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'Thank you, Clay,' she said, her voice little more than a whisper. 'I'm very grateful. I wanted you to do it because you're the best surgeon I know, and because I trust you.'

'Sit down,' he said. 'I'm going to make tea for us. We could both use some.'

Her face was ravaged, streaked with tears. Endearingly, she had pulled her hair back from her face and secured ,it with an elastic band. There was no make-up on. her face and, like him, she had put on a sweatshirt and jeans.

Hunched on a seat, she began to talk. 'Sitting here, thinking,' she said, 'I've realized that since my husband's death I've given everything to my daughter... I live for her...so that when something like this happens I'm terrified. After what happened to Peter, I think that if something happened to her, I couldn't bear it, that I'd go mad...' Tears ran down her cheeks again. 'I try not to make her my whole life, but I can't seem to help it...'

'Perhaps you're like me, Sophie,' he said, looking at her, 'I give everything to my work—you give everything to your child.'

'Yes.'

They drank tea sitting side by side.

'Could I see her? I want her to know I'm there when she wakes up properly.'

'In a few minutes,' he said calmly. 'Try to relax a bit and just drink the tea. She really is all right. Will you stay here for the rest of the night?'

She nodded. 'Maybe I could find somewhere quiet just to put my head down for a while after I've seen her.'

'There are the on-call rooms in Emergency,' Clay said. 'They are seldom all used at the same time. It's quiet there. I could take you down there and get the key.'

'Yes, maybe,' she agreed. 'I know I won't sleep. I just want to lie down, then I'll have breakfast in the cafeteria and spend several hours with Mandy afterwards.'

'When you're ready, I'll take you down there before I go home,' he offered.

'Thank you.'

Hospitals were strange places in the silence of early morning, before the day shift staff arrived in large numbers. Every sound seemed magnified—the workings of the elevator as it took them downwards, the creaking of doors, the loudness of footsteps in empty corridors.

At ground-floor level, Clay and Sophie walked towards the emergency department office in silence, both exhausted and sobered, preoccupied by their own thoughts. There was no one in the office, so Clay helped himself to one of the on-call room keys in a concealed cupboard and signed his name in the book to indicate its whereabouts. Then he led her to the quiet back corridor where the rooms were situated, turned the key in the lock and switched on the light once they were inside.

The central ceiling light showed them the cell-like room, containing a high hospital bed, a wooden chair and a bedside table with the ubiquitous beige-coloured telephone on it. There was a tiny bathroom
en suite.

'What a bleak place,' Sophie said, standing on the threshold, looking around. 'I don't think I could sleep here.'

'Yes, it certainly is utilitarian,' Clay said, fixing his eyes on the bile green of the thin counterpane that covered the bed. 'Its sole purpose is so that you can crash out here for as long as you get between phone calls.'

'I don't think I can stay here, Clay,' Sophie said. 'Thanks anyway. I...I would just be anxious by myself.'

'I'll stay with you,' he said, suddenly making up his mind. 'I could use a bit of sleep right now. Just slip your shoes off and he down.'

Obediently she slipped out of her shoes while he pulled back the counterpane to reveal two pillows, which he rearranged so that they would have one each side by side. As she positioned herself on the bed, he switched off the overhead light. They weren't in total darkness as a feeble light came in through a small window. After slipping out of his shoes, Clay lay down beside her.

'Try to sleep,' he said to her as his head hit the pillow beside her. 'I've got my beeper with me, so I'll get called if I'm needed.'

They'd looked in on the child in the post-anaesthesia room before they'd left the operating suite. Mandy had woken up long enough to recognize her mother and to be reassured that she was all right.

'This is a bit like being in a strait-jacket,' Sophie said wryly as they lay stiffly side by side on the narrow bed. 'Not that I've ever been in one. It
is
nice to get one's head down and feet up. Thank you for staying with me, Clay. I've really messed up your night, haven't I?'

'Not to worry,' he said, chuckling. 'I didn't have anything planned. And I don't mind getting up for a nice, straightforward appendectomy when I have the weekend off after.'

