Unknown by Unknown

Suzie assured him as she turned to leave. She moved her eyebrows up and down suggestively and gave him a last arch look, before marching off down the corridor.
    Clay sighed as he pushed his way through the double doors of the cafeteria and strode towards the banks of serving counters. The last thing he needed, or wanted, was a blind date, even though he did say it himself. An objective opinion might have said differently. Now he had twenty minutes in which to eat something and get himself over to the Medical Arts Building, he saw irritably as he looked at his watch. In a moment his mind became busy with all that he had to do.
    Tomorrow he had the medical advisory committee meeting at seven-thirty, which met once a month to talk about matters related to patient care and other urgent hospital matters, and on Thursday morning he had the surgical teaching rounds in the lecture theatre at the hospital, also early in the morning. They tried to have rounds every third week, although his surgical team wasn't always the one presenting a case or two.
    This time, Rick Sommers and two of the interns were going to present the case of Mike Dolby. At the operation today the hospital photographer had taken some very good pictures of Mr Dolby's gut, the mass of adhesions. Those would make very good and dramatic slides for the rounds. The term 'rounds' referred to the literal ward rounds of patients which doctors used to make in the old days, going from bed to bed with an entourage of junior doctors and the nurses in charge of the wards.
    Clay pondered that mental image briefly. These days they stayed put in one place and looked at slides and received a talk about an interesting case—far less time-consuming, although it meant that things were less and less hands on.
    Automatically he helped himself to a tray and selected some items of food which he could eat quickly. The brief meeting with Suzie had unsettled him. The very concept of a blind date irritated him slightly, a feeling he recognized as coming from his own understanding that his life was centred almost totally on work and on the progress of his career. To get ahead in his profession there was no other alternative. Those who relaxed too much, who were not absolutely up to date and on the ball, slipped behind. It was just as well that he loved his work and, without being conceited, knew that he was good at it.
    'Hi, Clay. How goes it?' A colleague accosted him and joined him at a table.
    Thrusting aside a slight feeling of dissonance which his own thoughts had engendered, Clay turned with relief to the prospect of talking about familiar subjects. 'Great,' he said, 'just great.'
     
    For once he found himself very glad not to be on call when he let himself into the house at about seven o'clock that evening, glad also to find the little cat waiting for him. He'd had a cat flap built into the back door that opened onto the large back garden so that the cat could come and go in the months of good weather.
    'Hey, Victoria,' he said, kneeling down to stroke the cat. 'Pleased to see me, eh?' Purring rewarded this simple effort of affection. 'Come on, food.' He led the way into the kitchen, where there was a tantalizing smell of something good being kept warm for him in the oven. Alice, his housekeeper, who came daily to clean and tidy the place, also cooked supper for him each week night and prepared meals for him to keep in the refrigerator for the weekend.
    As he put out cat food for Victoria, the telephone rang. The call-display unit showed him that the number belonged to Dawn Renton. Reluctance vied with a kind of odd relief that it was her. Right now he felt that he could use the company of a woman, yet at the same time he had a desire to be alone with the simple company of an affectionate, grateful cat. He let the phone ring four times before he answered, trying to decide. 'Hi,' he said. Dawn knew that he would know who was calling. 'How are you?'
    'Better for hearing your voice,