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‘OK.’ She took a deep breath. ‘Thank you for this evening. I enjoyed it.’
‘So did I.’ The expression in his eyes was so sweet, so gentle, that Sydney was close to tears. She ached to be able to trust. To be normal. To be whole.
But that wasn’t going to happen. And somehow, she was going to have to find the right words to tell him tomorrow at work.
The truth.
CHAPTER THREE
‘HEY, Syd!’ One of the junior doctors met Marco and Sydney in the corridor on their way to Cubicles the next morning. ‘Got a question for you. Who’s the abseilers’ favourite singer?’ He grinned, looking pleased with himself. ‘Cliff Richard.’
She rolled her eyes. ‘Pete, that’s terrible.’
He laughed. ‘I’ll pay up my sponsorship at lunchtime.’
‘Yes, and you can pay double if you make any more abseiling jokes,’ she threatened, laughing back. ‘Though I’ve got one for you. Two drums and a cymbal abseiled down a cliff. Boom, ba-doom, tssssh.’
‘Oh, that’s brilliant.’ Pete gave her a high five. ‘If I have any kids on my list today, I’m so going to use that one.’
Yet more things to like about her, Marco thought. Sydney didn’t overreact to good-natured teasing, and she thought on her feet. The more he saw of her, the more he liked.
He knew that she liked him, too, from the way she’d responded to his kiss last night. Then something had spooked her. Bad memories, maybe? Perhaps he could get her to open up to him.
Though that made him the biggest hypocrite in the world, because no way was he planning to open up and talk about Sienna.
Later, he told himself. Work, first.
Their first patient that morning was an elderly woman complaining of abdominal pain. It was a symptom common to a very wide range of conditions, making it difficult to diagnose what the problem was.
‘Mrs Kane, I’m Marco Ranieri and this is Sydney Collins,’ he said. ‘We’re going to find out what’s making your stomach hurt, and make you much more comfortable. How long have you been feeling like this?’
‘A couple of days. I wasn’t going to bother you, but then it started hurting when the postman came, and he called the ambulance.’
‘May we examine you?’ he asked. ‘We’ll be as gentle as we can, if you can tell us where it hurts most.’
‘Yes,’ she whispered.
Gently, Marco examined her. There wasn’t any guarding or localised tenderness: just general abdominal pain.
Sydney checked her temperature. ‘You don’t have any sign of fever, Mrs Kane.’
Which ruled out a couple of things, but he still had a few questions. ‘I know this is personal, and I’m sorry, but may I ask when you last went to the toilet and passed a stool?’
Mrs Kane thought about it. ‘A couple of days ago. I tried yesterday and couldn’t,’ she said.
Constipation could cause stomach pain; but Marco instinctively knew it wasn’t that. There was more she wasn’t telling them.
‘Can I ask what you’ve eaten lately?’
Mrs Kane made a face. ‘I haven’t really been hungry.’
‘Have you been sick at all, Mrs Kane?’ Sydney asked.
‘No. I thought I was going to be, yesterday, but then I had a drink of water and I was all right.’
‘Again, I apologise for the personal question, but have you needed to wee more often?’ Sydney asked.
‘A bit.’ Mrs Kane wrinkled her nose. ‘But that’s my age, isn’t it?’
‘Could be,’ Sydney said with a smile. She caught Marco’s eye. ‘Quick word?’ she mouthed.
‘Mrs Kane, we just need to check something out, and then we’ll come back to see you, if that’s OK?’ Marco asked.
At her nod, he followed Sydney out of the cubicle.
‘I know appendicitis is much more common in teenagers and young adults, but I have a feeling about this,’ Sydney said.
‘I agree. The presentation of appendicitis doesn’t tend to be typical in very young or elderly patients—and if her appendix is retrocaecal, then it won’t show up as pain moving from around her navel to the right iliac fossa.’
‘And needing to wee more frequently—it could be an inflamed appendix irritating her ureter.’
‘We’re going to have to do a PR exam,’ Marco said.
‘It’d be more tactful if I do it,’ Sydney said.
‘Do you mind?’
