A Very Precious Gift Read online

  Which didn’t, she learned, include Charles.

  ‘So what’s happened?’ Phoebe asked, and Jess grinned at her.

  ‘I’ve told him I won’t go out with him again until he makes a decision about Anne’s place in his life. I pointed out that if Anne seriously needs his help, then both of us—if there is to be an us—should go to her and help her.’

  The simplicity of the solution made Phoebe smile.

  ‘Good for you!’ she said. ‘And what was his reaction to that?’

  ‘I didn’t ask him. Just told him to think about it and get back to me when and if he made a decision.’

  They chatted for a while, but when Jess had departed Phoebe felt worse than ever. She knew Charles wouldn’t have considered such an ultimatum if she herself had delivered it, which proved his feelings for Jess were far stronger than they had ever been for her. So trying to make him jealous had been pointless.

  And Nick David, knowing the situation, must have been aware of that futility!

  So why had he done it? In the hope that she might influence her father’s decision? It seemed to be the only answer.

  The anger she’d felt earlier intensified, although now it was accompanied by an inner sadness she had no wish to analyse.

  Time was the problem. Too much of it. Maybe she’d visit her mother. Spend the night and go somewhere for a picnic the following day.

  Better than brooding all weekend.

  She suited action to the thought, phoned her mother and packed a bag, including clothes to wear to work on Monday so she wouldn’t have to return to the cottage. Tamborine markets would be on this Sunday. She and her mother could have a day up the mountain, and maybe dinner at Sanctuary Cove afterwards.

  Keeping busy—that was the answer!

  By Monday Phoebe had settled on a new plan. She would treat both her male colleagues at work as simply that—colleagues. She would be polite but remote, dedicated but reserved—totally professional.

  ‘Where on earth have you been?’ Nick loomed up behind her as she crossed the car park, causing problems with The New Plan before she’d even started on it. ‘Obviously not at home or you’d have realised what had happened, even if you didn’t get my note.’

  ‘It’s none of your business where I’ve been,’ she told him, hoping she sounded more remote than she felt. ‘And none of your business what I do—which includes what I choose as a career.’

  The memory of her father’s revelations reminded her why ‘remote’ was good, and helped add a haughtiness to her voice.

  Then the ambiguity of his final sentence struck her, and she stopped walking so she could turn to look at him. ‘What note? What do you mean—I’d have realised what had happened? What’s happened?’

  The look of uncertainty on his face jabbed pain into her chest.

  ‘Not Peter…’ she faltered. ‘He hasn’t died?’

  Sympathy made her abandon the remote scenario, and she grasped his arm to offer physical comfort.

  But it seemed to make him more uncertain. Although he did cover her hand with his, and the reserved part of her New Plan suffered a severe setback.

  ‘It’s not Peter. He’s as well as can be expected. It’s you—well, not you. It was me. I was worried. You didn’t answer the phone, or return my calls when I left a message on your machine. I couldn’t stop thinking of the myriad forms of delayed reaction to head injury.’

  He paused and Phoebe felt a sudden stillness in the morning air, as if the trees and birds and sunshine were all listening to his words.

  ‘I contacted your father—he didn’t have a key to your place, but with his parental authority and mine as a doctor, we got the police to break into your house.’

  ‘You got the police to what?’ Phoebe demanded, splitting the silence with her disbelieving shriek. ‘And for your information, my father has had little parental authority over me since I was two when he left my mother for his second wife, so let’s leave him out of this or any future conversations.’

  ‘I was worried. I left you a note explaining what had happened—asking you to phone me,’ Nick muttered lamely, glancing around at the other early arrivals whose walk across the car park had been arrested by Phoebe’s furious reaction. ‘Perhaps we should go inside. Continue this discussion there.’

  She gave him a look that probably singed off his eyebrows, and stalked imperiously away. At least she was moving in the direction of the clinic. He hadn’t lost her as a colleague.

  Yet!

