by Rebecca Lang
'Will you have coffee with me?' he asked. 'My duty here is over. Or maybe a glass of beer in a pub?'
Nell moistened her dry lips. 'I'd like to,' she said, quickly making up her mind that she would have to miss the next workshop. No doubt Trixie would put two and two together and come up with five. 'Let's make it the beer.'
'Are you married?' he asked abruptly.
'No,' she said. 'And you?'
'No...I'm not married,' he said.
They had always been very closely attuned emotionally to each other, understanding intuitively how the other had felt, even in the relatively short time that they had known each other. They had been good at hearing the unspoken words.
Now she again picked up that odd inflection in his voice which, inexplicably, gave her an odd sense of listening to that soundless communication, as she had felt when she had seen his haggard face.
Mixed in with the joy of seeing him again was a niggling sense of apprehension. Also, in the space of just over an hour, her world had been turned upside down.
CHAPTER TWO
Joel Matheson watched Nell as she walked in front of him out of the large lecture hall, more nonplussed by the sight of her than he would ever have expected, unsure of how to proceed from here.
He had, of course, hoped and half assumed that she would be at this conference. Now the reality of her unsettled him and he felt his carefully maintained composure slipping as his eyes focussed on her soft-looking hair. Although he had tried to prepare himself for this, the reality of her—her beauty, her sweet vulnerability and sincerity, his memories—seemed to be stripping away his carefully constructed defences more rapidly than he knew how to cope with.
Perhaps he had been foolish to come here, to meet her again, when there could be no future for them together. That much had not changed. Yet he had not been able to resist when he had been approached by the organizers of the conference to be a replacement lecturer. In the past he had made a point of avoiding such gatherings in Gresham, had usually come to visit his parents and a few close friends and gone away again, hearing professional news of Nell very indirectly.
At the door to the street she turned to him. 'I feel a little guilty, skiving off like this in the middle of the week.' She smiled up at him. 'Some of my colleagues will be looking for me in the workshops. But I'm going to do it.' She laughed, her eyes dancing in the way he remembered. 'We can walk through the park and I know a little place on the other side where we can get a beer.'
'Great,' he said, feeling the urge to sweep her into his arms and kiss her.
'How long are you in Gresham?' she asked as they walked side by side away from the conference centre—like two children playing truant from school, he thought.
'For a week, this time,' he said. 'My parents are still here. Actually, I've been offered a job here in Gresham, in the burns unit where you work.'
'You have?' she said, stopping in her tracks to look at him in amazement. 'How come I haven't heard of it? John usually tells me, and the other guys in our department, what's going on.'
The way she said the name 'John' sent Joel's mental antennae strumming, and he had a vision of the grey-haired man who was the head of department, a widower, whom he sensed would be very attractive to women. With that sense came the stirrings of something that he had not fully felt for a long time...jealousy. What, he wondered, did the head of department mean to Nell in a personal sense? After ten years he had no right to feel jealous, but there it was.
They resumed walking. 'I was approached by Dr Lane,' Joel explained, 'as were several other doctors from various parts of the country. I came to take a look at the job out of curiosity, mainly.' Indeed, he had had no intention of taking the job. It was good once in a while to look at other places, otherwise one became stale and out of touch.
'I hadn't made up my mind until very recently,' he found himself saying smoothly. Like two minutes ago, he thought with a smile to himself, enjoying her wide-eyed surprise.
'You mean...you're going to take it?' she asked.
'Yes,' he said, enjoying her shock. While he was here in Gresham he would let John Lane know that he would be taking the job. 'I asked John not to say anything until I had had a chance to think about it.'
'How come none of us saw you here looking at the job?' she asked incredulously.
'I wanted it that way. I came after hours,' he said. 'I didn't particularly want my current hospital to know at the time that I was looking at another job.'
Then later, several months ago, he had warned his current hospital in Montreal that he was looking at the Gresham job, so that his notice to leave would be retroactive.
'And when would you be starting?' Nell asked. Joel sensed the deep emotion in her, while trying to gauge how pleased she was to see him. That emotion moved him, so that he felt the urge more than ever to take her in his arms, especially as she looked somehow fragile, the roundness of her earlier youth having given way to a womanly slimness.
'A month or so from now,' he found himself saying calmly, as though an alter ego had taken over and was speaking for him, had made up his mind for him. If he didn't take the holiday time that was owing to him he could start in a month, a prospect that was becoming more attractive by the minute...until he reminded himself yet again that there could be no future for himself and Nell, the realization bringing with it the familiar bitterness that he had tried so hard to let go, that he had worked on by living in the present, by concentrating on his job which he, fortunately, loved. Perhaps he was crazy to contemplate it, let alone do it.
The bitterness came when he looked at Nell, who epitomized the lie that work was enough. Being in Gresham, seeing her more or less every day could, he suspected, increase the agony of fruitless desires.
'That's...incredible,' she said. 'I had no idea.'
They entered a small park that they had to traverse in order to get to the pub she had in mind.
