Bad Case of Loving You

by Laney Cairo

“Perhaps they’re insisting he pays all his own malpractice insurance. Or perhaps it’s just that he’s the best damn nephrologist I’ve ever seen,” I said.

  Olivia harrumphed. “Then the word comes down from on high that not only are we getting that aggressive little bastard, but he was bringing you and some other troublemaker with him, and that someone had found a secret supply of money to fund a new registrar’s position. I’ve been campaigning for another registrar for years.”

  “It’s that simple?” I asked. “I’ve got a job here?”

  Olivia leaned across the desk and held out her hand.

  “Welcome to London. Don’t drink the water, hitchhike, or eat any food from a roadside stall. Of course, I need to explain that you won’t actually be solely oncology; immunology, cardiology and rheumatology all want a piece of the action.”

  “General slave?” I asked, and I could feel myself grinning.

  “Yep,” Olivia said. “Guess they’ll give you a resident eventually. Come on, I’ll walk you around the wards you’ll mostly be working on.”

  * * *

  I came home with my head full, a jumble of new faces and labyrinthine Victorian wards, overlaid with the universal constants of hospitals; the smell of bad food and isopropyl alcohol.

  The lights were on when I put my key in the door, and I could hear music. Matthew was accompanying the stereo in the kitchen, singing badly, and as I didn’t recognise the music, it must have been one of his CDs. He appeared as I closed the door behind myself.

  “Hey,” he said, kissing my cheek. “Hope it’s all right for me to be here, even though you hadn’t invited me.”

  “I gave you a key,” I said, and I touched his face for a moment, suddenly blown away by the enormity of what his being here meant. “You can come around any time you want, as often as you want.”

  We kissed for a while, gentle and undemanding, and Matthew smiled at me. “I’m cooking; hope you’re going to like it.”

  It had been years since I’d come home from work and found someone cooking for me; it was something Tim and I had never done. Tim thought food was a temptation to be denied, and I thought food was like sex. You could get along without it, or with really basic food, for quite a while, but it was hard to be happy unless you had plenty on hand, just in case you got hungry.

  “Smells great,” I said. “What’re we eating?”

  “Nothing fancy, just stir fry with a tin of satay mix in it,”

  Matthew said. “I found stuff in your cupboards. Have you been doing job interviews? You’ve got your best shirt on.”

  I was kind of surprised that Matthew had observed enough of my meagre wardrobe to work out which was my least stained shirt, but he obviously had. “I’ve got a job,” I said.

  “At London Hospital. No idea when I start or anything like that.”

  “Is it a good job?” Matthew said, grinning with delight, making me grin, too. God, I just couldn’t take my eyes off him.

  “It’s a fucking brilliant job,” I said. “I’ll be a palliative care registrar, kind of floating all over the hospital, though I’m guessing that oncology will think they own me. It’s far better than grinding my days away in general medicine; this is specialising in something that I really want to do.”

  I flopped down onto the couch and Matthew straddled my lap. “Great!” he said, and I speculated about what would happen if I started undressing him. Guess we wouldn’t get dinner, though. “Any disadvantages?” he asked. “Or is this a dream job?”

  “Ihavetositmyphysician’sexams,” I said quickly, hoping that it wouldn’t be so bad if I didn’t think about it.

  “That’s not good, is it?” Matthew asked, and I shook my head.

  “Think both of us are going to be studying hard, not just you,” I said.

  He wrinkled his nose at me and said, “I won’t distract you, if you don’t distract me.”

  I squeezed his ass, and chuckled, then slid a hand around to unzip his fly, knowing he had nothing on underneath.

  “Think you should borrow some of my shorts then, because I’m kinda obsessing about your cock at the moment.”

  Chapter Forty Two

  There was a sustained shout from downstairs, and the sound of glass shattering, but I didn’t run down the stairs to see if anyone was hurt. I’d have to actually care for that happen.