Sophie's hand brushed against his and he grasped it firmly in his own, wondering at his own gratified response when she returned the pressure.

'I'm afraid I won't be able to sleep,' she said.

'We'll talk, then, if you want to. Tell me something,' he said. 'If your husband hadn't died, if he'd recovered, would you have divorced him? I'm asking because I'm curious.'

'Oh, no,' she said. 'I would just have made the best of it. You see, I believe that once you have a child your obligation is to give that child a secure life. You are no longer really your own person.'

'As simple as that?' he murmured.

'As simple as that,' she said quietly. 'But not really simple, of course. I like to think that it takes maturity to do it. It's easy to have a wedding—a big party—but it takes maturity to make a marriage.'

'Yes, I agree,' he said.

'Is that an admission of immaturity?' she said. 'A reason why you haven't married?'

Clay laughed, enjoying the feel of her hand in his. 'Maybe,' he said. 'I like to tell myself that it's because I haven't found a woman who has loved me for what I am, in all my facets. I know it's not easy, being married to a doctor, particularly to a surgeon.'

'Perhaps you haven't given anyone a real chance,' she suggested.

'Hmm...maybe,' he said.

'Why is it that many men change partners so easily? That married men can shuck off one wife and several children and take up with another woman as though the others didn't matter at all—or as if they didn't really exist any more?' she asked tentatively. 'I'm curious. And now that I've got you captive here, maybe you can present some insights. Not that women don't have their foibles and weaknesses... I don't want to imply that.'

'I've considered that quite a lot because it's common
here,' Clay said. 'That's one of the reasons I'm not married—I want to be sure. I think the name of the game with those men—especially the older ones who take up with much younger women—is that it's all they know how to be. To be a young man, to go through the same motions they went through at an earlier stage in their lives.'

'You mean they've learned the script so well that they can't take on any other role?' she said.

'Yes. You know...they understand how to meet a woman, flirt with her, get her interested, have an affair, get her to agree to marriage. It's all about a state of
becoming,
not a state of
being
—or, at least, not for very long. They don't know how to
be.
That takes consideration and effort. Does that make sense?'

'Yes. Go on.'

'A state of being, of sticking with it, takes maturity. And it also takes maturity to go on to the next stage in life, to become a middle-aged person, then an old person, in one's sense of self. We get there, whether we want to or not, whether our mind keeps pace with our body or not. It means confronting one's mortality, preceded by a shifting from centre stage. Yet, paradoxically, there's a centre core of our being, a sense of identity, that—if we manage to develop it—will keep us going in a state of equilibrium, will tell us who we are, no matter what age we are.'

'Yes, something that's quite divorced from our job, our relationships with other people, our social image. It's the real self...hopefully a positive thing,' she said thoughtfully.

'Yes.'

'In short, those men can't grow up,' Sophie said.

'Precisely. That's all they know how to do. They
constantly want to go back to square one in terms of relationships. Or maybe once in a while to square two. It's the reassurance of familiar territory.'

'Pathetic, really,' she said.

'Hmm...'

They both stared at the darkened ceiling, their sides touching warmly. Clay found waves of tiredness washing over him and a kind of peace, tinged with acute physical awareness of their close proximity. Carefully he eased himself onto his left side, facing Sophie, and bunched up the pillow under his head.

'Turn on your side,' he said. 'You'll probably find it more comfortable. Try to doze, even if you can't sleep.' He kissed her lightly on the forehead, then on the cheek.

Making a small, muted sound, Sophie moved her head slightly to one side as his mouth brushed her cheek so that their lips met. In a moment he had gathered her into his arms and was kissing her warmly, deeply, and she clung to him with a kind of desperation.

There was no pretence now about their attraction— it was very definitely out in the open. Without words, they both demonstrated that they felt something for each other, even though they couldn't be sure what it meant other than an acute, overwhelming mutual need.

