St Matthew's Passion: A Medical Romance (9 page)

But already Melissa knew she wouldn’t fall asleep easily. She’d slept poorly for days, ever since she’d seen Fin buying the necklace. When she did finally drop off, her dreams were tormented by his presence. He wasn’t even necessarily with his mystery woman in the dreams; just his image was enough to drive her to despair when she awoke again and remembered that he was out of reach. Had always, perhaps, been out of reach.

Melissa consulted the medication chart Deborah had handed her and scribbled the drugs and their dosages on the prescription pad. Like many patients who came through the Trauma Department, this woman was on a number of preexisting drugs, and it was important to include them on the discharge prescription along with the antibiotics, painkillers and other meds for the post-operative period.

She handed the prescription and chart back to Deborah who murmured her thanks. Melissa moved through her list patient by patient until she’d finished her reviews, then made her way to the nurses’ station to check if there were any last outstanding things to deal with before she signed off and went home.

Deborah appeared at her side. ‘A word?’

What now
, thought Melissa wearily, the fatigue starting to make her irritable. She followed Deborah into the nurse’s office.

Without a word, Deborah handed her a prescription. Melissa took it. It was the one she’d filled out earlier.

‘What’s the problem?’

‘
Take a closer look,’ said Deborah quietly.

Melissa ran her eye down the list of drugs, their names lettered in her tidy hand. Metronidazole and flucloxacillin to fight off bacterial infection. Dihydrocodeine for pain. Furosemide and digoxin for chronic heart failure.

Her glance caught on the last one. Digoxin.

She stared at the dose she’d written beside it. 125 mg. One hundred and twenty-five milligrammes.

The correct dose was 125
micro
grammes. She’d prescribed one thousand times the safe dose.

Melissa put her hand to her mouth, stared at Deborah. The nurse gave a small smile and took the prescription from her.

‘I noticed it when I was about to give it to the patient at the door.’ 

‘
I don’t know what to say,’ breathed Melissa.

‘
It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have asked you to write it out when you were tired and distracted.’ Deborah shrugged. ‘A learning experience for both of us. Anyway, no harm done. And the pharmacy would have noticed it immediately, before dispensing it.’

Her mind reeling, Melissa rewrote the prescription with the correct dose, checking through it three times to make sure she’d got it right. After Deborah had gone, Melissa stood in the office gazing at nothing in particular.

Prescribing errors happened. They couldn’t be prevented altogether, given the sheer numbers of drugs that were prescribed daily in the health service. But they’d never happened to her before. It was something she prided herself on.

Yes, Deborah was probably right in saying that the pharmacy would have spotted the error in time. But what if they hadn’t? What if a junior pharmacist overlooked it, and issued the medication as written? Digoxin was a powerfully effective heart drug, but it was also deadly if misused. A dose one thousand times higher than intended would prove lethal in every case. Melissa would have killed the patient.

Fatigue was well known to impair a doctor’s performance, or anybody else’s, come to that. Yet Melissa knew it wasn’t tiredness that was responsible for her mistake. She’d been just as exhausted as this before, but had never made a potentially fatal error like this. No, her failure to pay adequate attention had been due to something else entirely.

Namely, the turmoil in her head over Fin, what he meant to Melissa, and how his purchasing gifts for someone else had devastated her.

This was serious. If her ability to perform effectively, even safely, as a doctor was being compromised, she needed to address the problem urgently. And she knew she wouldn’t be able to do that unless and until she cleared the air with Fin. Confronted him, and brought out into the open, at last, this thing that was between them, and which both of them had been aware of for weeks but had decided almost playfully not to mention, still less discuss.

Tomorrow evening was the department’s Christmas party. The atmosphere would be informal, the usual hierarchical relations between different staff members more relaxed. It would be the ideal time to bring up a matter of this kind.

Melissa would find a moment to be alone with Fin and would speak to him then.

Chapter Six

‘
Melissa!’

For someone with so slight a build, Emma had a surprisingly strident voice when she needed to. Melissa spotted her colleague at the far end of the pub, sitting with a couple of junior doctors and nurses.

She picked her way across the crowded room, nodding her greetings as she went. The department was a large one and they’d hired this floor of the Black Lion pub for the evening. Everybody was there, from clinical staff to cleaners and porters, from secretaries to chaplains.

Everybody except, so far, Fin.

Melissa unwound her scarf and shrugged off her coat, glad to be in the boozy warmth after the harshness of the night outside. Melissa stood.

‘
What can I get you?’

Melissa accepted a red wine, fumbling for her purse. Emma shook her head.

‘Prof’s paying for the first hour.’

Professor Penney, the head of the department, was over at another table, regaling a group of staff with some anecdote or other. Melissa raised her glass to him in thanks, and he raised his in turn and winked.

Melissa had barely seen Fin all day, though she hadn’t been avoiding him; nor did she feel he was avoiding her either. They’d simply had their own work to do that day, and their paths hadn’t happened to cross. She remembered, however, that he’d proposed the venue for the office party himself some weeks earlier, and had enthusiastically been reminding people about it ever since. So she assumed he was going to be there.

She had woken from her post-night duty sleep that morning refreshed and with renewed resolve. She was going to speak directly to Fin about what had been going on between them. It would be painful, agonising even, to hear him admit that he had someone else, but the hurt it would cause her would in the long run be more bearable than the slow torture she was enduring at the moment. And she wouldn’t have to humiliate herself entirely. She would only need to acknowledge that she was attracted to him, even strongly attracted.

She wouldn’t need to tell him that she loved him. That was knowledge she’d lock away in a box inside her and bury deep. Eventually it would crust over like a treasure chest at the bottom of the ocean, forgotten and unseen.

