The Latin Surgeon

by Laura MacDonald

  ‘You go to them.’ Sister Jennings sounded a little shocked, as if the very idea of the clients being asked to go anywhere was totally alien. ‘Now, here is the list and their suite numbers.’ She handed Lara a clipboard. ‘Oh, and, Lara, your hair is escaping from your cap.’

  ‘Oh, no, not again.’ Lara put one hand to her head and attempted to tuck stray curls into the white frilly cap. ‘I’m not used to wearing a cap,’ she said.

  ‘You don’t wear one at your other hospital?’ Celia Jennings raised her eyebrows.

  ‘No, we don’t,’ Lara replied. ‘At least, only when we are in Theatre.’

  ‘I think it’s a shame all these niceties are being dropped.’ Celia wrinkled her nose as if she had just encountered an unpleasant smell then proceeded on to her office, not giving Lara a chance to comment further.

  With a little sigh Lara consulted the list she had been given and found that of the three clients, two were women and one a man. The check lists for medical and personal history were thankfully very similar to those she was familiar with, and another quick check revealed that all three patients, or clients as she was desperately trying to think of them, were in suites on the second floor. Still fiddling with truant strands of her hair, she took the lift and moments later stepped out into the calm, tranquil atmosphere of the landing that housed the majority of the Roseberry’s clients.

  After a further check of the room numbers she tapped on one door, which bore the number twenty-two. A female voice bade her enter and as she pushed open the door she saw a middle-aged woman seated on a stool in front of the dressing table, gazing anxiously into the mirror. ‘Mrs Roberts?’ asked Lara, and the woman half turned her head. ‘Mrs Stephanie Roberts?’

  ‘Yes, that’s right.’ The woman nodded.

  ‘I’m Staff Nurse Lara Gregory, I’ve just come to take a few details from you.’ Lara pulled out a chair as she spoke and, sitting down beside the woman, consulted the notes on the clipboard. ‘I see you are scheduled for surgery tomorrow,’ she went on. ‘A full, classical face lift, and Mr Ricardo is your surgeon.’

  ‘Yes.’ The woman nodded again then gave a short laugh that had a rather bitter edge to it. ‘I’m finally submitting to the knife,’ she said. ‘I’ve battled with the idea for a very long time and I’ve now just about plucked up enough courage to go ahead with it—that’s if I don’t escape and make a run for it during the night.’

  ‘I’m sure you won’t do that,’ said Lara, trying to sound as reassuring as she could but finding it difficult to equate this woman’s need for surgery with that of the burns victims she was used to treating. ‘Now,’ she went on, ‘if we could just talk about your medical history. Have you had any operations in the past?’

  ‘Yes, I had both my children by Caesarean section and five years ago I had my gall bladder removed.’

  ‘Was this by keyhole surgery or the traditional method?’

  ‘The traditional way—I have the scar to prove it.’

  ‘And did you have any problems with the anaesthetic?’ asked Lara, as she filled in the appropriate boxes on the forms.

  ‘I was very sick afterwards.’

  ‘We’ll tell the anaesthetist that,’ said Lara, making a note, ‘then he will be able to take preventative measures so it won’t happen again. Now, what about previous illnesses?’

  ‘I have recurring bouts of bronchitis, usually in the winter—but that’s about all. We…we used to winter in Spain to try to avoid my bronchitis, but…’ She hesitated. ‘That was before…that was some time ago. I love the sun and I know I have sun damage on my face, which probably hasn’t helped.’

  ‘And what about medication?’ Lara glanced up. ‘Are you taking anything at the moment?’

  ‘Only supplements—you know, extra vitamins, that sort of thing. Oh, and the antidepressants, of course.’

  ‘How long have you been taking those?’

  A frown crossed Stephanie Roberts’s features, throwing them into sharp relief. ‘Well, since…’ She trailed off. ‘About two years.’

  ‘That’s all right.’ Lara nodded. ‘Now, just a few lifestyle questions, Mrs Roberts. First of all, do you smoke?’

  ‘No.’ She shook her head.

  ‘Have you ever smoked?’

  ‘Yes—I gave it up about five years ago.’

