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'Your boss?' Geoffrey ventured gingerly.

Annabel blinked. 'Technically, yes,' she conceded finally, 'but we're still supposed to function as independent consultants. And Harry would never have dreamed of pulling a stunt like this.'

'Which might be why he was forced into retirement.'

'Forced?'

'So I heard.'

'But he's been talking about retirement for years.'

'He wanted to stay on as director part time,' Geoffrey told her. 'But the department's overspent badly the past five years. Harry didn't have the wherewithal to make cuts where they were needed and so...' he drew one finger across his throat evocatively '...he was out.'

'And they shelled out countless hundreds of thousands of pounds and brought in a hatchet man,' Annabel said bitterly.

'Hardly.' Geoffrey grinned at her. 'Well, you might be right about what they had to pay Luke to get him, but if they'd wanted a hatchet man they'd have appointed an administrator, not one of the best physicians in the field. You're just irritated because you see it as your ex-husband telling you what to do rather than your boss,' he told her sagely.

'St Peter's couldn't have got a better successor for Harry. We should be grateful Luke's ambitious enough to agree to take on the extra workload of the administrative work at all—most clinicians of his calibre wouldn't dream of it. And however much we might disapprove of the politics behind the rationing of funds, Annabel, we either run to budget or it's merger at best and closure at worst. You're the only doctor on staff who isn't full of praise for the job Luke's doing.'

'I'm not saying he's not good at his job,' Annabel said tersely. Ambition was something Luke, certainly, had never been short of. 'Simply that I object to his autocratic way of doing it. And I don't see why you're in such a bouncy mood about him. I thought you'd be sympathetic, Geoffrey. I thought you'd been warned about some of your clinics as well.'

'We have been through a couple of my lists but Luke quietly pointed out to me that my problem is that I keep following up patients far longer than necessary,' Geoffrey revealed. 'It was amazing to me that I'd never realised that before. Now I'm trying to be less reluctant about referring back to GPs. And I like what Luke's doing in Outpatients. He's revolutionising the referral systems. In future our new referrals are going to be pre-screened, which will cut down enormously on follow-up appointments and waiting times.'

'Perhaps I'll look through one of my lists and see what I come up with,' Annabel said reluctantly, Geoffrey's approval shaming her into the concession. 'But if I can't see a straightforward way of cutting my numbers I'm going to fight this. This is a hospital. We're not running a business here. We can't be expected to put profits ahead of patients.'

Geoffrey looked a little taken aback by her vehemence. 'Annabel, before you do anything rash, talk to Luke,' he advised seriously. 'Have him have an objective look at your numbers.'

'Objectionable
, more like.' But she managed a reluctant smile in response to Geoffrey's sudden grin, pleased that someone at least found the whole disastrous situation entertaining.

She checked her watch. 'I'd better get moving,' she told him. They'd grabbed a coffee together at the canteen after their respective ward rounds. 'That lady I told you about after clinic on Monday—you remember, the Italian lady with the atrial myxoma—is having her operation this morning. I want to pop up and say hello to her before she goes to theatre.'

Mrs Di Bella was sitting bolt upright in bed in one of the side cubicles on G ward, fully dressed in a tie-back cream theatre gown, cotton bootees and a frilled paper hat, her daughter and her daughter's fiancé holding one hand each. 'The nurse said the porters will be here any minute,' Mrs Di Bella told her when Annabel peeked in. 'They gave me an injection an hour ago. They said it would give me a dry mouth and make me feel calmer but it hasn't affected me at all. It's going to be all right, Dr Stuart. Please, tell me it's going to be all right.'

'You're going to be fine.' Annabel had been in to see her the afternoon before after her clinic and had done her best to reassure her, but she was clearly still very nervous. 'Perfectly fine. Hello, Carla. Gino.' She'd met both young people on a previous visit and now she strove for a normal atmosphere by looking away from her patient to greet them. 'I like your hair like that,' she told Carla, noticing the elaborate way she'd folded and twisted it up the long strands onto her head. 'It's lovely. That really suits you.'

'She's going to wear it like that for the wedding,' her patient told her tearfully. 'I told her I wanted to see it done properly just once.'

