The Surgeon's Marriage

‘The trouble with you, my friend, is that far too many women have been bowled over by your charm over the years, and it’s a blow to your ego when one isn’t.’

‘You reckon?’

‘I reckon,’ Tom confirmed. ‘In fact, I think it’s high time you settled down.’

‘And deny all the lovely women out there the pleasure of my company? No way.’

‘Maybe that kind of attitude is OK when you’re in your twenties,’ Tom said, horribly aware that he suddenly felt very old, ‘but you’re thirty-four—’

‘So I should be looking for a woman to settle down with,’ Mark completed for him in a mock-sonorous tone. ‘Perhaps I would if all the best ones weren’t already taken.’ One corner of his mouth turned up. ‘Women like your Helen. Now, if I’d met her before I went to Oz—’

‘You wouldn’t have stood a chance.’ Tom laughed. ‘It was love at first sight for Helen and me.’

It had been, and the love was still there, he thought as he began labelling the X-rays and putting them into Rhona Scott’s file. Even now she could still make his pulses race simply by smiling at him. Even now he felt a tightness round his heart when he saw her coming out of the shower, her hair all tousled, her skin pink and glowing.

He glanced thoughtfully across at Mark. When they’d been students he’d always envied Mark his good looks and easy charm, but he didn’t envy him now. Flitting from woman to woman, moving on when he got bored or if some other female caught his eye. It was an empty sort of a life, rootless and ultimately unsatisfying.

No, he didn’t envy Mark. He had a wife who loved him, two wonderful children, whereas Mark…Mark had absolutely nothing that he wanted any more.

‘He’s gorgeous, isn’t he?’ Liz Baker said dreamily as she switched on the staffroom kettle. ‘His thick black hair, his tan, those eyes…’

‘Looks aren’t everything,’ Helen interrupted tersely. ‘In fact, give me an honest, ordinary-looking man any day of the week.’

‘Hear! hear!’ Annie agreed.

‘Mark Lorimer,’ Liz continued, as though neither of them had spoken. ‘Even his name sounds romantic, don’t you think? Like something out of a story book.’

‘Grimm’s Fairy Tales, perhaps?’ Helen suggested, and Liz looked momentarily startled, then laughed.

‘Oh, come on, Helen, you’re not telling me you don’t think he’s seriously attractive?’

He was, but that didn’t give him the right to waltz into the Belfield and criticise the way they worked, Helen thought, unwrapping her sandwiches with more vigour than was strictly necessary. Neither did it give him the right to imply that she and Tom were a pair of old stick-in-the-muds with no ambition because they’d never worked anywhere else. They had children, for heaven’s sake—obligations. Something that Mark Lorimer clearly knew nothing about.

‘Madge in Paediatrics thinks he’s handsome,’ Liz continued. ‘So does Phyllis in Radiography—’

‘Madge and Phyllis should stop behaving like a pair of silly moon-struck schoolgirls,’ Helen retorted, then bit her lip when Liz’s mouth fell open.

Oh, Lord, but that had been an incredibly bitchy thing to say. Even Annie clearly thought it was, judging by the way she was staring at her, but she was sick to death of everybody giggling over Mark Lorimer like he was a film star or something.

Yes, he was quite unbelievably good-looking. Yes, he had a voice that could melt butter, and eyes that seemed to gaze down deep inside you, but anyone with half a brain should also have been able to see that he was also an unprincipled flirt. Good grief, put him in front of any female between the ages of eight and eighty—herself included—and he instantly switched on the charm.

Well, she wasn’t some naïve schoolgirl who could be impressed by a few slick words, a few finely tuned compliments, she thought with irritation as the staffroom door opened, and Mark came in, deep in conversation with Tom and Gideon. She was more interested in whether he was any good as a doctor.

‘Good news, Helen,’ Tom declared, coming over to sit beside her. ‘Gideon’s agreed to slot Rhona Scott in for surgery as quickly as possible, and we’ve got two possible dates. One for Monday the week after next, and the other for the end of May.’

‘Rhona would come in this afternoon if you asked her,’ Helen murmured, taking a bite out of her sandwich and trying very hard to ignore the fact that Mark was flirting quite outrageously with Liz.

‘You don’t think she might feel both dates are too soon?’ Tom said. ‘We’re talking major surgery here, and she’ll be in hospital for at least a week. As she’s a school-teacher she might prefer to wait until the long summer holidays.’