She shrugged. ‘That’s what teamwork’s for. Keeping our patient as comfortable as possible.’
They went back into the cubicle. ‘Mrs Kane, we need to give you an internal exam,’ Marco said, ‘and then maybe a blood test and possibly a scan to give us a better idea of what’s causing your pain—we want to rule out a couple of possibilities.’ Diverticulitis and cancer were uppermost in his mind, though he wasn’t going to alarm his patient by mentioning them at this stage.
‘As an internal exam’s a bit personal,’ Sydney said. ‘Would you prefer me to do it?’
Mrs Kane looked grateful. ‘Thank you.’
‘Marco, if you can excuse us a moment?’ she asked.
‘Of course. Give me a shout when you need me,’ Marco said, and left the cubicle.
‘Ow, that makes my tummy hurt,’ Mrs Kane said during the exam.
Bingo: just what Sydney had expected to hear. ‘Sorry, I wasn’t intending to make it hurt. Let’s make you more comfortable.’ She helped the elderly lady restore order to her clothes and sit up. ‘I think your appendix is inflamed and we’re going to need to take it out.’ She wasn’t going to worry Mrs Kane by telling her, but elderly people were more prone to complications—and there was a higher risk of dying from a perforated appendix. ‘Though sometimes we suspect appendicitis and it turns out that the appendix is perfectly healthy, so before I send you off to the surgeon I want to do a couple more tests, if that’s OK?’
‘Are they going to hurt?’
‘You might feel a scratch when I take some blood,’ Sydney said, ‘but the scan definitely won’t hurt.’
The blood tests came back with a high white cell count, and the CT scan showed Marco and Sydney exactly what they’d expected. ‘Definitely an inflamed appendix,’ Marco said.
They reassured Mrs Kane that the operation was done by keyhole surgery nowadays, so she’d recover relatively quickly, and introduced her to the surgeon, who also spent time reassuring her before taking her up to Theatre himself.
‘Good call,’ Marco said to Sydney.
‘Thanks, but I could’ve been wrong—you know as well as I do how difficult it is to diagnose abdominal pain in elderly patients.’ She shrugged. ‘I just happened to read a few journal articles about it recently and they stuck in my mind.’
‘Still a good call,’ he said with a smile.
There was barely time for a break during the day; at the end of their shift, Marco caught Sydney just as she was leaving the hospital. ‘What shift are you on tomorrow?’
‘Late,’ she said.
‘Me, too.’ He smiled at her. ‘Do you fancy going to the cinema tonight?’
This was where she should make some excuse. Especially as she still hadn’t found the right words to tell him about her condition.
But would it really hurt to see a film with him? And maybe afterwards they could talk. Was it so wrong of her to want just a couple more hours of fun, of enjoying his company, of enjoying being someone’s girlfriend again? ‘That’d be lovely.’
He took out his mobile phone and pulled the local cinema’s details onto the screen. ‘Drama or comedy?’
Given what she was going to tell him tonight, she could do with some light relief first. ‘Comedy—if that’s OK with you.’
‘It’s fine.’ He consulted the screen. ‘It starts at eight. Pick you up at half seven?’
‘I’ve got a few things to sort out at home. Can I meet you there at quarter to?’
He smiled. ‘Sure. I’ll buy the tickets and you buy the popcorn.’
She smiled back. ‘Deal.’
Even though the film was one she’d wanted to see and starred one of her favourite actors, Sydney found it hard to concentrate. Firstly because she still hadn’t worked out a gentle way of telling him about the neurofibromatosis, and secondly because they’d finished the popcorn and Marco was holding her hand.
Just holding her hand.
How could such a light, gentle contact set all her nerve endings tingling? How could it make her whole body feel liquid with desire? How?
By the time they got back to her flat, Sydney was almost quivering with need.
She had to tell him. Now. Before things went any further. It wasn’t fair to let him think there could be any possibility of a future between them, when she knew she had nothing to offer him.
‘Marco—’ she began as she opened her front door.
‘I know,’ he said softly.
He knew? What? How could he possibly know? The only people at work who knew about her condition were Ellen and the consultants, and there was no way they would’ve broken her confidence.
