St Matthew's Passion

chapter Seven



The thin rain, just short of sleet, flicked against Fin’s cheeks. He deliberately wore no hat or scarf, wanting the cold to scour him.

He strode along Millbank, the Thames to his left, Vauxhall Bridge looming in the distance ahead. He had no destination, needed simply to walk, exposed to the elements. It was midnight and most of the cars passing him were taxis. Some of them even slowed as if the drivers thought he must be wanting a ride, that nobody could possibly choose to walk in weather like this if other options were available.

Fin’s legs worked rapidly, compelled to keep on the move by the cold fire burning in his chest. He forced himself to play over and over in his mind Melissa’s expression as he’d seen it a couple of hours earlier, utter devastation and confusion mingling on her lovely face. He’d searched her eyes for contempt, wanting it because he deserved it; but there’d been none. Just bewilderment and unhappiness.

What a fool I’ve been, he thought, his teeth gritted so tightly his jaw muscles began to ache. What a spineless, inconsiderate fool.

Like all surgeons, Fin had made mistakes in his career, especially early on. You didn’t become a master at trauma surgery overnight, and inevitably his developing skills hadn’t always been enough to save patients. It was easy to dwell on your errors, easy to allow them to define your internal image of what kind of a doctor you were. The trick, and the challenge, was to focus ahead; not to avoid looking back entirely – that would be pig-headed – but rather to learn from your errors and as best as possible avoid repeating them.

He needed to adopt a similar approach now. He’d harmed Melissa by leading her on, by allowing things to develop as far as they had between them. And he’d harmed himself in the process, though he hardly deserved any sympathy. What Fin now needed to do was carry out damage limitation. And that meant a resolute commitment to ensuring that the personal barrier between him and Melissa – between him and any woman, come to that – remained unbreached.

As of tomorrow, he’d re-establish their relationship on a professional footing, where it should have remained. He’d be friendly with her, if she’d allow him. He’d praise her where praise was due; they couldn’t return to the standoffishness of the early days, too much had happened for that to be feasible. And above all, he had to treat her fairly. Not overindulge her in an attempt at compensating for his behaviour, but not go to the other extreme either and make life hard for her.

Fin raised his face to the winter sky, remembering something he’d told himself about Melissa in the early days of her time at St Matthew’s. She needs to toughen up… How wrong he’d been, he thought bitterly. He was the one who needed to toughen up. Self-pity was pathetic, and counterproductive, as was indulgence of one’s feelings at the expense of doing what was right.

As a child, Fin had always wanted to be a doctor. His parents had of course encouraged him, and when he’d got a place at medical school he’d seen it as no more than the inevitable first step in the fulfilment of his ambitions. As a student he’d set his heart on surgery and had applied himself with single-minded dedication. He’d always had a vague notion that he’d be a family man one day, with a wife and two or three children; but there was nothing vague about his professional vision of himself. He would be a surgeon, there was absolutely no doubt about it.

Well, he’d failed to become a family man, which meant that he must recommit himself to the goal which had always been his guiding light. He was already a leader in his field. He aimed to be the very best. And he had some way to go yet.

In which case, why was he wasting time walking in the cold at midnight when he could be learning something new, writing up a research paper, attending a web seminar with fellow surgeons on the other side of the world?

Forcing all thoughts and images of Melissa somewhere deep within his psyche, he turned and headed back towards St Matthew’s, his stride even longer and faster than before and this time driven by a sense of purpose.



***



Normally a phone call at three in the morning was cause for alarm, but when Melissa glanced at the ‘caller display’ screen and saw Emma’s number she reached across and unplugged the phone from the wall.

Emma had already tried Melissa’s mobile numerous times, leaving messages that were at first humorously suggestive but gradually became more and more concerned.

Melissa, are you okay?

Call back just to let me know you’re safe.

Eventually, to put and end her friend’s calls as much as to allay her fears, Melissa sent a terse text message: Am fine. Hope rest of party was fun. That was when Emma had started ringing her landline.

