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gut, and the ileostomy is only a temporary thing. You'll be feeling good in a few days.'
    Mike indicated that he understood by giving a slight nod. An expression of relief superimposed itself on his tired face as his eyelids slowly shut again.
    'I'll talk to you later when you're more awake,' Clay added, giving his patient's shoulder a squeeze before walking away.
    Now he had to detach his thoughts from this patient to focus on the next one on the operating list, the one with gall-bladder disease. The previous case had gone as well as he could have hoped for. Although the gut had been in a mess, with a number of adhesions, he'd been able to resect a portion of it fairly easily and make the temporary opening through the abdominal wall.
    There was every indication that this would be a good day. As he strode back briskly to room four he felt gratified, too, that he'd exchanged those few words with Jerry Claibourne. They'd indicated that everything regarding his own future was right on track.
     
    It was three o'clock in the afternoon when Clay was able to leave the OR and make his way to the hospital cafeteria for a quick nutritious snack, before going on to his private office in the Medical Arts Building next to the hospital, where patients would be waiting to see him. Surgeons seldom stopped for a proper lunch when they worked in the operating rooms. A lot of food left one sleepy and less able to summon up the high level of concentration that was required. Consequently, when they got out of the place they were often suffering from hypoglycaemia, low blood sugar.
    In the corridor outside the cafeteria he was waylaid by Suzie, the emergency nurse he'd met at the fund-raising dance.
    'Oh, Dr Sotheby,' she exclaimed, 'just the person I want to see!' She was as ebullient as before. 'You'll never guess!' In her uniform of pale blue scrub suit with a matching long-sleeved jacket over the top, she looked delectable, ripe for the plucking, Clay thought as he looked her over, even though he suspected that she had already been plucked.
    'Try me,' he said, conscious that he had only half an hour before he was due to see his first patient in his office.
    'You've won a blind date!' Suzie gushed, as though she were conferring a knighthood on him. 'Isn't that just great? You can go out for a great dinner with a great girl and forget all about this place.'
    'Oh hell,' he said. 'Too many greats there.'
    The nurse's face was blank with amazement. 'What do you mean?' she said. They stood against the corridor wall while people hurried past them in both directions. Overhead the loudspeaker paged doctors.
    'I really don't want to do that,' Clay said. 'I'd like to back off and let someone else "win" in my place. It isn't really my thing.'
    'You can't do that, Dr Sotheby—' Suzie was incredulous '—since you've all been carefully vetted and paired. It will be quite all right, you know, because you meet at a certain table in a restaurant—the owner's in on the scheme. It's all prepaid. You just go in there and your date will be sitting at the table. You have a super meal. It's at Guido's, that's Italian.'
    'I really don't think...' he said, leaning wearily against the wall, thinking that he wanted to pick his own women, not have one picked for him. 'Look, I didn't want to do this from the beginning. I didn't think I'd win. I just wanted to donate money.'
    'If this meal doesn't work out, it's no skin off your nose,' Suzie said. 'You just have a nice meal, say how nice it was to meet her, put her in a taxi and, bingo, that's it. If you don't want to see her again, you don't have to. But you might...' She left the possibility hanging.
    Clay shrugged in resignation. As a last resort he could always phone the restaurant on the night and say that he'd been called to the operating room. That would be mean, but at least the woman, or girl, would have a good meal on the house.
    'We'll be in touch...from the fund-raising committee with the finer details,'