Читать книгу The Surgeon's Love-Child - Lilian Darcy - Страница 8

IT WAS the best night’s sleep Candace had had in months, and it lasted until almost five the next morning. This meant she had plenty of time to iron a skirt and blouse, have another shower and eat breakfast on the deck, watching the sun rise over the sea. She was ready for Steve Colton at eight-thirty.

He was prompt, and if she’d had any sort of a theory overnight that yesterday’s intuitive sense of chemistry had been only a product of her jet-lagged disorientation, that theory was knocked on the head at once.

The chemistry was still there, invisible, intangible, lighter than air, yet as real as a third person with them in the room. Neither of them acknowledged it in any way. They didn’t get close enough to touch. Any eye contact they chanced to make was snapped apart again in milliseconds.

But, oh, it was there, and she was convinced he felt it, too.

She spent half an hour with Terry at the Narralee District Hospital. He had earned a certain seniority, having been a visiting medical officer in general surgery here for over twenty-five years, but in fact there wasn’t the official hierarchy of medical staff that Candace was used to.

There wasn’t very much that she was used to at all! It was quite a contrast to come from a 600-bed high-rise American city hospital to this low, rambling, red-brick building, which housed a mere fifty beds.

‘And six of those are political,’ Terry said darkly.

‘Political?’

‘They’re not beds at all, in most people’s definition. We have six reclining chairs where day-surgery patients recover until we’re satisfied that fluids are going in one end and coming out the other. But those six chairs make the numbers look better, so beds they’ve become and beds they’ll remain.’

He sounded tired and tense, and Candace longed to urge him, Go. Someone else can show me around.

Steve Colton, maybe? He’d muttered something about ‘errands’ after he’d deposited her into Terry’s care, and then he had disappeared. She was disturbed to realise that she was wondering, in the back of her mind, when she’d see him again.

She wanted to tell Terry, The tour can wait. I know you’re anxious to be on your way.

Terry was taking his wife, Myrna, up to Sydney today for a consultation with a top oncologist. The result of her second mammogram and fine-needle aspiration had come back yesterday afternoon, and there was no longer any doubt about the diagnosis. It was breast cancer.

They could only hope that it had been caught early, and Terry was clearly racked with worry. He was also behaving stubbornly in his insistence on a tour and a talk. He must feel as if he had let Candace down by not meeting her at the airport yesterday, and was determined to make up for it.

Accepting that she would only delay his departure if she kept apologising for her bad timing, Candace tried to ask a few intelligent questions and keep the pace brisk.

‘No full-time doctors here at all?’

‘No, we manage purely with Visiting Medical Officers. The local GPs cover the emergency department and the on-call roster, assist with surgery and handle anaesthesia. Steve probably mentioned that.’

‘Yes, he did, but not in any detail.’

‘Then there are about half a dozen of us who handle various specialities, travelling between several small hospitals in the region, as you’ll be doing. You can work out your own timetable, within certain constraints. Linda Gardner has space in her rooms, and will share her staff with you.’

‘Yes, Steve told me. Thanks for arranging it. I’m looking forward to meeting her.’

‘You’ll like her, I think. She’s married with two teenagers.’

‘We’ll have something in common in that area, then!’

‘Basically, you’ll probably want to operate one day a week here in Narralee, and a day every fortnight at Harpoon Bay and Shoalwater.’

‘A slower pace than I’m used to.’

‘Enjoy it!’

‘Oh, I intend to.’

The hospital had already created a pleasing impression. Its red-tiled roof had pale green lichen growing on it, attesting to its comfortable age. Above what must once have been the main entrance, the date ‘1936’ was carved. Mature eucalyptus trees shaded thick couch-grass lawns, and windows tinted with a gold reflective film ran all along one side of the building.

Most of the windows were open, providing a volume of fresh, mild air that was unheard of in Candace’s experience. In Boston, winters were arctic, summers were steamy and hospitals had air-conditioning.

With its pink walls and mottled linoleum floors, the place was too clean and cheerful to be called shabby, and there was an atmosphere of peace, underlaid by a low buzz of unhurried activity which suggested that hospitals didn’t have to be nearly as dramatic and hectic as they always seemed on prime-time television.

