Page 9 of Limits
‘Your patient is in the scanner.’
‘What?’ Pav did not like being on the back foot. He prided himself on being a step ahead of most people, usually using his charm and humour to achieve whatever he wanted. ‘How did you – ?’
‘I ordered the scan after Miss Conway left.’
Pav clenched both his fists by his sides, reining in his formidable but normally dormant Greek temper. ‘Could you not havetoldKira that was what you were going to do? Don’t you think that might have saved her and me some time?’
He watched Dr Morrison sitting motionless on the chair for a few seconds before she gave an almost imperceptible shrug. He’d been running around like a blue-arse fly trying to sort out this patient, and after Kira told him the scan had been refused he’d been distracted for the crucial last half hour of the nephrectomy he was doing, and all this bitch could do was shrug?
‘Right, well, thanks for that information, Dr Morrison,’ he bit out. ‘And please don’t worry, in future I won’tdreamof sending anyone less than registrar grade to request scans or ask advice.’
She was still motionless, but now her attention had turned back to her computer screen. He rolled his eyes and muttered ‘stuck-up icy bitch’ under his breath as he stomped out of her office.
Pav had thought he’d been pretty restrained when it came to that particular confrontation with Dr Morrison. Unfortunately he underestimated how loud his voice in anger could be, even when spoken under his breath; but he did see her visibly flinch as that verbal blow hit home. What he didn’t see was her shoulders sag in relief as he left, or the repair job she had to do on her wrists later that night. Pav prided himself on his ability to read women, but with Dr Morrison, as was so often the case for her in the hospital, he’d failed miserably.
He may not have been able to read Millie entirely, but he found that over the next few hours he could not get that flinch out of his mind. He joked with people, he was cheeky, he teased, but he wasneveropenly rude. What had pushed him into being such a wanker? The lack of eye contact had wound him up, coupled with her obvious reluctance to even talk to him. But was he such an arrogant twat that he needed every female he came across to fawn all over him?
Evidently, yes.
Sitting in his office at the end of the day, his hands went up into his hair and he tore his fingers through it in frustration. Bloody hell, he would have to apologize. He pushed away from the desk and stalked out into the corridor towards the radiology department. When he reached Dr Morrison’s office it was just Donald sitting at his desk, grumbling under his breath at his computer screen.
‘Uh … hi, Don,’ Pav said, smiling at the older man and walking into the room to stand beside him. ‘I’m looking for Dr Morrison.’
‘Millie?’ asked Don, his eyebrows shooting up into his hairline. ‘She’s not on call now, son. Colin took over at five. It’s all on the rota.’
‘I know … I wasn’t looking for her to …’ Pav trailed off and one of his hands went to the back of his neck. ‘I just need to speak to her. I think maybe earlier I …’
Don stopped tapping away at the keyboard of the computer he appeared to be locked out of and turned to face Pav, narrowing his eyes in suspicion.
‘What did you say to her?’ he asked. Pav knew Don as a jolly chap. The quintessential picture of a benevolent white-haired grandad. Always smiling, always open and friendly. Well, he wasn’t looking benevolent now, and he definitely wasn’t smiling.
‘I think there may have been a misunderstanding and I …’
‘Millie left two hours ago.’
‘Oh, right, well …’
‘Do you know that today is the first time she haseverleft work early?’
‘Uh …’
‘I don’t know what you said to her, but the best thing you can do now is leave her alone.’
‘I just want to speak to –’
‘Leave her alone. This office is her safe space. I’ll not have some arrogant, jumped-up surgeon take that away from her.’
‘Safe space? What are you – ?’
‘Ugh … look, I’ve got to visit the urinal for the five hundredth time today, damn prostate. By the time I come back I want you out of this office. You understand me?’
‘Yes, sir,’ Pav said as Don strode past him with surprising speed, considering he looked like Gandalf’s older cousin. Pav watched him go with a frown. As he looked across to Dr Morrison’s desk an uneasy feeling settled over him.
‘Safe space’? What on earth did the old man mean by that?
Pav walked over to the desk and absently lifted one of the stone paperweights, which were the only decoration the sterile area contained. When he put it back down, slightly out of its perfect alignment, he must have knocked the computer mouse, because the screen of the terminal suddenly lit up. There was an open Word document in the centre and the name at the top of it caught his attention. It was addressed to Elizabeth Penny.
Pav had never been very good at minding his own business. And Libby was his best friend Jamie’s girlfriend after all. He leaned in to take a closer look. It was outlining the ongoing payments for a grant, a very substantial grant: one that must have given Libby financial freedom. Pav knew that Libby had only recently hung up her stripper shoes. He’d assumed that she’d finally decided to let Jamie support her and her daughter in some way whilst she was still a student. Now that he thought about how fiercely independent Libby was, he realized that was unlikely. This grant was life-changing for her.
