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were settled between them. 'I'm Richard Decker.'
    'Hi,' she said.
    By the end of that hectic day of gynaecological surgery Lisa felt that she knew a lot about Richard Decker— his prodigious ego, the immense driving force behind his capacity for work, his hard, clinical intelligence, his seductive charm. Because of her attraction to him she had overlooked the assumptions he had made which from someone else might have jarred.
    'I've enjoyed working with you, Dr Decker.' She smiled at him sincerely. He had been more than competent.
    'Call me Richard,' he said, when they were momentarily alone. 'Have dinner with me on the weekend. For once, I've got a whole weekend off. Who knows when it may happen again?'
    'Well...' She hesitated, thinking of the essential chores she usually did on the weekend, actually nervous about accepting his offer.
    'Give me your phone number,' he said, grabbing a handy message pad and pen. 'I'll call you.'
    Someone had come into the room then so she quickly gave him her number. With a tremor of delightful anticipation she felt that she had gone beyond a point of no return with him.
    That was how it had begun—from a simple giving of her telephone number. From then on she would gradually give more to Dr Richard Decker.. .much, much more. And she hadn't, as it turned out, discovered as much about him on that first working day as she had thought.
     
    'Is the pain bad?' The gentle question, spoken at her side, together with a spasm of pain brought her back abruptly to the present. In a few moments her mind had encompassed two and a half years of her past life.
    Now the present intruded again forcefully as her eyelids shot open and she heard her own moan of pain—as though it were coming from another person—as her uterus contracted powerfully and another gush of fluid escaped from her body.
    'Oh. . .the contractions are very strong,' she gasped, turning her head sideways. 'Please help me... The pain... I can't...'
    'It's OK, everything's OK.'
    Lisa's eyes met those of the gowned and masked figure beside her. Not for me, it isn't, she wanted to say to him. And maybe not for my baby, either.
    'Hi! I've given you a shot of something in the IV. You should be feeling the effects of that any second now, just to take the edge off the pain,' he said. 'I'm Rudy Frazer, from the department of anaesthesia, and I'm going to be giving you your anaesthetic. Take a deep breath... Ride with the pain, if you can. That's it... Let it out slowly. In a moment or two I'm going to be giving you the Pentothal. OK? First, we're taking you into the OR.'
    As he spoke he began to push the stretcher through a door into the room where she would have her operation. Turning her head, Lisa could see the large operating lights, already switched on, over the operating table. The scrub nurse was ready, standing waiting for her, with the surgeon and his two assistants. It was all so familiar. This time she was on the other side of the fence.
    'Please...' Lisa looked up at Dr Frazer '.. .Don't let anything happen to this baby.'
    'We won't,' Dr Rudy Frazer said emphatically. 'Now, just slide over there onto the operating table. That's my girl... Take the sheet with you. Great! Now, I want to ask you a few brief questions.'
    She watched him take up the 20cc syringe that held the anaesthetic drug, Pentothal, that would put her to sleep in a few brief seconds when injected into her IV line. At the same time, the surgeons began prepping her abdomen with an iodine solution. The fear had receded somewhat now. From somewhere she had found the necessary strength. Leonora positioned her arms out on padded boards, moved her IV drip bags from the stretcher pole to another metal pole.
    'Have you had an anaesthetic before? And are you allergic to any drugs that you know of?' Dr Frazer asked.
    'No.. .no allergies. I've had an anaesthetic before when I had my appendix out at sixteen.'
    'Great! Any problems with your heart, lungs or kidneys? Any major