Marion Lennox - Midwives On Call - Stealing The Surgeon's Heart

And he didn’t give a patronising smile, or stare at her as if she were having some sort of manic delusion. He just gave a thoughtful nod. ‘You did very well with her—with her mother, too.’

‘That’s the part that interests me,’ Harriet responded eagerly. ‘The whole family dynamics, the bigger picture, not just what happened to, say, Alyssa, but what happened to her mother. Why her mother is so compelled…’ Her voice trailed off. She was embarrassed by her own enthusiasm but Ciro didn’t seem to mind a bit.

‘Alyssa spoke with me about you. She said you were very kind to her when she was on EHU.’

‘You’ve been to see her?’

‘A couple of times.’ Ciro nodded. ‘Though I’ll probably leave it for a couple of weeks. I don’t want her getting too dependent. You have to be very careful…’ It was Ciro’s voice trailing off now, Ciro giving a tight shrug, clearly trying to end the conversation.

‘You seem to know a lot about it,’ Harriet observed, her eyes narrowing slightly as she watched his reaction. ‘More than most emergency doctors, perhaps?’

Almost reluctantly he nodded.

‘My twin sister, Nikki—’

‘You’re a twin!’

‘Yes, and we are very close. But Nikki suffers from an eating disorder. I have been through many hospital admissions with Nikki, so I know how hard the first few days can be. That is why I warned Alyssa that it might be exceptionally difficult for her on EHU. Staff on a general ward, no matter how good their intentions, just don’t understand that the entire body image and emotional thought processes of people with eating disorders are chronically distorted—that it’s about so much more than food.’

‘It must be hard for you,’ Harriet observed, ‘seeing someone you love so much suffering.’ But Ciro shook his head.

‘If it’s been hard for me then it’s been unbearable for Nikki. She is doing so well now, has fought her way back, but it isn’t something that can be cured as such. Every day is a fresh challenge. She has to be constantly vigilant, to recognise when old habits start creeping in…’ He gave a small smile, but it was loaded with pain. ‘But you already know this, don’t you?’

‘I know a bit,’ Harriet admitted. ‘I’d like to know more.’

‘You’d be very good.’

‘Would have been very good,’ Harriet corrected. ‘I was accepted to study psychology at uni a few years ago, but at the time we couldn’t afford it.’ This time Ciro did raise his eyebrows. ‘OK, Drew wasn’t getting much work and we really needed a full-time wage. But when we moved here and his work was more secure…’ She shook her head. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘So what has changed?’ Ciro asked. ‘You can’t deny this is a new chapter in your life. Why not go the whole way and do something that you really want to?’

‘I might,’ Harriet said tightly. ‘Just not yet.’

But from his frown, Harriet realised he didn’t understand, just didn’t get the emotional war zone her life had been for so long now, still would be for a while yet, at least until her divorce came through. He couldn’t comprehend the battering her confidence had taken over and over, that apart from nursing every facet of her life had changed.

‘I want some peace,’ Harriet said finally. ‘I’m tired of unpacking boxes only to pack them up again a few months later, tired of being interviewed for a job I’ve been doing for years and starting over in yet another hospital, tired of having my mail redirected, or when the car needs a service having to find yet another new garage…’ Now she was starting to sound sorry for herself so she lightened it with a very bright smile. ‘I like Sydney,’ Harriet said firmly. ‘I love the fact that the beaches are just a stone’s throw from the city, love the ferries leaving the harbour, and the cafés and the mass of people, love the fact that at five a.m. at the end of a night shift I can go up to the top floor and watch the sunrise on a new day.’

‘It sounds like you’re staying!’

‘I am,’ Harriet said firmly, but taken aback a touch by her sudden decision. ‘I like my job, like the people I’m working with, and for the first time in years I’m going to stay put. Who knows? When the dust has settled, maybe I will go to uni and do psychology.’

‘Just not yet?’ Ciro ventured, and Harriet nodded.

‘Just not yet. Thanks for this.’ Holding up her wineglass, she chinked it with his. ‘It’s nice to have a sympathetic ear.’

‘Harriet, I am not here just to offer sympathy.’ Those gorgeous mocha-coloured eyes were staring directly at her. ‘I am here to spend some time with you, to get to know you. I am not very good at hiding my feelings and until I knew that you were sure your marriage was over it would not have been appropriate for me to come around for anything more than a very brief visit.’

‘Appropriate?’

‘I have watched you on the beach.’ Ciro gestured to the vast expanse below. ‘Seen the indecision in you…’

‘Ciro, there was no indecision, just pain.’

‘You needed space,’ Ciro said firmly, and Harriet had to leave it at that, but knew that the second she was alone she would go over the words he had said and see, if on replay, they were as wonderful as they sounded now, if Ciro was really saying that he wanted to spend time with her, not as a colleague, not as a neighbour, but as a woman.

And it should surely have been the most nerve-racking evening of her life, but it wasn’t, and it had nothing to do with two glasses of wine and everything to do with this amazing, insightful man. A man who actually knew not just how to listen but what to say, too, making her laugh, regaling stories of his own. And by the time the mozzies had started making themselves known and the noise from the party on the beach became more raucous than high-spirited it seemed the most natural thing in the world to drift into the lounge to relax back on the sofa and break open the chocolate while watching what would surely now top the list as Harriet’s all-time favourite movie.

‘You know it’s really over when you sleep in the middle of the bed,’ Ciro said authoritatively, handing her a tissue at a particularly tragic part, because when it was someone else’s life that was in tatters it was easier to cry somehow, easier to let go of the tears and pass them off for someone else.

‘I already am,’ Harriet gulped, startled that he had voiced something she had already thought about. It had actually come as a pleasant surprise to find that the bed wasn’t too big without Drew—in fact, it was divine, lying in the middle, stretching like a cat as she awakened with the sun. ‘The very first day I moved in here—that night I moved to the middle.’

‘There’s no going back, then,’ Ciro said assuredly. ‘Only forward—at least, that is what my sisters tell me.’

‘You have three sisters?’ Finding her voice she resumed the earlier conversation.

‘Three very different sisters,’ Ciro elaborated. ‘Cara is the eldest, impossibly dreamy and with the most appalling taste in men—married, drinkers, gamblers. I tell her one day she’ll hit the jackpot and manage to incorporate all three in the same guy. Estelle is studious, swore she’d never settle down until she’d finished her PHD, but she fell in love with a fellow student and now has two daughters, and we found out last week she is expecting twins—girls,’ he added. ‘All my life I am surrounded by women. Do you know that ginger cats are always male?’

‘I think so,’ Harriet said, raking her memory and trying to revive this rather useless piece of information.

‘My mother bought one for me, supposedly to even things up—it had kittens a few months later!’