Sunrise for Two

Sunrise for
two

Written by Merlot Montana
who holds the publishing rights

Copyright
©
Merlot Montana 2012

Sunrise for
two

Chapter
One

Harry switched on her
computer and pulled a large bunch of grapes out of her bag. It was
Monday and it was going to be a really long time until lunch. Her
computer looked like a horrible lab experiment, new drives and
slots grafted onto the side and held in place by a nest of wires,
and some brightly coloured elastic bands. She took a mouthful of
strong coffee and wondered why Mike always put milk in the first
cup of the day. He seemed to remember her tastes by about
mid-morning, but the first cup always had the mournful neutralized
flavour of beans with the bite taken out.

“
Good
weekend?” he asked, feeling the usual tingle when she smiled at
him.

“
Too short,”
she said with a grin, and he delighted in the elegantly baritone
overtones of her voice.

“
Maybe you
should have slept more.”

“
Maybe, but
then I would have had less fun.” She drained her coffee mug and
smiled appreciatively when he filled it again. She pulled a cereal
bar out of her bag and placed it on her table next to a picture of
her favourite hideaway in the Lake District. She was counting off
the days until they returned.

“
Are you not
eating that yet?” asked Simon, he had been in a relationship for
two weeks and his new partner had rather forcefully suggested a
diet.

“
It’s all
yours,” she said sympathetically, “I think you’ve got a great
body.”

“
You too
Harry,” Simon told her sincerely, and smiled apologetically at
Michael, his longing and possessiveness palpable as he hovered
beside her.

“
How is
Julia?” Michael asked casually, keen to prolong the conversation,
wanting to see her smile again.

“
She’s fine,
she spent most of Sunday practicing for her two minute saxophone
solo.”

“
What was it
like?”

“
Utterly
awful, I had to drink almost a whole bottle of wine just to get to
the interval.”

“
I thought
you were singing.”

I was, but she drowned me
out so often that I had plenty of time for drinking.”

“
Sounds
fun.”

She grinned at him and
ran her hand through her tousled curls. “What about
you?”

“
I had fun
too.” He said awkwardly, he didn’t want to say that he spent the
weekend thinking about seeing her on Monday.

“
I’m glad.”
She said affectionately, and raised her eyebrows when their boss
stepped crossly out of her office and gestured pointedly the
phones.

Then she answered the
first call of the day. “IT helpline” she said as warmly as she
could. He was already at breaking point. Usually the computers
didn’t upset the day shift clinicians this much so early in the
morning, but he’d had a head start and so she let him rant a bit
until he started to lose steam. Then she cut in, just as he got to
the paranoid part, and coolly started getting the facts. He began
to get annoyed again and demanded her name. She spelt it out for
him very carefully and asked for his. He faltered then and she
smiled, she had him now. She took down the rest of the facts, his
spirit was broken. Deftly she resolved the very simple problem and
wished him well in her kindest voice. Then she cut him off just
slightly before his thanks were finished and moved onto the next
call.

The fifth was the best of
the day. He was a consultant physician, something he reminded her
of about ten times before the end of the first minute. She’d spelt
her name by the end of the third minute and solved his problem by
the fifth. Then the server crashed and she spent the rest of the
day drinking black coffee and wishing for a lunch break.

They had the system
shakily running by four, but there were errors in program that
pulled up the blood results. “It's okay now Harry, I think we can
leave it.” Mike told her tiredly. He poured them each another cup
of coffee and checked his text messages.

“
No it's not
okay.” she said emphatically, then smiled at him apologetically.
“People need these results Mike, there's a surgeon who has been
emailing me every half hour since lunchtime. I can't let him
down.”

He smiled back, their
focus on the computer had led to them sitting very close to each
other, and he was finding it hard to concentrate. “They're lucky to
have you.” he said softly. He watched her rubbing the back of her
neck and wondered what she would do if he offered her a massage.
Harry picked up the phone yet again, she listened sympathetically
and smiled into the undeserving receiver, he allowed himself to
savour her lovely profile, then he took a deep breath and filled up
her coffee cup. She smiled up at him, and mouthed her thank you. He
smelt her perfume as he stepped away and wondered if she would ever
notice him.

Harry promised that a
member of team would look at their computers as soon as they could.
She emailed the longsuffering trio who sorted out computers across
the site, and put in the special code red that told them a
complaint was only days away.

The next caller was
struggling to access a database he urgently needed, Harry pulled up
his details on her system and started working. He watched her
fingers dancing over the keys, she was wearing a pink T-shirt with
a subtle reference to a computer game. He knew her love of bad
music from the 80s and he could see that she was still listening to
her latest gadget under dark curls. He wanted to tell that this was
one of the many reasons he liked her so much. She was laid back but
passionate at the same time, and he bought her favourite chocolate
bar from the vending machine and felt the tingle when she
smiled.

