by Sue MacKay
Tori said softly, ‘Let’s go.’ Then she waited for him to take the first step.
A move that seemed to take minutes to eventuate. Finally he took a step, brought her close, tucked her against him, his arm around her shoulders, and led her out into the warm night air.
They didn’t talk all the way to their turning point. Once there Tori sank down onto a bench and tugged her shoes off. ‘These are killing me.’
‘I’m not surprised.’ The heels were unbelievably high. He joined her, leaned back and stretched his legs out in front of him.
‘You don’t swagger like you used to.’ She was grinning at him. To soften the blow? Or to lighten their mood?
Unfortunately, her comment wasn’t funny. ‘That got knocked out of me.’
Her grin died. ‘Tell me about the hearing.’
The air whooshed out of his lungs. He was on his feet in an instant, slamming his hand through his hair. He spun around hard, stared down at her. ‘You didn’t come. I wanted you there.’ Needed you with me. Needed to know you’d stand by me no matter what the outcome. ‘Even when I didn’t want you to know the truth about my error of judgement.’
‘You insisted I stay away.’
‘You were meant to see through that and come anyway.’ He’d tried to have this discussion back then but hadn’t been able to find the words without dumping too much of his shock and resentment at what had happened onto her.
Tori nodded. ‘I thought as much.’ She stared out to sea, her fingers twisting the bracelet she wore. ‘I arrived late. I’d been in Theatre and the operation ran overtime.’
‘So you did turn up. I never knew that.’ They hadn’t done a lot of talking in the following weeks when he’d been on stand-down from the hospital and dealing with the hearing, and virtually none at all after he’d packed his bags and walked out of the apartment nearly three months later.
‘I tried to tell you, but...’
Tori didn’t have to finish that sentence. He’d been intent on keeping his distance to save from telling her what a fool he’d been.
She shrugged, not looking at him. ‘By the time I got there the door was shut and I wasn’t allowed in.’
‘It was a closed session with the hospital board chairman, the ethics committee chairperson and the heads of two other departments.’ Not the head of his department. Dad had been furious at being cut from the hearing, too. He’d wanted to manipulate the outcome so his son came out without a blemish.
‘So I wouldn’t have been allowed to sit in on proceedings.’
‘No, but I wanted you there.’ He’d have been pleased if he’d known she’d been outside, waiting for him. Except she hadn’t waited, had been nowhere in sight when he’d finally come out, many hours later, a changed man. He’d wondered if she hadn’t loved him enough to be there for him. What else had he got wrong?
‘I sat outside for most of the day, then got called into surgery at the wrong time.’
Ben grimaced. ‘I didn’t know that, either.’ Not that anyone would’ve told him. He’d become persona non grata by then. Except Tori should’ve told him. But they had already been shutting off from each other.
Tori looked over, her gaze contrite. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Thanks.’ He wanted to ask why she’d thought he was guilty when she hadn’t had the facts, but he also didn’t want to have her withdraw from him right now. Of course she knew now what had happened. Everyone did. It was on record. But he hadn’t had the guts to tell her first.
Tori reached for his hand, shuffled closer and didn’t let go of him. ‘I am glad the hearing was open-minded and allowed that mistakes do happen.’
‘So am I.’ He couldn’t imagine what he’d be doing now if he’d been struck off the register. ‘I wouldn’t have made a good waiter.’
Her smile was soft and caring, her thumb caressing the back of his hand. ‘You’d be great at it, but what a waste.’
‘You say the nicest things.’ He squeezed her hand and stood up. ‘It’s cooling down and you just shivered. We’d better make tracks. Barefoot?’
‘Until I reach the hotel anyway.’ Tori was quiet all the way back. At the hotel entrance she slipped into her shoes before turning to him. ‘I’m glad it worked out for you. I’m very sorry the outcome wasn’t the same for us.’ Then she was gone, her skirt swirling around her legs as she raced inside and headed for the elevators. So am I, Tori, love. So am I. Ben watched until the doors slid shut behind her. But what’s done is done.
