Chapter Nine #2
‘You don’t know if I’m any good.’ I was sceptical. Other than the occasional weird corridor or tea-room encounter, we’d virtually never worked on the floor together.
‘Yeah, I do. I’ve seen your handovers after night shifts; I’ve read your notes. Heard people talk about you.’
‘You’re sounding very creepy, Abel Sutherland. Are you spying on me? Are you a psychopath?’ I wasn’t good at receiving compliments and I couldn’t imagine he was being serious.
‘You’ll be a great consultant.’
Now I was the one to scoff. ‘Have you seen my people skills? I think I’ll need to do a course in how to communicate before they’ll let me loose managing the department.’
‘Your people skills are fine.’ He was looking at me earnestly now. ‘You’ve just spent too long around dicks like Felix who make you feel like you’re not the competent woman that you are.’
The word ‘woman’ hit something in my core. Abel was calling me a woman. Why did that make my tummy flutter?
‘When did you get your fellowship?’ I asked, trying to get back on track and ignore the gooey feeling in my belly.
‘About seven years ago.’
‘And would you do it again? All of it?’
He seemed to consider that for a moment. ‘If someone paid me to climb mountains and jump out of helicopters just for the fun of it, I’d probably do that instead.’
‘You’re a total hardcore adventure man, then?’ I gave his shoulder a mocking bump.
‘Oh, yeah. So manly and brave.’ His eyes were flashing, his expression was disturbingly sexy, and I could tell he had not a single clue how goddamn splendid he looked.
Felix had always been completely aware of his charm and effect on ladies, but Abel had this confident, self-assured manner that seemed completely without intention yet was enough to make me nearly drool.
‘Want to see some pictures?’
‘Okay.’ I couldn’t take my eyes off him.
He was … beautiful. And despite being sworn off men, apparently I wasn’t yet so sexually dormant not to notice.
His jaw was sharply angled. His neck was strong and almost royal in its grandeur.
His merino thermal was so thin that every bulge of his muscles was vivid enough that I couldn’t help imagining how he’d look without it on. Exquisite, I decided.
He turned to look at me and I looked right back at him, almost certain he knew what I was thinking about; my brain an open book.
We were shoulder to shoulder and our faces were less than a foot apart.
I could feel my breathing become shallow and my groin get hot for the second time that day and I felt he must know. He must know.
‘The pictures?’ I said, clearing my gravelly throat.
‘The pictures.’
He swiped open his phone and began scrolling through photos.
I tried not to watch until he found what he was looking for; maybe he’d accidentally flash a picture of him in the nude or a screenshot of his favourite porn.
All of which would be fine, but my current level of discomfort probably couldn’t handle any more awkward factor.
‘Here.’ He’d stopped scrolling and I let my gaze land on the phone.
It was a mountain scene. Snow, peaks – breathtaking.
He moved to the next picture, which showed a man in an orange jacket, arms out either side, helmet and goggles obscuring his features.
Behind him the snow fell away in what looked like a nearly sheer several-hundred-metre drop.
‘Is that you?’
‘No, my friend Will. We climb together.’
‘Jesus,’ I muttered. The very idea of it made me feel nauseous. And dizzy. ‘That looks horrifying.’
I felt him laugh beside me.
‘Did you like the climb today?’
I hesitated. ‘I did …’ I frowned at the photo, trying to make sense of the emotions I’d felt. ‘But it also made me feel … very out of control.’
‘You don’t like that feeling?’
‘No. I hate that feeling.’
‘You looked like you enjoyed it at the time.’
I remembered the embarrassing elation and how I’d thrown my arms around him, and I winced at the memory. I hoped he wasn’t reliving the same moment.
‘I did enjoy it at the time … but it made me feel a bit wild.’
‘Is there something wrong with feeling wild?’
‘I don’t know yet.’ I studied the wood on the wall opposite us. ‘It’s … unpredictable. Felix was right when he said I don’t like taking risks. I like to do things where I know the outcome.’
‘And did Felix ever make you feel like maybe you’d be strong enough to take a risk?’
I huffed a laugh. ‘No. I think he liked the sense of superiority it gave him in our relationship. He was the fun and spontaneous one. I’m the boring and conservative one.’
‘Wow,’ he deadpanned. ‘What a man.’
I shrugged. ‘Well. It’s true.’
‘So, you’re someone who is naturally cautious and he takes that as an opportunity to make you feel disempowered and bolster his own self-esteem?’
‘I guess.’
‘How very admirable, Mary.’
The intensity of him watching me was almost overwhelming. I didn’t know how to respond.
I pointed to the phone again, the screen black. ‘So, where’s the mountain?’
‘New Zealand.’
‘Show me some more.’
He smiled and flicked through the photos.
There were more top-of-the-mountain pics, then some climbing shots of another guy midway up a sheer snow slope.
There were ropes and backpacks and poles and all sorts of other competent, outdoorsy-looking things.
The pictures seemed to chart a day – various stages of what looked like the same ascent.
Then there was a shot that looked like it came from another day: a dark-haired girl arm in arm with Abel. They wore beanies and hiking jackets. She was beautiful in a totally breathtaking way, with piercing eyes that looked like jewels.
‘Tessie.’ Abel’s voice was full of affection as he scrolled past a few more pictures of the two of them and then we were back to mountains and snow and epic peaks.
Your girlfriend? I wanted to ask, but of course it was way too forward. It was none of my business, and he would have elaborated if he’d wanted to. Anyway, their closeness was clear from the photo, the soft way he said her name.
The knowledge gave me a weird feeling in my chest I didn’t want to decipher.
He paused at a spectacular shot of a ridge line, sharp and steep. The clear blue sky stretched above it and the peaks of mountains seemed to continue in the distance forever.
