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A cheerful young woman appeared in a brightly flowered long flowing dress Fran recognised as a muumuu. Zoe hugged Fran as Steve introduced her.
‘This is where we live when we’re here. Zoe will show you our quarters. Both she and Akila live locally and work at the hospital, but come down to help out when we are working on the island,’ Steve said. ‘Zoe keeps the place tidy for us and makes sure there is always food in the cupboards and refrigerator so we don’t starve to death, while Akila is on call for any emergencies—of which we get plenty—power outages, et cetera. But don’t worry we have generators which kick in to keep your incubator warm.’
Fran felt a niggle of apprehension, and for a moment longed to be back in her nice, safe, big, anonymous lab. These people were all too friendly. They were a team, but clearly friends as well. Why hadn’t she considered that it would be a small and intimate staff in this island clinic?
Friendly!
A queasy feeling in her stomach reminded her just how long it had been since she’d done friendly! At first, the pain of the IVF failures had made her curl into herself, erecting a cool polite barrier that outsiders saw.
Then the divorce and the humiliating knowledge that Nigel and Clarissa had been involved for months had made her draw away from the few friends she hadn’t shut out earlier. The only good thing that had come out of the whole mess was a better understanding of her mother, who had also built a protective shell around herself when her husband had departed. At last she now understood her mother’s detached behaviour during her childhood years.
Hurt prevention...
Fran had drifted across the hall to touch the leaves and flowers in the big display while these thoughts tumbled through her head.
‘I will show you your room,’ Zoe said, bringing Fran abruptly back to the present.
‘And I’ve got to check on something but I’ll be over later and will take you through the whole facility then,’ Steve added.
Fran felt a new wave of...not panic perhaps but definite uncertainty. Did she really need to see the whole facility? Of course she wanted to see the laboratory—it was where she would be working—and seeing how the place was set up would be interesting, but...
Something about the warm friendliness of the people was beginning to unsettle her—the realisation that they were all one big happy family, with Steve at the centre of it. It was threatening to cause cracks in barriers she had carefully erected between herself and others.
And all because they were welcoming her, were friendly? She could hardly resent that...
It had to be the heat, she decided, following Zoe across a courtyard filled with rioting plants, most with broad leaves and drooping fronds of flowers, and the same sweet, indefinable perfume.
‘Ginger,’ Zoe explained when Fran asked, and she looked more closely at the plants, not exactly surprised but trying to relate the small, bulbous roots she bought at the greengrocer to these exuberant, leafy plants.
The living quarters were adequate, freshly painted and clean, two bedrooms, a shared bathroom—she could live with that—and a combined living, dining, kitchen area.
‘Steve, he barbecues,’ Zoe told her, leading Fran out the back door onto a beautiful, shaded deck area, with a barbecue bigger and more complex than the kitchen back at her flat. ‘He brought the barbecue here but it is for everyone who stays. Patients bring fish and chicken and he says they are best on barbecue.’
Fran smiled. It was obvious the giant barbecue was the subject of much conversation among the staff at the clinic.
Zoe then indicated which bedroom would be hers and left her to unpack. It was a spacious room, with two beds—king singles or small doubles, she couldn’t tell—two wooden dressers with drawers, and a built-in cupboard. A vase filled with wide leaves and bright flowers stood on one of the dressers, welcoming her.
Uncertain of what lay ahead, Fran opted not to shower but simply to freshen up. She unclipped her hair, then made her way to the bathroom. She’d washed her face and was brushing out her hair when Steve arrived, calling hello from the front door.
She came out of her room, hairbrush still in her hand, anxious to tell him she’d only be a moment.
Steve stood in the doorway. Okay, so he’d assumed she’d be a very attractive woman with her hair waving softly around her face, but this attractive? She was smiling, saying something, but all he could do was stand and gawp.
Fortunately for his peace of mind she disappeared back into her room, returning seconds later with her hair neatly restrained, though this time more casually in a low ponytail at the base of her skull, one tail of the scarf that held it dangling forward over her white shirt, drawing his attention to—
No, his attention wasn’t going there.
‘I’ll show you our set-up,’ he said, aware his voice sounded rough. And why wouldn’t it because his mouth, for surely the first time in his life, had gone dry.
But his pride in the little clinic diverted his mind away from Fran as a very attractive woman—or almost diverted it—while he showed her around the rooms.
‘It’s very well set out, and far more complex than I’d imagined. You spoke about the couple who came to you in Sydney for IVF, and wanting to have something here, but this is impressive—it’s got everything you need, just on a smaller scale.’