Melissa lay in the darkness, staring up through swollen eyes at the vague expanse of the ceiling. She needed sleep, desperately, for its healing properties and because she had to work in the morning. But she knew it wouldn’t come. Not yet, anyway.

She could handle rejection. She had experienced it before, and she herself had ended relationships with men before, and knew how painful it was for both parties. Rejection by Fin was vastly more devastating because he was the first man she’d ever truly loved. She realised that now. But she could cope with that, too, even if a small part of her died in the process.

What she found hardest to deal with was not understanding why he’d rejected her.

He clearly wanted to be with her. Melissa wasn’t a vain person, but like all women she knew when a man was attracted to her. So it wasn’t that he simply felt nothing for her but was trying to preserve her feelings by not coming out and saying it.

Yet again she replayed his every word, searching for the nuance, the inflection, that would give a clue as to his reasons. Was he uncomfortable entering into a relationship with a trainee under his tutelage? Did he see it as a potential abuse of the power he had over her, or was he afraid colleagues would view it as such? Melissa could appreciate such concerns. But if Fin harboured them, why couldn’t he say so? Why did he have to be so cagey about his reasons?

Or was there another woman? That would be the most obvious reason for Fin’s pushing her away. When she’d asked him he’d answered ambiguously, saying not really. What on earth did that mean? Was he half in love with someone else? Was she married and he couldn’t be open about the affair?

As the night deepened into the hours before dawn, and sleep still eluded Melissa, her mind began to come up with ever more fanciful possibilities. Did Fin have some terminal illness he couldn’t talk about and which made him afraid of opening his heart to anyone? Was he gay, or impotent? (She immediately discounted those two notions.) Melissa knew Fin had been married before; Emma had said so. But she knew nothing about his former wife. Was the woman blackmailing him in some way, preventing him from getting on with his life and finding someone new by threatening to reveal some terrible secret he was hiding?

Maybe you ought to have been a novelist, not a surgeon, Melissa told herself wearily.

At daybreak, having abandoned all hope of sleep, Melissa sat in the tiny kitchen of her flat nursing a mug of strong tea. She had a decision to make. She accepted that Fin meant what he said, that a relationship couldn’t be allowed to develop between the two of them. There seemed little point in trying to change his mind on that point. But should she press him to explain his reasons to her, badger him until he finally gave in and told her why he’d made the decision he had? She did after all, she thought, have some right to an explanation. Or should she save her energy, avoid the escalation in tension between them that any such pursuit of the truth would produce, and accept the situation as it was?

Melissa went to the window and pressed her forehead against the cold glass, looking out. The city, or what she could see of it, slumbered below. She was reminded of where she was and what she’d achieved. She was in London, in a plum job that most other young surgeons would give their eye teeth for, in the heart of one of the most prestigious training centres in the world. She’d succeeded in her career so far beyond her wildest dreams. This was her life. Anything else – relationships, love affairs, even – was at best an additional extra, at worst an inconvenience.

Fin and his rejection of her had torn through her heart like a scalpel blade. But she needed to keep a sense of perspective. Pain was something you dealt with, just as her patients had to cope with a degree of pain after surgery. In the end they healed, and so would she.

So: her career was all. And she’d do nothing to further her career by hounding her boss about his reasons for his behaviour. She’d let it drop, allow the matter to wash away into the distance like the flow of the Thames, and commit herself once more to getting all she could out of the fantastic opportunity she’d been given.

Energised despite her lack of sleep, Melissa began to get ready for the working day.



***



She managed to avoid Emma for most of the morning, but her friend cornered her as Melissa was finishing up the ward round.

‘You look more knackered than the rest of us, and you weren’t even out late,’ Emma said. Her tone was lighthearted but her eyes were concerned, searching Melissa’s.

Melissa managed a smile. ‘I’m fine. Just didn’t sleep very well.’ At all, you mean.

Emma glanced about to make sure there was nobody within earshot, then put a hand on Melissa’s arm. ‘What happened? Did you find Fin?’

‘Yes.’ Melissa paused. ‘It’s all resolved.’

Emma stared at her, digesting the words. ‘And…?’

‘And, nothing. He’s my boss, you know.’

