‘Right, now you can fix her hand, Mummy,’ Rosie further bossed as she released Millie and slid off her lap. Libby rolled her eyes but smiled at her daughter.
‘Can I see?’ she asked Millie.
‘Listen, my hand’s fine. I don’t –’
‘That’s not what Pav told me, Millie,’ Libby said gently, and Millie let out a breath at the use of her Christian name. Everyone except these two and Don called her Dr Morrison. She absolutely hated it. It meant a lot to her that Libby called her Millie. Even her parents wouldn’t use the shortened version of her name, preferring instead the more formal Camilla.
Libby sucked in a breath as she prised Millie’s hand from her lap and turned it over. ‘Sh …’ Libby glanced at her daughter, whose ears had pricked up in preparation for a swear word, ‘… sugar, that had to have smarted, hun.’
Millie blinked. Endearments were not something she was used to either. From childhood they had been few and far between. Libby’s beautiful, make-up-free face was frowning down at Millie’s burns. Her short messy hair looked like she’d run her fingers through it about a thousand times already today. The way she looked and acted was so natural and carefree it made Millie feel stilted and repressed. No doubt Libby had a two-minute shower in the morning, brushed her hair, flung on whatever she had to hand and that was that. It made a mockery of Millie’s own ninety-minute routine: her obsessional need to be wearing the perfect outfit, for her appearance to be flawless, faultless.
‘Jesus, we need to get this looked at by plastics.’
‘No.’ Millie pulled away her hand and leaned back in her chair. Libby’s head tilted to the side and her forehead creased in confusion.
‘But I think –’
‘No plastics. It’ll be fine.’ Millie knew what would happen if she saw a burns specialist. They would dress her hand in such a way that it would be rendered pretty much useless. Her right hand. They would then tell her to contact someone to look after her whilst the hand healed: a friend, family – someone to stay with her. She wouldn’t be able to work.
‘Millie, please –’
‘No plastics.’ Millie stared at Libby, her mouth set in a thin stubborn line, and Libby sighed.
‘Okay, but let me dress it at least. I have iodine and gauze.’
Millie hesitated but caught sight of Rosie’s concerned little face. For a five-year-old she saw way too much.
‘Yes,’ Millie said, slowly uncoiling her hand and laying it back on the desk for Libby to see. Making sure a medical student left her free use of her hand would be a lot easier than a fully qualified plastic surgeon. ‘I … um, thanks,’ Millie muttered. Accepting kindness was not her strong suit, but then she hadn’t really had that much practice.
*****
Pav waited.
He could be patient when he needed to be and he got the feeling that with Dr Morrison he needed to be very fucking patient. That didn’t mean he wasn’t keeping tabs on her. Pav knew just about everyone in the hospital and he had his sources in the radiology department as well. Dr Morrison hadn’t taken any time off with her hand, which, whilst annoying, did not entirely surprise him.
What did surprise Pav was the tightness he felt in his chest when he thought of her using a burnt hand to click through her images, or the way his stomach had hollowed out when he’d seen her bandaged hand in the urology MDT and her flinch of pain when she used it to open up her laptop. He wasn’t quite sure why the thought of Dr Morrison in pain should create such a visceral reaction in him, but there was no mistaking it was there. He reasoned that maybe it was because he had indirectly been the cause of it. If he hadn’t propelled her over to their table and pushed her out of her comfort zone she wouldn’t have been hurt in the first place. No doubt guilt was playing a part then. There was a healthy dose of anger too, which also surprised Pav. He was generally a pretty mellow guy. But the thought of Dr Morrison pushing on to work through her pain and not resting her goddamn dominant hand made him want to smash something.
Normally if Pav thought that somebody was being stupid (and in his opinion working with your right hand after sustaining a second degree burn was right up there), he would make his view known fairly rapidly, and, more often than not, pretty loudly. But he’d already pushed Millie into a corner, not once but twice, with disastrous consequences, and for once in his life he needed to employ a bit of subtly. So he waited until he knew Don was back in the office from his holiday to approach her. That was about as subtle and considerate as Pav got.
‘Hey, Don,’ he said from the doorway of the office. Out of the corner of his eye he watched Dr Morrison jump in her chair before she settled back down and focused on the screen. At a glance she looked perfectly composed, but Pav could see how rapidly her chest was rising and falling, and how white her knuckles were as she gripped her mouse to click through the scans. ‘How were your hols?’
Donald turned in his chair and narrowed his eyes on Pav before flicking a concerned glance over at Millie. ‘I went to Bogner. It rained. What do you want, Stavros?’
‘Don, come on.’ Pav forced out a good-natured chuckle: the stubborn old man knew his name by now. Don just crossed his arms over his chest and raised one white eyebrow. Pav sighed. ‘Look, I’m actually here to talk to you if that’s okay, Dr Morrison?’ He watched her blink at the screen but no response was forthcoming. He tried again. ‘How’s the hand?’
‘Her hand is fine,’ Donald snapped. ‘Now, what is it you really want, son?’
Pav rubbed the back of his neck and then extended the journal he was holding in his other hand. Don glanced down at the front cover and smiled. ‘Millie? Why didn’t you tell me about this? Bugger me, it got intoTheLancet! I can’t believe it.’
Dr Morrison turned in her chair and, still avoiding eye contact with Pav, reached for the journal that was now in Don’s hands. He passed it across and she laid it reverently in her lap, staring down at it and then touching the featured article title, ‘CBT and Surgical Outcomes: The Psychology of Recovery’. A very small smile tugged at her perfectly painted lips before she masked her expression. She looked up at Don.
‘I didn’t know it was coming out this month and I –’
‘You never said it was getting intoThe Lancet,’ Don grumbled through a smile so wide Pav thought it might split his face. ‘My Millie,’ he said softly, reaching for her hand and laying his wrinkled one on top, ‘changing the face of medicine.’ Millie rolled her eyes.
‘Don’t be ridiculous, Don,’ she mumbled, a blush creeping up under her foundation. ‘It’s just an idea. Hardly groundbreaking. And Anwar had just as much credit, maybe more.’
Don snatched the journal away and started flicking through it. ‘Ha!’ he said triumphantly as he poked the page with his finger. ‘It says right here that this has the potential to be the biggest advance in post-op recovery in the last decade. It says that in the Editor’s letter. You can’t argue with the Editor ofThe Lancet.’
