I put the laptop aside and slid down the bed to lie beside Andrew. His hand was stroking me now, coaxing me back to hardness. I closed my eyes for a moment, and he kissed me.
“Sorry, am I distracting you?” he murmured.
“Mmm, yeah. I think you’re supposed to be supportive of my studying, aren’t you?”
Andrew’s mouth was pressed against my neck now, sucking on the skin. “I guess so,” he said. “Anything I can help you with?”
“Tell me what you know about erectile dysfunction,” I said, and we both burst out laughing.
“Point taken,” he said and he let go of me. “I’ll go get some work of my own and leave you alone.”
Andrew fell asleep some time later, slumped down in the bed, photocopied documents on wrongful dismissal cases strewn across the blankets, and I didn’t disturb him. It was only the fear of impending failure that stopped me from turning the laptop and light off and going to sleep, too. I was pathetically behind with revision, there was a mountain of stuff I needed to do for my placement, and I was hopelessly short of time, too. It was an appalling time to get involved with a new lover.
Andrew woke when I finally turned off the laptop and put it away, and he stumbled sleepily to the bathroom to brush his teeth when I went to the loo. I’d never really done the whole domesticity thing before, had prided myself on avoiding romantic entanglements even when I’d been seeing someone, and was caught completely by surprise when Andrew said,
“You can leave a toothbrush and razor here if you want.”
Stunned wasn’t an adequate description of how I felt, and I guess I must have been staring at him like an idiot.
Andrew’s fingers curled around the back of my neck gently and he smiled at me, then kissed me quickly, tasting of mint.
“Hey,” he said. “You don’t have to. I am, however, amused that you cope beautifully with powderless gloves, but look like I’ve kicked you when I suggest you might actually be back here again, maybe even on a regular basis.”
“Fuck,” I managed to say, and it did nothing to help with the idiot status. “Um, yeah, that would be good.” All right, I was being less of an idiot now. Hopefully.
Andrew kissed me again, and his stubble was rough on my cheek. “And before you have a panic attack over this, I’ve got Henry staying all this weekend, so I can’t see you again until next week.”
“I wasn’t going to have an anxiety attack,” I said defensively.
“Sure,” Andrew said, and he grabbed my arse as he walked past me. “You’ll be pleased to hear that I don’t have to be at work until eight tomorrow, so the alarm is set for six thirty.”
I leaned my forehead against the mirror. “Twit,” I muttered to myself.
“I heard that,” Andrew called out from the bedroom.
Chapter Sixteen
All hell broke loose the next day.
I’d left Matthew sitting at a bus stop not far from my place and driven in.
The Troll was waiting for me, simpering, a hand full of messages, when I tried to sidle past her desk. “Dr. Seagate is here to see you.”
I filed the scraps of paper into a pocket without reading them and waved to F where he was lounging against my office door. He looked like shit.
“What’s up?” I asked, unlocking the door.
“Feces,” he said. “Diced and tossed through the air very fast.” He kicked the door shut and slumped down in my plastic garden chair. “You need to become a consultant, that way you’d have a comfortable chair for me.”
“So, the shit’s hit the fan. What in particular has gone wrong?” I ignored the jibe about being a consultant. My American medical degree just wasn’t classy enough for the British medical system; I was never going to make consultant here.
“God was waiting for me in my office this morning.”
“Yuck,” I said. God never ventured out of his office without a damn good reason; he much preferred to summon intransigent doctors to his offices.
“He asked me to resign to save the hospital the embarrassment of having to fire me.”
I was impressed. F had obviously seriously pissed someone off. “Are you going to?”
“No fucking way,” F said. “If I quit, I can’t claim wrongful dismissal. Bastards aren’t going to get rid of me that easily.”
I nodded. My thoughts had been heading down that path, too. “What are you going to do?”
F smiled, kind of like a shark would. “I’ve left a message with the BMA rep. This is war. The administration here can’t prevent me from doing my job the right way, then punish me when I do it the wrong way. It’s not actually my responsibility if their budget is fucked. Getting the best care I can for my patients is my responsibility.”
I mimed putting on a cowboy hat and spinning a six-shooter and drawled, “Them there’s fighting words, pardner.”
F laughed, making him sound kind of manic. “I’d watch that American accent of yours,” he said. “According to Lena, who is an integral part of the gossip network here, there’s some young thing in High Dependency who’s enthusing about the lovely American doctor that her housemate is shagging that saved her when she ripped her arm to bits. What have you been up to, you naughty doctor?”
I went hot, then cold, and swallowed hard.
“Ah,” F said. “In the midst of the ruination of my career, you’ve been indulging a little. I want details.”
F waggled his eyebrows at me, and I couldn’t help but smile. “I was at Matthew’s place last night and one of his drunken and/or stoned housemates shredded her arm on a glass door. I really didn’t have much choice but to ride in the bus here with her.”
“Matthew? Cute name. How is the adorable Matthew?” F asked.
“Matthew is fine. Can we change the subject?” I really didn’t want to go into how fine he was, not when my whole body was still suffused with contentment from last night.
F was grinning at me like the idiot he was, but I had no intention of elaborating on my sexual adventures. For a start, if I did, F might decide to return the confidence and tell me in excruciating detail about his sex life, too, and I really didn’t feel up to it.
F waited, and I sighed and said, “Go away F. You’re cluttering up my office, and while you might be about to be fired, I’m not, and I have a batch of med students I need to keep occupied before the nurses kill them.”
“Don’t forget your private tutoring,” F said with a leer, but he did peel himself off the plastic chair and wander out of my office.
I sat down at the table, feeling tired, and glanced around at the gathered fresh-faced med students. Nevins was still cheerful, and he looked less of an idiot than usual. Lin looked studious; the blonde girl as tired as me; Matthew was as gorgeous as always, but I didn’t let myself stare at him too closely. “Okay,” I said, tossing a handful of index cards on the table. “Take one at random. This afternoon, I want to know all about the condition, what the treatment options are; the usual drill. Let’s do some work.”
I left the kids attempting to put together a trolley for an IDC insertion and answered a call from F.
I could hear the steady clunk-clunk of equipment in the background when he spoke so he must have been calling from the dialysis unit.
“Wassup?” I asked.
“BMA rep. Stop work meeting this afternoon. We’re walking off the job.”
I closed my eyes for a moment, and my stomach plummeted. So it had come to that? “Okay,” I said. “When?”
“Five p.m.. See you there.”
“Yeah,” I said, and I put my phone away.
Chapter Seventeen
Andrew was sitting at a table of doctors, all of them involved in an intense conversation, with their heads pressed close together, when I walked past at lunch time, but he looked up and smiled at me. “Blake,” he said, and he nodded at an empty chair.