‘You would, Don,’ she told him, her small smile back in action and her eyes soft on her colleague. ‘You would argue if they hadn’t said that about me, if they’d said it was rubbish.’
‘Well,’ Pav broke in, and Dr Morrison flinched again as if she’d forgotten he was even there in her excitement, ‘the fact is that this is a breakthrough, and as Surgical Director I can assure you the hospital is fully behind you attending whatever international conferences or meetings you need to.’
Pav let that hang there for a minute as he watched Millie bite her lip. He knew very well that she had no intention of going to any international conferences. Over the last month he’d had more emails from organizers all over the world, and he knew that she was continuing to turn them all down flat, each and every one. One of them was to Hawaii, for fuck’s sake. Was she mad?
‘That won’t be necessary,’ Millie told him as she spun her chair back around to her computer monitor and started scrolling through images again.
‘Listen,’ Pav said, making a fairly rubbish attempt to soften his tone, ‘you can’t just ignore all this. At the very least you’re going to have to present it to the rest of the hospital –’
‘No.’
Don sighed. ‘Millie maybe you could just –’
‘Don,no.’
‘Dr M., look …’ Pav spoke to her stiff back. Other than a small flinch she did not acknowledge his presence. ‘You have to present this stuff. You –’
‘Talk to Anwar,’ she said, still not making any eye contact. ‘He did all the CBT. He’d be –’
‘Youset up the study!’ Pav’s voice was raised in frustration. ‘Most of the CBT that the patients did was online in a computer programyoucreated. I can’t just get the psychologist to talk about it on his own. That’s ridiculous. It’syourstudy.’
‘No!’ To Pav’s shock, Dr Morrison’s normal, controlled tone went up a pitch and she actually slammed her hand down on her desk. Unfortunately it was her injured hand. He saw her wince in acute pain as she snatched it from the desk and hugged it to her chest. That dreadful hollow feeling was back again as he watched her in pain. Why was she so bloody stubborn?
‘I think, Stavros, you’d better leave.’ Donald was out of his chair now and drawing himself up to his full height (which unfortunately for Donald only came up to Pav’s chest); but the steely look in the old man’s eye and the disapproval in his expression had Pav backing away to the corridor.
Chapter 4
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 withThe Lancetand 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 Iama 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.
