The Surgeon's Proposal

Except Alex, Dylan revised. Alex swore during surgery the way he used a scalpel—deliberately, and with precision.

And Annabelle laughs at dirty jokes, he thought. As long as they’re actually funny.

She had a lovely laugh. It was gurgly and rich, and came from deep inside her diaphragm.

So perhaps I’m wrong about the swearing thing. Perhaps it’s just me who doesn’t swear in front of her. That goodness thing…I probably don’t have the slightest idea about who she really is at all.

The thought discomfited him a little, for some reason. This marriage to Alex, for example. Unlikely, wasn’t it, if Annabelle Drew was the woman Dylan believed her to be?

The light turned green and he made a little more progress before getting stopped on a steep hill, which necessitated a noisy handbrake start once the car ahead began to move. Dylan’s shirt was glued to his back, and it felt far too limp for a garment he’d only put on an hour ago.

Up ahead. Was that it? At last, yes!

Except that three circuits of the parking area revealed that there were no spaces, which forced Dylan into the next street and delayed his arrival by a further five minutes.

Now I really am in a foul mood! Dylan realised. I wish I’d turned down the invitation.

But his senior colleague would have read more into this than was intended. Alex had a tendency to do that.

Dylan hurried through the entrance of the elegant function centre and asked, ‘Sturgess-Drew wedding? I’m late.’

‘Straight through.’

‘Thanks.’

He opened one half of a double, frosted glass door, slid through the gap, narrowly avoided colliding with a potted palm directly ahead, and discovered that he’d arrived halfway through the ceremony itself. A string quartet waited patiently on a large, draped dais. Guests, seated in neat rows, listened politely as a civil marriage celebrant droned out a syrupy poem.

It was almost impossible to hear. In the front row, a little boy was squirming energetically in the arms of a rather frail-looking woman and yelling, ‘No! Don’t want to sit down! Don’t want to sit down!’ He looked to be around two years old.

There were barely any empty seats. Just one, in fact, at the end of the same short row where the little boy was refusing to sit. Dylan edged his way along the side aisle towards it, hoping Alex wouldn’t notice his terrible timing.

Again, it was the kind of thing that Dr Alexander Sturgess, MB, BS, M.Sc., FRACS, FA Orth. A., would take personally. Alex never considered that other people might have vindictive ex-wives and verbose divorce lawyers, late-running clinics and bad luck with traffic.

Dylan admired Alex Sturgess as a surgeon, which was why he’d returned to Coronation Hospital to train with him after a couple of rotations in hospitals elsewhere in Queensland. As a man, however, Alex wasn’t exactly a role model he strove to emulate.

Easing into the seat, Dylan could hear a little better. The celebrant intoned more flowery words about love. Alex looked as if he’d forgotten to paint an expression on his face—other than, perhaps, a faint mist of approval—and Annabelle looked very, very nervous. The pale grey suit that the groom wore was wrong. Expensive, but wrong. It made Alex’s skin tone look washed out, and stressed the fact that his once blond hair was heavily greyed. He was actually a much better looking specimen of manhood than he appeared today.

Oh, shut up! Dylan told himself. Who are you, to be this critical? Just sit through it, wish them every happiness and let them get on with it!

No.

No.

Annabelle’s dress was lovely. She had resisted the current vogue for strapless wedding gowns, in which most brides looked as if they had a single, log-shaped breast plastered across their chest. Dylan suspected, too, that she had an unsuitably freckly back and shoulders. Instead, she wore some draped confection in warm cream silk.

Portrait neckline, was it called? Anyway, it gave her a classic, regal aura and made her curvy figure look perfect. Her shoulder-length dark hair was piled up in glossy curlicues and tendrils. Her brown eyes were huge. Her freckle-dappled skin looked warm and peach perfect. She wasn’t beautiful, but she had something.

He wasn’t wrong about her, Dylan decided. She was going to be miserable with Alex.