Terry doggedly tramped the building from one end to the other on their tour. He showed Candace the eight-bed maternity unit, which opened onto a shaded veranda. He took her through the four-bed high-dependency unit, the agedcare rehab beds, day surgery, the pharmacy, Emergency and Physio. He even took her past the tiny chapel and even tinier kiosk, which was open for just one hour each day. Finally, he pointed out the electrical plant room.

It was a relief to both of them when he finally announced, ‘And now I must pick up Myrna. She’ll be packed and waiting. Steve should be back before too long. Find someone to make you a coffee, and—’

‘I can do coffee on my own, Terry,’ Candace said gently. Several strands of his grey hair had fallen onto the wrong side of his parting, and he was rubbing his stomach as if he had heartburn. ‘Just give Myrna my very best and have a safe trip.’ She almost pushed Terry out through the administration entrance.

She had no trouble over the coffee. Found the nursing staffroom and was at once invited in. She hadn’t finished her mug of unremarkable instant by the time Steve appeared in the doorway ten minutes later, but it didn’t matter.

‘Now, what do you need to get done?’ he asked. ‘Because I’m not seeing patients today, and you know Terry will have my guts for garters when he gets back if I haven’t been looking after you.’

‘He’ll have your…what?’

‘Guts for garters.’ He grinned.

‘That sounds violent.’

‘So you’d better let me look after you, then, hadn’t you?’

‘Apparently!’

‘Good decision.’

‘Right, well, I need to get groceries, open a bank account and buy a car,’ she announced.

Steve raised his eyebrows and grinned, appreciating the way she’d ticked off each item on her finger with such assurance. Perhaps he shouldn’t have teased her with that piece of colourful Australian idiom just now. She didn’t need him to entertain her so deliberately.

‘Need to learn how to drive on the wrong side of the road, too?’ he suggested.

‘Well, yes.’ Now she looked less confident, but the effect was just as attractive.

His expectations for the day notched themselves a little higher, and he was aware that they’d been high enough to begin with.

‘I’ll give you a driving lesson,’ he offered.

OK, now she looked quite panicky. She gave a shriek, but she was smiling as widely as he was. ‘This is going to be a treat for my fellow road-users!’

‘Is that where we should start?’ he asked. ‘With the driving lesson? I can take you somewhere quiet first off then, when you’ve got some confidence, you can do the shuttling round to the bank and the supermarket. I’ll just sit in the passenger seat and give a terrified hiss every now and then…’

‘And slam your foot onto an imaginary brake pedal on the floor. I get the picture. Is it an automatic?’

‘Yes, it is.’

‘And is it insured?’

‘Comprehensively.’

‘OK, let’s do it before I start thinking of excuses. How’s the public transport around here?’

‘Not good enough for commuting between three hospitals more than fifty kilometres apart, every week.’

‘Thought not.’

So he gave her a driving lesson, and it wasn’t nearly as hair-raising as either of them had feared.

I’m not flirting with her, Steve realised. Why is that? I’d planned to.

He had acquired some skill in this area over the years. He was nearly thirty-three, now. His brother Matt, three years his senior and married since the age of twenty-five, kept telling him, ‘Get serious. Don’t miss the boat. Stop going after women who have a use-by date.’

‘Use-by date?’

‘Like Agnetha. Women that you know are going to leave and let you off the hook. There was that other girl from Perth, too. Agnetha wasn’t the first. Settle down!’

And he always found himself thinking, Yeah, obviously. Of course I will…I’m not a hardened bachelor. But not yet. Don’t think I’ve quite come to grips with the married man’s job description yet. When he took on a responsibility—and he was in no doubt that marriage was that—he liked to be sure it was one he was fully equipped to handle.

To prove to himself, and perhaps to Matt as well, that he hadn’t missed the boat, be it kayak or cruise ship or ferry, he flirted with a variety of women. Mutually enjoyable. Nothing heavy-handed. Not threatening to anyone.

He kept it very light, never trespassed into the sorts of overtly sexual references and double meanings that he, along with most women, would have considered sleazy. He conceded that there was probably some truth to Matt’s observation about women with a use-by date as well, although he didn’t like the way his brother had worded it.

Candace Fletcher was only here for a year, and he was fully aware of the fact.

So perhaps this is flirting, he decided. We’re laughing. Teasing each other a little. Only it’s even lighter than usual, so I’m calling it something else.

Why?

Because I don’t want to scare her off.