‘I wanted to set up a place where couples can come and have their infertility investigated right from the start,’ he explained. ‘I can’t help feeling people are sometimes prey to exploitation. As you know, the most common cause of women not ovulating is PCO, and polycystic ovary syndrome can be treated with drugs. I believe, before IVF is even mentioned, ethical specialists must determine the underlying cause of the problem, and if possible treat it.’
Fran gave a little shake of her head. These were thoughts she’d had herself. Not that any of the specialists she’d seen had been unethical, but it had often seemed to her that they rushed towards IVF as an answer without considering alternatives.
‘I imagine drugs like clomiphene are a case in point,’ she said, seeing the way his mind worked. ‘With very little in the way of side-effects they can encourage the production of follicle-stimulating hormone, so the ovaries are better able to produce follicles. That in itself can lead to a previously infertile couple conceiving.’
‘Or, unfortunately, it could sometimes lead to cysts in the ovaries, which means the patient needs to be checked regularly. That’s why we employ a full-time O and G specialist who works at the hospital as well as here at the clinic. We want to be able to take a patient right through any treatment available, even Fallopian tube repairs, before resorting to IVF.’
‘So you need a specialist on the ground, so to speak?’ Fran said, following the conversation with increasing interest.
‘Exactly! He does regular obstetric and gynae work at the hospital but he’s also available for all the preliminary IVF checks and organises the counselling all couples need, as well as supervising the weeks of injections for any woman who will be using IVF.’
‘Wow!’ Fran muttered, unable to believe so much was happening from this small, run-down-looking building.
She looked again at the scruffily dressed man, and shook her head.
‘Did you achieve all of this on your own?’ she asked, and he smiled at her.
The smile surprised her. She’d seen versions of it before and thought it a nice smile, but this one set his whole face alight, shining in his dark eyes and wrinkling his cheeks with the width of his grin.
‘Not quite,’ he admitted. ‘The partners back at my clinic in Sydney have given a lot in that they cover for me two or three times a year when I’m over here, and various patients I’ve had have talked to me about what they’d like in a clinic.’
She nodded, knowing exactly what she’d have liked in the places she’d seen so much of, but Steve was still talking.
‘Then there are the people here. They are laid-back, casual and very family-oriented so something like an inability to have a child can cause them tremendous pain. I knew I had to set things up to make it as relaxed as possible for them. After all, they are the prime concern.’
‘And you fund it all yourself?’
The question was out before she realised how rude it was.
Not that it appeared to bother him—he just ignored it.
‘And here’s the laboratory, such as it is,’ Steve announced,
He’d left it until last, hoping she’d want to stay on and have a look around, check out where things were kept and see from the case notes, both written and on the computer, how things were done. Then he could go back to their quarters and, no, he refused to consider the cliché of a cold shower, but he could get away from her for a while and regroup.
Work out why this unlikely attraction was happening.
Attraction should be something that grew as you got to know someone—grew out of liking and respect...
Forget attraction, getting rid of the fish smell and doing something about the stubble on his chin were far more important issues right now.
Oh, and catching up with Alex to find out whether their new equipment had arrived...
But still he looked at Fran, bent over the boxes of coloured tags she’d pulled from one of the cupboards. She poked around in the contents for a while, then glanced up at him and smiled.
So much for his thoughts on attraction...
‘You’ll probably laugh at me,’ she was saying, ‘but I brought a whole heap of these things with me in my luggage, thinking maybe you wouldn’t have the ones I’ve always used, but someone whose mind runs along the same lines as mine does has set up a basic identification system.’
‘That someone was me.’
She looked surprised, and, probably because he was already off balance with the attraction business, he spoke more sharply than he need have.
‘Lab staff aren’t the only ones afraid of making a mistake, of giving a woman someone else’s embryo. It’s always in the back of my mind, even in the clinic back home where everything is computerised to the nth degree and ID is made with bar codes.’
Now she was taken aback, frowning at him.
‘Of course you must worry, it’s everyone’s biggest concern, but usually it’s left to the lab staff to make sure mistakes don’t happen.’ She grinned at him, defusing his mild annoyance but aggravating the attraction. ‘It’s certainly the lab staff who get blamed when things go wrong.’
She lifted a red wristband, a red marking pen, a roll of red plastic tape and a card of small red spots.