And then she stopped thinking as Marco cupped her face with his hands and brought his mouth down on hers. His kiss was soft, sweet and coaxing; every movement of his lips against hers made the blood feel as if it were fizzing through her veins. All thoughts of telling him were gone—until he untucked her shirt from her jeans and slid his hands underneath the hem, his fingertips moving in tiny circles across her back.
The second he touched scar tissue, he stopped. Pulled back. Looked at her, his eyes full of questions.
‘Sydney?’
She blew out a breath and pulled away from him, wrapping her arms round herself like a shield. ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered. ‘I should’ve told you. I meant to tell you, but … ‘ Her voice faded. How stupid she was to have wanted something she couldn’t have. Hadn’t she learned from the mess of her marriage to Craig? Her husband hadn’t been able to cope with her condition; even though Marco was a doctor, would understand it more, it was still a big ask.
She closed her eyes, not wanting to see pity on Marco’s face when she told him. And opened them again when he picked her up, carried her into the living room and sat on the sofa, settling her on his lap. ‘Marco?’ she asked, not understanding why he was still there. Shouldn’t he be backing away as fast as he could?
‘That feels like scar tissue,’ he said softly. ‘And, no, you don’t have to tell me about it if you don’t want to. I just wanted to be sure that I hadn’t hurt you.’
It was the last thing she’d expected to hear, and it took her breath away.
‘Sydney?’ His voice was so gentle that it brought tears to her eyes—tears she quickly blinked away. She wasn’t this weak, pathetic, needy creature. She was a strong woman. A damn good doctor. She’d just made the mistake of forgetting who she was for a little while and wanting something normal. ‘No, you didn’t hurt me. But thank you for—’ The words caught in her throat for a moment. ‘For being kind.’
‘Kind isn’t quite the way I feel,’ he said.
‘I meant to tell you.’ She shook her head. ‘Sorry. It was unfair of me to agree to date you.’
‘Unfair?’ He looked puzzled. ‘How?’
‘Because we can’t really see where this thing takes us. I owe it to you to tell the truth—but I’d appreciate it if it didn’t go any further than you.’
‘Of course.’ He frowned. ‘You don’t owe me anything, Sydney. But if you want to talk, I’m listening.’
She took a deep breath. ‘I have neurofibromatosis type two. NF2 for short.’
He stroked her face. ‘I’m an emergency specialist. I’m sorry, I don’t know anything about NF2. What is it?’
‘It’s a genetic problem with chromosome 22,’ she explained. ‘It causes benign tumours to grow on nerve cells and the skin. And although it does run in families, it can also just happen out of nowhere, a mutation in the genes that takes years to show up.’
‘One of your parents has it?’ he guessed.
She shook her head. ‘Neither of them are carriers, and my brother and sister had the tests—they’re both fine. It’s just me.’ And how she’d raged about the unfairness of it, when she’d learned about her condition. One in forty thousand people had it. Why her? What had she done to deserve it?
Then the practical side of her had taken over, kicking out the pointless self-pity. Whining about it wasn’t going to change anything. The best thing she could do was make herself informed, to understand what the condition was and how she could work round it to live as normal a life as possible.
‘That’s pretty tough on you,’ he said.
‘I’m fine,’ she said, knowing it wasn’t strictly true.
‘So how did you find out?’
‘I had back pain and nothing helped. Eventually I had an MRI scan to see if there were any lesions, and that’s when they discovered the tumours pressing on my spine.’ One of them had been the size of a grapefruit; and the operation had meant that she’d had to take some of her finals papers from her hospital bed. Not that she was going to tell Marco about that; she didn’t want his pity.
‘Which is why I felt the scar tissue on your back just now,’ he said softly.
‘Yes. The surgeon operated to remove the tumours, and they haven’t grown back yet.’ She dug her nails into her palm, reminding herself not to get emotional about it. OK, so the condition was incurable, but it wasn’t terminal. It could be much, much worse; it just made her life a bit awkward, from time to time.
And it had blown her marriage apart.
‘Are the tumours likely to grow back or cause you problems again?’