There was something in her eyes, something in the way she held that full, sensitive mouth. Coupled with the fact of her divorce, he was pretty certain that she would want a man to take things carefully, no matter how sudden and strong the spark was between them, no matter that she was leaving after a year.

Perhaps the spark was a little deceptive, too. They might both feel it, but that didn’t mean acting on it would be a good idea. Some instinct told him to tread carefully, and to think before he acted in this case.

I didn’t think twice with Agnetha, and neither did she…

The thought flashed through his mind and disappeared again.

They spent an hour on the quiet roads of Narralee’s newest housing development before Candace announced that she was ready for downtown.

‘Yes, I know you don’t call it that,’ she added.

‘Just town will do.’

‘Tell me how to get there.’

She parked without difficulty in the car park behind the bank and opened her account, then he showed her the supermarket nearest to Taylor’s Beach and they tooled down the aisles with a big metal shopping trolley, which she filled to the brim.

Always an instructive experience, shopping with a woman for the first time. What secret vices did she display in the confectionery aisle? Did she actually cook, or merely reheat in the microwave? Agnetha had lived on rabbit food, Steve considered. Celery and nuts and carrots. Horse food, too. Various flaky things that looked and tasted like chaff.

Candace’s diet held more promise and less obsessiveness. She smelled a rock melon—‘canteloupe’ she called it—with her eyes closed and a heaven-sent expression on her face. Then she put two of them in the trolley, right on top of the frozen chocolate cheesecake. She selected some delicate lamb cutlets and a medallion of pork, and they ended up lying next to the five-pack of lurid yellow chicken-flavoured two-minute noodle soups. She apparently drank hot chocolate, tea, three kinds of juice and four kinds of coffee.

He thought he’d been reasonably subtle in his analysis of her purchases, but he was wrong. When they stood waiting at the checkout, she tilted her head to one side and demanded, ‘So, Doctor, how many points did I lose? About fifty for the cheesecake and the cookies, obviously, but I believe I do have all the food groups represented in reasonable proportion.’

‘I wasn’t—’

‘You were, too! Silently analysing everything that went in the cart. Comparing me to—well, to whoever.’

Agnetha. He almost said it, but managed to stop himself. Felt colour rising into his neck and thought in disbelief, My God, I’m blushing!

‘I thought so!’ said Candace under her breath.

It was a type of audition. She teetered on the edge of resenting it. He had no right to judge and draw conclusions like that!

Then, with more honesty and less bluster, she decided that she was doing exactly the same thing herself. Auditioning him for this imaginary, unlikely affair she couldn’t get out of her head.

So far, he seemed like exactly the right candidate for such a thing, if she was going to consider the question in such cold-blooded terms. He would be easygoing, physical, fun to be with. He’d also possess certain shared understandings that didn’t need talking about, because they worked in the same profession.

Yes, quite definitely an ideal candidate for an affair.

Is this what Mom was thinking about when she told me to go away? That I’d meet someone and have a crazy fling, get my socks sizzled off and come home as revitalised as if I’d been to a health spa for three months? That I’d be over Todd and Brittany? Dear God, over it. That it wouldn’t hurt any more, and twist me up inside with bitterness and resentment and regret…?

The idea was both terrifying and dangerously alluring.

With her breathing shallower than usual, she asked, ‘Are you sure there isn’t anything else you need to do today? This is taking a long time.’

‘My schedule’s clear, so don’t worry about it. Shall we take this lot home to your place and unpack it, then grab some lunch before we do the car?’

‘Sandwiches? We have the makings for them now.’

‘Yep. Great.’

They got to the first car dealership at two, after a lunch so quick and casual Candace might have been sharing it with Maddy. The salesman then spent half an hour addressing himself exclusively to Steve, even when it ought to have been quite clear to him that Candace was the prospective buyer.

‘Do you think he realises why he didn’t make a sale?’ Steve asked her when they left.

She laughed. ‘I handled it. In fact, it was useful. He talked to you while I had an uninterrupted chance to think about whether I really wanted the car.’

‘I take it you didn’t?’

She waggled her hand from side to side. ‘Probably not. Let’s keep looking.’

At the second and third dealerships, she test-drove two vehicles and finally decided on a compact European model, with very low mileage on the odometer. She felt exhilarated and slightly queasy at having parted with so much money so quickly. Still, it didn’t make sense to delay. She was only here for a year. She needed to get organised, get her life sorted out, hit the ground running.

