The Surgeon's Proposal

by Lilian Darcy

  ‘But what will Alex tell them?’

  ‘The same as I did, I should hope. And so would a specialist in Sydney or Melbourne, if they decided to go further afield.’

  Annabelle took a deep breath. ‘If that’s the case, Dylan, why do you look so shattered?’

  ‘It’s obvious, isn’t it? The man’s career is over.’ He sounded stiff and prickly and hostile…and something else. ‘What exactly are you asking?’

  ‘If you’re OK, I suppose. That’s all.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ he said abruptly, then walked away.

  Dylan had told Annabelle that he was fine, and within a week it was true. The pain in his back eased gradually, until it wasn’t there at all, and if he was taking things a little easier than usual, if he was more careful about the way he moved and avoided too much twisting, bending or lifting, then that was only sensible, wasn’t it?

  It wasn’t that he was favouring his back, or that he was afraid.

  He swam every day. Twice, when he could. It meant getting up earlier than usual, and plunging into a dark pool late at night when he didn’t always feel like it, but if it strengthened his back muscles, then it was worth the effort. He knew of several nurses who’d had to change careers because of chronic back trouble, and he was going to take those cases, coupled with his own recent pain, as a well-timed warning.

  Swimming twice a day helped him in one other critical area as well.

  Annabelle.

  It was the old, tried-and-true cold-shower principle.

  Or something.

  Work off the need. Go beyond desire, and into total exhaustion. Power through this simmering anger against Alex—thank goodness they’d managed to avoid each other to a large extent over the past couple of weeks—the way he powered through the water. A hundred lengths of his five-metre pool, morning and night. Each of the four major strokes. Bilateral breathing. Tumble turns at each end. By the time he stopped, the water was lapping the sides like storm waves, and his whole body was tingling.

  It worked for his back, but he was kidding himself if he thought it did anything for the other stuff. The stuff with Annabelle. Eventually, something—or someone—was going to snap.

  CHAPTER SIX

  SOMEWHAT to Dylan’s surprise, the prime candidate for a major meltdown turned out not to be Alex. The start of week six since the non-wedding signalled an abrupt change in the senior surgeon’s mood.

  Gone was the first week’s flagrant bad temper and need to punish. Gone were the avoidance strategies which Dylan had, to be honest, welcomed with as much enthusiasm as Alex had put towards generating them.

  Alex stopped scheduling private patients who lived on this side of the city for surgery at a private hospital on the other side of the city, forty minutes’ drive away. He stopped delegating almost all the less critical cases to Dylan, and stopped discussing them only via terse phone conversations and abbreviation-laden e-mail messages.

  He was breezy and witty during surgery, told a couple of risqué and not particularly good jokes—Annabelle’s laugh didn’t reach deeper than her tonsils—and remembered to ask Sharon about the birth of her niece.

  But there was something about all of it that didn’t feel right.

  Or am I just a cynic? Dylan asked himself on Friday afternoon. They were doing another hip replacement—private patient, wife of a wealthy Brisbane businessman, the kind of case Alex always made a point of handling himself.

  ‘Now,’ he said to Annabelle, his tone affable and almost condescending, ‘what kind of hip pack do you think I might be planning to use this afternoon?’

  She wouldn’t bite, just said in a pleasant, neutral way, ‘We have both kinds available, Dr Sturgess. We’ve anticipated ceramic, but I haven’t opened the pack.’

  ‘Not eager to blow the hospital’s budget today?’

  ‘I’m never eager to do that.’

  ‘No? Well, let’s think, then.’ He paused for a quarter of a second. ‘Yes, I will use the ceramic hip.’

  ‘Very good, Dr Sturgess.’

  Sharon and Barb both glanced at her quickly, just as Dylan was doing. They all saw the way she closed her eyes and chewed on her lip, and they all saw Alex’s little half-smile and heard him begin to whistle under his breath.

  He drew unnecessary attention to Annabelle at least three more times during the procedure, and by the time it was finished, her cheeks were on fire and her well-washed top was clinging, damp and half-transparent, to her back. If Dylan hadn’t known their history, he might almost—only it didn’t quite ring true—have thought Alex was flirting with her.

