St Matthew's Passion: A Medical Romance Read Free Page A

wasn’t already tied back.
    From far off, muffled through the walls, came the sound of Big Ben chiming ten o’clock. Fin stood.
    ‘Time you were heading home. Busy day ahead tomorrow.’
    She rose and offered her hand again. Close up, he detected the faintest trace of perfume, the aroma of musk. He tried but failed to glance at her back as she left, noticing the soft sway of her hips beneath the coat. Fin stood for a moment after the door had closed, her scent lingering like a memory.
    He walked over to the window and gazed out. It wasn’t a river view but over to the left he could just make out the spires of the Houses of Parliament.
    Melissa Havers was going to have a tough time. Not only was she young, she looked even younger than her 29 years. Youthfulness was a handicap in medicine, with both patients and other staff members associating it with inexperience and lack of ability. She was also a woman, competing in an aggressively male-dominated arena. Regardless of the respect she was due for having come this far at all, her every decision would be to some extent judged in the light of her sex. It was stupid, it was grossly unfair… but it was the way things worked.
    And she was beautiful. She’d be subject to all manner of crude remarks and behaviour, though that was something she’d no doubt faced and learned to cope with already. But as with her youth, her looks would affect her credibility. People would assume she was just a pretty face.
    Fin certainly had no intention of making things easy for her. If anything, he’d have to drive her harder, hold her to an even higher standard than he had his other trainees. Anything less wouldn’t be fair on her. It would give her a false impression of the task ahead and just how difficult it was going to be.
    In any case, he couldn’t in any way be seen to be favouring her or treating her with kid gloves because people would assume he was being swayed by her beauty. He’d seen it before: the male mentor losing all his objectivity and being reduced to a soppy wreck when in the presence of a pretty face. And it was pathetic.
    Melissa was, though, attractive. Fin didn’t believe in self delusion and he knew it was as well to confront the fact at the start. She was an attractive, sexy young woman and he was stirred by her. If he couldn’t ignore it, neither did it have to mean anything significant. She was his senior trainee, entrusted to his mentorship, and his personal feelings for her were academic. There was no way he could ever take things further with her, even if he was so inclined, because of the nature of their professional relationship. Boundaries had to be observed.
    And of course there was the… other reason he could never get together with her. The more important one.
    Fin closed his eyes against the pain for ten long seconds. Then he took a deep breath, putting his thoughts to one side, and dropped into the swivel chair at his desk to attack his paperwork.

Chapter Two
     
    ‘Mrs Reynolds?’
    The tiny, stout lady struggled to her feet, her husband helping her. Melissa smiled and held the door open for the couple to shuffle through. Mrs Reynolds glanced curiously at her as they went in.
    Melissa offered chairs for the two of them before seating herself at her desk. The elderly woman’s clinical records were on the computer screen before her but Melissa didn’t need to give them much more than an occasional glance. She’d studied the notes of all today’s outpatient clinic attenders the night before and familiarised herself with the histories and the treatment plans. They were all people whom Fin or his staff had treated for traumatic injury at some point, and most would attend for follow-up only until they were deemed either fully recovered or at least stable.
    Mrs Reynolds had been in a car accident as a passenger two months earlier, and had sustained a deep laceration to her neck. The ambulance crew had kept her alive until she reached St Matthew’s,