A Woman Worth Waiting For

by Meredith Webber

  ‘Consultancy role? Is that what you do now? No teaching?’

  How to explain six months’ leave of absence from various consultancy and lecturing positions, for something as seemingly foolish as tracking down a woman he couldn’t get out of his mind? Particularly when the woman in question was questioning him?

  ‘It’s a long story and I haven’t unpacked my car yet. Could we go into that tomorrow night?’

  ‘I might have a date tomorrow night,’ Ginny told him, and though his heart lurched he maintained enough poise to reply.

  ‘Then I’ll tell Sarah, and you’ll never know.’

  Ginny’s smile returned, but it had lost some of its glow, as if an inner sadness was dimming the brightness.

  ‘Maybe that would be better,’ she said softly, and he knew she was thinking of the past—and of the sadness he’d caused her once before.

  What she hadn’t known, back then, had been that he’d shared her pain. Circumstances had forced them apart—but it had been his decision that they not keep in touch, his letter that had effectively ended things between them.

  To Ginny, that decision—that letter—must have seemed a betrayal…

  ‘Well, I’m off home,’ Sarah announced, rising to her feet and turning to Ginny to offer her thanks for the meal.

  ‘I’ll walk with you,’ Max said, although he ached to stay, if only to be in Ginny’s company a few more minutes.

  ‘It’s two doors away. I’ll manage on my own,’ Sarah said, so gently he guessed she’d sensed the tension in the air. ‘You two haven’t seen each other for a long time. I’m sure your unpacking can wait long enough for you to begin to catch up.’

  She walked out of the door, and as her footsteps sounded on the wooden boards, then the click of metal told them she was inserting her key in the lock, Max watched Ginny fuss with the plates, running water over them, refusing to turn around.

  Forcing him to speak!

  ‘I hurt myself as well as hurting you,’ he said, realising that particular thought must have had more strength than all the others jostling around in his head, so had forced its way out before any meaningless platitude could escape. ‘I wouldn’t want to quantify it with a more-than-you or less-than-you type of argument, but writing that letter was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life.’

  She turned and he saw the sheen of tears, imparting a luminous quality to the already beautiful eyes.

  ‘Then why did you do it?’

  The simplicity of the question kicked him in the gut.

  He stepped towards her but she held up her hands as if she didn’t want him any closer.

  ‘I explained at the time, or tried to, Ginny. You were still studying, pursuing a dream you’d had since childhood, and my immediate future at that time was so uncertain. When I realised I had to go back to the States, I thought putting a little time and space between us would be a good thing. But once there I realised it wasn’t going to be a quick visit—that I was going to have to stay for an indeterminate length of time.’

  He didn’t mention his mother’s illness, not wanting to offer it as an excuse. Not ready, even now, to talk about it in an abstract way.

  ‘So you wrote and ended things. Did you consider euthanasia was kinder than letting whatever we had die a lingering death?’

  ‘Abortion is probably closer to the mark if we’re using medical terms.’ Max felt again the weight of guilt and unhappiness he’d experienced when he’d written the letter, though at the time it had been lightened by the certainty he’d been doing the right thing. Could he explain that now? Would she understand?

  ‘In spite of the attraction we both felt, we’d barely begun to get acquainted in a relationship sense.’

  ‘Because I lacked experience,’ she said bitterly. ‘As if things might have been different if I’d had half a dozen boyfriends in high school and had rid myself of my virginity at an early age. Virginia the virgin queen, they called me at school—so I didn’t suit anyone there either.’

  Her bitterness buffeted him like a scorching desert wind, the words abrading his skin.

  ‘It was nothing to do with experience or virginity,’ he muttered at her, coming forward in spite of her earlier rejection. ‘But in the beginning, when we first met, my reluctance was to do with ethical questions. My position as your tutor was one of trust, Ginny. Getting involved with a student wasn’t part of the job description, and before we’d even worked through that dilemma I had to go away.’

