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'Heavens no! I've enjoyed every minute. Good evening then, Ted—and thank you for making my first day so pleasant and easy.'

'The pleasure was mutual,' he assured her.

Pleasant and easy, she thought, going to get her car. That wasn't completely true, was it? I have a feeling I'm going to have to watch my step with that man Preston...

On Yona's
third morning at Salchester Royal Infirmary, Sharon Lee came into her consulting room and laid a bulky package on her desk. 'Details of a few flats in decent districts fairly nearby,' she explained. 'I can get you some more if there's nothing suitable.'

By then the first clinic patient was being ushered in so, with a smile of thanks, Yona laid it aside. She also smiled at the patient, but got a frown in return. 'I always see Dr Redmond,' said the patient, a determined-looking woman in her mid-fifties.

Yona explained that Dr Redmond had left and she had taken his place.

'All this chopping and changing is very upsetting.'

'Dr Redmond was here for almost three years,' said Yona.

'And I've been coming for seven,' she was told.

There was no answer to that, so Yona asked whether the short-wave diathermy and exercises, prescribed on her last visit, had been beneficial.'

Mrs Ribble said it certainly kept her going, but she needed another doctor's line to carry on with it.

'I shall have to examine your knees first,' said Yona firmly, and was told that Dr Redmond always trusted her.

Wisely Yona decided to ignore that and insisted on being allowed to see for herself. The left knee was quiescent, but the right one was very red, shiny and swollen. 'I'd say you've recently given this a bit of a bash, Mrs Ribble,' she said, earning a glance of grudging respect.

'So I'm definitely needing the treatment, then.'

'No, Mrs Ribble. I'm going to draw the fluid off, bandage it firmly and send you home with some elbow crutches to rest up for a week.'

'Oh, nice,' said Mrs Ribble. 'It's easy seen you don't live on the seventeenth floor on your own and never getting out.'

She wasn't the first patient Yona had had whose only diversion was a trip to the hospital for treatment, but there were other remedies—like lunch clubs and day centres. When she'd dealt with the knee, Yona asked the nurse to make sure that Mrs Ribble saw a medical social worker before getting the ambulance home. 'And I'll be seeing you again this day week,' she explained.

'I suppose you're doing your best.' The reply was grudging.

The patients that morning were mostly arthritic, with roughly equal numbers having either osteoarthritis, often described as 'wear and tear', or rheumatoid arthritis, with all its associated symptoms. Mrs Kavanagh was one of the latter. 'I can hardly drag myself round these days, I'm that tired, Doctor.' She sighed as she eased herself into the patient's chair.

There was no need to look at her eyes to see that she was very anaemic. 'I've been taking the iron tablets, honestly,' said the patient, guessing what was in Yona's mind.

'I'm going to suggest iron injections instead,' said Yona, 'and I'm also going to take some blood, even though you say your joints are quiet just now.' Because if I'm not much mistaken, you're boiling up for an acute attack, she thought, before asking what other medication Mrs Kavanagh was taking.

Mrs Kavanagh said she was taking just the aspirin as the chloroquine upset her stomach.

Yona had never met that before, but no chloroquine or other controlling drug explained a lot. 'You must come and see me again next week when I've got the results of today's blood tests,' she said firmly. 'Then we'll know what other medicine to try.' If we don't have to bring you into the ward for the full works...

There were several other patients Yona needed to see again the following week and the chief appointments clerk took her to task over it. 'You're disrupting my figures,' she complained.

'I'm sorry, but all those patients really need to attend,' said Yona wearily. She'd been on duty for the whole medical block the previous night and had been too busy to do more than catnap occasionally in an armchair. Also, she was getting a headache.

'You're new here, Doctor, so I'd better explain that your function is just to check them over now and again and refer them to their GPs for any treatment.'

'If that was all that was required, then there'd be no need for them to come here at all,' said Yona, trying to keep her temper. 'But I'll tell the professor what I've done this morning and let him decide if I was right or wrong.' The phone rang and Yona picked it up. 'But now you'll have to excuse me. Sister Evans has a problem and needs my help.'

