скачать книгу бесплатно
Mr Elliott stood, poised in obvious frustration for a moment and then, when his voice finally broke, it was clenched and steady, as if a great force was being needed to keep it so. "And how should I have addressed the situation instead, may I ask?"
By this time Kate was rapidly running out of fire. She knew how to fight when her opponent shouted back, but this cool, calculated analysis had her on the wrong foot. She searched for something further to say, but came up blank.
"What, no sound advice? No words of wisdom?"
Kate bristled and shot him a glare, cursing her brain for letting her down right when she needed it.
"Maybe I had better remind you of your objections. I think the word 'bully' was in there, and from what I can remember you were attempting to incite mutiny on one of my wards. So would you care to elaborate on any of that? You were very free with your opinions a few minutes ago." He looked at her for a moment as her brain struggled hard to find the right words to say. "Maybe you should try running my team, doing my clinics and operating on my patients for a few days and then come back to me. At least then you might have some idea of what you're talking about."
"I wasn't questioning your abilities as a doctor,” she said, suddenly finding the spark she needed and tossing it right back at him, but her conviction was waning.
"Oh? Well, that is a relief." His tone had taken on a sarcastic quality that ignited the dying embers of her rage.
"No, it was your lack of compassion that I was questioning," Kate said. "It's not your right to play judge and jury, deciding who should be worthy of treatment and who should not. Are you absolutely certain he was the one to blame for the crash? It’s just as likely that he wasn’t. In fact we had one, just the other day, where a woman swerved to avoid a cat and crashed head-long into a van coming in the opposite direction."
Elliott's face paled. His stone wall cracked just a little as Kate could see the doubt settling in. For a second she could sense his turmoil and found new strength in his weakness. She looked at him straight in the eyes. "Precisely."
"Do you know what happened to bring him in here?" He asked, pausing for a moment to see if Kate would respond, but she didn’t. "No, you don't, do you? So I say to you, if someone had been a bit harder on that lad a few years ago, then maybe I wouldn't have another patient fighting for her life on ITU right now." He let out a small breath. "Maybe you should keep your nose out of business that does not concern you from now on and go back to… A&E?" He looked at her for confirmation of her department, "and concentrate on your own job. And the next time you try accusing someone of being 'unprofessional', I suggest you make absolutely sure your own behaviour is beyond reproach, or it might end up being you that gets reported for misconduct and not the poor wretch who finds himself on the sharp end of your malicious and ill-founded gossip."
Kate was defeated. Tears threatened to well up but she was damned if she was going to give him the pleasure of seeing it. She looked at the dull grey floor in front of her, Elliott's crisp black leather shoes firmly blocking her way. He hesitated for a moment, his brow crinkling and then he opened the door and stood back, letting her slip away in silence.
Kate’s hands were locked hard at her sides as she escaped the ward and walked as fast as she could, breaking out into the fresh air a few minutes later, in search of a moment's privacy. Away from prying eyes.
~~~
"I know how that feels," Lena mumbled and the woman was relieved to see the girl had been paying attention. Empathy was going to help her now.
~~~
Alone at last, Kate broke down. She leant back against a brick wall, with her palms pressed against the cool hard surface. She closed her eyes and tipped her head to the sky and slowly sank to the ground and wept. All the tension of the past few days had finally come to a head, exploding, quite dramatically, at Mr Elliott.
Footsteps approached and she quickly wiped the tears from her face and pulled herself together. A porter passed by, his thoughts a million miles away from her own. Kate dabbed her eyes with an old tissue she found in her pocket and lifted her chin, ready to face the day again.
In the canteen, she bought a sandwich and two Mars bars and found a quiet corner to sit down in. The first bar disappeared in a matter of seconds. How dare he? she thought as she sat there. Elliott had been the one losing it over one of his patients and he had had the nerve to take it out on her when all she'd done was have the courage to stand up to him. She pulled out her sandwich. He was a bully, but he was a consultant; he would never get his comeuppance. She had half a mind to go right back up to that poor lad and point him in the direction of the complaints procedure.
She wondered at how many times Mr Elliott might have been allowed to get away with this behaviour before. Maybe it was the reason he left his last hospital, she thought. She swigged back her carton of juice and decided to pocket the other bar of chocolate for later, binned the rubbish and then held out her hands. Still trembling.
