Sunrise for Two (2 page)

“
Well that’s
no reason to harass her.” Mike said hotly, wishing the man was
smaller.

“
No you’re
right. I’m sorry.” Chris smiled apologetically at her and backed
awkwardly out of the portacabin and disappeared into the
hospital.

“
Is
everything okay?” Rafiq asked, returning from his cigarette
break.

“
Yes it's
fine.” said Harry unconvincingly, her mind replaying the moment
when his handsome face had changed from excitingly angry to
painfully embarrassed. Mike was watching her, his plump features
radiating protective concern. Harry willed him not to say anything
and she felt a surge of relief when her neighbour appeared to
collect her for their journey home. “Have a good evening guys.” she
said with an unconvincing smile and they stepped out into the damp
May evening.

“
What
happened?” Julia asked finally, when they were safely beyond the IT
suite in the echoing hospital car park. She had known Harry since
the start of university and she knew that the best way to find out
what was wrong was to tackle her head on.

“
This big
handsome surgeon came crashing into the department yelling at me
about his blood results. He was vibrating with intensity and
dedication and it was all quite entertaining.” She wanted to add
that she had found him so very attractive, that she had imagined
kissing him to the sound of one of the pop groups that she loved so
much. But she didn’t, she felt embarrassed even remembering her
thoughts. Julia was still watching her, and she took a breath and
finished her sentence. “It was all quite entertaining,” she
reiterated, “and exciting until he saw my chair and
fled.”

Then she slid into the
jumble of empty juice bottles, crisps, chocolate wrappers and CDs
that filled Julia's car and took a deep breath. She was used to
people reacting badly, so why had he upset her? She watched the
people on the side of the road, walking, standing, cycling and she
closed her eyes. “You've got a good life Harry.” she told herself
firmly, while a tiny traitorous part of her mind imagined walking
with him through the restaurants, coffee shops and ice cream
parlours that lined the journey home.

Julia stopped the car and
Harry looked at her. “Come on,” she said affectionately, “let's go
and chose a film and a pizza.”

Chapter
Two

Fast food and
a romantic comedy worked
their magic, by
morning she had almost forgotten him and she drank her first coffee
with Mike and laughed when he told her about his evening wearing a
badly fitting uniform as part of a battle re-enactment. He pulled
his chair closer to her and said softly, “Are you okay?”

“
I’m always
okay Mike, you know that.”

“
Of course,”
he felt a twist of disappointment in his stomach, and wished that
he could be the man that she confided in, but he knew her gentle
boundaries and he smiled at her, and moved back to the safe
territory of their evening’s entertainment. The atmosphere changed
when their manager arrived, Belinda wore suits with the jacket
buttoned up all year round and read all the trust policies. She was
accompanied by a surgeon and she introduced him to Harry as Mr
Patel, the head of orthopaedics. She explained that they were
planning to set up a televised teaching clinic and needed the
technology to record it. “I said that you were the best.” Belinda
said, with almost a trace of a smile.

Harry blinked her
surprise. “Thank you,” she smiled up at the big man in the
beautifully made suit, “What do you need?”

“
Come with me
my dear. We're having a planning meeting and we love to have you
there.” Harry smiled her thanks at her boss, a morning away from
the advice line did sound good. Then she followed Mr Patel out into
the corridor where the smell of disinfectant and tiredness
contrasted with the cheerful voices of a gaggle of medical
students.

Chris hesitated for a
moment outside the IT corridor. He had thought about her all
evening, and he knew that her delicious voice had echoed in his
dreams. Even a punishing round of rugby practice had not been
enough to knock the feeling out of him that he had really gotten
things wrong. He cared about people, he liked to think that he made
their lives better, but he knew that he had hurt her. He just
hadn't expected her to be beautiful, with big dark eyes that made
him think of poetry and art.

He remembered the
amusement in her pretty mouth as he questioned her intelligence and
her professionalism. Then his mind replayed the sudden pain that
had flared across her expressive face as he reacted so badly to her
wheelchair, and he berated himself for his insensitivity yet again.
He pushed his hands into his pockets and tried to think of the
right words to say to her; a way to apologise for the shame he had
felt when he realised how badly he was behaving. He wanted to
explain that even if she had been able walk, he would have felt
ashamed of himself, but whenever he got near the subject of her
wheelchair his words tangled up, so he walked up to the operating
theatres and made himself a strong cup of coffee. He was an
orthopaedic surgeon. He wasn't interested in poetry and
art.

He sat down and tried to
focus on his case list, but his mind wandered unbidden back to his
early childhood, an image of his mother listening to jazz music and
creating yet another gorgeous meal, slid traitorously into his
consciousness. She had always generated masterpieces with the
products of the bargain supermarket that she had to use. And the
sound of her warm laughter blossomed into his mind. He took a
breath, and shut down the thoughts. He had patients to see and he
needed his head to be clear.

The nurse in charge of
the operating theatre where he spent most of his time joined him in
the coffee room. “You okay?” she asked.

“
It's been a
long week.” he said with a smile, fighting an almost physical urge
to face Harry again and apologise.

“
It’s been an
awful week,” the nurse said softly, “and you've pushed through the
waiting list like a train, do something good this
weekend.”

He nodded and wondered
what Harry would say if he invited her out for dinner. He was still
wondering when the man in charge of surgery paged him and asked him
to meet him in the boardroom. Reluctantly he walked down to the
entrance of the hospital, took the plush elevator that only lead up
to one floor and wondered what entirely pointless meeting he had
forgotten now.

