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She looked awful, nervous and close to tears, and I squeezed her hand reassuringly. “If you’re needed, you can always go back inside,” I said. “Just make sure that the surgical coordinator knows to send someone to get you.”

She blinked and nodded. “Have you done this before?” she asked. “Gone on strike?”

I shook my head. “Unless you count quitting a job flipping burgers at sixteen because the unnamed mega-corporation I worked for sacked someone for joining a union, no, I’ve never gone on strike.”

“Oh,” she said.

“Clarissa, we’re doctors. The administration is telling us how to practice medicine, what we can and can’t do for our patients. I worked in an Episcopalian community hospital in the US because I couldn’t stand an HMO telling me what I could and couldn’t do, and when I had to leave someone untreated. I didn’t expect to come here and work in a socialised national health service, and have the hospital tell me the same things.”

She hugged me quickly and I could feel how tense she was. “I’m going to go check my patients in post-op, I’ll see you outside.”

Ghastly George came over and took Clarissa’s place beside me. She didn’t say anything, just took hold of my hand and held it tightly. She was presumably off-duty, having been on the wards all night, and was also presumably working tonight, too, and I wondered if she was insane enough to join us on the picket line instead of sleeping.

We walked out just before eight, a solid elevator of doctors. Clarissa was crying beside me so I wrapped one arm around her shoulders and Ghastly George kept hold of my other hand.

I hadn’t thought what this moment might feel like, hadn’t tried to imagine it, and I wished I had.

I was deeply moved. People slapped my back in the elevator, and when we stepped out into the main hallway through to the hospital’s front entrance, orderlies and nurses and the women in striped aprons who worked in the candy store in the lobby all started clapping. There were doctors coming out of the main stairwell, too, and from the side hallway down to the orthopedics outpatient clinic and Casualty.

I could still hear Clarissa sobbing beside me, and I understood why.

We walked out the main entrance and onto the paved courtyard in front of the hospital, into blinding sunshine and the flash of cameras. Another thing I hadn’t thought of.

There were doctors I didn’t recognise standing outside, all wearing their BMA membership cards outside their pockets or clipped around their necks. They must have been the BMA stalwarts, the divisional reps and board members. There was a smattering of nurses uniforms’ amidst the group of doctors that were massing in the courtyard, most wearing their RCN membership cards, presumably as a sign of support.

I handed Clarissa to Ghastly George and walked up to where a very forlorn F was standing with the BMA people. We hugged, and he said, “Really, this is all some terrible mistake. I don’t actually mind being buggered by the admin and fired. Probably not enjoying it as much as you would, though.”

I kissed him on the cheek. “We can’t all have your good luck,” I said. “Besides, what makes you think I’m a pillow biter?” Got to love the UK slang, so much more descriptive than ‘fucking homo’.

He laughed, and sounded much more like the F I knew.

“Honey,” he said, hugging me again and chuckling against my ear. “Your darling med student has left knee prints on the back of your legs.”

I’d miss him. I hugged him back.

“You’re cheerful for someone that’s unemployed,” I said.

He slapped me on my back and grinned, and there was too much twinkle in his eyes. He was either tanked, or employed, and he didn’t smell of booze.

“Smug bastard,” I said. I left him to the tender ministrations of a BMA lawyer and walked through the milling crowd of doctors to where Jane was standing with a group of nurses.

She hugged me, nearly scaring the living daylights out of me.

“I had no idea you were joining us,” I said. “No idea at all.”

“Show of support, sweetheart,” she said. “Thought I’d stand here with you until my shift starts. We all thought that.

The RCN wouldn’t approve any real industrial action, but there’s no reason why we can’t be here while we’re off duty.”

Somehow, the idea of Jane giving up her free time was even more amazing than her going on strike.

I kissed her cheek, and she went bright red and flapped her hands at me speechlessly.

Someone touched my elbow and pulled me aside, depriving me of the delight of seeing Jane with pink ears.

We stood quietly. It was more like a vigil than a strike. We had no placards, just the BMA banner fluttering in the gentle spring sunshine. No one shouted, or ranted. There wasn’t a bullhorn in sight.

I couldn’t bring myself to estimate how many doctors were there. Someone would count us, either from the BMA or the press, who were standing expectantly across the road, obviously hoping we’d behave like coal miners or dock workers, not very sad doctors.

People walked past, some of them staring at us, some of them avoiding our gaze as they walked through the hospital’s main doors.

One little old woman with a stick and a plastic shopping bag walked past us into the hospital and came back a few minutes later and gave a cup of coffee to one of the gynae residents whose name I didn’t know, before returning to the hospital. Hopefully she wasn’t going to be requiring medical attention.

F nudged me with his elbow and said, “Quack.”

Under the circumstances, it struck me as being extremely rude for him to be calling anyone here a quack, and my distaste must have shown because he said, “No, you idiot. Mamma Duck, here come your ducklings.”

Chapter Twenty Nine

Lin walked ahead of me up to Andrew, hugged him quickly and said, “Hello, Dr. M. We’ve come to join you.”

Andrew smiled at her, and he looked pleased. He hugged me in turn, and I had to remember not to kiss him, then he hugged Nevins and the girl with the Lancastrian accent

“Thank you for coming,” he said. “It means a lot.”

“Hi, Dr. Seagate,” I said, and he slapped me heartily.

“Good to see you. I don’t know any of your names, but you’re all Dr. Maynard’s students, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” Lin said. “He told us what happened to you, Dr.

Seagate, and we went to the stop work meetings, too.”

“Aren’t you worried about the impact on your careers?”

Andrew asked Lin.

She shook her head, sending black hair flicking around her shoulders. Damn, her hair was down, she must be going all out to impress Nevins.

“No, Dr. M.,” she said. “I did some reading on the impact of the Irish strike of ’87 on the careers of the participants, and it seemed to have not made a difference. Our career path is only influenced by the support of our clinical referees to a very small extent. Seventy percent of the human resource employment decision-making is based on the applicant’s presentation at the first interview, with the rest primarily based on academic record. Clinical references do little other than prove that we worked in a particular hospital for a period of time. If we all just submitted blank letterhead samples from the hospitals, it would work just as well.”

“Oh,” Andrew said.

Lin looked around her. “Besides,” she said. “I’m sure if we encounter any of these doctors in clinical placements, they won’t hold our presence here against us.”

“You researched this?” Andrew asked.

Lin nodded. “Definitely. I research everything.”

As I found out when Nevins took me aside later on, scuffing his feet and looking embarrassed. “Blake,” he said.