Bad Case of Loving You

by Laney Cairo

  She leaned forward, elbows on the table, and said, “What’s happened? Is there something going on in the hospital to make a meeting necessary?”

  “Okay, a reasonable point. One of the renal consultants couldn’t get the thoracic surgical team to assess one of his patients. They claimed they didn’t have space on their list to even consider it. So, after talking to his patient so she knew what he was doing, he changed her diagnosis to malignant tumours. Surgical team saw her instantly and complained bitterly about the consultant bypassing the system. The admin wants to discipline the doctor; we want the BMA in on it because the doctor was just doing his job in the best way he could.”

  The students all stared at me, and I felt guilty for disillusioning them. “Who can tell me what the underlying issues are?”

  Nevins was off in sexual fantasy heaven and I felt like grabbing him, shaking him, and shouting, “Do you think you’re the only one here that had sex last night? The rest of us are managing to concentrate!”

  I waited.

  Lin said, “The primary objective is patient care. If it takes deception to manipulate the bureaucracy and get that, what’s the problem?”

  I waited, and said, “And?”

  Blank looks.

  “What about the surgical team?” I asked.

  “By the first doctor misleading them and forcing them to divert resources that they couldn’t spare, it decreases their ability to provide care to their patients,” Lin said.

  “And?”

  Lin looked puzzled, and it was Nevins who looked up and said, “It says something about the hospital if it is that short of resources.”

  I was stunned. Obviously a degree of critical thinking had been imparted by osmosis.

  “Absolutely,” I said. “What occupancy rate does the hospital run at?”

  It was a rhetorical question; I didn’t actually expect anyone to know.

  “104%,” I said. “Yes, we manage to consistently run at significantly over capacity. If you ever meet Rina, the bed manager, ask her about it. She describes it as rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic.”

  “How?” Blake asked. “How does the hospital fill 104% of its beds?”

  What the hell, it didn’t look like we were ever going to manage to do rounds today, so I might as well show them.

  “Let’s go. Come and have a look at the dark underbelly of the hospital, see how many people can be packed into Casualty on a bad day.”

  * * *

  F was in the cafeteria at lunchtime and I took my burger over to join him. He was looking far more cheerful than I had expected from someone who’d had a new one ripped at an early morning meeting.

  “How’s it going?” I asked.

  “Fucking awful,” he said brightly. “But that’s all right. I typed up a letter of resignation and left it in the printer

  ’accidentally’ for a minute or two. That should help things.”

  “I made my med students think about your problem. Then I took them to Casualty.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Really? Did it help?”

  I shrugged. “Fuck knows.”

  He smiled knowingly. “I looked it up. I’m impressed.”

  “So was I,” I said.

  Chapter Eleven

  The meeting was mind-boggling. I sat down the back with Lin and watched in amazement as the Powers That Be went head to head with a bunch of angry doctors. There had been shouting, heated discussion of the standard employment contract the hospital used, and threats of industrial action.

  Lin and I sat in rapt silence through this, though I must admit that I kept my eyes on Andrew most of the time. He was so passionate, speaking at one point about the obligations of practicing medicine, and the hospital’s abrogation of its duty of care, and I tried to reconcile this aspect of him with what I’d seen the night before. What he’d let me do. How good it had been.

  Lin nudged me at one point, while Andrew was talking, and whispered, “You’ve got it bad for him, haven’t you?”

  “Guess so,” I whispered back.

  Fuck, I’d been so sure it had been a one-night stand; that we’d just fuck and that would be it, and I couldn’t quite believe that he’d asked me over for dinner, and that he was happy for me to study at his place. That implied something I hadn’t really had a chance to think about. Was it possible he wanted a relationship? That would explain him lending me his shirt, leaving me to let myself out of his house.

  He was shouting now, standing up beside the doctor who had lied about his patient, the same man I’d seen him talking to in the bar the night before. I thought of what we’d seen that morning, where he’d taken us in the hospital. I guess at an intellectual level I’d known that parts of the National Health were in that bad a state, but it was a shock to actually see it.