‘Trust me, she won’t.’

‘Female intuition?’ her husband said curiously.

‘Female heart.’ She smiled.

‘OK, that’s good enough for me. I’ll suggest the Monday when she comes in for the results of her hysterosalpingogram, and see what she says.’

Helen nodded. Annie was getting ready to go off duty, and she saw Gideon bend his head to catch something his wife had said, then laugh and press her hand briefly to his lips.

She and Tom used to do that, Helen thought wistfully. Steal kisses, hold hands simply for the pleasure of touching one another. In fact, they’d joked that there wasn’t a sluice room in the hospital they hadn’t used at one time or another for a secret rendezvous.

And I’m doing it again, she thought angrily as the couple left the staffroom. Envying them, and it’s so stupid. The love I feel for Tom is bound to have changed over the years, become less intense, more familiar, more comfortable.

Like a pair of old slippers, her mind whispered, and she shook her head. No, not like an old pair of slippers. She loved Tom, and he loved her. Their love was just…different now.

‘I’ll see you later, then.’

‘You’re going?’ she exclaimed, seeing her husband get to his feet. ‘But you haven’t had any lunch.’

‘No time. Admin wants a word with Gideon about Mark’s work permit so I’m stuck babysitting his students.’ He half started towards the door, then turned. ‘Which reminds me. Gideon was a bit worried about his afternoon ward round, so I said you’d help Mark to do it.’

Oh, brilliant, Tom, she thought vexedly as he strode away. Like you couldn’t perhaps have checked with me first—asked if it was OK? I’m still only halfway through my paperwork because I was helping you this morning, and now you’ve gone and lost me this afternoon as well.

‘He really shouldn’t have done that,’ Mark murmured, slipping into the seat Tom had vacated. ‘Just assumed you’d help me.’

She couldn’t agree more, but there was no way she was going to say so.

‘He’s the specialist registrar, I’m an SHO—it’s his job to allocate work,’ she said defensively, wishing that Liz would come over and join them, but she was busy on the phone.

‘But shouldn’t he have checked you with first, rather than simply say you’d do it?’

‘Like I said, it’s his job,’ she repeated, and his mouth turned up at the corners.

‘And as he’s also your husband you’re damned if you’re going to bad-mouth him to a semi-stranger.’

It was so exactly what she’d been thinking that Helen couldn’t prevent an involuntary chuckle springing to her lips, and his smile widened.

‘That’s better. I was beginning to think I was going to be put in the dog-house for the duration after what I said about Rhona Scott’s treatment this morning.’

She stared down at the remains of her sandwich, then sighed. ‘I know things are far from perfect at the Belfield, but—’

‘You don’t want—or need—some big-mouth newcomer like me telling you so,’ he finished for her.

She couldn’t deny it. Not when his eyes were brimming with laughter, and warmth, and something else which was making her heart race, her breathing jerky and erratic.

He’s flirting with you, she told herself, trying to look away, only to find that she couldn’t. He does it with everyone, and you’re a big girl, you can handle it.

But she couldn’t and that, she realised, was the trouble. She could tell herself—and anybody else who cared to listen—that Mark Lorimer was nothing but a womaniser, and she was more interested in his qualifications than in him, but it wasn’t true. The plain, galling truth was that she was as impressed and stunned by him as every other woman in the Belfield.

Dammit, she’d actually caught herself choosing clothes to wear to work now instead of just grabbing whatever was nearest, and yesterday she’d found herself looking at lipsticks and eye shadows in the chemist. And it was crazy.

She was married. She was happily married, and even if Mark Lorimer was the handsomest, sexiest man in the world, her knees shouldn’t be turning to water and her brain to mush whenever he smiled at her. And they were.

‘Helen?’

Oh, Lord, could he possibly know what she was thinking? There was certainly a decidedly wicked-looking gleam in his eyes, and she stood up fast. ‘I…I’m afraid you’ll have to excuse me. I want…I need to have a word with Liz.’

He didn’t believe her. She could tell by the way he smiled that he didn’t, but she didn’t care. All she wanted was to be as far away from him, and her own unsettling thoughts and feelings, as she could possibly get.

‘The agency can’t supply me with any emergency nursing cover for this afternoon,’ Liz declared, slamming down the staffroom phone. ‘Apparently I haven’t given them enough notice. Not enough notice,’ she repeated furiously. ‘Like how exactly am I supposed to know when people are going to be sick?’