‘You think anyone would pay me just to swan around in the mountains all day?’
‘The North Face? You could probably get them to hire you as a model.’ It slipped out before I could stop myself, but he seemed to think I was being sarcastic and gave an amused chuckle, clicking his phone to black.
‘Sorry. I’m being self-indulgent. You’re probably not interested at all.’
‘Not personally interested, no. But I admire seeing other people do exciting things.’
‘What would you do? If you could get paid to do absolutely anything you wanted?’
I frowned. ‘I like being a doctor. I’m happy that’s what I get paid to do.’
‘But if you weren’t? What would you do instead?’
It was an oddly personal question. I don’t think anyone had ever asked me that before.
Only Ebony and Mum knew about my gardening; even in all our years, I’d never talked about it with Felix.
I think a part of me was afraid he’d diminish it somehow, break something of mine that was special.
So, I’d never mentioned it, and our rental apartments hadn’t ever lent themselves to growing of any kind.
But the genuinely curious way Abel had asked made me surprise myself by saying, ‘I’d probably grow flowers, I suppose. ’
‘Flowers.’
‘Yeah. I’ve always loved growing flowers.’
He just stared at me for a moment, not saying anything, and I realised I was grateful he didn’t.
Glad he didn’t say something inadvertently condescending like, ‘How sweet’ or ‘That’s cute’.
In fact, I had the oddest feeling he actually understood growing flowers was important to me.
Not why it was important of course, but just that it was, and I appreciated that he left it without comment or judgement.
My eyes shifted to the open laptop beside me. It was like a guilty tug.
‘You want me to let you get back to it?’ he asked, nodding at the screen.
I groaned. ‘I guess so.’
‘I’m gone.’
He hopped off my bed and the air was suddenly cold beside me. It was shocking how his absence actually made my spirits sink. And it made me realise that I’d liked sitting there next to him, talking and looking at his photos. It had made me feel good.
I watched him unfold his ridiculously long body on his bed, which seemed dwarfish beneath him. He hunched the pillow beneath his chest and his feet hung over the edge in a way that made an involuntary laugh escape me.
‘What?’ he demanded with a look of almost childlike self-consciousness – stupidly silly and cute.
‘Your – your feet …’ I didn’t know why I was finding this so funny, but my belly was starting to shake.
He looked at his feet and back to me. ‘Are you making fun of me, Contrary Mary?’
‘You’re just—’ I was almost hysterical. ‘You look ridiculous.’ I hiccuped. ‘You’re … a very tall man.’ I tried to compose myself, but he started jiggling his massive, sock-clad feet, amused by my amusement.
‘You’re distracting me, Mary,’ he said, in mocking reprimand. ‘Mind your own ketoacidosis.’
I composed myself and reached for the big emergency medicine textbook I’d packed in my bag.
I virtually never used textbooks anymore; there were so many up-to-date online resources that books were basically obsolete.
But unfortunately, I was very much offline, and the single resource I had saved on my laptop wasn’t as useful as I’d hoped. I wasn’t in a position to be choosy.
I opened the book to the endocrinology section and tried to concentrate.
Abel was reading a book now too. Lying on his belly, resting on his elbows.
I couldn’t make out the title but it looked like a novel; soft, worn pages that I heard turn, one after the other as I did my best to focus.
I wondered what a man like Abel Sutherland would choose to read in the quiet of his wilderness evening time.
Something manly, no doubt. Maybe about fighting a bear?
Or the benefits of eating your colleagues when you ran out of food?
How to overcome a distaste for cannibalism?
‘You’re not making much progress over there,’ he muttered after a while, his eyes not leaving his book.
‘Pardon me?’ I said, returning my concentration to the dreariness of the sodium-potassium ATPase pump.
‘You haven’t turned the page in about fifteen minutes.’
I wanted to say something sharp in response, like he hadn’t either. But he had, he’d been flying through the pages, while I’d been busy trying to work out what the hell it was he was so engrossed in.
‘What’s your book?’ I asked.
‘Captain Corelli’s Mandolin.’ He finally looked my way. ‘You know it?’
‘No. Why would I possibly know it?’
‘Do you read?’
I scoffed. ‘Of course I read.’
‘Anything other than textbooks?’
I could tell he knew the answer in the way his eyes crinkled.
‘Not … much.’
He shook his head in sad way. ‘Contrary Mary, you really are missing out.’
‘Oh, yeah?’ I didn’t believe it. Reading for pleasure was a total waste of time. Time I could be studying, or working, or anything else really.
‘Indulge me?’
‘Sorry?’ I had no idea what he meant.
‘Let me read you a chapter. You’ll love it. Everyone loves Captain Corelli’s Mandolin. Unless you’re completely emotionally dead.’
‘Maybe I am emotionally dead.’
He chuckled. ‘Go on. Take a risk, Mary, I promise you, no harm will come.’
I knew he was teasing, but there was no menace in it.
‘You’re ridiculous. Why on earth would you want to read me a chapter of your book?
’ But in actual fact, I was curious. I did want to know what Abel Sutherland was filling his brain with.
Interestingly, I was wanting to know a lot about Abel Sutherland.
‘Fine. You can read me the paragraph you’re in. I don’t want to disrupt your flow.’
‘You’re underestimating how much I love this book. And how many times I can read it from start to finish. Let’s start with chapter one.’
I scrutinised him to see if he was serious. His eyes were smiling but he had turned to the beginning of the book and it looked like he was really going to do this – read to me.
I couldn’t recall the last time I had ever been read to. And based on my mum’s health, it would have only been on a handful of occasions when I was less than five years old.
‘Ketoacidosis away please, Mary. I need your full and undivided attention.’