If it wasn't his ceiling, then it wasn't his living room, and if it wasn't his living room, then whose living room was it?
The answer came in a voice from the nearest doorway.
'Oh, you're awake. Did you fall off the sofa or something?'
He sat up straight, and that was when his head really began to throb; a dull pulsating agony that started in his temples and reached all the way in behind his eyes. The medic in him lectured him on the dehydrating effects of alcohol, how it leached moisture from the brain, causing it to shrink, pulling on all the microscopic fibres linking it to the skull and resulting in a headache. The human in him was simply practising the art of suffering.
In the doorway stood a goth girl in pyjamas. The pyjamas weren't particularly goth; pink with pictures of Hello Kitty. She was a goth girl only from the neck up, a shock of black hair and slightly smudged mascara left over from the night before.
His heart sank. Had they…?
'Where am I?' he asked.
'Our living room, silly,' replied the goth girl, giggling.
'And… where is your living room?' asked Owen.
'In our house. In Cathays,' said the goth girl. 'Near the uni.'
Owen sat fully upright and, with weak arms, hoisted himself onto the sofa. He rested his head in both hands and let out a long, traumatised groan.
'Hung over?' asked the goth girl.
'A little,' said Owen. 'What happened last night?'
The goth girl laughed again. 'You don't remember?'
Owen shook his head. Even that hurt.
'Your friend's upstairs,' she said, 'with my housemate, Kirsty. I'm amazed they didn't keep you awake. They were a bit, um, noisy.
Mind you, you just kind of passed out.'
His friend? Oh, that was right. A little bit of memory came back to him now; a mere shard of recollection. Lloyd was upstairs. With Kirsty, whoever Kirsty was.
Owen looked at the goth girl, wincing at the question he was about to ask. 'And did anything… I mean…'
The goth girl raised one eyebrow, and shook her head. 'You're fully dressed,' she said. 'Or hadn't you noticed?'
He looked down at himself, and realised he was indeed still wearing all the clothes he'd worn the night before. He was dismayed to see a gory dash of chilli sauce down the front of his shirt. At least he'd remembered to take his shoes off.
'And you've got a girlfriend,' said the goth girl, smiling sweetly now. 'In fact, you didn't stop talking about her. Would you like a coffee?'
Owen shook his head. That throbbing pain again, and a sudden, violent stab of nausea. 'Um…'
Work. The word exploded in his brain like a firework, like it was lit up in neon or carved in bloody great big stone lettering. Work.
'Actually… I've probably got to make a move. I've got work.'
'Work? When?'
He looked at his watch. It was nine o'clock. And his shift started at half ten.
'An hour and a half,' he said, quietly. 'Where am I?'
The goth girl laughed. 'Cathays. I just told you.'
Owen sighed. Cathays. Just outside the city centre. It could have been worse. It could have been Swansea. He was still struggling to piece together the last few hours of the night. There had been the Cross Inn and, at some point after two or three pints, the urge to grab a takeaway and a video had left him, and they were in a taxi and heading into town. That was when it started to get just a little hazy.
But Cathays wasn't too far. It was further away from the hospital than his flat and, thinking about it logically, going home first was no longer an option, which meant he'd have to go in wearing the same clothes he'd worn the day before, but that wasn't the end of the world.
'Can I use your shower?' he asked.
The goth girl nodded. 'Top of the stairs, first on the right. There's towels in the airing cupboard.'
Owen lifted himself up from the sofa with a nauseous groan and tiptoed out of the living room, nodding a wordless 'thank you' to the goth girl before climbing the stairs.
It was while he stood under the hot spray of the shower that further fragments of information came back to him. The trawl around Cardiff's coolest bars and a few that weren't so cool before they wound up in Metros nightclub. They'd looked a bit out of place, Owen and his fellow doctors, all of them in their Ben Sherman shirts and shoes, while around them kids with spiky multicoloured hair and piercings, most of them dressed from head to toe in black, bounced around to System Of A Down and Green Day.
Lloyd had started talking to another goth girl, the girl he assumed was Kirsty, and then introduced him to Kirsty's friend, the girl who was now downstairs in Hello Kitty pyjamas. Quite what Lloyd was playing at he wasn't sure; perhaps angling for some kind of orgy; Owen could never tell with Lloyd.
Whatever his game was, Lloyd had persuaded Owen to join them in the taxi back to Cathays, stopping at a kebab shop en route. He'd tried eating the kebab in the back of the cab, and the driver had shouted something at him about no food and drink in the car. That was when Owen had dripped chilli sauce down his front. It was a little sketchy after that — a drunken conversation on the sofa; the goth girls rolling spliffs, and then nothing. He'd blacked out pretty quickly.
As Owen left the bathroom, he knocked on the door that was signposted 'KIRSTY'S ROOM' by a brightly coloured wooden plaque, and said, 'Lloyd… It's Owen. Come on, mate. We've got to go to work.'
He heard a groan and a giggle from inside the room; the groan Lloyd's, the giggle Kirsty's.
'Not me, mate,' said Lloyd. 'I've got the day off.'
'Bloody typical,' thought Owen. 'He drags me into town, gets me pissed, and then he's got the day off. Bloody typical.'
'Do you really have to go to work?' the goth girl in pyjamas asked as he returned to the living room to put on his shoes.
'Yeah, kind of,' said Owen. 'I'm a doctor.'
Minutes later, he stepped out into the very bright and very cold light of day. He needed food, but there wasn't time to buy any. He also needed to find his bearings. He hadn't lived in Cardiff all that long, and much of the city was still new to him.
Added to his geographical disorientation was the feeling of shame, as he made his way past pensioners pushing trolleys and commuters on their way to work. It was as if they all knew exactly what he'd done the night before, as if they could see right through him. Or maybe they could just smell the booze as he walked past. Either way, it wasn't a good place to be.
The bus journey was marred by screaming toddlers, which he really didn't need as that headache began to kick back in. He could have phoned in sick, of course, but that wasn't really an option. Doctors don't 'do' sick days. Doctors, according to unwritten law, have immune systems that can defeat any virus, and they most definitely do not have hangovers.
He got to A amp;E at the hospital almost an hour after he had left the goth girl's house. His colleagues and so-called friends were waiting for him, all with grinning faces or pursed lips.
'Tut, tut, tut… Where did you get to last night, you dirty stop-out?'
'Feeling a bit worse for wear?'
'Is that kebab sauce you've got down the front of you?'
'I think Dr Harper's going to need a lie down. Shame we need him over on 5. Grab a coffee, and put on a jacket. Can't have you walking around looking like a bloody tramp. You're coming with me.'
The first patient he had to see was a young boy who had been hit by a car on his way to school. When his superior, Dr Balasubramanian (Dr Bala, for short), pulled the curtain aside, Owen felt his heart sink. He could deal with all aspects of the job; the blood, the injuries, the bodily fluids; but it was always hard when it was a child. Luckily he'd not had to deal with too many of them, and all the kids he'd dealt with had left the hospital breathing.