Unknown

ON THE RIGHT TRACK

Rebecca Lang

Surgeon Dr. Clay Sotheby has everything going for him – or so he thinks. With a good social life, and a probable promotion to Chief of Surgery in the near future, what more could he ask for? But as the time for his promotion draws near Clay feels curiously restless. And, having met Nurse Sophie Dunhill, he starts to question his priorities as he discovers he can’t put her out of his mind…

'Oh, come
on,
Dr
Sotheby, it
's
only a bit of fun! All in a good cause, you know. It's only twenty dollars, and you could win a date with any one of these gorgeous women.'

Clay Sotheby grinned slowly, wryly, at the very pretty and enthusiastic young nurse who stood behind one of several trestle tables that flanked the interior of the vast hall where the fund-raising event for the hospital was being held. His eyes scanned the displayed photographs on the table of a dozen or so smiling women, not really taking them in. He had been waylaid as he was more or less killing time.

Raising his voice against the persistent background throb of dance music and laughter that came from the band at the other end of the hall and the gyrating mass of bodies in the centre of the floor, he asked the nurse, 'And have they consented willingly?'

'Of course.' She laughed, tossing her head so that her mass of blonde curls bounced. 'They wouldn't go into this involuntarily, would they? Even though it is for a blind date! Not that blind.' She chuckled again, batting her eyelashes at him as he gazed at close quarters into her baby-blue eyes.

'Tell me about it,' he said, putting his hands on the table to support his weight and leaning his tall body against its edge. He was only here at the fund-raiser because he was on call for the operating rooms in the department of surgery at University Hospital, Gresham. He would cover the evening and the night.

From long experience he knew that there was no point in going home early in the evening when he was on call, only to be called back again—it was much safer to wait until about ten o'clock. Not only were there emergency cases coming into the emergency department of the hospital, there were also the patients he had operated on that day who might develop postoperative complications. Although that didn't happen too often—a haemorrhage, for instance—he liked to be on hand just in case. It wasn't fair to the surgical residents-in-training or the surgical interns not to have the staff man readily available.

Not that he had anything to go home for really—the thought came to him once again—unless he counted the cat, a stray, which had come into his life about three months before. She—it had taken him a while to figure out it was a she—had shot through his front door on one cool, dark, rainy night when he'd been called back to the hospital. There had only been time then for him to note that she was all black, very skinny and half-starved, so that her ears looked too big for her head. He hadn't had the heart to shoo her back out again into the wet night, so he'd poured her a dish of milk and watched for a few moments while she'd lapped as though she hadn't eaten for a long time.

When he'd arrived home again, in the early hours of the morning, he'd found her curled up asleep in the middle of his bed, her slight form making a cosy indentation in the luxury of his down duvet. He'd smiled at her tiredly and had adopted her then and there, as the line of least resistance, naming her Victoria.

Now the young nurse looked at him alluringly, leaning forward so that her purple silk dress with its
dé
colletage
offered him a view that left little to the imagination. 'Well,' she said, smiling, 'you buy a ticket which we put into a box for a draw some time next week. There will be fifteen winners, as we have fifteen women who've volunteered to be blind dates.'

Clay raised his eyebrows, noting that the girl blushed. 'Is there a choice?' he said.

'No. No choice.'

'Isn't it a bit...er...risky for the women? I mean, the whole concept of a blind date?' he commented.

'Not really.' The young nurse returned his smile. 'We know your name, address and telephone number. We also know where you work, and so on.' Again she blinked her eyelids rapidly. 'There's plenty of opportunity for us to weed out anyone who's a bit dubious. All slimeballs excluded. I'm only approaching doctors in a particular age group, Dr Sotheby, and those I judge to be of the right type. The word "chauvinist" may gradually be turning into an irrelevant concept, but we all know what it means, don't we? We're certainly not going to abandon it until it's no longer needed.'

'Quite,' he said, grinning, not entirely sure what she meant. 'I'm sure relieved that I'm the right type. And are you really a good judge of character?'

'You'd better believe it. There are no flies on me, Dr Sotheby,' she said with a laugh. 'That's why they picked me for this job. I also work in Emerg. I see all comers there.'

'I'm sure you deal with them more than adequately. Perhaps I would be borderline,' he murmured, giving her a mocking grin.

'Oh, no, Dr Sotheby, you would be perfect. There aren't too many men...real men...who aren't married or otherwise tied up, so to speak,' she enthused.

'How do you know I'm not "tied up"?' he queried, intrigued by her strategy.

'There isn't much that's secret in a hospital, Dr Sotheby,' she said pertly. 'Your private life becomes public knowledge.' She gave a trilling laugh, which to him implied that she knew all that there was to know about his private affairs.

'Are you included here?' This time he looked at the displayed photographs more closely.

'No, Dr Sotheby, I didn't have the guts to volunteer.'

'You surprise me. I was just getting the impression that your delicate exterior belied a tough interior.' When Clay raised his eyes to her face he saw that she had coloured again.

He was used to having that effect on women. It didn't really mean much in the long term, he'd discovered. In his job he met and worked with a lot of women, some very attractive, very bright. Many were not averse to a relationship with a surgeon, not expecting anything to come of it, not expecting any shared future. That was how he wanted it for now, too, and for the foreseeable future.

