St Matthew's Passion: A Medical Romance Read Free

fighting shot. And often they did make it. Fin didn’t dwell on personal statistics but he knew his success rates were some of the highest in the world.
    But like all good doctors – like all professionals worthy of the title in any field of human endeavour – Fin knew that a certain amount of self-doubt was necessary in order to stay at the top of one’s game. You needed the nagging fear that possibly, just possibly , you weren’t good enough. That your failure to save a patient’s limb, or life, was because you’d messed up somewhere. Too much of this feeling would paralyse you, of course. But complete and unbridled self-confidence was arrogance, and arrogance crippled growth.
    Fin glanced at the clock above his office’s window. Nine forty p.m. A few minutes’ more limbering up, then perhaps half an hour applying himself to the paperwork that infiltrated every hospital doctor’s life like weeds. Then he’d call it a day.
    He’d propped his foot on his desk to stretch his hamstring when the knock came at the door. Startled, he almost lost his balance.
    Then he remembered. Of course. He’d asked his registrar to drop by.
    ‘Come in.’
    She stepped into the room, still wearing her white coat. He watched her cast a quick glance about his office. Amused, he wondered if she was surprised at its modesty. He’d been offered a larger, flashier one with a view over the river and had declined. He didn’t need those kinds of trappings to feel secure. Besides, he rather liked the cluttered, academic look of his surroundings: shelves crammed to bursting with box files and stacks of journals, cosy overstuffed armchairs flanking a matching sofa.
    Fin nodded at one of the chairs and she sat, uncertainly. He sank into the one opposite.
    ‘Melissa. Hello. Quiet day at the office?’
    It broke the ice. She smiled, her expression changing from one of faintly nervous seriousness to a warm, almost playful look. He studied her. Her dark blonde hair was pulled back into a practical pony tail, which somehow accentuated her large blue eyes and her high cheekbones. Her mouth was wide, her nose pert. For an instant Fin pictured her hair free and tumbling around her face.
    ‘Sorry I haven’t had a chance to catch up with you before now.’
    She shook her head, still smiling. ‘That’s quite all right. I prefer getting thrown in the deep end.’
    ‘Not much actual surgery for you today, I’m afraid,’ he said. ‘If we get a chance, I’ll have you assist me tomorrow. See what you’re made of.’ Fin raised his eyebrows. ‘You come highly recommended. In the top three of your graduating class at Oxford, and references from Professors Murray and Gordon that aren’t so much glowing as solar.’
    ‘Thank you, Mr Finmore-Gage –’ she began.
    ‘Fin. Please. Though you’ve probably heard by now that I get called that.’
    ‘Fin.’ She seemed to taste the name on her tongue and find it to her liking. ‘It’s an honour to be here.’
    She shifted in the chair and her white coat fell open a little, revealing the gentle curve of her breasts under a thin sweater. Fin kept his eyes on her face.
    ‘You’ve also probably heard, or noticed, that I run a tight ship. I expect nothing but the very highest standard of work from my trainees. In return, I promise to provide you with nothing but the very best training in trauma surgery.’ He softened the rather austere comment with a smile. ‘I’m aiming to produce surgeons who’ll knock me off my perch one day, odd though that might seem. I have a responsibility to the future of the specialty.’
    ‘I won’t disappoint you.’
    They discussed practicalities for a few minutes. All the while, Fin was absorbing details: the shape of one slender leg as she crossed it over the other, her pump dangling off the toes; the discreet way the tip of her tongue moistened her full lips; the habit she had of smoothing the hair on one side of her head with a slim-fingered hand as though it