lilian said wistfully, and Jack laughed.
    ‘Then practise! It’s like everything else—you need to do as much as you can before you get the hang of it.’
    It took another two hours before he was satisfied that he had done all he could for now. The large tear on Becca’s left cheek was the thing that worried him most. There’d been too much tissue damage to match the edges successfully. It would need a skin graft, and that was something he’d have to do at a later date. He sighed as he straightened up.
    ‘That’s about all we can do for now. Thanks for all your help. It’s been really