The little while stretched to a full two hours, and by the time he’d gone, and she’d got the twins into bed, Helen had a thumping headache, which wasn’t helped by Tom’s cheerful chatter.
‘Told you everything would be OK, didn’t I?’ he said as she dragged on her nightshirt, then brushed her teeth. ‘All that agonising over the food. Mark’s not choosy—never has been.’
‘So it seems,’ she muttered grimly, pulling back the duvet and getting into bed.
Tom fiddled with the bedside light switch for a few seconds, then sighed. ‘Look, I promise I’ll give you more warning next time, OK?’
Next time? Over her dead body would there be a next time, she thought, rolling onto her side and tugging the duvet up to her ears.
‘The kids really liked him a lot, didn’t they?’ Tom continued as he slipped into bed beside her. He chuckled as he switched off the bedside light. ‘Did you see Emma’s face when he was telling her about the alligators—’
‘Do we have to talk about this now?’ she demanded. ‘It’s after midnight, and we’ve got to work tomorrow.’
‘Oh. Right. Sorry.’
Tom sounded so contrite that Helen groaned inwardly. It wasn’t his fault that his friend was handsome, and charming, and completely amoral. It wasn’t his fault that she was bewildered, and confused, and wished she’d never heard the name Mark Lorimer, far less met him.
‘No, I’m sorry,’ she mumbled. ‘I shouldn’t have snapped at you, but it’s been a long day.’
He gathered her to him, spoon-shaped against his chest. ‘It’s all right, love,’ he murmured, nuzzling the back of her neck. ‘I shouldn’t have sprung Mark on you like that, and I won’t do it again without giving you plenty of notice.’
She didn’t want plenty of notice. She didn’t want Mark in her home ever again.
‘Tom, about Mark…’ she began, only to come to a halt.
How could she say, Look, your friend’s hitting on me? She couldn’t. He’d be so angry, and if Mark left the hospital before Rachel returned from her compassionate leave their schedules would be a nightmare. And she shouldn’t need to go running to Tom for help. She was a fully grown-up woman who should be able to sort this out herself.
‘What about Mark?’ Tom asked.
‘I was just wondering if he’d ever been married, or in a long-term relationship, or anything,’ she lied.
‘Good grief, no.’ Tom chuckled, his fingers stroking up and down her back, easing the tension there. ‘He’s a strictly love-’em-and-leave-’em sort of a guy, so I wouldn’t recommend introducing him to any of your friends.’
She didn’t intend to—especially not to the married ones.
An affair. That’s what Mark had been suggesting with all his fancy words and flowery compliments. For them to have an affair.
Well, she didn’t do affairs, never had. Some of the staff at the Belfield did. She’d seen it happen on the wards, in the operating theatres, but she’d never been tempted. Never been interested.
Until now.
The words crept into her head before she could stop them, and she bit her lip savagely. What was she thinking? She loved Tom. They had a good marriage, two beautiful children, and she could never deceive him, never.
‘Tom…’ She cleared her throat. ‘Tom, have you ever thought—have you ever met another woman—and thought, Wow, but she’s terrific?’
‘What sort of daft question is that?’ he murmured, his hand slipping up under her nightshirt to cup her breast.
‘It’s not a daft question,’ she protested. ‘We’ve been married for ten years, and it would only be natural if you’d found yourself maybe attracted to somebody, maybe tempted to—’
‘Sweetheart, you don’t half talk a lot of nonsense at times.’ He chuckled huskily.
It wasn’t nonsense. Surely it was simply human nature to sometimes wonder if the grass might not be greener on the other side? To perhaps occasionally wonder if this was all there was. But how to explain to him, how to say it?
Helen tensed slightly as she felt his fingers slide slowly down her stomach, and when they reached between her legs, rubbing gently at first, then more persistently, she put her hand over his quickly.
‘Do you mind if we don’t? It’s just…it’s just that I’m a bit tired tonight.’
The fingers stilled, then withdrew. ‘Sorry, love. I should have thought.’
Which made her feel rotten, and guilty, but to make love with him, after what she’d been thinking…
Tom fell asleep quickly. She heard his breathing slow, then deepen, but she couldn’t sleep.
