The Elusive Consultant

‘I wouldn’t,’ Tessa said indignantly. ‘I only listen to the gossip, I never start it.’ They sat in silence again, but this time it certainly wasn’t comfortable. Endless questions bobbed on her tongue, but Tessa bit them back, knowing it was none of her business, knowing Max would tell her only what he wanted to.

‘London won’t know what’s hit them.’ It was a small attempt to break the strained atmosphere, a little joke to desperately lighten the mood that had suddenly taken a massive dive. ‘You’ll have to smarten up a bit.’

‘What’s wrong with what I’m wearing?’ Max replied indignantly, but he was at least smiling now they were on the familiar territory of his appalling dress sense.

‘Nothing.’ Tessa gave a cheeky wink. ‘For a walk along the beach, anyway.’

‘They’re smart shorts!’ Max protested.

‘They might be if you ironed them, and I can’t really imagine the consultants there wearing T-shirts and boat shoes.’ Tessa put up her hands in mock defence as Max opened his mouth to protest. ‘Just a mental picture I’ve got of London, Max—you know, doctors in smart suits, nurses with starched uniforms and caps.’

‘It’s the twenty-first century, Tess, that all went out with the ark.’

Tessa laughed. ‘I could be wrong, but you’re in a little bay-side town here Max, most of the patients know you already, the staff certainly do. We know that under that scruffy hair is a brilliant medical brain.’

‘Well, I’m not wearing a suit,’ Max shrugged defiantly. ‘For anyone.’

Tessa turned back to her coffee staring dreamily out of the window, images of London dancing through her mind—Piccadilly Circus, the Houses of Parliament, tree-lined streets she had seen only in televised weddings and funerals. So far away it might just as well be on another planet, and Max was actually going to be there, riding on the subway or the tube or whatever its name was, having short days and cold Christmases. Her mind danced around London as she sat there. She’d never had any desire to go, it had never even entered her head before. Despite being an eternal romantic, Tessa had her head screwed on firmly enough to realise it wasn’t all going to be rosy-cheeked children singing around Christmas trees and rolling English countryside littered with wildlife. And, no doubt, Max would grumble like crazy about the warm beer and the exchange rate, but London...

‘Maybe I should get some smart trousers,’ Max relented after a few moments’ silence, his mind obviously still on the conversation. ‘I guess I could buy a couple of shirts as well.’

‘A tie even?’ Tessa teased, and Max shuddered. ‘And while you’re at it, you might even get a haircut.’

‘You’re pushing it now,’ Max grumbled. ‘Still, I am going to have to start sorting things out, it’s only two weeks until I go.’

‘Are you excited?’

‘Yes and no.’ Max shrugged but didn’t give any more away.

‘It’s a big move, though,’ Tessa pushed, even though it was obvious that Max wanted to end the conversation. ‘You must at least be a bit nervous. Will you miss us all?’

‘It’s only for a year, Tess,’ he said, but the raw note of urgency to his voice had Tessa convinced he was assuring himself more than her. ‘Peninsula Hospital will still be here when I get back. I’m just taking a year out—things will stay the same, won’t they?’ His face was serious, his hand was back on her arm and Tessa swallowed the lump that had mysteriously appeared in her throat. ‘You’d do the same, wouldn’t you? I mean, if your dream job came up you’d grab it.’

For an age she stared at Max, but it became too hard. Too hard to look him in the eye and tell him she was OK with this. Dragging her eyes away, she drank in the view—the fisherman on the jetty, the endless beach that constantly beckoned her, the jagged rocks full of tiny pools, each one a Pandora’s box of treasures she’d gaze into and dream away the hours as she swirled her hands through the water.

Maybe London was glamorous and exciting, but it wasn’t home.

‘I’ve got my dream job, Max,’ she said softly, her eyes slowly moving back to him. ‘OK, it’s not the cutting edge of nursing, people aren’t going to look at my résumé and shake with excitement, but it’s all I want—Charge Nurse of the emergency department at Peninsula. Enough emergencies to keep the adrenaline flowing and plenty of stunning views to calm me down when it all gets too much. This is enough for me, Max. I thought it was for you as well.’

