words were clipped and Ryan couldn’t fail to get the message that she was upset about this.
Holly was more than upset. She felt like the ground had shifted under her feet—that someone else was taking control of her life. She was being offered something she wanted more than anything, but she couldn’t possibly accept. This was cruel, in fact, and a seed of anger blossomed.
‘I’m speaking to you now, Holly.’ Ryan looked puzzled, which was perfectly understandable. ‘I’ve just been waiting for the right opportunity.’ His mouth twisted in a wry smile as he shook his head. ‘I’m sorry. I should have known not to go behind your back. I know how fiercely independent you are and how you’ve managed your illness so far.’ He spread his hands in a gesture of surrender. ‘There aren’t many people who would choose to cope with home dialysis when they live alone. Even fewer people that could manage to keep up such a demanding career. I admire that independence, Holly. It’s a big part of why I want to help. And…’ the smile tilted up at both corners this time ‘…I wanted to give you a surprise.’
‘You’ve done that all right.’ Ryan’s winning smile was impossible not to respond to, but he’d summed up the problem here, hadn’t he? Holly managed alone. She made her own decisions and weighed up the consequences of those decisions very carefully beforehand. Some required a lot of thought. Others didn’t. Her smile faded.
‘You must have realised how impossible it would be for me to accept.’
‘Why?’
‘You’re offering something I wouldn’t even ask a blood relative for. You’re my boss, Ryan. Way above the level of being equal as a colleague. We’re not even…’ Holly searched for a word that could demonstrate the gulf between them in a personal field. ‘Friends,’ she concluded unhappily.
‘Aren’t we?’
Something in his tone made Holly feel ashamed of what she’d said. As though she was rejecting something of great importance to Ryan. But it was easier from his side of the fence, wasn’t it?
‘You’re my boss, Ryan. You’re older and far more experienced than me. You’re my teacher. A mentor.’ In a position of power that precluded anything as levelling as a personal friendship. ‘Our lives don’t touch outside working hours.’ She sighed, staring down at her tightly linked fingers. ‘And I’m a woman, trying to succeed in what is still a male-dominated career path. I’m also trying to cope with a fairly debilitating illness. I resent the limitations it imposes on my life and having to accept help.’ She glanced up again. ‘That’s not to say I’m not enormously grateful for your help. God knows, I’d never have got as far as I have if it hadn’t been for you, but you’ve done enough, Ryan. I couldn’t…wouldn’t accept any more.’
He looked so disappointed, Holly tried to smile.
‘Imagine if it didn’t work? There I’d be still struggling along and you’d know you’d gone through all that pain, not to mention the risks of having a general anaesthetic, for nothing. I wouldn’t be able to work with you any more because I’d feel like such a failure. I’d feel terribly guilty. As though I’d been given a precious gift and I’d just thrown it out or lost it or something. Nobody would blame you for resenting that. It would be way too much of a burden.’
‘There’s no reason to think it wouldn’t work.’
‘So there I’d be with a debt of gratitude instead of guilt. It would still be enough to prevent me ever stepping up and working alongside you as an equal.’ Holly straightened her back. ‘And that’s exactly where I intend to be, one day.’
A silence fell, laced with unpleasant hints of how unlikely that scenario was going to be unless Holly did get a successful kidney transplant. Holly ignored the vibes. She was really no worse off than she’d been yesterday, was she? And tomorrow was another day. She had learned long ago to take things one day at a time. And maybe…tomorrow, even—that pager on her pocket that linked her to the transplant unit would sound and a well-matched, anonymous kidney would be waiting for her.
Ryan nodded slowly, seeming reluctant but resigned to accepting Holly’s point of view. But then he smiled. A real Ryan smile, full of warmth and understanding.
‘Think about it anyway,’ he said softly. ‘Please.’
As if she could think about anything else!
Ryan Murphy was the most genuine, caring person Holly had ever met. He couldn’t have known how disturbing his offer would be because he would never do anything to deliberately hurt anyone. It hadn’t been fair to suggest that their relationship was less meaningful than a friendship because Ryan meant far more than that to Holly.
Far more.
She had the utmost respect for him as a surgeon and the deepest admiration for him as a person. He was, simply, a wonderful man and Holly had wondered on more than one occasion why there wasn’t an adoring wife in the picture. As far as she knew, Ryan wasn’t in any kind of relationship and that certainly wasn’t due to any lack of opportunity. Holly couldn’t fail to notice the way women looked at Ryan and she knew exactly what they were thinking. If Holly had been looking for a perfect partner herself, she’d be thinking the same things. Ryan Murphy would have more than fitted any bill of that type.
But she wasn’t in a position to be looking, was she? And while Ryan’s concern and support for her had been so much more than she could have wished for, it had never crossed any professional boundaries. They might think highly of each other but they were colleagues on very different rungs of a professional ladder. Not friends, because they knew nothing of each other’s lives outside work.
Holly wouldn’t have a clue what Ryan might be eating for dinner that night. She put the frozen supermarket dinner into her microwave with a grimace. This meal was a cop-out. Only acceptable because the level of protein and probably anything else in the nutrition stakes was low enough for the occasional use not to tip her carefully balanced diet into disarray. Whatever Ryan chose or possibly cooked for himself, it was bound to be more appealing than the plastic-looking pumpkin and spinach lasagne she was heating.
He certainly wouldn’t be counting out pills to have with his food either. Working her way methodically along the row of canisters adorning her window-sill, Holly shook out the phosphate binders, vitamin and mineral supplements, the iron tablets and her doses of diuretics and anti-hypertensive medication.
Maybe Ryan had exotic spice jars on his kitchen win-dowsill. Or herbs growing in pots. Holly wondered what his kitchen looked like. And his house. She had never thought about Ryan in such personal terms before and some of the anger she had felt earlier returned when she couldn’t shake her current train of thought.
Too tired to be hungry, she forced herself to eat and wondered, in some dismay, whether just voicing that extraordinary offer had been enough to seriously undermine her professional relationship with the man who headed her chosen department.
Holly didn’t want to have to leave St Margaret’s Children’s Hospital. She’d have to go offshore to find anything similar and with the support team she had in the renal department of the nearby general hospital, she couldn’t afford to look elsewhere. Neither did she want to leave her home town of Auckland, New Zealand. This was her home. Where she wanted to live. And work.
This apartment would never be her ultimate goal, of course, but it was close to both hospitals. It was tiny and low maintenance, and while it might be without soul it was valued nonetheless for its contribution to Holly’s independence. Did Ryan have a house rather than an apartment? A cat? A garden, maybe, instead of a sad set of pot-plants on a minuscule balcony? The plants weren’t going to receive the attention they urgently needed this evening either. Not when she seemed unable to shake the imaginary comparisons between her life and Ryan’s.
That kind of thinking had the potential to destroy things between them. Holly couldn’t afford to be envious of anybody and particularly her boss. What if she became resentful that he had a life at all outside work when she didn’t? A home and garden to go to? That he had the prospect of