He crossed the reception area, heading for the bar. A nightcap was needed.
CHAPTER FOUR
JEFFERY WELLS STOOD close to Tori, leaning over her. ‘Talk some sense into Ben. He needs me to get him through this fiasco so he can come out clean.’
She glared at her father-in-law. ‘Don’t you think this is Ben’s decision to make?’
‘You want him to ruin his career?’ Jeffery slammed back at her.
‘That’s not what I said.’
‘Of course not. You think Ben should take the rap for someone else’s irresponsible behaviour.’
‘But Benji—’ If Benji wasn’t responsible for the woman’s death, then who was?
Anger and pain sliced through Tori. She rolled over and blinked her eyes open. ‘Ben?’
She reached her arm across the wide bed. He wasn’t there. He’d be sitting in the lounge, as usual, staring into space.
Tori sat up, startled at how dark the room was. Fumbling at the bedside table, she found the light switch. Soft light spilled into the room. The hotel room in Nice. Not her bedroom back in the apartment.
She’d had a nightmare. A very graphic one with all the details there in vivid colour. Jeffery had been real. The way he’d tried to dominate her by standing over her had been true to form. His harsh words had battered her, as they had that night he’d bowled into the apartment to tell her what she should be doing with Ben, and made her shudder even now she understood she’d been dreaming. Her father-in-law had hated her for standing up to him.
Tossing aside the cover, she leapt out of bed and crossed to haul the heavy curtains open. Then she took a bottle of water from the small fridge and, snapping the lid off, glugged the water straight down.
It hadn’t been her place to tell Ben what to do. He’d had to make his own decisions about his future, but she’d have talked it through with him anytime he’d wanted. If she’d told Benji his father had pressured her, the chances were that Benji would’ve shrugged his shoulders and said, ‘That’s just Dad’s way.’
Sure it was. ‘Dad’s way’ had been to rule with an iron will and woe betide anyone who dared to challenge him. Ben adored his father and had spent his life trying to make him proud. It had been like an endless mountain with each achievement shrugged away with the demand for the next goal to be set.
Jeffery’s demands of her that day had been pointless. Ben hadn’t talked to her. Not about the death of his patient anyway. Heck, by then he’d barely asked if the power bill had been paid any more. It seemed their marriage had been about the good times, and that they hadn’t had a clue on handling the bad ones.
Sitting by the window, her legs tucked under her backside, Tori gazed out at the sea, and closer in the promenade, which was devoid of people. Four o’clock. Too early and too dark to go for a brisk walk that’d clear her head.
Was Ben sound asleep? Sprawled on his back, taking up most of the bed, like he always had? Or had he learned to lie on one side?
Oh, Ben, I loved you so much. We had it all. Or so we thought.
Why had it gone so wrong? They could blame the death of Ben’s patient, but if their love had been as strong as she’d believed it to be, they’d have found a way to deal with that. She’d naively thought that if she loved Ben enough they’d never have insurmountable problems, that love conqu
ered everything.
How did other couples cope? Her mother had never remarried after Dad had been killed so she’d not seen first-hand how Mum might’ve dealt with a crisis in her relationship. Ben’s parents had always appeared to have a strong marriage with no hint of dissension, but his mother had tended to take a compliant role.
Last night, talking with Ben, had felt almost like old times. Almost. At the back of her mind a little niggle had kept her aware of how untrue that was, but when he’d wrapped his arm around her shoulders to walk her back to the hotel she’d come close to believing the past had been a nightmare that she’d finally woken up from.
Ben. Benji. Her heart tightened. It was like she hadn’t got over him at all. Almost as though she would walk back into her marriage without a backward glance given half a chance.
No way. She’d never go through all that agony again. Watching Ben walk out their front door for the last time had decimated her. It had been as though he’d taken a sledgehammer and pummelled her heart flat.
