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sitting positions. 'Shocked on admission with positive tap,' he went on, and from watching him at work over the weekend Merrin now knew that meant he'd found blood inside the abdomen when he'd threaded a small needle with a plastic cannula down through a stab made just below the man's umbilicus.
    'Taken straight to laparotomy,' he continued, meaning they'd operated and opened his abdomen. 'We found a partially ruptured spleen which we elected to glue together rather than remove. He's doing well this morning. His blood count's been stable for twenty-four hours.'
    'You glued it, Neil?' The man she now knew was Mr Sanderson, the other doctor's consultant, looked up at a dark-haired man who was sitting half-propped against the table that bore the X-rays.
    Merrin went up on tiptoe, then leaned sideways to peer between the doctors immediately in front of her, trying to see him better. It occurred to her briefly that as they were talking about one of the weekend admissions this just might be her new consultant, but as soon as she saw the doctor properly she dismissed the idea because the man who sat, arms crossed and regarding the proceedings with impatient, if resigned, intolerance, was far too young to be anyone's professor.
    As a surgeon, Professor McAlister's reputation placed him high among London's top practitioners of the craft, but the cropped dark hair of the man in front of her was unmarred by grey and the tautness of his face and the athletic ease of his body, while not youthful, still suggested he was at least twenty—perhaps twenty-five—years younger than the man who questioned him.
    'I didn't realise you were doing that yet,' the other consultant added questioningly.
    'The organ was cleanly severed,' the younger man answered briskly. 'He's young. It made sense to try.'
    'But if it hadn't worked... ?'
    'It did.'
    'But if it hadn't...?'
    'I was on site all weekend.' The younger man sounded genuinely weary. 'I didn't consider I was putting him in any danger, Harry, so give it a break. He's come out of it well.'
    'Luckily.'
    'There was no luck involved. It isn't the first time I've done it.'
    'It's still an experimental technique—'
    'Up to eight per cent of post-splenectomy patients will subsequently have an episode of life-threatening sepsis,' the younger man said crisply. 'By gluing salvageable spleens together rather than taking them out we reduce morbidity and mortality. It's sound treatment.'
    The older man bristled, and Merrin sensed from the speculative looks being exchanged between other doctors in the groups that such confrontations between the two surgeons were not unusual. 'Only if the spleens are properly selected,' the other man began, but the other consultant interrupted.
    'This one was,' he said flatly. 'Douglas, move on,' he added, his attention switching abruptly to the registrar by his side. 'We've wasted enough time on this. Are there any other cases to discuss?'
    There obviously were because Douglas promptly shuffled some X-rays around and started talking.
    The younger doctor beside Merrin pulled a face. 'We know who won that round,' he said in an undertone. 'And it wasn't my boss. Do you think they go on like that all the time?'
    'I imagine so,' Merrin whispered, fascinated both by the younger surgeon and by the interplay between him and the other doctors. In her years of training she'd witnessed polite disagreements between doctors but they'd always been muffled by gesticulations of mutual respect and she'd never seen outright confrontation before. 'We're the only two who seemed to be surprised,' she added softly.
    There were brief discussions over the following cases, the beginnings of mild disagreements over management of several of them, but the man who'd argued with the elderly consultant rode over anyone who seemed inclined to delay proceedings with practised ease. Merrin watched him wide-eyed, spellbound.
    When they'd finished going over the medical details of the cases in an academic way,