  ‘Then the letter,’ she reminded him. ‘Telling me it was best not to stay in touch. I had no say in it? I didn’t deserve to be considered?’

  Max leaned his hands on the bench and bowed his head.

  ‘You were all I ever considered,’ he said, his voice so low she had to strain to catch the words.

  Ginny studied him, seeing the light pick out a few silver strands in his hair.

  Was it the truth? Had she been his only consideration?

  Either way, she’d learnt a lesson—to follow her head, not her heart. And certainly not her physical senses, which, from the way they were behaving now, hadn’t learnt the lesson.

  As if prompted by the silence, he raised his head and looked into her eyes, then smiled.

  ‘Let’s skip from past to present. Congratulations—I suppose that’s where I should start. You made it through med school, survived internship and now—is A and E a career choice or a stepping stone to somewhere else?’

  The smile had negated the ‘thinking with the head not the heart’ lesson as well but, pleased to have something ordinary to talk about, she rallied sufficiently to reply.

  ‘It might be a career choice, though I’m not certain yet. I’ve done two years in A and E departments and enjoy the work. I thought I’d miss ongoing patient contact, but no hospital doctor has the ongoing involvement a GP has. In other departments, doctors might see patients for a few days rather than a few hours, but with the fast patient turnover it’s not much more than that.’

  ‘Hospital doctoring rather than GP work? Is that one choice you have made?’

  Max moved onto a stool. Settling in?

  Did she mind?

  ‘Yes!’ She answered his question as the jury was still out on her internal one. ‘I like hospitals, like the hum of activity, the bustle of it all. I like the challenge of juggling priorities and getting the best out of the system. We’ve got a good system, it’s just top-heavy with administration and grossly under-funded, but—’

  The warm rumble of his chuckle stopped her.

  ‘I always did get carried away,’ she admitted, and won a smile that reawoke the trouble in her knees.

  ‘No, Ginny, you always had the most vibrant enthusiasm. I’m so pleased time and experience hasn’t dimmed it because it’s a rare and wonderful gift.’

  She turned her attention back to the sink, as if washing three plates and three forks was of mega-importance.

  ‘And Ellison? This is your second year here? You like the place?’

  ‘I like hospitals this size, and the place itself—the people,’ she said, releasing the dirty water and reaching for a tea-towel. ‘I had enough of big city hospitals during my training and decided then that a regional city would suit me better. Somewhere big enough to have a real hospital in the sense that it has a good range of departments, but not so big the hospital becomes like a city within itself and consequently impersonal.’

  She managed to get all the words out, though it took an effort since Max had joined her in the kitchen and had lifted the tea-towel from her hands. He was calmly wiping the dishes, while she stood beside him, rooted to the spot, trying to remember how to make her lungs work.

  ‘In here?’

  Max moved far enough away to release her from the spell, and she nodded agreement that the plate he waved towards her went into the cupboard he’d opened.

  ‘Boyfriend?’

  ‘Not in the cupboard,’ she managed, although the question had brought the paralysis back on.

/>   What business of his was it anyway?

  ‘None of my business!’ he muttered, agreeing with her thoughts. ‘Don’t know what made me say that.’

  But he did, of course.

  It was being with Ginny, seeing her, sharing the same air. Six years of his life had been wiped out in an instant and he was twenty-seven again. An earnest, nerdy young doctor intent on pursuing further studies, knocked senseless by an overwhelming attraction to a twenty-year-old student—all eyes, freckles and smile.

  He hung up the tea-towel and backed out of the kitchen, the better to avoid the temptation of taking her in his arms.

  ‘I suppose I’d better go,’ he said, dragging the words from reluctant lips while his hopeful heart longed to hear her argue with his suggestion.

  She looked at him and the uncertainty in her eyes raised expectations which were dashed by the shrill demands of the phone.