Emma let out a long, slow breath. ‘Right. Look, it’s none of my business. I didn’t mean to pry. It’s just… Your text last night sounded a bit brusque, as though you were upset.’

‘You know how easy it is to mistake the tone of a text message.’

‘Yes.’ Emma patted her arm. ‘I don’t mean to be a pain, as I say. But if you want to talk about anything, you know I’m always here.’

‘Thanks. I appreciate it.’ This time Melissa’s smile was heartfelt. She knew Emma genuinely meant well. Emma waved goodbye from the door, her glance still uncertain and tinged with concern.

The theatre list started after lunch, at two in the afternoon. Most of the department’s operations didn’t follow a schedule; it was the nature of trauma surgery that it was ad hoc, in response to emergencies as and when they came in. But there were always post-operative patients who needed to go back into theatre for revisions or further exploratory work, and three of these were on the afternoon’s list.

Melissa knew Fin was in, but hadn’t encountered him all morning, though she wasn’t deliberately avoiding him. She walked into the scrub room and found him at the sink, already scrubbing up himself. He turned his head to look at her and she felt a pang of something, more intense than she’d been ready for.

‘Melissa. Good to see you.’

He didn’t say how are you or did you sleep well, for which she was thankful. They were alone together in the scrub room. She stood at the adjacent sink and applied the brush vigorously to her nails and fingers.

The silence swelled between them. Melissa felt her chest tightening. One of them had to say something.

‘Melissa –’

‘Fin, look –’

They’d spoken at the same time. Their eyes met and they grinned.

‘You go,’ he said.

Rinsing her hands, she kept her eyes on his. ‘I think we should draw a line. Not mention any of it again. No quiet talks in the office after hours, going over stuff. No lingering resentment or doubts. Are you okay with that?’

He studied her, then said, his voice quiet and grave, ‘Yes. Thank you, Melissa. It’s more than I deserve, and far less than you do.’

She raised a finger to her lips, taking care not to touch them and recontaminate her hand. ‘No more, remember? Water under the bridge.’

‘Agreed.’ He dropped his eyes as if ashamed.

‘One condition,’ she said, feeling emboldened. ‘I don’t want any preferential treatment. No favours. No kid gloves. Drive me as hard as you’d drive any of your trainees. Call me out, in fact bawl me out, when I mess things up.’

‘Don’t worry. I will.’

She finished rinsing and went to dry her hands on a sterile cloth. With her back to Fin, she felt safe to let out a long breath.

That had been easier than she’d expected.

The afternoon list progressed smoothly, Fin and Melissa taking one case individually each and then collaborating on the third, which needed two surgeons of their seniority. The atmosphere between them was relaxed, even companionable. There were no stolen looks over the tops of their surgical masks, no lingering silences pregnant with awkward meaning.

Melissa wasn’t on duty that night and, the theatre list over and a last visit to Accident & Emergency having yielded no new patients, she decided in view of her tiredness to leave work at five, a time most people in other lines of work would consider not early but standard. It was Christmas Eve, she had a few last-minute Christmas presents to buy, and hoped to catch the shops while they were still open. Melissa’s Christmas plans were to visit her parents on Boxing Day and stay for a few days. She had nothing planned for Christmas Day itself. At one point she’d wondered if something might come up, someone might be inclined to spend Christmas with her… but she mustn’t think about that. She’d decided to push all of that out of her mind, and she had to stick to her guns. The best thing to do, to keep herself from moping and brooding in her flat, was to come in to work tomorrow. There were bound to be trauma cases even on this of all days, and she’d welcome the distraction.

As she stepped out through the hospital doors into the icy street, Melissa saw a passing bus with an advertisement down the side. The advert was for an exclusive jewellery shop. She found herself wondering what Fin was going to do with the necklace she’d seen him buy, for her, he’d said. She supposed he’d return it for a refund.

The cold wind batted at her face as she walked quickly towards the Underground station, making her eyes tear up and stream. By the time she reached the Tube entrance and prepared to descend the escalator into the depths, the sobs were threatening to burst free from her chest.