St Matthew's Passion - By Sam Archer Page 0,1

29 she’d landed a place on the St Matthew’s rotation as a registrar in trauma surgery. Prestigious wasn’t the word to describe the rotation. It was the medical equivalent of an actress’s landing a role in a film directed by a multiple Oscar winner. And, in one of the most intensely macho specialties in all of surgery, Melissa had seen off the male competition and got to where she was through sheer bloody-minded hard work.

There were three reasons why training at St Matthew’s was the Holy Grail of any aspiring young trauma surgeon. The first was the unit itself. Sporting state-of-the-art resuscitation facilities and operating theatres, and its own dedicated ambulance fleet and even a helicopter, it was the envy of Europe. The second reason was the weighty presence of Professor Malcolm Penney, head of department and a legend whose name was revered by trauma surgeons throughout the world.

But the third reason was the most compelling, and everybody knew it even if they didn’t say so. Daniel Finmore-Gage was, at 36, simply the most brilliant trauma surgeon the country had ever produced. His meteoric rise to the position of Deputy Head of the department at St Matthew’s was a case study in single-minded discipline. By the age of 24, as a junior house officer, he’d had a paper on the management of blunt abdominal trauma accepted by Nature, one of the heaviest-hitting scientific journals in the world. His research findings into the predictors of long-term outcome in penetrating cardiac injury had gained acceptance as gospel. The Mayo Clinic and Johns Hopkins in the United States had both tried desperately to poach him for their own, but he’d stayed put, insisting his life and career belonged in London.

Melissa had read every paper he’d ever published, had listened to every podcast he’d recorded. She’d committed to memory his textbook chapters, had studied his career and tried as best she could to emulate it, even though she knew she could never match him. When the letter had dropped through the front door confirming that she’d been successful in her application for the St Matthew’s job - it was an old-fashioned letter, not an email or a text message - she’d had to sit down for a few minutes and remind herself how to breathe. Not only had she landed a post on the rotation, it was specifically one with Mr Finmore-Gage.

Now, as the group moved from bed to bed in the post-intake trauma ward and took the measure of the night’s recovering cases, Melissa glanced at her consultant’s cleanly cut profile as he listened to his junior staff present the patients one at a time, and watched the movement of his lips as he asked questions and gave instructions; and she thought how little his learned writings, even his rolling voice on the podcasts she’d absorbed, revealed of the man underneath. Melissa was committed to her career as a trauma surgeon; was dedicated one hundred per cent to becoming not only the eminent female specialist in her field but one of the finest of either sex. She was now apprenticed to the man who was currently the leader of the pack, and from whom she’d learn an incalculable amount.

But she had to admit that, quite apart from the attractiveness his expertise bestowed on him, Mr Daniel Finmore-Gage was a powerfully sexy man.

***

The canteen echoed to the clatter and bustle of scores of staff taking a brief break for sustenance. Melissa carried her tray over to what looked like an empty table by one of the ceiling-high windows overlooking the river. The view was magnificent, the South Bank a panoramic vista across the water, outlined against the bright early-autumn sky. Much as she loved London, Melissa couldn’t help a twitch of unease as she glanced down at the restless, shifting surface of the Thames. She didn’t like large expanses of water, and hadn’t done ever since almost drowning as a six-year-old when she’d fallen into a pond.

The last seven hours had been some of the busiest Melissa could remember. Quite apart from having to learn a host of new names and where they all fit into the machine that was the Trauma Department, she’d been plunged immediately into clinical work. The ward round had been interrupted by a call from theatre, where an early-morning commuter had been brought in after being hit by a bus. Mr Finmore-Gage had turned to Melissa and for a moment she’d thought, with a thrill, that he was going