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'Thanks, I appreciate that,' Jason said.

The nurse in charge on the evening shift came into the room and spoke to Sophie and Cathy. 'Could you both possibly stay longer?' she asked. 'The standby teams have already come in...there's no one else.'

Sophie nodded. 'All right,' she said. 'I'll just have to make a phone call.'

'I'll stay,' Cathy Stravinsky said.

'Thank you. We're going to do it in room five, which is empty. I'm getting it set up now. Can you scrub, Sophie? Have you done this before?'

'Yes, I'm familiar with it,' Sophie said.

The head nurse hurried out of the room. Not long after, when their patient with the gunshot wound had been transferred to the recovery room, the surgical team transferred to operating room five.

It was ten o'clock when Clay finally got out of operating room five. Thankfully he went over to a scrub sink and, taking off his cap, face mask and goggles, splashed cold water over his face, head and neck. 'Ah, that's better,' he said. He was dead tired.

The others came out to do the same, except Jason, Clay noted, who must have gone to the recovery room to make sure his patient was stabilized. It had been touch and go oft several occasions, but the man had survived. They had used many units of blood.

'Can I give you a ride home, Cathy?' Claude Moreau addressed Cathy Stravinsky as she rinsed her hands at the sink and dabbed her face with cold water. 'I should be ready to go in about twenty minutes.'

'Yes...please,' Cathy said, her face lighting up. 'I don't fancy getting the street-car.' She was an attractive young woman in a slightly unusual way, with her very dark eyes, almost black, and her thin, delicate features, framed by rich, dark, wavy hair.

When they left, Clay was left alone with Sophie. 'Well, Sophie,' he found himself saying, not to be outdone by Claude, 'could I give you a ride home—now that I know where you live?' He surprised himself.

'Well...' Her hesitation was obvious.

'It's no trouble.' Clay took a handful of paper towels and dried his wet hair as she hovered uncertainly at the scrub sinks. He thought how pretty she was, with her damp hair clinging to her cheeks, and how tired she looked with dark shadows under her eyes.

'That's very kind of you,' she said at last. 'Thank you.'

Clay wondered why she had to be so formal with him. 'You were great with the aneurysm case,' he said. 'Did you feel up to it?'

A look of surprise came to her face, and he knew he'd made a
faux pas
again. 'I didn't mean...' he began, knowing that his remark had implied that she couldn't cope. 'What I meant was that you must have felt very tired, having put in a full day and then working all evening as well.'

'Yes, I'm exhausted,' she admitted, 'but no more so than you, I imagine, Dr Sotheby.' Her expression had tightened.

Self-consciously she smoothed her untidy hair behind her ears as he looked at her in silence. Their eyes met and held. For a few moments he felt mesmerized by her, uncharacteristically finding himself tongue-tied. He wanted to reach out and touch her, to cup his hand round her pale cheek, to caress her mouth with his thumb...to draw her to him, to kiss her.

There was something in the depths of her expressive eyes that made him feel she knew what he was thinking as the silence between them deepened. She was about three feet away from him. He had only to take a step and...

'Where...where shall I meet you?' she asked, taking a step back.

'Oh...' he said, trying to think. 'How about right outside the door of the OR suite?' At this time of the evening there would be few staff coming in and out of the OR suite, no one to wonder why he was meeting one of the nurses, out of uniform, and leaving with her. Not that it mattered particularly—it was just that observers would love to make something of that, and spread it around.

'All right,' she said, 'Ten minutes?'

Clay nodded. 'That's fine,' he said. When she'd gone he stood leaning against the sink, feeling slightly stunned. It had taken all his will-power not to reach for her and draw her to him. It must be the tiredness getting to him. He'd wanted to give comfort to her...and to take it for himself.

There was something about her that made him feel tender, whereas with Dawn and Eva he knew they wanted something very specific from him, so with them he was aware of getting something back that he also wanted. These were somehow transactional relationships, however enjoyable they were. They were limited, so each individual knew where they stood. That kind of calculation was all right in certain circumstances.