‘How many patients are you expecting? I know you said earlier, but I can’t recall the number,’ she said. ‘I’ll make up packs of what we need for each of them—that way I won’t be fishing in boxes later and will be less likely to make a mistake.’
She was here to work and she was making that abundantly clear, which was good as he could forget all the weirdness he’d been experiencing and get on with his job.
‘Five, or maybe six,’ he told her. ‘I’ve just heard that there’s one couple we’re not sure about. Apparently it took longer than expected to shut down her ovaries and then to begin the stimulation so she may not be ovulating yet.’
‘But surely she would be before we leave?’ Francesca asked, the slight frown he was beginning to recognise as one of concern puckering her forehead.
‘Yes, and although I do have other volunteers come out here to work, we like to have the same team on hand for the whole cycle of taking the eggs through to implantation, then confirmation of pregnancy.’
‘Or confirmation that it didn’t work that time,’ Fran said, remembering her three thwarted attempts.
‘That too,’ Steve said, his voice sombre. ‘It’s the main reason I like the team to stay until we know, one way or another. At least then we can talk to the couple about what they would like to do next. Whether they want to try again later—explain the options, talk it all through with them.’
He’d really thought about it, Fran thought, studying the man who seemed to understand just how devastating a failed IVF treatment could be. But couldn’t they still work with the sixth couple? Hadn’t Andy said...?
‘But rather than have them miss out, couldn’t we stay a little longer?’ she asked. ‘I’m sure Andy said that it could be longer—six weeks he might have mentioned. Wouldn’t that give us time?’
Fran realised she was probably pushing too hard—especially as a newcomer. But it seemed inconceivable to her that a woman would get this far into treatment then be told they couldn’t go ahead until Steve could return or someone else could come over.
Steve shook his head, but it wasn’t the headshake that bothered her, it was the look on his face—discouragement?
‘And if six weeks isn’t long enough?’ he said quietly.
‘Then we’d just have to stay on,’ Fran declared. ‘I know you must feel guilty about leaving your own practice longer than necessary, but a few days? Surely we can’t just ignore this couple as if they’re nothing more than names on a list.’
She waited for a reply, but all Steve did was look at her, studying her as if she was a stranger.
Had she let emotion seep into her words? She knew, better than anyone, that she had to separate her emotion from her work—that she had to be one hundred per cent focussed on whatever job she was doing—no room for emotion at all. But hadn’t her argument been rational?
‘Let’s wait and see,’ he finally replied, but he was still watching her warily.
Assessing her in some way...
Wondering if he’d made a serious mistake in asking for her...
He turned and walked away, leaving her with all the red markers in her hands, no doubt remembering she’d said she wanted to sort the separate colours into packs. Well, she did intend to do that. Keeping track of everything in the laboratory was of prime importance, and as far as she was concerned, the laboratory’s responsibility stretched across every sample taken. So she settled on a stool, marking syringes, specimen jars, test tubes, specimen dishes—everything—with coloured stickers or tape or even paint for things that wouldn’t hold the coloured tape.
But her fingers stilled, and she looked towards the door through which Steve Ransome had disappeared.
Was it because he thought as she did about fertility treatments, or because he obviously cared so much about his patients that she found him attractive?
She considered the word. Certainly he was tall and well built, with dark hair, and eyes set deep beneath thick black brows. Nice enough nose, good chin...
But carelessly dressed, unshaven—scruffy!
Scruffily attractive?
Work, she reminded herself.
Five couples, five colours—no, she’d do six. Mr and Mrs Number Six were going to get just as good treatment as the others. Red, green, blue, purple, yellow and brown—she never used black as somewhere along the chain someone might use a black pen to write a note on a sample and confuse things. From this point on she usually thought of the couples in colours—Mr and Mrs Yellow’s egg might be dividing beautifully, Mr Green’s sperm was very healthy.
It made sense, especially in a foreign country where the names might be difficult to pronounce, and it kept things clear in her mind. A psychologist would tell her she did it to prevent herself bonding too closely with the couples and that was probably true as well, but her main function was to run the lab efficiently so every couple had the best chance of success. She packaged up what would be needed for each coloured couple, turning her mind now to all the questions she hadn’t asked Steve.
Normal questions, like did they add a little serum from the mother’s blood to the media in which they’d place the egg, and was serum extracted from the blood on site or at the hospital? It was a job she could do and she had a feeling adaptability was an essential attribute when working here, but was this lab purely for the fertilisation and maturation process or was it multi-purpose?
