The Surgeon's Love-Child

by Lilian Darcy

  '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 Mend 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 pantyhose 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.

  CHAPTER THREE

  They lay side by side on their towels in silence, soaking up some late afternoon sun and digesting what couldn't possibly have been called a late lunch.

  Barbecued steak, a microwaved jacket potato and salad, dished up at a quarter to five? Not lunch. Delicious and satisfying, though. Steve Colton cooked steak very well.

  He was going to ask me something, but I've forgotten what it was, Candace thought hazily.

  She was too busy thinking about signals. Yes, those signals! The ones men sent to women, and the ones women, in their different way, sent back to men.

  It's been so long... So long since I had to decide if I was imagining it or not. If I wanted it or not. If a man really meant it or not. I was so sure about all those questions the other day, but now...

  Some men had flirted with her, had given off signals, during her marriage to Todd. They had been signals she had casually interpreted as meaning, If you weren't attached, I'd be interested. The key attitude on her part, of course, was 'casually'. She had never needed to test out her perceptions, to work out whether she was right or wrong.

  Because of Todd, because of her marriage, it just hadn't mattered. She'd never had the remotest intention of responding to the possible, or probable, signals in any way. She'd never been tempted into an affair.

  This time, it was different. A part of her craved the heady therapy of a successful fling. Another part of her was cynical, sceptical and just plain terrified. If I'm wrong... If I'm right, and it doesn't work...

  If I'm sure I'm right, and I throw myself at him, and he laughs, or he's kind, or he tells me very carefully, Oh, but I'm married. Didn't you know? My wife is away visiting her parents for a week in Woggabiggabolliga—which seemed to be the name of at least half of the towns people mentioned around here, as far as she could work out.

  Candace had to suppress a gulp of hysterical laughter at this point. Am I going crazy? Who knew that betrayal and divorce could do this to a person?

  'You're different in surgery, aren't you?' Steve said suddenly, sitting up cross-legged on his towel and resting his elbows on his knees.

  Candace immediately sat up, too. She didn't bother to argue his perception. 'Enough to be worthy of comment, apparently.'

  'I didn't—'

  'No, go ahead. It's OK.'

  'I guess I thought you'd be more touchy-feely.'

  'And instead I'm...?'

  'You really give the impression that you know what you're doing and you know what you want.'

  'Of course I do! I was doing this when you were still dissecting frogs, Steve!'

  His abrupt launch into probing questions rattled her, especially the way it followed on from her own jittery train of thought.

  'Don't,' he said.

  'Don't what?'

  'Don't pull rank.'

  'Why not?' she retorted. 'I must be at least five years older than you.'

  'Six, I think.'

  'You've been checking?'

  'Terry said you were thirty-nine.'

  'Well, Terry is wrong! I'm only thirty-eight, and my birthday's not until July!'

  They looked at each other and both laughed at the absurdity of her objection.

  'Hey, can we start this again?' he said.

  'Start what again?'

  'Now you're being deliberately obtuse. This conversation. I hadn't intended it to get confrontational. I wanted to say that in surgery you were...' He hesitated.

  'A royal pain about the music?'

  'Yes, and it was great. I really liked the way you handled it. I liked you in surgery, Candace. I liked your focus and your confidence in the fact that it was your right to dictate the mood. But you were quiet about it. Polite.'

  'I'm well brought up.'

  'So well brought up that normally you're probably like most women and apologise when someone else steps on your toes, right?'

  She laughed again, recognising the arrow-like accuracy of his observation. 'In my private life, yes. In surgery, Dr Colton, you'd better damn well apologise to me!'

  He grinned and his blue eyes sparkled like the sun on the sea. 'Yep. I liked that. It was good,' he said, then repeated even more lazily, 'It was good.'

  Seconds later, he was on his feet and reaching down to pull her up as well. 'Want to?' he said.

  'A swim? Yes, I do.'

  The surf was bigger today. 'Dumpers,' Steve told her. 'Be careful. They can flip you over pretty hard.'

  He kept a careful eye on her and on the waves as they swam, and told her a couple of times, 'Not this one.'

