Sold to the Surgeon (11 page)

“There you are, nothing to worry about now,” she smiled, reassuringly at him. “You'll be home in no time at all. You wait and see.”

Mr. Sampson raised his knobbly hand in a grateful salute as Abigail left the ward and made her way back towards the changing room. Penelope is really rotten sometimes, she thought, and wondered, not for the first time, why the girl had ever bothered to go into nursing at all.

As she drove up the narrow lane, she saw Rupert's car already outside her cottage gate. Glancing at her watch, she realised she was over an hour late; he must have been waiting for ages. I'll tell him later in the evening that I'm not going to Italy, she resolved. There was no point in starting off by having an argument!

Rupert came down the path to meet her, looking concerned. “Where have you been?” he asked. “I've been worried.” Kissing her gently on the lips, he linked his arm through hers.

“A minor problem on the ward,” said Abigail, “but it had to be sorted out, so I stayed.” She was tempted to say the problem had been caused by Penelope not doing her job properly, but bit her tongue, thinking that would sound too bitchy. Especially as she knew Rupert thought Penelope was a lovely girl! And who was she to disillusion him? she thought wryly.

“As long as you're safe,” said Rupert, smiling. “I was thinking that perhaps you'd had second thoughts about me, and had skipped the country!”

Abigail looked at him sharply. That was a strange thing to say, putting into words the vague worries she had only just begun to be aware of herself. “Don't be silly,” she said, her voice sharper than she had intended, as she unlocked the front door to let them both in.

“Only joking,” said Rupert easily.

He insisted that she sat down, and that he prepared supper for both of them, and Abigail felt too tired to protest. She was content to sit in the old, shabby armchair that had been her father's, looking out of the big bay window into the garden. But tired as she was, she couldn't still the turbulent racing of her brain.

At last she could bear it no longer. Rupert hadn't mentioned it, so she had to. “Greg has told me you've arranged for us to go to Italy, with his family and the Orchards.”

“Yes,” answered Rupert from the kitchen, sounding very enthusiastic. “It's a great idea, isn't it?”

“I'm not so sure,” said Abigail.

“What do you mean?” He came to the doorway, a bowl of lettuce in his hands. “Don't you want to go? I thought it was the perfect way of combining business with pleasure.”

“I don't really want to go with Greg Lincoln, and his family and the Orchards,” said Abigail. “I'm not over-keen on the Orchards, and anyway, I don't think I can possibly afford it.” This last remark had come as a sudden flash of inspiration. If she said she couldn't afford it, that would be that.

“Rubbish, it's not going to cost you a penny,” said Rupert, dismissing her flimsy excuse in one breath. “I'm getting paid, I'm taking you, and as far as not liking the Orchards, you're being ridiculous. You got on very well with them the other night. You and Penelope can go sightseeing together, when Greg, Sir Jason and I are engaged on business; it seems an ideal arrangement to me.”

Abigail sat silently mutinous in her chair, racking her brains to think of a way out, but it seemed she was to have no say in the matter at all. The very last thing she wanted was to go sightseeing with Penelope! Greg hadn't even mentioned Penelope, he had just said the Orchards. But of course, she ought to have realised, she was a fool not to have thought of it. Penelope was part of the Orchards. A whole fortnight with Penelope, that really was the last straw.

Rupert popped his head back in from the kitchen. “Is it because you can't bear to be separated from me while I'm working?” he asked, raising his eyebrows teasingly.

Abigail tried to match his smile, not very successfully. What could she say without looking stupid and unreasonable? After all, there was no logical reason why she shouldn't want to go, she couldn't possibly tell him about Greg, and the strange effect he had on her.

“No, it's…oh, I don't know,” she ended up muttering lamely. Then she added, “I suppose I'm annoyed because you arranged it all without thinking to ask me.”

Rupert laughed, and came back in from the kitchen and knelt beside the chair, putting an arm round her shoulders. “Darling, I do understand, and I'm sorry. But you can blame Greg for that. He's an absolute whirlwind of activity once he makes up his mind!” He picked up her hand and kissed it. “When Greg Lincoln decides on something, he goes after it with no holds barred.”

Yes, I had noticed, reflected Abigail thoughtfully, in work
and
play! Her thoughts were interrupted by Rupert.

“I want to work on this project. It will do me a lot of good professionally. Sir Jason's is a particularly thorny problem, I'm looking forward to the challenge.” He looked at her. “Please say you'll come. I know you'll enjoy it. We both will.”

Abigail smiled uncertainly “All right,” she answered reluctantly. She didn't know why, but her heart was heavy. Intuitively she felt that by saying yes, she was stepping into deep water, that they both were.

