The Elusive Consultant

Grateful for the excuse, Tessa replaced her cup in her saucer and grimaced. ‘Despite what the label says, this tastes nothing like sugar.’

‘You’re not on another diet?’ Max groaned. ‘If it’s that cabbage soup one, I’m really going to have to put my foot down. Every time you pulled out that Thermos I felt like ducking for cover, I couldn’t stand the smell.’

‘Me neither.’ Tess laughed. ‘And, no, it’s not the cabbage diet and it’s not the milkshake one either— this one involves real food and lots of it. Narelle’s cooking up a storm back there.’

‘So how was the course?’

‘Great.’ Tessa gave an enthusiastic nod. ‘I learnt heaps, which is just as well, Admin were very reluctant to fund it. You’d have thought I was asking them to pay me for a week by a pool in Queensland, not an advanced trauma course.’

‘That’s so like them,’ Max groaned. ‘You’d think the money came from their own wages sometimes.’

‘They only agreed in the end because I had my own accommodation lined up.’ Tessa grinned. ‘Hotel Hardy.’

‘How was it?’

‘Oh, the food was wonderful, the service amazing and the bedroom divine. There’s nothing quite like your old bedroom, is there?’

‘How’s your mum?’ Max asked, his laughter fading as he watched Tessa stiffen.

‘Oh, fine,’ Tessa said airily, then, feeling the weight of his stare still on her, she gave a little shrug. ‘She’s still living in la-la denial land.’

‘Thing’s haven’t got better, then?’ Max asked gently as Tessa shifted uncomfortably.

‘Dad’s back with her.’

‘His mistress?’ Max checked.

Tessa gave a low laugh. ‘Whatever you want to call her.’

‘Maybe he isn’t back with her this time, Tessa, maybe it’s all innocent. You might just be reading too much into things.’

‘No, I’m not.’ Her voice was sharp, her eyes defiant as she looked up. ‘I know I’m right, the same way I’ve always know since I was ten years old. The pattern’s been the same—later and later back from the office, more trips to Sydney than a flight attendant, and endless presents for Mum to quash his guilt. The front room looks like a funeral parlour there’s so many flowers in there. I don’t know how Mum can let him get away with it, and as for her...’ Tessa’s full mouth practically disappeared into her face as she sucked in her cheeks. ‘How could she do it? Leaving aside how many people she’s hurt over the years, how can she bear just to have a part of him?’

Max didn’t say anything, just watched as she leant back in her chair and nibbled at the skin around her thumbnail, her serious brown eyes finally coming back to meet his. ‘Mum just refuses to believe it, she just can’t see that it’s all happening again.’

For an age he didn’t answer, just stared at Tessa thoughtfully. ‘That’s her prerogative, Tessa,’ Max said slowly. ‘Maybe she knows exactly what’s going on and just chooses to ignore it. The truth hurts sometimes.

‘Anyway, enough about grown-up games, let’s get on to brighter things.’ He gave her the benefit of a very nice smile and Tessa gave a grateful sigh as Max sensibly moved the subject to safer ground. ‘I missed you while you were away.’

The grateful sigh caught in Tessa’s throat. Max saying he had missed her definitely wasn’t safer ground. Max saying he had missed her sent her imaginations soaring, and her heart fluttering, so for something to do Tessa’s thumb went up for a second nibble. ‘Don’t you mean you miss the way I do your bloods and generally clean up behind you?’ Tessa said, forcing a half-laugh, trying to keep the conversation light.

‘No, Tessa, I missed you.’

Wrong answer.

An imaginary gong sounded in Tessa’s head and she could almost hear the clock ticking as she struggled to come up with a witty reply, a quick bucket of water to douse the undercurrents that were sizzling across the table. What the hell was going on? Max never spoke like this, never leant across the table with puppy-dog eyes and nervous smiles. He’d only said that he’d missed her, Tessa frantically reasoned, but it wasn’t so much what he’d said but how he’d said it. Not once in their five-year history had there been any subtle connotations, any shifts in tempo, but all of a sudden here Max was telling her he’d missed her, with eyes that seemed to be directed to her very soul.

