‘Callum, this is Sam,’ Katie said soothingly. ‘He’s justleaving.’ She gave Sam a pointed look, but he was focused on Callum, who unfortunately was still right in Katie’s personal space.
‘Step. Back,’ Sam bit out, and Katie felt Callum tense with fear beside her, his eyes going wide. At this point Katie was done. Why on earth Sam ignored her for days, then interrupted her during an extremely tense consultation, she had no idea, but it made her blood boil.
‘Callum,’ she called, and he tore his eyes away from Sam. ‘Listen to me, trust me, Sam’s leaving. Everything is okay. You’re going to be okay. You and I are going to work this out, right? Now, sit down.’ Katie’s gentle but firm words seemed to penetrate Callum’s fug of confusion. He glanced at Sam once more, then took his seat, cowering slightly into his mum. Katie turned to Sam and jerked her head towards the door. He frowned at her and crossed his arms over his chest, not moving an inch. Sighing, she pushed away from her desk and walked over to him, put her small hand in the centre of his chest and pushed. Frustratingly the freakishly big bastard didn’t even sway.
‘I have this under control, Sam,’ she told him, hoping her voice was low enough not to carry across the room. ‘You’re not helping. Get out. I mean it.’ Sam looked startled for a moment by her tone. After a few seconds of stare-down he uncrossed his arms and held his hands up in defeat.
‘Fine, right, okay,’ he muttered, glancing over at Callum, who had his earphones back in and was muttering again with his eyes on the floor. ‘I’ll be right outside the door though.’
‘Okay.’
‘Right outside,’ he said a little louder, probably hoping Callum would hear over the music banging in his headphones. Once the door finally shut after him Katie sighed and rested her forehead on it for a moment, before straightening up and preparing to go straight back to square one with Callum.
*****
‘You hadno rightto barge into my consultation room like that,’ Katie semi-shouted at Sam, whom she had frogmarched into the staff room after spending a good half hour calming Callum down, then starting him on antipsychotics and getting him an urgent referral to psychiatry. Katie heard a squeak from the corner and noticed Marney cowering there looking terrified. Then again, for Marney, terrified was sort of a default setting, so Katie wasn’t too concerned. She looked over at her and gave her a reassuring smile.
‘Sorry, Marney,’ she said. This was met with another squeak before Marney scrambled to her feet and scurried out of the door. Sam watched her go, shaking his head slightly.
‘And what? Leave you alone with a six-foot psychotic maniac? You think either of those two at the desk could have intervened?’ Sam asked, pointing after Marney.
‘I didn’t need intervention, you great big brute. He’s a teenager, he was scared, he –’
‘Katie, he was double your size. I don’t care how young he is or what sort of sob story he has going for him. You shouldn’t be in a position where –’
‘But I am, Sam,’ Katie cut in, getting more and more angry and frustrated with his blatant lack of respect. ‘I deal with patients like that all the time. I can risk-assess; I’m a good judge of people.’ Sam opened his mouth to speak but Katie cut him off. ‘I’m a professional, Sam. I know what I’m doing. I love my job. I’ve helped that boy today, no thanks to you.’
Sam stared at her for a moment, then looked down at the floor, rubbing the back of his neck. When he looked up at her again he’d blanked all expression in that curious way of his, and he took a step back from her.
‘Okay, well, none of my business,’ he said, and Katie very nearly groaned in frustration. Had she offended him again? She instinctively reached out for him, but he flinched away and her arm fell back to her side. ‘I only came to say that Daniel is out of the country for the next month.’
‘How do you know that?’
He shrugged, looking away from her evasively. ‘I just do. Look, it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t set the alarms and do all the other normal precautions. It just means that you don’t have to be careful about being out alone in the daytime. You shouldn’t walk or scoot anywhere on your own after dark anyway, stalker or not.’ Katie barely restrained an eye roll at this ridiculous piece of high-handedness, but managed to just breathe a sigh of relief. ‘And I’m going away too.’
‘W-what?’ Katie asked, a sick feeling gathering in her stomach. He was practically all the way across the room from her now, and completely shut off.
‘I’ve got a job in London. Leaving tomorrow.’
‘W-when will you be back?’
He shrugged. ‘Depends.’
Katie was beginning to get angry. Depends? What sort of blooming answer was that? They’d just made love for the first time two days ago and he was ready to bugger off to London?
‘I think,’ she started to say, moving forward to where he was already edging for the door. ‘I think you owe me more than that as an explanation, Sam. I care about you.’
Katie had never seen the point of playing games. She did care about Sam. Okay, so she was in love with the big bastard, but he didn’t have to know that quite yet, especially if he was planning on sodding off to London. Sam’s face may have been devoid of all expression but it was impossible to hide how stiffly he was holding his body, or the fact that his hands were curled into tight fists at his sides. Katie took another step towards him and he seemed to tense even more.
‘I think you care about me too,’ she whispered, laying her hand over one of his fists, feeling the ligaments and muscles pulled tight under her fingers. Sam looked down at her and she could have sworn she saw a flash of fear in his brown eyes before he managed to blank them again. He shook her hand off and moved even closer to the door, eyeing her like she was a predator ready to strike, not a five-foot-one woman in ridiculous shoes.
‘Look, we’ve had fun, yeah? It’s been great whilst I had to hang here and help Rob with the film set, but now I think it’s time we did our own thing. Let’s face it, our lives are pretty different; I’m not exactly the homely, local-pub, comfortable-life sort of guy.’
Katie narrowed her eyes at him. He’d seemed quite happy with that sort of life for the last month.
‘What sort of guy are you, Sam?’ she asked, realising that in their time together he’d always managed to hide as much as he shared. Did she actually know him as well as she thought she did?
‘You don’t want to know,’ he told her, his voice alarmingly hollow. With that he turned and slammed his way out of the room leaving a bewildered Katie frowning in his wake.