  ‘Annabelle, I’m glad I caught you.’ She turned to find Ruth Stacey hurrying up behind her as she crossed the hospital foyer. ‘Did you get my message?’

  ‘Yes, I was going to phone your office when I got home.’

  ‘And you’re right, I’d still have been there!’ the unit co-ordinator said wryly. ‘I’ve got you the shifts you wanted, a regular four nights a week, eleven till seven, covering the weekend. It’ll usually be Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday, but occasionally we might have to juggle that a bit.’

  ‘That’s great,’ Annabelle answered, relief washing over her like a cool breeze. ‘When can I start?’

  ‘Next roster goes out on Monday. You’re down for two more weeks of days, and then you switch.’

  ‘Thanks so much, Ruth! I really appreciate it.’

  ‘I got the impression you needed it.’

  ‘Oh, I do. Thanks.’

  ‘Have a good weekend.’

  ‘You, too, Ruth.’

  Annabelle forgot, for the moment, how uncomfortable Alex had made her feel this afternoon. She floated out of the building on light feet, going through calculations she’d already made in her head at least a hundred times. Eleven-till-seven shifts, four times a week. She’d bring Mum over to stay for those nights. Duncan rarely woke in the night, so it wouldn’t be too hard on Mum, and she’d be more than happy to do it. Then she’d be able to give Mum a good breakfast, make sure she took her medication and check her breathing, deliver her home and do her errands and her housework, albeit with Duncan’s ‘help’.

  That would leave three nights a week for Annabelle to get a good sleep herself, plus whatever she could manage in the way of naps while Duncan watched television, or during the early hours of the night before work. She’d join a play-group with him, and maybe a kinder gym, and they’d go to story time at the library…

  Outside the hospital’s main entrance, the late February day was still bright and hot. To the left, there was a taxi rank and a bus stop, and straight ahead was a set-down zone where cars could park for a few minutes to pick up and let off passengers. To the right, a walkway led past the ambulance entrance and on to the staff car park just down the hill.

  Annabelle was just about to head in that direction when she saw a familiar car in front of her. That was Alex’s red open-top Mercedes sports, wasn’t it? He hardly ever brought that car to the hospital. Normally, he drove his more anonymous and conservative dark green BMW.

  Was it Alex’s car? It wasn’t him at the wheel. She checked the numberplate, which had his initials, followed by the number 007. Definitely, that was Alex’s personalised plate, but in the driver’s seat there was a woman whom Annabelle didn’t know. She was silvery blonde, dressed to match the car, around forty years old, and absorbed in checking her face in a make-up mirror.

  Short of openly staring, Annabelle couldn’t observe anything more, but a second later she didn’t have to. Behind her, as she began to walk on slow and rather numb legs towards the staff car park, she heard Alex’s voice, speaking with loud, clear authority. Had he seen that she was just ahead of him? Yes, she was sure of it. That carrying voice was deliberately intended to capture her attention.

  ‘Dylan, I’m not going to operate over the weekend,’ he said. ‘It’s not necessary. Monday will be soon enough.’

  ‘Medically, yes,’ Dylan agreed. ‘But in terms of the patient’s be
st interests, I’m not so sure. We’re talking about a young child and a couple of very anxious parents.’

  ‘Monday,’ Alex decreed. ‘I’m going away. As you can see.’

  ‘Alex, you’re late,’ came the woman’s voice from the driver’s seat of the car.

  ‘Barely!’

  ‘I’ve had some kind of security guard eyeing me with a black look on his face for the past fifteen minutes, darling.’

  I have to sit down, Annabelle thought. I should just keep walking but I don’t know if my legs would get me as far as the car.

  Instinctively, she made a quick, clumsy turn, and headed for the left-most foyer door, but it was locked from the outside—the kind that had push-down bars on the inside and was intended only as an emergency exit. Turning again, she went some metres further along the walkway until she came to a low wall, edging a colourful garden bed, and sat down on that.