And how could I have predicted I’d start behaving like a loopy schoolgirl because a handsome man keeps smiling at me? Helen thought unhappily.

‘Is there anything I can do to help?’ she asked as Liz made for the door.

The sister shook her head. ‘All I can do is phone around, and see if I can sweet-talk somebody into coming in on their day off.’

Helen wished she had the day off, too, when Liz had gone and she turned to find Mark staring at her thoughtfully.

‘We’d better get going,’ she began. ‘We’re doing Gideon’s ward round, remember, and—’

‘You don’t like me very much, do you?’ he observed.

Whatever else she might have been expecting him to say, it hadn’t been that, and she flushed.

‘I don’t know you well enough to dislike you,’ she said, striving to sound light, dismissive, which wasn’t easy with a pair of intense green eyes fixed on her.

‘That’s what I figured.’ He nodded. ‘In fact, it might surprise you to know that I’m generally considered to be quite likable.’

It didn’t surprise her in the least. Men who were as charming and handsome as Mark Lorimer were generally well liked. In fact, if she was honest—and she had absolutely no intention of being honest—she would have admitted that she could all too easily get to like him herself. A lot.

‘I really do think we should start making tracks,’ she said uncomfortably. ‘The ward’s pretty full so it will take us quite a while.’

‘Tom tells me you have eight-year-old twins—Emma and John?’ he said, clasping his hands behind his head and leaning back in his seat. ‘They must be quite a handful.’

‘They have their moments,’ she replied, wondering what else Tom might have told him, and just where this conversation was going.

‘It must be very difficult for you—holding down a full-time job, running a home, looking after your kids.’

‘Tom does his share,’ she said swiftly. Well, he’d been trying to recently, she told herself, though at the moment his efforts were proving more of a hindrance than a help. ‘It’s not a solo effort.’

‘I can’t imagine Tom as a New Age man.’

He hadn’t make it sound like a compliment. In fact, he’d somehow managed to make Tom sound both boring and dull, and before she could stop herself she said, ‘I don’t know about New Age, but he’s certainly a lot more adult than men who flit from girlfriend to girlfriend, with no roots or purpose in life.’

Mark grinned. ‘I’ve no doubt he is. But I bet he’s not nearly so exciting.’

There was no answer to that—at least none she could immediately think of—and she strode to the staffroom door and opened it. ‘Our ward round, Dr Lorimer?’

‘Didn’t think he was,’ he said, his green eyes dancing.

And you’re too smart by half, Helen thought as she followed him down the corridor. Too smart, too charming, too everything.

Well, maybe he wouldn’t be quite so smart and charming after a couple of hours on the ward, she thought waspishly. Maybe a couple of hours of examinations, blood pressures and sheer exhausting hard work, would dent his charm and overweening confidence.

It didn’t. Not even when Mrs Foster launched into her usual round of complaints the minute he appeared at her bedside.

‘A week is how long I was told I’d be in here,’ she declared, her beady eyes sweeping over him with no appearance of being in the least impressed. ‘One week, and now no one can tell me when I’m going home. If my stitches had been inserted properly—’

‘The trouble is, you tried to go to the toilet too soon after your hysterectomy,’ Mark interrupted, his face a picture of warm solicitude. ‘I can understand why you wanted to—an active, independent person like yourself—’

‘Well, I’ve never been lazy,’ she said, her eyes softening slightly, ‘but—’

‘And I appreciate that you’re anxious to go home, what with having little ones to take care of…’

‘My youngest is twenty-five.’

‘Good grief, you must have been married very young,’ he exclaimed. ‘I wouldn’t have put you a day over forty.’

Mrs Foster pinkened, and simpered. ‘Well, I’ve always tried to take care of myself, but—’

‘And that’s what we want to do for you now,’ he continued with a dazzling smile. ‘Take care of you. I want to take care of you, and surely you’re not going to deny me that opportunity, or the pleasure of your company?’

Helen heard Liz choke behind her, and she only just managed to maintain her own composure by staring determinedly at the wall over Mrs Foster’s bed, but when Mark had moved on down the ward she couldn’t restrain her laughter.

‘That was the most outrageous example of flattery I’ve ever heard,’ she gasped.

‘It worked, though, didn’t it?’ he protested. ‘And you’re not telling me that dreadful woman hasn’t been a thorn in your side for the past week.’