  It was on the bench, within arm’s length, and he watched her slender fingers lift the receiver and press it to her ear. The colour faded from her cheeks so quickly he reacted automatically, stepping towards her and slipping an arm around her waist to support her.

  Not that she noticed his presence! Her entire being was focused on the call, her tense body further indication that the news was bad.

  ‘I’ll be right there,’ was all she said, then she dropped the receiver back into its cradle and rubbed her hand against her skirt as if to rid her skin of contamination.

  ‘I’ve got to go back,’ she said, moving past him to pick up her keys, then she was out the door before he could ask any questions. As he followed her along the veranda he noticed a light on in the fourth flat. Another tenant?

  ‘Come on!’ Ginny’s voice brought him out of his thoughts. ‘You can act as my escort, and you might want in on it anyway. There’s a possibility she’s victim number four, though this time she was lucky enough to have got away.’

  He caught up with her as she walked down the steps.

  ‘Aren’t you off duty? What’s happened to whoever’s doing the night shift?’

  Ginny swung towards him, hesitated then hurried on.

  ‘There are only male doctors on duty at night at the moment and we try to offer rape victims a woman doctor.’ The words flew back over her shoulder like flat pebbles skipped across a pond.

  A rape victim! What was wrong with some men that they forced themselves on women?

  A rage as strong as his attraction flamed through his body, so he had to consciously calm himself before taking Ginny’s arm to cross the road.

  Going into A and E through the ambulance entry, Ginny led the way to one of the trauma rooms.

  ‘You’re studying stress,’ she reminded him. ‘Come and see some.’

  Once in the green cubicle, he realised that the sex of the doctor didn’t matter—neither was there time to worry about the protocol for rape victims. A young male doctor was battling to save the woman’s life. A long flat line on the ECG machine told its own story, but the first buzz of defibrillation produced peaks and valleys. Ginny moved into place beside him and worked as if the two of them were following a carefully choreographed dance. For the next half-hour the medical staff tried everything they knew to stabilise the woman, while the straight blue bruise where some kind of ligature had been tied around her neck deepened in colour and somehow emphasised the horror of her attack.

  ‘I’m afraid for her,’ Ginny murmured, when the woman’s vital signs picked up fractionally and the frantic activity eased. ‘Although the ambulancemen did an emergency tracheotomy and intubation, the damage to her neck means she’d already suffered a lack of oxygen to the brain before she was found, and organs would have begun to shut down.’

  ‘Damage to her neck?’ Max asked. ‘You mean internal damage, as well as the bruising.’

  Ginny nodded towards X-rays a nurse had brought in and slotted into the light boxes on the wall.

  ‘See the fractured hyoid bone, and here—that’s damage to the cartilage in the trachea and larynx. The radiologist’s note explains it.’

  She passed the slip of paper to Max, as someone opened the curtains and stepped in behind him.

  ‘A doctor once told me stranglers use far more force than they need.’ The newcomer’s voice was deep and seemed to hold an aching weariness. It was also familiar. As well as being the police officer in charge of the murder investigation, Brent Carson was Max’s cousin on his father’s side. And the person who’d recruited him to his unofficial job in the hospital—part consultant, part information-gatherer.

  ‘Max!’ Brent greeted him with a nod, before turning to Ginny. ‘Have you checked to see if she’s been raped?’

  Ginny shook her head.

  ‘We’ve been too busy trying to keep her alive, although that’s why I was called. The message came through as a rape case.’

  ‘The young couple who found her assumed it,’ Brent explained. ‘She was lying on the ground with her skirt pulled over her head and no underwear.’

  Max saw Ginny shudder—it matched his own reaction.

  ‘I’ll examine her for rape now,’ Ginny said quietly.

  Brent passed her the police kit. Ginny set it on the bench then pulled on clean gloves.

  She slid a collection of envelopes free of the packet, spreading them out so all the print was visible. Each envelope contained what she’d need for different samples, which would then be sealed back into their respective wrappers and handed over to the police. It was their lab work, not the hospital’s, which would seek out any secrets or discover any clues.