Did this apply to arranging a quick, therapeutic fling as well?

‘Now you just have to drive it home,’ Steve said, reminding her that in all spheres of life, actions had consequences.

‘I don’t know the way,’ she answered.

‘Which is why you’ll follow me.’

By the time they reached home, it was late afternoon. Steve suggested an evening meal at a local Chinese restaurant, and that sounded fine.

Sounded fine.

In reality, it was harder. When someone was seated a yard away and facing in your direction, it wasn’t as easy to avoid eye contact as it had been during driving lessons and grocery shopping. Candace drank a glass of red wine and regretted it. Jet-lag swamped her again, and the lighting in the restaurant was warm, inviting and intimate. She felt woozy, smily, relaxed and far too conscious of him.

When their eyes did meet, it was like tugging on a cord. She was a marionette and he was controlling the strings. He was making her nod and smile and listen with her chin cushioned in her palm and her elbow resting on the table.

‘Hey, are you falling asleep?’

‘No…’

‘You will be soon. I’d better take you home.’

‘You’re making my decisions for me,’ she retorted.

‘Only tonight,’ he said softly. ‘Promise you, the rest of the decisions will be all yours.’

Perhaps he hadn’t meant it to sound like such an intimate threat, but Candace panicked anyway. Her sleepiness vanished and she pulled herself to her feet, grating the legs of the chair on the restaurant’s scratchy carpeting.

‘Damn right they will!’ she said, and saw his startled expression.

‘Candace, I didn’t mean—I meant it, OK?’

‘I—I know. I’m sure you did.’

She turned away from him, felt his fingers slide in a quick, feather-light caress from her shoulder to her wrist, and was absolutely positive that she’d end up in his arms tonight. The idea was so breathtakingly terrifying that she didn’t wait for him to pay for their meal. She simply stumbled out of the restaurant, hurried along the sidewalk and stood by the driver’s side door of her new car until he caught up to her.

Steve didn’t say anything about it. Not then. Not for the next few days. And he didn’t kiss her.

He had more than one opportunity. Terry and his wife were still away, but the rest of Narralee’s small medical community gathered to welcome her at a barbecue at Linda and Rob Gardner’s on Saturday evening. She enjoyed meeting everyone, and laid some tentative foundations of friendship.

As Terry had predicted, Linda was going to be nice. She had a no-nonsense haircut, a chunky build, a throaty laugh and a wicked sense of humour. She was down to earth in her opinions, happy with her career and open in her love for her children and her even more down-to-earth husband.

Getting over her jet-lag, Candace stayed until ten o’clock and drove herself home, then saw Steve’s car breeze past her house as she stood on the deck, watching the moonlight over the water.

He glanced across, saw her there, slowed down and waved. She almost wondered if he would come over. They’d had a long conversation at the barbecue. Lots of laughs in it, and some quiet moments, too. If he did come, she would offer him tea or coffee, while secretly quaking in her shoes…

But, no, he didn’t show up.

The next morning, they met on the beach. Candace hadn’t swum in the ocean in years, but loved it again at once. Taylor’s Beach was patrolled and flagged in the Life-saving Association’s colours of red and yellow, so she felt very safe swimming between the flags. Had no desire to go out as far as those surfers, though, in their slick black wet-suits.

One of the surfers was Steve.

She didn’t recognise him until he came to shore with his creamy fibreglass board tucked under one arm, and he didn’t see her until he’d put the board down, pulled his wetsuit to his waist and towelled himself.

He did this with rough energy, like a dog shaking off the water, then he caught sight of her, slung his towel over his shoulder and came over. Dropping her gaze, she was treated to the sight of his bare, tanned legs still dripping with water from the knees down, and his feet, lean and smooth and brown, covered with sand.

‘Hi,’ he said.

‘You’re not afraid of sharks out there?’

‘Only when I see a fin.’

‘You’re joking, right?’

‘We get dolphins here sometimes. They like surfing, too.’

‘Now you’re definitely joking!’

‘No! Their bodies are perfect for it. They catch fish around here, too.’

‘I’m going to look out for them. Still don’t quite believe you…’

‘You’ll see them,’ he predicted. ‘If you spend any time on these beaches. The shape of their fin is different to a shark’s, and so is the way they move in the water, but when you first glimpse one, before you’ve had time to work out whether it’s shark or dolphin every hair stands up the way it does on a cornered cat. I tell you!’ He laughed and shook his head. ‘Yes, a couple of times I’ve been damned scared!’

