*
‘That should do it, nurse. Best leave some skin on your hands for the patient.’
‘Yes, doctor.’
Soila Waneta was annoyed that her voice contained tension while his was as steady as his life saving hands. It was true she had been excessively washing her hands, ritualistically savouring the moment to come. The dashing cop who had shot off his own foot to kill his wildly beautiful assailant, Waneta would be a player in the crucial final chapter, set to be played out on an Alfred Hospital operating table. Whether he lived or died, those tables never took sides. Stretching on her sterilised gloves she braved a follow up glance at the doctor meticulously lathering up his own hands. Even at sixty three years of age Dr De Chul was still regarded as the best gunshot trauma surgeon in the country. And with supreme calm and self-assurance he looked every bit of it. The one they would call upon if the Prime Minister himself were shot. It was an obvious general rule that gunshot victims had their enemies; it was much rarer that they had the kind of friends able to coerce Dr De Chul out of his beloved classroom.
It was irrefutable proof that Breeze was no ordinary cop. Waneta endeavoured to not attract any further attention. She feared it wouldn’t take much for her colleagues to surmise that she had cashed in a favour to extend her shift beyond the night for the simple reason that this operation was personal, that she would do anything to be reunited with Breeze in circumstances far more exhilarating than a helicopter ride. She walked into the operating theatre, eyes fixated upon the patient.