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'OK.' She looked back at her pizza then tasted it experimentally. Clearly his wife was too painful and too personal a subject for him to discuss and she could understand that. She had no claim on him. She didn't expect him to ever return her feelings, so she could hardly be jealous of a dead woman. And knowing that he was capable of great depth of feeling and a love that could survive death, that merely increased his attractiveness to her.'

'This is good,' she declared, taking more food, resigning herself to their discussion becoming less personal. 'With Mrs Corby, does the fact that the liver-function tests her GP took were normal mean that there's a good chance that her tumour hasn't spread there yet?'

'There're no guarantees.' He took another piece of pizza and Merrin was pleased that he seemed to be enjoying it. 'Small deposits won't necessarily cause enough liver-cell destruction or obstruction for the enzymes to rise above normal levels in the blood tests. She'll need an ultrasound scan prior to surgery to check that the liver is clear before we proceed.'

They talked about work over the course of their meal and when they'd both had enough Neil carried the boxes and the last few slices of pizza through into the kitchen and left them on a table.

'Ever heard of open plan?' she asked, fingering the heavy plasterwork around one of the doors. 'If you knocked a few of these walls out you could make this one big open space.'

'You want me to rip up the carpets, pull down the ceilings, now knock out the walls?' He was putting water on to boil for coffee and now he turned back to her, his expression enigmatic. 'Where will I live during this?'

'With me,' she suggested brightly, promptly grimacing at his unflinching regard. 'Joking. Joking. Don't panic. Besides, I've no room for you. I've a single bed, one desk, a narrow wardrobe and space to turn around if I hold in my breath. I'm stuck in the house officers' quarters. The doctors' flats are all full at present.'

'The ones that haven't been condemned yet,' he said grimly, turning back preparing their drinks. 'Why are you living in? You're a London girl. Haven't you got family you can stay with?'

'I have, but I'm the youngest child and the only girl and my parents are a bit smothering,' she explained. 'I love them dearly but I'm grown up now and I prefer my independence.' She looked back into the room they'd just left. 'Where are your photos?'

His look was blank. 'What photos?'

'Of family. Your wife. Friends.' She lifted one shoulder. 'There's nothing personal anywhere.' She wandered out into the first room they'd come into then back again. 'May I look around the rest of the place?'

Midway through spooning coffee into a plunger, he hesitated. 'Do you mean you want to find a bathroom?'

'I might use a bathroom in passing,' she said slowly. 'Mostly I just want to look around.'

'I'll await your interior design suggestions breathlessly,' he said wearily, lifting one arm to wave her away. 'White or black?'

'White if you've skim, black if you haven't. One sugar.' Merrin opened the door leading out of the room they'd eaten in. 'Why do you keep all the doors shut?'

'Must be the cleaners,' he said absently. 'I don't close them.'

He followed her a few minutes later, bringing her coffee to where she stood looking out of what she assumed was a guest bedroom through lightly swirling snow into the busy street below.

'On the radio this morning they said it's going to be warmer next week,' she said quietly. 'Snow over the weekend then rain on Monday then better. You don't hear much up here. It must be the double glazing. You know this place is really awful, Prof. I realise it's probably worth a fortune but it's stuffy and stilted and depressing. You shouldn't be coming back to this every night. If I were you I'd sell up and get out of here.'

'It's somewhere to sleep, Merrin.'

'A home should be a haven.'

'You mean like your room at the hospital?'

She grimaced, acknowledging his point. 'That's different,' she declared half-heartedly. 'That's only temporary. Just this year while I'm a house officer at the National. No more.'

She took a sip of the coffee he'd made. 'Don't you have any photographs at all?' It bothered her that there'd not even been a picture of his wife in his bedroom. That he still grieved was understandable. That he still grieved so much that he found it painful to even see a picture of his wife was worrying.

'They're in albums,' he said finally. 'Somewhere. In the study perhaps. I don't know. Why are you so interested?'

'I wanted to see what your wife looked like,' she admitted, wishing for once that she knew how to be less than honest.

His brows drew together, but he looked merely puzzled. 'She was about your height but thinner. Long, straight, dark hair. Brown eyes.'