She leapt up to prowl around the room, looking for a distraction. Her phone lay on the bedside table. Snatching it up, she checked for texts and emails. No texts. Nine emails, mostly from work. Good. They’d keep her busy. And her mind off Ben.
Clicking on the email headed ‘Dean Cox’, Tori smiled at the cheeky-faced youngster dressed in street clothes and walking out of the clinic’s entrance, waving happily. Only weeks ago his health had been deteriorating, despite aspirin treatment for his heart inflammation, and she’d had no choice but to operate, inserting an assist device into his left ventricle to support his blood flow. That had been five days before she’d come away, and every day she’d checked in with her clinic staff to see how Dean was responding.
That photo said it all really. Dean would never be as robust as he’d been before the rheumatic fever had struck, but he was looking a lot better than she’d ever seen him.
Tori tapped in Dean’s email address.
Hey, young man, you’re looking awesome. Love that T-shirt, by the way.
The T-shirt read ‘I’m allowed to be noisy... I’m a kid’.
Bet Mum and Dad don’t. J Make sure you come and see me the moment I get home, won’t you?
Hugs, the Heart Lady.
Dean would have an appointment already arranged to see her but she liked her kids to know she was there for them anytime, that they always mattered to her. Dean and his parents had walked into her consulting room late one day and told her they’d come from Dunedin to see her because they’d heard the Heart Lady loved her patients so much.
Dean, with his huge eyes and cheeky grin, had stolen into her heart right from that moment. He was one brave little guy who had taken everything she’d told him, and had done to him, as though it had been easy, which it most certainly hadn’t been. He’d never complained about life being unfair, never cried—which had worried her sometimes. The counsellor had seen him and come away smiling, saying he was the most together kid she’d ever met. His family had never returned home down south, instead finding jobs and a home in Auckland.
Tori tapped in a reminder to herself to buy T-shirts for all her current patients. She had a list of sizes filed with her emails. A third bag would be needed for her return trip. What would they think at the border when she declared dozens of shirts and zillions of pairs of shoes?
The sun was shoving the night aside by the time Tori had done with answering her mail so she dressed in track pants and a T-shirt, grabbed the city map and went out for a fast walk.
Turning left, Tori headed for Quai Rauba Capeu and the hill overlooking Port Nice on the other side. The steps she found leading directly to the top were gut-busters and she was glad of the challenge. It kept her focused—and out of breath most of the way.
‘Wow.’ She sighed as she stared down into the port when she finally made it to the edge on the far side of the hilltop.
‘Worth those steps, isn’t it?’ a young man acknowledged in heavily accented English as he jogged past.
A yacht, if anything so large and opulent could really be called a yacht, was tied up to one of the wharves. As she watched two shining black Mercedes-Benz rolled up to the gangway. The uniformed drivers emerged to open the back doors for the four men dressed in suits disembarking.
Tori shook her head in amazement. A very different life from hers, more like something out of a fairytale. And equally unattainable—even if she wanted it, which in all honesty she didn’t. But, she sighed again, she could take a day or two of such luxury. Or a week. Or two.
Tearing her gaze away, she looked around for the Monument aux Morts and headed across to study it, before walking along the path to start back down, this time avoiding those steps. She’d find a café for breakfast before going back to the hotel and getting ready for the day.
Ben and his colleagues were first up this morning and she did not want to miss their panel discussion.
Back to Ben. He was never far away, lurking in her mind, waiting to pounce the moment she had nothing else to occupy her.
* * *
‘Hey, I called to see if you wanted to do breakfast again.’ Ben sat down beside Tori in the auditorium. ‘Get a better offer?’ He smiled to show he held no rancour, though he had been disappointed when she hadn’t picked up. Yesterday morning had been fun and he’d wanted to repeat it.
‘I went for an early walk.’
When Tori turned to him he saw the dark smudges above her cheekbones. ‘You okay?’
‘Lack of sleep’s catching up.’ Her voice was dull, missing yesterday’s excitement.
‘Got anything to take tonight so you get a good rest?’
