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'Do you think that will be enough time for you to get your set-up ready? I don't want to hassle you by snapping at your heels, so to speak.'
    'Now, that would come into the canine category, Dr Sotheby,' she said coolly, not looking at him. 'I thought we'd established that you were in the feline category. At least, Rhona has been trying to convince me that you're just a pussycat.'
    Clay laughed. 'Rhona should know,' he said.
    'Make it seven minutes, Dr Sotheby,' Sophie said, 'although I can do with no minutes if I have to.' She turned up the water pressure full blast by manipulating the long handles of the taps with her elbows. 'And I seldom feel hassled in the OR.'
    'I see,' he said, smiling as he helped himself to a sterile scrub brush. 'Then why do I detect an atmosphere, Sophie? May I call you Sophie?'
    'You know you can,' she said. 'Everybody else does. And if there's an atmosphere, as you say, it's because of the dissonance between your perception and mine.'
    'Ah, yes... the tiger.'
    'Precisely.'
    Such badinage helped to diffuse tension in the OR, even though he sensed her antipathy which in itself could produce a tension of sorts if they weren't careful. Anyway, he considered, this was better than blind adoration, not uncommon, which could produce its own problems.
    Rick Sommers burst into the scrub area breathlessly, dissolving by his presence any atmosphere. 'Sony I'm late, sir,' he said to Clay, who didn't like to be called 'sir' because it made him feel old. 'Got called down to Emergency for a quick consult.'
    'Anything for us down there?' It wasn't uncommon for the elective cases in the OR to get bumped to make way for emergencies that came in via the emergency department.
    'No, the chest guys are going to deal with it,' Rick panted, putting on a face mask and goggles in short order. 'Hi, Sophie.' He turned on the taps at the sink next to her, preparatory to getting scrubbed.
    'Hi, Rick,' she responded warmly. 'How are you these days?'
    It was as though she hadn't seen him for a couple of years, Clay thought.
    'Tired,' Rick said. 'I was on call for the weekend. All I want to do is sleep. I can't understand how people get addicted to drugs when there's sleep.'
    'You're off tonight, though?' she asked commiseratingly, so that Clay wondered anew whether they were sleeping together. They always seemed pretty close in the OR.
    'I sure am,' he said feelingly.
    'Well, you can go out to eat,' she suggested. 'In this great weather you can go to a street cafe, have a beer and a meal, get away from hospital food.'
    'Nope,' Rick said, scrubbing his hands and arms vigorously with hexabetadine, 'I'm just gonna go home, stay in and sort through my unmatched socks. Then I'm going to sleep, sleep, sleep.'
    Sophie's soft laugh added to the lightness of the mood which had pervaded the place from the moment Rick had breezed in. Somewhere along the line Clay had lost the knack for that sort of lightness, he realized that as he, too, began to scrub.
    Sophie gave her hands and arms a final rinse, before backing into room four with her hands held up so that she wouldn't inadvertently touch anything. Clay was left wondering why he couldn't get to her with the same kind of insouciance Rick displayed. It must be something to do with the fact that Rick was ten years younger than he was.
    Why would he want to impress Sophie, anyway? he argued with himself. He didn't, of course. He simply felt guilty at breaking his own rules of conduct. That was it. Otherwise why would he worry about her, when there was Dawn, who clearly wanted to be with him as often as possible, as well as plenty of other nubile women on whom he had but to turn an eye? He knew that much from experience. Maybe it was because she seemed to wear a label that said 'Not available to Clay Sotheby'.
    'Well, I hope we can get away with only a temporary ileostomy here,' Rick said. 'I really feel for the guy.'
    'Everything points towards that,' Clay said. 'We'll do our best, that's for