by Susie Tate
Millie had certainly not known what to do with Kira’s rampant friendliness, so she had withdrawn into her shell. The warmer Kira was, the colder Millie became. She barely spoke to her. Eventually, as was normally the case with Millie’s social interactions, the other woman’s smile had faltered and she had started to look uncomfortable. This was all the more excruciating as Millie would put money on the fact that it was very rare indeed for this particular girl to be uncomfortable in any situation. It had to take a really socially inept total bitch to make her appear so.
That’s what Millie had been.
She’d been a bitch.
And whether intentional or not, she still took that on as her fault. She was the one who had insisted that medicine was what she wanted. It would have been easy to bury herself in the safe world of quantum physics or mathematics, but she’d known that if she went down that route, if she allowed herself to hide away in the backroom of some university or major company with them just being happy that she was producing results and supporting her hermit ways in order for her to continue doing so, she knew that she would lose her chance to be normal. She would lose her chance to really be a part of something.
The patient interactions Millie could handle: those followed set lines, set protocols, she knew the boundaries, the rules, and could work well within them. She could even communicate effectively with patients – not that that was always an essential part of radiology, but when it was required Millie could take a history, break bad news, reassure patients. It was interactions like this one now that she fell down on. She simply didn’t understand the rules. And like it or not they were an essential part of being a doctor: you had to be able to interact with your colleagues.
Millie hated the fact that she’d made Kira feel uncomfortable. That she’d dimmed that girl’s light for even a short time. Not for the first time it made her reconsider her decision. Maybe she should be festering away in some lab somewhere? At least then she wouldn’t be able to upset anyone.
*****
This bloody woman is not to be believed, Pav thought as he tapped his foot with impatience. Kira – Kira for Christ’s sake – had come back to the ward with a blank expression after her run-in with Nuclear Winter. He knew that she felt bad about what had happened in the canteen and wanted to give Dr Morrison a chance; hell, Pav had been the one to encourage her to do so. When Kira explained what had happened earlier, she’d clearly been embarrassed.
Kira, embarrassed.
And she hadn’t smiled since. Kira was always smiling; it was like some sort of disease with her. Okay, Pav knew she could be annoying, but the way Miss High and Mighty Reader of Scans treated her was totally out of order. And worse, it made Pav feel guilty – not an emotion he was particularly familiar with, or one he enjoyed overmuch. Kira was still low on confidence clinically since failing her anatomy viva, and he was the one who had suggested she go down to discuss the scan with the on-call radiologist. The fact he was scrubbed in theatre and they were a junior doctor down on the team was a big factor in his decision, but come on. Couldn’t this bloody woman even discuss the options with Kira? Instead of point-blank ignoring her? Add in the fact that Dr Morrison had been avoiding him for weeks now, and the time she’d cut him dead in the MDT meeting, giving that smug twat Lucas the chance to smirk behind his back, and Pav was furious.
‘Right, well,’ he said, gritting his teeth as he noticed she still hadn’t bothered to actually maintain eye contact with him for more than a few seconds. She was sitting there in her perfect pencil skirt and pristine white blouse, with immaculate hair (not a mousy strand out of place) and expertly applied make-up, lording it over his medical student. For fuck’s sake, she was lording it over him. He hadn’t worked all this time to become a consultant surgeon just so snooty know-it-all radiologists could look down their noses at him. ‘I’m here now and hopefully you can discuss the options with me.’
‘The best investigation would be a CT urogram as the patient has a history of atopy and is taking beta blockers, giving him an increased risk of allergic reaction to the dye we use in the IVU ...’
All this information was imparted in an almost bored monotone and directed straight at his right upper arm.
‘How did you even know the patient’s medical history? You can’t –’
‘Instead of looking at Miss Conway I was looking at the screen and had drawn up his details after she said his name. We are now linked to System One GP records. He had a reaction to shellfish recorded on the 12th of May 2003 whilst he was a patient in Derbyshire.’