  I hated my housemates at that moment. The stereo was so loud that the floor boards were humming faintly, I hadn’t been able to use either loo for a couple of hours, the stairs were so packed with people that just getting out of my room was problematic, and people I didn’t know kept opening my door every few minutes, looking for somewhere to fuck.

  It was Heidi’s welcome home party, and the cops had already been called twice.

  There was another crash, clearly audible through my headphones. There was no way I could study through this, and I certainly wasn’t going to be able to sleep. There wasn’t enough credit on my phone to actually call Andrew, so I texted him, ‘please call me.’

  I had intended studying, to make sure I wasn’t falling behind, really hit the books hard, then go over to Andrew’s tomorrow evening for a meal and some silent sex, but I was going to fucking kill the next person who opened my bedroom door.

  The door opened and I shouted out, “Fuck off!” to the person who’d opened it without even looking up from my pathohistology text.

  My phone vibrated in my hand, and I took off my headphones and put it against my ear hard.

  It was Andrew, though I couldn’t hear him clearly enough to know what he was saying.

  “Can you come and get me?” I shouted into the phone.

  I caught his answer. “On my way,” he shouted back.

  I packed my textbooks, laptop, and some clothes into my pack, then looked around the room to see if there was anything else worth stealing there. Only my porn, I guessed, but I didn’t feel like lugging a carton of muscle mags over to Andrew’s, so I hid them under my dirty clothes.

  I rolled the futon up to discourage people from fucking on it and stuck a sign saying, ‘STAY THE FUCK OUT’ on my door, then pushed my way through the press of bodies and down the stairs.

  The party had spilled out onto the footpath, too, and down the street, so I worked my way through the crowd and up the street to somewhere that Andrew would be able to see me.

  Exactly how good an idea this had been became obvious when, just as the Morris rattled to a halt beside the kerb, a panda car came down the street and pulled up where the crowd had spilled out onto the street.

  Andrew was grinning as he leaned across and unlocked the passenger door.

  I tossed my pack onto the back seat, put my laptop down more carefully, and climbed into the car.

  “Hey, babe,” he said, and I leaned across and kissed him.

  “Thanks for this, they’re being the housemates from hell at the moment,” I said.

  He kissed me again. “I’m not going to complain, not if I get to sleep with you tonight.”

  I had to admit, it was a benefit that had occurred to me, too, so I just grinned back at him.

  He didn’t the start the car again; instead he took hold of my hand, looking serious all of a sudden. “You don’t have to say yes, but how about going back and getting the rest of your stuff?”

  I could see by the streetlight that his hand was stained with paint or something. “You want me to move in with you?”

  I asked. “Seriously?”

  He nodded. “You’ve been at my place the past five nights.

  I know you planned on being at your place to study, but it doesn’t look like that’s going to work. I think, if we set some boundaries, especially with Henry, you’ll get more study done at my place.”

  I squeezed his hand, and he lifted my hand up and kissed my knuckles. “This is going to sound horribly needy and desperate and just plain embarrassing, but I was really missing you this evening, and was not looking forward to sleeping without you.”

  I hugg
ed him and said, “If you think I’m not going to drive you crazy, I’d love to move in with you.”

  The police had dispersed some of the hordes of party-goers, which made emptying my room into the back of the Morris easier. I left Andrew lugging boxes down the stairs and went and found Jeff number one. He was in the kitchen, hanging onto some girl while she was sick in the sink, and I tapped his shoulder.

  “Yeah,” he said, and I was glad the police had confiscated the stereo and the noise had dropped enough that I could hear him clearly.

  “I’m moving out,” I said, and I took the money I’d just borrowed from Andrew out of my pocket.

  “What?” he said.

  “Here’s a month’s rent,” I said. “I’m leaving my futon behind, too, the household can have it.”

  Heidi came over and said, “You’re leaving, Matthew?” She took the money out of Jeff’s hand and put it in her own pocket. “Because of tonight? The party?”

  I shook my head. “No, because Andrew just asked me to move in with him.”

  She hugged me tightly.

