LITMIR.BIZ

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on.’

      ‘Someone jokingly told me that he was a professor, and so that’s what I called him—after, I might add, I mistook him for one of the maintenance men.’

      Ella stifled a giggle. ‘Oh, Poppy!’

      ‘How was I to know that “Professor” was the nickname he hated which he’s had since medical school?’

      ‘You’re making all this up!’

      ‘Oh, that I were! And now I’ve got to try and get some shelves up in his room before Monday, or else he’ll hit the roof when he sees how I’ve rearranged his blessed books. Do you have Mick Douglas’s number?’

      ‘It’s in the book,’ replied her friend with a fond but sinking heart. Why had Poppy insisted on rocking the boat in order to do a job that she clearly wasn’t suited for?

      Professor indeed! She couldn’t see this job last the week out.

      Fergus left the side room and walked quickly into the office, his professional demeanour of calm assurance crumpling into brief despair. It never got any easier. How could it?

      The charge nurse looked over at him sympathetically. ‘Coffee?’ he asked.

      Fergus shook his head. ‘No, thanks, Geoff.’ He began to write in the patient’s notes ‘systemic lumpus erythematosus’. In his untidy hand he scrawled the inevitable syptoms—the outaneous signs which included the well-known ‘butterfly’ erythema on the face, frontal alopecia, mucosal ulceration. He refrained from writing the two words which the disorder signified to most of the staff on the ward—potentially fatal.

      Today was Sunday and he shouldn’t even have been here, but how could he not be here? He had come in himself as if to lessen the blow of the news he’d had to impart.

      But how did you tell a young girl of twenty-three, poised on the brink of her professional and emotional life, that she might not see the year out? A beautiful young girl with the face of a Madonna, a classical pianist with so much life and talent in those hands, whose equally young husband had stared at him with bewildered eyes, as if he were some idiot who had made some fundamental and terribly wrong mistake, not the consultant in charge of his wife’s case.

      He finished writing in the notes and stood up slowly.

      ‘What are you up to today, Fergus?’ asked Geoff. ‘Nice day for a country pub!’

      Fergus half smiled. ‘No such luck, I’m afraid—I’ve an article waiting at home which won’t write itself.’

      Geoff groaned. ‘Rather you than me!’

      Fergus left the ward, mentally agreeing with the charge-nurse. He wished he had arranged something today, something which was a million miles away from this damned job.

      Still, he’d feel good once it was written, and afterwards he’d reward himself with the luxury of all the Sunday papers and a plate of spaghetti alla carbonara while Vivaldi played gently in the background. An almost perfect evening.

      He was just about to leave by the main entrance when he remembered the book. Blast it! His run-in with the latest dizzy blonde secretary meant that he had left the office on Friday without Jacob’s definitive work on skin diseases, without which he couldn’t hope to write the kind of well-founded article the Journal would naturally expect from him. Thank goodness he’d remembered before he’d gone all the way home.

      He was pleased to be able to arrive at the door to his office without encountering anyone he knew. He had been dreading running into Veronica Entwistle—the staff nurse on one of his wards, who had told him at least four times that she was on an early Saturday, followed by a late on Sunday, ‘so if you’re short of company, Fergus. . .’ The woman was about as subtle as a sergeant-major!

      As he turned the handle of the door he became aware of two discrepancies—a muffled expletive assailed his ears and he heard some tinny kind of banal rubbish playing, which he assumed was the radio.

      He flung the door open and the first thing he saw was the sight of a very long, very slender leg, clad in faded denim so clinging that he was immediately convinced that the wearer’s circulation would be seriously affected. The shapely thigh became an extremely attractive bottom and in turn a tiny waist topped by the most splendid bust he’d ever seen.

      Fergus had been many things in his life, but he had never before been quite so taken aback, and it took a few seconds for it to dawn on him that he was standing staring like an idiot at the curvaceous shape of his new secretary. She was standing frozen into immobility, screwdriver in her hand. In the corner stood a worried-looking fair-haired young man whose huge shoulders and stature marked him out as a born rugby player.

      Fergus set his mouth in a grim line. ‘Perhaps you’d care to explain what you’re doing hanging off a step-ladder, Miss Henderson? No, don’t tell me, let me guess! Your local amateur dramatic society is holding auditions for its production of Peter Pan, and you’re just getting in a bit of practice?’

      Sarcastic so-and-so! thought Poppy as she carefully picked her way down to his level, peering up at him with a fixed smile on her face.

      ‘I’m putting up some bookshelves for you, Dr Browne,’ she informed him brightly. ‘Do you like them?’

      It was true. He could see symmetrical shelves, four rows of them already in place on one side of the fireplace, and at the same moment he realised that she’d changed his whole office round.

      ‘What?’ he boomed, so loudly that Poppy took a step back. ‘What have you done with my books?’

      Poppy smiled as patiently as if she were dealing with a simpleton. ‘I’ve been sorting them out for you, Dr Browne. Obviously we couldn’t have them lying around in piles on the floor, could we?’

      ‘Oh, couldn’t we?’ he snapped petulantly. ‘Well, I want a copy of. . .’ He rattled the name of the textbook off quicker than a laser. ‘And I don’t want it next week—I want it now. So either you produce the book within the two minutes I’m giving you, or you find yourself back in the dole queue first thing in the morning!’

      Damn cheek, thought Poppy rebelliously as she scurried over to the alcove—she’d never been in a dole queue in her life.

      The silence in the office was like a time-bomb waiting to go off. Fergus stood looking out of the window, his back to the giant in the corner, studiously avoiding all contact with him.

      Mick Douglas watched as Poppy scrabbled to find the list she’d made of all the volumes. To think he could have been down the pub with his mates, instead of stuck in this chilly room with this hotheaded maniac! The guy needed locking up. Fancy speaking to her like that! Mick sighed. Poppy had a lot to answer for. She had a way of looking at you that made it impossible to refuse her anything, and she had meant it when she’d said that she wanted to put the shelves up, not him. ‘You’re just here in an advisory capacity,’ she had told him grandly. Mick eyed the brooding figure by the window warily. He must be a good twenty pounds lighter, but he’d hate to get on the bad side of him.

      Fergus had begun drumming his fingers on the windowsill as the final seconds ticked away, when Poppy gave a great shout of delight.

      ‘Here we are! Dermatological Disorders Discovered by Professor Donald Jacob.’ She held the book out with smiling eyes, the laughter quickly leaving them when she saw the expression on her boss’s face as he strode over from the window to take the book from her.

      ‘I wonder if you’d be good enough to step outside for a moment?’ he asked in a deliberately polite voice which did nothing to disguise his ill-humour.

      ‘Certainly, Dr Browne. I shan’t be more than a moment, Mick,’ she called to her friend. I hope. She had been reading 1984 by George Orwell last night, the bit where they had recited the old nursery rhyme: ‘Here comes a candle to light you to bed. Here comes a chopper to chop off your head’. How appropriate that seemed

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