‘Yeah, okay,’ I replied, barely controlling an eye-roll. Of course they had to be done today, but I wasn’t going to argue. I finally made it to the door.
‘Chopsiness?’ he asked, with that damn raised eyebrow again.
‘Um, yeah. You know: chopsy, radgy, bolshy.’ He was fighting a smile again, but unfortunately he won that particular battle.
‘I know what it means, I’m just surprised a Saesneg girl like you uses it,’ he replied, letting a small smile slip through.
After hanging around Dylan for years I was bound to pick up more than a few Welshisms, hence my use of ‘chopsy’ and my knowledge that ‘Saesneg’ means ‘English’. Whilst Tom had a subtle Welsh lilt, Dylan (who was from the deepest darkest valleys) was Welsh with a capital W.
‘I’m not English,’ I retorted.
‘Oh right … Rossetti –’
‘Look,’ I said, cutting him off, not wanting to be drawn into any conversation with this prickly man, especially not one about my background, ‘I need to get going, so –’
‘Fine,’ Tom replied, his smile dying, and the loss of it causing a peculiar tightening in my chest. ‘See you tomorrow.’
As I was leaving I realized that, other than just now, I hadn’t seen Tom smile or laugh all day. The Tom I had spent two years obsessing over, and therefore watching closely, was always smiling and laughing. I had loved above all things to watch him laugh, if only from a distance. Why was he so different?
Chapter 4
Groin-pressing
‘Ladies!’ Dylan was striding onto the cardiology ward like he owned the place, with Lou in his wake, clicking over the linoleum in her sky-high heels. I was sitting checking blood results at the computer as they came to a halt in front of me.
Lou was red in the face, and I could see from her expression that she was dangerously close to the edge. She slapped the small designer handbag that she carried around the wards with her down on my desk in front of me (I had never known her to be without her lip gloss), shoved her hands into her hair and shrieked.
‘Jesus, Lou,’ I said, looking around to see if the ward staff had noticed her outburst. ‘What the heck is going on?’
‘Do something with this fuckwit before I brain him with the nearest bedpan,’ she bit out, literally shaking with fury. Dylan was smirking next to her, looking completely unrepentant. Lou was an Elderly Care registrar. It was her specialty of choice and she loved it. Dylan was an orthopaedic registrar and part of his rotation was to spend six months working in Elderly Care. He hated it and didn’t see the point.
It’s a massive generalization to say that orthopaedic surgeons are testosterone-fuelled meatheads who like playing with their hammers and power tools. However, on the whole it was pretty accurate, and Dylan was no exception.
By some cruel twist of fate, the powers that be had allocated Dylan to be Lou’s junior for the next six months. They had already been driving each other up the wall for the last eleven years and now the situation was nuclear, with me as the unfortunate referee.
Lou flopped down into the chair next to me, putting her knee-high boots up on the desk and displaying her long legs for all on the ward to see. Apart from anything, I didn’t think that this was entirely healthy for the bay of men opposite us, all of whom had suffered recent heart attacks, and all of whom had abandoned their pay-per-view tellies to focus on the far more entertaining display around my desk.
‘Babes,’ Dylan said, leaning against the edge of the desk opposite us. ‘Calm yourself.’ He turned to me, his smirk still in place. ‘Ladies, what’s occurring? You fixing hearts instead of breaking them?’ I rolled my eyes and pushed back from the computer, crossing my arms over my chest.
‘Much as I enjoy theDylan and Lou Show, I’m up to my neck here, guys,’ I said, rubbing my eyes, which were tired from focusing on the screen. ‘Can I sort your latest drama out later, at home maybe, or at the pub?’
Dylan had his own flat but spent an inordinate amount of time at ours; this might have been something to do with his lack of cooking skills and love of my cakes.
‘Our latest drama is that he walked out of a multi-disciplinary meeting halfway through,’ Lou declared in a horrified tone. ‘But worse, barely ten minutes in, he did this in front of everyone.’ She put two fingers to her forehead, miming shooting herself, and used her other hand to mime her brains splattering out of the other side of her head.
‘In my defence,’ Dylan returned, ‘there were extenuating circumstances. We had been discussing the rugs and carpets in an old lady’s house fortwenty minutesby the time I did that. I mean, how is that even possible?’
‘For Christ’s sake, Dildo,’ Lou said, exasperated. ‘What on earth do you expect the occupational therapist to discuss, when the reason the patient is in hospital is because she keeps tripping over her fu –‘ I made a choked noise of protest at Lou’s second use of the f-word in front of the whole ward, not to mention ‘dildo’ – ‘herrugs,’ she continued, flashing me a look of irritation. ‘Your problem is that you’re such a Neanderthal you can’t see the holistic picture. You’re just like: I man, have hammer, fix bone. It’s pathetic. At leasttryto learn something in this six months.’
The whole point of making the orthopaedic surgeons do six months of Elderly Care was because they were notorious for forgetting all their medical training in favour of bashing bones into shape. This would be fine, but many of their patients had multiple medical problems, and these problems needed attention just as much, if not more, than their broken bones. A perfectly aligned nail repairing a femoral fracture didn’t mean much if the patient died of heart failure anyway.
‘Didn’t anyone say anything when you left the meeting?’ I asked.
‘Oh God,’ Lou said. ‘You know what he’s like. He just winked at them, their ovaries all skipped a collective beat and they smiled at him like he’d done them a colossal favour attending in the first place.’
‘Well, see, I’ve done that physio a few favours in the past, mind, and she wasverygrateful, believe me,’ Dylan said smugly.
‘You are a disgusting pig,’ Lou said, her lip curling.
