Hearts of Gold: The Children's Heart Surgeon

Today she wouldn’t talk to herself, would look where she was going, would not bump into anyone and would not tell any lies. Even small ones. Even small self-protective ones.

‘Good morning!’

Not Phil’s cheerful cut-glass accent, but a slow, deep, American drawl. Alex was emerging from the front gate of the house four doors down.

‘Good morning,’ Annie managed, mentally noting that was lie number one and her resolution was already shot to pieces because there was nothing remotely good about having to walk to work with Alex.

‘The meeting went well. The staff seemed enthused. You met with the nursing staff later—are you confident we’ll have them all on side, even when things get tough?’

Annie should have felt relief that the walk to work was going to be nothing more than a business meeting with added exercise, but relief wasn’t happening. What was happening was a hot flush. Premature menopause it must be, because just walking next to this man couldn’t make her feel hot all over.

Very hot all over.

‘Are you all right?’

Annie stopped walking and turned to glare at the questioner.

‘Why wouldn’t I be?’ It must be early menopause—menopause made you snappy!

‘You’re a little flushed and you didn’t hear my question.’

Alex Attwood was now frowning at her—so much for good mornings!—but it seemed more an enquiring kind of frown than an angry one, then he reached up and touched a finger to her cheek.

‘You’re not sickening for something?’

Only love.

The thought came from nowhere, and so horrified Annie she knew whatever colour had been in her cheeks was now gone as all the heat drained from her body, leaving her deadly cold.

‘I might be,’ she told him, ‘and it might be catching.’ She turned away to keep walking. Think premature menopause, not love. Although menopause itself wasn’t contagious—and not really a sickness, either, though she was reasonably certain premature menopause could be classed as such. And as she’d now come up with a third symptom, fuzzy thinking—why else would love have popped into her head?—she was willing to believe that’s what she had. Especially since she also had mood swings and she’d felt like crying when he’d touched her cheek.

‘Annie!’

She’d been striding determinedly along the footpath, but something in the way he said her name made her look at him again. She read confusion on his face, yet he seemed to have nothing more to say.

Alex cursed his ineptitude with words. It had always been this way. As a child he’d made things with his hands, fixed things—found making a gift for his mother easier than saying he loved her.

Oh, he could talk about his work, to a certain extent. Though even there he preferred to do it—to operate—and to let the results do his talking.

But at some stage he had to talk to Annie, really talk to her. Find out if there was any validity in the way his thoughts kept imposing a fair-haired ghost over her features. Because if there wasn’t, then he might be going mad. He might, as his sister had so kindly suggested when she’d visited him in Melbourne, be suffering the effects of living upside down for six months—mental muddle-headedness, she’d called it.

Though she’d only accused him of that because he’d refused to laugh at her absurd jokes and failed to accompany her on an umpteenth shopping expedition.

She’d walked on—Annie, not his sister—and had stopped at the lights on the busy intersection opposite the hospital. He took her arm as the green man indicated they should cross, and though he felt her soft muscle go tense she didn’t pull away, accepting the touch as nothing more than a courtesy.

Not knowing that he’d had to touch her, had to feel her flesh and the hardness of bone beneath it. Closer to madness than mental muddle-headedness. He sent the thought-wave to his sister, now back in North Carolina with the rest of his family, then, the crossing safely negotiated, dropped Annie’s arm and turned his thoughts to work.

‘The staff are really keen. It was a good idea to negotiate to have our own staff treating our patients even once they leave the special care unit for the ward.’

‘I’ll be observing in Theatre Three today—adult patient but an intricate aorta repair.’

They spoke in unison, then Annie gave a laugh and said, ‘As I was answering a question you asked ages ago, it seems only fair you continue.’

Though equally willing to talk about the nursing staff—anything to get his mind off the physical manifestations of Annie’s close proximity—Alex continued.

‘It was torn in a MVA, repaired at the time, but now the cardiologist feels there must be adhesions slowing the flow of blood through the vessel. The echo shows some kind of blockage but it’s where the aorta’s tucked away behind the pulmonary artery and it’s hard to get a clear picture of the problem. Even the MRI doesn’t show much.’

‘Sounds tricky,’ Annie said, though he guessed from the relaxation in her voice that she was relieved by the topic. ‘I’m assuming that’s this morning. You’ve a couple of patients booked for consultations this afternoon.’

They were inside the staff entrance, in the small alcove where he’d waited for them yesterday, and she turned and smiled at him.

‘To think I doubted you’d get referrals. I know Phil laughed at me when I said as much yesterday, but I wondered if paediatric cardiologists here would prefer to continue to use the surgeons they knew.’

He found himself smiling back.

‘I knew I could always take cases from the waiting list at Children’s. That was part of the deal, but referrals? I had a few doubts about them myself,’ he admitted, still smiling, because Annie’s smile had brightened up his day.

He sent a new thought-wave to his sister. Total muddle-headedness!

Annie wondered if it was because they were in the hospital—on her home ground, so to speak—that she felt able to relax. Back there, when he’d said her name, even premature menopause couldn’t explain away the quiver of excitement that had ricocheted through her body. But now they were talking work, and she was so relieved she smiled at him. A real smile, not a pretend one, so the score on small lies for the day remained at one.

And he was smiling back—which made her confidence on being on home ground waver slightly. But she held firm and asked about the operation, and somehow they made it to the office without any further manifestations of her condition.

Manifestations of something else, perhaps, when they’d bumped together in the lift, but it certainly wasn’t love, she assured herself. Attraction, maybe. And why not? He was an attractive man.

That thought alone was enough to make her seek refuge in her work. It had been so long since she’d considered the attractiveness or otherwise of men, this time she felt a shiver, not a quiver, and the shiver was more fear than attraction.

‘Come on, the unit can’t afford too much overtime. We’re all heading for that pub up the road for a drink to celebrate day two safely over.’

Phil had poked his head around the door and, looking at him, Annie suspected he hadn’t poked more of his body into the office because the rest of it was attached to Becky.

‘Maybe later. If you’re still there.’ Second small lie of the day as she had no intention of going near the pub. But it was only a self-preservation-type lie so surely that didn’t count! ‘Right now I have to finish some requisitions or the Great will have my hide.’

Phil rolled his eyes. ‘Forty-eight hours into the job and he’s got you bluffed already. Believe me, his bark is far worse than his bite—not that he barks all that often. Come and see the man relax—learn for yourself he’s human.’

For some reason Annie’s mind flashed to the kiss, and though she didn’t tell Phil, she was willing to admit to herself that she knew for sure he was human.

‘Maybe later,’ she repeated, pulling a sheaf of paper across the desk to let him know she was serious about working.

He shrugged good-naturedly and walked away, but what seemed like only minutes later her diligence was again interrupted.

‘Phil says you’re not coming for a drink. He’s blaming me—says I’m a slavedriver. Is there really so much work for you to do?’

Annie considered lie number three, then shook her head.

‘Not really. I do want to check these letters going out to possible corporate sponsors. You mentioning that cardiac units can generate more money than most hospital divisions started me thinking. It won’t take long, but I don’t feel like going out tonight anyway. I’ve not let anyone know I’d be later than usual, so I’d prefer to go straight home.’

Was that a lie? I’d prefer not to spend avoidable time with you would be closer to the truth, but that could be translated into going straight home.