by Rebecca Lang
‘Thank you. You’re making me blush,’ she said, quite unnecessarily, as he was clearly noting her flushed face.
‘Good,’ he said, grinning at her and Emma. ‘It makes me feel young again to find a woman who can blush at what I have to say to her.’
‘Get on with you,’ Emma said scathingly. ‘You are young.’
‘I’m thirty-five, going on fifty.’
‘That’s nothing,’ Emma said. ‘I’m twenty-seven, going on fifty.’
Distractedly, Anna thought her own thoughts. It’s not just what you say that makes me blush, she thought tartly, it’s also what you know about me and what you can infer from what I’ve told you. Biting her tongue, she refrained from articulating her thoughts. Maybe if Emma had not been there, she would have said something of her thoughts, if not all.
In the crowded room he stood close, of necessity, and she felt overwhelmed. ‘It…it was a very interesting case,’ she said. ‘Will he be all right?’
‘He’ll get over the operation all right,’ he said. ‘But he’s not out of the woods, of course, having had cancer. There does not seem to be a spread of the tumour, so when he’s recovered we may give him a course of chemotherapy to make sure he’s all right on that score.’
‘I see.’ Anna nodded. ‘I do hope he’ll be all right, he’s still young.’
‘Yes, he’s only forty-four.’
They continued to talk, while Anna felt her red cheeks gradually returning to normal, and Emma tactfully left them to get herself another cup of coffee.
And I’m very impressed with you, Seth Ruelle, Anna thought, very, very impressed. In some ways she felt as though she had been knocked over by a sledgehammer, that was the effect he was having on her. It was pathetic really, she chided herself, the first good-looking, charming man you come into contact with, you turn into a quivering jelly because you’ve been deprived for so long. Tensely, she wondered if he could divine something of her reaction to him, hoping fervently that it was not the case. After all, she knew next to nothing about him. He might be married, and have a harem on the side as well. She smiled at her own feeble joke.
‘Can I share the joke?’ he said, looking at her quizzically.
‘Oh, no,’ she said. ‘A very private thought.’
‘Pity. Can I get you another cup of coffee, then? That will give you a chance to get those lovely cheeks to stop burning.’
‘It’s cruel of you to remark on it,’ she said.
‘I know,’ he said, taking her cup out of her weak hand. ‘Don’t take any notice of me. It’s a while since I’ve enjoyed anything that approximated a flirtation.’
‘Is that what it is?’ she said. ‘The same goes for me, so I can’t even recognise one.’
He grinned at her. ‘Don’t go away, Ms Grey,’ he said.
I wouldn’t dream of it, she thought. For one thing, her legs were so weak she couldn’t walk. And another thing—she had an excuse in the shape of a child for not having had a flirtation. She wondered what his reasons could be. That didn’t go with the harem idea.
‘You look bemused and somewhat glassy-eyed,’ Emma observed as she sidled up to Anna. ‘I’m going to the washroom before going back, and I advise you to do the same, but not before you’ve had a good old flirt with the delectable Seth.’
‘Oh, God, is it noticeable?’
‘Only to me, as I’m highly attuned to those things, and I know him pretty well. I would say that he’s dying to get his hands on you.’
‘Oh, Em. Don’t say that. I can’t live with it.’
‘I have said that.’
‘Is he…is he married?’ she whispered urgently.
‘Not that I know of,’ Emma said, ‘but I bet he’s got a lot on the side.’
‘I was thinking that he might have a harem.’
‘That too,’ Emma said. They both laughed.
‘He’s attractive,’ Anna conceded. ‘But I don’t even like him. He was rather mean to me when I met him.’
‘Sure you like him. It’s all over your face.’
‘Oh, is it? Heck!’
‘Don’t worry, that’s only because I know you well. Nobody else could tell. Here he comes, so I’m going. Don’t forget that washroom. You might find yourself standing for the next four hours, unable to leave the room.’
