Challenge (35 page)

“
I
NDIE,”
P
RICHARD SAYS, STOPPING ME
in the hallway on my way to Patch Alley.

I do my best to suppress a heavy sigh. “Hi, Dr. Prichard.” I enunciate his name more forcefully than necessary, attempting to put extra focus on the
doctor
part of my address.

He grasps my elbow and guides me away from the hustle and bustle, into the darkened hallway where stretchers are stored. His touch feels like needles. “I have excellent news.”

“I was just paged for an ortho consult on a little boy,” I say, pointing to where I was heading.

“This won’t take long.” His eyes crinkle on me in that way that makes me feel squirrely. I’ve done my best to avoid him since that odd moment in the scrub room, but with Camden’s surgery coming up, there’s only so much space I can create.

“
The British Medical Journal
will be here on Monday for the Harris surgery. They want to interview me…and you.” He seems to bite out the last part. “They are interested in talking to you about the research you did in med school.”

My mouth drops open.
The British Medical Journal
is even bigger than the one that published my research before. “What do they want to know?”

“Nothing too technical. They want to do a human interest piece on how you are one of the youngest published practicing doctors operating on a top-level athlete. They want to talk about your upbringing, your research, the procedure we’re doing on the Harris patient. Everything. The hospital is very keen about this idea.”

“Wow,” I reply still feeling a bit stunned. To have a medical journal interested in me at all is a tremendous honour. But a human interest piece? About my background and Camden? Nerves erupt inside my belly over how awkward this could be for me in more ways than I can even admit.

“I thought you might be pleased.” Prichard’s brows rise and he gets a smug look in his eyes. “I have a bottle of vintage Dom we can share after the surgery to celebrate.”

Realising that his hand is still on my elbow, I force out a smile. His advances are becoming more and more obvious. It’s not against hospital policy to date a member of the staff; however, when I’m already fighting against other residents’ perception of me, attention like this will not help me get ahead.

“We’ll see.” I step away from him, but he steps back into my space—so close that I can smell his cologne.

“Indie, I hope you can see what a good team we make. Together, I can really see big things happening all around.”

I stare back at him in wonder. It’s such a jarring juxtaposition for someone so handsome to say things so obviously creepy. When he has the entire hospital flocking at his feet, I wonder why he puts so much focus on me.

“Well, Dr. Prichard, I have a patient waiting, so…”

“Of course.” He smiles and winks. I turn and haul arse out of his space, away from his scent, and retreat into my own thoughts.

“What was it you did, little man?” I ask, sitting down next to a wide-eyed little boy whose tiny form takes up only ten percent of the stretcher we’re sitting on.

His lower lip protrudes as he’s doing his very best not to cry again. “Well, I was chasing my sister…and she went downstairs real fast and I wanted to get her…and so…I didn’t.”

“The steps are wooden. There’s no carpet, or padding, or anything. He screamed so loud. I just know something is broken.”

I look over at his mother’s face and see matching wide eyes tear up as she watches her four-year-old son clutch his arm protectively to his chest. It took a solid ten minutes for me to get him to stop crying and finally talk to me.

“It hurts,” he mumbles again.

An idea comes to mind. “Hey, Limerick, do you like football?”

“Yeah, my dad says, ‘Go Gunners.’” His voice wobbles as he sniffles.

I smile. “So you’re an Arsenal fan? That’s a great team. Do you want to know something really cool?”

“What?”

“I treated a professional footballer here in this hospital not very long ago.”

“Who was it?”

“He’s a striker. He’s very big and very strong and has scored lots of goals this season. But do you know what else?”

He looks at me with wide, puppy-dog eyes.

“He was scared, too.”

“He was?” A light turns on in his eyes.

“He was. And do you know how I got him to not be scared?”

“How?”

“I had him sing a song,” I lie. I can’t very well tell him that I snogged his face off. “Do you like singing?”

“Depends on the song.”

“Humpty Dumpty seems to make sense here.”

He grins and says, “I know that one.”

“Come on then, let’s hear it!”

I get him going on the nursery song before he lets me touch his arm. Eventually, around some giggles and some pitchy notes on my part, I’m able to do a full manual exam.

“Limerick,” I whisper and he stops singing. “You’re a better singer than that footballer.”

He beams and then drops his face to serious. “But he’s probably a better footballer.”

“Only until you get bigger.” I ruffle his hair and tell his mother that someone will be by to take him to X-ray. I suspect he does have a hairline fracture but, depending on the location, he could get by with a brace and not a full cast. She seems grateful, and I make a mental note to relay the singing bit to the radiologist.

“You know, that’s the third time you’ve brought him up in random conversation since we came back to work yesterday.” Belle pushes herself off the nurse’s station counter and jogs to catch up to me as I make my way to the on-call room.

“It is not,” I defend. “And don’t you have better things to do than watch me with a patient?”

Ignoring my last remark, she continues, “Yesterday you yelled at Stanley when he said footballers are all poofs who like to put on a show. And last night you ripped my head off when I asked you why you were reading a sports medicine textbook.”

“I just had to look something up,” I argue, still annoyed by my newly found interest. Ever since I saw Tower Park and felt the grandness of it all, my brain won’t shut up.

Thinking about Tower Park evokes a most unwelcome memory of how Camden held me on the dance floor as I cried the other night. How embarrassing and humiliating. For some odd reason, it’s always been easy to open up to him. I reveal things to him that I’ve never even told Belle.

The rest of my time off was very un-Tequila Sunrisey. Belle kept pestering me about why I was emotional when we left Old George that night. I lied and told her I was allergic to the ivy on the walls and had accidently touched some. She made me take medicine and spent the night with me to make sure I didn’t go into anaphylactic shock.

I’m grateful to be back at the hospital now, letting work consume my mind instead of thoughts of Camden.

