The slippery game of outward love. Part 3

When she awoke she was glad to be alive.
Half an hour later she was glad of a small glass of water. After four hours she was glad to leave her bed and hobble and after six long hours she was very grateful to be leaving the hospital, sat in Parvez’s passenger seat, shooting down the M40, back to normality. As the first lights of London began to slip across the windscreen, sharp stabs of pain shot across through her groin causing her to suck in large gushes of air. Her brother in law watched her agony, slowly shaking his head sympathetically, “The guy’s cut you deep there.”

That night she found a YouTube video of ligation and stripping of the saphenous vein and found herself watching it in rapt horror. It was as if those dextrous blue-gloved hands sliced into her very own groin. Alice tried to imagine Mr Dhoni in his gowns but, she realised, as she drifted off to sleep, she had completely forgotten his face.

Hassan, although distracted by business, tried to stay in England for as long as he could but within the week Karachi called and he was once again gone from her. Now that Karachi was just around the corner it seemed he was going more and more often and when at home he’d sleep in the spare bed only coming into ‘their’ room to dress. During the long lonely nights, after the children were in bed Alice’s thoughts would drift to the last man who had actually touched her and began fantasising about her surgeon. One night she tried googling “Mr Dhoni vascular surgeon” and quickly became acquainted with all the hospitals he worked in, his colleagues and the many letters after his name. She also found out that he shared his name with several other business men and an Indian test cricketer. But, try as she might, no amount of searching would offer up a single image of the face of Mr Manjit Singh Dhoni BM BS, MRCP, FRCS (Gen. Surg). Sometimes she would try to recreate the image of him sat beside her, clipboard in hand, making her wince again. She could see the suit and hear the clipped English accent but now she wasn’t even sure what colour his hair was. She trawled images of surgeons, hospital news bulletins, anything that might have his face on. A website of one of the private clinics he worked at began with the face of a celebrity plastic surgeon smiling confidently at prospective patients. The face seemed to say ‘Come to me all ye who are wrinkly and sagging and I will transform you into superior beings of ageless beauty. Yes, even you could be nearly as good looking as me, and I look rather like Omar Sharif.’ It infected her mind and she started putting his features on Mr Dhoni’s shoulders. She yearned for that passed moment which she had barely acknowledged right before surgery. Then she had merely glanced at the face of the man who would cut her, open her up, and sew her back together as a matter of course. There would have been no glance given if she had a second chance. She would have looked intently into his eyes, studied the arch of his eyebrows and paid close attention to the sweep of his nose. Instead of feeling a rising panic she would have focussed on the curve of his lips, scrutinized his cheekbones and taken careful note of the thrust of his chin thus creating a map of his face that would become an indelible structure in her memory. Closing her eyes she easily recalled the neatly tailored suit and the possibility of a white shirt, but the face? Perhaps it was that she was getting it all mixed up, perhaps she was trying to recreate Omar Sharif when she should have been thinking of Ghandi. Was he ugly? She couldn’t be sure anymore. Her one saving grace was a card that had been thrust in her hand as she left detailing her next appointment to see him again. Made for exactly 6 weeks after the operation, the appointment would be a time for him to check up on his work and make sure all was well and it would provide a last chance for her to inspect the face, put a head on a suit. She was able to assure herself that it would actually be Mr Dhoni whom she saw and not some minion because he needed to see his cuts on her legs, his and her scars. Before Mr Dhoni could sign off on her he would have to see her one more time. And boy how he was going see her this time. She began the preparations half deliberately, then kind of daring herself to go on.

There could be no doubt as the weeks went by that Alice’s self esteem had shot through the roof. Dhoni had given her her legs back; it was as simple as that. For ten long years they had remained hidden under long skirts and tight trousers and over time she had stopped noticing what was great about her body and instead had begun to see how like her mother’s hers was becoming. Now she was proud of her legs again so she began them, moisturising them and admiring them in the mirror. All her old high heels started to make appearances and she began to remember bits her old, younger self. She remembered how she used to blow her tips on expensive hosiery. How she had said a skirt was a long skirt if it was wider than your belt. The heels made her walk taller, the skirts made her look thinner and the stockings made her feel sexy once again.  She spent the day before the appointment at the hairdressers turning her rusty coloured hair into a bright red vision and at last the transformation was complete.

