Safe space
‘Dr Morrison?’
Millie’s stomach clenched, not only because, yet again, it was Him, but also at that formal greeting. Despite being used to it, the small rejection that the use of her surname elicited always cut her deep, every single time. The worst thing was the awful awareness that the situation was her own damn fault. She’d been too unfriendly to too many people for too long, and had never invited any sort of informality. And now she found it upsetting, as if the people around her went out of their way to maintain that extra distance by using the formality of her surname. No other doctor in the hospital, probably the whole trust, was as disliked. It was two weeks since he’d confronted her with The Lancet and Millie had hoped he would have given up trying to convince her by now.
‘Yes,’ she replied, not taking her eyes off the computer screen.
‘Listen,’ the deep voice continued. ‘I know you’re busy but I would really appreciate it if you could afford me the courtesy of looking at me when I’m speaking to you. I might only be a surgeon, but I am a consultant at this hospital too.’
Millie blinked at the screen and her hands balled into small fists. The feel of her nails digging into the skin of her palms helped to calm her racing heart and slow her breathing, but only just. She didn’t correct him. She knew that most of the hospital thought she was a consultant. It was easier for the management that way. At her last placement she had been acting as a registrar and it made everyone involved very uncomfortable.
Millie passed the radiology exams before she even started the radiology training programme. Once the college found out that she was only a second-year doctor at the time they had wanted to take the exam away from her, but the fact that she achieved an unheard-of perfect score on all tests made this more that a little tricky. Nobody had ever completed the postgraduate exams without getting a single answer wrong. She was a phenomenon. At the highest level it was decided that the last thing they wanted was to lose Millie from their specialty, so they allowed her to count her exams but made her start at the bottom of the training. That had worked for the first couple of years, but as she became a senior registrar it became more difficult. She knew more about radiology than any of the consultants she was working with. She picked up errors in reporting that had been missed by the most experienced radiologists. Working beneath people she intimidated, if only unintentionally, had been very difficult; eventually the consultants couldn’t hack it.
So a solution was reached. She would be transferred to a different hospital, instated in her own office, which she would share with a consultant who could supervise her and guide her, but who wouldn’t be intimidated by her knowledge base. That consultant was Donald. He was seventy-two, unfailingly calm, incredibly perceptive and ridiculously kind. He had seen through Millie’s cold indifference almost immediately. He was her only real friend.
It made sense for the rest of the hospital to think Millie was a consultant. She did Don’s on-calls for him under his extremely loose supervision (Don had no intention of doing any on-calls any more). Without her, the consultant rota would fall apart. And she got through twice the amount of reporting as any of her colleagues, so they could hardly demote her back to first-year trainee: they needed her.
She forced her hands to relax in her lap and turned in her chair to face Mr Martakis. Her eyes rose to meet his gorgeous, dark ones for a split second before she focused on the far safer territory of his shirt collar and heard him let out a loud sigh.
She could feel the panic rising up to her throat and tried to swallow it down. Millie was not good with people, but this man … for some reason this man terrified her. It may have been to do with him being the most beautiful human being she’d ever seen before, or his manner: totally uninhibited, completely at ease with himself and others, quick to smile and laugh – the complete opposite of Millie. He fascinated her, although in much the same way a hawk would fascinate a tiny field mouse: with a good amount of fear and awe.
Well, he wasn’t smiling now. In fact, his mouth was set in a grim line and a muscle was ticking in his jaw. Feeling the hostile vibes fill the room, Millie scooted back slightly in her chair and kept her hands coiled into fists to stop them shaking. Thankfully the burn had healed enough that she didn’t need the dressing on anymore.
‘C …’ she cleared her throat and swallowed down her anxiety. ‘Can I help you, Mr Martakis?’ For the last two weeks Millie had been successfully avoiding Mr Martakis. To the extent that at the last urology MDT she hadn’t even glanced at the coffee he’d put in front of her on the conference table (despite the fact it smelt amazing and she’d been having to survive on the terrible instant stuff in the radiology department for the two weeks before – there was no way she was venturing to the canteen again), and at the end of the meeting she’d raced past him without acknowledging his greeting. Millie was willing to admit that might have come across a little … weird, and a lot rude. She doubted Mr Martakis was used to being blanked by anyone. Donald had done a lot of the Mr Martakis fielding as well. Twice he’d effectively barred the man from coming into the office, and once he had managed to keep a straight face when Millie hid under her desk.
