Kira rolled her eyes but made no move to push up off her human chair. Mark’s hands were now resting on her thighs. Was this bastard even gay? He could be pulling a fast one to grope women without fear of reprimand. And why did the thought of Mark groping Kira bother me so much? I was losing my goddamn mind.
“For the last time, nobody ever calls me ‘Dr Murphy’,” Kira said. “Even my patients call me by my first name. If you could remove the stick from your arse for five fucking minutes, maybe I’d be prepared to speak to you.”
I forced a smile, which I’d hoped would come off as charming but knew ended up more as a grimace. I’d never been naturally charming and Kira was testing my reserves of patience. My head throbbed and a wave of nausea washed over me.
“I’m sorry,Kira.” My words sounding stiff and forced but it was the best I could get out. “If you could possibly see your way to allowing me five minutes of your time, I would be extremely grateful.”
Kira snorted, but she still pushed herself up with Mark’s help and made her way over to the doorway made for tiny people, which I succeeded in cracking my head on.
“If the pizzas get here whilst I’m gone and nobody saves me a piece of vegetarian supreme, I will bepissed.”
“Ki Ki, nobody eats the wanky veg one other than you,” Pav told her.
“Don’t give me that, Martakis,” she said, hands on her hips. “I’ve not forgotten the Quorn Sausage Incident.” She shooed me back out into the corridor, causing me to crack my head on the frameagain,then she slammed the door on Martakis’ protests.
“Right,” she muttered. “Come on then.”
She flitted around me in that super-quick, fey way of hers and led me into her tiny bedroom on the other side of the corridor. It was a miniscule room built amongst the eaves. I couldn’t straighten to my full height so I was standing hunched over and with my thumping head tilted to the side.
“It’s like something out ofGulliver’s Travelsin here,” I complained as I tried to negotiate a more comfortable standing position. Kira seemed perfectly comfortable, standing to her full height with no problem and smirking at my discomfort. My gaze flicked to the bed and her eyebrows went up.
“I was just going to ask if I could sit on it,” I told her, feeling my neck spasm on one side due to the awkward angle.
“Say what you’ve got to say. No sitting on my bed. There’s no space there anyway and if you move any of my papers and disrupt my filing system, I may have to kill you.”
“There’s a system in there?” I asked, eyeing the mass of papers and books sprawled over the small bed with disbelief.
“Sure,” Kira looked down at the chaos and stuck her chin out defiantly. “It’s a finely balanced ecosystem. Everything has an exact position. I’m a highly organised genius.”
I thought of my own immaculate desk back in my study. Empty in-tray. Perfectly ordered filing cabinet. Desk bare other than the two screens for my desktop computer. Delicate ecosystem? I called bullshit. But it was not going to do me any favours at this point to verbalise this. I needed to get on with this apology and somehow get her to agree to the idea my PR team had floated yesterday.
“Look, I’m sorry if I offended you the week before last. As you can probably understand, it is a sensitive situation and we’re trying to stay in control of the press.”
Kira crossed her arms over her chest, tilted her head to the side and narrowed her eyes at me.
“You’re not sorry.”
“What?”
“You said ‘I’m sorryifyouwere offended’, not ‘I’m sorryI wasa rude arsehole’. There’s a big difference. I can spot a non-apology when I see one. The hospital gives them out all the time.”
I rubbed the area between my eyebrows behind which the dull, throbbing pain was slowly escalating.
“Okay, okay. I’m sorryIwas a rude arsehole. I was stressed and I shouldn’t have taken it out on you.” That may have been the first genuine apology I’d given in years.
She muttered something under her breath that sounded like cockwomble.What?
“What was that?” I asked.
“If I accept your apology, will you bugger off and leave us in peace?”
“I . . .” The pressure behind my eyes was becoming truly unbearable now. An entire area of my vision had gone blurry. A little late, I realised that the stress of the last two weeks may have been catching up with me. I’d had very little sleep. Everything was riding on getting this bill through. “Christ, it’s a bit bright in here, isn’t it?”
I tried to focus on Kira through the pain but it was becoming more difficult. When I dragged my eyes away, there was a trail of colour after her image; a sure sign that this migraine was going to be dramatic. Bugger, I needed to get home.
“Hey,” her voice had softened and she was closer now. I felt her small hand on my arm. “You okay up there? You’re looking a bit pale.”
My eyes were closed now. There wasn’t much else I could do against the light. My head felt like it was going to explode. I heard rustling of paper and then her hands were back on my arms, pushing me over towards the bed.
