‘Catriona. . .’ he began.
So she was Catriona now. Not Cat. His Cat. The use of her proper name became the final straw, and she wrenched the door open. ‘Thanks for the memory!’ she said on a sob, before running away down the road, as if demons were on her heel, away, far away, where he could never find her.
‘ARE you all right, Cat?’
Cat turned from the mirror, where she had been adjusting her green theatre gown, her lacklustre eyes regarding Josey Betts, her fellow staff nurse, and a good friend. ‘Sure, I’m all right,’ she answered unconvincingly. ‘Why shouldn’t I be?’
Josey hesitated. ‘It’s just that you’ve been so—well, so strange since you’ve got back.’
‘Strange?’ echoed Cat dully. Perhaps it was true, then, perhaps sexual awakening could be seen in a woman’s eyes. Except that it hadn’t been much of an awakening in her case, more like an ongoing nightmare.
‘I mean, I know you were ill when you came back from Italy——’
‘Yes,’ agreed Cat calmly. III? It had been no disease that her doctor had heard of, that was for sure, but she had been unable to function normally. She had stopped eating and sleeping and laughing—as the stark reality of what she had done came home to her. She had lost her virginity to a total stranger. Her doctor had diagnosed depression, and she hadn’t had the energy to argue with him, and, besides, what would he say if she told him the truth? He would be disbelieving at first, and then, if she managed to convince him of the veracity of her statement, she could imagine the disbelief changing to distaste, disgust. Knowing that the Ice-Queen was no better than a slut.
Physically, the pills had made her feel better. Soon she had stopped taking them, and now she was functioning ‘normally’, except that there was a huge gap where her heart used to be. Mentally, she just didn’t know. How on earth did she go about coming to terms with doing something so completely out of character—and doing something which felt as though it had devastated not only her heart and soul, but her whole future?
She pushed one narrow foot into the white theatre clog. ‘I don’t suppose you know which list I’m down for today?’ she queried.
‘You mean, you haven’t looked?’ Josey gave an amused smile. ‘Well, this will really cheer you up—you’ve hit the jackpot this time, Cat!’
‘Jackpot?’
Josey clicked impatiently. ‘Will you stop repeating everything I say? It makes you sound all dopey, and you’re going to need all your wits about you. You’ve landed the new visiting prof!’
Cat wondered why Josey was doing an excellent imitition of a Cheshire cat. ‘So?’
‘So?’ Josey exclaimed, hitting her hand dramatically on to her forehead. ‘So, he’s a walking dreamboat. Sensational! I tell you, Cat—this one is the business!’
‘Really?’ Cat asked absently. ‘Well, then you’ll have to get to work on him, won’t you?’
Josey crinkled up her freckled nose. ‘Oh, sure,’ she said resignedly. ‘He’s bound to fancy you—they all do.’
Cat shuddered, feeling as though she’d been offered a poisoned chalice. ‘Well, he’s safe from me. I am off men completely.’ Natural curiosity got the better of her. ‘What’s he like?’
‘Italian——’ started Josey, and then stopped when she saw her friend’s white face. ‘Cat, what’s the matter?’
Cat shook her head. ‘Nothing. Nothing at all.’ No point in saying that even the gods seemed intent on compounding her misery. Everywhere she went she seemed to be invaded by images of all things Italian. Or was it simply that she couldn’t get Rome, and that dark, beautiful, cruel stranger out of her mind?
‘You can’t believe how good-looking he is,’ prattled on Josey excitedly. ‘Sister Henderson even said that he should have been a film star—and that, coming from her, well. . .’
Cat knew what she meant. Sister Henderson, only two years off retirement, had once been jilted by her fiancé, and had decided that the rest of the male sex should pay. Cat had always thought her a slightly ridiculous figure. Ironic that after what had happened to her in Rome she now felt she had more in common with the older woman than any of her peers. ‘Is he a good surgeon—that’s the question?’
‘He’s a professor—for heaven’s sake!’
Cat looked at her patiently. ‘You know as well as I do that people often get promoted because they’re brilliant fund-raisers and medical politicians. Some of them can’t operate their way out of a paper bag!’
‘Well, this one can,’ retorted Josey smugly. ‘Sister Henderson says she’s never seen such a wonderful technique. . .neat, yet fast—the ultimate combination!’
‘Good grief,’ said Cat sarcastically. ‘Has the idol got feet of clay, I wonder? Does he come complete with a halo?’
Josey’s eyes glinted. ‘The last thing he looks like is a saint, I can assure you.’
‘Sister Henderson isn’t seriously besotted, is she, Jo?’
This produced a fit of the giggles. ‘Probably. But it won’t do her the least bit of good—he’s decades younger!’
‘I’m surprised she’s put me in with him, if he’s that grand.’
‘Ah, well—you are the blue-eyed girl, aren’t you?’ asked Josey a touch bitterly. ‘Everyone knows they’ll make you sister soon.’
Was that true? wondered Cat as she made her way slowly towards Theatre One. Ironic that once she could think of nothing she’d wanted more, yet now the thought of promotion filled her with only a kind of mild curiosity. She shook her head very slightly, knowing that she was going to have to snap out of this mood very quickly indeed. Soon she would be on hand to use her skill as a scrub nurse in some of the most exacting operations known to medical science.
As she set about preparing her trolley she reflected that cardio-thoracic surgery—or heart surgery, as it was more popularly known—excited a very passionate response from the general public. All doctors and nurses knew that getting funds for this particular speciality was almost as easy as raising funds for the children’s ward. Perhaps the fact that the heart was seen as the very nub of human life was what made the public response to it so gratifying. And the heart was, of course, seen as the centre of the emotions, something which she had only recently discovered. For the first time in her life she found herself wishing that she worked on a ward, or in Out-patients, or in something, anything other than a job where the word ‘heart’ was spoken day after day, reminding her of all those terms that now seemed to accurately reflect her life, and her feelings. Heartbroken. Absolutely.
The theatre began to become a hive of humming activity. Cat had gloved and gowned up, and was placing the myriad fine instruments on to the sterile trolley. Her ‘runner’ scurried around, fetching more sutures and extra instruments. She was a student working three months in theatres, and had been dreading assisting Staff Nurse Bellman. Everyone knew that she didn’t suffer fools gladly—her high standards were the talk of the student nurses’ canteen. What she hadn’t been expecting had been someone quite so young as Catriona Bellman, or so lovely, either.
Systematically, in a routine which was now as familiar to her as washing her face, or brushing her teeth, Cat began to lay the instruments out in neat lines, in the order that they would most probably be called for. She glanced up at her runner.
‘Student Nurse Lloyd, could you find out if the professor favours any special instruments?’
‘Yes, Staff.’
She