‘What has she been saying to you?’ Seth enquired as he handed her the coffee. ‘She likes to tease.’
‘She suggested that you had a harem,’ Anna dared to say, putting words into Emma’s mouth, then took a swallow of the too-hot coffee.
‘And she said that I was planning to add you to it?’
‘Well…something like that,’ she said, flushing again.
‘She might be right there,’ he said.
Anna looked at the big clock on the wall, seeing that she had only four minutes left of the coffee-break. ‘Oh, time’s up,’ she said. ‘I must go back.’
Seth grinned at her. ‘Running away from me, Anna?’
‘Yes,’ she said. With the cup gripped firmly in her hand, she let herself out of the lounge and strode along the outer corridor towards the washroom. She had almost forgotten the extent of the friendly joking and teasing that went on in the operating rooms, to defuse the tension of the job. It generally didn’t mean anything, and one took it in the spirit in which it was intended. Seth’s flirtations, if one could call them that, did not mean anything.
Emma was coming out of the washroom.
‘See you back in the OR,’ Emma said. ‘Do you want to scrub with me for the next case? It should be a straightforward removal of a lobe of the liver, no cirrhosis, for a secondary tumour. We’re running late now, of course.’
‘Yes, I’d like to scrub, Em.’
After the stress of the previous case, she now felt light and optimistic, basking in the praise that Seth had given her. It had been generous of him.
CHAPTER SIX
THE rest of the day went by quickly, an interesting day all in all. When the evening shift of nurses came on duty at half-past three, Dr Ruelle was just finishing his last elective case of the day.
‘Thank you, Emma,’ he said quietly. ‘Thank you, Anna. I hope it’s been a good first day for you.’
‘Oh, it has,’ Anna responded enthusiastically. ‘Very interesting.’ What she really wanted to say was that she had found him very impressive, his technical skill, his calm assurance and his polite interaction with everyone he worked with…which was not the case with all surgeons. But there was no way she could say that.
‘Great. I’ll look forward to working with you again,’ he said. ‘Will it be Wednesday?’
‘Yes,’ she said.
Unlike Simon, he did not rip off his mask theatrically in front of her. Instead, he looked at her steadily, seriously, his joking mood of the coffee-lounge gone, as though he was trying to suss her out, which had an odd, disturbing effect on her. Just by working together, in this tense atmosphere, they were certainly getting to know something about each other. In a place like this there was no subterfuge.
The evening shift nurses came into the room then, breaking the emotional contact that had temporarily sprung up between Anna and Seth in the brief verbal exchange and eye contact.
As she turned to go out of the room, Anna remembered the words that he had uttered when he first met her. ‘I find your story unlikely.’
She tried to harden her heart against him.
* * *
It was good to have a day off after each day of work, in which she could catch up on all the things she had to do of a domestic nature and spend time with Finn.
On the Friday of that first week she scrubbed for the first case of the day on her own, Emma and Jay having decided that she was ready and she had agreed.
Although she was nervous, she felt that she would be all right, with Emma there to keep a watchful eye on her and to prompt her if necessary. One of the more difficult things was to remember all the different sutures that the surgeons used to sew up and to close
the incision. She took deep, calming breaths while they were waiting to commence.
When Seth had carefully and expertly removed the liver tumour he’d been operating on and had placed it in a stainless-steel bowl, he turned to Jay, the circulating nurse. ‘Jay, would you ask the pathologist to come here to take a look at this, please? She’s expecting my call. Before I close up here, I want to make sure the margins are clear.’
Anna knew that the pathologist would come to make a few cuts in the specimen to make sure that the part taken out of the liver contained all the cancerous tissue, that it was surrounded by a generous margin of healthy tissue that had not been invaded by the cancer.
In a few minutes the side door of the room opened and Anna saw, surprisingly in that setting, one of the most beautiful women she had ever seen. She wore a white lab coat over a pale green scrub suit.