  ‘And were you a heavy smoker?’

  ‘About twenty a day.’

  ‘And what about alcohol?’ Lara glanced up again from her forms.

  ‘What about alcohol!’ Stephanie gave another, short, bitter laugh. ‘I have to have something, you know—that’s about all that’s left.’

  ‘Can you give me some idea how many units per week?’

  ‘Not really.’ She shrugged. ‘I look forward to my G and T in the evenings, wine with dinner, sometimes at lunchtime. Like I say, I don’t really know—I don’t keep count.’

  ‘So probably more than the recommended weekly guidelines?’

  ‘Yes, probably.’ Stephanie fell silent as Lara carried on filling in the forms.

  ‘Who is your next of kin?’ Lara asked, looking up at last.

  ‘My daughter, I suppose—unless an ex-husband counts.’

  ‘How old is your daughter?’ asked Lara, her pen poised over the clipboard.

  ‘Twenty-two.’

  ‘She will do fine. I just need to put down a contact name really.’

  ‘I lost my confidence,’ said Stephanie after a moment, and when Lara looked up again she went on. ‘When he left me, you know.’

  ‘Your husband?’

  ‘Yes.’ She gulped and nodded. ‘We’d been married twenty-five years and he left me for a girl barely older than our daughter. My confidence was shot to pieces…and it was only then that I realised how old I was looking…’

  ‘Surely that wasn’t your husband’s reason?’ murmured Lara.

  ‘Oh, he didn’t say that in so many words, but it’s pretty obvious, isn’t it? People have said that this girl he’s with looks just like me when I was younger. Anyway, at last I’ve decided to do something about it. You see…’ she straightened her shoulders and tossed back her hair ‘…soon I shall be a new woman, thanks to Mr Ricardo.’

  When Lara had completed her forms she left Stephanie and went to the next suite, where she carried out the same procedure with Edward Millington, a young man who was to have surgery the following day to correct his protruding ears.

  ‘I’m dreading it,’ he confessed to Lara, after she had asked him all the routine questions about previous operations, illnesses and medication, ‘but I’d really reached the stage where I couldn’t stand it any more. I’m due to go up to university soon and the thought of all the jokes and taunts that I’ve had all my life starting all over again as I meet a whole new lot of people was more than I could cope with, so I decided to go for it this time.’

  ‘Have you considered it before?’ asked Lara.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ he replied. ‘Many times. I’ve even reached this stage before but I could never go through with it—chickened out at the last moment. But this time I’m determined to see it through.’

  ‘Good for you,’ said Lara. ‘I’m sure you won’t regret it.’

  The third patient for admission was a woman who was to have surgery for breast reduction. She told Lara she was tired of being a figure of fun and just wanted to be normal.

  ‘I’ve been forced to change my opinion a bit where cosmetic surgery is concerned,’ Lara told Cassie after that first shift at the Roseberry. ‘Behind practically every desire for surgery there is a story of some sort of human suffering.’

  ‘Even if it’s only vanity?’ asked Cassie.

  ‘Even that,’ Lara agreed. ‘The aging actress who feels she is facing the end of her career because of the way she looks can be suffering inside just as deeply as the person who wants corrective surgery for, say, a prominent nose.’

  ‘Did you see much of Andres?’ Cassie asked curiously.

  ‘No, not really.’ Lara shook
her head. ‘He was in Theatre and from what I can gather, when he isn’t operating he’s more often than not at the Harley Street consulting rooms.’ She didn’t add that she’d been disappointed not to see him during that first shift, but just as she had been only too painfully aware that she had been looking for him, she had also been on edge, waiting for him to appear. In the end she’d had to be content with a brief glimpse of him in the theatre when she’d gone to Recovery to bring a client back to her room. He’d seen her, come to the door and said, ‘Lara, how’s it going?’

  ‘Fine, thank you,’ she’d replied. And that had been all. The doors had closed and she’d no longer been able to see him. And at the end of her shift she’d left the clinic and driven home through the damp February night, feeling strangely depressed. Why she should feel this way she had no idea. She had needed a job and Andres had given her that job. Really, that should be that. Maybe she should feel grateful, but that surely was all.

