by Susie Tate
‘I know you do,’ Millie said. ‘That’s fantastic news. Statistically speaking, young women with father figures are more likely to complete higher education and less likely to conceive a child during their teen years.’
Kira rolled her eyes. ‘I think she’s a bit young to under –’
‘I knows what she’s sayin’.’ Rosie cut Kira off in an angry little voice.
‘Of course you do, Squirt,’ Kira said, then turned back to Millie. ‘You’re not on the table plan. You know that, right?’
‘Yes,’ Millie replied, just above a whisper as she took a small step back.
‘Libby was upset that you rejected the invite. It’s just it’s really difficult if people say they’re not coming but then change their minds at the last –’
‘I just wanted to see … I won’t –’
‘I know: you won’t mingle with the commoners.’ Kira turned away after that cutting remark and started pulling Rosie along with her.
Millie huffed out a breath of relief as she watched them disappear in the direction of the bridal car. Then she started to weave her way through the crowd to get out onto the narrow street at the back of the church, where she had parked hers.
She was concentrating on her feet as she wound her way through the gravestones and onto the cobbled path, so she didn’t notice the large obstacle in front of her until she was nearly on top of him.
‘Woah!’ Pav said, his large hands closing over her upper arms to stop her falling backwards. ‘Careful there. These stone buggers would give you one hell of a bruise on the arse.’
Millie couldn’t have spoken if she’d tried, so all she did was pull away and take a few steps back. She moved to the side to pass him, but he stepped in her way, blocking her again. He was wearing a morning suit, but had already loosened the tie. He looked almost too attractive to be real. A sense of déjà vu swept over her. Why was this man always trying to get in her way?
‘Listen,’ he said into the silence. She moved to the side again, and again he moved with her to block her path. ‘I want to clear the air with you once and for all. Okay?’ Millie blinked and Mr Martakis let out a sigh before continuing. ‘I was out of order that day in your office. I might have been a little …’ he paused and rubbed a hand over the stubble on his jaw in an uncharacteristic gesture of uncertainty, ‘… frustrated with the situation. And I wanted to come clean about something else, too. I may have knocked your mouse that day in your office a few weeks ago, and I may have seen a document on there mentioning Libby …’
Millie took a deep breath and forced herself to speak. The last thing she wanted was for Mr Martakis to start sniffing around that bit of scheming. He’d ruin everything.
‘The Deanery sent some stuff through to me about her because …’ she crossed her fingers behind her back, ‘because I’m on the committee for grant approval for the trust.’
This was impossible for two reasons: first, there was no such committee, and second, Millie was not a consultant; even if she were, with her lack of basic communication skills she would have had nothing to do with the medical students anyway.
She must have been too flustered that day to close the file and shut down the computer properly, which just went to prove how out of character she behaved around this particular man. What Libby didn’t know was that the university wasn’t upping her grant at all, the money going into Libby’s account every month was from Millie – but that was a fact Millie was intending to take to her grave. She didn’t blame Mr Martakis for the suspicious look on his face. It wasn’t like he could know that Libby’s daughter was the first good thing to happen to Millie in forever. Or that looking after Rosie the few times she was allowed was just about the best thing in Millie’s life, and that the fact Libby would trust Millie with her child meant everything to her.
Millie had money. She had a lot of money. But there was nothing to spend it on other than the charities she supported and the wardrobe Eleanor picked out for her. So if having a grant to complete her training and not have to rely on a man, or to strip for a living, would make Libby happy, then that’s what Millie was going to give her. She couldn’t offer the money directly – for one, Millie would never be that brave, and for another, Libby would never have taken it. But this way everyone was a winner – unless this interfering man standing in front of her blabbed about what he’d seen on her computer.