‘Good morning,’ she said to the room in general, smiling. She had naturally red hair, the pale, creamy skin, inclined to freckle, that went with it, and beautiful big hazel eyes under dark arched brows.
‘That’s Dr Carmel Saigan,’ Emma said to Anna quietly. ‘One of the pathologists.’
Anna simply raised her eyebrows in surprise that such beauty should be hidden away in the laboratories, which were often located in the basement of a hospital. No doubt this doctor was a very intelligent woman who took her beauty for granted. Anna could just imagine that Dr Saigan had been told from a very early age that she should be in the movies, but not perhaps by those who had had the most influence over her in her impressionable years. Either that, or she had been a very strong-minded individual.
Seth walked over to her. ‘Morning, Carmel,’ he said, his voice soft. ‘Take a good look at this for me, would you?’
‘Sure,’ she said, smiling up at him as she drew on a pair of rubber gloves.
Anna got the impression that these two doctors had something going between them, although perhaps she was being fanciful, she told herself. These days she was hyper-sensitive to relationships and possible relationships, aware of nuances in the behaviour of others. This came, she thought, from her acute awareness of her own loss. She tended to think that other people were happy, connected, while she was always seeking and not finding, even though her common sense urged her to the contrary at times.
The two doctors stood on opposite sides of the small trolley, their heads close together as they bent over the specimen. They did not touch, as he was sterile and she was not.
They all watched as the pathologist, using her own scalpel, made several parallel cuts into the centre of the specimen where the tumour was located. ‘You have good margins,’ she said at last. ‘This is good.’
Seth turned round to the nurses. ‘Emma, Anna, Jay, would you like to take a look at this? It’s a classic example of a liver tumour that’s confined to one place.’
One by one they looked at the specimen that had been cut open to reveal the tumour. It never failed to leave Anna in awe that these hidden things could be revealed to the human eye. They could clearly see the difference between the tumour of cancerous cells and the healthy tissue that surrounded it, and they all got a sense of satisfaction that they had been a part of solving the problem.
The pathologist took the specimen away with her, and they returned to the job in hand. By the end of the operation Anna was again aware of a very strong sense of professional respect for Seth.
* * *
After work she went home on a streetcar, her mind buzzing with all that had happened during the very busy day as she stared unseeingly out of the window while the vehicle clattered along on its tracks. All in all, it had been a good day.
Meeting the beautiful pathologist, seeing her rapport with Seth, had had the effect on her, of making her feel more than ever like the exhausted single mother that she was, trying to juggle the two aspects of her life. Perhaps Dr Carmel Saigan was a single mother, for all she knew. Anyway, beside that woman, with her bright hair and obvious rapport with Seth, she had felt insignificant. Why it should matter, she wasn’t sure, but somehow it did.
And she reluctantly had to admit that she did not want to be totally insignificant as far as Seth was concerned. If he were to help her in her search for Simon she would need to have him very much on her side. As things stood now, she could not say exactly what his attitude was towards her. That he was wary of her, albeit in a subtle way, was definite.
When she arrived back in her basement apartment, the first thing she did after taking off her coat was to check her answering-machine. There was one message, and her heart leapt in anticipation as she heard the voice of Hector Smythe.
‘Give me a call when you get in, Ms Grey,’ he said. ‘I’ll be in my office until at least six-thirty.’ He had left his number, so she dialled it immediately, getting through to him directly.
‘I have a little bit of news for you, Ms Grey,’ he said. ‘We’ve been able to check with both the Canadian and the United States professional medical colleges, with which all physicians must be registered if they wish to work in those countries, and we discovered that Dr Simon Ruelle is not currently a member of either of them. So we can say with assurance that he is not working in North America.’
‘I see,’ Anna said quietly, a little more hope dying within her. ‘That’s interesting information. How did you get it, Mr Smythe?’
‘Dr Seth Ruelle got it for us, actually,’ Hector Smythe said. ‘We could have got it ourselves, eventually, but he expedited the search for us.’