'Where will you live?' she asked. How odd it was that they were having this polite conversation, when really she wanted to go into his arms, wanted to rant and rave at him about why he had not contacted her for a very long time. He seemed to care, that was the odd part. It was difficult to ask pointed questions of someone you had not seen for a long time, when you didn't know what other attachments they had. She did not suppose that he lived in a personal vacuum.
'I own an apartment here,' he said casually. 'I'll live there until I can find a house I like, with a garden.'
'Oh...' she said. All the time that she had been searching for him he had had an apartment in Gresham and had obviously spent time there. Niggling feelings of anger tempered her happiness at seeing him, especially fuelled by the casualness of his tone.
'Are you engaged to be married?' he asked abruptly, torturing himself with a desire for knowledge that he was most likely better off without. 'Or have you a man friend? I hesitate to say "boyfriend", since you must be twenty-six.'
'Yes, I'm twenty-six,' she said. 'And, no, I don't have a specific man friend.'
Joel picked up something in her tone, which made him think again of John Lane—he was not sure why, except he suspected that the head of department would not let a prize like Nell Montague pass him by if he could help it. Although he was much too old for her, of course. Many a powerful man did not let age stand in his way, he well knew that, using his power as a lever to compete with younger men.
'In that case,' he said, taking her hand and pulling her under the shade of an enormous maple tree which had branches sweeping close to the ground, 'I shall give in to temptation.'
With that, he took her into his arms and kissed her, something he had fantasized about for a very long time, in the many lonely hours he had spent. At first she responded to him like a startled fawn, then she put her arms up around his neck and kissed him back with a fervour to match his own, so that he felt all his angst melting away, and a powerful sense of having come home. For a few precious moments he felt normal, relaxed, full of hope.
H
is thoughts went back to the time when he had first seen her, working in the emergency department of Gresham General Hospital, where she had been a volunteer worker for the summer and he had been a harassed intern, with all the weight of his twenty-four years seeming to bear down very heavily on his shoulders. Nell Montague had looked very fresh and sweet, very genuine, beautiful, tempered by common sense and a capacity for hard work, intelligent in a non-arrogant way that he had found wholly refreshing.
For Nell, standing in the circle of his arms, there was a familiar feeling of dissonance, when something she had wanted so much was actually happening. Her hands crept up into his hair, her fingers twining through it, as they had done years ago. With all her heart and soul she responded to him. This was how it had been for them before. It was all so fresh in her mind, as though there had not been a gap of ten years, had not been a lonely longing.
'Could you give me a hand?' Joel had said to her all those years ago that seemed like yesterday, coming up to her in one of the wide corridors near the reception desk and triage station of the emergency department of Gresham General Hospital. 'This man's waited long enough. I want to get him into a treatment room.'
She hadn't known his name then, of course, had only seen him vaguely from a distance, where his presence had not really registered on her as she had gone about her tasks. He had grasped one end of a stretcher on which a young man whose face had been pale and drawn with pain had lain, indicating to Nell that she should take the other end of the stretcher. At the time she had registered that the young doctor had looked harassed and serious.
Dumbly, she nodded, automatically going into action. 'I'm just a volunteer,' she said apologetically, moments later, to the young doctor who looked pale with fatigue, almost as pale as their patient on the stretcher. 'Just doing a summer job.'
'I know,' he said. 'That doesn't matter. I need help.' The look he gave her said everything that he did not want to verbalize in front of their patient— the shortage of staff, the lack of money that had caused the running-down of the department.
And I'm only sixteen, she felt prompted to add, but didn't do so. With her light brown hair piled up on top of her head in a neat chignon, instead of the ponytail that she usually wore at school, she knew that she looked older. Discreet make-up added to the illusion.
They, introduced themselves, then later he asked her more questions about herself.
'What sort of training have you had?' he asked her. 'I assume you get one?'
'Oh, yes, we do.' She nodded, a little unnerved by him because she found him very attractive and wasn't sure how to handle that attraction. Compared with some of the other interns, who seemed to have two left feet sometimes, as well as two left hands, Dr Joel Matheson seemed mature and sophisticated beyond his years.
'You planning to be a doctor or nurse?' he asked. 'Or are you already in med school?'
'I...um...hope to be a doctor,' she said hesitantly, truthfully, yet not wanting him to know her age, sensing his personal interest in her and predicting his sudden loss of interest if she told him she was a schoolgirl.
'Are you in pre-meds?' he asked.
'I—' she began.
'I'm going to throw up,' their patient said, struggling up to support himself on one elbow, so that she didn't at that point have to answer the question. For the time being, Joel could speculate that she was already at university in a pre-med BA or BSc course.
That time with Joel was when she first developed an interest in the treatment of burns, including plastic surgery for burns, as that patient they wheeled on a stretcher into a treatment room had some severe, though localized, burns.
'How old are you?' Joel asked her later when they were momentarily alone.
'I'm nineteen,' she replied, surprised and shocked at herself at how easily the lie tripped off her tongue, as though she had been rehearsing it for a long time, knowing that her face was impassive and managing to prevent herself from blushing. Or it was as though she had been split into two personalities and the other one was speaking for her.
