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Dawn wore a full-length black mink coat that came down to just above her ankles. Her straight blonde hair, jaw-length, was sleeked to one side elegantly and she wore pearl and diamond drop earrings. Impeccably made up, her lips crimson to match her fingernails, she looked cool and sophisticated, in spite of the fur. She carried a small black snakeskin handbag. Stepping over the doorstep carefully in her high-heeled shoes, she turned to flash him a smile.

Dazzled, he closed the door while she placed her bag on a chair.

'Not particularly hot,' she said, 'when you have nothing on underneath.' Again she smiled, teasing him.

Clay raised his eyebrows at her. 'You're full of surprises, Dawn,' he said, aware that his own voice had thickened.

She laughed softly. 'I hope you're not too hungry, Clay, because I don't want to eat just yet.' With a coquettish look, she captured his hand and led him into the sitting room, where the drapes were partially closed against the late sun and music played softly.

Standing in the centre of the plush oriental rug, she slowly opened the mink coat to reveal that, true to her word, she was totally naked underneath. Clay sucked in his breath sharply as he looked at her, feeling the familiar desire take hold. There was no doubt that she was a beautiful woman, softly feminine. 'I can wait to eat,' he said, smiling. 'It's sacrilege to think of food when a man has a woman like you.'

He let go of her hand and put his hands on her waist, smoothing them down over her hips as she slowly slipped out of the coat and let it subside in a sensual heap on the floor at their feet. Dawn took his hands and moved them up to cover her breasts. Clay closed his eyes and let the feel of her overwhelm him.

'Did you try this on Jerry...with the coat?' he asked, the words coming out before he could hold them back. 'If so, I'm surprised he could resist.' They had never actually discussed her passion for her boss.

That was exactly what he'd been thinking, yet he regretted what seemed now, a moment later, to be an uncouth utterance, especially when he felt her stiffen under his hands.

'No, I didn't,' she said, a coldness in her tone. 'Maybe I should have.'

Clay pulled her against him so that she was aware that he wanted her, enveloping her softness tightly in his arms. 'Forget I said that, my beautiful,' he murmured. 'Forget everything. Mmm...' He breathed in her scent, nuzzling her hair. 'I want you...desper
ately...and I'm very glad you came.' He kissed her, feeling her relax her weight against him. Taking her hands, he eased her down onto the floor so that their heads rested on the soft fur of the coat.

Once
again Clay was at the hospital at seven o'clock in the morning, striding through the entrance of the surgical wing, making for the elevators that would take him up to the floor where he could see Mike Dolby and the other patients he had operated on the day before. He was rushing, trying to see them before he had to be at the meeting.

Mike, who shared a two-bedded room, looked considerably different today. As Clay came up to the bed he could see instantly that his patient was feeling considerably better for having had a mass of inflamed bowel removed. His colour was good, that look of strain, which denoted constant chronic pain, had gone, as had some of the look of illness and fatigue.

'Well,' Clay said, smiling, 'I scarcely have to ask you if you feel better.'

'I feel really good, Dr Sotheby,' Mike said. 'I can tell already that when this bit of pain from the operation wears off I won't be having the sort of pain I had before.'

'Any problems with the ileostomy?'

'Not so far. And it's great here—the nurses are really spoiling me.' Mike smiled from his semi-sitting position in the bed. 'I wish I'd done this a while ago.'

'Well, you hang in there, Mike. I want to have a quick word with the night nurses before they go off duty, then I'll come to see you later today.'

By the time he had seen his other post-op patients
he was a few minutes late for the meeting of the medical advisory committee. Meetings bored him somewhat, he acknowledged as he entered the boardroom where the meeting was being held, yet he would have to go to plenty of them if he were Chief of Surgery. He didn't want to lose touch with patients, or to lose that fine edge of skill that he needed to be a good, competent, practical surgeon. Sometimes those considerations bothered him to a point where he questioned his suitability for the job. Perhaps after all he wasn't ready for all this sort of stuff, the endless wrangling over finances, procedure, protocol, problems...