‘Oh.’ Mr Martakis cocked his head to the side. Her gaze flicked up to his face briefly and she noticed him narrow his eyes. ‘Right. I suppose –’
‘I’ve got to go,’ she blurted out, dodging round him successfully this time. To her annoyance she heard his heavy footfalls follow her to the small gate leading out onto the road. As she pulled back the latch and pushed it open, his hand shot out and held it shut. She could feel his heat at her back as he crowded her, but she was trapped between his body and the gate.
‘You’ve got somewhere better to be?’ he asked, and she could feel his breath on her cheek.
‘Yes,’ she told him, realising too late how rude that would sound. ‘Move away. Now.’
‘Oh … right … sorry,’ he said, taking his hand off the gate and stepping back. She let out the breath she hadn’t realised she’d been holding, and flew out onto the road.
‘Whoa!’ she heard him shout behind her, and then felt herself yanked backwards. A car shot past inches away from her feet and she staggered into the hard wall of his chest. ‘Christ. Are you okay?’
She could smell him: toothpaste, soap, aftershave and man. It made her head spin.
‘I’m fine,’ she told him, and pulled away, this time safely onto the pavement. ‘Uh, thanks,’ she muttered at her feet, wondering what was the minimum required amount of time you had to spend with someone after they had saved your life. But of course she would never have been rushing out onto a road had he not been intimidating her, so it was not entirely her fault, not that someone as arrogant as Mr Martakis would ever apol –
‘No … don’t thank me. It was my fault,’ he said quickly. She started in surprise but then began to inch away again. ‘Look, Dr Morrison, I really did just want to say sorry for being a pushy arsehole, but I guess I just acted like a pushy arsehole … again. Could you … I mean … I …’
He was following her down the street now as she had started walking away in earnest.
‘It’s fine,’ she muttered, having at last reached her car. ‘You’d better get back.’ She attempted to force a smile, but, going by his frown, realised she likely missed the mark by a long way.
Home, she thought to herself, limits.
‘Okay, well I –’
She slammed the door of her Prius, cutting him off, and then closed her eyes for a moment before she pulled away from the curb. Millie tried to resist the rear-view mirror, she really did. But just before she turned the corner her eyes flicked up. He was still standing there, his arms crossed over his broad chest and his head cocked to the side like she was some sort of complicated puzzle he wanted to solve. A challenge.
Millie didn’t want to be a puzzle or a challenge. She wanted to try and live her life within her limits. Somehow she had a feeling Mr Martakis and his damn curiosity could threaten that.
Then again, she’d had years of experience blending into the background, making herself invisible, or at least unpleasant enough to be avoided. A man like him would forget about her in a heartbeat.
Chapter 6
That chick is weird
Millie looked down at her arms and sighed. Deep grooves where the nails had bitten into the skin marked her palms, and there was the familiar livid bruising on her inner forearm. She closed her eyes slowly, forcing her hands apart and taking a deep breath before she moved to the sink to wash them. The sting of the soap on her exposed knuckles was weirdly comforting as it cut through the fog of her anxiety. She looked up at herself in the mirror; all she could see was the dark circles under her eyes and the tight set of her mouth. It was a long time since she’d been this
bad. She knew that she was going to have to do something. There was no way she could go through with the presentation.
There were things she simply could not do, and talking to a lecture theatre full of people was one of them. Talking to just one person was often a challenge for Millie, but two hundred? No way. There was literally nothing for it: she would have to speak to Him, again. Her hands shook as she held them under the hand drier and grabbed a small plaster from her desk. They were still shaking as she carefully applied it to her knuckle, and then arranged her papers and keyboard symmetrically in perfect alignment, before shutting down her computer. Taking a deep breath, she smoothed the front of her skirt and started for the door, but stepped back as it swung open.
‘Oh, sorry dear,’ Don said as she retreated further to avoid being mown down – their small office did not offer much room for manoeuvre. ‘Are you finished reporting?’ He squeezed past her to get to his chair before muttering a few expletives when his computer wouldn’t let him log in. Millie reached past him to grab the wallet he had slung on the desk and took out his smartcard.