Carla leaned forward and patted her mother's arm above where she still clutched her other one. 'You'll see it at the wedding, Mama.'

'You'll come down with me to the theatre, Dr Stuart, won't you?' Mrs Di Bella released her future son-in-law's hand to clutch at Annabel's. 'That would give me more confidence. I think of you as my good luck charm. Will you come with me?'

'Of course.' Annabel agreed immediately despite her surprise at hearing herself described as a good luck charm.

Considering she'd been the one to make Mrs Di Bella's diagnosis, she would have thought the other woman would have considered her more the opposite. 'Just let me make one call to warn my clinic I'll be delayed,' she said gently. 'OK?'

Mrs Di Bella released her hand with reluctance and when Annabel hurried back a few seconds later she grabbed it again and held it tight. When the theatre porters eventually arrived, Annabel went with them, still holding her patient's hand as she was wheeled to the central bank of lifts and then to the main operating theatres.

Racing down to Outpatients after delivering Mrs Di Bella to the anaesthetist who'd be responsible for her care all the time she was in Theatres, Annabel almost cannoned into Luke as she dashed around the corner into the department. Only his arm, grabbing her and lifting her aside before she hit him, stopped a direct collision.

She looked up at him, breathless, an apology ready, but his disapproving green glare made it die on her lips before she could voice it. 'Where's the emergency?' he demanded.

'No emergency,' she answered hurriedly. 'I'm just running late—'

'Twenty-five minutes late for an already heavily overbooked clinic,' he pointed out coldly. 'Eighteen patients have been waiting more than thirty minutes. Your registrar's doing her best but she shouldn't be left to work unsupervised. I expect better of my staff, Annabel. If you can't cope with your workload, talk to me and I'll arrange to have it reduced to reasonable levels.'

'I don't have a problem with my workload,' she said through gritted teeth, furious that he'd been spying on her clinic and resenting his attitude. In all her time here Harry had never once complained about her clinics. She glared up at him fiercely. 'There's only one thing around here I have a problem with, and it's got a face like thunder and it's standing right in front of me.'

He didn't look amused. 'Get used to it,' he said grimly. 'I'm here to stay.'

Annabel turned to stare at his back as he stalked off, only just resisting the childish urge to poke out her tongue.

When she'd left Mrs Di Bella at Theatres, the older woman had been desperate that Annabel agree to be there with her
if
she ever made it out of the place. As soon as she got a spare second Annabel rang the surgical intensive care unit as all post-op open-heart surgery patients went to the unit routinely at least overnight. The unit's ward clerk cheerfully agreed to bleep her immediately her patient was transferred.

'Bit nervous, is she?' she asked brightly.

'Petrified,' Annabel agreed. 'Thanks, Valerie. I appreciate it.'

'Oop, better go and touch up my lipstick.' The ward clerk giggled. 'The new professor's just walked in to see one of our admissions and I wanted to be looking my most beautiful. Bye, Dr Stuart. Talk to you soon.'

'Bye, Valerie.'
Lipstick.
Annabel banged the receiver down in disgust. Was she the only woman in the whole hospital not running herself ragged trying to impress Luke?

She almost felt a small sense of triumph at that until, abruptly, she looked down at herself and flushed. The bright, summery dress she was wearing was one she'd taken out of a dry-cleaning bag that morning for the first time in years. While it reached the top of her knees and was not at all clinging or revealing, the silky, button-front frock was still far lighter and more youthful than anything she'd worn before Luke's criticism the night she'd gone to the movies with Geoffrey. Obviously, despite her smugness, she was, even more than Valerie, dressing to please "the new professor".

And any arguments with herself that the dress was simply more comfortable than one of her longer ones or a suit now that it seemed warmer weather had arrived to stay were irrelevant because part of her annoyance with Luke that morning had stemmed from a very definite feeling of pique that he hadn't noticed her outfit. Disgusted with herself for being so transparently pathetic, she vowed to go out of her way to wear something long and colourless the next day.

A little while later the absurdity of that, and of the way she was continuing to react to Luke, suddenly struck her. Geoffrey had been right that morning, she realised sadly. She was treating and reacting to Luke her ex-husband rather than Luke her new boss.

