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'Yes. I'll be all right, Marcus. I'm not going to do anything to provoke her,' she said quietly, occupied with thoughts of what could happen.

'You could maybe provoke her by merely existing,' he murmured. When their eyes met it seemed to her, from the guarded light in his eyes, that there was a definite added dimension to his words yet he did not follow that up. Their faces were close and, against her will, her glance focused on his well-shaped mouth. He was so different from Richard. Somehow he overwhelmed her, in spite of all her efforts not to feel involved.

For a long time she had felt emotionally dead with everyone except her baby and her own parents. Sitting near to Marcus Blair, she felt herself trembling, tentatively, into a renewed life—the feeling vying incongruously with the subject of their conversation. It was bitter-sweet. Maybe this was the wrong man to reawaken her, if that was actually happening. And how much of it came from gratitude to him? She should be with Emma's father, a small protesting voice reminded her.

'Could I invite you for supper?' she asked, standing up as she felt the gnawings of her own hunger. 'I've cooked it. I was just about to eat when you came.'

'Well. . . Thank you. . .yes. I'm sorry I've delayed you.' Although his hesitation was minimal, Lisa felt it acutely.

'Won't take long,' she said lightly as she went to bring the food from her small kitchen to the table in the sitting room. 'It's just salad, pasta and some cold chicken.'

'Sounds great,' he said.

'Glass of wine?'

'Mmm.. .please.'

When they were seated at opposite sides of the pine table, each with a plate of food and a glass of wine, Lisa decided to take the opportunity to question him. She might never get another such chance. 'How has this woman, Charlene Damero, affected your life? I find it all difficult to imagine.' Really she was probing, wanting to know something more about him.

'She has definitely put off two of my very serious girlfriends, as well as several dozen who fell into a less than serious category,' he said, with a self-deprecating smile.

'You're teasing me,' she said, seeing amusement glinting in his eyes. 'I hope that isn't true.' The mood between them was lightening a little more.

'Women don't like men who take off for Africa at short notice, either. I couldn't impose all that on any woman.' There was self-mockery in his tone, as though daring her to question him further about his intimate life.

'Um.. .no,' she agreed, gratified that he was telling her.

'Some men do, of course. It's very selfish of them,' he mused.

Lisa gave him a tight smile. Richard would fit nicely into that category.

'They hope for the best of both worlds—the best for themselves, that is,' he said. 'They work all the hours God gave, seldom get home and when they do they're about as useless as an electric blanket in a power failure.'

Lisa laughed out loud.

He looked at her levelly across the table. 'Also there's the urge to overwork, to be a sort of superman. One thing I am learning is that no one is indispensable in the workplace in a big city. No one. Some are just better than others, that's all.'

'It's nice to meet a doctor who's got that all figured out,' she said succinctly.

'Now you're teasing me,' he murmured.

'No...'

'Where one is indispensable,' he went on more soberly, his eyes boring into hers and holding her attention, 'is in one's relationships, in one's role as a lover, a spouse, a close friend—a parent, especially. Wouldn't you agree?'

'Yes...' They both seemed to be enclosed in a circle of awareness, held by his intensity.

'A baby, a little kid, needs to be with someone who loves him or her—they don't care how much money you make in a year.'

Lisa bit her lower lip, deciding not to comment—trying not to read judgement of her into his words. Clearly, he did not approve of young women who tried to bring up babies on their own.

'Excuse me.' Lisa got up to bring in a fruit salad she had made, then escaped again to make coffee.

In no time at all he was ready to leave.

'That was a great meal, Lisa. I appreciate it very much,' he said as they stood in the hallway and he put on his coat.

'It was great to have your company,' she said. 'You've made me realize how lonely I get sometimes, in spite of having the most wonderful parents in the world.' That was the understatement of the decade, she thought as she opened the door.

'No hard feelings?' he said.

'No...' That wasn't entirely true.

'I'll speak to the security people tonight. I'll talk to you on Monday,' he said.

'Thank you. That's a relief.'

As he was leaving he turned to her in the open doorway. For a heart-stopping moment she thought he was going to kiss her—and she knew that she wanted him to. 'Don't be lonely, Lisa,' he said softly. 'See you next week. Goodbye.'