His eyes strayed down to the creamy shoulders of the young woman in front of him, imagining how she would feel if he could smooth his hands slowly over that bare skin that looked so soft and plump. Although his interest quickened, part of him remained detached; he wanted more from a woman than a lovely body. On the front of her dress was a small, sticky label which bore the name Suzie. But a lot of the time he was bored...so very bored. Only his work really engaged his attention.

'You...you haven't said whether you'll buy a ticket, Dr Sotheby. Twenty dollars is the minimum,' Suzie said breathlessly. 'There's no upper limit. Oh, please, say you'll do it!'

'Call me Clay,' he drawled. 'It sounds so formal when you say "Dr Sotheby".'

'I've always wondered what Clay stands for,' Suzie said.

'Short for Clayton,' he explained ruefully. 'My mother's maiden name. But, please, don't call me anything other than Clay.'

Suzie was suitably captivated by the implied suggestion that there might be other opportunities where she could use his first name. 'You sound like that great guy who was in that really old movie...what was it?
Gone With the Wind
or something?' Suzie said. 'My granny was always going on about that. Not that I'm implying it's an old-fashioned name. It's really great, actually.'

'Suzie's a great name, too,' he said gallantly, reaching into his pocket for his wallet.

'Thanks.'

'I'm not sure I'm flattered by your reference to your granny.'

'You should be! She was a great connoisseur of men.'

'Relieved to hear it.'

'Then you'll buy a ticket, Dr Soth— I mean Clay? If I don't sell a certain number of tickets I'll get blasted.'

'Sure,' he said, silently vowing that if he 'won' a blind date he would find some excuse to get out of it. 'Will you take a cheque?'

'Yes, anything. Thank you so much. Fill in this form with your personal details, please.'

While Clay filled out the necessary form and wrote a cheque for two hundred dollars, most of his mind on the patients he'd operated on that day, the music came to a halt.

Glancing surreptitiously at his wrist-watch, he speculated on whether he had time to ask Suzie to abandon her post and have a dance with him before he had to make some necessary telephone calls. It was a quarter past nine. In another half-hour he would call his chief resident, Rick Sommers, to make sure there were no post-operative problems with his patients, then, if all was well there, he would call the emergency department to make sure that there were no pending cases for him there before he headed home.

Strictly speaking, Rick Sommers could deal with most things himself and would only call in his chief if they had to operate right away or if there was something he really couldn't cope with. But Clay had got into the habit of staying until 10 p.m. when on call. If he were to go home earlier, he wouldn't be able to relax anyway; he knew that much from long experience.

One of the interns got there before him with Suzie,' asking her to dance just as the music started up again with a slow, smoochy number. There had been a very good turnout for this fund-raiser on a Friday evening. For once, large numbers of the medical staff were there, as well as many nurses, physiotherapists and lab staff.

Clay shrugged as he turned to watch Suzie being drawn into the arms of another man...a considerably younger man. Quite suddenly he felt a little old, maybe too old for this at age thirty-five, as he watched young couples cleaving together, swaying to the soft, sensuous music that seemed oddly nostalgic to him just for a few seconds. Although he liked a good time as much as the next man, it seemed that he had not fully given himself up to something like this since he'd been a medical student, when some of their fun-making had had a kind of frenetic desperation.

Looking at his watch again in the dim light, finding himself uncharacteristically impatient to get home, he bumped into someone and found an elbow jabbed into the region of his diaphragm while he felt the toe of his shoe make contact with someone's ankle.

'Ouch!' an irritable female voice complained.

'Sorry,' he apologized, 'it's a bit like a zoo in here.' He put out his arms to steady the woman he had bumped into from behind, while she turned to face him.

Unlike the enraptured Suzie, this woman was a few years older, he surmised, and definitely not enraptured. 'Scowling' would be a better word to describe her, Clay thought as he scrutinized her face. Otherwise it would have been an attractive face, almost beautiful. She was tall for a woman, slim, rather busty, good legs...he took in that much in the first few seconds... and she wore a dark red dress in a sort of glittery material that clung to her figure, outlining it in a definitely attractive way.

In the soft, intermittent glare of the revolving lights over the dance floor, Clay could see that her hair was a dark auburn colour, drawn back from her face in a sophisticated pleat behind her head—unlike the casual profusion of hair on the exuberant Suzie. This woman had an equally creamy, soft-looking skin, but the light was too dim to see the colour of her eyes exactly.

Another thing...she looked vaguely familiar; there was something about the shape and set of her eyes, which were large, expressive, doe-like.

'So you ought to be sorry,' she said. 'It feels as though you've fractured my ankle.' The voice sounded familiar, too.

He watched her while she stood awkwardly on one leg to rub the ankle of the other leg. She seemed impervious to his habitual charm.

'Sorry,' he said again, contritely. 'Perhaps you would do me the honour of this dance.' He smiled, trying to keep any hint of irony out of his voice.

'I don't think—'

'Please,' he said.

'I think you might tread all over my feet, Dr Sotheby,' she said.

'Do I know you?' he said politely, frowning. 'You do look and sound familiar. You'll have to forgive me. Women look different in evening dress. What's your name?'