  CHAPTER NINE

  NICK followed more slowly, wondering how, in the short space of a week, his life could have gone from an orderly existence to such chaos. He’d always set goals for himself, and worked out priorities. Being a doctor had been an early ambition. The step to a skin cancer specialist had been a natural progression when Peter’s melanoma had been diagnosed.

  Since then, his life had been focussed on his work—on the three-pronged strategy he’d mapped out to take the clinic to the forefront of prevention, treatment and research of all forms of skin cancer.

  Now a woman who, last Monday, had simply been part of the team working with him to achieve his goal was blurring his vision so the strategy was less important—his focus shot to pieces.

  Not that he wouldn’t get back on track, he promised himself. It had been concern for her health, nothing more, which had caused him such agonising apprehension over the weekend.

  When he looked at it, it was the kiss that had started the problems. That first—and in retrospect disastrous—kiss. He’d kissed her out of kindness—and if he was totally honest with himself, because he’d always found her attractive and had been slightly piqued by her obvious preference for Charles.

  But, for whatever reason, he’d done it, then damned if he hadn’t been so affected by it he’d had to do it again.

  And again.

  Each one had been better than the last, promising more excitement, more enticement—addictive in a way he couldn’t understand and didn’t want to analyse.

  Fortunately, if the way she’d stormed off earlier was any indication of how she felt about him, there’d be no more kisses—for any reason.

  He plodded towards the hospital, wondering if he’d ever be able to regain the impetus that for so long had given purpose to his days and meaning to his life.

  He flashed his ID at the guard and continued towards the rooms to check on the day’s surgery patients. Smiled to himself. Phoebe had obviously forgotten she was scheduled to assist him today. How huffy could she stay when they’d be operating side by side?

  Phoebe remembered the surgery as she walked into the clinic.

  Perhaps Nick had forgotten he’d asked her.

  She was trying to decide whether she’d be disappointed or relieved, should this be the case, when she heard his voice.

  ‘We’re due up in Theatre in twenty minutes, Phoebe,’ he said, his voice carefully neutral.

  Two could play the neutral game, she reminded herself, and she stowed her handbag in the filing cabinet and headed back out to the main area of the hospital. She’d need half those twenty minutes to change and scrub, then the rest of them checking on the instruments the theatre nurses would have set up.

  Nick accompanied a drowsy Elizabeth Ramsey into the operating theatre.

  ‘You’ll be back in your hospital bed before you know it,’ he assured her.

  He nodded to Phoebe to acknowledge her presence, and she managed to nod back, pleased she wasn’t expected to speak as her mouth had gone dry.

  Though why it should have when all she could see of the man was the gap between his mask and the concealing surgical cap—a gap that contained two cool blue-green eyes—she didn’t know.

  ‘Do you know why we’re doing this operation?’ Nick asked, directing the question to one of the three students who’d followed him into theatre.

  ‘To remove a small basal cell carcinoma from the patient’s leg,’ one of them, a young woman, replied.

  ‘Doctor
s remove BCCs from patients every day of the week,’ Nick reminded her. ‘Why in Theatre under a general anaesthetic?’

  ‘Because you’ll need a skin graft?’ the student guessed, and Phoebe imagined she could hear Nick’s teeth grind.

  ‘Keep talking—why might she need that?’ he persisted, and when the student shrugged he continued, ‘Why you lot don’t read the patient’s history before you come into Theatre I’ll never know.’

  He turned to Phoebe.

  ‘Would you like to explain to these young hopefuls?’ he growled, passing responsibility to her and turning to check the instruments laid out on the trolley.

  ‘Mrs Ramsey has a history of skin cancer and has had perhaps as many as a hundred lesions removed from her legs, arms and face. This one is between old, scarred skin so it’s possible it’s a continuation of a BCC which has already been removed. The problem is that small patches of malignant cells can stream between the collagen bundles and lurk beneath skin which appears quite normal.’