Helen lay awake for a long time, staring at the streetlight outside the house, listening to the distant hum of traffic from Great Western Road, and wished with all her heart that she’d never met a man with a shock of black hair and a pair of sparkling green eyes.
CHAPTER FOUR
‘YOU’RE going to be just fine, Rhona,’ Helen insisted as the woman stared nervously up at her from the theatre trolley. ‘The anaesthetist will be here in a minute to give you an injection, then all you’ll have to do is sleep.’
‘I know,’ Rhona said, then swallowed convulsively. ‘It’s just…Thanks for coming down with me, Doctor, for staying with me until I go in. I really appreciate it.’
‘It’s no trouble.’ Helen smiled.
Which wasn’t strictly true. In fact, hanging about outside the operating room, waiting for the anaesthetist to arrive, was scarcely the most productive use of her time, but Rhona had been so clearly terrified when the porter had arrived to collect her from the ward that coming down with her had seemed the only thing to do.
‘It’s the waiting I can’t stand,’ Rhona continued, her head turning anxiously as the door opened and one of the theatre nurses appeared. ‘I just wish they’d get on with it.’
‘It won’t be long now,’ Helen said soothingly. ‘I understand Dr Brooke and Dr Lorimer have almost finished scrubbing up—’
‘Dr Lorimer’s nice, isn’t he? And he has a way of talking to you…Well, you just know you can trust him, don’t you?’
Oh, really? Helen thought sourly. She wouldn’t trust him as far as she could throw him, and that wasn’t very far. She might have been shaken and confused when Mark had come to dinner on Thursday, but she wasn’t confused now. She was angry.
Just who the hell did he think he was? Offering her a cheap, sordid affair, and expecting her to be flattered. And that’s what he’d been offering, she’d no doubts about that. All his fancy talk about them having something special together—He’d meant an affair, but she wasn’t some bimbo with half a brain cell and no pride. She was worth more than that—a hell of a lot more than that—and he could stuff his flattery and his compliments where the sun didn’t shine.
‘This operation that Dr Lorimer is going to do on my Fallopian tube,’ Rhona continued. ‘It’s quite a difficult one, isn’t it?’
‘It’s Dr Brooke who’s performing the surgery—Dr Lorimer is simply assisting,’ Helen replied as evenly as she could, ‘and it’s difficult because the instruments he’ll be using are so tiny.’
‘Couldn’t he just use ordinary instruments—make it easier for himself?’
Helen smiled. ‘How big do you think your Fallopian tubes are, Rhona?’
The woman frowned. ‘I’ve never really given them much thought. Something like a garden hose, perhaps?’
The theatre sister choked and Helen laughed, too. ‘Rhona, at its thinnest point your Fallopian tube is about the size of a piece of button thread.’
‘Cripes,’ the woman gasped. ‘I knew Dr Lorimer was good, but I didn’t realise he was that good.’
Helen gritted her teeth. ‘It isn’t Dr Lorimer who’s performing the surgery, it’s—’
‘OK, we’re ready to roll,’ Mark declared, coming through the swing doors of the theatre looking for all the world as though he’d just stepped off the set of some glossy American medical drama. ‘Time for you to go to sleep, Rho
na.’
She managed a wobbly smile. ‘If you say so, Doctor.’
‘Hey, stop worrying,’ he said, his green eyes smiling at her from above his mask. ‘I haven’t lost a patient yet.’
‘Thanks for coming down, Helen,’ Tom muttered in an undertone as the anaesthetist inserted a needle into the back of Rhona’s hand and asked her to start counting. ‘I understand she was in a bit of a state.’
‘I didn’t mind,’ she replied. ‘I just hope everything goes OK, and you don’t find anything else wrong.’
‘I’m sure we won’t,’ Mark said, overhearing her. ‘And thanks for your help, Helen. Like Tom said, we appreciate it.’
To Tom’s surprise his wife coloured, muttered something unintelligible under her breath, then strode through the waiting-room door, letting it clatter shut behind her. Which wasn’t like her, but, then—just lately—there’d been a lot about his wife that wasn’t like her.
Like the animosity she obviously felt towards Mark. If he even mentioned his name her face became rigid, and yet the dinner on Thursday had gone really well. The kids had certainly enjoyed it. They were already asking when Mark would be coming back.