It was a bold person who would rate her claim for attention higher than Sister Evans's, and the clerk went away without another word.

Sister was waiting for Yona in the main corridor of the unit, and greeted her with 'We have just admitted a woman for assessment who, to my mind, has a fractured neck of femur.'

'Did she fall?' Yona asked quickly.

'She says not and I believe her, but as she's been on steroids for many years…'

'I get the picture,' said Yona grimly. Steroids were a boon until the side-effects caught up with you. 'Let's go and take a look.'

'We must get her X-rayed for the orthopods,' she said when she'd examined the patient, who had the tell-tale signs of fixed outward rotation and muscle spasm round the hip joint, 'but you were quite right, Sister. What a good thing you called me so promptly.'

There was nothing that Sister liked more than being told that she was quite right. She preened and said, 'But I'm afraid this unfortunate episode has put paid to your lunch, Doctor, as you're due in Theatre at one-thirty.' She always knew everything. 'I'll get you some coffee and send down to the canteen for sandwiches, if you like.'

Yona wasn't the least bit hungry so she said, 'Please don't bother, Sister. Just some coffee will be fine.' Then she sank thankfully onto the nearest chair, feeling quite ashamed of herself. A busy night on call had never affected her like this before. I must be getting old, she thought wryly.

Sister's coffee was as strong and bracing as herself and just what was needed to see Yona through a long afternoon of standing under the heat and brilliance of the theatre lights. This afternoon would be almost the last stage of her orientation programme and the bit she'd been looking forward to the least, and the fact that it was Mike Preston who'd be operating was an added irritation.

Yona had done her best to be pleasant on the few occasions their paths had crossed so far, but they were only too obviously on different wavelengths.

'More coffee, Doctor?' Sister was asking.

'No, thanks—that fairly hit the spot and I really must be
making a move. They tell me that Mr Preston is a stickler for punctuality.'

'Mr Preston is a perfectionist who expects perfection from others,' Sister returned with such obvious approval that Yona was left feeling quite depressed.

She'd been sure that Mike Preston would ask her a lot of questions in an attempt to catch her out, so she'd taken care to read up on joint replacements. When he seemed content just to keep her at his elbow and describe procedure in detail as he worked, Yona felt irritation rather than relief. What a waste of an evening! Another black mark against him.

He was swift and sure and very neat—she had to admit that—but more than once she felt herself swaying in the heat as the afternoon wore on.

Only one more case now—a hip replacement for severe osteoarthrosis—and Yona reckoned she could just about last out. It was the squelching and scrunching as Mike dislocated the hip, prior to replacing the damaged head of femur, that did it. With a tiny mewing sound, like a distressed kitten, Yona slipped unconscious to the floor.

She came round in the surgeons' rest room under the kindly and interested eye of the theatre nurse manager. She flushed scarlet with embarrassment as she realised what had happened and she poured out a stumbling apology.

'Think nothing of it,' the man said soothingly. 'It happens more often than you'd think to somebody unused to the heat and the atmosphere. Particularly if they're coming down with the flu.'

'But I'm not! At least...' Her head was throbbing and she ached all over, as well as feeling hot and cold at once.

He slipped a thermometer under her tongue. 'Just as I thought,' he said a moment later. 'Thirty-nine and a bit. Now tell me you're not getting the flu, Doctor.'

Yona smiled weakly and told him she wouldn't dare. 'I can't stay here, though. I must be dreadfully in the way...' But when she tried to stand up, she collapsed back on the couch.

'Nonsense,' said the man bracingly. 'The theatre team will be some time yet and by then I'll have fixed up for somebody to drive you home.'

He handed her two white tablets and a glass of water. 'What are these?' asked Yona suspiciously.

'Aspirin,'
said a
nurse, laughing. 'Still the best thing for
flu, as I'm sure
you agree. I've things to do now, but there's
a
bell at your elbow if you want anything.'

The only thing that Yona wanted was to be out of this place where she'd made such a fool of herself before Mike Preston came out of Theatre. Her head felt clearer now and the next time she got to her feet she managed to stay upright.