  ‘But don’t doctors have guidelines for the removal of all suspect lesions?’ one of the students asked. ‘I mean, don’t they have to excise a particular margin around the lesion and have that tested to make sure they got the lot?’

  ‘Theoretically, yes,’ Phoebe told him, ‘but although that was undoubtedly done when the original lesion was removed from Mrs Ramsey’s leg, it’s possible the margins were clear but there was cancerous involvement beyond them.’

  ‘Which is why we’re using Mohs’ technique this time,’ Nick explained. ‘The stain we use will show up any further migration of the cancer cells, and we can remove the lot. We do, of course, use it in day surgery situations and even in the skin-cancer clinic itself, taking thin layers of tissue and testing each one. In this case, however, the site and the extent of previous damage to the surrounding skin indicates we will probably need to graft new skin over the wound, and there’s the possibility the wound could be extensive.’

  He waved Phoebe into place beside him as the theatre sister pulled the plastic-wrapped microscope into position for them.

  Using the eyepiece meant close body contact, something Phoebe could have lived without. She tried desperately to concentrate on the job at hand and regain her usual detachment from the physical closeness of surgery.

  But her body would have none of it—reacting to Nick’s with tremors and heat and pathetic longings which her mind was powerless to control. The colours of the dye swirled outward, Nick’s scalpel following, selecting carefully, excising. It was her job to spread layers of excised skin onto slides, then pass them to the nurse who’d transfer them to the pathologist on duty for immediate consideration. But in her head the colours of attraction swirled as vividly, confusing and weakening her.

  ‘Have you used a dermatome before?’ Nick asked, and she realised, belatedly, he was talking to her.

  ‘To harvest skin for a graft?’ she muttered, as she dredged the name of the electric knife used for this operation out of her befuddled brain.

  ‘What else?’

  The question was short, and sharp. Fair enough, given her apparent vagueness. She did the pulling-herself-together thing again and rallied.

  ‘Yes,’ she told him. Then, because she could feel a tension in the room, beyond what was happening in her body, she added, ‘Piece of cake.’

  ‘Good. Then you can do the harvest.’

  Before she could protest, the nurse was handing her the instrument and pointing to the already prepped patch of thigh left uncovered by the surgical drapes.

  Phoebe felt her fingers tremble on the instrument. Nick had asked her to assist last week. Back when he’d been plotting with her father to have her specialise.

  Which was probably why he’d made the offer.

  These thoughts, which had nothing to do with the task before her, raced through her head, then she straightened, determined to show him just how good a specialist she would have been.

  Had she cared to follow that path!

  She set the rotary blade in motion and carefully removed a slice of skin less than a millimetre thick. The nurse lifted it and passed it to Nick who placed it carefully across the wound. While he stitched it into place, Phoebe covered the donor site with a sterile, non-adhesive dressing. The wound was weeping and would continue to do so for a few days. In fact, in some cases, it could take longer to heal than the site which had the graft.

  ‘So, what did you learn?’ Nick asked the students, when Elizabeth Ramsey had been wheeled into Recovery and they were stripping off their outer gowns, replacing them with clean ones.

  ‘Harvesting skin is a piece of cake?’ the cheeky young man suggested, sending a smile in Phoebe’s direction.

  Nick cooled whatever pleasure that might have given her by directing a stern frown her way.

  ‘Apart from my assistant’s flippancy!’ he muttered.

  ‘Cancerous cells from a BCC can migrate and not be found, except by the use of this surgery?’

  It was the young woman who answered, and she won a smile from Nick.

  ‘Exactly!’ he said.

  ‘But does that mean all BCCs should be excised this way?’ the third student asked.

  Nick shook his head.

  ‘Simple excision of the lesion and the margins is usually enough, but if you suspect the tumour is an extension of an older one, then Mohs’ is the way to go. If it’s migrated once, chances are it will do it again, so go for the lot. It’s ninety-eight per cent effective.’