She finished her packages, two for each colour, one for use by the nurses and doctor interacting with the couples, and one for lab use, and went in search of Steve, wandering around the little clinic first, checking the procedure room, the ultrasound machine Steve would use to measure the size of the women’s follicles to see if an egg was ready for collection, then use again to guide him when collecting them.
He’d lamented not having a laparoscope and perhaps when she returned home she could find an organisation willing to donate one.
‘Were you looking for me?’
He was so close behind her that when she spun around she all but fell against him, needing to put her hand on his chest to steady herself.
Something sparked in Steve’s eyes but she was too concerned with her own reactions to be thinking of his. The long-dormant embers of desire that an earlier smile had brought back to life flared yet again.
With nothing more than an accidental touch?
He mustn’t guess!
That was her first thought.
So cover up!
That was her second.
Although it was far too late. They’d stood, her hand against his chest, for far too long, the tension she could feel in her body matched by what she felt in his—something arcing through the air between them—pulsing, electric.
She stepped back, sure she must be losing her mind that such fantasy could flash through it.
Talk work!
‘I was thinking I could probably find an organisation or service club back home that could donate a laparoscope,’ she said, backing off as far as the doorjamb would allow.
‘It would come in handy, especially as a diagnostic tool,’ he said, ice cool for all she’d seen something flicker in his eyes, and felt the tension—sure she’d felt an accelerated pulse. ‘But since I started coming here, I’ve become adept at removing eggs with the ultrasound to guide me.’
‘Imagine going back to the days when women needed an operation to remove them, sometimes in the middle of the night, because ovulation wasn’t timed as well as it is today.’
This was good, carrying on a normal conversation with him for all the sudden heat and awareness flaring inside her.
‘There are some funny stories of those days,’ he said, smiling at her, although he seemed slightly surprised that she knew the history of IVF.
But, then, he didn’t know her history.
He didn’t know anything about her, which made her feel just a little sad as she walked with him across the courtyard towards their quarters.
‘So, if you’ve seen enough, how about I take you for a quick drive around the town and we grab something to eat down on the foreshore? There’s a great French restaurant on the front that most of the visiting staff use as a home away from home.’
‘But Zoe said that monster barbecue is yours—that you cook?’
He grinned at her, alerting all the bits she’d just damped down.
‘You make it sound somehow shameful,’ he protested. ‘I enjoy cooking—well, barbecuing—and patients bring us food so I feel obliged to cook it. Some of them have so little, yet they give whatever they can. But tonight there’s no free gift so we might as well eat out.’
He hesitated for a moment, then said, ‘You probably want to shower and change before we go. We’ll leave in an hour? Is that okay with you?’
‘I won’t need an hour to shower and change,’ she said. ‘Embryologists still get called out at night from time to time, so I’ve retained my get up and go skills.’
He smiled again, something she was beginning to wish he wouldn’t do because being attracted to a man she’d only just met was ridiculous. Just as ridiculous as reacting to something as simple as a smile.
‘Ah, but in our case, remember, we share the bathroom, and after a morning wrestling with a pelican I, too, need to use it.’
‘A pelican?’
‘I’ll tell you later,’ he said, and for some obscure reason it sounded like a special promise.
‘So the shower? You’ll use it first?’ he prompted, before adding with a teasing grin, ‘Unless, of course, we shower together.’
She didn’t blush—she hadn’t, even when she was young—but she knew if she was a blushing type she’d have been ruby red. Not that she could let him guess that reaction.
‘And wouldn’t the other staff view that as unprofessional behaviour?’ she asked, hoping she sounded far cooler than she felt.
‘Maybe they wouldn’t know,’ he replied, the teasing note lingering in his voice. ‘They don’t live in, you know.’
He wasn’t serious, she was one hundred per cent sure of that, yet there’d been an undertone in his voice that unsettled her even more than she was already unsettled.
An undertone she didn’t want to think about.
Except the conversation did suggest that he had felt whatever it was that had arced between them...
‘I just want to check something back at the lab,’ she said, turning on the spot and hurrying away, calling over her shoulder, ‘so you can have first shower.’
She was being ridiculous.
As if he’d be interested in her.
It was his way. Teasing and maybe a bit flirtatious—laid-back like the islanders—he was that kind of man.
Could she flirt back?
The idea excited her but deep down she knew she couldn’t play that game. She’d never been able to flirt.
Oh, for Pete’s sake, what was she doing, standing in this makeshift lab having a mental conversation with herself about flirting!
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