He was still a little breathless. His hair stood on end and looked darker than it did when it was dry. The coarse plastic teeth of the zip on his wetsuit had pulled apart to just below his navel. She could tell by his six-pack of stomach muscles that he kept himself fit, and by his tan that he didn’t always surf in his wetsuit.

My God, he’s gorgeous! she thought, her insides twisting. Who am I kidding, that he’d want an affair? With me? Sitting here in my plain black suit. He’d probably flirt like this with my grandmother. Oh, I mean, was it even flirting? It was only friendliness. He was making me welcome very nicely, as Terry would have done, and I—Oh, lord, I’m so raw, right now, I actually felt nourished by it. Totally misunderstood it, obviously.

A girl in an extremely small orange bikini wandered past. She was as blonde as natural silk, sported a tan the colour of fresh nutmeg and looked about twenty-five. For one crazy moment, Candace was tempted to reach out, haul her across by a bikini strap and park her right in front of Steve.

Here you go. Much more suitable. My apologies for trespassing on your personal space by even contemplating that you and I might have—

‘Ready for another dip?’ he said. He had taken no notice of the orange bikini, or the body inside it, and now the girl had gone past.

‘Um. Yes. Lovely.’ Oh, hell! ‘That would be really nice.’ She tried again, and managed a more natural tone. ‘I’ve been pretty timid on my own, but it’d be great to get out beyond the point where every wave dumps a bucket of sand down my front.’

He laughed. ‘OK, let’s go.’

Then he reached for the plastic zipper and peeled the wetsuit down even further.

He was wearing a swimsuit, of course. Board shorts, in fact. Black, with a blue panel on each side. Beneath the wetsuit, they’d ridden down below his hips. He had his back to her now, and she could see the shallow hollow just above the base of his spine. Like the rest of him, it was tanned to a warm bronze, and was dappled with tiny, sun-bleached hairs.

A moment later, he had hauled casually on the waistband and pulled the board shorts back to where they belonged.

They swam together for an hour, then she went home for lunch and he put his wetsuit back on and returned to the outer boundaries of the surf. She didn’t see him when she went back to the beach for a walk late in the afternoon, didn’t see him when she walked past his house on the return trip, although his car was in the driveway and a sprinkler was spinning round on the lawn.

Definitely, he was just being friendly.

And I appreciate that, she realised. Maybe that’s the problem. I appreciate it, and I need it too much at the moment. I’d better get the rest of it under control.

Candace didn’t see Steve again until Tuesday, when she had her first surgical list, consisting of three patients. Steve was scheduled to handle the anaesthesia.

She’d seen each of her patients the day before for a brief chat, and had gone through their reports from the preadmission clinic. No danger signals. Chest X-rays and cardiograms all normal. Blood pressures within the acceptable range.

First was a scheduled gall-bladder removal on a fifty-three-year-old woman, followed by two straightforward hernia repairs, both on older men. Blood had been cross-matched for the gall-bladder patient as there was a higher risk of bleeding during this operation. All three of the patients were here on a day-patient basis. After the surgery, they’d make use of the ‘political beds’—those reclining chairs that Terry had been so cynical about.

Preparing for surgery was like coming home. The OR—Theatre One, which sounded odd to her ears—was a place in which she was used to possessing undisputed control. She loved this environment, and the way everything was geared towards a single focus. One patient, one operation and six people who knew exactly what they were doing.

The scrub sinks were different—old-fashioned porcelain, with long levers on the faucets which you flicked on and off with a quick touch. She was used to stainless steel, and foot pedals. Theatre One had washable vinyl walls and the hard, antistatic floors which she knew only too well. They were murder on backs and legs after you’d been standing there for more than a couple of hours.

Candace was the last to scrub, and everything was ready to go now that she had arrived. She briefly greeted the other staff and the patient. Mrs Allenby looked a little nervous, of course. Years ago, Candace had had to fight the instinct to give her patients a reassuring pat, but now it was second nature to keep her gloved hands back.

There was music playing on a black compact disc player set up on a shelf. Something classical. Beethoven, Candace recognised. Not that it made any difference.

‘Could we have that off, please?’ she said.

The scout nurse, whose name badge was hidden beneath a green surgical gown, immediately went across and pressed a button on the player, bringing silence.

