made her shudder. There would have certainly been deaths. Even with the hospital’s proximity to the school, there’d been far too many close calls. Not everyone was out of the woods yet, including little Ryan Walker.
The stalwarts at the gate greeted her and her coffees with a cheer. ‘Morning, love.’
‘Early again? You still on Aussie time?’ one asked.
She laughed. ‘I’d be going home after a day’s work if I was.’
Once she’d distributed the coffees, she ducked through the gates and strode under the decorative brick archway. Behind the beautiful Victorian façade was a modern hospital with state-of-the-art equipment and an experienced and dedicated staff. There were one hundred and fifty years of history here and she was humbled to be a part of it. When she’d received the offer of a chance to train under the tutelage of the world-renowned neurosurgeon, Alistair North, she’d actually squealed in delight, deafening the very proper Englishwoman on the other end of the line.
‘Now, now, Ms Mitchell,’ the secretary to the chair of the Royal College of Surgeons had said primly as if overt displays of enthusiasm were frowned upon. Then, without pausing, she’d continued to outline the terms and conditions of the scholarship.
Claire hadn’t cared about her unrestrained antipodean response. If a girl couldn’t get excited about such an amazing opportunity, when could she? After all, her work was her life and her life was her work, and the scholarship was a chance of a lifetime. At the time, she’d danced down the corridors of Flinders Medical Centre telling everyone from cleaners to consultants that she was going to London.
Now, as she ran up five flights of stairs, she was almost certain that if she’d known what was in store for her at the castle, she might not have been quite so excited. When she reached the landing with the large painted koala on the ward door, she smiled. Why, when all the other wards were named after northern hemisphere birds and animals, the Brits had chosen an Aussie marsupial for the neurology ward’s logo was a mystery to her but she loved that they had. It made her feel a little less like an alien in what was proving to be a very unexpected foreign land.
Despite speaking English and having been raised in a country where the Union Jack still sat in the corner of the flag, Londoners were different. The brilliant Alistair North was extremely different, although not in the often restrained and polite British way. She’d been fortunate to work with talented neurosurgeons in Australia and she understood that brilliance was often accompanied by quirks. But Mr North had taken quirk and magnified it by the power of ten. All of it left her struggling to convince herself she’d done the right thing in accepting the scholarship.
Stepping into the bright and cheery ward, she noticed with a start that the nurses’ station was empty. Surely she wasn’t late? Her mouth dried as she spun around to check the large wall clock. The bright, red and yellow clock hands pointed to big blue numbers and they instantly reassured her. She gave a little laugh that contained both relief and irony. Of course she wasn’t late—she was never late and today she was even earlier than usual. Preparation and attention to detail was as much a part of her as breathing. It had been that way since the fateful day in grade five when her small childhood world had suddenly turned on her.
Assuming the nurses to be busy with their end-of-shift tasks, she slid into an office chair and logged on to the computer. She always read her patients’ overnight reports before rounds. It was better to take the extra time, learn what had happened and to have a well thought out plan than to be caught short. Just the thought of being put on the spot with the critical eyes of the medical students and junior house officers fixed upon her made her breath come faster.
The ward cared for children with a variety of neurological, craniofacial and central nervous system disorders, including those that required surgery. Although Mr North performed many different operations, his passion was the surgical treatment of focal epilepsy. It was the reason she’d fought so hard to win the scholarship and work with him, but as her brother often said in his laconic and understated tone after everything had gone pear-shaped, ‘It seemed like a good idea at the time.’ Right now she was second-guessing her good idea.
While she read the reports, the daytime nursing staff drifted in, busy chatting, and the medical students soon followed. Finally, the consistently late junior house officer, Andrew Bailey, arrived breathless and with his white coattails flapping. He came to a sudden halt and glanced around, his expression stunned. ‘I still beat him?’
Claire, who’d just read little Ryan Walker’s ‘no change’ report, stood with a sigh. ‘You still beat him.’
He grinned. ‘I must tell my father that my inability to be on time makes me a natural neurosurgeon.’
‘Perhaps that’s my problem,’ Claire muttered as she checked her phone for a message or a missed call from the exuberantly talented consultant surgeon who had no concept of time or workplace protocol. Nope, no messages or voicemail. She automatically checked the admissions board, but if Mr Alistair North were running late because of an emergency admission, she’d have been the one hauled out of bed to deal with it.
‘I heard while you and I were slaving away here last night, he was holding court over at the Frog and Peach,’ Andrew said with a conspiratorial yet reverent tone.
‘That doesn’t automatically mean he had a late night.’
Andrew’s black brows rose and waggled at her. ‘I just met the delectable Islay Kennedy on the back stairs wearing yesterday’s clothes. She mentioned dancing on tables, followed by an illicit boat ride on the Serpentine and then bacon and eggs at the Worker’s Café watching the dawn break over the Thames. When I see him, I plan to genuflect in his direction.’
A flash of anger swept through Claire’s body so hot and fast she thought it might lift her head from her neck. I want to kill Alistair North. Surgery was such a boys’ club and neurosurgery even more so. For years she’d gone into battle time and time again on the basis of raw talent but it was never enough. She constantly fought sexism, and now, it seemed, she had to tackle ridiculous childish behaviour and the adoration of men, who in essence were little boys. Fed up and furious, she did something she rarely did: she shot the messenger.
‘Andrew, don’t even think that behaviour like that is commendable. It’s juvenile and utterly irresponsible. If you ever pull a stunt like that and turn up to operate with me, I’ll fail you.’
Before her stunned junior house officer could reply, the eardrum-piercing sound of party blowers rent the air. Everyone turned towards the raucous sound. A tall man with thick, rumpled dark blond hair and wearing fake black horn-rimmed glasses—complete with a large fake bulbous nose and moustache—was marching along the ward with a little girl clinging to his back like a monkey. Behind him followed a trail of children aged between two and twelve. Some were walking, others were being pushed in wheelchairs by the nurses and many wore bandages on their heads—all of them were enthusiastically puffing air into party blowers and looking like they were on a New Year’s Day parade.
‘Wave to Dr Mitchell,’ the man instructed the little girl on his back. ‘Did you know she’s really a kangaroo?’
Despite his voice being slightly muffled by the fake moustache, it was without doubt the unmistakably deep and well-modulated tones of Alistair North.
A line of tension ran down Claire’s spine with the speed and crack of lightning before radiating outwards into every single cell. It was the same tension that invaded her every time Alistair North spoke to her. The same tension that filled her whenever she thought about him. It was a barely leashed dislike and it hummed inside her along with something else she didn’t dare name. She refused point-blank to contemplate that it might be attraction. The entire female staff of the castle might think the man was sex on a stick, but not her.
Granted, the first time she’d seen all six feet of him striding confidently towards her, she’d been struck by his presence. Unlike herself, not one single atom of the many that made up Alistair North hinted at doubt. The man positively radiated self-assurance from the square set of his shoulders to his brogue-clad feet. He wore clothes with effortless