'Hi, Clay,' Jerry addressed him before he sat down at the big table in the boardroom. 'I want to know if you've got your curriculum vitae in order for your application for the job.'

'Yes, I have,' Clay assured him.

'Good, because things are moving. You'll need the names of eight to ten referees for the search committee to contact.'

'That many?'

'Yes. It's because a few of them are never available—they're away at meetings, on holiday, sick or whatever, so it's better to have more than you really need,' Jerry said as they stood casually away from the few others who had arrived. 'They are contacted by telephone or teleconferencing.'

'I see. Are you going to be on the search committee, Jerry?'

'No, I'm not. So you're welcome to use me as one of your referees, if you want to.'

'Thank you, I appreciate it,' Clay said, feeling a surging excitement that his goal might be within his grasp. He pushed aside his earlier reservations as pessimistic niggles. Positive thinking was what mattered here—it often made the difference between success and failure. Although he would be competing with other guys who were equally good at their jobs, he had perhaps an advantage in having worked with Jerry Claibourne as a senior surgical resident.

When the meeting was over he had an outpatient clinic, then had to go again to his private office to deal with the never-ending paperwork. At the office he shared a secretary and a registered nurse, part time, with his colleague and friend, Dr Jason Ritt, who was a peripheral vascular surgeon, one who dealt with diseases and operations of the arteries and veins of the human body, all except those of the heart itself. The heart was the province of the cardiac surgeon.

While in the hospital, and out of it, Clay was always available for emergency surgery. Tomorrow he had a full operating list. Some of the patients on that list would be coming into hospital today, where they would be seen by the surgical residents, but he would also go to see them before he went home that evening.

In his private office that afternoon he got a phone call from the hospital fund-raising office. 'I'm calling about the details of your prize, Dr Sotheby,' a woman explained, after she'd identified herself. 'First of all, I'd like to thank you for your donation to the hospital fund, and for being such a good sport in participating.'

'Er...' he said, his mind still on the notes he had been writing. 'Prize?'

'The date you won,' the woman said, 'the blind date.'

'Oh...right,' he said vaguely, knowing that he was sounding less than enthusiastic.

'Yes. Could you give us a day and time that would be suitable, Dr Sotheby? Then we set it up for you at Guido's restaurant in Gresham. It's a great place. You simply turn up there at the agreed time, ask for the hospital table, which is table ten, and your date will be there at the table. She is asked to come five minutes ahead of you.'

'Ah,' he said, chewing on the end of his pen, trying hard to retain his previous line of thought regarding the patient on whom he was writing up notes.

'It's all very civilized,' the woman went on cheerily. 'We've arranged these things before. If, by some remote chance, you don't like each other much, you just have a very good meal together, prepaid by the hospital, then you simply say goodbye.'

'I see,' he said woodenly. 'You make it sound as though that possibility would be
very
remote.'

'Oh, it would be,' she said, obviously trying hard to ignore his lack of enthusiasm. 'If you could give me a day, Dr Sotheby, I'll set the wheels in motion. Many people find a Friday night best.'

'How about the Friday after next?' he said. 'I'm not on call. About half past seven?' Damnation! he thought irritably. Between now and then he would think of some way of getting out of it, if he possibly could, without seeming too boorish. At the same time, he wanted to keep a profile at the hospital of being a good, all-round sort of guy.

'Precisely half past seven,' the woman said. 'Right! We'll set it all up for you Dr Sotheby, then I'll call you when it's all in place. We'll also call the day before to remind you.'

'Er...thank you,' he said. What he didn't need was a blind date, he thought once again as he replaced the receiver—not when he had Dawn, among others. For
a few seconds he allowed his mind to dwell on images of her on the floor, with her sleek blonde head resting below him on the black mink. Not that Dawn was entirely satisfactory. He wanted more personality, intellect or something... He strongly suspected that her interest in him was largely calculated.

But what did it matter really? he asked himself irritably. It wasn't as though he wanted to marry any of them. Dawn wanted him physically. She liked to be seen with him in social settings, and that was great— a large part of the attraction. Maybe when he was in his early forties, part way through his stint as Chief of Surgery, he would think about marrying and having children. Plenty of time for that.

