tired people having dinner, OK?’
‘Now who’s reading auras?’ she asked. ‘And here I was, positive I’d managed to conceal the shadows underneath my eyes.’
‘I don’t know anything about auras but I can tell you work hard, harder than most.’
‘Now, I am really going to ask for a refund on that eye cream,’ she said with a rueful grimace.
He smiled at her but just then the waiter approached to take their drinks order and to advise them on the daily specials.
Allegra studied Joel covertly as he asked the waiter about the menu, the low, deep timbre of his voice and gentle respectful manner as he listened to the young man telling her more about him as a person than anything else she’d seen so far. She inwardly cringed as she recalled her date with Patrick, who’d practically abused the young inexperienced waitress for not bringing the garlic bread out on time.
After the waiter returned with their wine and took their order for meals, Joel sat back in his seat and surveyed her features in silence for a moment or two.
‘So what made you choose coma recovery as a project?’ he finally asked.
Allegra met his dark gaze guardedly. ‘Is this what this dinner is about—me having to justify my project to you all over again? If that’s the case, I might as well leave now and save the chef the hassle of cooking a meal I won’t be able to eat.’
‘No, I’m just interested in what motivated you to choose that particular study over any number of other topics you could have chosen instead. There are a lot of people who would feel it’s unlikely to produce anything of scientific significance.’
‘It’s pretty clear which camp you’d be in.’
‘Come on, Allegra,’ he reasoned. ‘Everything in our profession is data-driven now—if you can’t measure it, it probably doesn’t exist. Anecdotes and expert opinion are no longer good enough.’
She sent him a hardened glare. ‘Can we talk about something else?’
‘OK, but there are two deeply comatose patients in ICTU right now but I don’t want you to do anything that would draw unnecessary attention to the unit at this time.’
‘What do you mean by that?’ she asked with rising anger. ‘What do you think I’m going to do? Cast a spell or something?’
‘I just want you to tread very carefully. I’m just concerned that if Mr Lowe’s son dies, you could be an easy target to blame.’
‘Me? What about his wife? She’s the one who drove the car!’
‘I know, but you know how people are when they’re under a lot of stress. The whole spectrum of emotion gets played out in ICU. The very best and worst of human behaviour comes out. In my opinion, Keith Lowe is a litigation time bomb waiting to go off.’
Allegra couldn’t help agreeing with him, although it pained her to admit it. ‘He does seem the type, I guess,’ she said, lowering her gaze a fraction.
‘I’m not trying to sabotage your project, Allegra, nothing like that. If anything, I would actually be delighted if you were able to deliver some measurable and repeatable results. But is this the right time to do it, the right case to start with?’
She raised her eyes back to his. ‘Are you expressly forbidding me to do anything or just asking me to be discreet?’
He held her gaze for a lengthy period. ‘I said I’d give you a month and I’ll stick by that. But if you’re going to use this case, I want you to keep a low profile. Things are much more tense than usual because of the question mark hanging over Kate Lowe. One press leak and public emotion will be running high. The notion of a mother trying to kill her own child in her own suicide attempt is bizarre—the press would play it from every angle for all it’s worth, every day either of them survives. And if, on top of that, they got wind that they were being used in a research project, especially using not-strictly-medical methods, they’d have a field day—none of us might survive it.’
‘I understand,’ she said. ‘But I’d still like to try with the little boy. I’ll ask the father for his permission, of course.’
He held her direct look for a moment. ‘Fine, but all I’m saying is that emotion runs high when children are involved. Just keep that in mind.’
Allegra thought back to her earlier conversation with Susie but decided against mentioning it. The nursing staff were well used to dealing with all sorts of people and could be relied on to remain professional at all times.
After a short pause she released a heartfelt sigh. ‘I often wonder how they get on—you know, once they leave ICU. We patch them up and send them on their way, but we get very little long-term feedback. Don’t you wonder how they manage to adjust, especially the ones with permanent disability?’
Joel examined the contents of his wineglass, a shadow of something coming and going in his dark eyes. ‘I try not to think about it too much.’
She looked at him, her expression softening. ‘But you do, don’t you?’
He gave her a twisted, humourless smile. ‘Well, it’s part of the job, isn’t it? You go home exhausted after long shifts, then you can’t sleep, worrying you could have done more.’
‘I know … It’s a wonder we don’t all end up on stress leave.’
‘It’s why doctors’ marriages have a higher than average failure rate,’ he said, reaching for his wine and taking a sip.
The waiter arrived with their meals and once he’d left, Allegra said into the little silence that had fallen, ‘You never told me what your parents do for a living.’
Joel put his glass back on the table before answering. ‘My father is a teacher and my mother hasn’t worked outside the home since my brother and I were born.’
‘That must have been nice for you and your brother,’ she said, ‘having a full-time mum at home.’
‘It certainly had its advantages.’ He reached for his cutlery and asked, ‘What about your early childhood? Did your mother choose to work or stay at home?’
‘My mother wasn’t the stay-at-home type. My father did a lot of the child care in the early days, but I seem to remember a few child-care centres along the way.’
‘But you had a happy childhood?’
‘Of course. My parents were a bit “out there” at times, but I can’t remember ever being unhappy. Even when they went their separate ways, they did it so wonderfully well that I was the envy of all my friends for having such trendy, cool parents.’
Joel looked at her in silent envy. His childhood had been marked with tragedy, a tragedy relentless and ongoing. The last time he’d visited, just two days ago, his mother had aged and visibly shrunk even further, and his father’s face had become a mask of pain from their situation, each line more deeply etched, each shadow a darker curtain.
Allegra became aware of his silence and wondered if she was boring him. ‘I’m sorry …’ She pushed her glass out of her reach. ‘I tend to talk too much about myself when I drink wine.’
He gave her a lopsided smile. ‘Truth serum?’
‘Next I’ll be telling you all my innermost secrets.’
‘You seem to be pretty much an open book to me. You wear your heart on your sleeve, which is unusual in a medico. It usually gets hammered out of you at medical school.’
She lowered her gaze to the small flickering candle on the table, a small frown bringing her finely arched brows together for a moment. ‘Well I must have been absent that day at medical school.’
‘What happened?’
Allegra brought her eyes back to his, surprised yet again