‘My medical student came to you to request a perfectly reasonable scan twenty minutes ago.’ He paused and Millie decided to keep her mouth shut, adjusting her gaze to the centre of his chest, then wishing she hadn’t when she took in the way his broad muscles filled out the shirt he was wearing, something she would never normally notice with other men. The sight gave her an unfamiliar swooping sensation deep in her stomach. Almost as though she was falling on a rollercoaster.
‘Hello? Dr Morrison?’
Millie started in her seat. Her perusal of his chest seemed to have scrambled all functioning neurons. Which for her was an almost unheard of occurrence.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, her voice high and tight. She cleared her throat again but knew the tightening wouldn’t fade, not whilst He was here. ‘I don’t know whi –’
Mr Martakis let out an annoyed huff and crossed his arms over his chest. More negative vibes filled the room and Millie shrank back into her chair.
‘I’m not surprised you don’t remember the request, seeing as you didn’t even spare the medical student in question a single fu –’ he looked away and took a deep breath in an obvious attempt to reign in his temper, ‘a single glance to acknowledge her existence.’
Millie managed to stop herself flinching at the near-use of the f-word, but only just. It wasn’t that she was offended by swearing itself: only that the words were so harsh, so confrontational. Millie was not good with confrontation. Not at all.
‘I … Are you talking about the IVU that was requested?’
Where was Don? Millie thought to herself. He should be back by now; she knew Irene had packed his lunch today. How long could picking up a bag of Wotsits (something Irene’s strict food rules did not allow) take?
‘Yes,’ he bit out, and it was clear from his tone that his patience was fraying. ‘And you know what: yes, okay, it’s not always appropriate for a medical student to request a scan but … Jesus, you could at least have the courtesy to look at her when you dismiss her from your exulted presence. Maybe explain why you won’t do the scan for us. They do have to learn somehow you know. I presume you were a medical student once?’
Yes, Millie had been a medical student once, but she’d been nothing like that girl. Kira was full Technicolor high-definition, to Millie’s dull, black and white persona. She always intimidated Millie and put her on the defensive. But this time Kira had changed tactics, being so friendly it was almost unreal: she smiled and chattered and sat on Millie’s desk, apologizing for the ‘coffee incident’ when that wasn’t even her fault; the strange girl had even offered Millie a custard crème in order to ‘butter you up, you cheeky badger’.
Millie dreaded her on-calls more than anything. If you were the starred consultant for the day you had to be available to discuss scans and investigations for patients. Thankfully most of this could be achieved over the phone, but sometimes junior doctors (rarely medical students) would venture down into the bowels of the radiology department to actually discuss a scan face to face.
Dr Morrison’s a.k.a. Nuclear Winter’s reputation as a stuck-up bitch was now firmly ingrained, mostly because Millie had a tough time making eye contact with the doctors that sought her out, and she often communicated non-verbally with just a curt nod if the request was reasonable. However, if the request was unreasonable or another investigation was indicated, she had to speak, and her anxiety normally made her voice tight, coming across as if she was angry and not terrified. Millie was good at her job, her suggestions were always correct; had they come with an encouraging smile, a bit of banter or a glimmer of friendliness, then the doctors she corrected would have thanked her. As it was, the fact she often changed requests and couldn’t manage casual niceties had earned her a pretty unsavoury reputation.
Millie had certainly not known what to do with Kira’s rampant friendliness, so she had withdrawn into her shell. The warmer Kira was, the colder Millie became. She barely spoke to her. Eventually, as was normally the case with Millie’s social interactions, the other woman’s smile had faltered and she had started to look uncomfortable. This was all the more excruciating as Millie would put money on the fact that it was very rare indeed for this particular girl to be uncomfortable in any situation. It had to take a really socially inept total bitch to make her appear so.
That’s what Millie had been.
She’d been a bitch.
And whether intentional or not, she still took that on as her fault. She was the one who had insisted that medicine was what she wanted. It would have been easy to bury herself in the safe world of quantum physics or mathematics, but she’d known that if she went down that route, if she allowed herself to hide away in the backroom of some university or major company with them just being happy that she was producing results and supporting her hermit ways in order for her to continue doing so, she knew that she would lose her chance to be normal. She would lose her chance to really be a part of something.