For a long time they kissed and held each other in the narrow bed, in the mean, utilitarian room that served to highlight the existential aloneness of the individual against the odds of uncontrollable circumstances. This was something that they both felt in their work; it was omnipresent. With Sophie having her daughter in the hospital, he could do something to ease her aloneness.

'Feeling better now, Sophie Dunhill?' he murmured as he lifted his mouth from hers. Much as he wanted to make love to her, this wasn't the right time or the right place. There was too much anxiety in the air, too much desperation.

'Yes.' She nestled against him. 'Much better.'

'Turn on your left side,' he said. 'We'll try to sleep.'

He lay with his knees drawn up so that she, with her back to him, fitted neatly into the curve of his body and he could put an arm protectively around her. 'Shut your eyes,' he said, kissing her neck. 'We'll get up at about eight and go for breakfast in the cafeteria. That way, the rush will have passed through.'

'Mmm...'

'And forgive me if I snore,' he said as an afterthought, 'I've been told that I do sometimes when I'm really exhausted.'

'There must be a lot of women around here who know whether you do,' she said, allowing herself to relax against him.

'Shut up, Dunhill,' he said.

Looking back on this episode a month later, Clay found it amazing that they hadn't made love, as since then the need had grown, the attraction escalated, to such a degree that he felt he had to give in to it very soon or go mad. Perhaps a weekend away, perhaps at his cottage, with Sophie, would ease the immediate hungry need—if she would ever consent to it.

When they worked together he found himself watching her obsessively, finding ways and means of being with her, being near her. A few times they'd met for drinks at the Pied Merlin, although they hadn't found the time to go out to dinner again.
While her
daughter had been recovering from the operation, Sophie had been distracted. Clay vowed to himself that he would wait until she was ready, that he wouldn't repeat the near fiasco of asking her to go to bed with him. Until she gave a stronger sign—apart from her need for comfort—that she wanted him, he would hold off making a move, whatever it cost him.

Another scene haunted him—the scene on the morning of the second day after the operation when he'd gone to the ward to see Mandy, a pale little girl with fair hair and a sweet smile like her mother's. He'd taken pains to explain to her something about the operation so that she understood, then about the recovery period.

Apropos of nothing in particular, the girl had looked at him and said, 'I haven't got a daddy.'

'You did have one,' he had said, struggling for words. 'Everyone has one.'

During the days Mandy had spent in the hospital he'd felt that they'd got to know and like each other well. Then she'd come twice to his office after she'd been sent home. Sophie had visibly relaxed once her little girl had been home, having also taken time off from work.

Gradually Clay began to see even less of Dawn, making excuses to the angry and perplexed woman, obsessed as he was with Sophie Dunhill. The time that he'd previously spent with Dawn he put into work, going in to the hospital even earlier than usual, going home later. The times when he met Sophie for a drink began to seem to him like oases in a desert. It amazed him that in a comparatively short while he should have become single-mindedly obsessed with the need to bed a particular woman. It was ridiculous, he told himself repeatedly. Maybe he was losing his edge in everything he was doing.

On the Friday of the week he'd operated on Mandy, he'd also operated on John Tanner, the man with the hydatid cyst of the liver. The operation, for which Sophie had scrubbed, had been tricky and fraught with uncertainties. Yet the patient had come through it well and had since been discharged home, where he would continue with the drugs and would come frequently for consultations.

Now, on a Thursday morning in early August, the surgical intern was presenting the case of John Tanner for the surgical rounds, which would be the last rounds until the summer was over as the turnout would be less over the peak holiday period. They had some good photographs, photographic slides and microscopic slides of the case. As the staff milled around prior to the presentation, Clay sought out Sophie who was with the group of registered nurses seated near the back of the room.

'How's Mandy?' he asked unnecessarily, knowing her to be well. He knew that his own face was pale and haggard from overwork, that he very badly needed the two weeks of holiday that he would be taking later in the month.

'She's more or less back to normal,' Sophie said, smiling at him. 'We're going on holiday to visit family in Vancouver, leaving on Monday for two weeks.'