  Rounding her shoulders and hugging her arms across her chest, she felt exposed and vulnerable and rubbery in her knees. The hot sun pressed on her back, and the light skirt and strappy blue top she’d changed into after finishing in the operating suite seemed inadequate.

  Although she didn’t look back the way she had come, the position turned out to be a box seat for hearing the scene that was still unfolding, and the cast of three—Dylan, Alex and the unknown blonde—delivered their lines perfectly.

  ‘Ultimately, Alex, it’s your call, of course,’ Dylan was saying, just audibly.

  ‘Yes, it is,’ Alex answered much more loudly. ‘And I’ve made it. We’re operating on Monday.’

  ‘If you keep talking shop like this, darling…’ The blonde woman’s voice carried naturally, without her having to try. ‘I’ll floor the lovely, responsive accelerator pedal of this gorgeous machine right now, and spend the weekend in Noosa very expensively by myself!’

  ‘Never let a beautiful woman drive your best car, Dylan!’ Alex quipped on a laugh. ‘Stephanie, move over and give me the keys like a good girl.’

  ‘Thought that would work!’ she said, and Annabelle heard a clink as the keys changed hands.

  The engine revved up, and they cruised off seconds later. Annabelle cast a quick look and saw Dylan shrug, turn and begin to walk in the direction of the same car park she herself had been heading for.

  Only now did he catch sight of Annabelle. He stopped short. Too late, she pretended to be searching for something in her bag, then closed it quickly, got to her feet and said, ‘Hi, Dylan!’ in a voice so determined to remain steady that it came out more like a bark. ‘Have a nice weekend,’ she added on a squeak that was even worse, and began to hurry ahead of him towards the beckoning glimpse of her little car.

  Please, don’t follow me.

  Her body language must surely say this to him, although she didn’t stop to say it with words. Reaching her car, still shaking and weak-kneed, she took a covert look back the way she’d come, but didn’t see him.

  She felt sick, and would have leaned her forehead on the car roof if it hadn’t been burning hot in the sun. Fumbling for her key, she couldn’t get it into the lock because her hand was so tight and shaky. Instead, she just stood there, breathing in car fumes.

  Alex, she was quite certain, had engineered that whole scene. Or if ‘engineered’ was too strong a word, he had at least set the wheels in motion, hoping it would happen. He knew Annabelle’s schedule, and her habits, knew that it was highly likely she would be leaving through that exit at just after three on a Friday afternoon.

  ‘Meet me at the front entrance at three, and we’ll head off. Here are the keys to the Merc,’ he must have said to the blonde. Stephanie. She had a name and a life and feelings, although she looked like she’d come direct from the local franchise of Rent-a-Mistress.

  Alex didn’t believe in renting when he could buy. He was from a wealthy Brisbane family, and he had connections. Stephanie might be the sister of an old school friend, back on the market after a divorce. Or she might be a regular on the charity circuit, a B-list celeb who could still wangle invitations to the right parties.

  She would know about the healthy income that Alex pulled down each year, not just through his work but through his investments, and she would have jumped at him as soon as he’d made his move. She looked like exactly the kind of woman he’d always, and rather smugly, said to Annabelle that he didn’t want for his wife—brittle hair and talon fingernails, collagen lips and a metallic laugh like someone sawing on a tin can, dollar signs in her eyes. ‘So different to you, Annabelle.’

  Future wife or long-term mistress or weekend lover, however, it didn’t really matter. They were involved, and Alex had gone out of his way, in public, to make quite sure that Annabelle knew it.

  I need to get into my car.

  There was still no sign of Dylan, but somehow she was convinced he hadn’t gone away. Other cars were leaving the car park, but she hadn’t noticed his. She got her door open at last, and left it that way as she slid into the driver’s seat. The car was like an oven, robbing her of breath once more.

  Why does this feel so bad? she wondered.

  She hadn’t ever kidded herself that she was rapturously and naı¨vely in love with Alex Sturgess. On both sides, their decision to marry had been based on other feelings. She’d been aware of his faults, or so she’d thought, and more aware of them after he had walked out of their unfinished wedding. But to discover that he was prepared to punish her like this, over and above his pointed behaviour in surgery lately—it hurt!