‘We have to use these every time we log on now, Don, remember?’ she said gently, pushing the card into its slot and typing in his password (after a number of IT helpline call-outs with forgotten passwords it was now just easier for her to keep track of it for him). Don ran both hands through his white hair causing it to stick straight up almost as if he had been electrocuted, then smiled at Millie, the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes going into overdrive.
‘What would I do without you, love?’ he said, grabbing her hand and giving it a squeeze. Don might rely on her for all things technological (at seventy-four he was not keen to start learning all the new computer systems the hospital brought in) but she knew she owed him far more. Without Don she probably wouldn’t have a real conversation with another human being for weeks on end.
Millie never said anything in meetings, the radiographers she worked with had long since given up any kind of small talk with her, and she avoided the rest of her colleagues like the plague. Sharing an office with Don was the best thing that could have happened to her. Don didn’t intimidate her, he didn’t expect too much of her. She could relax around him and she had been able to tell him about her limitations without him making her feel like a freak. She’d even, after weeks of persuasion on his part, been back to his house for dinner a few times and met his wife Irene, who was just as warm and understanding as Don.
Don and Irene were good people, kind people. The sort of people who tolerated someone as painful to be with as Millie. She knew that was why they pretended to like her.
‘You know it’s really the other way around, Don,’ Millie whispered. Don’s smile faded as he frowned up at her.
‘Listen, Camilla, Irene and I have been talking, and –’
Millie dropped his hand and turned to grab her handbag from her chair. ‘Sorry, Don,’ she said, cutting him off. Lately he’d begun trying to persuade her into trying to make some changes, and before he launched into one of these lectures he would always preface it with the fact he’d consulted Irene, as if she was the oracle of all things and this gave gravitas to his opinion. So far Millie had successfully managed to dodge the subject. ‘I’ve got to pop out for a bit.’
‘But it’s ten o’clock,’ Don told her. ‘You hardly ever leave in the middle of a reporting session.’
This was true. Millie was a creature of habit and routine; not in a funny, quirky way, but in a slightly desperate, trapped and terrified way. However, the fear of standing up in front of two hundred people was overriding that of breaking her routine for a morning. She had no choice; she had to talk to Him before it was too late, and she knew he wasn’t operating right now, as he had just sent a consultant-wide email out about a reorganization of rotas.
‘I know I’m bad but I can break my routine once in a while without too many dramas,’ she said, going for a confident smile, which was rather more shaky in nature. Don raised an eyebrow but kept quiet as she slipped from the room. Millie hadn’t told Don about how she’d been backed into a corner over the last week. Mr Martakis had managed to get Dr Small, the head of the radiology department, on side to make her present at the Grand Round. Dr Small had implied that if she didn’t, he’d have to think about moving her into the registrar office in order for her to ‘assimilate better’. It was blackmail. He knew Millie wouldn’t cope without Don.
Walking anywhere in the hospital was a challenge for Millie: eye contact, casual nods and smiles were simply not in her repertoire, so she mostly kept her head down or stared straight ahead. Nobody called out to greet her anyway; nobody really knew her – unless it was as ‘that prickly bitch radiologist’ or ‘Nuclear Winter’, both of which she still overheard on a fairly frequent basis.
So no, nobody attempted to interact with her as she walked down the corridor. In fact nowadays it was actually as though nobody could even see her, which, in Millie’s opinion, was for the best.
You’d have thought the urologists would all have their own offices, but if anything they were more cramped than down in radiology, and He shared his office with two others. She paused at the door as a burst of loud, male laughter sounded from the other side. Before she could stop herself she took a step back into the middle of the corridor, straight into the oncoming traffic of a hospital trolley, which smacked painfully into her ankle, causing one of her high heels to snap clean off. The pain and the shock caused her to let out a very uncharacteristic scream as she collapsed down onto her side, spread-eagled across the corridor.
‘Jesus Christ!’ the porter shouted, reversing the trolley to release the heel of Millie’s shoe. ‘Are you okay?’