His surgery is in just a few days and I have to stop thinking about him. I can’t think about how he felt when he held me at Old George, or how incredible my first time with him was, or how funny and charming he is when he puns. I don’t give a toss if he meant what he said that morning I threw him out of my flat. It was a mistake when I cried in his arms at Old George—a lapse in judgment. I’d had too much to drink and didn’t know what I was doing.

So I detached. I pushed him away not once, but twice. In my experience, that’s how most relationships are. Distant. Here one minute, gone the next. No goodbye hug. No thoughtful words. No grand gestures. Just a departure. That is what Camden Harris would have turned into if I gave too much of myself. If I allowed myself to depend on him for my sole happiness, he’d become like all the other absentee figures in my life.

I just wish I knew why this is all still bothering me so much.

“And those two instances don’t necessarily have to do with
him
,” I say to Belle as we reach the on-call room door. I turn, pressing my back against the door, and add, “I’m just applying the knowledge I gained from that experience to the real world.”

Her eyes narrow. “Please.” Reaching behind me, she quickly shoves open the door and sends me flying backwards.

Thankfully, a pair of able hands catch me. “Indie, are you okay?” Stanley’s big brown eyes look down on me all soft and worried and still a bit wounded. He hasn’t lost that look since that night at the club over a month ago.

“I’m fine, Stanley. Cheers.” I right myself and pull out of his arms, staring down at the floor. I feel his eyes on me as he shuffles his way out. I exhale as the door closes behind him. “Gosh, this place can feel so stifling sometimes.” I drop down onto the bed and Belle flops down next to me.

“I don’t know what you’re moaning about. You have Penis Number Two right there, ready and waiting for you. That’s called easy-peasy convenience if you ask me.”

The idea of having sex with Stanley churns my stomach. “I’m not having sex with Stanley.”

“Why not? You’ve completed number one…You were so keen on number two just a few days ago.”

“I can’t do it.”

“You said you were ready. I think experiencing a guy like Stanley could be good—”

“Maybe we can wait until I get the feel of the first cock out of me, all right? Not all of us are like you and can hop from one dick to the next without a care in the world.” My breaths come out fast and heavy as my words slice into Belle’s unsuspecting guts. I wince at her crestfallen face.

She rears back from my attempted embrace. “Fuck. Off. Indie.” Then she stands up and storms out of the room, leaving me completely shattered in her wake.

I could laugh…if I didn’t think it might make me cry. If space is what I wanted, then I’ve certainly achieved it now. First Camden, now Belle. My eyes sting with unshed tears. Tears that I refuse to release. Tears that I won’t permit to drop. Tears that have no business coming from me. This is all ridiculous.

Pushing Camden away was the right thing to do. The presence of
The British Medical Journal
cements that fact. I couldn’t operate on him if we were still together. Plus, what we’re doing with sports medicine is so much bigger than some crush. Walking away from Camden was necessary. He is my patient. Nothing more. I’m making history here, and all of this will work out just fine.

“Erm…Indie?” Stanley interrupts my thoughts, peeking his head around the door. “There’s someone here to see you. I put her in the consult room down Hallway D.”

“Who is it?” I ask.

“She didn’t want to say.”

She?
I think to myself, standing up and smoothing my scrubs into place. Who on earth?

I make my way to the room where we take patient’s families to tell them bad news. It’s not a good room. It’s a very bad room with mauve cushioned chairs and dusty silk flowers. I hate the room.

When I open the door, my eyes fall on the back of a slender blonde who’s looking out the window on the far wall. When she turns around, my heart sinks.

“Vi,” I say, my eyes wide with frozen shock. “What are you doing here?”

Her lips are curled, nostrils flared, and eyes razor sharp, focused on me. “What did you do?” she asks, her voice low and controlled.

I frown as she advances toward me. She looks as if she wants to hit me. “Is everything okay?”

“No,
Dr. Porter
, it’s not. Tell me what you did. What else did you say to him?”

My face is the picture of horrified. Did Camden really tell her everything about us? I begin stammering, “I don’t…I just…We couldn’t—”

“Why would you convince him not to have the surgery? You’re his doctor! This is what’s best for him. This is what’s best for the hospital. If he leaves that stupid graft in, he won’t be able to play football or anything ever again. Tell me what you said to him.”

My head spins. This is nowhere near what I thought she was accusing me of. “I never told him not to get the graft removed, Vi.”

She looks me up and down as if she doesn’t believe a word I’m saying. “Did you tell him people can get by without repairing their ACL? Did you tell him not everyone has the surgery?”

My mind flashes back to our first two nights together in the hospital, and she’s completely right. I did say all of that to him. But I didn’t say it because I thought he shouldn’t do it. I said it because…because…

I care about him.

“Vi, I said some derivative of that, but I didn’t mean for him…Of course I didn’t…He’s a career athlete.” I’m tripping over my words. “He has to have the second surgery. There’s no question.”

“We’ve been trying to convince him for two days. He’s not budging!” Her clear blue eyes are wide and wild and a bit scary, if I’m being honest. “What the hell happened between you two? I never would have given you coffee had I known you would do this to him.”

“What does coffee have to do with anything?”

She shakes her head and rolls her eyes, clearly not giving up that nugget of information to me…the chosen enemy. “You have no right to judge our family or how we operate. None.”

“I never said I did!”

“Yet you passed judgement on our dad. He said you questioned him the day before Cam’s surgery. God only knows what you said to Cam. And then you hooked up with him outside of the hospital just to further insert yourself into his life and mess things up. I let it go because I could see how happy he was around you. And I know he’s a charming sod. But you! I never expected you to mess things up like this. This has to be grounds for malpractice! Who do you think you are?” Her voice is so loud it rattles the light fixture.