“Good girl,” said Rupert breezily. “Come on, let's have supper, then I'll leave you in peace, as I've got some paperwork to do at home.”

As he had promised, he left almost immediately after supper, with a brief goodnight kiss. As his cool lips touched hers, Abigail momentarily wondered how it could be that the same physical act of kissing could be so different with two different men. Then guiltily she banished the errant thought from her mind, and kissed him back affectionately.

Long after Rupert had left, she sat quietly in the deep armchair by the open window. A barn owl hooted from the depths of the woodland surrounding the garden, its cry echoing eerily through the tall trees. Abigail peered out, trying to pierce the darkness, to catch a glimpse of the owl as it went about its business, the night's hunting. But it remained elusively invisible.

Her thoughts returned to Greg Lincoln. What was it Rupert had said? “When Greg Lincoln decides on something, he goes after it with no holds barred.”—yes, that was it. The main problem was, did she know for certain what it was that Greg had decided?

The barn owl hooted again, the sound floating into the house from the still blackness of the night. Suddenly Abigail was filled with the image of the field mice, hiding out there in the long grass, frightened to move because of the sound of the owl. How awful it must be to be hunted, not to know which way to turn for safety. Suddenly Greg's face flashed before her mind's eye. “No holds barred,” Rupert had said, ruthless like the barn owl!

With a sudden irritable movement she stood up, closed the window, and swished the curtains across, shutting out the night. Don't be ridiculous, she told herself firmly, you're no mouse, and Greg Lincoln isn't a bird of prey! Although the somewhat sinister simile remained disturbingly with her, as she made her way upstairs to bed.

Chapter Eight

The three weeks before the Italian trip disappeared quickly; Rupert flying out earlier with Sir Jason and Lady Orchard, and of course Penelope. Although how Penelope had managed to wangle the extra time off, a whole month in the middle of the busiest period, Abigail didn't know. She supposed Sir Jason and Greg had put pressure on the Senior Nursing Officer. What it is to have friends and relations in high places! she reflected drily.

“I'll take good care of Rupert for you,” Penelope had told Abigail blithely, the day before their departure.

“Thanks,” Abigail had replied shortly, Penelope's smug, supercilious smile doing nothing to improve her ill humour.

It was leading up to the time of the bed closures for August, which meant all the surgeons were squashing in semi-urgent cases, trying to rush through the patients needing minor surgery before the beginning of August. This meant a very rapid turnover in the bed state, and a heavy workload for everyone, most of all for the nurses on the wards.

“Half of these patients could be done in the day surgical unit,” grumbled Sister Collins one morning, as she and Abigail were updating the Kardex system yet again. “I keep telling the consultants that they should have pressed for another operating session in the day unit—the one the GU surgeons have just managed to acquire.”

“Yes,” agreed Abigail, “but I understand they do have a tremendously long waiting list. Their wards are always more crowded than ours.”

“If they were a little better organised, they could turn over their patients as fast as we do,” replied Sister Collins severely.

Abigail smiled wryly; their own good organisation was due in no small measure to Greg, rather than Sister Collins. “Never mind, it's a good job some of us are well organised,” she said, flipping the last Kardex card into place. “It would do them good, Sister Collins, to have you around on the GU ward for a month, you'd soon get those housemen on their toes!”

Sister Collins looked up sharply. “I sincerely hope you're not serious,” she muttered. “A month on that ward would give me a nervous breakdown!”

Abigail laughed. “I was only joking,” she said, “although seriously, they do need someone like you or Mr. Lincoln. If he was their consultant, the housemen wouldn't forget to do chest X-rays, or send the bloods down to the pathology lab on time.”

“Mr. Lincoln certainly wouldn't tolerate the slipshod habits of the GU housemen,” agreed Sister Collins. Then her face broke into one of her rare smiles. “And somehow I think it would be the housemen who had the nervous breakdowns, not our Mr. Lincoln!”

Abigail agreed, noting the way Sister Collins had said “our Mr. Lincoln” in quite a proprietorial and proud way. It was obvious that she had eventually taken him to her heart; and on reflection she supposed this was not altogether surprising. Greg Lincoln could be devastatingly charming when he so chose.

“Have you got everything fixed up for your holiday?” enquired Sister.

“Yes,” Abigail replied briefly. It was the first time Sister had mentioned it since the day she had told her that the leave had been granted. And Abigail hadn't discussed the forthcoming holiday with anyone, not even her closest friend Lynne.

Not that Lynne would have been all that interested—she'd hardly seen anything of her, as she was now totally absorbed in her new romance with Derek Thompson. It seemed to have blossomed into something serious with a vengeance. Whenever Abigail had bumped into her in the canteen, she had always been with Derek, and Abigail had usually made an excuse to go and sit with other friends, leaving the two of them alone. It was quite obvious to everyone that the old saying “two's company, three's a crowd” applied in their case.

