And she turned and stalked off, head held high, out of the restaurant and into a parked taxi before Tak had even moved a muscle.
Her tears could wait until she was alone. The way they always had.
CHAPTER NINE
‘THAT SOUNDS LIKE an emphatic crack,’ Tak approved, as he carefully lifted out a section of his patient’s skull and began to clear away the dura to expose her brain. ‘Okay, we have good access to the temporal lobe now, and the tumour is hiding in there. Time to map her brain, so go ahead and wake her up.’
He waited as his co-pilot and the anaesthetist worked together to bring the patient to the level of awareness he would need her to have in order to carry out his language tests as he passed a series of electrical currents over her brain to map it.
The lull was unwelcome. It created a void in the operation and allowed his own brain the chance to reflect on things he would rather not have to mull over.
Like the way everything had changed when he’d touched Effie, held her, kissed her last night.
One minute they’d been playing some kind of game, and the next he had completely taken leave of his senses. Felt the same kind of madness taking hold of him that he had always despised in his selfish, ruthless father. The man who had taken such delight in telling his wife time and again that his latest mistress made him feel alive in a way that Tak’s mother never could.
The same kind of selfishness that Rafi had shown, taking a mistress of his own and believing it was perfectly normal even though he’d seen how it had devastated their mother. Worse, Rafi had said contemptuously that Uma Basu—he hadn’t called her Mama since he’d turned fifteen—was foolish, emotional, even irrational. That her depressions and addictions were of her own making, and even that they excused their father for needing to find companionship elsewhere, rather than it being his father’s actions causing Uma’s devastation.
Tak couldn’t say he thought his brother was entirely wrong—their mother was quite the master manipulator—though what had come first, her machinations or his father’s cruelty, was a question he couldn’t answer.
Either way, he’d spent his whole life avoiding being like either his father or his brother. He’d thought he’d succeeded. His relationships had always been fine. He had sated his physical and emotional desires without ever feeling as though he wasn’t in control.
Until last night. Or, more accurately, until Effie.
He could no longer deny the attraction which had been evident between them since that first meeting. Or the fact that he’d been acting irrationally since the hospital gala—not least when he’d commanded her to pack her bags and move herself and her daughter into his home.
He could couch it in whatever terms he liked—Effie needing somewhere to live or him wanting to distract his mother from her obsession with arranging a marriage for him—but ultimately it all came down to the fact that he’d wanted an excuse to spend more time with Effie. To indulge this attraction which had slid so insidiously into his entire body.
‘Madeleine, can you hear me?’
As the neurologist dropped down behind the sheets Tak switched quickly back to the task in hand.
‘Can you open your eyes for me, Madeleine? Good. Now, can you stick out your tongue for me?’
Working quickly and efficiently, Tak moved the electric current over different areas of his patient’s brain. As the tests went on, through actions and various language tests, he could work out which parts of Madeleine’s brain were responsible for key activities and try to avoid these areas when he moved in to try to remove the tumour.
They were partway through the first series of exercises, the reciting of the alphabet, when the neurologist signalled to him to slow down.
‘Okay, Tak.’ Her voice carried low but clear. ‘We have some problems in this area.’
‘Understood.’ Tak nodded to his colleague.
It seemed as though they were near a vital speech area of Madeleine’s brain, from where he would be unable to remove the tumour. But they were only a short while into the operation and their patient was already becoming increasingly tired, finding it harder and harder to stay awake.
He had ideally anticipated three hours’ brain-mapping for this size tumour, but they were barely ninety minutes in. If they didn’t work quickly Tak risked missing out on the vital brain-mapping information that would enable him to remove the tumour without compromising their patient’s brain function.
It was the kind of challenge which spurred him on—even more so today, when he didn’t want to think about anything but his work.
If only everything in his life could be pigeonholed so damned easily.
* * *
For several almost blissful hours Tak concentrated on his surgery.
And the next. And the next.
Yet the minute he was out of the operating room, and his shift was over, his brain was flooded afresh with images of Effie. They had been becoming more and more insistent all week. Ever since he’d taken Effie on that disastrous date, since he’d taken Effie’s daughter to that bowling alley.
He had no idea what it was about Effie—about wanting to make the woman happy—that had possessed him to volunteer to chaperone her kid at a party. Not that it had been a chore. The girl had chattered non-stop, even whilst climbing into his sleek, muscular super-car. Undisguised happiness had danced off her every word, and as far as she was concerned the evening had been a resounding success.