'Goodbye.'

Lisa watched him walk round the side of the house, feeling a sharp sense of loss as he disappeared. Somehow she knew that he would never risk getting seriously involved with a woman while he had a crazy ex-patient pursuing him. What a waste, what a terrible waste.

'Hello
, Mr Reese.' Lisa halted in the reception area of the emergency department as Ed Reese came through the entrance doors on Monday morning. 'How are you?'

'Much better, thanks.' Ed Reese gave a small smile of satisfaction. 'I came in on Saturday morning to have the thing cut to let out some of the fluid. I've just come back today to see Dr Hanks for a check-up.'

'Well, the swelling's certainly gone,' Lisa observed, looking at the man's cheek which sported a small Band-aid over the area of the incision. 'Just go into the waiting room and I'll tell Dr Hanks you're here.'

In the triage station Lisa looked up his record on the computer. He was taking the oral cloxacillin, and would be taking it for ten days. Then she went in search of Nathan Hanks among the examination cubicles.

The morning so far had been very much quieter than usual. Like all Emergency Department nurses, she was beginning to distrust such quiet, only thinking of it as the lull before the storm. This week she was to spend time working between the ambulatory section and the stretcher section. If something of a serious nature came in she was to go immediately to help and observe in that area. Sadie Drummond was keeping an eye on her and Diane Crane, otherwise they were left to their own devices until something came in.

'Ah, Dr Hanks,' she hailed him as he went by. 'Mr Reese is here to see you.'

'Great. Just put him into a cubicle, will you? I'll be there in a couple of minutes.'

From then on things went at a steady pace for a while until an ambulance pulled up at the entrance,

'Come on, Lisa.' Diane hurried up to her. 'Here's our first stretcher case of the day. Sadie Drummond wants us over the other side for our orientation.'

'OK.' Lisa punched some information about her last patient into the computer in the triage station, then followed Diane at a brisk pace just as the stretcher was being wheeled through the doors.

'They don't seem to be in a great hurry,' Lisa remarked, looking at the ambulance attendants, 'so I guess it's not an accident case.'

Sadie Drummond met them in the corridor. 'Miss Stanton,' she said, 'I want you to go with Dr Blair to examine this case. He's some one who's known to us. Miss Crane, I want you to help Dr Hanks deal with face lacerations. He'll need to clean up and suture. OK?'

The two nurses nodded, before going off to their assignments. In a treatment room Lisa supervised the transfer of the patient, a middle-aged man, from the stretcher to an examination table.

'This is Mr Carl Ottinger,' the ambulance attendant said to her, handing over a slim folder of notes. 'Sent in by his GP. There's a letter from him in there. Mr Ottinger's been operated on before in this hospital.'

'Thanks.' Lisa took the folder and turned to the patient. 'Hello, Mr Ottinger.'

'Hi,' he said weakly, his voice barely audible. He looked desperately ill, pale and slightly cyanosed, his lips dry and scaled as though he had not had anything to eat or drink for a long time. His eyes were sunken and his face very thin so that his cheekbones jutted out.

Quickly Lisa scanned the GP's letter. Mr Ottinger had metastatic carcinoma, the outcome of an original bowel cancer that had been detected and operated on too late to prevent spread of the disease. Now it looked as though he had intestinal obstruction, possibly at more than one site, as the tumour had spread. Probably it was in his liver as well.

Trying to keep the expression on her face neutral— knowing that the patient was watching her—she felt a wave of sympathy for Mr Ottinger. There would be little anyone could do for him, other than possibly operate to relieve the obstruction temporarily—to give him a colostomy so that at least he could eat and eliminate. A sense of frustration and sadness seemed to pervade the room as she sensed the man's fear and despair.

'Hullo, Lisa.. .or is it Liz?' Dr Blair was there beside her—she hadn't heard his approach.'

She smiled a quick welcome, glad to see him. He looked competent, inspiring confidence, in his green scrubsuit and white lab coat. 'This is Mr Ottinger,' she introduced the patient, handing over the file.

'Good morning, sir.' Marcus acknowledged the patient's presence, before turning to the letter. 'I'm Dr Blair. I see you've been in this hospital before and had surgery here several times.'