'Would you please tell the nurse in charge thank you very much, but Dr MacFarlane feels fine now and has gone to Outpatients?' she asked the first nurse she saw. The main door of the theatre suite clanged shut behind her a second after Mike stepped into the corridor.

Phew! That was a close thing, but a miss was as good as the mile it had seemed, plodding down that corridor from the rest room. Now, which way to Outpatients? She hadn't quite finished the morning's notes when Sister Evans sent for her.

By the time Yona was ready to leave, the evening rush hour had begun and she didn't feel up to coping with the traffic. It was raining heavily, though, so she'd need to get her brolly from the car. No sense in drowning while she •waited for a taxi.

She was head and shoulders in the car, and feeling about for her umbrella in the fast fading light, when she heard Mike Preston say in an exasperated voice, 'Haven't you got more sense than to drive when you were out for the count less than an hour since?'

Yona .pushed herself out of the car and turned to face him indignantly. 'I was not about to drive off,' she insisted. 'I was merely looking for my umbrella.'

'Oh, yes—then where is it?' he asked disbelievingly.

'Not where it usually is! I must have left it at the hotel.'

'That's as likely as anything else, I suppose,' said her tormentor. 'You'd better lock your car and come with me.'

'Where to?' she asked haughtily, standing her ground.

'I'm offering to take you home—and preferably before we both drown,' he spelt out for her, before seizing her arm and towing her faster than she could cope with across the uneven ground. 'Are you still feeling groggy?' he enquired when she stumbled and he had to hold her up.

'No,' she said untruthfully,' but this car park is an absolute disgrace.'

'For once I can agree with you,' he muttered, unlocking a large VW and virtually lifting her into the front passenger seat.

'I had intended phoning for a taxi,' Yona informed him when he got in beside her.

'You'd be lucky at this time on a wet night,' he returned shortly. 'I suppose you know you've offended the theatre manager—walking out the way you did? He'd gone to a lot of trouble, finding a porter who was free to drive you home!'

'If that's so, then I'm sorry,' said Yona with dignity. 'My only wish was not to cause any more trouble—and I did leave a message for him with a nurse.'

'Which he didn't get,' retorted Mike Preston, sounding rather smug.

Yona bit back a sharp reply and settled her chin into the collar of her coat.

'Did you hear what I said?' he asked after a minute.

'Yes, thank you—I did,' she returned frigidly. 'However, as everything I say to you is wrong—and with all this horrendous traffic for you to cope with—I decided not to...to annoy you any more than I seem to have done already!' A marvellous answer from one so sorely tried, she considered proudly.

His only reply was a sharp indrawn hiss and he didn't speak again until he stopped the car outside her hotel. He said then, 'If you'll take my advice, you'll get an early night.'

'I intend to,' Yona told him quietly. As she opened the
car
door, she was struck by a sudden thought. 'How did
you know where
I
was
staying?'

'Somebody must have mentioned it,' he answered casually. 'Ted, probably. Can you manage?'

'Certainly,' she answered loftily. 'And thank you so much for the lift—it was extremely kind of you.'

She managed to get out all right, but rather spoiled the effect by stumbling on the top step of the hotel as she pushed against the heavy swing door. 'Hateful, hateful man,' she muttered as she went inside.

A surprising number of hospital workers had the curious idea that they themselves were somehow immune to the ills they dealt with daily and Yona was no exception. It was, of course, the heat of the place and her personal distaste for operating theatres which had caused her to pass out that afternoon. A good night's sleep—even though it had been the remedy suggested by that awful man Preston—and she'd be as right as rain.

But after a fitful night of fever, headache and aching
limbs, Yona was forced to admit that the kind theatre manager hadn't been so far off the mark after all. She felt about for the phone on her bedside table and rang in to report sick, feeling very guilty. Doctors weren't supposed to be ill—and certainly not after only three days in a new job.

Her new boss rang her at lunchtime and soon put her right on that score. 'You're crazy,' he said when she told him she'd be in for sure the next day. 'If I were a GP and you were my patient with the flu, I'd sign you off for a week. Keep taking the aspirin and stay in bed for at least forty-eight hours. OK?'