‘No, but—’

‘And it got you to smile at me, instead of shooting daggers, so it was worth it.’

Mark’s eyes were deep, and warm, and she shook her head. ‘You’re completely incorrigible.’

‘But likable?’ he suggested, and she shook her head again, and laughed.

He was likable. Dangerously likable. In fact, in the space of a week he had somehow managed to make her feel more feminine, more attractive and more desirable than she had done in years, and it had to stop.

She had to start distancing herself from this man. For her own peace of mind and safety she needed to distance herself from him, or…

Don’t go that way, her mind warned. You’re married, and he’s Tom’s friend, so don’t let your mind go down that road even for a second.

‘Helen?’

A smile was playing about his lips, and again she had that uncanny feeling again that he was reading her mind.

Abruptly she turned on her heel. ‘We’ve two more patients left to see. Which do you want first—Mrs Alexander or Mrs White?’

CHAPTER THREE

‘ANYTHING happening yet?’ Helen murmured, hovering at the delivery room door while Liz checked Mary Alexander’s blood pressure, then the foetal monitor.

‘Nothing,’ Tom muttered back. ‘I’m afraid it looks like we’re going to have to go for the Caesarean after all.’

Helen nodded. Tom had ruptured Mary Alexander’s membrane earlier in the morning to release some of the amniotic fluid around the baby. In theory that should have induced her contractions, but when nothing had happened he’d ordered an IV line of oxytocin, and yet still there was no sign of her going into labour.

‘BP up, foetal heartbeat becoming a little unsteady,’ Liz said in an undertone.

‘Shouldn’t something be happening by now, Doctor?’ Mary asked, gazing uncertainly up at Tom. ‘I know I’m no expert, but—’

‘Occasionally we get a baby who’s reluctant to leave the nice warm shelter of his mummy’s tummy.’ He smiled, his face a picture of calm, controlled confidence. ‘It’s nothing to worry about.’

But it’s taking too long, Helen thought, seeing the concern behind her husband’s bright façade. With so much of the amniotic fluid gone the baby was going to be in big trouble soon if they didn’t do something.

Tom met her eyes and he nodded. It was time to alert the theatre staff.

‘Do you want me to page Gideon, tell him what’s happening?’ she asked after she’d phoned the theatre and Tom had explained the situation to Mary and her husband.

‘Please. A Caesarean’s the one thing he was hoping to avoid after her deep-vein thrombosis, but…’ He sighed wryly as one of their porters wheeled a very frightened-looking Mary and her husband out of the delivery room. ‘Want to wish me luck?’

‘You won’t need it,’ she declared, and he smiled.

‘Female intuition?’

‘Professional opinion,’ she replied, and he shook his head and laughed as he hurried after Mary, but she meant it. He might not have Mark’s flamboyance when it came to operating, but he was good—very good.

And Annie looked decidedly harassed when Helen met her coming out of the ward.

‘Tell me that you speak Greek,’ the junior doctor exclaimed. ‘Please—please—tell me you speak Greek.’

‘Why in the world would—?’

‘It’s Mrs Dukakis. She came into A and E this morning complaining of severe stomach pains. They decided she was simply suffering from a bad case of indigestion, but when they tried to discharge her she became hysterical so they sent her up to us.’

‘But—’

‘She’s six months pregnant, and…’ Annie shook her head. ‘Look, come and see for yourself. Or, to be more strictly accurate, come and listen.’

Helen did.

‘Cripes,’ she murmured when Mrs Dukakis finally subsided into silence after a long and virtually incomprehensible account of what she thought was wrong with her.

‘Exactly.’ Annie nodded. ‘Now you see why I was hoping you might speak Greek.’

‘I don’t, and I’m afraid I can’t think of anybody on the staff who does,’ Helen replied, seeing Mrs Dukakis gaze uncomprehendingly from her to Annie.

‘I believe Mark does,’ Liz announced, overhearing them as she passed by with the drugs trolley.

Mark would, Helen thought sourly. Mark probably spoke ten languages, had an IQ of two million and did rocket science in his spare time.

No, that wasn’t fair, she told herself, but after spending the better part of the last ten days trying to avoid him, the last thing she wanted was to actively go looking for him.

‘Helen?’

Annie was staring at her curiously, and she forced a smile to her lips. ‘We’d better get Mark.’

