I felt heat creep up my neck as I bristled in indignation. “I have not been blocked! That’s something that happens to… to stalkers and weirdos.”
Josh did laugh this time but stopped abruptly when I shot him a murderous look.
“Right, well,” Josh paused and cleared his throat, eyeing me with a nervous expression. “I hate to break it to you, but it happens plenty to us normal blokes. My ex blocked me rather than tell me she wanted to break up. Ghosted me. And I was blocked by the last person I went on a date with the minute we parted ways – I mean I had only taken her out for a Nando’s, which may have been an error. She was wearing a dress and heels, so it’s possible I misjudged that one slightly. My nan even blocked me once for being too needy. Anyway, welcome to my world.”
I stared down at my phone and felt the heat in my neck seep up into my face. Women did not block me. I didn’t think a woman had ever rejected me in my entire life. Women returned my texts, they answered my calls. To be honest, it was more common for them to be the ones calling me rather than the other way around.
“Damn it,” I muttered at my phone, forgetting Josh was hovering next to me. “How the hell am I going to get to speak to her now?”
“Er…” Josh ventured tentatively.
I flashed Josh an annoyed look, and he swallowed nervously. Seriously, the man needed to grow a bloody backbone.
“Well, if she’sblocked you,then she probably doesn’t want to speak to you. Take it from a former blockee – you’d be better off leaving her alone.”
“Some bird blocked you, mate?” Ruben, the orthopaedic consultant, said as he sauntered over to the central desk. He was grinning from ear to ear, the bastard. “Losing your touch, are you?”
“Bugger off, Ruben,” I said, shoving my phone into my back pocket and standing up from my stool. “It’s complicated.”
“If a woman blocks you, then you really should respect that, you know,” said my colleague Liz, as she approached the desk behind Ruben.
“I’m not some bloody stalker,” I said through gritted teeth.
“I’m not suggesting that. I’m just saying that you’ve got to respect boundaries. You can’t–”
“She’s in love with me, okay!” I burst out, then immediately regretted it when Ruben’s smile widened and Liz’s frown deepened.
“Funny way of showing it, Casanova,” Ruben put in. He was thoroughly enjoying this. I knew he was still holding a grudge from the recovery staff voting me “most fuckable” three years ago. I’d kept the title despite his best efforts with his open shirt collars, shameless flirting and grotesque displays of arm muscles. He’d even strutted through the department in his cycling lycra a couple of times – if anything, it put them off.
“Sometimes signals can be confusing,” Liz told me in a serious tone, and I groaned. Liz had teenagers at home and she was speaking to me like I was one of them. “But we have to respect other people’s decisions otherwise all the lines of consent become blurred and we can–”
“Oh myGod.I’m not some creepy stalker. You don’t understand.”
“Just to say – that’s exactly the kind of thing a creepy stalker would say,” Liz said with an apologetic shrug.
“Oh wow. I can’t wait to tell the recovery staff, mate,” said Ruben. “Your approval rating will be right in the shit after this.”
I rolled my eyes and pushed up from my stool. “Liz, shall we handover the patient?”
“Right, of course. We can talk about this later.”
I kept my mouth shut. I would not be talking to Liz about my private life later or receiving another lecture, but I needed to get her off the main floor before the whole department thought I was some sort of leech that couldn’t take no for an answer.
“Let’s go to the office.”
“But–”
“Josh, you can come too. I’ll hear about your latest crisis of confidence in there.”
Liz and I started moving towards the office with Josh trailing after us. Ruben’s laughter echoed around the department as we went.
Blocked. Blocked! I had a flashback of a thirteen-year-old Yaz looking up at me like I was the saviour of the modern world when I told the Hardcastles about my first week on the wards working as a doctor. I remembered her smile that lit up the room when I’d arrive at her house to pick Max up; the joy on her face when I offered to let her tag along to the pub as long as she stuck to lemonade; or her expression when I made Max let her watch a film and eat pizza with us. Then there was that day when she was eleven and I’d taught her to surf in Saint Tropez – just before we arrived back at the villa she’d looked up at me with unbridled adoration, her expression so earnest as she put her small hand on my arm and told me, “You are the kindest most… most wonderful man I’ve ever met in my life.” She then turned bright red and sprinted away before I could get out my reply, but those words had stayed with me.
That eleven-year-old’s high regard has always meant something to me. The fact was, I wasn’t always a good person. Especially not at twenty-one. I was an over-privileged, entitled shithead a lot of the time. Back then I treated women like crap. I was ambitious and put my career ahead of anything else. Yes, given my childhood there were excuses I could make for myself. Reasons for the emotional detachment. With the childhood Verity and I had had it was a wonder we were able to form any successful relationships full stop. I had thought that was improving over the years. But I’d certainly displayed a record level of arrogance, emotional stupidity, and insensitivity in my recent interactions with Yaz.
I couldn’t get over the look on her face after I’d told her we “may as well” be together. It was as though the scales had finally fallen from her eyes where I was concerned, and she was seeing me for the first time as the horrible callous human I really was. Being well and truly knocked off that pedestal was harder than I realised. And to make matters worse, if I thought my obsessional craving for her would diminish after actually being with her, I was sorely mistaken. Staying away from her, not being even able to contact her, was now an actual source of physical pain. I wasn’t eating, I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t concentrate on anything. Ineededto see her. I needed to make it right and take that awful look off her face. But seeing as I was bloody well blocked, ringing her didn’t seem to be an option. I would have to be creative. It wasn’t like I had never had to work for anything in my life before. Okay, so women had never required much effort on my part, but I was capable of it, surely. I just had to work out a way to speak to her without seeming desperate.
*****