‘I had a bad dream.’ She was staring somewhere beyond his shoulder and looking like she already regretted giving that much information.
‘What about?’ Tori used to need a bomb under the bed to wake up. As for nightmares, they had been something other people had, not her. But, then, he hadn’t been around lately to know what went on in her life, what might upset her so deeply as to give her bad sleep.
‘Your father.’
He barely heard the words, she’d spoken so softly. ‘Dad?’ A nightmare about his father? Why?
Her abrupt nod told him, yes, definitely.
Why? he repeated to himself, even as something deep and dark began unfurling in his gut. It had taken the malpractice hearing to open his eyes to Dad and see that no amount of hard work and achievement would ever satisfy the old man. That death had occurred partly because he’d been trying to impress Dad, but he’d also wanted the kudos that would’ve gone with being the first surgeon to use that procedure successfully. If only he hadn’t been so cocky and one-eyed. ‘What did Dad do?’ he asked uneasily.
‘He came to apply a little pressure.’
No such thing as a little pressure with the old man. It would’ve been full-on. ‘To do what?’ A memory flicked on. There had been a night when he’d come home to get a change of clothes and had seen his father driving away from the apartment. His phone had rung before he’d parked, calling him back to hospital urgently, and by the time he’d had an opportunity to talk to Tori it had seemed unimportant. Had he got that wrong, too?
Ben shifted his butt on the chair, still watching Tori, who lifted her head so he could see directly into those beautiful green eyes that now were apprehensive. He laid a hand on top of hers, which were gripped together on the table. ‘Tell me.’
Her eyes widened and she glanced around at the crowds filling up the seats. ‘Not now. You’re speaking shortly.’
‘Not for an hour. There’s been a change to the programme.’ He didn’t need to hear the first session as much as he needed to know what had caused Tori to look so unhappy. Making a decision, he stood and tugged her gently to her feet. ‘Let’s get coffee.’
Fully expecting her to refuse, he was relie
ved when she slung her bag over her shoulder and led the way out and around to a quiet corner in one of the smaller restaurants open for the breakfast rush.
The moment the waitress moved away with their order Tori said, ‘I’m so sorry, Ben. I don’t know why I told you that. It’s not as though I’ve dreamt about your father before. I guess seeing you after all this time has side effects.’ Her smile was lacking in conviction.
Her hand was cold under his. ‘Talk to me.’
Tori nodded slowly. ‘Jeffery insisted I make you see his way was the best, that you shouldn’t take responsibility for that woman’s death and should let someone else cop the fallout.’
Ben’s stomach sucked in so hard it felt as though it banged against his spine. Nausea swamped him. ‘You knew about that, then?’
‘Not the details, just the bare minimum.’
‘You told Dad to take a hike?’ That wouldn’t have been easy. Dad could be persistent.
‘Obviously.’ She locked her gaze with his. ‘He told me I’d be ruining your career if I didn’t do as he said. But I...’ She shrugged. ‘You had to make your own decision. What Jeffery or I thought didn’t come into it.’
‘Thank you. You were right.’ No wonder Dad didn’t mention Tori’s name at all any more. She’d stood up to him far more readily than he had—until then.
‘You did the right thing by admitting your error.’
‘I agree. But I should’ve told you everything.’ Yet despite him not doing so she’d stood up to his father’s threats. He could love her for that alone.
‘We weren’t doing talking very well by then.’ The sadness deepened, turning that emerald green shade of her eyes to something murky. ‘It started before your incident in Theatre.’
‘Incident?’ That was a tame word for what had happened. Though he was pleased Tori wasn’t dwelling on how bad that had been or what he’d done.
Another nod. ‘Our separation was gradual, had started long before that day, with us working opposing shifts and then studying every spare moment. We swore we knew what we were in for, and that we wouldn’t let it happen, but we did. I’d come home from work, have a few drinks to relax me, and then collapse in bed. I was so overwhelmed with the workload at times I’d go to the warehouse outlet to buy up a pile of clothes because I didn’t have the energy to do the washing.’