  With as much care and gentleness as she could, she spread the paper towel from the first envelope beneath the woman’s lower body, combed the woman’s pubic hair, took vaginal swabs and samples, sealing, labelling and signing every exhibit, then having Brent countersign each envelope.

  ‘There’s no visible signs of rape—no bruising or tearing. Were the other victims raped? I can’t remember reading that they were.’

  ‘Not forcibly enough to make it obvious,’ Brent told her. ‘Although they’ve all been sexually displayed. If he did have sex with them, he must have used a condom—but people do these days, don’t they? With so many police and forensic dramas on TV, everyone knows how the police work an investigation, so any murderer worth his salt takes extra precautions. This guy hasn’t left much of himself behind.’

  Much?

  Max found the word repeating itself in his head. So the police did have something! He stared at the seemingly lifeless body. The long dark hair, spread across the white sheet on the gurney, had the gleam of good health; the neat features, marred by the congested redness of strangulation, suggested the onset of maturity—a girl on the threshold of womanhood.

  ‘Do you know who she is?’

  Brent shook his head.

  ‘No ID at all. We’ll have to wait until someone misses her and phones in.’

  ‘V-fib!’

  The nurse watching the monitor alerted them all to the emergency, where the ventricular fibrillation of the heart had gone haywire. The male doctor gave the patient a hard thump on the chest, which often settled the rhythm, while Ginny prepared the paddles of the defibrillator again, smearing them with the jelly-like substance that conducted the electric charge through the skin.

  ‘Stand back,’ she said, holding the paddles in place while the doctor shot 200 joules of current into the lifeless body.

  ‘You know why everyone stands back?’ Max asked Brent, to take his mind off what was beginning to look like a hopeless task.

  ‘No, but they always do it, and I don’t argue,’ Brent said, the anxiety in his voice suggesting he, too, felt they were losing the battle.

  ‘You can get a shock from the patient if you’re touching any part of her. Human bodies are good conductors of electricity.’

  ‘They’re also bloody fragile!’ Brent muttered, as if he were somehow responsible for the terrible attack on the young woman.

  The first shock did nothing and, whi
le her colleague started chest compressions, Ginny organised a dose of epinephrine and infused it through the IV tube. She checked the tube and the oxygen being fed into the woman’s lungs, tried drugs to stabilise the erratic heartbeat, then raised the voltage of the current, ordered staff to stand clear and shocked her again.

  She followed the procedure all emergency personnel knew by heart—shock, drugs, shock, drugs, trying different drugs to stop the crazy beating. But though the voltage was increased twice, and more drugs tried—with frantic chest compressions forcing the medication through the victim’s body each time—in the end the heart gave up and they couldn’t bring her back. They could pump oxygen into her lungs, but without heartbeats to collect it from there and carry it to her brain, further shutdown was occurring every second.

  The bruised line on the girl’s neck had seemed to grow even more vivid as the team worked, and the callousness of the man who’d caused them filled Max’s heart with anger. How could someone dare to snuff out this woman’s life as carelessly as he might have stepped on an ant?

  Working with silent determination, Ginny finished what she’d been doing before the crisis, eventually resealing the outer envelope of the rape pack and signing it. She passed it to Brent, who left the cubicle then returned without it. No doubt it was already on its way to the crime lab.

  ‘Does the fact that he doesn’t rape them mean it’s not a sexual crime?’ the young doctor asked, as he and Ginny began removing the monitor leads and drip lines.

  Brent, perhaps not wanting to get too involved in conversation, said nothing, but Max could see no reason not to explain.

  ‘Serial killing is nearly always a sexual crime,’ he explained. ‘The offender might not get his thrill from raping or otherwise humiliating the bodies of his victims, but he’d still be aroused by the actual crime. It’s a bigger pay-off than you’d think, because he can replay the killing over and over in his mind.’