‘But …’ Pav scratched the back of his head. ‘But there aren’t any allergies in his –’
‘It wasn’t recorded as an allergy by either the hospital or the GP. It was mentioned in a pre-assessment for an appendicectomy.’
‘But Kira was only down here for a few minutes. How could you have gone through all the notes in that amount of –’
‘I read … um … fast … Very fast.’
‘Well, okay but that still means –’
‘Your patient is in the scanner.’
‘What?’ Pav did not like being on the back foot. He prided himself on being a step ahead of most people, usually using his charm and humour to achieve whatever he wanted. ‘How did you – ?’
‘I ordered the scan after Miss Conway left.’
Pav clenched both his fists by his sides, reining in his formidable but normally dormant Greek temper. ‘Could you not have told Kira that was what you were going to do? Don’t you think that might have saved her and me some time?’
He watched Dr Morrison sitting motionless on the chair for a few seconds before she gave an almost imperceptible shrug. He’d been running around like a blue-arse fly trying to sort out this patient, and after Kira told him the scan had been refused he’d been distracted for the crucial last half hour of the nephrectomy he was doing, and all this bitch could do was shrug?
‘Right, well, thanks for that information, Dr Morrison,’ he bit out. ‘And please don’t worry, in future I won’t dream of sending anyone less than registrar grade to request scans or ask advice.’
She was still motionless, but now her attention had turned back to her computer screen. He rolled his eyes and muttered ‘stuck-up icy bitch’ under his breath as he stomped out of her office.
Pav had thought he’d been pretty restrained when it came to that particular confrontation with Dr Morrison. Unfortunately he underestimated how loud his voice in anger could be, even when spoken under his breath; but he did see her visibly flinch as that verbal blow hit home. What he didn’t see was her shoulders sag in relief as he left, or the repair job she had to do on her wrists later that night. Pav prided himself on his ability to read women, but with Dr Morrison, as was so often the case for her in the hospital, he’d failed miserably.
He may not have been able to read Millie entirely, but he found that over the next few hours he could not get that flinch out of his mind. He joked with people, he was cheeky, he teased, but he was never openly rude. What had pushed him into being such a wanker? The lack of eye contact had wound him up, coupled with her obvious reluctance to even talk to him. But was he such an arrogant twat that he needed every female he came across to fawn all over him?
Evidently, yes.
Sitting in his office at the end of the day, his hands went up into his hair and he tore his fingers through it in frustration. Bloody hell, he would have to apologize. He pushed away from the desk and stalked out into the corridor towards the radiology department. When he reached Dr Morrison’s office it was just Donald sitting at his desk, grumbling under his breath at his computer screen.
‘Uh … hi, Don,’ Pav said, smiling at the older man and walking into the room to stand beside him. ‘I’m looking for Dr Morrison.’
‘Millie?’ asked Don, his eyebrows shooting up into his hairline. ‘She’s not on call now, son. Colin took over at five. It’s all on the rota.’
‘I know … I wasn’t looking for her to �
��’ Pav trailed off and one of his hands went to the back of his neck. ‘I just need to speak to her. I think maybe earlier I …’
Don stopped tapping away at the keyboard of the computer he appeared to be locked out of and turned to face Pav, narrowing his eyes in suspicion.
‘What did you say to her?’ he asked. Pav knew Don as a jolly chap. The quintessential picture of a benevolent white-haired grandad. Always smiling, always open and friendly. Well, he wasn’t looking benevolent now, and he definitely wasn’t smiling.
‘I think there may have been a misunderstanding and I …’
‘Millie left two hours ago.’
‘Oh, right, well …’
‘Do you know that today is the first time she has ever left work early?’
‘Uh …’
‘I don’t know what you said to her, but the best thing you can do now is leave her alone.’
‘I just want to speak to –’
‘Leave her alone. This office is her safe space. I’ll not have some arrogant, jumped-up surgeon take that away from her.’