‘Helen’s excellent with patients, isn’t she?’ Mark commented as the theatre nurses wheeled a now unconscious Rhona into the operating theatre.
‘She could have made a first-rate surgeon, too,’ Tom replied absently.
‘Really?’ Mark exclaimed.
‘Vital signs perfect—ready to go whenever you are,’ the anaesthetist observed.
Quickly Tom made an incision into Rhona’s abdomen to accommodate both the microscope and instruments, then gently slid the microscope into her uterus.
‘Helen won the gold medal for surgery in her final year at med school.’
‘You’re kidding?’ Mark said, and Tom shook his head.
‘Straight up, no kidding.’
‘Then why on earth is she still an SHO? If I’d won a gold medal—’
‘Emma and John came along rather sooner than we’d planned, so…’
‘She put her career on hold to look after them,’ Mark finished for him. ‘You’re a lucky man, Tom. Not many women would have been prepared to do that.’
He was lucky, Tom realised guiltily, especially when he couldn’t actually remember ever sitting down with Helen and discussing which of their careers would take a back seat until the children were older. Somehow it had just sort of happened that she’d stayed home to look after the twins until they’d been old enough to go to nursery, and she hadn’t appeared to resent it. At least she’d never said she had.
Maybe she did now. Maybe that was what so many of her recent odd conversations had been about. The ones she’d start, then shake her head and mutter something about it being not important, for him to forget it.
Perhaps she was trying to work up the courage to tell him she wanted to leave the Belfield, to try for a promotion at a different hospital.
What was it she’d said to Mark about them still being there ten years after they’d qualified?
‘Who’s to say what’s round the corner for any of us—what changes we might make?’
Did she mean she wanted to leave? If she did, then they’d leave. She’d given up so much for him over the years that there was no way he was going to stand in her way for something she really wanted.
‘How does it look?’ Mark asked when the microscope was in place.
‘Right Fallopian tube completely blocked, as we suspected,’ Tom replied, ‘but luckily the blockage doesn’t seem to extend through the wall of the uterus into the uterine cavity. Want to see for yourself?’
Mark did.
‘It looks like a straightforward cut, remove and sew-up job to me,’ he observed.
‘Oxygen reading normal, BP steady, everything A-OK here,’ the anaesthetist announced.
Tom flexed his shoulders. ‘OK, let’s go for it.’
It was a long operation, and a delicate one. Removing the damaged part of the Fallopian tube was difficult enough, but what was equally important was to ensure no damage was caused to any of the surrounding delicate structures. A careless scrape here—the very slightest abrasion there—would cause adhesions to form, and then the whole operation would have been pointless.
‘You’re wasted here, mate,’ Mark said in obvious admiration when Tom finally straightened up after inserting the last tiny stitch into Rhona’s rejoined Fallopian tube. ‘With your skill you could make a fortune if you went abroad.’
‘Maybe.’
‘Maybe nothing,’ Mark insisted. ‘You’d have a queue of infertility clinics lining up to employ you if you put the word out that you were available.’
Tom smiled as he checked Rhona’s uterus for signs of excessive bleeding, then waited while the tiny instruments he’d used were counted by the theatre nurses. ‘I wouldn’t want to do fertility treatment all the time. I enjoy the variety of Obs and Gynae too much.’
‘Then why don’t you apply for an Obs and Gynae post abroad?’ Mark asked as he took Tom’s place at the operating table and began stitching the incision he’d made into Rhona’s stomach. ‘Why struggle on here with substandard equipment and not enough staff?’
‘Because I like it. It’s a good hospital, Mark, despite its shortcomings,’ he continued as Mark shook his head. ‘And Gideon’s working on Admin, trying to get them to agree to us having another member of staff.’
‘Yes, but—’
‘What we really want is our own infertility clinic. A clinic affiliated with Obs and Gynae, but with its own consultant, rather than us doing both the infertility and our normal work. Gideon thinks Annie’s brother, David, might be interested if we can get it up and running. He’s working as a specialist registrar at the Merkland Memorial at the moment, but he’s not happy there and I think he’d come to us like a shot if we could offer him a consultancy.’
