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rather than them all going out onto the ward together to see the patients, as she'd expected, the younger surgeon's bleeper shrilled and he simply stood up and stalked out. As if his departure was the signal they'd been waiting for, the doctors in the group then quickly dispersed, leaving her alone with Douglas and Lindsay.
    'Whew!' Lindsay, busy gathering up the discarded X-rays and notes, laughed. 'That was fun. He's in good form today. I could practically see poor old Mr Sanderson's blood pressure shoot through the roof when he was talking about that spleen. The boss virtually called him a fossil to his face.'
    Douglas grinned. 'What about when he wouldn't let poor Mr Ludlum argue with him? At one stage I was worried the old man was going to have a heart attack.'
    The registrar chucked a bundle of blue X-ray envelopes and some loose X-rays towards Merrin. 'Make yourself useful and sort these out,' he told her easily. 'How did you get on last night, Merrin? Get any sleep after you left here?'
    'A few hours,' she admitted, squinting to make out the names on the X-rays before finding their appropriate envelopes and sliding them in. 'I fell asleep in the mess and I didn't get bleeped the rest of the night. That's why I was late getting here this morning. I promise I'm never usually late for anything.'
    'Don't worry about it—it's been a hard weekend,' Lindsay told her kindly. 'With any luck we'll be able to get away fairly early this afternoon. After a weekend on call we aim to leave by four if there's nothing urgent outstanding.'
    'Are we going to do a proper ward round?' Merrin asked.
    'When Prof gets back,' Douglas confirmed, crouching to retrieve a sheaf of notes he'd dropped. 'Monday mornings we start with the academic round with all the general-surgical staff, then we just see our own patients.'
    Merrin nodded. Finished sorting the X-rays now, she added them to the pile Lindsay had created.
    The other woman thanked her. 'So what did you think of the boss this morning, Merrin? Wasn't he great?'
    'Great...?' Merrin blinked. 'You mean he's Prof McAlister?' she exclaimed, paling as she understood that he was. Much as he'd excited her and much as she admired the professor's reputation, the thought of ever being in the line of that abrasive, biting impatience was terrifying. 'But he's too young.'
    Douglas grinned at her. 'Don't let that fool you.'
    'And fierce,' she added hollowly.
    'True,' he conceded. But he didn't seem particularly concerned about it. 'He doesn't suffer fools.'
    'But as none of us are fools that's not a problem,' Lindsay said brightly. 'Don't fret, Merrin. His bark is worse, believe me, and you still have to do something pretty awful to see it. He's a brilliant surgeon and a good boss. You'll like it here. He gets a bit grim at times but...well, he hasn't had an easy time of it these last years—'
    'And considering what he's up against here you can understand a little grimness,' Douglas interjected quickly.
    'What is he up against?' Merrin asked, puzzled by the quick interplay of looks between the two doctors.
    'The dark ages,' the registrar said eerily, waggling his fingers at her. 'We're practically into the new millennium yet most of the surgeons around here have panic attacks when he suggests any technique invented after the Beatles. The work of the specialist surgical teams—trauma, vascular, plastics, orthopaedics and even urology—in this place is state of the art, but apart from Profs work and one or two others' plus the stuff we registrars manage to sneak behind the other consultants' backs, general surgery's still languishing in the seventies.'
    'Three surgeons have hinted at retirement at the end of the year and Profs already chosen their replacements,' Lindsay told her. 'So things are going to get better soon.'
    'But for now he's stuck with them,' Douglas added.
    Merrin pushed back a blonde ringlet which had worked its way out of her braid and fallen across her face. 'But if they're not good