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'Swab.' He passed her an antiseptic-soaked gauze and she saw that he looked faintly amused. 'Come on, Dr Ryan. Clean it up. You're not finished yet.'

Obediently she wiped away the traces of iodine and blood which clung to the edges of the wound, imitating his movements on her side when he tore away the plastic shield on his.

'I'm going to be a surgeon,' she declared.

'Good.' He stood back to let the scrub nurse fix a sterile dressing in place. 'We need more female surgeons.'

'An hour ago you were talking about becoming an anaesthetist,' their anaesthetist remarked. Merrin saw that he winked at the Professor. 'Does this mean that you're fickle, Dr Ryan?'

'It means, Chris, that she's very young.' The Prof had unclipped the guards and now he collected them together and dumped them onto the scrub nurse's trolley. Making Merrin's mouth dry up again, he came around and undid the back of her gown. 'We've already agreed about that, haven't we, Dr Ryan?'

'This may surprise you, Professor McAlister, but I am
actually old enough to drive and vote and even have sex and drink in pubs,' she announced, her sudden sharpness coming as much from embarrassment at his reference to their earlier conversation as from a defence against the sudden thudding of her heart which his impersonal touch at her back had provoked. 'In fact, at some point in this prolonged childhood of mine I've somehow managed to acquire a medical degree.'

The anaesthetist laughed. 'That's it, Merrin. You tell him. Don't let him bully you.'

'Dr Ryan's unbullyable,' the Professor said dryly.

'And when you say sex and drinks in pubs, Dr Ryan, does that mean you like both at the same time?' the anaesthetist asked cheerfully. 'If it's true then you might just be the woman I've been looking for all my life. Drink tonight?'

'Definitely not. I'm far too conservative for you. Thank you for the invitation but I'm on call tonight. Why do you say I'm unbullyable?' she asked, spinning towards her consultant.

'I assume four brothers have rendered you immune,' he said evenly.

Midway through shedding her theatre gown, Merrin stopped and blinked up at him, surprised he'd remembered their conversation in the
mess
where he hadn't remembered her name. 'Not immune,' she countered. 'Just very good at defending myself.'

'You won't need that skill here.' He met her look calmly. 'No one's going to attack you.'

'You attacked Mr Sanderson.' Moving slowly, she pulled the rest of her gown free, aware that the others were all busy now with their patient and with disconnecting the equipment and cleaning up. The two of them were alone in their conversation and no one else would hear them. 'And Mr Ludlum. On the academic round you made them look like complete idiots. What makes me exempt?'

'Mr Sanderson and Mr Ludlum are both old enough and experienced enough to look after themselves.' He inclined his head, his pale eyes narrowing. 'You're neither. You might be old enough to vote but compared with those two you're a baby.'

'So I'm safe?'

'Relatively.' The gentle amusement in his regard was intoxicating. 'Unless you're going to do something particularly stupid.'

'What if I already have?' she murmured.

His careless shrug suggested he wasn't particularly concerned. 'You've got a couple of weeks of introductory leniency,' he said easily. 'Have you made a mistake? Is it something I should know about?'

'It doesn't feel like a mistake yet and it's not something you'd thank me for telling you about and it's personal, not professional,' she admitted heavily.

His brows drew together. He pulled his mask down and she saw that he was frowning. 'Merrin—'

'And it's my problem, not yours,' she said quickly. Moving fast, she balled her gown and dumped it into the nylon bin by the rear doors. 'So no need to fret. I should call the wards before we start the next case,' she added hastily, turning away from him lest he saw more than she was ready to have him see. 'I've been away over two hours.'

Celia on the ward reassured Merrin that there were no problems needing urgent attention but the call got her over the potentially awkward moment with her boss. When she returned to the theatre, tying a fresh mask around her head, the anaesthetist was readying their final patient for the morning.

Once he was asleep, she had another turn at trying to insert the endotracheal tube, but Mr Woods wasn't as easy as their previous patient and so after a few seconds the
anaesthetist took over and smoothly inserted the tube where she'd struggled to even find his vocal cords.