‘Safe space? What are you – ?’
‘Ugh … look, I’ve got to visit the urinal for the five hundredth time today, damn prostate. By the time I come back I want you out of this office. You understand me?’
‘Yes, sir,’ Pav said as Don strode past him with surprising speed, considering he looked like Gandalf’s older cousin. Pav watched him go with a frown. As he looked across to Dr Morrison’s desk an uneasy feeling settled over him.
‘Safe space’? What on earth did the old man mean by that?
Pav walked over to the desk and absently lifted one of the stone paperweights, which were the only decoration the sterile area contained. When he put it back down, slightly out of its perfect alignment, he must have knocked the computer mouse, because the screen of the terminal suddenly lit up. There was an open Word document in the centre and the name at the top of it caught his attention. It was addressed to Elizabeth Penny.
Pav had never been very good at minding his own business. And Libby was his best friend Jamie’s girlfriend after all. He leaned in to take a closer look. It was outlining the ongoing payments for a grant, a very substantial grant: one that must have given Libby financial freedom. Pav knew that Libby had only recently hung up her stripper shoes. He’d assumed that she’d finally decided to let Jamie support her and her daughter in some way whilst she was still a student. Now that he thought about how fiercely independent Libby was, he realized that was unlikely. This grant was life-changing for her.
Pav frowned. How had Dr Morrison got hold of this? Pav knew that Dr Morrison used to look after Rosie a few early mornings a week when Libby was on the surgical rotation so she could start when the other students started at seven thirty. Apparently the little girl had hung out in Dr Morrison’s office with her for an hour until the hospital nursery opened.
Millie wasn’t the only one with a quick mind and a high IQ. Pav couldn’t think of any reason why she would have a copy of this letter unless she was the one who’d written it. He filed that piece of information away. He had succeeded in alienating Dr Morrison completely that afternoon (so much for his legendary charm rays); he was going to need all the ammunition he could get if he was going to have any chance of changing her mind about public speaking. He had another six months to do it in before the conference.
No problem, he thought to himself as he strode out of the department.
There was nobody Pavlos Martakis couldn’t talk around, given enough time. Nobody.
Chapter 5
Ruin everything
Millie stood at the back of the church in the shadows, prepared for a quick exit as soon as the ceremony was finished. This was the first wedding she had ever been invited to. El had, yet again, been ridiculously excited to pick out her outfit. Millie knew she looked perfect.
But she also knew her limits.
She would not be going to the reception. She would not be congratulating the bride and groom. It was enough to watch them from here, to see how happy Libby and Rosie looked, and to know that in a small way she had something to do with that happiness; not that she would ever let them know that. Libby already took too much interest in Millie for her liking. Not many people looked beneath her cool exterior, not many could be bothered; but she had a feeling Libby was different. If she knew what Millie had done, she would no doubt double her efforts to draw her out.
Applause broke out when the couple kissed as man and wife despite the vicar not inviting them to do so. Millie knew that was her cue to leave. But she allowed herself a moment longer to watch their happiness. She even allowed herself a fleeting smile. Something caught her eye next to the altar and she froze, her smile dying on her lips. One pair of dark eyes wasn’t on the bride and groom like the rest of the church; these eyes were looking directly at her, and, as always, they held way too much curiousity.
Pavlos Martakis was really becoming a problem. Since that day in her office a month ago he’d attempted to apologize more than once. Seemingly immune to embarrassment, he’d brought her coffees at every single weekly MDT and persisted in trying to approach her despite her continued rudeness. After the second week Millie had broken and taken a sip of the Americano he’d left in front of her. The bastard was smiling when he managed to catch her eye after that small victory, but it hadn’t stopped her from polishing the whole cup off. By her calculation she owed him fifteen pounds and seventy-three pence currently in Americanos. It was getting ridiculous.