  It made me want to shout, too, and those patients weren’t my patients yet. They would be soon, either here or in another hospital, and I wasn’t sure how I’d cope.

  The BMA lawyer interrupted one of the hospital’s lawyers and said, “This is at an impasse. I suggest we stop now, we’re not making headway.”

  The doctor that had precipitated this mess, the one who looked like he was Andrew’s friend, stood up and called out,

  “Drinks are on me, ten minutes, in the bar over the road.”

  Andrew slapped him on the back and pushed his way through the doctors who were all standing up, talking at the top of their voices.

  “Good to see you both here,” he said. “Join us at the bar?”

  Lin said, “We’d love to,” and Andrew smiled at us briefly, then turned to speak with the person who was tapping on his shoulder.

  Lin grinned at me in the lift. A couple of other doctors got in, too, so I was saved from whatever teasing Lin obviously had in mind.

  She stayed for one drink only, then left, presumably to meet up with Nevins, leaving me leaning uncomfortably against the bar, listening to the BMA rep try and persuade me to buy a membership. I wanted to leave, but I really wanted to talk to Andrew first. I guess I was still uncertain that he actually wanted to see me again. Wasn’t much I could do about that right at that instant.

  He walked past me while I was at the urinal, and I wanted to turn and look at him, but pissing with an apadravya requires a degree of concentration. There was a bang, bang, bang and when I looked over my shoulder, he was pushing open all the doors of the cubicles.

  Oh, yeah.

  I followed him into the end one.

  This wasn’t a particularly classy bar; there were needle disposal units in each of the cubicles, but the wall that I found myself pressed up against was clean enough.

  The kiss wasn’t clean, it was wet and demanding, and I clung onto Andrew and kissed him back as hard as I could.

  Fuck, his hands were pulling at my chinos and I was hard in an instant, groaning as he stroked me and sucked on the skin of my neck.

  “Fuck,” he groaned, and I felt rather than heard the word.

  Someone came into the bathroom. I could hear him whistling and pissing, then there were voices and Andrew was kissing me like there was no tomorrow, our mouths sliding wetly together.

  He was hard when I found his cock through his clothes but he guided my hand away. “No,” he whispered. “This is for you.”

  He flicked his wrist on the next stroke, and squeezed and I closed my eyes and leaned back against the cubicle wall.

  One of the loos flushed, a hand basin tap ran, and I groaned. Andrew pushed fingers into my mouth to shush me.

  There was a muffled chuckle from someone, and the door to the bar opened briefly, letting in a sudden wash of voices for a moment.

  “Be quiet,” Andrew murmured, and he stroked me hard.

  There are two ways I come. I can scream and thrash and clutch and groan and in general make a hell of a fuss about it.

  Or I can hold still, legs trembling, stomach muscles quavering, keeping quiet.

  It was the wrong one, and I think I bit Andrew’s fing
ers.

  He was almost convulsed with laughter by the time I’d finished, and if I hadn’t been hanging onto the wall for support, and trying to collect my scattered wits and clothes, I might have thought it was funny, too.

  “Jesus Christ,” an unfamiliar voice said. “Good to know someone is having fun.”

  The door to the bar opened again and while I pulled my trousers up, Andrew stood on the toilet bowl and peered over the top of the cubicles. “All clear.” He clambered down and kissed me quickly. “I’ll pick you up at eight from your place.”

  I gave him a couple of minutes to mingle back in the crowd, and for anyone watching to become bored with waiting to see who else walked out, before heading out of the bathroom and through the bar to catch the bus back to my place.

  There was a fair bit of good-natured ribbing from my housemates for taking a guy upstairs and fucking, then disappearing for the night, but I just nodded and smiled and told them to fuck off back to engineer land.