  Which your immunity used to be, Phoebe thought as she stood aside and studied Nick as he chatted to the group. Had it only been The Kiss which had destroyed it? Or had, dread thought, the attraction been there all along, and she’d forced herself towards a preference for Charles as a measure of self-preservation?

  Thoroughly confused, she turned away, intending to change as Nick hadn’t asked her to assist with any other operation.

  ‘Not staying to watch my expertise for the rest of the morning?’

  His voice made her turn, and what she imagined was a different question in his eyes made her shake her head.

  She remembered how angry she was with him and rallied.

  ‘The young man we met at the beach might have turned up. Even if I’ve missed him, I’d like to know what Charles has told him—what he’s decided to do.’

  Nick nodded.

  ‘Let me know later,’ he said, so absent-mindedly she guessed his mind had returned to the day’s surgical procedures.

  So much for questioning eyes!

  She walked away, more confused than ever.

  Nick knew she’d gone, although he was speaking to the students again, explaining about the lentigo maligna he was about to remove from the next patient’s left cheek.

  ‘It’s a slow-growing malignancy which we often monitor for change before surgery,’ he explained, while thinking himself of the not-so-slow growing attraction he felt for Phoebe and what he could possibly do about it. ‘When we do decide to operate we use a special light which shows up the extent of the tumour in much the same way as the dye we use for Mohs’ gives us the boundaries of the BCC involvement.’

  And special light—like that of Phoebe’s namesake, the moon—hadn’t shown up much more than the strength of his attraction—or was it the depths of his weakness?

  He had to stop kissing her for a start.

  Not that she’d be likely to let him that close again. What had possessed him to—?

  ‘Skin graft?’

  He had to guess at the question as he hauled his mind back to work-related topics.

  ‘Usually we can simply draw the edges of the wound together, although if the excision is wide we do use grafts.’

  He went on to explain the appearance of the tan freckle that was typical of lentigo maligna, which could thicken and develop into a malignancy if left untreated.

  Untreated! Would his attraction to Phoebe develop a malignancy if left untreated? And how the hell could he treat it anyway?

&nbs
p; Taking her to bed was the obvious answer. Experience had told him it was the allure of the unknown that heightened sexual attraction. Taking the object of desire to bed was like scratching an itch.

  He grinned to himself as he imagined Phoebe’s fiery reaction to that philosophy, and amended the scratching metaphor to excising a skin lesion.

  Not that it would ever happen.

  Back to work, Nick David, and put Phoebe Moreton right out of your head!

  Which wasn’t any easier to do than banishing the effect of her from his body. He made this gloomy discovery as he sat in Peter’s room later in the day, eating the slightly stale sandwich Peter had left on his tray.

  ‘It’s not exactly encouraging for a patient when his doctor sits beside his bed and sighs so heavily,’ Peter told him.

  Nick, dismayed to find he’d been behaving so badly, rallied, smiling at his friend and apologising for his preoccupation.

  ‘Don’t apologise,’ Peter said. ‘You’ve no idea what a relief it is to have you preoccupied with something other than me.’ He smiled quizzically at Nick and added, ‘I assume it isn’t me causing you so much mental anguish?’

  ‘It should be,’ Nick told him. ‘I don’t know what’s happening. Normally, at this stage of your treatment, I’m totally focussed on what’s going on inside your body.’

  ‘Exactly what I’ve been trying to tell you for years, old mate. You’ve been too damn focussed! You’ve got to get a life!’

  Nick began to protest, but Peter held up his frail hand.

  ‘No, let me finish! I know you’ve pretended to have a life—even going so far as to parade a line of lovely women past me in an attempt to convince me—but I know, and deep down you know, that you put your life on hold from the day I was diagnosed. Almost as if you felt if I couldn’t have a long and happy future, you didn’t deserve one either.’

  ‘That’s nonsense,’ Nick told him. ‘It’s not as if you haven’t had a lot of good years since then. Boy! You more than rivalled me in the parade-of-lovely-women stakes. Remember Bette Sinclair?’

  Peter smiled, then shook his head.