All she ever wanted
‘Can’t I just slip out now?’ Pav grumbled as Kira and Libby crowded him into his seat in the lecture theatre. ‘I’ll come to the next one, I swear.’
‘You say that every time,’ Kira said, shoving him towards a seat in the front row.
‘And why do I have to sit in the bloody front?’ he hissed. ‘I can’t even check my phone here.’
‘You are not sixteen years old, Pavlos,’ Libby said as Jamie strode over to them with a wide smile on his face. Why were all these lunatics so excited about another boring Grand Round? He rolled his eyes and fell into the seat in front of him. Kira sat on one side, and for some reason she was bouncing and tapping her foot, but then again Kira was weird in a variety of ways. Jamie and Libby sat on the other side, and he saw Don shuffle in to join them. It was the first time he’d been to a meeting in a long while. With Millie now able to work with the rest of the department better, he’d been semi-retired over the last few months.
As the theatre began to fill, Pav frowned. What was he missing? Yes, you could get your mitts on the odd cheese sandwich at Grand Rounds, but that was never enough of a draw to get the whole hospital turning out. Then he turned to the entrance and blinked. El, Claire and Tara were walking into the large space together. El gave his group a small wave before scanning the crowd and biting her lip with what looked like worry.
‘What on earth … ?’ he muttered, noticing that the others seemed to think that three random women strolling into a hospital lecture theatre in the middle of the day was no big deal. He was about to say something to Jamie when the side door opened and a hush fell over the crowd. Millie stepped forward, then froze in place and blinked as she looked up at all the people. Pav half rose out of his seat to go to her, but Jamie’s strong arm pushed him down.
‘Leave her be, mate,’ he muttered under his breath. Pav shot him a filthy look and refocused on the stage. An image of Millie’s pale face before she crumbled into a heap and the sound of her head cracking against the wooden surface bloomed in his mind with perfect clarity. Leave her be, his arse. He wasn’t about to let her put herself through that again. He shook Jamie’s arm off and shoved him away, but was distracted by a sharp poke in his arm on the other side.
‘Stand down, Double D.,’ Kira told him in a harsh whisper. Over the last few months Pav had morphed from Dick Doc to Double D., which seemed to amuse Kira, as she already called Jamie Triple G. Pav had been most put out to find out that Triple G. stood for Gorgeous Grantham the Gasman. He’d proposed a comprise of Triple D. to Kira so that she could include adjectives such as ‘dishy’ but she laughed in his face, telling him his head was the size of a small planet already and that the last time any man was called dishy was in bad nineteen-sixties sitcoms. ‘She does not need you to go all Conan the Barbarian on her and drag her off the stage. Let her do this.’
Pav frowned but settled back down into his seat, raising both hands in defeat. But he remained tense and ready to jump up should Millie’s eyes show any sign of rolling back into her head again.
*****
Millie scanned the crowd once more and took another deep breath in through her nose and out through her mouth. She focused on Anwar in the audience, who gave her an encouraging smile and a small thumbs up. The breathing techniques they had practiced were just to get her up on stage; other techniques would get her through actually speaking. But standing here and not shaking like a leaf still felt like an enormous victory in itself. She moved forward towards the microphone and gripped both sides of the lectern. Between them Anwar and Millie had decided that she should start with the PowerPoint presentation, and she clicked on the projector, which was already set up with her first slide. When her eyes met Pav’s she even managed to smile. He looked so cross and worried that she felt like climbing off the stage and kissing him right on the mouth in front of everyone. The fear that fuelled that worry for her was because he loved her.
Millie was loved.
Had she believed it right away? Well, no. Years of conditioning were tricky to undo all in one go. But gradually she’d started to trust. Yes, he’d said the words, and often, but it was more the way he showed her it was true. The way he stole her toothbrushes and her knickers to keep at his place so that she couldn’t use that as an excuse not to stay over. The way he wanted to be with her, even going as far as reading The Vagina Monologues so that he could come with her to book group – much to Kira’s annoyance. The way he came with her to visit Gammy every time if he wasn’t working, remembering to bring a bag of Werther’s Original and submitting to the new name of ‘Paul’, as Gammy found Pav ‘a bit too European for me, darling’.
