‘Sorry,’ he said quietly. ‘My mistake, okay?’
Her eyes closed briefly in relief before she gave a quick nod and rushed back to her table. Once she had sat back down she found that she had lost all appetite for the now rather sad-looking bacon sandwich, and pushed her tray away. She glanced to the side as she continued to bundle her hair up into the elastic, stuffing hairpins in as she went for good measure. Triple G was frowning across at Mediterranean Guy, asking him something. Luckily for Libby, the man just shook his head and avoided eye contact. Whether he didn’t want to admit where he had seen her before, or whether he had taken pity on her, she wasn’t sure.
Some men could be decent.
Most were scum.
She should know.
Chapter 2
Everyone’s fighting their own unique war
‘For the love of God, please make it stop,’ Jamie pleaded through gritted teeth as the first chords of the next Justin Bieber song sounded obnoxiously throughout the enclosed space.
‘You know as well as I do, me old mucker, that the surgeon gets to choose the songs,’ Pav said from his position at the end of the bed, between the patient’s legs. His dark head was bent to concentrate on his task, but Jamie could just about make out the smirk he wasn’t trying to hide. ‘This isn’t a democracy you know. I need this kind of existential beauty to soothe my soul and help me focus my genius.’
‘You are forcing me, and the entire theatre staff to suffer for your own satisfaction. You hate this stuff as much as the rest of us, you sick bastard.’
‘Aren’t you a true Bielieber then, Grantham?’ Mick the ODP’s low voice rumbled from the other side of the patient. ODPs, or Operating Department Practitioners, were the anaesthetist’s right-hand men and women. Without Mick on side, Jamie would be royally screwed.
‘No, Mick,’ Jamie said slowly. ‘No, I am not.’ Mick shrugged his massive shoulders, exposing some more of his elaborately tattooed forearms. He was bald and about as wide as he was tall.
‘Not averse to a bit of the Biebs. Little fucker can sing, after all.’ Mick delivered this in such a deadpan voice that the theatre staff who didn’t know he was a purely heavy metal man probably thought he meant it. The other half were sniggering. They all enjoyed Jamie’s torture sessions during these urology lists.
Ever since Jamie had let slip to his best friend that Justin Bieber gave him the creeps and his music made him feel physically ill, it had been playing on loop every Friday morning for months.Months. Pav was a persistent and diabolical wind-up merchant; if something amused him he would keep it going well past the tolerance of any other reasonable human being.
‘It’s not like you really need to concentrate anyway,’ Jamie complained. ‘It’s just a TURP. You’re not removing the bladder or anything; just making sure that this guy isn’t going to be pissing every five minutes.’
‘I’m not sure that if you were the one with a metal bar up your cock, getting your prostate hollowed out, you would agree.’
Jamie rolled his eyes. ‘Saving the world one dick at time.’
‘Damn right I am. I’ll have you know – ’
The double doors to the theatre crashed open and all eyes swung to the dishevelled figure that stepped through. Her scrubs were inside out and massive on her, her theatre shoes were different colours and sizes, and her hair was a huge mess on top of her head, secured with multiple elastic bands and clips. She was trying to shove a torn theatre cap over the mass as she moved through the doors. Jamie smoothed down the front of his perfectly fitted scrubs and frowned.
‘Dr Grantham,’ she said as her wide bright blue eyes met his, ‘I’m so sorry I’m late.’ She was out of breath, her cheeks were flushed pink, and despite the crazy disarray of her appearance she looked absolutely stunning. Pav had stopped squinting down his ‘metal rod’ to take her in, and was openly smirking. Jamie shot him a warning look before turning to deal with the latecomer.
‘One of the most important things in anaesthetics is preoperative assessment,’ he said, frowning down at her and trying unsuccessfully to block out how bright her eyes were after her rush to get here, or how full her bottom lip was as she bit it. ‘You’ve not only missed assessing the patients on the ward but also the anaesthetic itself.’
Libby released her lip and took a deep breath in. For a moment her eyes clouded with the strangest look of bone-deep weariness and defeat that he almost wished he could let her off the hook. But by the time she spoke, that look had been replaced with hard determination.
‘It won’t happen again,’ she told him. ‘I just had – ’
‘Let’s forget about it,’ he cut her off. He’d heard too many lame excuses from medical students burning the candle at both ends over the last few months since he’d agreed to be Educational Director. To Jamie it was black and white: you turned up, you put the effort in and you got the job done, end of story.
‘You may as well come up this end, newbie,’ Pav put in, having gone back to operating. ‘The Gasman has already done big syringe, little syringe. All he does now is listen to the inane beeps and watch porn on his iPhone.
‘Pav, will you please, for once, shut up,’ Jamie snapped. ‘And turn this goddamn musicoff. I feel like I want to rip my brain out through my nose.’
‘Boys, that’s enough,’ the theatre sister snapped, thankfully shutting off the Bieber. ‘No swearing.Ladiesare present.’
Pav snorted a laugh (they’d already heard this particularladyusing the c-word when referring to a theatre manager before the list started), which, under the sister’s glare, he managed to turn into a cough. Jamie waited until he’d caught Pav’s eye and gave him a long stare before turning back to Libby.
‘Okay … Libby is it?’
He knew her name. He’d been thinking about her name, her hair, her eyes, her skin, even her baggy bloody jumper way too much over the last few days. But he wasn’t about to reveal that to her or anyone else for that matter. She nodded, her breathing still fast, and Jamie had to put all his concentration into not looking down at her chest as it rose and fell rapidly.