'Thick neck,' he said easily, when Merrin tried to apologise. 'Don't worry, Merrin. It comes with experience. A few months' practice and you won't have a problem.' He nodded to the technician who'd been helping and together they wheeled their anaesthetised patient into the theatre.

They tipped the head of the bed down, unwound the base and lifted Mr Woods's legs into stirrups, then Merrin went away to scrub.

The Professor had already started and he sent her what she decided was a deliberately neutral look above his mask. 'If you're needed on the wards I can manage alone here.'

'They don't need me and I'd like to see this,' she said carefully, turning on the water at the opposite end to where he stood. 'Is it all right if I stay?'

'Yes.'

She lowered her head, concentrating hard on not contaminating herself again. 'Thank you.'

She heard a sound that might have been a sigh. 'Look, Merrin, about what we were talking about before. I hope you didn't mean—'

'Please forget it,' she said stiffly, pumping the dispenser clumsily with her elbow and releasing far more solution than she needed. 'About that last operation, I meant to ask something earlier. I hope this doesn't sound stupid, but why didn't you do it with the laparoscope?'

'It's a good question, not a stupid one,' he said finally as he rinsed again, to her relief—apart from a
brief,
assessing look—apparently content to let her change the subject. 'We are cautious still about doing cancer surgery with the laparoscope. It's possible and it's done but in that particular operation it's a lengthy procedure because it takes a lot of time to divide the mesentery. I still feel that keeping table time down is important and I'm not convinced that the risk of missing nodes during a laparoscopic resection
isn't significant. Plus, in Mrs Henderson's case she's had previous abdominal surgery.'

'How does that make a difference?' Merrin asked, soaping for her second scrub. 'Because of adhesions?'

'That's right,' he confirmed. 'In the last five years she's had her gall bladder out and an abdominal hysterectomy. According to the old operation records, the cholecystectomy was difficult because she'd had a lot of inflammation in the past. As it happens, she didn't have many adhesions, but if she had, then doing the hemicolectomy through the laparoscope would have been difficult. It made sense to go for the direct approach first off.'

Merrin saw that he didn't work as quickly on this operation as he had on the previous one. From her reading she'd assumed that removing haemorrhoids was a relatively simple matter of grabbing each one with forceps and cutting it away but, while still working fluently, he proceeded very carefully, each move, each tie and each tiny cut calculated and precise.

'It's too easy to do damage here,' he explained, when she questioned him. 'The tissues are delicate. Done properly, this is a superb operation but it must be done carefully.'

That case signalled the end of the morning's list and while the theatre staff retired to the staffrooms for lunch, Merrin went back to the ward to catch up on the tasks waiting for her there. She had a couple of Venflons to replace, some blood results to check and one person needing a letter confirming his admission to hospital so that he could claim a refund for a holiday he'd been scheduled to take the following week, but that was all.

Her bleeper shrilled as she finished buying her lunch in the canteen and she stuffed the paper bag holding her sandwich into her pocket and hurried to the telephone, expecting the call to be a summons. But it was one of Professor McAlister's secretaries. She merely wanted to tell her that
she had the suture-learning equipment that the Professor had offered her ready for her to collect.

'I'll come up and get it now,' Merrin said, thinking that would be the best timing since she was confident that the Professor would still be eating lunch in Theatre.

'Good, dear,' the older woman answered. 'I'm on my way to McDonald's but I'll leave it on my desk for you to collect.'

But the office wasn't empty when Merrin got up there. Her consultant was perched on the edge of the secretary's desk, using her telephone. The casual grace of his posture and the theatre blues he still wore emphasised his lean athleticism and Merrin felt her mouth become dry again.

She stopped in the doorway but he must have heard something because he swung around and regarded her enigmatically. 'Tuesday's always out of the question,' he was saying, his eyes still on Merrin. 'It's my night on call at the National. I can make it next Thursday at seven-thirty, otherwise not at all this month.'

Merrin felt awkward. She searched both secretaries' desks with her eyes but unless her boss was sitting on it she couldn't imagine where the suture kit was. She didn't feel that she could leave without saying anything because that would look ridiculous, but neither did she feel comfortable staying here, not after what she'd almost revealed that morning and not with the measured way he was studying her now.