  So if that was the case, why did she feel this way, a mixture of restlessness and depression? What had she been expecting to happen, for heaven’s sake? Had she allowed her head to be turned by Cassie’s and Katie’s assumptions that there was more to the whole thing—that Andres had some sort of ulterior motive in offering her a job, that he was interested in her in some way? She had told them both that the very idea was ridiculous, that she and the surgeon were worlds apart, so why couldn’t she believe that herself?

  She didn’t see him for the next few days at St Joseph’s either because when it was her shift he was off duty or vice versa, and by the time she did see him again, which was towards the end of her second shift at the Roseberry, she had made a supreme effort to get her feelings under control and dismiss him from her thoughts. She would be civil to him if their paths crossed, but that was all.

  ‘Lara,’ he said, coming out of a room and encountering her unexpectedly in a corridor. One word. That was all, but it was all that was needed to melt her earlier resolve to be merely civil to him.

  ‘Hello,’ she said. She wasn’t sure whether to call him Andres or Mr Ricardo. She was pretty certain that Sister Jennings would expect her to say Mr Ricardo when they were on duty, just as Sue Jackman would expect the same at St Joseph’s—but they were alone in the corridor and somehow, instinctively, Lara knew what Andres himself would expect. ‘Andres,’ she added almost shyly.

  ‘I’ve been wondering how you’ve been getting on,’ he said, that rare smile lighting his face, ‘but I haven’t seen you anywhere. I asked at St Joseph’s but they said you were off duty.’

  ‘And when I was there you were off duty,’ she added with a little laugh.

  He glanced at his watch. ‘What time do you finish this evening?’ he asked.

  ‘Eight o’clock,’ she replied.

  ‘Why don’t we go somewhere for a quick drink before you go home?’

  She was aware that her heart leapt but her head urged caution. ‘Well, I don’t know…’ she began.

  ‘Can’t you phone Cassie and say you will be a little late?’ he said, effectively destroying any excuse she might have been about to make.

  ‘Yes, I suppose I can.’

  ‘Good—I’ll meet you in the foyer at eight o’clock.’

  ‘Yes, all right.’ She turned and walked away from him down the corridor, outwardly calm and serene but inwardly with her heart thumping with excitement.

  She was a couple of minutes late, having been delayed with a client who’d wanted to talk, but true to his word Andres was there waiting for her in Reception. In his black overcoat he looked every inch the successful consultant surgeon, and Lara found herself thankful that she’d chosen to wear her white trench coat, polo-necked sweater, tailored trousers and her leather boots, in which she knew she looked good.

  He was sitting at one of the tables, leafing through the pages of a magazine, but he looked up as she entered Reception, tossed the magazine aside and stood up.

  ‘Sorry I’m late,’ she said. ‘A client, you know…’

  He waved aside her apologies. ‘Do you have your car?’ he said, and when she nodded he went on, ‘I suggest we leave it here. There’s a little place just round the corner where we can go.’

  Andres wasn’t certain why he had asked Lara to go for a drink with him. He hadn’t planned it but, when he had come across her unexpectedly in the corridor, a sudden impulse had urged him to do so. Whether the fact that he had been thinking about her had anything to do with it or not, he didn’t really know. He only knew he had found himself uttering the words and feeling ridiculously pleased when she had accepted. And as for thinking about her—well, for some reason which he was at a loss to explain he had found her slipping into his thoughts at the most inopportune moments. When he was operating, his favourite opera would be playing, and at the most passionate part of the music she would be there in his mind. The picture he had of her was always the same—she would be alone, wearing a turquoise dress, her auburn hair like a fiery halo, walking through a field full of flowers. He wasn’t sure where this image had come from unless it had been conjured up by that elusive fragrance she wore, which reminded him of summer flowers. She was there when he woke up in the mornings before he even had a chance to turn his head and look at Consuela’s photograph. She was there many times during his day, hovering on the edges of his consciousness, and again at night, after his final thoughts of Consuela and in those last moments before sleep claimed him, it was that sun-filled image of Lara that he took with him into his dreams.