‘The chopper’s out,’ Tessa said in a flurry of nervousness, gesturing to the window and wishing she could rest her burning cheeks against the cool glass. ‘I can’t see anything going on, but it isn’t their usual time for a practice run.’

The tension that had built around them popped like an overblown balloon as Max turned his attention to the window. ‘It isn’t a practice, they just called for a doctor assist.’

Tessa heard the edge in his voice and found herself smiling. Max lived for call-outs, unlike Tessa whose blood ran cold each and every time she was summoned to the chopper. ‘So how come you’re not out with them?’

‘It’s Chris Burgess’s turn this week, lucky thing. I haven’t been out to a good rescue for ages.’

‘We were out there two weeks ago,’ Tessa pointed out. ‘I’ve still got the vertigo to prove it. I don’t know how you can get such a kick out of it.’

‘Tessa Hardy, you know you love it really,’ he teased, but Tessa shook her head adamantly.

‘Solid ground does it for me every time. I freeze inside when they ask for a nurse assist. It’s not the patients that worry me. I enjoy a good multi-trauma just as much as you, Max, and I love going out with the road ambulance, but helicopters...’ Tessa gave a small shudder. ‘If I never set foot in one again it will be too soon.’ Her gaze drifted back to the window. The helicopter was long since out of sight, the perfect scene uninterrupted now. ‘It’s hard to believe someone might be in trouble out there when it all looks so picture perfect.’

‘Isn’t it just?’

Something in his voice dragged Tessa’s attention away from the view, a distant pensive note that sounded so, so out of place with Max’s usual easygoing manner.

‘I guess things aren’t always as idyllic as they seem,’ he said slowly, the dark note to his voice so audible Tessa felt the hairs stand up on the back of her neck.

‘Are you all right, Max?’

For a second his eyes crinkled, but not in their usual sunny way as his face broke into a smile. Instead, deep, unfamiliar lines grooved the edges of his grey eyes as the beginning of a frown appeared. ‘It’s nothing,’ Max mumbled, fiddling with the salt shaker, which instantly hit her as strange. It was normally Tessa who fiddled, Tessa who played with her food, the sugar bowl, the teaspoons—anything she could get her hands on actually—while Max sat nonchalantly, a look of vague amusement on his carefree face.

‘If there’s a problem Max, you can talk to me,’ Tessa offered tentatively. ‘We’re friends.’

A look Tessa couldn’t quite interpret flashed in his eyes and she was quite sure, as she registered his Adam’s apple bob in his throat, that Max was working his way up to tell her something.

‘Here you are, Dr Slater, sunny side up, just as you like them.’ Like the channels changing on the television, instantly the vision shifted. The wistful moment disappeared and the larrikin was back as Max licked his lips, while Narelle busied herself arranging knives and forks.

Max always licked his lips when a plate was put in front of him, Tessa mused. He was the only person who enjoyed food as much as she did. They spent hours, literally hours, talking about recipes and restaurants and the lack of variety in the canteen’s machines at night. Mind you, unlike Tessa, Max didn’t suffer for his sins. Three bars of chocolate washed down with cola was his usual staple diet on a night shift and not a single globule of fat ended up on his tall wiry frame, whereas Tessa only had to watch him eat to suffer the consequences at the next weigh-in.

‘What’s this?’ Max’s fork stopped midway to his mouth as Narelle placed a steaming plate of bacon and eggs in front of Tessa.

‘My new diet.’ Tessa shrugged. ‘It’s low carbohydrate, or should I say no carbohydrate. Apparently loads of film stars are on it at the moment, the weight’s supposed to fall off you. And the best bit of it is that I can eat as much of this as I like.’

‘You’re not serious?’ Max stared incredulously at her heaving plate. ‘As much as you like?’

Tessa nodded. ‘The more the better. I had this for breakfast as well.’

Max peered at her plate more closely. ‘No toast to mop up the yolk?’

‘Definitely not.’

‘No mushrooms?’

‘No.’ Tessa shook her head seriously. ‘They’ve got carbohydrates.’

‘Fruit?’

Again Tessa shook her head. ‘It’s this and lots of it—no doubt I’ll be having this for dinner later. Apparently I can have cheese as well,’ she added with a slightly nauseous twinge to her voice.