So much so that last night Millie even said it back. It might have been a whisper and it might have been in a post-sex cuddle when she thought he was asleep, but when his arm tightened around her, and judging from his smug grin this morning, she knew he’d heard her.
‘So I’m not sure how many of you were here for my last talk,’ she started, her voice cracking a little. She cleared her throat and pushed on. ‘I’m hoping this time around things will be a little less dramatic.’
There was a light wave of encouraging laughter and Millie risked a small smile. After she’d been through the slides, explained the next upcoming article in the Lancet about her results, there was a barrage of questions. They’d practiced this, Libby, Kira and her. She knew what to expect. Even a snide remark from a jealous radiology trainee couldn’t put her off her stride. Once the questions had dried up she looked down at the lectern for a moment and took another deep breath before raising her eyes and fixing on her friends in the front row.
‘I wanted to finish by …’ Millie paused and closed her eyes briefly. An expectant hush fell over the hall. When she opened them again she focused on the people in the front row again: her people. After all these years Millie could finally say that she had her own people, ones who cared about her, even loved her.
‘I know that I haven’t been an easy person to work with or even …’ Her eyes dropped to the lectern for a moment before she looked up again and straightened her shoulders. ‘… or even a human being. I’ve heard the nicknames.’ There were a few uncomfortable murmurs in the crowd and she could see some of the audience shifting in their seats.
‘I’m not accusing or blaming any of you. I know none of you meant for me to hear, and I know I have lived up to my name “Nuclear Winter”. I’ve upset people, it wasn’t intentional but it has happened. I just … I didn’t want to be that way, but I was stuck; stuck within my limits, scared all the time.’ She took a deep breath and then stepped around the lectern and forward towards her friends.
‘Anxiety and phobias can rule your life if you let them. I know I’m not the only one who’s been crippled by it – even in this room there’ll be others; maybe not as extreme as me, but people whose lives are restricted, even if it’s just in small ways. What I wanted to say is that you can push through the limits you put on yourself. So … I’m sorry if the Nuclear Winter has upset you in the past. And I can’t promise she’s gone, not completely. But I want you all to know I’m working on it. CBT has always helped me, but what really made the difference was people. People who made me see I didn’t have to live within my limits, that I didn’t have to stay stuck where I was. That there was a way out.’ Millie fell silent and the entire lecture theatre followed suit.
‘So … thank you, Don, El, Kira, Libby, Jamie, Anwar, Claire, Tara and, of course, my Pavlos. At least … at least I hope he’s still my … oomph!’ She was cut off as Pav launched from his seat and nearly winded her in a hug that took her off her feet.
‘I love you,’ she whispered in his ear once she was able to fill her lungs again with much needed air. He pulled away just enough that he could look down at her, and grinned before kissing her, right in front of the entire lecture theatre. She smacked his arm and when he pulled back her face felt on fire.
‘I’ve still got some limits,’ she hissed. Pav laughed in the face of her residual rather-not-swap-spit-in-front-of-entire-hospital limits, and they were promptly swamped on all side by Millie’s friends. At least with the ensuing group hug she was shielded from the crowd, and Pav was distracted from doing anything even more inappropriate than he already had.
It was Don who started the clapping. When Millie finally emerged from the arms of her friends she saw the audience on their feet. A year ago having so many eyes on her would have sent her into a flat panic, but now, with her hand in Pav’s, Kira administering a sloppy kiss on her cheek, Don’s hand on her shoulder, Jamie, Kira, Tara, El and Claire flanking her, now she just felt … loved.
And really that’s all she ever wanted, anyway.