‘It is, it’s just...’ A long-fingered hand ran through his tousled hair and he let out a ragged sigh. ‘I need to talk to you, Tess.’

‘We are talking,’ Tessa said lightly, a forced smile taut on her strained face.

‘I mean away from here.’ He gestured to the room, his eyes never leaving her. ‘Away from the hospital.’

‘What about Emily?’ Tessa asked slowly.

‘She’s on call tonight.’

Another wrong answer. As the shutters came down on her eyes Max broke in quickly. ‘I don’t mean it like that, Tessa, I just really need to talk to you.’

‘No!’ Tessa said rather too forcefully. ‘It’s Emily you should be talking to about any problem you’re having with your relationship—she’s the one with your ring on her finger. And if it’s an impartial, feminine viewpoint you’re after, believe me, Max, you’re asking the wrong woman.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘Well...’ Tessa’s eyes darted nervously, wishing she could take back the words she had just uttered and frantically searching her mind for a way to diffuse them. ‘I’m not exactly an authority on the perfect relationship. Look how many dating disasters I’ve endured in my time.’

‘I’m not asking you out for a counselling session, Tessa, I just want to talk to you.’

‘Sorry, Max.’ Tessa gave a vague shrug. ‘I’m a bit tied up at the moment.’

Never had the chimes of the emergency loudspeaker springing into life been more gratefully received and Tessa jumped up, grabbing her pager from the table as Max reluctantly joined her. ‘Come on, it looks like we’re wanted.’

‘Tessa?’ The question in his voice didn’t go unnoticed, but so innocent was the smiling face that turned to him, so wide her smile, that Max hesitated, his pensive expression shifting, his own face breaking into a wide smile that matched hers. ‘Come on, I’ll race you.’

They sped along the corridor, laughing as they did so, Tessa’s long brown hair flying behind her as she tried to keep up with Max’s effortless strides, their pagers shrilling in their pockets alerting them to head to Emergency as other hospital personnel flattened against the walls to let them past.

And to anyone watching, Tessa didn’t look as if she had a care in the world as she burst through the swing doors and headed straight for Resus.

‘Beat you.’ Max smiled before turning to Jane and getting the run-down of the trauma that was about to come through the doors.

‘You always do,’ Tessa grumbled as she ran through and set up the necessary equipment.

‘Ah, but I had an added incentive to stay ahead of you this morning.’ Max grinned as Tessa’s forehead creased. ‘How many eggs did you say you’d had?’

It was a joke, a below-the-belt joke that nurses and doctors dished out almost by the minute, a brother-sister-type tease that normally Tessa would have shrugged off before it had even registered in her brain.

But it wasn’t a normal morning, and there was nothing sisterly about the way Tessa was feeling. Max was leaving, there was no denying it now, she’d heard it straight from the horse’s mouth.

It really was going to happen.

All that talk, all that bravado about being friends had all been a lie—a lie she was so used to living. After five years it came as naturally as breathing. And her excuse to him about not being able to offer an impartial feminine viewpoint had been another one.

Feminine she could readily manage, but impartial, well, it wasn’t even a vague possibility.

Max, with his curly brown hair and teasing smile, had never, since the moment Tessa had first laid eyes on him, been just a friend. Max, with his crumpled clothes and banana-skin humour, who could make her cry with laughter one minute and suddenly be serious the next, was so much more than her work confidant, brunch buddy and sounding-board.

There was nothing impartial about Tessa’s feelings.

Max Slater was the man that she loved.

CHAPTER TWO

‘SORRY to drag you back, guys. The story’s a bit vague from Ambulance Control so I thought it best to be prepared.’

‘No problem,’ Max replied easily. ‘What do we know so far?’

‘Speedboat versus jet-ski.’