‘Would you like something else, Dr Fletcher?’ she offered. Her name was Pat, Candace found out a little later.

‘No, thanks,’ she answered, calm and polite. ‘I can’t operate with music.’

She registered one or two slightly surprised looks above pale green disposable masks, but didn’t take the time to explain. This was her space now. All surgeons had their quirks, and she wasn’t going to apologise for hers, now or later. She never swore or threw things or yelled at the nurses; she didn’t practise her golf swing to warm up her hands; she was consistent in her preference of cat-gut length and instrument size.

But she liked silence. It helped her sense of focus. No music. A minimum of chatter. No jokes or ribbing. Absolutely no disparaging comments about the patient.

‘OK, we’re looking good at this end,’ Steve said a few minutes later.

‘Thanks, Dr Colton.’

Her gaze tangled with his as he looked briefly away from his monitors, and she could tell he was still thinking about the ‘no music’ thing. Maybe he’d chosen the Beethoven himself. Well, he could listen to Beethoven at home.

‘All right, are we ready for the gas?’ she asked, and began the operation.

She’d done it hundreds of times, probably.

Several litres of carbon dioxide were injected into the abdomen to provide a space to work in between the outer layers of tissue and the internal organs. A tiny incision allowed the passage of a laparoscope with an equally tiny camera on the end of it, manipulated by the assistant surgeon, Peter Moody. What the camera saw was then screened like a video, allowing Candace to guide her instruments. The lumpy, disorientating appearance of the human abdominal cavity on the screen was a familiar sight to her now.

This patient’s symptoms suggested the need for a cholangiogram, which would confirm or rule out the presence of stones in the bile duct. In this case, the X-ray-type scan showed that, yes, there were three small stones present. Candace decided to remove them immediately, rather than bring Mrs Allenby back for a second procedure at a later date.

The monitors indicated that she was handling the anaesthesia well. Candace had no trouble in removing the stones successfully.

‘If I know Mrs Allenby, she’ll want to see those later,’ Steve said.

‘She’s your patient?’ Candace asked.

‘Since I started here four years ago. And she’s got a very enquiring mind, haven’t you Mrs A.?’ Under anaesthesia, Mrs Allenby’s conscious mind was almost certain to be unaware, but there was strong evidence that many patients could retain a memory of what happened during surgery. ‘She wanted to know last week—’ Steve began.

‘Could we save it until later?’ Candace cut in.

‘Sure.’ He gave a brief nod and a shrug.

Again, there was a moment of tension and adjustment amongst the other staff. Candace ignored it and kept going. She used tiny metal clips to close off the bile duct at the base of the gall bladder, as well as the vessel which provided its blood supply. Next, she used a cautery to detach the gall bladder from the liver, once again working through tiny incisions.

She brought the organ to the incision in Mrs Allenby’s navel and emptied its contents through a drain. The gall bladder was limp now, and slid easily through the incision. She checked the area for bleeding and satisfied herself that all was looking good, then the patient’s abdomen was drained of gas, the incisions were covered in small bandages, Steve reversed the anaesthesia and the operation was over.

Easy to describe, but it had still taken over two hours, and there was more work yet to be done. The two nurses chanted in chorus as they counted up instruments, sponges and gauze to make sure nothing was missing. Forceps and retractors clattered into metal bowls. Surgical drapes were bundled into linen bins. Mrs Allenby was wheeled, still unconscious, into the recovery annexe where two more nurses would monitor her breathing, consciousness, behaviour, blood pressure and pain as she emerged from anaesthesia.

The two hernia operations which came next were simpler and shorter. Both were of the type known as a direct inguinal hernia, which resulted from a weakness in the muscles in the groin area. A short incision just above the crease between thigh and abdomen on each patient allowed Candace to slip the bulging sac of internal tissue back into the abdominal cavity.

The first patient’s abdominal wall had quite a large area of weakness, and Candace asked for a sheet of synthetic mesh to strengthen it. The second patient, several years younger, needed only a series of sutures in the abdominal tissue itself. Each incision was closed with sutures, and both patients would rest on the reclining chairs in the day-surgery room after their first hour or two of close monitoring in the recovery annexe.

She would check on them as soon as she had showered, Candace decided. You never came out of surgery feeling clean.