She broke eye contact to take one more look at the gorgeous couple, then allowed her gaze to sweep over the congregation. The empty feeling that had been intensifying for the last few months grew almost crippling for a moment, but she pushed it down, like always, and turned her back on all the happy people around her to leave.
But, once she was standing outside the church, Millie realised that simply seeing Libby and Jamie get married would not be enough. She wanted just a little more. She wanted to watch them leave the church together, and she even wanted to shower some of the confetti rose petals she’d been given by one of the ushers at the start of the service on them. Although she knew that she wasn’t responsible for the couple finally getting married, Millie liked to think that by taking the pressure off Libby financially (not that Libby knew it was her), she had had a small part to play. So she stepped back behind a few gravestones and watched the congregation file out.
The church had been packed so the crowd was huge. Perfect for melting into and remaining anonymous. Millie found crowds strangely comforting, as long as she was amongst them and not the focus of their attention. The wedding guests divided to surround the path out of the church and Millie joined the throng nearest the far gate. She merged perfectly, reminding herself to give Eleanor the most enormous tip next time she saw her. El would like that. It was some small compensation for the amount of time she had to spend with her; Millie was well aware of how boring and downright uncomfortable her company could be; the very least she could do was recompense Eleanor financially for it.
A cheer went up in the crowd as the couple emerged and Millie felt the corners of her mouth tip up, just a little. Jamie was carrying Rosie, with his other arm wrapped around his new wife, and all three were laughing. In Millie’s mind the crowd melted away as she focused on them and the joy radiating from their threesome. When they were nearly at the gate she shook out her confetti to join the rest of the rose petals in the air. That was when Rosie spotted her.
‘Millie!’ Rosie shouted, wriggling frantically until she was set down on her feet next to Jamie and then plunging into the crowd to get through to where Millie was standing, open-mouthed with shock.
Rosie, Don and Gammy were the only people that Millie allowed herself to believe genuinely enjoyed her company. In Don’s case he hadn’t really had much choice in the matter, Gammy was family; but Rosie – now, Rosie had chosen her. She’d pushed her way into Millie’s office one day when her mother was down in the radiology departm
ent asking for a scan and plonked herself down on Millie’s lap. Millie didn’t know any other children, but she knew Rosie was special. Gifted. Not in the way Millie had been gifted, not at the expense of her social skills or happiness. But in a way that complemented every aspect of her personality: that gave her higher emotional intelligence than most fifty-year-olds, leave alone five-year-olds.
‘You came!’ Rosie shouted when she was finally in front of Millie. Her arms went straight up in the air and she did a little dance on the spot before she launched herself at Millie’s legs. For some reason the little girl looked like she had rolled in mud before the church service and had a couple of twigs sticking out of her hair. Millie felt her cheeks heat as all eyes swung from the newlyweds to her and she squatted down to Rosie’s level. Rosie detached herself from Millie’s legs to circle her neck with her little arms.
‘You look so pretty,’ Millie told her, cuddling the small body close and letting that familiar warm feeling settle on her chest, despite the discomfort of being the focus of attention. ‘You’ve been bug-hunting though, huh?’
Rosie pulled back slightly and opened her little fist to reveal a centipede and a woodlouse. ‘They wanted to come to the church too,’ she explained. ‘Can you tell me their posh names?’
‘This one is Armadillidium Valgare and this guy is Collinellidae. Okay? Now you’d better get back to your –’
‘Rosie, what are you … ? Oh, it’s you.’ Millie looked up to see that Kira had made it through the crowd. She looked beautiful in her bridesmaid dress, her red hair containing a deep blue streak of the exact same shade. Kira was barely over five feet tall but Millie still found her ridiculously intimidating. Suddenly the light-beige silk outfit Eleanor had painstakingly selected felt dull and lifeless. ‘Rose-Pose, come on. Mummy and Daddy are waiting.’
‘I get a daddy now,’ Rosie told Millie, unwinding her arms from Millie’s neck and skipping over to Kira to take her hand.