He stretched his long legs out under the desk, leant back in his chair and put his hands behind his head, closing his eyes for a few moments. God, he was tired! Time for a vacation. He'd tentatively planned a couple of weeks at the end of August away at his country cottage at Random Lake. As he saw in his mind's eye the blue-grey shimmery water of the lake he also found himself imagining a woman there, the sort of woman he might one day marry.. .if he ever did...with two or three little children around her, clutching at her dress.

Hell! He sat forward abruptly. The image had been vague, shimmery like the water of the lake, wrapped in an early morning summer mist.. .yet it was as though that image had conjured itself up from something very real, almost like something remembered. Yet he had never had it before. Clay shook his head, as though clearing away mental cobwebs, then turned his attention to the task at hand. Maybe he was getting mushy in his creeping old age.

* * *

When Wednesday dawned, an operating day, it was almost with a sense of relief that Clay was once again to do what he loved to do, what he was skilled at. As he parked his car at seven o'clock in the multi-storey parking lot opposite the hospital and strode out in the morning sun, it felt good to be alive. As usual, he would go to see the patients he was to operate on that day.

A few nurses and office women in the main lobby of the surgical building stared at him as he strode by in his stone-coloured cotton pants and white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, open at the neck. 'Morning, Dr Sotheby,' they chorused.

'Hi...morning.' He grinned and waved to all and sundry, making for the elevators, giving a special wink and wave to Dr Eva Clarkson, a young colleague and urologist, who had appeared from one of the corridors leading off the lobby.

'Long time no see,' he called to Eva. At one time, he and Eva had had a 'thing' going for them, then they'd both become exceptionally busy with their careers and their passionate meetings—usually in the hospital, and on hospital time—had gradually petered out from necessity, although when they saw each other they promised to get together. It hadn't happened recently.

Eva was pretty, beautiful even, with dark curly hair and pale eyes and skin, somehow exotic. They were two of a kind—they took what they wanted from each other, no strings attached, no expectations. At the moment she was concentrating on her career as a urologist, breaking into what had been largely a man's world.

'Clay! Great to see you,' Eva called, hurrying up to him as he waited for an elevator. 'Let's get together some time. How is it that we go for weeks without seeing each other?'

'We're workaholics. Great to see you,' Clay responded, giving her shoulders a quick squeeze. At this time of the morning they were just a few minutes ahead of the main rush of nursing staff coming in to do a day shift. 'We should rectify that situation as soon as possible, Eva. How about if we make it today? May I call you in your office at about three?' Eva had been an intern when he'd been a senior resident.

'Sure.' Eva smiled up at him, pleasantly surprised, and he looked down at her, appreciating her full, very feminine lips. 'I'll be there. And I'll be looking forward to it.'

There were other people in the elevator when it came, so they didn't speak further. Clay was very physically aware of her standing next to him, yet he gave no indication of it. Even in the anonymous garb of a green, shapeless scrub suit and a white lab coat on top, she looked alluring. Clay wondered why she wasn't married, then caught himself up short. Why wasn't he married, come to that? And he was five years older than Eva. Maybe he was sexist—making one rule foe a beautiful woman and another for himself. Well, they did have to think about the relentless ticking of the biological clock. But, on the other hand, men tended to die earlier, to get heart disease earlier, to get prostate problems, become impotent...

Hastily he shifted his thoughts away from that to appreciate Eva's rear as she left the elevator and walked away. Sighing, he forced his mind back to the contemplation of his first case on the operating list, a removal of a breast lump in a man. It wasn't commonly known, he thought, that men could get cancer of the breast tissue.

*

'We know he has cancer of the left breast,' Clay explained later to Sophie, his scrub nurse for the first case in the operating room, 'because I've done a fine-needle aspiration test—cytology. I did that in my office and sent it to the lab here.'

'That isn't very common, though, is it?' Sophie asked, handing him a sterile towel on which to dry his hands prior to gowning and gloving. Their patient, A1 Harris, sixty-three years old, was already anaesthetized on the operating table. Today their anaesthetist was Dr Claude Moreau. Rick Sommers was already there.