  After a while, she could feel the difference in the waves for herself. They didn't curl and pause and fold smoothly over today, but broke abruptly, like hands crashing on piano keys. If you caught them at the wrong moment, they sent you tumbling so that you emerged disorientated, with wrenched muscles.

  'Where are the flags today?' she asked Steve.

  'They don't patrol Taylor's Beach during the week, outside school holidays,' he said. 'We can stop, if you like.'

  'No, I'm enjoying it.' And she felt very safe beside him, sensed that he really knew what he was doing in the water.

  'Jump!' he interrupted, and they managed to keep their heads above water as a wave boiled around them. 'They're breaking all over the place. We'd have to go out a long way to avoid them.'

  'No, thanks!'

  They stuck it out for a little longer, then Candace got dumped again and came up with sand all through her hair and down her classic black one-piece swimsuit. Salt stung in her nose.

  'Let's stop,' Steve suggested again, and this time she didn't argue.

  They towelled themselves dry, and he slipped into a white T-shirt, while she wrapped a cotton skirt in tropical ocean colours around her waist, still enjoying the sun on the scooped back of her suit. They went for a walk, and explored the rock pools at the tide-level shelf jutting out from the headland at the southern end of the beach.

  He showed her crimson and white anemones, glistening brown sea squirts and pinky-purple crabs. The late afternoon sun slanted golden on the water. A little later, a glorious sunset painted a palette of colour in the west, a mix of fiery orange, salmon pink and storm purple as clouds began to move across the sky. The clouds hastened the onset of darkness and they turned back.

  'I'll walk you home,' he said, and when they got there, he added helpfully, on a careless drawl, 'You can invite me in, if you like.'

  'Are you hungry again?' she teased.

  'We could have a drink on your deck.'

  'You have a perfectly good deck of your own, Dr Colton.'

  This time, he just looked at her. Silent. Patient. His blue eyes glinted and his mouth was tucked in at the corners. They both knew exactly what the other was thinking. It was a delicious yet sto
mach-churning feeling.

  She sighed. 'Wine, beer, tea, coffee or juice?'

  'Iced water?'

  Out on the deck a few minutes later, he noticed her scratching her head. 'Hair still full of sand?'

  'Yes, and when I try to get it loose, it runs down into my suit. Ugh!'

  'We can do something about that, I think.'

  He put down his clinking glass and disappeared inside, to emerge in a few moments flourishing her hairbrush. 'You were in a hurry this morning, weren't you?' he said.

  'That's right. I left it on the table.'

  'I noticed it earlier. Stand up and bend forward.'

  'Um...'

  'Let me. Please!' The teasing, knowing tone had gone from his voice suddenly, to be replaced by a husky note that was new. 'Please, let me. I'd really like to do it, Candace.'

  She nodded, her throat too dry for speech. Time had slowed. There was an almost tangible sense of expectation hanging in the air. With her hands pressed on slightly bent knees, she faced him, then felt the light touch of his fingers on the back of her neck. A tingle flooded her spine.

  Steve stroked the brush through her hair, his touch rhythmic and careful and slow. Cool, dry sand showered silently down onto her feet. Steve was silent, too. Only his fingers seemed to speak to her as they threaded a stray strand over her ear, then moved the thick mass to one side to brush in a different place. She was hypnotised by the gentleness of it, by the warmth of his touch and by the faint sound of his breathing. Could have let it go on forever.

  'Now sit down,' he instructed her softly, 'And lean your head back.'

  Her hair was like a cloud now, and the bristles of the brash tickled her temples and her scalp as he resumed his steady strokes. She closed her eyes and felt their lids flicker. She felt more vulnerable this way. The swimsuit wasn't outrageously revealing, but when she sat at this angle her breasts were thrust forward and she could feel the imprint of the cooling air pressing deep into the cleft between them. A shudder vibrated through her.

  'You're cold,' he said. 'And I should stop. Don't want to.' He held her thick mass of hair in his hands like a rope. 'Could do this for ages.'

  She opened her eyes and heard the brush clatter onto the glass-topped cane table. He knelt beside her. 'Your hair is gorgeous, and hidden underneath it are these stretches of soft skin I just want to kiss, Candace.'