‘If being the salient word,’ Mark said when Rhona was wheeled, still unconscious, into the recovery room where the nurses would monitor her breathing, consciousness and blood pressure as she emerged from the anaesthesia. ‘You’re an idiot, Tom—you know that, don’t you?’
‘Some of us would call him loyal,’ one of the theatre nurses declared tightly, clearly having overheard their conversation, and Mark grinned.
‘Well, somebody obviously agrees with you.’
Tom wondered if Helen did. Did she think he was loyal, or did she think he was a fool? It was time he found out.
Helen wasn’t thinking about loyalty, or the hospital, or her future. She was too busy trying to keep her temper.
‘It was Dr Brooke who performed your Caesarean, Mary,’ she declared tersely once Mrs Alexander had come to the end of her eulogy of how wonderful Mark Lorimer was, how skilled, how handsome. ‘He was the one who delivered your baby, made sure nothing went wrong during the operation.’
‘I know, but Dr Lorimer’s so kind, so thoughtful, isn’t he, and have you noticed his eyes, Doctor? They’re green.’
I don’t care if they’re sky-blue pink, Helen longed to yell at her. Yes, he’s handsome, yes, he’s a good surgeon, but he’s only been here three weeks. My husband’s worked at the Belfield for ten years, and he’s a considerably better surgeon, but just because he’s not jaw-droppingly handsome, and doesn’t trot around flattering everybody, he’s suddenly become invisible.
‘Did Dr Brooke explain that we’ll be keeping you and your baby in for about a week?’ she asked as calmly as she could.
Mary nodded. ‘He said I’ve to keep taking the heparin when I go home.’
‘Only for about six weeks,’ Helen reassured her. ‘It’s just to make sure the clot has completely gone.’
‘I know. Dr Lorimer came to see me yesterday, and he explained all about it. He gives you such confidence, doesn’t he—Dr Lorimer?’
Helen counted to ten, and managed a very small, tight smile. ‘I’m just pleased everything’s turned out all right for you,’ she said, before turning abruptly
on her heel and walking out of the ward.
‘You look fit for murder,’ Annie declared when Helen swung into the staffroom and yanked a cup out of the cupboard. ‘Anybody I know?’
‘Let’s just say I’m getting a little bit tired of all our patients assuming that the only surgeon we have in Obs and Gynae is Mark Lorimer,’ Helen replied grimly. ‘And if that sounds petty, I’m sorry but right now I feel petty.’
Annie chuckled. ‘Don’t apologise to me. Personally I’m beginning to wonder if I should start carrying a sign saying, REMEMBER MY HUSBAND? HE’S ACTUALLY THE CONSULTANT IN CHARGE OF THIS DEPARTMENT.’
‘What is wrong with everybody around here?’ Helen continued, banging the cup down on the staffroom table, then following it with the jar of coffee. ‘Are they all cracked?’
‘I don’t know about everybody, but that coffee jar and mug are certainly in serious danger.’
The junior doctor’s eyes were brimming with laughter, and Helen groaned. ‘I’m going crazy, aren’t I? I’ve totally lost the plot, and I’m going crazy.’
‘I think you just don’t like your husband being ignored any more than I like my husband being sidelined,’ Annie observed as Helen spooned some coffee into the mug. ‘The trouble is, Mark looks so very much the part, doesn’t he?’
‘Looks aren’t everything,’ Helen retorted. ‘It’s brains and ability that count, not black hair, green eyes, and a tan. It’s skill and dedication that are important, not whether you can chat up every woman in sight. And not just chat them up, but hit on them, suggest that they—’
She came to a horrified, panic-stricken halt. She’d said too much—way too much. There was concern in Annie’s eyes, and not just concern, and if she didn’t start backtracking fast she was going to be asked questions she most certainly didn’t want to answer.
‘I’m sorry,’ she continued quickly with a laugh that sounded false even to her own ears. ‘I’m overreacting—I know I am—but I’m sick to death of all this “isn’t Mark wonderful” stuff.’
‘And all the attention he’s been giving you.’
It wasn’t a question, it was a statement, and hot colour flooded Helen’s cheeks. ‘I haven’t been encouraging him.’
The Surgeon's Marriage Page 6
