St Matthew's Passion - By Sam Archer Page 0,19
instead. He’d been aware of what she was on the point of asking, and he’d headed her off because he didn’t trust himself to say no.
She was prepared to wait. At least she knew now that there was a possibility, even a probability, that her feelings were reciprocated. For now, it was enough that some of Fin’s reserve towards her had disappeared, that she felt he was at last pleased with the work she was doing.
As Melissa pushed through the doors into the theatre where the man lay anaesthetised and ready for the procedure, she saw that the nurse assisting her was none other than Deborah Lennox. While primarily in charge of the post-operative wards, Deborah was also a qualified theatre sister and sometimes helped out with surgery to cover staff absences.
Deborah nodded to her, her eyes steady over the mask she wore. Relations between the two women had thawed a little since their clash several weeks earlier, though they remained coolly polite rather than friendly towards one another. They hadn’t mentioned the argument as if by silent, mutual consent. Deborah had herself been away on leave for the past couple of weeks and so Melissa hadn’t seen her for some time.
Melissa made the initial incision and the operation began. It went as smoothly as might reasonably be expected, with the usual surprises including unexpected bleeding vessels which needed to be cauterised or tied off. Behind Melissa the anaesthetist sat on his stool and hummed tunelessly as he read a magazine. Melissa wasn’t one of those surgeons who needed music playing in order to operate, so there was no soundtrack.
She became aware of Deborah’s gaze upon her from early on in the operation, but managed to catch the nurse’s eyes only once before they darted away. Melissa also became conscious of a coldness from the other woman, as if the thaw of the last few weeks had been only a temporary reprieve.
Not again, Melissa thought wearily.
In addition to the two of them and the anaesthetist, the theatre was populated by a junior doctor who was assisting Melissa and two junior nurses, one of them scrubbed up and helping Deborah carry out tasks such as suctioning while the other one performed jobs not requiring sterility, such as adjusting the light over the operative field. At one point the nurse doing the suctioning moved closer to get better access and her gowned hip nudged a clamp, which clattered to the floor.
‘Sorry,’ she muttered in terror. Melissa shook her head.
‘Never mind.’ She looked over at the second nurse. ‘Could you open a new one, please?’
On the other side of the patient Deborah’s eyes blazed. ‘Nurse, another clamp.’
Melissa frowned. ‘I’ve already –’
‘It’s for me to ask, Ms Havers. Not you.’
Melissa watched her for a long moment, then shrugged and applied herself to the field once more.
The rest of the procedure progressed without incident, and Melissa was the first out of the theatre, leaving the enthusiastic junior doctor, an aspiring surgeon himself, to suture closed the last layer of the abdominal wound. She degloved and degowned and went into the female locker room, which was otherwise empty.
Deborah came in a few minutes later and Melissa rounded on her.
‘What exactly is your problem?’
Deborah stood, hands on hips, squaring off. ‘As I said, it’s not for you to be telling my staff what to do.’
‘Oh, come on.’ Melissa felt the anger rising again. ‘I didn’t tell her to do anything. I asked her if she could please replace a piece of equipment. You ask the junior doctors to do things all the time and I don’t get all upset about it. What’s really going on? What’s eating you now?’
Deborah opened her mouth, then held her breath for a moment before expelling it in a long, slow sigh. ‘I warned you.’
‘Warned me what?’
‘I told you to watch yourself with Mr Finmore-Gage.’
‘What are you talking about?’
Again a pause. Deborah said, quietly: ‘Two or three weeks ago. Someone saw you get into his car late at night.’
The words were like individual blows, and for a second Melissa was stunned. ‘Who?’
‘Doesn’t matter. Somebody in the car park, who told somebody else. Now everyone knows.’
‘Oh, for the love of –’ Melissa was so angry she didn’t know where to look. ‘He was giving me a lift home. It was two in the morning, we’d both been working late, and I’d missed the last Tube. I can’t believe people are reading something into it.’
‘Can’t you?’
Melissa thought about what the nurse had just said.