  I stuffed some textbooks and my laptop into my backpack, along with some clean clothes and a razor and toothbrush, then flopped down onto my unmade bed. I hadn’t planned on sleeping, in fact I had a microbiology textbook in my hands, but I fell asleep instantly.

  Chapter Twelve

  F slung a cheerful arm around my shoulders. “Andrew, you wanker.” He pushed a pint at me with his free hand. “Gonna get fired with me?”

  “Absolutely,” I said. Right then, I didn’t actually care about much of anything, least of all losing my job. Matthew was adorable, I was picking him up later, we were going to fuck.

  For a man with an over-developed social conscience, I was proving to be easily distracted by a little sex. Perhaps principles were for people who were celibate. Everyone else was too busy fucking to worry about anything else.

  “What you thinking about?” F asked, leaning his head closer and ignoring the BMA rep, who was being boring.

  “That I don’t fucking care if I’m going to lose my job over this. What the fuck does it matter?”

  F shook his head and I began to suspect he was drunker than he seemed. Of course, he could just have stopped off at his car for a couple of joints before coming to the bar.

  “Andrew, my sweet boy.” He pushed his mouth close to my ear. “You reek of sex,” he whispered. “Come all over your clothes?”

  Fuckityfuckityfuck. There was no way I was going to look down and find out, but it was one detail that had escaped me at the time.

  “Think I might just go home,” I said to F and he nodded sagely.

  “Smart move there. Leave me here with the BMA rep, why don’t you?”

  “Don’t drive.”

  He nodded and pursed his lips. “Not going to. Have given my keys to, um, someone. Think she was a blonde.” He looked hopefully around the crowd at the bar, and I left him risking life and limb by frisking people at random, presumably in search of his keys.

  F was right, I did reek of sex, and in the car I ran an experimental hand over my clothes. Yep, there was a good reason for the pervasive smell.

  At home, I changed my work clothes for jeans and T-shirt, and changed my sheets, too. Food would require some thought, eventually, and possibly a stop for more take-away.

  There weren’t crashing waves of noise rolling out of Matthew’s house, but still no one answered when I knocked repeatedly on the door. I eventually pushed it open and found myself staring at a room of scabby looking students, one of whom was pushing an entire piece of pizza into his mouth, while another one sucked on a bong.

  “Is Matthew around?” I asked, and a boy shrugged. And the boy proved to be a girl when she lifted her arm and dropped it around the shoulders of the boy … person …

  beside her, displaying obvious breast tissue.

  “Who?” she asked.

  “Matthew. Medical student, gay?” I asked. Henry was going to grow up to be just like this, I could tell.

  “Yeah,” someone with wispy facial hair said. “Upstairs.”

  They turned their attention away from me, so I stepped over the snaking ADSL cabling and climbed the stairs. Sure, I’d been a drug-fucked student myself, at least for as long as it took for me to work out that I’d fail unless I did some work, but I didn’t remember ever being that out of it.

  F, on the other hand, had presumably spent his entire medical degree off his face.

  There was no answer when I tapped on Matthew’s door so I pushed the door open carefully. Matthew was asleep on the mattress on the floor, reading lamp on the floor beside him, Medical Microbiology, by Mims and sycophants, on the pillow beside him.

  There was an inarticulate shout from downstairs and I pushed the door closed again and kicked my shoes off.

  Matthew didn’t stir as I stepped onto the futon and carefully lay down on the bunched-up sheet beside him. He was obviously exhausted; I could wait for him to wake up.

  My pager vibrated on my hip, and I ignored it, and got to my cell phone and turned it off before the hospital called to see why I hadn’t answered my pager.

  This was what had put me off fucking fellow medical types; it always felt like there was a third person (or on one memorable occasion, a fourth) in the bed with you. Someone who would page you at random, who wanted to swab you for MRSA during sex, someone that thought you actually wanted to work a weekend shift. Nobody in their right mind would sleep with a doctor, not even another doctor.