Millie twisted over to her hands and knees. Her hair had somehow worked its way out of the perfect chignon to spill over her shoulders and into her face. This was literally straight out of one of her nightmares.
‘Hey, love?’ she heard the porter call more softly but closer this time. ‘Can you get up?’
She nodded at the floor, concentrating on slowing her breathing down. ‘I’m fine,’ she whispered, lifting her head slightly as she heard the ominous creak of a door opening, through which she saw two big, leather-clad shoes emerging from the office.
*****
Pav opened the door and was about to step out when he saw the woman on her hands and knees in front of him. A porter was hovering anxiously over her, seeming unsure whether to help her up or leave her in her frozen position on the floor. Light brown wavy hair was covering her downcast face and spilling down the back of her fitted grey dress.
‘I heard a scream,’ he said, crouching down in front of the woman and cupping one of her elbows with his hands. ‘Are you o –’ The woman unfroze at rapid speed and pulled away from him violently, only to smack her head on the trolley above her.
Pav winced but made no more moves to touch her for fear the woman might actually knock herself out if she sustained another injury. He watched as she pulled herself up to her feet on the trolley with her back to him, then heard her whisper ‘Sorry’ to the bemused patient, and ‘I’m fine’ to the porter, before stepping back so that they could pass, and nearly stumbling into Pav on her uneven heels.
His hands shot up to enclose both her forearms before she could go down again. She tried to wrench away but another trolley was bearing down on them, so Pav had no choice but to keep hold of her. He dropped his hands once the trolley had passed, and then watched as she stepped away and turned in a small circle (hobbling on her one heel) until she was facing him. She pulled her hair back from her face and tucked it behind her ears. Wide grey eyes flicked up to his and she froze again.
Dr Morrison.
Dr Morrison, looking human for once. It was safe to say that under normal circumstances she was not his type in any way: perfect make-up, perfect clothes, never a hair out of place. Everything about her screamed uptight, and Pav was not into uptight stuck-up women. He liked women who smiled easily, who weren’t afraid to get mes
sy, who were friendly, easy-going. This was the first time Pav had seen her without that fucking roll thing firmly in place at the back of her head. She looked … different.
‘Uh … hi, Dr Morrison,’ he said, stumbling over his words slightly, which was almost unheard of for him. ‘Are you all right? You must have taken quite a hit.’
She was still staring at him, her lips parted and her cheeks flushed. She looked almost … cute.
‘Dr Morrison? How hard was that bump to your noggin?’
She blinked slowly, her long lashes shadowing her cheeks for a moment whilst her face drained of colour. When she looked back up she no longer had any trace of cute in her expression; her mouth had snapped shut into a tight line and she seemed to be focusing on his shirt collar rather than his face.
‘I’m fine,’ she snapped at his shirt collar, wobbling slightly as she balanced on one heel, then flinching away from him again when he went to steady her.
Gah! That bloody word again. He swore this woman could be lit on fire and she’d still be using it.
‘Okay,’ he said, drawing out the word. ‘Is this about tomorrow?’
She nodded and her thick hair slipped over her shoulders.
‘I … I …’ She met his eyes briefly, then looked past him into his office. ‘I need to talk to you.’
‘Okay, well, come on in and we can have a chat.’ She hesitated; bit her lip before squaring her shoulders and moving past him into his office.
‘Hey, Dr M., how’s it hanging?’ Jamie said from his desk, smirking at Pav.
‘H-hello, Dr Grantham,’ she said, not even sparing him a glance as she hobbled into the room and then turned back towards Pav, who was now perched on his desk.
‘I’ve told you to call me Jamie.’
Dr Morrison didn’t respond to that, so Pav decided to fill the awkward silence.
‘So … Millie,’ he started, but paused as he noticed her briefly startled expression at the use of her first name. Somehow, in her present state it seemed more fitting than ‘Dr Morrison’. But Pav would have expected annoyance, not bewilderment, in reaction to his use of it. ‘How can I help you?’