The patient interactions Millie could handle: those followed set lines, set protocols, she knew the boundaries, the rules, and could work well within them. She could even communicate effectively with patients – not that that was always an essential part of radiology, but when it was required Millie could take a history, break bad news, reassure patients. It was interactions like this one now that she fell down on. She simply didn’t understand the rules. And like it or not they were an essential part of being a doctor: you had to be able to interact with your colleagues.
Millie hated the fact that she’d made Kira feel uncomfortable. That she’d dimmed that girl’s light for even a short time. Not for the first time it made her reconsider her decision. Maybe she should be festering away in some lab somewhere? At least then she wouldn’t be able to upset anyone.
*****
This bloody woman is not to be believed, Pav thought as he tapped his foot with impatience. Kira – Kira for Christ’s sake – had come back to the ward with a blank expression after her run-in with Nuclear Winter. He knew that she felt bad about what had happened in the canteen and wanted to give Dr Morrison a chance; hell, Pav had been the one to encourage her to do so. When Kira explained what had happened earlier, she’d clearly been embarrassed.
Kira, embarrassed.
And she hadn’t smiled since. Kira was always smiling; it was like some sort of disease with her. Okay, Pav knew she could be annoying, but the way Miss High and Mighty Reader of Scans treated her was totally out of order. And worse, it made Pav feel guilty – not an emotion he was particularly familiar with, or one he enjoyed overmuch. Kira was still low on confidence clinically since failing her anatomy viva, and he was the one who had suggested she go down to discuss the scan with the on-call radiologist. The fact he was scrubbed in theatre and they were a junior doctor down on the team was a big factor in his decision, but come on. Couldn’t this bloody woman even discuss the options with Kira? Instead of point-blank ignoring her? Add in the fact that Dr Morrison had been avoiding him for weeks now, and the time she’d cut him dead in the MDT meeting, giving that smug twat Lucas the chance to smirk behind his back, and Pav was furious.
‘Right, well,’ he said, gritting his teeth as he noticed she still hadn’t bothered to actually maintain eye contact with him for more than a few seconds. She was sitting there in her perfect pencil skirt and pristine white blouse, with immaculate hair (not a mousy strand out of place) and expertly applied make-up, lording it over his medical student. For fuck’s sake, she was lording it over him. He hadn’t worked all this time to become a consultant surgeon just so snooty know-it-all radiologists could look down their noses at him. ‘I’m here now and hopefully you can discuss the options with me.’
‘The best investigation would be a CT urogram as the patient has a history of atopy and is taking beta blockers, giving him an increased risk of allergic reaction to the dye we use in the IVU ...’
All this information was imparted in an almost bored monotone and directed straight at his right upper arm.
‘How did you even know the patient’s medical history? You can’t –’
‘Instead of looking at Miss Conway I was looking at the screen and had drawn up his details after she said his name. We are now linked to System One GP records. He had a reaction to shellfish recorded on the 12th of May 2003 whilst he was a patient in Derbyshire.’
‘But …’ Pav scratched the back of his head. ‘But there aren’t any allergies in his –’
‘It wasn’t recorded as an allergy by either the hospital or the GP. It was mentioned in a pre-assessment for an appendicectomy.’
‘But Kira was only down here for a few minutes. How could you have gone through all the notes in that amount of –’
‘I read … um … fast … Very fast.’
‘Well, okay but that still means –’
‘Your patient is in the scanner.’
‘What?’ Pav did not like being on the back foot. He prided himself on being a step ahead of most people, usually using his charm and humour to achieve whatever he wanted. ‘How did you – ?’
‘I ordered the scan after Miss Conway left.’
Pav clenched both his fists by his sides, reining in his formidable but normally dormant Greek temper. ‘Could you not have told Kira that was what you were going to do? Don’t you think that might have saved her and me some time?’
He watched Dr Morrison sitting motionless on the chair for a few seconds before she gave an almost imperceptible shrug. He’d been running around like a blue-arse fly trying to sort out this patient, and after Kira told him the scan had been refused he’d been distracted for the crucial last half hour of the nephrectomy he was doing, and all this bitch could do was shrug?
‘Right, well, thanks for that information, Dr Morrison,’ he bit out. ‘And please don’t worry, in future I won’t dream of sending anyone less than registrar grade to request scans or ask advice.’
She was still motionless, but now her attention had turned back to her computer screen. He rolled his eyes and muttered ‘stuck-up icy bitch’ under his breath as he stomped out of her office.
