they say. But I’d completed my PhD, and had a year post-doctoral experience so I met the selection criteria. The board approved my appointment for three years and I’m only six months into it,’ he responded. The PhD had kept his mind from missing Sara after she left. It had provided him with a focus and purpose in getting up each day.
‘I still operate on private patients but I’m more involved with the teaching and rotation programme in the undergraduate, graduate and professional curricula and the development of post-qualifying modules. But enough about me. I’m still in shock that you are Stu’s mysterious replacement.’
‘What do you mean, mysterious?’ Sara replied, giving him a puzzled look.
‘I mean he hadn’t told me who was filling in at the practice. Stu told me that he had it covered but not that you were his replacement.’
Sara was even more confused. Stu’s private practice was not his concern. ‘Why do you discuss his practice? Don’t you still have your own?’
Tom gave her a wry look. ‘Because we’re partners, Stu’s a partner now in my old practice—he bought in a few months ago. I only consult there one day a week now. The hospital consumes most of my time, but I still wanted to maintain some patient contact.’
Sara was completely flustered for a moment. Not only was Tom consulting at the hospital where she would be operating but he was also a partner at the practice where she would be consulting for the next month. She would be working at Tom’s old practice. This was quickly spiralling into a disaster.
‘Oh, well, at least this will be uncomfortable for both of us,’ she said honestly.
Tom stood watching her carefully, looking for clues as to what she was thinking and, more importantly, feeling. He wanted some signs that would let him into her head. There was nothing. She really had shut him out. That night had been nothing but a moment of passion between two lonely people in a big city. Nothing more.
He knew then and there what he had to do. He had to keep his ex-wife away from his heart. Or he’d go mad. It was crazy and he knew it but he still loved the woman sitting there, so close but emotionally so distant. The woman who had captured his heart all those years ago still held it quite firmly in her hands. He had to push her away. Or, more to the point, he had to push her out of his reach.
He didn’t need a reminder of why she’d left. Or why she’d had to leave. They had shared that discussion too many times to recall.
Any feelings she’d once had for him were clearly gone. He had to accept it. And so he adopted the same detached demeanour. A demeanour very far from his true feelings.
‘There really shouldn’t be any problems. That night...’ He paused. ‘Let’s just say old habits, reminiscing, we crossed the line, both of us. It won’t happen again. But, hey, we got it out of our systems. Like an itch that needed a good scratch, and now it’s done we can both move on.’
Sara was thrown by his response. It was cold. He really was over them. An itch? That sounded so unlike the Tom she had known. Still, three years had passed and he had obviously changed. Or, just like her, was he putting on a façade to make the arrangement they found themselves in a little less awkward? It didn’t matter. They both knew and understood the rules.
Without answering, Tom crossed back to her and reached for her leg. Sara jumped as his hand gently lifted her leg down from the stool and placed her foot back on the floor.
‘We’re good, Sara...we’re good.’
* * *
Sara wasn’t so sure. She was going to be operating at the hospital for a month. That meant bumping into each other, on ward rounds, near the OR. There were too many opportunities where they would see each other.
The way her body had reacted to Tom made her realise only too quickly that the chemistry she shared with him wasn’t just a memory. She suddenly worried if her love for him would ever truly be over. But they had no future. She would not give up on the idea of bringing children into the world. Being a mother was a dream she wanted to hold onto but Tom never wanted to be a father. That was written in stone.
She had spent too long getting him out of her head and her heart.
Sara looked at him, and even through her tired eyes she could see the man who won her love was still as handsome and charismatic as ever. It’s four short weeks. It can’t be that difficult.
‘I’m a little tired—can we discuss the work schedule later? We can sort out the personal arrangements too over the next few days. I’m happy with the financial separation the way it is. It won’t change after we divorce. You won’t need to support me, so it should be done very quickly.’
There was an uncomfortable silence between them. She had no idea what was going on in Tom’s mind but he clearly wasn’t about to share anything. She had said her piece and cleared the air.
‘Quick and painless, like an extraction of an upper molar,’ he said matter-of-factly.
Sara knew when Tom became uncomfortable he always used dark humour. It was how he masked his emotions.
‘Not quite,’ she replied, then chose to change the subject. ‘After the four weeks here, I’m off. I don’t know a lot about Texas but the position sounded exciting and I jumped at it,’ she told him as she crossed to one of the floor-to-ceiling bookcases that lined the room. Part of her didn’t want to go to the US. Part of her still wanted Tom. But she also wanted more.
Sara lightly ran her fingers over a row of leather-bound medical books standing next to one another on the shelf and thought back to all of the nights she had spent poring over books just like them as a postgraduate student at the university library, hoping to come close to Tom’s knowledge and skill. But it wasn’t just his ability and compassion as a doctor that had her in awe, it was his commanding presence as a man that had drawn her to him. He had been her lecturer and her mentor but more than that, she had wished he was her lover.
She had felt on some level there was chemistry that ran between them. She would watch him standing at the lectern, speaking to all the medical students, and she had hoped, as his eyes had scanned the lecture hall, that he had seen her as more than just his student. She had wanted him to see her as a woman. A woman who respected his knowledge, admired his skills but wanted to know more about him as a man.
Sara would daydream in the tram on the way home, a bag full of handwritten notes at her feet and a laptop in her backpack, about the two of them driving home together. She had pictured them talking about their days, comparing notes on cases and discussing surgical procedures. Sara remembered back to the long nights when she would lie in twisted sheets staring at the ceiling in the darkness of her university bedroom. She would picture the curves of his handsome face, the skin wrinkling softly around his grey eyes when he laughed, and the warm, masculine scent of his body.
Not being able to say how she felt during those many months of study was at times almost impossible. But she knew better than to say anything to her incredibly handsome tutor. It was more than likely that her romantic musings were one-sided. She didn’t want her imagination to steer her into attracting more of his attention. He was almost seven years older, infinitely wiser and often intimidating. And she was his student. Capable and willing to learn, passing with distinctions, but still his student.
She thought he would be more interested in dating one of his peers, yet there were moments when she felt there