As he walked to the surgeons' locker room his thoughts dwelt on Sophie, sensing that somehow she would be different... Maybe it had something to do with the fact that she'd been widowed at a young age. Maybe, he considered, she was still mourning her husband, although she'd said that he'd died four and a half years before. How long did it take to get over that? he mused. Perhaps one never did, not really. Maybe he was intrigued by her because she showed no signs of falling at his feet...and because he didn't understand her.

Pompous ass! he told himself as he took a very quick shower, which served to jolt him into greater wakefulness. Maybe he needed a woman like her who didn't dwell on him and his world, who understood it but had other interests.

Then he remembered that tomorrow morning early there were the surgical teaching rounds. His team wasn't presenting any cases, so maybe he could give it a miss for once. He would see how he felt when his alarm went off at six next morning.

Sophie was waiting for him at the suite entrance when he strode down the corridor the short distance from the surgeons' locker room, carrying his medical bag. Dressed in light linen pants with a matching jacket over a simple silk top, she looked totally different, especially with her hair loose. She looked casually sophisticated without even trying.

'I didn't expect to be here for fifteen hours today,' she said ruefully when he came up to her. 'It's been like a marathon, so I really appreciate the ride home.' She looked lovely when she smiled, he thought...without the accoutrements of the OR to hide her face like a woman in purdah.

They didn't bother to wait for an elevator, but started down the two flights of stairs to the main floor.

'Who looks after your daughter when you have to stay unexpectedly like this?' he asked. 'I guess you're not regularly on call?'

'My mother lives a few houses down from me, so I phone her and she comes to take care of her,' Sophie said matter-of-factly. 'I know I'm very lucky that she's willing to do it. Actually, I'm on second call once in a while for evenings, and sometimes I do a weekend. Don't get called much.'

Clay, who really knew little about the problems of child-care, nodded.

'Ah...fresh air. How wonderful.' Sophie held her face upwards and took several deep breaths of the cool night air which was moist from a sudden earlier downpour of rain.

'I'm not sure how fresh it is,' Clay said, smiling.

'It feels fresh,' she said.

In his car he didn't have to ask her for directions, so they sat in silence for quite a while, a relatively companionable silence, although Clay felt he ought to be talking to her. He was also still mulling over the possibility of giving the surgical rounds a miss the next morning.

'Dr Sotheby,' she said, turning to him, 'that man with cancer of the breast tissue—will he be all right, do you think? I've been thinking about him all day because he seemed so bewildered by what was happening to him. I felt so sorry for him.'

'I expect he'll be all right,' Clay said. 'There was no spread to the lymph nodes under his arm, so it appears to have been localized. I'll check on him fairly frequently. We can give female hormones to men, which act as a preventative to the spread of the cancer, but they do have side effects such as retention of fluid which can lead to heart problems over a period of time. I expect I'll just watch him.'

'Mmm.'

When they were halfway to her home, making good progress on streets thinly populated by traffic, Sophie leaned forward when they were on a bridge that crossed another road. 'Would you stop at the end of this bridge for a few minutes, please?' She pointed to a small park and mature trees at the side of the street just ahead of them. 'You could just pull in there. I'd like to get some fresh air before I go home...I'd like to feel the rain on my face.' Indeed, a light rain spotted the windshield of the car.

'Sure,' Clay said, slowing down and pulling over to park in an area off the road.

'Just for a few minutes,' she said. 'I know you want to get home. I want to clear my mind of work before I get into the house. I still feel so wound up...'

'Yes,' he agreed as they walked the few yards over to the bridge. 'Those aneurysm cases are just like walking a tightrope over a canyon—the same sort of feeling, I should imagine. I was just glad it was Jason's case, not mine. It's rather different when you're the assistant.'

They leaned over the bridge, side by side, looking down at the deserted road below. A blustery, cool wind had got up, blowing away the heat of early summer, blowing light rain into their faces.

'Yes,' she agreed, 'I guess you can relax a little more. I always admire Dr Moreau. He's always so calm, so good at his job.'

'Yes,' he said. 'He's a great anaesthetist. I think Cathy's got a crush on him, don't you?'

Sophie looked at him in surprise. 'Yes, she has. It's more than a crush because she's a mature woman, not a kid. How do you know? I thought you didn't notice things like that.'

'Why do you say that?' He turned to her.

'Well, I...I thought you probably wouldn't be aware—'

'You mean you think I'm an insensitive clod?'