The shower beckoned strongly as she pulled off her gloves and mask just outside the door of Theatre One. Behind her, Steve and the other staff were preparing for a Caesarean, and Candace crossed paths with Linda Gardner. The obstetrician was about to squeeze in a lunch-break while Theatre One was tidied and replenished with equipment, ready for her to take over.

‘Quiet in here today,’ Linda commented.

‘They’ll probably appreciate a request for rock and roll, I expect,’ Candace answered.

‘So you’re the culprit? You like reverent silence?’

‘Reverence isn’t a requirement,’ she returned quickly. ‘Silence is.’

‘No one gave you a hard time?’ Linda asked with a curious smile.

‘In surgery, I don’t give anyone the opportunity.’ She softened the statement with a smile in return, then went and answered the clamouring of her aching back with a long, hot shower.

She emerged in a skirt, blouse and white coat twenty minutes later to find Theatre Two up and running and ready for her.

‘All the symptoms of appendicitis, admitted through Emergency,’ on-call theatre sister Lynn Baxter explained.

‘Give me five minutes,’ Candace said.

‘And turn off the music?’

‘Word travels fast around here. Thanks very much, yes.’

As usual, she didn’t go on at length. Didn’t admit either that the unexpected extension of her list today was almost as unwelcome as the discovery that the last leg of a long flight home would be indefinitely delayed. She considered it her responsibility to each patient and to the rest of the surgical team never to talk about how she felt.

No complaints, no explanations. Her aching back and feet were private—her problem. So were hunger, thirst and an itchy nose or a throbbing head.

And as for the inner turmoil she’d felt during each agonising step between her discovery of Todd’s affair and their outwardly businesslike divorce…She had said nothing about it at all until the final papers had been signed and their marital assets divided. Then she had simply made an announcement in the doctors’ change-room at the end of a Friday list with a three-day weekend coming up. She had asked those present to pass the word around.

Most of her colleagues had been stunned, she knew, but they had three days to get used to the idea and to recognise the signals she was sending out. They knew her professional style by this time. Comments had been sympathetic and heartfelt, but mercifully brief…

Theatre Two was the exact twin of Theatre One, with all equipment and supplies set out in exactly the same way. This patient, a thirty-five-year-old woman with an uncomplicated medical history, had been given a pre-med through her drip and was already drowsy and relaxed, her considerable pain masked by the medication.

The appendix was notorious for sending out mixed signals, so Candace kept her mind open as she prepared to make the incision. You could open someone up and find nothing at all, even when a patient’s white cell count was up and all his or her symptoms slotted into place. Or you could find—

‘Good grief!’ she said.

She’d spotted it before anyone else. There was a tumour wrapped around the appendix, turning this operation from a routine excision into a complex feat of surgical technique.

‘It’s huge,’ muttered on-call assistant surgeon Mark Daley.

‘But still potentially benign,’ Candace said. ‘We’ll take it out straight away to send to Pathology, then explore a bit to see if there’s any obvious spread to other organs.’

She excised both appendix and tumour, then looked at the ovaries, which were the most likely sites for a primary tumour in a woman of this age. Fortunately, they looked healthy and normal. Neither was there any evidence of metastasis to the liver.

‘We’re looking pretty hopeful on this one,’ she concluded, and there was a sense of relief all round.

It was after three by the time Candace emerged from Theatre, and her stomach was aching sharply with hunger. She took another brief shower, grabbed a packet of potato chips from the vending machine in the emergency department, gulped some coffee and went straight in to check on the recovery of her day patients.

Mrs Allenby had eaten a sandwich and drunk some juice and tea, voided her bladder and shown a return of bowel sounds. She could manage a strong cough, her lungs were clear and she’d walked up and down the corridor a couple of times to assist her circulation.

‘But my shoulder is hurting,’ she said.

‘Your right shoulder?’

‘Yes.’

‘Strangely enough, that’s normal. Quite a common symptom. It’s called referred pain, and that’s really all you need to know about it, Mrs Allenby. It should go away on its own by the end of the day. You’ll probably notice some discomfort from gas as well. Your stomach doesn’t like being manhandled, and it may take a couple of days to settle down. But the surgery went very well, and I’m not anticipating any problems. Dr Colton would like to see you in his rooms in about a week to check on how you’re doing.’

‘I’ll make an appointment.’

‘Meanwhile, you can go home as soon as you’re ready. You have someone to pick you up?’

‘My husband’s waiting.’