Nine o’clock came and went. Around her the merriment was growing and the drink was flowing thick and fast. Melissa nursed her single glass of wine, wanting to keep a clear head for the coming encounter with Fin. She kept up her end of the various conversations she found herself drawn into, trying her best to appear as if she was enjoying herself, was full of seasonal cheer. But her thoughts were elsewhere. Every time the door opened to a blast of freezing air she looked across, but it was always someone else, coming in off a late shift or after popping home first. There was no Fin.

By ten o’clock the party was taking a turn for the raucous. Professor Penney had closed the tab by then and so Melissa went to the bar to buy a round of drinks for the group of people she was sitting with. While the barman prepared the order Melissa leaned on the bar, and became aware of Emma sliding on to the stool next to her.

‘
Fin not here yet, then.’

Emma was a little tipsy, her speech a fraction slower than normal. Melissa shrugged, as if she hadn’t thought about it.

‘He’s probably finishing up at the office.’

Emma slung an arm across Melissa’s shoulders. Leaning close, she half-whispered: ‘It’s okay to show that you’re disappointed, you know.’

‘Disappointed?’ Melissa’s laugh sounded forced to her own ears. ‘Why would I be? The company here’s pretty good as it is.’

Emma laid a forefinger alongside her own nose. ‘You can be open with me, girl.’

Melissa sighed, turned on the stool to face Emma. ‘What are you on about?’

‘
You and Fin.’

As with Deborah, Melissa felt a stab of indignation. ‘There’s nothing going on –’

Emma held up both palms in a placatory gesture. ‘Whoah, whoah. I’m not saying there is.’ She winked. ‘But it’s obvious you fancy each other like mad.’

‘
Come on –’ But Melissa suddenly, desperately wanted Emma to continue. She’d said not
you fancy him
but
you fancy each other…

‘
Listen. All the girls look at Fin.
I
look at Fin. Can’t help it. He’s rather easy on the eye. Ah, forget that; he’s drop-dead gorgeous. A heart throb. And all the blokes look at you. No, let me say my piece before I lose the power of speech,’ Emma said, holding up a finger. ‘But the two of you, you and Fin… it’s not just looking at each other. Sparks fly when you’re in the same room. There’s a chemistry there, a connection. Neither of you can help it, though why would you want to?’ She leaned in again. ‘And for the record, I know you haven’t… done anything. That’s exactly why the electricity’s there. The tension.’ She sat back again, stifling a hiccup. ‘Think I’d better switch to water.’

Melissa stared at Emma, her friend’s words playing over and over in her mind. Emma beamed.

‘The question is, what are you going to do about it?’

Emma helped Melissa carry the glasses back to the table, then wandered off to the ladies’ room. Melissa sat, letting the conversation swirl and eddy around her once more.

Was Emma right? If so, Melissa herself had been right all along too. Fin did have feelings for her, and powerful ones. And perhaps he was conflicted; perhaps he did have someone else and he was torn between her and Melissa. Was that why he hadn’t come tonight? Couldn’t he face a whole evening of being with someone in a social situation whom he desired yet couldn’t acknowledge his feelings for?

A sudden thought hit Melissa almost audibly, like a coin dropping into an empty vending machine. She nearly slapped her forehead.

Had Fin bought the necklace for her?

She stood up abruptly, one word repeating itself over and over in her head.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

‘
I’m going to head off,’ Melissa announced to the table.

‘
Home so early?’ someone asked. Emma had just arrived back from the bathroom and gazed at Melissa.

Melissa said, ‘No, I think I’ll pop back to the office for a bit.’

‘The office, eh?’ Emma gave her an amused, knowing look. ‘Don’t work too hard, darling.’

Melissa said her goodbyes throughout the pub, trying not to seem too hasty. Emma had asked what she was going to do about the situation, and it was a fair question. Well, if Fin wasn’t going to come to Melissa, she was going to go to him.

She hoped only that he hadn’t gone home yet.

***

Melissa’s fears were unfounded. She saw a light from under the door of Fin’s office as she approached down the dark corridor.

The pub was a ten-minute walk from St Matthew’s and she was glad of this. Any longer and she might have got cold feet, found any number of excuses for herself to put this moment off.

At his door she paused, her fist poised. She took a few deep breaths to steady herself, then tapped four times.

There was no response, and for a few seconds Melissa felt a sweep of relief. He’d gone home after all, and had left the light on by mistake. But then she heard footsteps and the door opened. Fin peered out.

‘Melissa?’

‘
Fin. Hi.’ She was momentarily lost for words. ‘I’ve come from the party. We wondered where you’d got to.’ This wasn’t at all the way she’d planned to start her speech, as if she’d been despatched merely to jolly him along into attending the Christmas do.

‘
I am coming. Just finishing -’ He broke off, looked at his watch. ‘Is that the time? Ten thirty?’

‘
Afraid so.’

Fin sighed deeply, wiped a hand across his face. Then he opened the door wide. ‘Forgive me. You’re standing out there like a delivery boy. Come in.’

Melissa stepped inside. The lamp was on at Fin’s desk and a pile of papers was spread across the surface.

‘
Just finishing this review article,’ he said, apologetically.

He gestured at the armchair, just as he’d done on her first day, but she didn’t sit. Instead she stood watching him as he moved back round his desk and started to gather up the papers into some semblance of order. His sleeves were rolled halfway up his forearms, his collar button was unfastened with the tie knot pulled to one side and his shirt tails were partly untucked. He’d have looked like a schoolboy if it hadn’t been for the overwhelming aura of adult masculinity he gave off, the blue shadow on his jaw, the flop of disorderly black hair across his brow that added a raffishness to his appearance.