Chris tried the phone
again, it was still engaged. His shift had finished at midday, but
he had spent the whole morning stabilizing a patient with a badly
injured leg and now he needed to check that there was no infection.
He had been getting an automated reply from the IT department all
afternoon and he could feel his frustration rising. He reminded
himself that there was probably someone working very hard to solve
the problem. All the same, he could see his patient starting to
deteriorate, and he would take on any battle to keep her in one
piece. The ward sister appeared by his side and handed him a warm
cheese sandwich left over from the long departed lunch trolley.
“It’s a sacking offence to eat the patient’s food,” she said
conversationally.

“
Thanks Anna”
he said with a distracted smile.

“
It’s
probably also a sacking offence to let good surgeons work
themselves into the ground.” she added affectionately. He looked at
her then, the stains of tiredness highlighting the blue of his
eyes.

“
She’s 18 and
she’s got a picture of her horse in her pocket.”

“
I know
honey.”

“
Any news on
the blood results?”

“
Not
yet.”

He swore quietly, the
traces of his Scottish accent hardening into a burr. “What are they
doing down there?” he asked in frustration.

The phone was still
ringing at 5pm and Harry stretched tiredly and announced the IT
department as politely as she could. He started shouting almost
immediately and she drained the cold cup balanced on top of her
monitor. “All I want is a set of blood results.” He said again.
“Surely even for someone with your obvious lack of organisational
skills that’s not impossible.”

“
There’s
nothing on the system.” She replied calmly, as she had already done
a couple of times. He made some rather cutting remarks about her
intellect and she signalled to Mike for another drink. He gestured
that the machine was empty and their usual supply of filter coffee
depleted. Hating to disappoint her he held up a note saying that he
would run across to the small supermarket opposite the hospital.
She shook her head, but he smiled at her and rushed out of the
office. She focussed again on the man shouting into the phone, and
wondered idly if he had even paused for breath.

“
That’s my
pager,” he said with exasperation, and rang off without saying
goodbye.

She turned her attention
back to the server, it was stable again, but she needed to find out
why it had collapsed. She knew that there was data missing and she
felt the pressure of the hard working staff depending on her.
Carefully she scrolled through the logs stretching her tired
shoulders. She closed her eyes for a moment, straining her mind for
inspiration. She had an idea and started typing, feeling a sudden
tingle of excitement at the thought of solving the problem. She
heard voices in the training team that shared the other end of her
portacabin and she wondered idly if they were producing another
terrible compulsory customer service film.

“
Hello,” a
man said irritably, she recognised his voice and raised an
eyebrow.

“
How did you
get in here?” she asked with mild curiosity.

“
I’ve just
got a consultant post,” he said, slightly dramatically. “And I'm
determined to keep all my patients alive.”

“
Congratulations.” She said drily, wondering if he had
specially chosen a pair of surgeon's blues that emphasized the hard
lines of his stomach and the satisfying way his muscular thighs
filled his trousers. He ignored her and took a step closer, she
realised how tall he was and looked approvingly at his long legs,
and the way his dark stubble gave him a slightly feral
look.

“
Do you keep
printouts of all the bloods as they get entered?” he asked, and she
wondered idly where that sexy trace of an accent was
from.

“
I’m afraid
not.” She said apologetically, imagining him barking orders at the
nurses and bravely making the difficult decisions that needed to be
made.

“
I’d like to
discuss that with your supervisor.” He stepped even closer to her
desk, looming behind Mike’s chair. The comic related art that Mike
cluttered his desk space with was at the same height as his
deliciously defined thighs.

“
Excellent
idea,” Harry said approvingly, still admiring his intensity and his
proportions, “would you like her direct number?” She toyed with the
idea of pointing to Belinda, just visible in her office behind the
stack of photocopied memos and carefully written safety pathways.
In the end she decided against it, she wanted to keep this tall
passionate doctor all to herself.

“
What’s the
point?” he said bitingly, “You lot seem to have a policy of not
answering your phones.” On cue, the receiver on her desk started
ringing and she looked up at him, deciding whether or not to answer
it.

Chris paused then and
looked at the messy desks behind her. “Over there, that looks like
a stack of blood forms.” Harry sighed and manoeuvred her wheelchair
away from her desk. She had been through this routine a couple of
times before, in fact Belinda had written a policy and a flow chart
after the last incident. They did print out blank forms to use for
their programming, but there simply wasn’t the storage space to
keep records on all patients.

“
Oh I’m
sorry.” Chris said awkwardly, he stopped looking at her face and
stared instead at her delicate legs. Then he took a step back and
pushed his hands into his pockets. “I’m sure you working as hard as
you can.” He added heartily, watching the colour rising in her
lovely throat, and feeling worse by the moment. “Once again, my
apologies, I can see how hard you’re trying.”

“
You didn’t
have anything to apologise for until you said that.” She told him
quietly, her dark eyes no longer meeting his. She wheeled back to
the safety of her desk, feeling suddenly self-conscious.

“
Why are you
apologising?” Mike asked protectively, he had spent the past three
years studying Harry’s beautiful face, and he knew when she was
upset. “Why are you in here at all?” he added, wishing he had taken
that self-defence class that his mother had emailed him
about.

“
His
patient’s bloods are missing.” Harry told him quietly, rubbing her
hand across the back of her neck.