The training meeting was
underway when he arrived, there was a complicated diagram on the
screen about the need to train doctors in new types of operations.
He sat down at the big polished table and felt his pulse quicken.
Harry was sitting opposite him, and he drank in her gloriously dark
skin and her cheekbones. She was wearing an elegantly tailored
shirt, buttoned almost to her neck, and he couldn't help noticing
her generous breasts. He looked around the room, looked at the men
nodding and smiling at her and wondered how many of them had
noticed her intoxicating build. Harry felt his hungry gaze and
arched an eyebrow, he smiled apologetically and looked back at the
screen. She was more beautiful than he remembered. Long gently
curly hair, a lovely mouth and a delicate build with those eye
catching curves that looked feminine even in her cotton
top.

The clinicians were
detailing the nuances of their operations and procedures, and Harry
was making rapid notes with her black fountain pen, addressing all
the possible ways of capturing the images in a way that would allow
for people to look at them from different angles. Chris watched the
normally aggressive head of anaesthetics deftly managed by the
combination of her smiles and her clear headed perspective on the
practicalities of implementation. There were eight men in the room,
all older than her and all asking her questions at once, if she was
nervous then it didn't show, but she did drink a lot of
coffee.

They stopped at lunch
time, and she sat back in her chair, her relief obvious. The new
head of the transplant team stepped quickly out of his seat and sat
down on the table close beside her to continue his conversation.
Chris watched her rubbing the back of her neck, and wondered if she
was even aware that she did it. He wondered also how she would
react if he offered her a massage. She drank yet another mouthful
of coffee and smiled at a remark from Mr Patel, Chris took a deep
breath and rose to his feet he decided that he would escort her
back to the IT suite and make her smile, it wasn’t very often that
a woman had had this kind of effect on him, and he knew he would be
a fool to stand by and let her go.

An overweight man that he
recognised from the previous day appeared awkwardly in the doorway.
He had long messy hair tied back with what looked like an elastic
band, and a shirt with a superhero logo was stretched over his
stomach. “Belinda says can you come back? The blood results from
this morning have disappeared off the system.” Harry said her
goodbyes and Chris watched her manoeuvre her chair away from the
table.

She was wearing well cut
trousers that partially obscured her shoes and he wondered how tall
she was. She didn't look at him and he was surprised at how much
that disappointed him. He wasn't used to making such a bad
impression on a beautiful woman. He imagined the amusement in his
housemate's eyes. “This will be good for you.” he would
say.

“
She really
knows her stuff.” The head of anaesthetics said
approvingly.

"Come on guys,” Mr Patel
said with a smile “she's also gorgeous.”

The head of anaesthetics
nodded, “Quite stunning, I understand you're divorced again Mr
Patel.”

The elegant surgeon shook
his head ruefully. “She's far too young, I realised that last
time.” Chris poured himself another cup of coffee and listened to
their conversation. It had been a very long time since he had
thought seriously about anything aside from his career. He had
focussed the past decade on reaching this point, but if he was
honest with himself, then at this moment his success felt pretty
empty. He decided that he would have to swallow his pride and think
of a way of talking to her.

Harry followed Mike into
the corridor. She was grateful for his silence and the chance to
think. She had completely lost her train of thought when Chris
arrived, and she hoped it hadn't been too obvious. He had been
wearing a shirt that emphasized the gorgeous nature of his powerful
build, shoulders that barely fitted beneath his slightly rumpled
shirt and a lean flat waist distractingly delineated by a faded
belt. His trousers were good quality, but slightly frayed and they
showed his long long legs to perfection. She liked the fact that he
was rather scruffy. She wondered if that reflected his obvious
passion for medicine. Then the memory of his shock when he saw her
chair came unbidden into her mind and she forgot her attraction to
him. She had been hurt before by a tall dark and handsome man and
she didn’t think she could bear the pain again.

Fortunately the server
filled her thoughts completely, she ironed out the creases in the
blood results and smoothed over a fight between Mike and the scary
woman who inputted the data in the laboratory. She placated the
woman who maintained the database of blood cultures, remembering
that she liked horses and asking her about her recent jumps, and
she worked until six in a coffee fuelled haze. Mike stayed behind
with her, he could see that she was tired, but he knew better than
to suggest that she stopped. Julia appeared beside her when the
office was empty and the battered portacabin was starting to get
cold even in the summer sun. “Come on you” she said affectionately,
“I've got a craving for curry.”

They stopped in the
vibrant throng of Indian restaurants and takeaways and ate
poppadum’s as the sun went down. “How are you feeling honey?” Julia
asked her when her main course had arrived and the exuberant Indian
love song filling the room grew slightly quieter.

“
I'm okay
thanks, he just caught me off guard. One of the reasons I like my
job so much is that it lets me forget.” She paused as a piece of
chilli tingled in her throat, and drained a glass of water. “Not
about my legs, but about people's reactions to them.” she added
softly.

“
People just
don't think Harry, and this guy, he sounds like an
idiot.”

“
That's just
the problem,” Harry said ruefully, “he wasn’t.” She filled up her
glass and took another mouthful of water and her dark eyes held
Julia’s for a moment. “I know it sounds silly,” she added finally,
“but he’s the sort of guy I hoped to meet when I took this
ridiculous job.” She closed her eyes for a moment and then smiled
at her friend. “I know it is preposterous isn’t it? He’s not going
to be interested in me. He’s bound to be this athletic superstar
who likes lean long legged blondes. I can imagine them spending
their weekends watching one another in sporting exploits then
playing volleyball together at barbecues full of tall beautiful
people.”

“
Harry he’s a
surgeon living in Manchester not a lifeguard in
Cornwall.”

“
You’re
right, of course you are, although it would be fun to meet a
lifeguard from Cornwall.” She smiled her thanks when the waiter who
knew her well brought her a cup of coffee, then looked the woman
she confided in. “We look after each other you and I, and I love
that, but sometimes I just really ache for someone to hold my
hand.”