Now in Joel's arms, under the maple tree, her mind and emotions in turmoil, feeling as though she were in a dream, she marvelled again at the lie she had told so glibly. Guiltily she pulled back from him, feeling again the familiar regret of a past that could not be undone. On his face was an unguarded expression of admiration and desire, before he looked away, his arms dropping from her.
'Which way from here?' he said, as they moved on to resume their walk.
'This way,' she said, pointing, striving for composure. There was a tension between them now that one could have cut with the proverbial knife.
As they walked in the bright sunlight, her thoughts persistently went back to the past, as the sense of unreality was so strong here in the present, especially when Joel's hand brushed against hers and he said 'May I?' before taking her hand in his. Her compliance was her answer.
'I know this is crazy,' he said, 'but I can't resist.'
Nell refrained from asking him why he thought it was crazy, frightened of the answer. There was in her a barely controllable desire to weep. How on earth was she to tell him about Alec? Her tempestuous state of mind was in conflict with her joy in the clear blue sky, in the green grass, brilliant in the sunlight.
More than anything, she had wanted Joel to remain interested in her, had wanted to see that light of unconscious admiration in his eyes as he had looked at her. Her all-girls school had not prepared her for that. Yet with Joel Matheson she really had felt that they were kindred spirits, destined to mean something to one another. All that intuitive knowledge had come from having worked together for a few hours of intense interaction. In her youthful enthusiasm, she had blurted out all that to him. Solemnly he had agreed that they were, indeed, kindred spirits. If he had been amused by her intensity then, he had not given any indication of it.
Unlike some of the self-centred, brash and uncouth youths she knew, brothers of her school friends, Joel Matheson had seemed to be in a league of his own.
'You must be in university, then?' he asked.
'Um... first year,' she said, with remarkable sangfroid. 'BSc. Hoping to get into medical school.'
Again she sensed instinctively that he was interested in her as a woman, an intelligent person, as well as a colleague of sorts. She also sensed that he wouldn't go in for cradle-snatching, and a three-year period made all the difference in one's maturity at her stage of life, which she knew from her sister, Lottie, who really was nineteen, very grown-up and serious about life in general and her studies in particular.
Now, walking with Joel, herself a responsible senior resident surgeon-in-training—with only two more years to do before taking her final fellowship exams— with the burns team at a respected teaching hospital, she felt seriously chastened by the memory of those lies that had tripped so thoughtlessly and uncharacteristically from her tongue.
'What have you been doing all these years?' she asked Joel now as they walked. 'I...I tried to find you, but no one knew where you were—or if they did, they were not going to tell me.' Some of the hurt and bitterness that she had felt by that fruitless search came through now in her tone, and she didn't care.
'From Gresham I went to Montreal to do some further training in burns treatment, as you knew at the time,' he said. 'Then I went to various places in the States, before coming back to Montreal more recently.'
'Ah,' she said. 'So you're not going to tell me why you didn't want me to find you?'
'Not at this moment,' he said.
'Some time, perhaps?' she persisted.
'Perhaps,' he said.
A closeness engendered by the embrace was slipping away, while the emotional tension increased, so it seemed to Nell.
At the pub they bought two glasses of beer and carried them out to a small patio in a back garden, the only people there, and seated themselves at a small bistro table under a tree, with the scent of lilac around them.
'This is great. I'm glad you brought me
here,' Joel said, fixing her with that appraising stare from his astute grey eyes that had so devastated her in the past and was doing a lot now to undermine her defences. And she was going to need those defences, she told herself wryly.
'It's a small oasis in the middle of this city,' she said, returning his regard. In the brilliant, unforgiving sunlight, she confirmed that he looked strained, as though he had in the past been ill. Until he told her about it, she could not bring herself to ask personal questions about his health.
'Do you remember when we worked together that first time,' Joel said, 'when a nurse called you from helping me, to get two urinals for patients who were stuck on stretchers in the corridor?'
As he must have intended, Nell thought, the memory disarmed her and she laughed. 'Oh, yes. I'm not likely to forget that. I was never so humiliated in my life. Especially as I was trying so hard to impress you.'
Joel smiled. 'Yes...' he said. 'I know.'
So he knew that much.
'Nell!' One of the registered nurses had bawled at her just as she had been about to help Joel with another case. 'Would you take a couple of urinals to those two guys on the stretchers at the end of the hall, left side? As quick as you can.'
'Sure,' she had called back, making eye contact with Joel as she had backed away from him, responding to his rueful grin with one of her own. She had known he had been amused by her, by her earnestness, but had not laughed at her.
'So much for getting above myself,' she had added. 'That puts me firmly in my place.'
'See you in treatment room two, if you can come back to help me, Nell,' he had said, grinning broadly. 'You're very much appreciated.'
With a slightly false smile, she had walked away, with her face more than ordinarily hot.
Now, sitting with the mature Joel Matheson, soothed by the scent of lilac and the beer, she relaxed and laughed. 'Saved by the urinal!' she said. 'Saved, maybe, from making a fool of myself, assuming knowledge I did not have. At the time, I wanted to giggle hysterically as I marched briskly to the nearest utility room. You must have thought me an uppity little thing!'