'She must have been very special.'

'Why do you say that?'

'It's obvious. I can tell from you and from things other people have said in passing this week. Lindsay says the whole hospital was in shock when she died. Celia says she was the most beautiful woman she's ever seen.'

'Yes, she was beautiful.' He moved away from Merrin slightly and went to the window beside the one where she stood, now looking down himself into the street below.

Holding herself tensely, sensing his preoccupation, Merrin stayed silent. Eventually he said heavily, 'She died young and tragically. Such deaths invariably provoke outpourings of excessive sentimentality.'

She stiffened. 'What does that mean?'

He studied his coffee then took a long swallow. 'It means, Dr Ryan, that I'm becoming morose and bad company.' Finishing the remainder of his drink in a few mouthfuls, he dumped the mug carelessly onto the antique-looking dresser beside the window and looked at her. 'Which also means that it's time I took you home. Drink your coffee. I'll take you back to the hospital.'

'I'd rather you didn't,' she said honestly, her mouth drying. She stared up at him, her eyes wide, trying not to let the stillness in him hurt too much. 'I'd much rather stay,' she whispered, aching to soothe away the pain she could feel in him. 'Let me. Don't take me away. I could make you feel better.'

'Yes, I think you could,' he admitted finally, and though she sensed the admission didn't come easily to him, one hand lifted to cup her cheek, caressing her gently and turning her immediately languid and breathless. 'Temporarily. But that wouldn't help either of us.'

'I don't know.' Unable to stop herself,
she turned her mouth into his palm to taste him, barely suppressing a despairing cry
when he drew it away so swiftly that it was as if the touch of her tongue had stung him. 'I think it might help me quite a lot.'

'That's your wine talking.' Abruptly brusque now, with no sign of the softening she'd thought she'd glimpsed, he took her barely touched coffee from her shaking hand and deposited it beside his. 'That's enough, Merrin. Home now.'

'It's not the wine,' she murmured automatically. She'd had two glasses of the Chianti and she could drink half a bottle easily—more, sometimes, with food—without becoming even slightly intoxicated. But she didn't argue too forcefully.

Apart from directing him to the building housing the house officers' rooms and murmuring her thanks for the evening, she didn't speak on the drive back and neither did he.

On Monday when Professor McAlister met them on Orange Ward in the morning, Merrin stared at him hungrily but he barely looked at her and his greeting was brief and entirely neutral. 'Douglas, Raymond Alfio was admitted to Coronary Care Saturday with an infarct. I told the medics that we'd look in on him this morning. When was he supposed to be coming in for surgery?'

'Another month, I think.' The registrar opened his notebook, and leafed through it quickly. 'Make that five weeks.'

'Postpone it. His heart's obviously his main problem at the moment and Chris won't want to anaesthetise him within six weeks of a heart attack. We'll see how he gets on and worry about his surgery later. The academic round's starting next door this morning.'

Lindsay had told Merrin that the Monday morning round was always held on the main ward belonging to the team who'd been on call for the weekend, and so they went immediately across to Red Ward, Lindsay explaining,
en route,
to Merrin about Mr Alfio.

'He was in under Prof about two weeks ago,' she explained quickly. 'Twisted sigmoid colon. We managed to straighten it out in the short term by decompressing it, using a colonoscope, but he needs that bit of his bowel chopped out to stop it happening again.'

Mr Sanderson had been the surgeon on call for the weekend, and his registrar presented the cases who'd been admitted acutely. Compared with the weekend before, it sounded as if they'd had a quiet time, and Merrin was relieved to know that not all weekends on call would be as frantic as hers. There'd only been five people admitted, compared with the twenty-seven who'd come when she'd been on call.

Three admissions had had appendicitis, another had come in with abdominal pain yet to be diagnosed, and a fifth had been admitted with gall-bladder symptoms similar to Mrs Franklin's.

In this case, though, it appeared Mr Sanderson was going to avoid operating until about two months down the track when the inflammation had settled down. Although Merrin looked at the Prof quickly, curious about whether, in the light of his own habit of operating acutely, he would criticise that decision, he didn't make any immediate comment.