  A shadow fell across the interior of the car, and she looked up to find Dylan standing with his arm resting on the top of her open door. Behind him, she saw his car parked in one of the spots that had opened up as other nurses had ended their shifts and left.

  ‘You were right, OK, Dylan?’ she told him in a strained voice. ‘You were right about Alex, from the moment you spoke up in the middle of the ceremony. And I understand the point of that meaningless marriage proposal of yours now. You were totally right. It would have been a disaster if Alex and I had gone through with the wedding. I was kidding myself that it would have worked, just because we’d been sensible about it and my family needed it. But that doesn’t mean I’m feeling cheerful and happy and let off the hook, so do me a favour and don’t—don’t…’ She stopped, unable to finish.

  ‘I know,’ he answered quietly. ‘There’s a kind of habit builds up, isn’t there? A habit of care. You can’t just switch it off, even if the other person endeavours to make it easy for you by behaving as badly as possible. It still hurts. It still changes the way you look at the world. And it still makes you wonder what you did to make it happen. Whether, somehow, it is your fault, only you can’t see straight.’

  ‘Thanks. Yes, that’s how it is. Now, go away. I’ve admitted you were right, and I guess the reason you understand so well is because you’ve been through it, and I really feel for you about that, but—’

  ‘That’s not why I’m here.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘You shouldn’t drive when you’re feeling like this.’

  ‘I’ll be fine in a minute. Stop trying to look after me.’ She aimed the key at the ignition.

  ‘No, Annabelle.’ His hand swooped down, but she saw it coming and closed her own fingers tightly around the keys. They ended up in three layers, like some odd piece of fruit, with a seed and flesh and skin. Her keys, wrapped in her fist, covered in his hand. The hand was warm, hard, sure of itself. She looked up, still rebellious, and found Dylan leaning over her with narrowed eyes and a steady, determined mouth.

  Such a totally kissable mouth, she’d decided several weeks ago. Firm lips, not too full but not thin either. An illogical part of her instantly ached to find out how soft they would be, and how they would move. Demanding or gentle or wickedly seductive? A mix of all three?

  Whichever way he kissed, she craved it, beyond her burning disappointment over Alex’s behaviour, and knew that a man with Dylan’s experience could hardly be in doubt as to h
ow she felt.

  ‘Let me have those keys right now, Belle,’ he growled. It sounded like a proposition, not a threat.

  Let me have the keys to your bedroom…the keys to your body…the keys to your soul.

  ‘No. I’m fine,’ she insisted.

  For a moment, his grip tightened and he pulled even closer. She could see a faint mist of sweat in the tanned hollow of his throat, and she could smell the complex and satisfying fragrance of his skin, nutty and fresh.

  His body was intimidating in a way that made her breathless and expectant. A huge part of her wanted him to take control, make decisions, crush her in his arms and kiss her so thoroughly that she didn’t have time to think twice. Not about Alex or Dylan himself, her future, her family or anything else.

  Except that it was impossible and wrong. She had to pick up Duncan and go over to Mum’s. As she knew from experience, having Duncan with her was likely to make the household chores take twice as long, but her talk with Lauren at Gumnut Playcare recently had gone round and round in circles and hadn’t thrown up any solutions.

  Duncan had bitten Katie again. Katie’s mother wasn’t happy.

  Understandably.

  Duncan needed more attention and more freedom to be his active two-year-old self, but neither of these needs could be met in the structured environment of the child-care centre, without impinging unfairly on the other children. Annabelle no longer left him there for a second longer than absolutely necessary.

  Abruptly, she twisted her arm, hoping to loosen Dylan’s stubborn grip. She had expected resistance, but he didn’t give it. Instead, she pulled her hand away easily, and looked up to find his eyes momentarily closed and his lower lip caught between his teeth as if he were fighting off a spasm of pain. Or was it something else?

  ‘Dylan?’ she blurted, her voice suddenly husky.

  He opened his eyes, and straightened up. ‘Can’t stop you if you don’t want to be stopped,’ he said tightly.

  It wasn’t true. If he’d been prepared to use his body and his iron grip more forcefully, he could easily have won out.