'Yes,' the patient said quietly.

'Tell me when this latest problem started.'

'It's been coming on for some time—over the past month,' the patient said, his voice hesitant. 'At first I had difficulty having a bowel movement, then ten days ago I stopped having any bowel movements.' He hesitated, moistening his dry lips with his tongue. 'Three days ago I started to vomit just about everything I ate—not that I had much of an appetite. I forced myself to eat something. In the last two days I've had nothing but water. This morning I started vomiting that as well.'

'You have pain?' Dr Blair asked gently.

'Yes. Pretty awful it is at times.'

'I'd like to examine your abdomen,' Dr Blair said, easing aside the blanket that covered Mr Ottinger. 'Show me where the pain is most of the time.'

As Marcus palpated the man's abdomen Lisa moved around the room, which was only superficially familiar to her, as she looked for a rectal examination tray, knowing that Marcus would need one. He would most likely want to put down a stomach tube as well to aspirate the stomach contents. She felt like weeping for Mr Ottinger who seemed like an intelligent man, very aware of what was happening to him.

'Thanks, that's great,' Marcus said appreciatively, his tone very professional nonetheless as she brought over both trays. 'I'll want an IV as well as he's pretty dehydrated. And.. .um, Liz, could you call Admitting, find out if we've got any vacant surgical beds, then get on to the senior surgical resident on Dr Claibourne's team, Ted Logan. He may be in the operating room at this time of day. If he is, leave a message for him to come down here as soon as he's free.'

'All right.'

'I'll want to take some blood for a stat haemoglobin,' Marcus continued, talking quietly to her. 'If it's very low, as I suspect it is, I'll consider giving him a blood transfusion to raise it a little so the lab should do a cross-match as well. He'll feel much better if we can do that, as well as get him rehydrated. Then we'll arrange for a scan to find out where the obstruction is.'

It was three quarters of an hour before Dr Ted Logan could get down to see Mr Ottinger and make arrangements to have him admitted. In the meantime, he had been made comfortable with something to relieve his pain and an intravenous line inserted so that he could be given fluid. Marcus had inserted a gastric tube.

'He's got an elevated temperature, Dr Logan,' Lisa said to him, handing over the file, 'and we've reserved a bed for him, if you will OK it with Admitting.'

'Yes. Can you make the arrangements to get him transferred? Once he's admitted I'll get Jerry Claibourne to see him. Maybe we can operate on him later today—do a colostomy. The sooner the better. He's malnourished, poor devil.. I don't think he would stand up to much.'

Lisa sighed. 'No. We're going to give him the two units of blood. We should be getting it from the lab very soon.'

'That's great.'

When Dr Logan had gone she went to find Marcus to make arrangements for the transfer. She found him in the middle of suturing a young man with multiple lacerations.

'I'm going to admit Mr Ottinger, Dr Blair. It's all arranged,' she informed him quietly.

'Good.' He drew her to one side. 'It's important not to write off these patients. I like to go to see them later. Maybe you should, too. He's pretty depressed, to begin with. It's important that we make him feel that something can be done for him, that something
is
actually being done.'

'Yes,' she said.

'Don't transfer him until we have the blood here so we can start him on the first unit. We'll get that haemoglobin level up as quickly as we can.'

'Right. And I'll go to see him when I get off duty,' she said. 'I've informed his son and daughter. He doesn't seem to have a wife.'

'By the way.' He was frowning, speaking in a low voice so that his patient would not hear. 'I've spoken to the security department. If Ms Damero appears here again we are to let them know immediately. Their tactic will be to escort her out instantly, provided she has no legitimate reason for being in here. If she still hangs about on hospital property the police will be called to take her away.'

'That's a relief,' Lisa said feelingly.

'We are to avoid dealing directly with her ourselves. We'll refer her to another staff member.'

They worked together a lot that day, she and Marcus, and for the remainder of the week. Getting to know Marcus Blair as a colleague was proving to be a pleasant and interesting experience, Lisa acknowledged, even though it was very obvious to her that he was deliberately being very professional with her, subtly keeping her at a distance—as though he needed to do it for reasons of his own, as though he disapproved of her somehow, maybe.