‘Great! All the best, then. You were special, you know—my first patient in Australia.’

‘Oh, how nice!’

Mrs Allenby went to the patients’ change-room to dress, while Candace checked on her two hernia patients, who were both progressing normally but still too groggy to leave. As she slid her stethoscope around her neck, Candace heard Mrs Allenby say to a nurse, ‘All right, I’m ready. Do I get my stones now?’

She hid a smile as she crossed to the three-bed recovery annexe where Andrea Johnson was just emerging from her anaesthesia. Steve had predicted his patient’s interest in ‘her stones’. In a relatively small community like this one, where a patient’s GP could also be present during surgery, there would be more examples of this kind of knowledge. As Mrs Allenby had said in a different context, it was ‘nice’. A difference for Candace to enjoy while she was here.

Andrea Johnson was still very sleepy and disorientated. She was lying on a wheeled hospital bed a few metres from the other patient in Recovery, the Caesarean delivery from Theatre One.

‘Hurts,’ was all she wanted to say. ‘Feels awful.’

Candace ordered some additional pain relief, and out of the patient’s earshot said to the recovery annexe sister, ‘She’s not ready to hear about what we found and what we did.’

‘Wait until she goes upstairs?’ Robyn Wallace suggested.

‘Definitely. My notes are pretty clear, I think. I’ll follow up in the morning and answer any questions she’s come up with. If she seems too groggy to be told tonight, it can wait. And, of course, there’ll be a wait anyway for the pathology results. Does she have family here?’

‘No, she’s single apparently. Drove herself in.’

‘There must be someone to tell. Could you try and find out?’

‘She was probably in too much pain to think about next of kin before.’

‘That’s usually when people want family or a friend around.’

‘True.’ Sister Wallace nodded.

‘What have we got here? Two for the price of one?’ said a new voice just behind them.

It was Steve. As anaesthetist, he was technically responsible for any complications in patients for the first twenty-four hours following their surgery, and he’d be taking a look at the two hernia patients as well as the Caesarean delivery he’d just been involved with.

Candace didn’t understand his comment about two for the price of one. She assumed it was another Australian joke, but Sister Wallace looked blank as well.

‘They’re both my patients,’ he explained. ‘Sisters. And there’s a whole posse of other Johnson and Calvert relatives upstairs, waiting to see Carina and the baby. Should probably warn you,’ he added quietly to Sister Wallace, ‘sparks will fly if they each realise the other is here. Andrea and Carina don’t get on. Andrea seems to have cut herself off a bit lately.’

‘I’ll keep that in mind, and pull a curtain across,’ Sister Wallace drawled.

‘Speaking of getting on,’ Candace said lightly, ‘I’m heading off. It’s been an interesting first day, but I’m done now.’

She should have known it wouldn’t be that easy. Steve caught up to her as she reached her car.

‘Heading straight home?’

‘Yes, thanks to the existence of the frozen meals we picked up the other day, I don’t need to stop for anything.’

‘Frozen meals! Yum!’ he drawled. ‘How about steak instead?’

‘Too hungry to wait for steak.’

‘I’ll get it on the grill as soon as I get home. Walk down to my place when you’re ready, and we can call it a late lunch.’

‘You don’t have to.’

‘I know. If I had to, I’d be chafing by now. Terry said, “Look after her till Monday.”’

‘Ah, so he did say that?’

She felt the severity in her expression. Couldn’t always relax straight after surgery. He would probably think she was tight and humourless and no fun at all. From experience, however, she knew it would be worse to force a more laid-back mood. Wait until she got out of these cruel pantihose and unwound the stethoscope from her neck. She’d be far more relaxed then.

‘Yes, he did say that,’ Steve echoed steadily. ‘But it’s Tuesday now. This one’s pleasure, not duty. And I’m such a crash-hot GP I can tell just by looking at you that your iron stores are low.’

Unexpectedly, she laughed. ‘They probably are.’

‘You need steak. And a swim.’

‘The swim I won’t argue with.’

‘Neither will I, as long as it’s after the steak.’

‘All right…’

‘Then, when we’re sitting on the beach, I think we’ve got to talk about why you hesitated even for a second before you said yes to this,’ he finished.

Casual tone. Meaningful after-shock.

It was a threat. Candace was in no doubt about that. And it was a threat which sent twin curls of panic and dizzy need spiralling wildly through her blood. She stalled the car three times on the way home.