As she watched them leave the canteen one day, little fingers linked in a private intimate way, a chilly feeling of inexplicable sadness swept over Abigail. It was lovely to see them so very much in love, and it made her wish it could be like that for her and Rupert. She was happy with Rupert, very happy, but not ecstatic; not the way Lynne and Derek were.

I'll feel much happier when I get to Italy and see Rupert again, she told herself firmly, as the canteen doors swung shut, blotting out the sight of Lynne and Derek.

She had only spoken to him once, very briefly on the telephone, since he had been in Italy, but he had seemed to be enjoying himself. That night Abigail rang him again. He sounded so loving, and was so sensible and reasonable, that she started feeling better, and in spite of everything even began to look forward a little to the trip. Rupert had told her that the airline tickets would be sent to her, and she would be met at the Linate airport in Milan.

After she had put the phone down that night, Abigail smiled at her reflection in the mirror hanging above the telephone. She had been foolish in her imaginings of impending doom, nothing would go wrong—how could it? And as for Greg—well, she hadn't seen much of him recently either, as they'd been so busy that he'd been tied up in the operating theatre for long periods at a stretch, and she'd been working on the ward at a permanent gallop!

Abigail assumed that he would be going on ahead of her, to join his father and mother, and that she would be the last one to join the party at the villa. However, with just one day to go before she was scheduled to fly out, she still hadn't received the airline tickets, and Greg was still working in the hospital.

There was nothing for it but to ask him if he knew what was happening, so rather reluctantly she stopped him after the morning ward round. She was very conscious of the curious eyes of the junior medical staff, all focused with unblinking gaze on them, eager as always to pick up the latest piece of gossip. So she said very formally, “May I have a word with you, Mr. Lincoln?”

“Certainly,” he replied equally formally, gesturing to the juniors that they could leave. “Come into my office.”

One of the junior doctors, a girl, giggled, and Abigail glowered at her. She was well aware the three-quarters of the females in the hospital thought Greg Lincoln was the dishiest thing on two legs, and that probably the junior doctors in question thought that she, Abigail, was of the same opinion! Well, she was not, and flashing the errant giggler another withering glance, she followed Greg into his office.

“Rupert told me that the airline ticket would be sent to me,” she said hesitantly, “but I haven't received it yet, and I was wondering if you…”

“I thought you didn't want to go,” he replied with an irritating grin.

“I…well, I
am
going, as you very well know,” said Abigail, exasperated by his grin, partly because she knew she was grinning back. “That is,” she added, “if I ever get the ticket.”

“I've got it,” said Greg casually, tapping the briefcase on his desk. “We'll be going together.”

“Together?” Her surprised voice echoed round the office.

“Do you mind?”

“I…er…no, of course not. But I thought you…” she paused, collecting her thoughts, the wind being momentarily taken out of her sails. “I thought you would be travelling earlier to be with your parents,” she said at last.

“No,” he answered, pulling a pile of papers towards him. “Now, is there anything else? I've got a lot to do before we go.” The tone of his voice was almost curt, not quite, but most certainly dismissive.

“No,” said Abigail, turning to go. But Greg's voice called her back.

“Oh, by the way, I forgot to tell you. It's not going to be all play, you know.”

Abigail turned round to face him. “I know,” she began, “you and Rupert have business to attend to.”

“I shall be doing laser surgery in Siena,” he said, sorting through his papers, “and as you will be there, I thought you could be my theatre nurse. I prefer to use an English-trained girl.”

There was silence, and he raised his head to look at her. “You've had theatre training, haven't you?” he asked abruptly.

“Well, yes, but…” Abigail suddenly felt panic-stricken.

She never knew what surprise Greg was going to spring on her next. “I've never even seen laser surgery,” she said. “I don't think I…”

“Don't worry about that. You're not going to do the surgery,” he replied, raising his eyebrows wryly. “All you have to do is be there, and hand me whatever I ask for. Your part of the procedure will be exactly the same as for any other orthodox operation.” He looked at her quizzically. “Don't tell me you're not capable of that!”

“Of course I'm capable,” Abigail flashed back proudly, “it's just that I'm surprised. Is there anything else you haven't told me?”

“Not that I can think of,” came the absentminded reply, he was sorting once more through the papers, “but I'll let you know if I think of anything.”

“Thank you,” said Abigail, leaving the office quickly. What a cheek that damned man had, springing that on her! I'd better brush up my theatre technique with a textbook, she thought, realising she'd have to take the wretched thing on holiday with her. She hurried down the corridor. The last thing she wished to do was make a fool of herself in front of Greg, and an operating theatre full of Italians.