  Not that sharing my life with a musician had actually been any easier. Never share a house with someone who plays an amplified instrument, and if you have to, disable the amp at bedtime each night. That little fuse is your friend. Never travel with someone who insists their instrument has to sit on their lap the whole time, especially if you have a child with them. For that matter, never travel with a child either.

  Lying there, listening to Matthew breathe, listening to the rise and fall of voices from downstairs, and the sound of distressed plumbing somewhere in the building, was peaceful.

  I wasn’t sleepy; I’d stopped feeling tired sometime during my first year as a fuckwit house physician. The bit of me that was supposed to warn me about exhaustion had burnt out years ago, like an asthmatic’s central respiratory chemoreceptors no longer responding to falls in the partial pressure of carbon dioxide in arterial blood.

  Some time later—I wasn’t sure how long, but it was long enough that I had become so bored that reading Mims and the sycophants had begun to seem appealing—Matthew stretched and stirred and rolled over to settle against me.

  “You’re here,” he said sleepily. Sleepy people are allowed to state the obvious.

  “Yeah. Didn’t want to wake you up.” He was warm against my skin, even through the layers of clothing between us, and the reading light flickered as the electrical wiring in the house struggled with the load of the stereo that had just been turned on downstairs. “How do you manage to sleep here?” I asked him.

  “Earplugs,” he said.

  Matthew moved, leaning across to kiss me, and I could feel the hard ridge of his cock through the layers of clothing. God, I remembered what it was like to be that young, then his fingers found the buttons of my jeans, and I didn’t feel quite so old any more.

  Things were just starting to get interesting when there was smash of breaking glass, and a shrill scream from downstairs, audible over the music.

  “Matthew!” someone shouted, and we both took off out of the room and down the stairs.

  Whoever the stupid fuck was that decided forty years ago that sliding glass doors were fashionable should fucking well have to come and clean up this sort of mess.

  “Turn the music off!” I shouted, and I squatted down beside the young woman, who was kneeling down amidst the shattered glass, blood welling freely from her arm.

  Matthew handed me a pair of latex gloves, and I had a vague memory now of there being some beside the bed. “Call an ambulance, tell them it’s a hemorrhage,” I said. I peeled the girl’s hand off her arm, and silence descended on
the house.

  She was sobbing, quite reasonably in my opinion considering the mess she’d made of the tendons in her arm, and I said, “I’m a doctor. Let me have a look.”

  Oh, yeah, great chunks of glass in her arm. I couldn’t apply pressure until the worst of them were out, so I grabbed the bits I could see and pulled them out. Matthew was doing the right thing, gloves on, too, soothing the woman, who was called Heidi, trying to stop her from pulling at her arm. There must have been people standing around, but if they didn’t get in the way, I wasn’t interested in them.

  The big shards came out easily enough, and there was fuck all I could do about the smaller bits without some decent supplies, so I took the wadded-up shirt Matthew handed me, and pushed the ragged edges of the wound together as well as I could, then wrapped the shirt around the girl’s arm and clamped my hand over the top. There was blood welling up through the fabric, but I’d be damned if I was going to try do anything as fancy as tie off an artery when there was an ambulance a few minutes away.

  “Do you have a medical kit in your car?” Matthew asked me, and I shook my head. Medical kits were for doctors who didn’t get pissed off at them being stolen all the time, not for me.

  The losers in the house must have rubbed their mutual brain cells together, because they carried the mattress from the living room over, and we lifted Heidi onto it. This was an improvement. With Heidi lying down, I could get some decent elevation on the arm and have a better chance of slowing the blood loss.

  “Have you got an IV catheter kit here?” I asked Matthew, and he nodded and bolted back up the stairs. I’d hoped he would have; like the NGTs it was something he could reasonably be expected to practice on himself. And if I could get a line in ready for the paramedics, it would speed things up for them, and if Heidi lost enough blood that her veins went flat, an existing line could make all the difference…

  Matthew was back in a moment, handing me a bundle of equipment. “Take over,” I said. Matthew’s hands clamped over mine, and I slid mine out.