  I didn’t really own much, not without the futon, and Andrew had got most of it in the car before I’d extricated myself from Heidi’s clutches.

  He met me on the stairs, his arms full of the sheets of revision notes and anatomy sketches that had covered my walls.

  “I don’t really need to take them,” I said. “Your place is too lovely to clutter up with sheets of scribble.”

  He shrugged, crinkling the papers, and said, “You, of all people, must know that I’m casual about what happens to my walls. If I can paint on them, you can cover them in revision notes.”

  Henry was sprawled on the couch, watching something on the TV that involved a lot of gunfire, when we arrived, and he barely glanced up when I said, “Hello.”

  About five minutes later, when I walked into the house, trailing an armful of my clothes, he appeared in the doorway to the lounge room. “You moving in?” he asked me, looking at the bulging pack in my arms.

  “Yep,” I said, and he nodded and went back to sprawling on the couch.

  “Cool,” he said, picking up the remote control.

  I carried the stuff in my arms up to Andrew’s room and added it to the mound on the bedroom floor. “That’s the last of it,” I said to Andrew, and I sat down on the bed, unbearably tired all of a sudden.

  Chapter Forty Three

  When I woke up on Saturday morning, the other side of the bed was empty, but there was a reassuring mound of junk at the foot of the bed. Matthew had definitely moved in.

  I pulled a robe on and wandered downstairs. Henry was still in bed, but the lights were on and the coffee percolator had been started. I poured myself a mug and headed back upstairs.

  Matthew was in the study, a strip of fabric tied around his head to hold his hair back, textbook propped beside his laptop on the desk, chewing his lip in thought.

  “Hey, babe,” he said when he looked up. “Chronic occlusive disease?”

  “Pump them full of pentoxifylline,” I said without thinking.

  “Want some more coffee?”

  He shook his head and went back to peering alternately at his text, and his laptop screen. I left him to it.

  Henry and I spent the day walking the Roman wall through London, detouring down side streets, finishing up with a raid on HMV on Oxford St. on the way home.

  I left Henry slouched on the couch, alternately lamenting the amount of exercise he’d been conned into taking and gloating over his new DVDs, and went upstairs.

  Matthew was exactly where I’d left him. The only way I could tell he’d moved at all was that there were two empty plates beside his elbow on the desk, and that he wasn’t in his bathrobe anymore.

  He pushed himself back from the desk and took his headphones off when I opened the door, and stretched luxuriously. “What’s the time?” he asked, and I thought that he looked damn hot in a ‘Hello Kitty’ T-shirt and a pair of my sweat pants.

  “After three,” I said. “Did you wake up feeling particularly gay this morning?” I asked, gesturing at his T-shirt.

  He chuckled and wriggled his eyebrows at me. “Probably, considering where I woke up. My sister gave me this T-shirt as part of some kind of campaign to appall our mum, so I’m quite fond of it. If it’s three, then I can stop; I’ve done eight hours, and I don’t think I can look at another page of signs and symptoms without screaming.”

  He stood up and stretched from side to side, with alarming crunching noises from his vertebrae, then wrapped his arms around my neck and kissed me.

  When we surfaced again, he said, “So what domestic goodness do you have planned for the rest of the day?”

  “Hmm,” I said. “Laundry. Food shopping for the week.

  Goofing around with Henry. What about you?”

  “Laundry, too,” he said, pouting. “Did you know that every single item of clothing I own, apart from this T-shirt, is dirty?”

  I slid my hands under the sweats he was wearing, at the back, and found bare skin. “Oh, I approve,” I murmured. “If all of your clothing being dirty explains why you haven’t been wearing shorts, I don’t think you should do any laundry.”

  “Not having any boxers is one thing,” Matthew said, and I had a really good grope while he was hugging me. “But, having no clean shirts or trousers for clinical is something completely different. Now, let go of my arse so I can go and load the washing machine.”

  I let go of him and said, “So, you planning on telling your mom you’ve moved in with me?”