'No.' She laughed. 'I just thought you would be so focused on what you were doing that you would scarcely see the nurses, except in their roles in relation to you at a particular moment...' She was floundering a bit for words.

'In other words, an insensitive clod,' he said.

Again she laughed. 'No, really, I...'

They were facing each other, the wind whipping her hair forward over her face. 'You look like Botticelli's Venus,' he said, reaching forward to pull a strand of auburn hair away from her mouth, 'with those tawny eyes and hair that looks alive.'

'So, Dr Sotheby,' she said softly as his fingers brushed her skin, 'you are human after all. I had doubts.'

Clay put his hands on her upper arms and bent down to kiss her, moved by instinct, the action quite unplanned, He closed his eyes as his mouth met her cool lips and her windblown hair caressed his face.

She responded to his kiss, gently, warmly, after a moment of hesitation, but she didn't put her arms around his neck or press herself closely against him, as some women he knew would have done. She just stood and let their mouths cling together.

For his part, he maintained a light grip on her, the contact giving him a sharp flare of desire mixed with a sense of something like wonder that he should be here on a bridge at night, kissing the somewhat aloof Ms Dunhill who, he suspected, didn't really like him very much. At the moment he didn't really care as he began to lose himself in the sensations aroused by her gentle yet sensual response to his kiss.

For a long time they stood there, buffeted by the wind. After some minutes, he slid his arms round her shoulders, as though protecting her, knowing that he didn't want this contact to end.

She at last pulled away from him, straining against his arms so that he was forced to let go. They stood looking at each other in the soft light of the streetlamps.

'Why did you do that?' she whispered.

'I wanted to.'

Sophie turned her head into the wind so that her clinging hair blew away from her face. 'We'd better go,' she said.

In the car he turned to her. 'I didn't plan that,' he said.

'I know.'

'Do you mind?'

She hesitated. 'No.'

Clay let out a sigh. Sometimes you wanted something to happen, then out of nowhere, it seemed, it happened and took you galloping ahead so that you didn't know how to maintain control of it. He picked up one of her hands which lay inert in her lap and carried it to his lips.

'I want to make love to you,' he said. They'd shared such a horrendous day that to lie in a comfortable bed with this woman in his arms seemed like a fitting end to it, to chase the demons away, to share warmth and passion... Somehow he knew that was how it would be. He didn't know where they would go...perhaps to his place.

'So do a lot of people,' she said, her expression veiled in the semi-darkness of the car.

'Really?' he said, taken aback by her reply, kissing the tips of her fingers.

'Well...quite a few, anyway. It's an occupational hazard in the operating rooms.' She was speaking softly, matter-of-factly, so that he couldn't tell if she was laughing at him. 'And aren't you being very premature? To say that we don't know each other is an understatement. Or maybe you prefer women you don't know very well, then you don't have to get emotionally involved. Hmm?'

'I hadn't really thought of it in that light,' he admitted. 'I feel that I know you pretty well.'

'No, you don't.'

'So that means no, then?' he said, after a few minutes of loaded silence.

'Well, it doesn't mean yes,' she said, 'so that leaves only no, doesn't it?'

'It could be perhaps, or maybe,' he said, still retaining her hand.

'To you. I don't subscribe to maybe,' she said.

'Am I so odious? I know that's an unfair question, and not really the point.'

'No, you're not odious,' she said softly, removing her hand from his grasp. 'Sometimes obnoxious at work.' There was a touch of laughter in her voice. 'And, no, it isn't really the point.'

'You're laughing at me, Sophie Dunhill...teasing,' he said, putting his hand behind her head so that he could draw her to him as he bent forward.

'Not teasing. I don't like that. I just feel a strong sense of the ridiculous—'

He cut her short by kissing her. Again, she didn't put her arms around him, only put her hand against his cheek after a moment, keeping it there, so he put his hand up to cover it. Again the kiss went on for a long time so that he lost himself in the feel of her. Usually with Dawn and his other women he was always aware of himself there with them. Now he felt a loss of self, as though he were floating away to a realm of pure pleasure where he could forget work and everything else but her, the two of them in the cosy, enclosed world of the car's interior. He couldn't have said why it was so.