Mrs Dukakis clearly agreed. In fact, her face lit up like a beacon when he spoke to her in her own language, but something was obviously very badly wrong judging by the number of times she burst into tears when he questioned, then examined her.

‘What is it—what’s wrong?’ Helen asked as Mark took her by the elbow and steered her to the bottom of the ward, leaving Annie to comfort the woman.

‘At the moment nothing more drastic than a very bad case of indigestion, but…’ He shook his head. ‘What do you know about thalassaemia major?’

‘That it’s a serious, inherited childhood anaemia, most commonly found in people of Mediterranean or Asian descent.’ Helen glanced over her shoulder at the sobbing woman. ‘Is that why Mrs Dukakis is so upset—is she a thalassaemia carrier?’

‘Mrs Dukakis hadn’t even heard of the condition until I asked her whether she had any other children,’ Mark said grimly. ‘She thought she was having a miscarriage.’

‘But—’

‘Helen, she only came to Glasgow four months ago. Before that she and her husband lived in a poor, very isolated part of Greece with limited medical facilities. All she knows is she’s given birth to two other children, and neither of them reached their second birthday. The wasting disease, the people in her village called it.’

What must it be like to lose two children? Helen wondered, staring at Nana Dukakis. To feel them grow inside you, feel them move, then give birth to them, only for them to die so quickly. It didn’t bear thinking of.

‘It’s too late to take a sample from the baby’s umbilical cord to find out if it has thalassaemia major, isn’t it?’ she murmured. ‘If she’d known she was a carrier when she first arrived in Glasgow we could have done the test, then offered her a termination, but at six months pregnant…’

‘It’s too late, but there’s still a lot we can do,’ Mark declared, his green eyes encouraging. ‘First we need to test her and her husband to find out if they’re both carriers. If her husband’s not, this baby might be all right, and even if it isn’t we can start giving it monthly blood transfusions as soon as it’s born, and regular injections of Desferal to ensure its liver and kidneys aren’t damaged.’

Regular blood transfusions and injections of Desferal. It sounded a wretched life for a little baby, and Mark must have read her thoughts because he smiled. A small, rueful smile.

‘It’s better than the alternative, Helen, and new treatments are being tried out all the time. We’re getting excellent results from bone-marrow transplants, and there’s also a lot of work being done with gene therapy.’

He was right, she knew he was, and it was stupid of her to be thinking so negatively. ‘What have you told her?’

‘The truth. There was no point in skirting round the subject, so I told her I thought her other children had died because they had thalassaemia major, but if we started treating her baby as soon as it was born there was a very good chance it could live to be as old as you or I.’

Helen nodded, then sighed as more immediate concerns suddenly occurred to her. ‘You know we can’t possibly keep her in—not for indigestion.’

‘I’m going to sweet-talk Admissions, ask if she can at least stay for the night. It will give her time to calm down, and me the chance to run some tests.’

‘It’s going to take some real sweet-talking,’ Helen commented. ‘We’re wall-to-wall patients at the moment.’

He grinned. ‘You don’t think I’m up to it?’

Oh, he was up to it all right, she thought. In fact, if he treated the women who worked in Admissions to one of his blinding smiles they’d probably agree to Mrs Dukakis staying in one of their private rooms for the duration of her pregnancy.

‘Actually, you might not have to talk to Admissions,’ Annie said, overhearing the last of their conversation as she joined them. ‘Mrs Foster went home this morning—’

‘Hallelujah!’

‘And Rhona Scott’s not due in for her cornual anastomosis until Monday—’

‘So unless an emergency comes in we’ve got a vacant bed for the next few days.’ Mark’s eyes lit up. ‘Liz could OK it for me, couldn’t she?’

‘Yes, but—’

‘Oh, Liz, light of my life, joy of my heart,’ he exclaimed, heading off towards the sister before either of them could stop him. ‘Could I have a word?’

Annie shook her head as she watched him go. ‘He’s quite something, isn’t he? Handsome, charming and about as reliable as a fifty-pence watch.’

‘You reckon?’ Helen murmured, seeing Liz frown, then nod, then dissolve into helpless laughter when Mark kissed her soundly on the cheek.

‘Don’t you?’

There was a very decided edge to the junior doctor’s voice, and Helen glanced back at her thoughtfully. She’d never asked—had never thought it was her business to ask—why Annie hadn’t married her son’s father, but now she thought she knew.

‘Annie—’

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