Next time there was a gap in her session, while the patient she needed to examine undressed, she fished in her desk and retrieved the latest classified advertisement section of
The Lancet.
She opened the journal to the section dealing with cardiology vacancies. She loved St Peter's, and until Luke's return she'd imagined seeing out the length of her career here. But perhaps now the sanest thing was to admit she wasn't going to be able to cope with him. And if she was leaving, it was best she went early. It was time to acknowledge defeat, sacrifice her job and go away quietly.

Mrs Di Bella
arrived on the unit awake and breathing on her own, but extensively monitored. Annabel noted a line into her neck, recording her heart's function, along with cardiac leads, an indwelling arterial line plus several venous lines connected to pumps controlling her medications and fluids, a catheter into her bladder and a little tag on her ear connected to a machine that displayed her blood oxygen saturation levels.

'I am alive, Dr Stuart,' she rasped sleepily but triumphantly through her oxygen mask.

Annabel smiled. 'The operation went well.' Simon Rawlings, Mrs Di Bella's surgeon, had bleeped her at the end of the operation. 'He's removed all the tumour and patched up the hole it left in your heart wall.'

'Thank you, Dr Stuart.' Her patient's eyes started to droop shut. 'Thank you so much. My daughter...?'

'Carla will be allowed to come in a little later,' Annabel told her. 'You should sleep for a while now. I'll come back and. see you tonight.'

Annabel stopped at the desk to thank Valerie again on her way out. 'She was very nervous pre-op,' she explained to the unit's charge nurse, who was standing with the ward clerk at the main desk. 'According to Simon, everything was straightforward.'

'She had a burst of A Fib when we were transferring her,' Catherine told her, referring to a type of disordered heart rhythm of the sort Mrs Di Bella had had intermittently prior to her admission. 'We called the registrar but she reverted back to sinus rhythm before he could get here. Her rhythm's been stable since.'

Annabel frowned. Mrs Di Bella had been taking a beta-blocker drug pre-operatively to try and prevent the disturbed rhythm, which wasn't uncommon in the first twenty-four hours after this sort of surgery. It was good that her rhythm had come back to normal without further treatment, but it was possible it might recur in future or might even become a permanent rhythm.

If it did, Annabel would need to prescribe blood thinners to reduce the risk of Mrs Di Bella having a stroke or arterial blockage as a result. She couldn't give her patient blood thinners yet because they would increase the risk of her haemorrhaging from her surgical wounds, and for the moment it was important for her simply to recover from her surgery.

'How's Daisy Miller?' Catherine asked. 'Tony mentioned she was back in again but she hasn't been up to see us here. He said she hasn't bounced back too well this admission.'

'She's a little better,' Annabel conceded. 'She can walk to the bathroom now, and with Daisy that means she's raring to go dancing again so I'll probably have to let her out. There's a fund-raising dinner tomorrow night, which she's been helping to arrange, and I suspect nothing short of a transplant turning up will stop her getting to it.'

'We heard her new boyfriend contributed some huge amount.'

'He's been great,' Annabel agreed with a smile. Daisy worked tirelessly at raising funds for cardiac research and it seemed her boyfriend had now been coaxed to help. 'Also, he organised his team-mates to sign football shirts to be auctioned. Daisy says they'll bring in a few pounds.'

'Hundreds, probably,' Daisy told her when Annabel asked her about the shirts later that day on her evening ward round. She fiddled with the adjustment of the oxygen tubing behind her ears. 'Perhaps more since they're so near the top of the league this year.'

'Is that uncomfortable?' Annabel moved behind her and lifted the tubing slightly, checking to see there was no redness developing behind her ears. 'Want me to ask the nurses to pad it for you or would you prefer to change to a mask?'

'Padding might help,' Daisy answered. 'Thanks.'

Annabel sat on the edge of her bed, looked through her results from that morning and her observation chart and exchanged a carefully neutral look with Hannah, before turning back to her patient. 'I was half expecting you to be begging me to let you go home tonight.'

Daisy struggled up on the pillows behind her back and head. 'Tomorrow's OK,' she said, her words confirming Annabel's fears that she really wasn't feeling any better. 'I want to be really well for the dinner. You're still coming, aren't you, Dr Stuart?'