children, so it couldn’t be sold. So at least we had a home…’
‘And Scott wasn’t impressed.’
Nikki shrugged listlessly. ‘Scott said he was damned if he was working hard for the rest of his life. He said he’d been conned. He said he’d been trapped into marriage-that my father had led him to believe there were millions. And that much was true,’ Nikki admitted. ‘My father had always talked big. And Scott… well, Scott just stood up at the end of it and said, “That’s it, Nikki. This is where I get off.” And he walked out. Just like that. Just like…just like my father. “This is where I get off”.’
Nikki fell silent. She stood motionless against Luke while his fingers did their work. ‘I never saw him again,’ she whispered finally. ‘He wrote once, to ask for a divorce. But that was all…’
‘Well.’ Luke’s fingers had stilled but now they started again. ‘That must have been some week out of your life, Nikki.’
She shrugged. ‘In that week I had my pregnancy confirmed. In that week…well, it was the week I found out what the world is really all about.’
‘What Scott was all about,’ Luke said grimly. ‘You can’t judge the world by your father’s weakness and Scott’s appalling behaviour. You can’t, Nikki.’ He put her away from him then, his hands holding her shoulders at arm’s length, allowing him to look into her tear-drenched eyes. ‘Believe me, you can’t.’
And for a moment she almost believed him. Nikki looked up into the depths of those eyes and found her world shifting. She could drown in those eyes. She could let herself go. She could be as big a fool over this man as she had been over Scott.
Then from nowhere Charlotte’s words came crashing into her head to haul her back to reality. ‘Luke Marriott had every junior nurse, some senior ones, and a few female doctors besides, making fools of themselves every time he walked past. He’s broken more hearts than I care to name.’ Charlotte’s words echoed over and over again until Nikki came to her senses.
Luke Marriott wasn’t breaking her heart. She wasn’t going to make a fool of herself. Not again. She couldn’t bear it. With an angry thrust she put herself away from him and whirled to face the door.
‘I know I can’t keep judging,’ she said bitterly, ‘but I can make darned sure I’m not such a fool again.’
‘If you don’t trust, then you can’t love,’ he said softly.
She turned back to face him. ‘Well, who can I trust?’ she demanded. ‘Are you to be trusted? I don’t even know why the hell you’re here, Luke Marriott. You should be sitting back in Cairns with your adoring nursing staff and your highly paid surgical career…’
That’s right,’ he said equitably. ‘I should be.’
‘So why the hell aren’t you?’ Nikki had gone past the point of courtesy. This man had left her raw and exposed and she wanted to lash back-at any cost. ‘Why aren’t you there? What are you running from?’
‘I’m not running from anything.’
‘No?’ Nikki gave a bitter laugh. ‘Something had to go wrong in your life to make you give up such a lucrative profession as your surgical career. I’ve told you my pathetic past, Luke Marriott. Now you show me your shadows.’
Luke’s eyes darkened. For a moment Nikki thought he would walk out of the room in anger, without replying. Then his look changed.
‘Fair enough,’ he said softly. ‘You did tell me.’
‘So…? So why did you leave Cairns in such a hurry?’ The words came out slowly as Nikki’s anger died. Suddenly she wasn’t sure she wanted to know his reason. And when it came, she was sure of it.
There was a very good reason,’ he said slowly. ‘I had cancer.’
Cancer…
The word echoed around and around the small room. Nikki stared across at Luke as if he had physically struck her.
‘Cancer,’ she said blankly.
‘That’s right.’
She took a deep breath. ‘What…what sort…?’
‘Hodgkin’s disease.’
It had to be, she thought dully. Hodgkin’s disease was a cancer of the lymph glands, often presenting in otherwise healthy young males. Nikki had seen a couple of cases in her practice. One had died and Nikki still cringed at the tragic waste.
‘Yes.’
‘I…I see.’
‘No.’ He shook his head and his eyes were suddenly far-away. ‘I bet you don’t see, Dr Russell. Only someone who’s faced cancer themselves can see what a diagnosis like that can do to you.’
‘It must…it must have been frightening.’
He shrugged. ‘What do you think?’ He closed his eyes momentarily. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever been so scared in my whole life.’
Nikki moistened her lips, searching for the right words. In the end she found refuge in medicine-a doctor’s approach.
‘How did you find it?’
‘I had night sweats,’ he said shortly. ‘I’d been working too damned hard and was feeling pretty run down. Then I started waking drenched with sweat. For a while I told myself I was imagining things. Then I found a swollen lymph node in my neck.’
‘Weight loss?’
‘No.’ He smiled without humour. ‘I was living too well for that.’
Still…Nikki’s mind was racing. Without weight loss, he’d caught it early.
‘So you had tests in Cairns?’
‘No.’ Luke grimaced. ‘I can put two and two together pretty fast, even if I was hoping to hell I was making fourteen. I was at the end of a job in Cairns. An oncologist friend, Rod Olsing, who worked with me for a while in Cairns, had just moved to Sydney, so I rang him and took myself down there.’
‘Why?’
He shrugged again. His habitual smile was gone, replaced with bleak remembrance.
‘Cowardice, if you like. In Cairns I’d been successful and totally in control. Suddenly I was badly out of control and I couldn’t face it. So I went south and faced it there.’
‘And it was bad?’ Nikki’s voice had softened in automatic sympathy.
‘Yeah. It was bad.’ He gave a short laugh. ‘And there’s nothing like lying in a strange hospital thinking you’re facing death for making you look at life. Or what you’ve been calling life.’
‘You had radiotherapy?’
‘And chemotherapy.’ Luke dug his hands deep in his pockets and turned away. ‘The X-rays and CT scan were clear, thank God. The glands in the neck were the only ones affected, but the night sweats made me stage 1B instead of stage 1A. Hence they gave me the works.’
Nikki nodded. The appearance of a single tumour would usually be treated just by radiotherapy. The night sweats would mean chemotherapy, though. Involuntarily her eyes went to Luke’s shock of blond hair and he caught her look as he turned back to face her.
‘It’s grown back nicely,’ he said grimly, touching his hair. ‘That’s the least of the side-effects.’
Nikki nodded sympathetically. ‘But you’ve been in remission now for…?’
‘For close on two years.’
‘But that means there’s every chance you’re cured. The cure-rate for Hodgkin’s is…’
‘Over seventy per cent if it’s caught at stage one. I know, Dr Russell; believe me, I know.’
‘Well, then.’ Nikki took a deep breath. ‘Well, then, why aren’t you getting on with life again?’
‘I am.’
‘By running?’
‘I’m not running.’
‘So what are you doing here? Isn’t your career centred on the city? You’ll never get anywhere doing three-week locums.’
He shook his head. ‘On the contrary, Dr Russell. I’ll never get anywhere by being a successful city surgeon.’ He