Pav had thought he’d been pretty restrained when it came to that particular confrontation with Dr Morrison. Unfortunately he underestimated how loud his voice in anger could be, even when spoken under his breath; but he did see her visibly flinch as that verbal blow hit home. What he didn’t see was her shoulders sag in relief as he left, or the repair job she had to do on her wrists later that night. Pav prided himself on his ability to read women, but with Dr Morrison, as was so often the case for her in the hospital, he’d failed miserably.
He may not have been able to read Millie entirely, but he found that over the next few hours he could not get that flinch out of his mind. He joked with people, he was cheeky, he teased, but he was never openly rude. What had pushed him into being such a wanker? The lack of eye contact had wound him up, coupled with her obvious reluctance to even talk to him. But was he such an arrogant twat that he needed every female he came across to fawn all over him?
Evidently, yes.
Sitting in his office at the end of the day, his hands went up into his hair and he tore his fingers through it in frustration. Bloody hell, he would have to apologize. He pushed away from the desk and stalked out into the corridor towards the radiology department. When he reached Dr Morrison’s office it was just Donald sitting at his desk, grumbling under his breath at his computer screen.
‘Uh … hi, Don,’ Pav said, smiling at the older man and walking into the room to stand beside him. ‘I’m looking for Dr Morrison.’
‘Millie?’ asked Don, his eyebrows shooting up into his hairline. ‘She’s not on call now, son. Colin took over at five. It’s all on the rota.’
‘I know … I wasn’t looking for her to …’ Pav trailed off and one of his hands went to the back of his neck. ‘I just need to speak to her. I think maybe earlier I …’
Don stopped tapping away at the keyboard of the computer he appeared to be locked out of and turned to face Pav, narrowing his eyes in suspicion.
‘What did you say to her?’ he asked. Pav knew Don as a jolly chap. The quintessential picture of a benevolent white-haired grandad. Always smiling, always open and friendly. Well, he wasn’t looking benevolent now, and he definitely wasn’t smiling.
‘I think there may have been a misunderstanding and I …’
‘Millie left two hours ago.’
‘Oh, right, well …’
‘Do you know that today is the first time she has ever left work early?’
‘Uh …’
‘I don’t know what you said to her, but the best thing you can do now is leave her alone.’
‘I just want to speak to –’
‘Leave her alone. This office is her safe space. I’ll not have some arrogant, jumped-up surgeon take that away from her.’
‘Safe space? What are you – ?’
‘Ugh … look, I’ve got to visit the urinal for the five hundredth time today, damn prostate. By the time I come back I want you out of this office. You understand me?’
‘Yes, sir,’ Pav said as Don strode past him with surprising speed, considering he looked like Gandalf’s older cousin. Pav watched him go with a frown. As he looked across to Dr Morrison’s desk an uneasy feeling settled over him.
‘Safe space’? What on earth did the old man mean by that?
Pav walked over to the desk and absently lifted one of the stone paperweights, which were the only decoration the sterile area contained. When he put it back down, slightly out of its perfect alignment, he must have knocked the computer mouse, because the screen of the terminal suddenly lit up. There was an open Word document in the centre and the name at the top of it caught his attention. It was addressed to Elizabeth Penny.
Pav had never been very good at minding his own business. And Libby was his best friend Jamie’s girlfriend after all. He leaned in to take a closer look. It was outlining the ongoing payments for a grant, a very substantial grant: one that must have given Libby financial freedom. Pav knew that Libby had only recently hung up her stripper shoes. He’d assumed that she’d finally decided to let Jamie support her and her daughter in some way whilst she was still a student. Now that he thought about how fiercely independent Libby was, he realized that was unlikely. This grant was life-changing for her.
Pav frowned. How had Dr Morrison got hold of this? Pav knew that Dr Morrison used to look after Rosie a few early mornings a week when Libby was on the surgical rotation so she could start when the other students started at seven thirty. Apparently the little girl had hung out in Dr Morrison’s office with her for an hour until the hospital nursery opened.
Millie wasn’t the only one with a quick mind and a high IQ. Pav couldn’t think of any reason why she would have a copy of this letter unless she was the one who’d written it. He filed that piece of information away. He had succeeded in alienating Dr Morrison completely that afternoon (so much for his legendary charm rays); he was going to need all the ammunition he could get if he was going to have any chance of changing her mind about public speaking. He had another six months to do it in before the conference.
No problem, he thought to himself as he strode out of the department.
There was nobody Pavlos Martakis couldn’t talk around, given enough time. Nobody.