St Matthew's Passion: A Medical Romance (2 page)

‘But, a difficult man to read. Not moody, just… a closed book. You know? Private.’

‘Is he –’ Melissa said before she could stop herself. She closed her mouth, and obviously looked so comical Emma laughed.

‘Gay? No.’

‘That wasn’t what I was going to –’

‘I know.’ Emma patted her hand. ‘You were going to ask if he’s married.’ Before Melissa could protest – even though Emma had correctly guessed Melissa’s question – Emma said, ‘He isn’t. But he was once. That’s all I know.’ She watched Melissa, her eyes mischievous. ‘He’s terribly good looking, though, isn’t he?’

‘I hadn’t noticed,’ Melissa answered, too quickly. For a moment they stared at one another. Then they both burst out laughing, causing heads to turn.

They chatted on, talking about their chosen careers and life at St Matthew’s. Melissa found it difficult to pay attention to what her new friend was saying because her thoughts kept returning to Mr Finmore-Gage.
Fin.
His face hovered before her, strong, confident, with a slightly wry mouth and those eyes that could switch from professionally appraising to amused in an instant.

A hard taskmaster.
Well, she could appreciate that. She’d had to develop a core of steel herself to make it through medical school and beyond, though she hoped it hadn’t turned her jaded and cynical. But… a closed book? A difficult man to read? Melissa found it difficult to square Emma’s description with the warm, open-faced man she’d met that morning. Perhaps he preferred not to talk about his private life in the work setting, which again was fair enough. But that wasn’t the same as being hard to read.

Maybe Emma simply hadn’t worked closely enough with him to be able to form much of an impression. Melissa, on the other hand, hoped to work very closely indeed with him, and not in any lewd sense. There was only so much you could learn from textbooks or even from hands-on experience of surgery. The most profound learning, she knew, came from an apprenticeship, from being at the right hand of a master and modelling your practice on his.

Reinvigorated by lunch and by a new excitement about the world opening up before her, Melissa cleared away her tray and left the canteen with Emma to face the rest of the day’s onslaught.

***

Fin stood on tiptoes, arched his back, flexed his neck from side to side. No matter how much he practised, how experienced he became, he could never prevent the knots of tension forming in the muscles of his neck and upper back during the long hours over the operating table. Squash twice a week and a daily run along the river didn’t do the trick either, whatever other benefits they might impart. No, the knitted-together muscles had to be actively loosened up at the end of each working day. Which was every day, really.

It had been a killer of an afternoon. There’d been two major cases he’d had to deal with: one a serious crush injury to the chest following a head-on car collision, and the other a damaged lower leg caused by a high-tension power cable that had snapped. The second he’d managed in collaboration with his orthopaedic surgeon colleagues, and together they’d saved the young man’s leg. The businessman in the car crash had been less fortunate. The injury to his mediastinum was too great and he’d expired on the operating table, two hours after the efforts to save his life had begun.

As always, Fin had stripped off his surgical gown and latex gloves in the scrub room with a sense of deep personal failure. It was completely irrational, he knew. The injuries he saw were often so extreme that anywhere else the patients would have had no chance whatsoever of survival. Here, at St Matthew’s, they had at least a fighting shot. And often they did make it. Fin didn’t dwell on personal statistics but he knew his success rates were some of the highest in the world.

But like all good doctors – like all professionals worthy of the title in any field of human endeavour – Fin knew that a certain amount of self-doubt was necessary in order to stay at the top of one’s game. You needed the nagging fear that possibly, just
possibly
, you weren’t good enough. That your failure to save a patient’s limb, or life, was because you’d messed up somewhere. Too much of this feeling would paralyse you, of course. But complete and unbridled self-confidence was arrogance, and arrogance crippled growth.

Fin glanced at the clock above his office’s window. Nine forty p.m. A few minutes’ more limbering up, then perhaps half an hour applying himself to the paperwork that infiltrated every hospital doctor’s life like weeds. Then he’d call it a day.

He’d propped his foot on his desk to stretch his hamstring when the knock came at the door. Startled, he almost lost his balance.

Then he remembered. Of course. He’d asked his registrar to drop by.

‘Come in.’

She stepped into the room, still wearing her white coat. He watched her cast a quick glance about his office. Amused, he wondered if she was surprised at its modesty. He’d been offered a larger, flashier one with a view over the river and had declined. He didn’t need those kinds of trappings to feel secure. Besides, he rather liked the cluttered, academic look of his surroundings: shelves crammed to bursting with box files and stacks of journals, cosy overstuffed armchairs flanking a matching sofa.

Fin nodded at one of the chairs and she sat, uncertainly. He sank into the one opposite.

‘Melissa. Hello. Quiet day at the office?’

It broke the ice. She smiled, her expression changing from one of faintly nervous seriousness to a warm, almost playful look. He studied her. Her dark blonde hair was pulled back into a practical pony tail, which somehow accentuated her large blue eyes and her high cheekbones. Her mouth was wide, her nose pert. For an instant Fin pictured her hair free and tumbling around her face.

‘Sorry I haven’t had a chance to catch up with you before now.’

She shook her head, still smiling. ‘That’s quite all right. I prefer getting thrown in the deep end.’

‘Not much actual surgery for you today, I’m afraid,’ he said. ‘If we get a chance, I’ll have you assist me tomorrow. See what you’re made of.’ Fin raised his eyebrows. ‘You come highly recommended. In the top three of your graduating class at Oxford, and references from Professors Murray and Gordon that aren’t so much glowing as solar.’

‘Thank you, Mr Finmore-Gage –’ she began.

‘Fin. Please. Though you’ve probably heard by now that I get called that.’

‘Fin.’ She seemed to taste the name on her tongue and find it to her liking. ‘It’s an honour to be here.’

