The Nurse's Christmas Wish (The Cornish Consultants)

His eyes glittered hard in the darkness. ‘You can’t fix everything.’

‘Neither can you.’ She stepped forward into the room, fearing rejection and yet unable to leave him alone. ‘You did everything you could, Mac. More than most would have done and she’s holding her own. I just rang ITU to check.’

There was a long silence.

‘Did you see his face?’ He spoke slowly, almost talking to himself. ‘It was like looking at myself in the mirror. A couple of years ago, I was in his shoes. Standing in the relatives’ room, waiting for someone to come and tell me what the hell was happening to my wife.’

Hardly daring to breathe, Louisa tiptoed into the room. There was a long silence and she sat down timidly on the sofa next to him, braced for rejection.

‘Do you want to talk about it?’

‘No.’ Mac closed his eyes and rested his head against the back of the sofa. ‘Or maybe I do. I don’t know. I’ve never tried it before. It was all too complicated.’

Louisa relaxed slightly, relieved that he hadn’t sent her away. ‘Is it so complicated just to say how you feel?’

He looked at her. ‘It is when how you feel isn’t the way people expect you to feel.’

She sat still. ‘How did you feel, Mac?’

He closed his eyes. ‘Angry. Frustrated. Let down.’

‘It’s normal to feel angry when people die.’

‘That’s what everyone told me. It’s fine, they said, all part of the normal grieving process.’ He gave a harsh laugh. ‘They didn’t have a bloody clue.’ He looked at her. ‘She was nothing like you. She wouldn’t have been sitting there now, waiting patiently for me to talk. She would have been tapping her high-heeled shoes on the floor and glancing at her watch. For Melissa everything was measured in time. Billable hours.’

Louisa watched him. ‘Tell me what she was like.’

‘Melissa?’ He dropped his head back against the sofa. ‘She was driven. Wildly ambitious, political and totally focused on where she was going and how she was going to get there.’

‘She was a doctor?’

Mac shook his head. ‘A lawyer. She worked for a big, fancy firm in London and I met her when I was doing a stint for one of the London teaching hospitals. We got married. End of story.’

Except it wasn’t the end of the story, Louisa mused. Any fool could see that.

He had so many emotions that he’d locked away.

‘So you moved down here once you were married?’

‘In a manner of speaking. There were firms down here that would have given her a partnership but she wasn’t interested. She carried on working in London during the week and travelled here at weekends.’

Louisa hid her surprise. ‘That’s quite a journey.’ Even with good roads that was a journey of at least five hours. ‘You must have been very much in love.’

Mac made a noise that was somewhere between a groan and a laugh. ‘Louisa, you are so innocent!’ He turned his head towards her, his eyes tired and more than a little cynical. ‘Such a romantic. I hate to disillusion you but my marriage was anything but a fairy-tale.’

She sat still, everything suddenly falling into place. ‘You weren’t in love with her?’

‘At the beginning. Maybe.’ He shrugged. ‘Or maybe we weren’t. We had a passionate relationship and I think we both confused that with love. But we didn’t want the same things.’

‘What did you want, Mac?’ She hardly dared ask the question.

‘I suppose I was pretty naïve, too,’ he said gruffly. ‘I thought we could both enjoy our careers until the time came when we were ready to start a family together. But Melissa didn’t want that. Perhaps she never did. She was only interested in her career. In the next case. The adulation. She was seduced by her own success.’

‘There are plenty of couples who both manage to have careers,’ Louisa said softly, and Mac gave a bitter laugh.

‘But generally they at least live in the same county. Melissa never had any intention of leaving London. She had to be at the heart of the action. A law firm outside the city was her idea of hell.’

‘And you would never have left Cornwall because it’s so much a part of who you are,’ Louisa said softly, remembering how he content he seemed whenever he was at the beach or in the sea.