  She was sitting at a table in the window of the crowded wine bar, her head turned so that only her profile was visible to him as he stood at the bar. It was an entrancing profile—a short straight nose, high cheekbones, long lashes and a sensual mouth above a sharp but determined jaw. That mass of hair was still drawn back from her face in the way she wore it for work and fastened at the nape of her neck with a black velvet bow. Even as he watched her Andres felt a quickening of his pulse. She was wearing her white trench coat over a black outfit—a perfect foil against her hair—and boots with slim high heels.

  ‘Will that be all, sir?’

  Andres swung back to the bar to find the barman leaning forward anxiously and his order before him on the counter. ‘Oh, yes,’ he said, taking out his wallet. ‘Sorry.’ He’d become so lost in his contemplation of Lara that momentarily he’d become oblivious of everything else around him. After paying for the drinks, he carried the two glasses of wine back to the table and set them down, telling himself as he did so to stop being so ridiculous and to get a grip on himself.

  ‘So…’ He removed his overcoat, draped it over a chair and sat down. ‘How have you been getting along at the Roseberry?’

  ‘Very well really,’ Lara replied.

  He laughed. ‘You said that as if you were surprised, as if you hadn’t been expecting to get on well.’

  ‘Did I?’ She smiled. ‘I didn’t mean it to sound that way. But to be honest with you, I was a bit apprehensive. I thought it would be very different from St Joseph’s.’

  ‘And is it?’ he asked. ‘Different from St Joseph’s, I mean?’

  ‘In some ways,’ she replied slowly, ‘but not in others. Let’s face it, patients are patients whether they are called clients or not. They all need care and looking after, so from a nursing point of view it’s not really very different.’

  ‘In what ways do you find it different?’ He lifted his glass as he spoke. ‘Cheers.’

  ‘Yes, cheers.’ Lara lifted her own glass then took a sip of her wine before answering. ‘Well, I suppose it’s the whole private care aspect that is different, and the staffing and management is very different, of course. But I have to say you were quite right when you said the reasons for cosmetic surgery can be every bit as heart-wrenching as those for, say, a burns victim.’

  ‘We do sometimes have some pretty frivolous and needless requests,’ he said, setting his glass down and sitting back in his chair.

  ‘How do you deal with those?�
� she asked curiously.

  ‘One of the consultants will talk to the potential client at great length, and if it is felt that the client is unsuitable for surgery or if the proposed surgery is unnecessary or will not improve their confidence or quality of life in any way, they are dissuaded from pursuing their request any further.’

  ‘I see,’ Lara replied slowly.

  ‘Tell me,’ he said after a moment, ‘how are the shifts working out with your home life?’

  ‘Very well so far,’ she replied. ‘In fact, I think this new regime is encouraging Cassie to go out more and do more—although we have a long way to go yet. But I have to say, financially it will make a tremendous difference.’ She paused. ‘And we have you to thank for that.’ As she spoke she threw him an almost shy glance from beneath her eyelashes.

  ‘Not at all,’ he replied. ‘Don’t mention it.’

  ‘I mean it,’ she said. ‘We are very, very grateful to you, and if there is ever anything we can do in return…’

  He smiled and took a mouthful of his drink. As he set the glass down again an idea came unbidden into his mind. It was a crazy idea, one that really should not even be pursued, but as Lara lifted those green eyes in his direction he rapidly reached a decision. ‘Actually,’ he said, and she raised her eyebrows questioningly, ‘maybe there is something you could do…’

  ‘Yes?’ She sounded surprised but not alarmed or unwilling so, encouraged by this, Andres took a deep breath and proceeded to explain.

  ‘I am in something of a predicament,’ he said, wondering even as he spoke whether or not this was something in which he should involve Lara who now, by his own efforts, was not only a colleague but also an employee. ‘Since coming to London, friends of mine have been determined to find a partner for me.’

  ‘Do you mean partner in the business sense or the personal sense?’ A small smile played around Lara’s mouth.

  ‘Oh, the personal sense,’ he replied with a sigh. ‘Most definitely the personal sense.’ All around them the hubbub of the wine bar carried on, and as he struggled to find the right words to explain his predicament, at the same time wishing he’d never started, Lara spoke again.