She shifted in the chair and her white coat fell open a little, revealing the gentle curve of her breasts under a thin sweater. Fin kept his eyes on her face.

‘You’ve also probably heard, or noticed, that I run a tight ship. I expect nothing but the very highest standard of work from my trainees. In return, I promise to provide you with nothing but the very best training in trauma surgery.’ He softened the rather austere comment with a smile. ‘I’m aiming to produce surgeons who’ll knock me off my perch one day, odd though that might seem. I have a responsibility to the future of the specialty.’

‘I won’t disappoint you.’

They discussed practicalities for a few minutes. All the while, Fin was absorbing details: the shape of one slender leg as she crossed it over the other, her pump dangling off the toes; the discreet way the tip of her tongue moistened her full lips; the habit she had of smoothing the hair on one side of her head with a slim-fingered hand as though it wasn’t already tied back.

From far off, muffled through the walls, came the sound of Big Ben chiming ten o’clock. Fin stood.

‘Time you were heading home. Busy day ahead tomorrow.’

She rose and offered her hand again. Close up, he detected the faintest trace of perfume, the aroma of musk. He tried but failed to glance at her back as she left, noticing the soft sway of her hips beneath the coat. Fin stood for a moment after the door had closed, her scent lingering like a memory.

He walked over to the window and gazed out. It wasn’t a river view but over to the left he could just make out the spires of the Houses of Parliament.

Melissa Havers was going to have a tough time. Not only was she young, she looked even younger than her 29 years. Youthfulness was a handicap in medicine, with both patients and other staff members associating it with inexperience and lack of ability. She was also a woman, competing in an aggressively male-dominated arena. Regardless of the respect she was due for having come this far at all, her every decision would be to some extent judged in the light of her sex. It was stupid, it was grossly unfair… but it was the way things worked.

And she was beautiful. She’d be subject to all manner of crude remarks and behaviour, though that was something she’d no doubt faced and learned to cope with already. But as with her youth, her looks would affect her credibility. People would assume she was just a pretty face.

Fin certainly had no intention of making things easy for her. If anything, he’d have to drive her harder, hold her to an even higher standard than he had his other trainees. Anything less wouldn’t be fair on her. It would give her a false impression of the task ahead and just how difficult it was going to be.

In any case, he couldn’t in any way be seen to be favouring her or treating her with kid gloves because people would assume he was being swayed by her beauty. He’d seen it before: the male mentor losing all his objectivity and being reduced to a soppy wreck when in the presence of a pretty face. And it was pathetic.

Melissa was, though, attractive. Fin didn’t believe in self delusion and he knew it was as well to confront the fact at the start. She was an attractive, sexy young woman and he was stirred by her. If he couldn’t ignore it, neither did it have to mean anything significant. She was his senior trainee, entrusted to his mentorship, and his personal feelings for her were academic. There was no way he could ever take things further with her, even if he was so inclined, because of the nature of their professional relationship. Boundaries had to be observed.

And of course there was the…
other
reason he could never get together with her. The more important one.

Fin closed his eyes against the pain for ten long seconds. Then he took a deep breath, putting his thoughts to one side, and dropped into the swivel chair at his desk to attack his paperwork.

Chapter Two

‘Mrs Reynolds?’

The tiny, stout lady struggled to her feet, her husband helping her. Melissa smiled and held the door open for the couple to shuffle through. Mrs Reynolds glanced curiously at her as they went in.

Melissa offered chairs for the two of them before seating herself at her desk. The elderly woman’s clinical records were on the computer screen before her but Melissa didn’t need to give them much more than an occasional glance. She’d studied the notes of all today’s outpatient clinic attenders the night before and familiarised herself with the histories and the treatment plans. They were all people whom Fin or his staff had treated for traumatic injury at some point, and most would attend for follow-up only until they were deemed either fully recovered or at least stable.

Mrs Reynolds had been in a car accident as a passenger two months earlier, and had sustained a deep laceration to her neck. The ambulance crew had kept her alive until she reached St Matthew’s, where Fin had operated in time to repair the carotid artery on the right-hand side. She’d had other injuries, including a broken leg which accounted for her limited mobility, but the neck wound was the one that would have proved fatal. Post-operatively she’d healed well, and all things being equal, Melissa was anticipating discharging Mrs Reynolds today.

After an initial exchange of pleasantries, Melissa was running through a standard checklist of questions – had there been any new swelling in the area, was there any lingering dizziness or lightheadedness – when she noticed Mrs Reynolds casting glances at her husband.

‘Is something wrong?’ Melissa asked.

‘It’s just…’ The older woman looked at her husband again, who shrugged slightly. Mrs Reynolds faced Melissa.

‘It’s nothing personal, dear. I’m sure you’re a lovely doctor, and a very good one. But… I really was hoping to see Mr Finmore-Gage.’

‘I know.’ Melissa smiled. It was a familiar request. Patients always wanted to see the most senior doctor, and who could blame them? Melissa herself would probably be the same if she needed medical help. ‘But I’m afraid he’s busy with his own clinic right now.’

The silence stretched out. Mr Reynolds coughed awkwardly, looking at his feet.

Mrs Reynolds said, ‘He
is
here, though. And he said to me that if he’s here when I come up, he’ll see me personally.’

Melissa kept her smile. ‘I’m really sorry, Mrs Reynolds. But I’m perfectly qualified to see you.’

Immediately she regretted saying it, thinking it must have come across as insufferably pompous. Mrs Reynolds tottered to her feet again, her husband jumping to help her.

‘
I’m
sorry, doctor,’ she said primly. ‘But I’d rather wait outside until Mr Finmore-Gage is free.’

Melissa rose, nonplussed. Mrs Reynolds’s husband gave her an apologetic grimace over his shoulder.