'Thursday at eight, then,' he said, to whoever he was speaking to. 'All right, Laura. I'll meet you there.'

Laura. Ludicrously, Merrin acknowledged that the image her head created of the woman behind that elegant name irritated her. When he lowered the receiver she lifted her head defensively. 'I thought you'd be having your lunch in Theatre.'

'I wasn't hungry.'

'Have a sandwich.' Her own appetite gone, she found herself pulling the bag containing her lunch out of her pocket. 'It's only bacon and egg left over from breakfast but it was either that or chocolate spread. The food in the canteen's not very inspiring.'

'The food in the canteen's appalling.' To her surprise he actually took the bag and opened it slowly. 'What is this, Merrin?' he asked softly. 'What's going on?'

'Latent mother-hen instincts, I suspect,' she observed. She'd never imagined that being in love with a man would involve such concern about his diet. 'I'm as puzzled by this as you are,' she admitted. 'I don't normally find myself worrying about other people's eating and sleeping habits.' She frowned gently. 'Are you going to eat it or admire it?'

'I'm going to eat it.' He drew the sandwich out of the bag and began to unwrap the cling film. 'Thank you.'

'You're welcome.' She checked the desk on which he sat again. 'Your secretary called me to say that suture set was ready.' She looked around. 'Is it here?'

'On the other desk.' Moving more quickly than her, he leaned across to the desk behind him and moved some files to retrieve a black box which he passed to her. 'Ask Shirls for spare suture materials from Theatre. A lot of packs get opened then never used and they normally have to throw them out. Somewhere they've got a box for students. If you need any help, let me know.'

'Thank you.' Merrin decided it would be easier on her nerves to get such help from Douglas or Lindsay. She tucked the box under her arm and went for the door. 'What time does your afternoon list start?'

'If you're free, we start in fifteen minutes. Douglas will be with me. He only has a half-day session on his own.'

'I'll be there, too.' However disturbingly their personal relationship might be developing, professionally she wanted every ounce of knowledge she could gain from him. 'Is Dr Jennings anaesthetising for you again this afternoon?' she
asked, thinking that if he was she'd be able to extend her anaesthetic experience as well.

At his nod of confirmation she said brightly, 'I'll go and see if he needs any help now.'

'He'll be finishing his lunch.' But instead of waving her away, as he had earlier, she saw that he was frowning at her. 'Have a care, Merrin,' he said deeply. 'Just a small one. You're much too trusting. I suspect you treat every man the way you're used to treating your brothers. Remember that not all of us will understand that.'

Merrin froze. 'Are you warning me about Dr Jennings?' she asked faintly.

He sighed. 'Chris is still getting over a traumatic divorce.' She had the impression that he revealed that reluctantly. 'He might not be the best person—'

'I'm not interested in him,' she said abruptly.

'I didn't say—'

'But thank you for being concerned,' she interjected, leaving him before the weary impatience in his expression found a voice. 'Please, enjoy your lunch.'

Merrin found the afternoon theatre session fascinating. Lindsay was still not back and Douglas and the hospital's paediatric surgery registrar assisted the professor. Because the list was all small children there wasn't enough room for her to scrub and assist with the cases but they made sure that she had a good view of proceedings from the box she perched on at the head of the bed. The Professor took care to explain what he was doing.

In between times, while the others took coffee in the staffroom, she helped the anaesthetist and the anaesthetic technician prepare their little charges for surgery.

The list finished early, around five, but by then it sounded as if cases were building up in Casualty and as they were on call for the day and night she went downstairs with Douglas to try and sort things out.

He sent several people home with either reassurance that
their symptoms were nothing to worry about or appointments to come in for further investigations as outpatients, leaving Merrin with two people to admit.

The first, a twelve-year-old boy with probable appendicitis, he'd scheduled for Theatre at six, and the second, a middle-aged woman with fever and right-sided abdominal pain which Douglas suspected was secondary to gallstones, were both waiting on casualty trolleys.