St Matthew's Passion - By Sam Archer Page 0,20

Now everyone knows… Were she and Fin grist to the department’s gossip mill, then? Was every friendly greeting followed by a knowing smirk behind her back?

Deborah stepped a pace nearer, not close enough to be belligerent. She said, her voice still quiet, ‘You see what happens. People hear things, they spread stories. Authority is compromised, and with it morale suffers. The department suffers, and so in turn do the patients.’

Melissa pressed her fingertips against her forehead and massaged the skin. ‘I know that, Deborah. I understand. But I’m telling you, there’s nothing to gossip about. He gave me a lift home. That’s all. Nothing happened between us.’

‘Whether or not that’s true, it’s beside the point. You should have been more careful. Of course it’s going to be interpreted only one way.’

‘It was just a lift home.’ But Melissa knew there was no point in arguing. Deborah’s mind was made up.

Deflated, Melissa turned to go. Now she’d have to be constantly on her guard, watching her colleagues for signs that they were talking about her. She’d misinterpret innocent comments, would pore over every facial expression. It was no way to work.

A thought struck her. Well, she could limit the damage. She turned back to Deborah.

‘One thing. I don’t want to find out that you’re stoking the fire. Spreading rumours about me or Fin, however grounded in reality you believe them to be.’

The nurse rolled her eyes, sighed. ‘For heaven’s sake, girl. Haven’t you heard a word I’ve been saying to you? Of course I won’t go aggravating an already difficult situation. Why would I want to make things any worse than they are?’

Because you’re jealous of me, and you want me gone, or at least neutralised, Melissa thought. She said nothing, instead giving a curt nod and turning on her heel.

Whatever Deborah’s motivation, Melissa thought as she headed to the wards, normally Melissa would have heeded any warnings that she was putting her reputation in jeopardy. Reputation was essential, along with clinical acumen, in order to get anywhere in the cutthroat medical hierarchy. To be told that she was being gossiped about because of some action of hers, even one that had been misinterpreted, would usually have made her especially cautious in the future. But it was a mark of how much she’d changed, even in the last couple of months, that she was less bothered than she felt she ought to have been.

Because, in truth, she didn’t want to back off. Didn’t want to put emotional distance between herself and Fin, not even for the sake of her career. And besides, wasn’t there more than a grain of truth in the gossip? Nothing had happened between her and Fin after she’d climbed into his car… but it very nearly had. In fact, she was increasingly certain it would have, if Fin hadn’t intervened when he did.

As she set to work on the ward, reviewing the patients’ medication charts, Melissa shook her head inwardly. Being a trauma surgeon in the making was a complicated life by anyone’s standards. She hadn’t realised her life could become even more complicated.

Chapter Five

Fin had been a doctor and in particular a trauma surgeon for long enough to be able to maintain a calm demeanour in the face of human suffering, but that didn’t mean an especially nasty injury couldn’t provoke a wince within him. He peered at George Harrow’s face as the man sat propped up on a hospital bed. Harrow was sixty years old and had the tough, level-eyed features of a stoic, though he must have been in a great deal of pain.

A fisherman, George Harrow had been out on the Thames with friends some distance upriver, taking advantage of the early morning quiet. One of his fellow anglers had cast his line a little carelessly and the hook had caught Harrow in the corner of the mouth, tearing his cheek open. They’d arrived as a group, four damp, grizzled men smelling of tobacco and fish, Harrow with a filthy handkerchief pressed to the side of his face.

‘It’s just a scratch, Doc,’ he said. Fin peeled away the rag as carefully as he could. Some scratch. The hook had cut through the cheek’s full thickness.

The wound needed extensive cleaning and coverage with a course of antibiotics. Most of all, it needed painstaking suturing. This wasn’t a simple scrape on a thigh or a back. Both the mucosa inside the mouth and the outer skin of the face required stitching involving different materials, and