Sydney Harbour Hospital: Ava's Re-Awakening. Carol Marinelli

a bit carried away, it turned out! By the time their hour was up, they were all smiling. ‘I’ll see you again next month and, George, you in two weeks,’ she said to the couple. ‘And follow the rules this time.’

      She grinned at her own success. Okay, they had a long way to go, but they were both determined to get there, and with a couple as lovely as them, they would, Ava was quite sure.

      ‘Ava?’ She heard a knock at the same time she heard her name, Elise and George had left the door open. She felt her stomach tighten at the sound of her husband’s voice, and she turned round.

      ‘James.’ There he stood, tall, strong, gorgeous and different. His light brown hair, which usually fell rumpled and messy, now had a modern cut, and usually his chin was crying out for a razor, but he was clean-shaven today. Generally James wore jeans and a T-shirt or jumper, depending on the season. His patients, he’d explain, had more on their minds than whether or not the doctor was wearing a suit—but now and then he donned one and when he did, he quite simply took her breath away.

      He wasn’t wearing a suit today but, dressed in grey linen trousers and a black fitted shirt, he was a mixture between the two versions of James she adored and it almost killed her to see it. James never bought himself new clothes; they simply didn’t interest him. Her heart stopped in her chest for a moment, seeing him in new attire, wondering who had bought them for him, or who James had bought them to impress. She had a horrible glimpse into her future if they both worked at SHH, watching the man she loved and knew so well change before her eyes.

      ‘You’ve lost weight,’ she said, because he had. He was a big man, and had never been that overweight, but he’d lost a lot and now stood broad, lean and toned.

      ‘A bit.’ He shrugged.

      ‘How was your flight?’ How stilted and formal she sounded when really she wanted to run to him, to rest her head on his chest, to welcome him home, to say how much she had missed him, except she greeted him like a colleague and clearly it was noticed, because he didn’t even answer the question, just shot her a slightly incredulous look that that was all she had to say after his three months away.

      ‘I’ll see you tonight,’ James said instead, and then as he turned to go, he stopped. ‘Ava, we need to talk.’

      He’d been saying that for months—no, years—as more and more she’d shut him out, only this time it was a different conversation to be had. ‘I know we do.’

      ‘I’ll speak to you tonight.’ He didn’t come over and kiss her, he just turned and walked away and headed out to work, to involve himself in his patients. Only it wasn’t his familiar scent that lingered. Instead she smelt cologne. Ava wished she had patients scheduled this morning, that she could think about someone else’s problems instead of her own.

      Instead, she was giving a lecture.

      She had her little case packed, filled with aids that would make the student nurses laugh at first, but she would push through it, hoping to get her message across, hoping that one day in the future her words would be recalled and a sensitive, informed word might be had by one of them to a patient, that there was help available.

      Except she felt a fraud as she stood there, this cheerful, laughing, sexual dysfunction specialist married to the gorgeous James.

      She couldn’t remember the last time that they had slept together and wasn’t stupid enough to think in the three months he’d been away, in the years they’d been away from each other physically, that James wouldn’t have seen someone else.

      Someone he liked enough to lose weight for, to tone up for, to buy new clothes for and splash on cologne for—it wasn’t the James she knew. She knew that she’d lost him long ago.

      Lost them.