  He pushed past me and disappeared into the bedroom, reappearing a moment later with arms full of clothes. “Rang her today,” he said, and he galloped down the stairs, dropping socks and shorts behind him as he went.

  I followed him down the stairs more sedately, picking up his washing as I went, and he reappeared at the bottom of the stairs. “Oh, my God,” he said. “Your washing machine has buttons and dials and gauges and things.”

  “I’ll show you how to use it.” I handed him the pile of washing when I got to the laundry. “What did she say?”

  “’Have you met any nice doctors for your sister?’” Matthew quoted. “I told her about F, and the other doctors I’d met, and said you were the only sane one out there.”

  “Your sister wants to date a mechanic,” I said, adding detergent to the machine and starting it. “They work decent hours and earn more. Hell, considering the hours I work, Kendra is better off than me. Mind you, she’s obsessive/compulsive about music.”

  “I’m telling Mom you said that,” Henry called out from the living room, before appearing in the hallway. His eyes boggled at Matthew’s T-shirt, and I slapped him on the back.

  “Get used to redefining masculinity,” I said cheerfully, and he groaned and went back to the TV.

  When I’d lugged the first armful of groceries in, I dropped the bags in the kitchen and went upstairs to investigate the shouts of glee.

  Henry and Matthew were in the study, Henry at the desk, Matthew on the floor, with cables snaking between his laptop and my PC. “Look out behind you!” Henry shouted, and the speakers on the PC boomed with gunfire.

  Obviously, ‘Hello Kitty’ T-shirts didn’t interfere with Matthew’s eligibility as a fellow gamer. I went back downstairs to carry the rest of the shopping in by myself.

  That night, when I was curled up under the quilt, my head on Matthew’s chest, listening to his slow deep breathing, our fingers entwined, he said, “Andrew?”

  “Hmm?”

  “I have a problem,” he said, and I could hear that he was trying not to laugh.

  “Okay,” I said. “And that’d be?”

  “It seems that I’m very good at negotiating having safe sex, but I actually have no idea how to ask if we can stop,”

  Matthew said as he squeezed my hand.

  “Guess you just did,” I said contentedly.

  Chapter Forty Four

  London Hospital didn’t have a ca
rdiology special on the menu in the cafeteria, but they did do a killer omelette, thick and substantial, obviously filled with whatever was left over in the kitchen from the day before.

  I got stuck into my omelette, keeping a close eye on the doors, watching for Matthew. Neither of us had very long for lunch, but it was always a good thing when we overlapped.

  This was one of the lucky times, and I was only halfway through my lunch when he appeared, wearing green scrubs, hair still in a cap, laughing over his shoulder to Clarissa, who was walking behind him, carrying a laden tray, too.

  I waved a fork at them, and Matthew grinned at me and pushed his way through the crowd to plunk his tray on the table opposite me. Clarissa sat down and Matthew leaned across the table to kiss me quickly.

  “God, I’m starving,” he said, picking his knife and fork up.

  He was eating the omelette, too.

  “Guess what?” I said to him, reaching into the folder that was on the table beside my plate.

  I handed him the printout from the MRCP examination result page.

  He scanned it quickly, and grinned when he found my name, then practically leapt across the table to hug me.

  “Yes!” he shouted. “You did it!”

  I hugged him and kept hugging, and he kissed me. Life didn’t get any sweeter than this.

  “Who have you told?” he asked me, clambering back into his own seat and giving Clarissa a chance to congratulate me, too.

  “No one,” I said. “I’ll call Henry now, tell him, then drop into F’s office and leave a message for him.”

  He was grinning at me across the table, and we were having one of those sentimental moments that made Henry make vomiting noises if he caught us, when Clarissa elbowed Matthew.

  “Eat up, kid,” she said. “We’ve got six minutes until we’re back in pre-op.”

  Matthew bolted down his food, but I could still feel his glee. When he pushed his chair back from the table, I said,

  “What time tonight?”

  He glanced at Clarissa, who shrugged and finished her orange juice as she stood up. “Think the list runs until seven,”