Mr Sanderson, though, made the point himself. 'Personally, forty years of surgical experience tells me that this approach is far safer than operating in the presence of acute inflammation,' he sniped. 'The eagerness amongst our younger colleagues here to remove the gall bladder immediately sets a dangerous precedent, and I believe that it's a trend that should be resisted.'

Beside her Merrin felt Douglas tense, but she saw that their boss's expression was merely resigned. 'No one's about to criticise your decision to wait, Harry,' he said wearily. 'The evidence isn't strong enough either way.'

'Who needs evidence?' The other man looked annoyed. 'The answer's obvious. Waiting has to be safer.'

'It doesn't
have
to be anything,' Neil McAlister supplied mildly. 'If complications supervene then it certainly isn't safer.'

'Complications are rare—'

'Not rare enough to ignore the possibility,' the Prof interjected, the hardening of his tone now proof that his resignation had been less solid than she'd assumed. 'Last year's mortality and morbidity figures prove that.'

'You can't tell me it's easy, operating with active inflammation,' the older man protested.

Around her, it felt to Merrin as if all the other doctors were holding their breaths, just as she was, but there was no explosion. Instead, the younger surgeon merely said quietly, 'On the contrary, my experience is that it's invariably less technically difficult than I'm expecting it to be.' She saw him check his watch. 'Is that it, Fiona, or are there other cases?'

'That's the last.' Merrin thought that Mr Sanderson's registrar looked nervous. 'Unless there's something else you'd like to discuss...?'

'Just a reminder that my registrar teaching session this afternoon's going to begin at four instead of three-thirty,' the professor said evenly.

They started their ward round as usual on Orange. The professor discharged Mrs Franklin, now eating and happy after having had her gall bladder removed on Thursday. He told them that he'd sent Simon D'Souza home on Saturday.

Toby Wiseman looked brighter and he'd managed some light food over the weekend without any problems. 'The drain can come out today,' the Prof told him once he'd examined him. 'Aim for home Wednesday but you're going to need the TPN for another month.'

Toby looked up at the black-plastic-covered bag doubtfully. 'There could be another big game on next week. Manchester, if we win on Saturday. What do I do with this then?'

'Finish your bag that morning then clamp the line off for a day,' the Prof instructed crisply. 'Missing twenty-four hours won't do you any harm. Make sure you tell pharmacy in advance so they don't make up the bag. Your nurse can call me if she has any doubts.'

'Want tickets, Prof?' Toby brightened. 'I've got connections. I can get good seats.'

'Another time.' The Prof looked up from the results Lindsay had passed him. 'Ask me again if they ever look like making a final.'

'That'll be in about three months at Wembley, then,' their patient announced, grinning.

Merrin saw the consultant lift his eyes to the ceiling. 'You should be worrying about relegation, not Wembley,' he observed dryly. He reached for the chart Douglas was holding. 'Since you're having delusions I'm reducing your pain relief.'

He acknowledged the younger man's indignant howl of protest with an indifferent shrug but Merrin realised that he was merely teasing Toby because he didn't alter his medication. 'Wednesday,' he said calmly. 'Up and about the place today. I want to see you moving.'

Compared with the usual pace of his rounds, this morning he moved relatively slowly, taking longer with each patient, and he spent more time teaching. 'Merrin, give me three differences between Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis,' he said, after seeing one of his patients who had long-standing UC.

'Ulcerative colitis occurs in the large bowel, but Crohn's can be anywhere,' she said confidently. 'In UC the inflammation is continuous, but in Crohn's it's patchy with normal bowel in between, and UC means an increased risk of bowel cancer.'

'Good.' His nod of approval made her warm. 'Lindsay, another three.'

By the time Douglas had a turn and he came around to Merrin again, she had to think hard to come up with the third of the next three differences, but she managed it. Third time round, she was struggling. 'UC has crypt abscesses,' she said slowly, referring to a microscopic finding on biopsies. 'Granulomas are present in seventy-five per cent of Crohn's. I can't think of any more.'

He nodded neutrally. 'Lindsay?'