‘Oh,’ she said. ‘I was working with him today and he didn’t mention it.’
‘Well, he wants to remain in the background and wants me to be the one to talk to you. After all, it’s our investigation. We’ve been very lucky that he’s taken an interest.’
‘Yes…’
‘He told me he would be in touch again.’
‘I see,’ Anna said again, a familiar sense of foreboding taking hold of her. ‘If Simon isn’t working in North America, where could we try next? Assuming he’s alive…’
‘We’re looking for family connections,’ he said. ‘We have to tread carefully. We have to consider the possibility that he might not want to know that he has a child, and we certainly don’t want any other members of his family knowing about it before he knows himself…assuming that he has any other family.’
‘Will you try South Africa?’ Anna said tentatively.
‘That’s exactly where we are going to look, at the suggestion of Dr Ruelle,’ Hector said, sounding enthusiastic, as though he was really warming to the chase. ‘Dr Ruelle has agreed to help us there. We’re going to be looking at parts of Africa, as your Simon was born in Zimbabwe, and we’re going to look at Cape Town.’
‘Why there specifically?’
‘The doctor has some evidence that there are Ruelles living there, either not related to him or maybe distantly related, but perhaps more closely related to the missing man.’
‘I see. Well…thank you so much.’ There was a feeling of sick excitement in the pit of her stomach.
‘I’ll be in touch, Ms Grey, at least every three or four days, whether we have anything significant to report or not, so that you’re not wondering what we’re up to.’
‘Thank you, Mr Smythe,’ she said again.
When she had changed into jeans and a sweatshirt, she went upstairs to see Finn and her mother. Although she was looking forward to a weekend off, she found that she was also looking forward to being at work again. Thank God, she told herself, that the move back to work had turned out to be a positive thing so far. She would keep her mental fingers crossed that it would remain so. Part of her enjoyment was that she liked working with Seth, even though he did not appear to want any direct communication with her about Simon. Maybe that was for the best. At the same time she did not want to examine more closely her enjoyment of his professional company.
‘Finn!’ she called. ‘I’m back!’
‘Mummy!’
It was always such a pleasu
re to hear his voice, to pick him up and hug him, to have his arms around her neck. As she scooped him up, marvelling at how heavy and compact he felt these days, she made a firm attempt to shift her mental processes, to give her full attention to Finn and to forget both Simon and Seth.
‘How’s my boy?’ she said.
‘Good,’ he said.
* * *
The next two weeks went by very quickly. Because Anna was working on Seth’s operating days, she saw him and worked closely with him every day she was there. The transition of thinking of him as Seth had worked. When she thought of him, she no longer automatically thought of Simon. This was helped by the fact that they had different personalities, Seth being more serious, thoughtful and quietly wary in a nice way, although he certainly had a sense of humour. Nonetheless, there was a barrier that she felt she had little hope of getting through, and she told herself that it was nothing to do with her.
Often she felt his eyes on her as she went about her work. Sometimes she returned his look, briefly; sometimes she pretended that she was not aware that she was under close scrutiny, whereas in actuality she was acutely aware of him.
Other times it appeared to her that he wanted her to be fully aware that he was assessing her, while giving away little of himself. Much of the time he appeared inscrutable to her. Yet he was unfailingly pleasant, polite and professional.
Inevitably, they met again at the scrub sinks, just the two of them. It was a revelation to her that she could be so drawn to an attractive man. It was very sobering, as well as confusing. Over the years she had carefully nurtured a certain sense of loyalty to Simon, misplaced or not. Whether she loved him was a moot point. Perhaps because of that loyalty, she seldom found men attractive these days. It was partly, too, that she was a tired mother. The fault, if she could call it that, was with her.
So, confronted with Seth, she felt somewhat as though she were going back in time to a period in her life before she had met Simon.
‘And how are you, Anna?’ he asked, looking at her sideways in that assessing way that unnerved her.