Later in the day she was at the nursing station filing the latest batch of pathology reports, when Greg walked by. “Be ready at seven o'clock in the morning,” he said, not stopping. “And be prompt. I'll organise everything else.”

“So nice of you,” said Abigail, her voice edged with sarcasm. “I don't know what I'd do without you!”

He threw back his dark head and roared with laughter, causing several patients to look over with curiosity. “Stop looking so bad-tempered,” was his only reply as he strode on down towards the end rooms of the ward.

Abigail scowled in a most unladylike fashion at his retreating back, then bent over her paperwork. He'd had the last word as usual! However, she was very careful to make sure she was ready at the appointed time, which was just as well, as Greg was punctual to the very minute.

As they drove to Heathrow, Greg told her they would pick up a hired car at Milan, then drive down the autostrada to the villa, which was situated on the shore of Lago di Trasimeno. Abigail's feelings were a mixture of apprehension and excitement as the journey to Italy began. There would be so much to see, and of course she would be with Rupert again. She hoped they would have plenty of time for sightseeing together, just the two of them.

The arrangements Greg had made unfolded with clockwork precision, and soon they had left Milan airport far behind and were speeding down the autostrada in brilliant sunshine.

“Looking forward to seeing Rupert?” asked Greg suddenly, keeping his eyes on the road ahead.

“Yes, of course,” said Abigail truthfully. “I'm hoping that he and I will be able to do some exploring, I'd like to see as much as possible.”

“You will,” replied Greg. “I've got quite a few trips lined up for us, plus of course the visit to the hospital in Siena, which will be just you and I.”

Abigail remained silent. What exactly did Greg mean by “us”? she wondered. She hoped he didn't mean that she and Rupert would have to spend all their time with Greg and Penelope. Suddenly, the sinking feeling she'd had before returned to the pit of her stomach. She had a horrible feeling everything was going to be organised for her, and that she wouldn't have a say in anything.

However, she didn't voice her doubts, merely remarking, “won't it be a little difficult explaining laser surgery?—the language barrier, I mean,” she added by way of explanation.

“I speak pretty good Italian,” answered Greg. “My mother is Italian, remember?”

“I didn't know you could speak the language—you never said.”

“There's a great deal you don't know about me,” came the reply.

That's true, reflected Abigail, as she sat back and watched the flat plain of Lombardy, the rice-fields separated by the straight lines of poplars flashing past. Soon the lush flat fields gave way to the rolling patchwork hills around Florence, and they were negotiating the bends on the impressive viaducts which linked the peaks of the Appenines. Abigail gave up worrying about the two weeks ahead, and began to enjoy the scenery. From Florence they descended once more into a valley, the fields crammed with orderly rows of sunflowers, their serried ranks turned with one accord towards the heat of the sun, the brilliant yellow of their faces enhanced by the purple blue background of the distant mountains.

As they drew near their destination she began to wonder if Rupert would be there to meet her, and also what would Greg's mother and father be like. She hoped they wouldn't be as stuffy as Sir Jason and Lady Orchard! And of course, Penelope would be there, no doubt looking elegantly suntanned, thought Abigail, looking down at her own pale-skinned arms. She also idly wondered what sort of villa it could be. Fairly large, she assumed, because of the host of people that would be staying together under one roof.

But in spite of all her imagining and wonderings, she was totally unprepared for the beauty of the scene that met her eyes, as Greg's car drove into the courtyard of an enormous villa and pulled to a halt on shiny cobbles. The villa was located just outside the fortress walls of the small lakeside town called Castiglione del Lago, which clung, with the tenacity born of ages, to the craggy rocks overlooking the lake.

Rupert came running out into the courtyard. “I heard the car,” he said, hugging and kissing Abigail. He took her arm. “Come and look at the view, it's quite fantastic.”

Abigail walked with him across to the grey stone wall, chipped and flaking with age, which surrounded the courtyard, her arm comfortably tucked through his. She felt secure again, now that she was with Rupert; she was happy. He loved her, and that was enough. Together they leaned on the wall, looking at the vista of the smooth waters of the lake, reflecting the brilliant blue of the sky. The mirror-smooth blue stretched as far as the eye could see, its surface broken only by the white sails of the small sailing dinghies, fluttering about like a host of moths, as they tried to catch the slightest breeze. It was very hot, the only sound from their perch high above the lake was the whirring of cicadas, filling the air; the noise seeming to come from all sides. Abigail craned her head, looking up into the thick branches of the umbrella pines shading the courtyard, but the cicadas remained elusive.