The toddler was still struggling and yelling. He was an attractive child, with brown eyes and light brown curly hair, but clearly he wasn’t suited to this formal setting. The woman who held him—presumably Annabelle’s mother as there was a resemblance—looked grim-faced and at the end of her rope, on the verge of giving up and carrying him out.

Dylan could hear her laboured, wheezy breathing, and remembered overhearing Annabelle talking to another nurse about ‘Mum’s health’. Emphysema, he thought.

Meanwhile, the little boy was ruining the occasion. Alex clearly thought so. He glared in the child’s direction, then frowned tightly. The celebrant reached the meat-and-potatoes part of the ceremony. Traditional and churchy, this bit. Alex’s idea? It didn’t really fit, after those chintzy poems.

‘If anyone here present knows any reason…’

The celebrant raised his voice, struggling to be heard above, ‘Put me down, Gwanma!’

‘May they speak now, or forever hold their peace.’

‘Yes,I do!’ Dylan muttered darkly but very distinctly. ‘You’re making a terrible mistake!’

They’d heard.

Not the whole congregation, but the ones who counted. Annabelle’s mother and Annabelle herself. Alex. The celebrant. The bridesmaid and the best man. The first two rows of guests. Lord, had he said it that loudly?

Apparently.

It didn’t help that the little boy had suddenly gone quiet. A plastic lollipop stick protruding from his mouth explained this unlikely development.

Dylan began to sweat. Again.

Alex and Annabelle had both turned in his direction. Alex was looking slack-jawed and appalled, Annabelle startled and bewildered. The bridesmaid was gulping in air, and had a hand pressed to her ribcage. The best man was staring in horror.

Even Annabelle’s little boy was watching him, happily sucking on his lollipop, while ‘Gwanma’ looked as if she had fully expected some kind of ghastly last straw at some point during the afternoon, but hadn’t thought it was going to be this.

‘I’m sorry,’ Dylan barked. Instinctively, he stepped forward. This was another mistake. He was standing just a foot or two from Annabelle now, and right beside her. ‘I didn’t mean it.’ But he had meant it. ‘It was…’ a moment of indulgent madness ‘…a joke. It was nothing. Please, uh, carry on.’

Alex wasn’t buying it. The slack jaw had hardened. The washed-out complexion had refined to white around his nostrils.

‘A joke?’ His voice rasped. ‘That’s ridiculous! People don’t joke in the middle of a wedding. You have a reputation as a loose cannon in some circles, Dylan, and I’ve chosen to ignore it, but this…What do you mean by it?’

He looked from Dylan to Annabelle and back again, and the action seemed to link the two of them together, standing shoulder to shoulder, as they now were.

‘Dylan? Annabelle?’ His voice rose.

It was obvious that he suspected an affair. Annabelle had gone bright red. The first two rows of guests were watching in strained silence, like the audience at an amateur play in which the cast have forgotten their lines. Further back, there was whispering, as those who hadn’t heard Dylan’s words tried to fathom what was going on. On the string quartet’s dais, the cellist let her fingers slip and the strings of her instrument squawked.

‘Nothing,’ Annabelle said. ‘Nothing, Alex.’ She clasped her hands together. The gesture could have meant either ‘Believe me’ or ‘Forgive me’. Dylan knew it was the former, but Alex clearly wasn’t so sure.

Taking another edgy step forward, which brought the billowing skirt of Annabelle’s dress washing around his trouser-clad legs, Dylan said, ‘Really, Alex, I’m sorry. I know what you’re thinking and it’s my fault, but, no, it’s…’ He cleared his throat. ‘Nothing like that.’

Annabelle’s bridal fragrance enveloped him, evocative and sweet.

‘It isn’t, Alex. Honestly,’ she echoed. Shaking, she laid a hand on her groom’s arm. From this perspective, Dylan could see the slope of her right breast where the neckline of her dress gaped a little with her movement. Too many heartbeats passed before he looked away. ‘You can’t possibly believe—’

‘It doesn’t matter what I believe,’ Alex said. ‘It’s what other people believe, and it’s fairly obvious what they’ll believe about this!’