The mountain was at the back of the office when she arrived and a young boy barely out of school handed her a blue ticket giving her a wink. She flicked back her new hair and headed for the rectangle. Just then a nurse came out of one of the consulting rooms and for an instant she caught a glimpse of the back of him seated there, at a computer, then the nurse reverently closed the door and he was gone. So his hair was grey. Did that help her in remembering the face? Surely now that she was back here where the memory of his face was encoded...? but no. She found herself staring at the closed door, willing it to open. It was hot so she took off her jacket and leafed through yet another magazine with more celebrities. She wondered why she had bothered with heels and expensive tights at all when the nurse asked her to take them off and wait on the bed. So how do you sit on a hospital trolley with nothing on your bottom half and look, well look less like a patient and more like you? She decided on legs crossed trying to look casual. As usual there was no warning, he just walked right in.

The most striking thing about his face was his deep black eyes, shaded by languorous eyelids, and long black lashes. How could she have forgotten such eyes? How could she have forgotten how his eyebrows gently arched to frame those eyes? Or how his delicate mouth widened into a grin to reveal perfectly white teeth? He asked if everything was fine whilst she committed these details to her memory. ‘Yes’ was her reply. He didn’t need to touch her he could see that the scars had healed well, ‘Great! Good!’ he said as he headed for the door.

He heard her say ‘Bye Mr Dhoni’ as he left the room with a soft Punjabi ‘Dh’ and a wisp of a sigh. He was done. Back in his office he was shocked to realise that he was shaking. He wasn’t going to easily loose the image of her sat there: she had dyed her hair to a flaming orange. Bright green eyes searched his face looking for something he was in no a position to give. He knew what had happened. The Rubicon had been crossed and his silly imaginary stamp was vindicated; that nervous woman with eyes of emerald and hair of flame had woken up from the anaesthetic believing herself to be in love with him.

‘Why do English women do this?’ he thought. Do Italian women habitually fall in love with their surgeons? Do Indian girls start swooning once they come round from the anaesthetic? And why, he sighed, did it always have to be the beautiful ones? He heard his father’s cautionary  words of long ago when he had first brought Karen home to meet them; ‘Nain mila ke kade chain nai milda...’ Fall in love, lose your peace. He had thought he was in control at the time and not in love with a gori. How wrong he had been. And now there was too much at stake, far too much to lose to head down that slippery slope one more time. As he headed for his next consultation he conceded that he may not be able forget her but at least, thankfully, he would never have to see her again.

‘Mr Dhoni?’ She was right in front of him. He smiled. Was he relieved to see her?

‘I forgot, I had another question to ask you.’

‘Yes?’ He took a step back and tried to relax, they were in a public place and all was well.

‘Yes, I wanted to ask you about my spider veins. Now that my legs are back to normal I’d like to get rid of them. I know you can’t carry out that procedure here in this place...’ she glanced at the nicotine corridor, then looked back into his eyes and saw something different there, so that for an instant she forgot what she was trying to say. He pushed down the handle behind him and led her into the privacy of his office.

She stood there babbling, ‘I just feel now that I‘ve got my old legs back, you know, much wants more and all that.’

He sat down in a chair and asked ‘Can I have a look?’ So she stepped out of her heels and hitched up her skirt to pull down the expensive silk tights. Their eyes met and although they continued with their conversation neither one of them were smiling. The silence of the tiny office suddenly became charged with expectation. She showed him the thin blue lines on her legs and he pressed an expert thumb over each one. Now she spoke just to drown out the silence that hung between them.

‘Do you think you can get rid of them?’ Again he looked up. Yes he could; a few injections, that’s all. He, or his colleague, could do it at the local private hospital.

‘Oh I’d want you to do it,’ she said, ‘Better the devil you know’ she added. But he wasn’t a devil. His eyes seemed to suck her in. Something hovered between them; a fragile vision of all their pasts and futures teetered in mid air and the slightest gust of air in that airless room could smash it to smithereens.

‘Okay’

‘Okay’ His gaze was still searching, penetrating her psyche in search of answers. How much would you be willing to sacrifice for the briefest of touches? Do you dare throw everything in the air for one tender embrace? Can you risk everything for the promise of nothing?

She wasn’t sure.

Standing up she pulled her tights back over her long smooth legs covering the scars. 

‘I’ll make an appointment then.’ He stood up, and they were eye to eye.

How much was she willing to risk?

Manjit took a step forward and laid his family, his career and his future out on the line. Looking up at his face made Alice feel as though everything she had ever been was now floating away from her, leaving her with nothing but the present and this moment with this man whose deep and tender black eyes looked directly into her soul. She closed her eyes and surrendered, offering her lips to his. But instead of a kiss a trembling finger gently traced the outline of her mouth as though a doting parent was gently admonishing a much beloved child. She looked at him and saw tears filling his eyes. Then, as if to reassure him, she pulled his hand away and lifted his palm to her mouth then planted a gentle kiss in the middle.

‘Sorry’ she said.

‘Don’t be sorry.’

‘Will you still do my veins?’

Oh God oh God oh God.

‘Yes,’ it was all he could say.