Mr Elliott had slipped in under the radar when he’d joined the hospital almost six months before. Kate had neither particularly noticed, nor heard much about him, but if a fight had been what he’d wanted that day, then Kate had been in just the right mood to oblige him. She checked her watch. Arrogant bastard, she thought. She took a deep breath, straightened her uniform and walked back down to A&E.
Kate said nothing of the incident to her colleagues that day, if not because she was already questioning her part in it, then for the greater fear that if she began to speak and let go of her control, she might just fall to pieces in the middle of the department. But her reluctance to share did little to quell the undercurrent of anger she felt towards the arrogant, overbearing man, for the rest of that day.
That evening, her housemate, Sophie, realised something was up when she came home from work. She searched round the house only to find Kate in the kitchen, scrubbing the living daylights out of the work surfaces.
"Everything all right?" she asked, looking around quickly for any clues.
The sudden noise made Kate jump. "Grief! Don't do that to me," she said.
"Sorry," Sophie said.
"It was getting dirty in here," Kate told her, not faltering for a moment in her mission.
"You know I think that bit's pretty clean now," Sophie soothed.
Kate continued cleaning, her mind focussed on the task in hand and thereby avoiding everything else. She rubbed hard at the tiles on the wall behind the cooker.
Sophie watched her for a moment and then walked over and laid her hand on Kate’s, stopping the movement. Kate paused mid scrub, but did not step back, so Sophie slowly took the cloth and spray out of her hands and put them to one side. Then she led Kate to the living room and sat her down.
Sitting opposite her, Sophie took a deep breath. "Out of ten, where one is lovely and ten is crappiest day ever, what exactly are we talking about here?"
"About a nine and a half,” Kate said.
"Do you want to talk about it?" Sophie asked her.
"Not really," Kate said.
"Is it just the funeral - and I'm not saying that isn't absolutely enough on its own - but has there been something else as well?" Sophie asked.
Kate nodded.
"Something else as well as the hideousness of having to go through your grandfather's funeral and a day’s work?"
Kate nodded again and rubbed her face before recoiling rapidly at the overpowering smell of bleach.
Sophie scratched her head. "Are you on in the morning?"
"No. A late," Kate told her.
"Me too. How do you fancy going out and getting plastered?"
Kate looked aghast. "What, now?"
"Yes."
"Oh, no, Soph. I'm shattered," she said.
"Well, maybe we won't get plastered, but have a bit of fun, just for a bit. Yeah? It's better than moping around here feeling miserable. Your granddad would have wanted you to be out having fun, wouldn't he?"
The corner of Kate’s mouth perked up into a soft smile as, despite herself, she remembered how full of fun her granddad had been. She sighed. "Yeah, he would."
"Well what do you say then?"
They met Jenny and Flis, some nursing friends, at The White Horse just before ten; they had a couple of drinks and then headed off down the road to Helix.
By eleven, Kate was feeling wobbly. She had eaten only a sandwich and a packet of crisps before going out and had necked her first couple of drinks rather quickly.
"Feeling any better yet?" Sophie asked when they returned from the dance floor and plonked themselves down on a seat near the bar.
Kate nodded. "Much," she said. "Just give me a surgeon-ectomy and I'll be fine."
"Oh dear. Which one has been rattling your cage this time?" Sophie asked.
"Elliott," she said.
"What, old Jolly?"
"Who?" Kate asked her.
"Jolly. That's what we call him on our ward."
Kate was amused. "Appropriate.” Then she thought she’d better clarify. “Young orthopaedic consultant, right? Quite new?"
"Yeah. Tall, dark and gloomy."
Kate chuckled. "That's the one."
"Why? What did he do to you?"
"He hauled me into Sister's office and tore strips off me, that's what," she said.
"What on earth for?" Sophie asked her.
"I was, and quite rightly, I have to say, objecting to his behaviour, and get this, he ended up threatening to report me!"
"He's going to report you? Why? What did you do?"
"Bastard was ripping into this poor lad on Aintree, acting the big 'I am' and I… kind of accused him of being a bully."
Sophie laughed, obviously surprised at Kate’s nerve. "You go, girl!" she said.
"Oh, I wasn't as good as I would have liked to have been," Kate told her. "He was so… ugh… he was… infuriating. I tried to fight my corner, but I was rubbish and he was so icy and prickly. In the end he had me shaking in my boots."
Sophie put her arm around her friend. "I knew something must have happened when I found you scrubbing the house to death this evening. You don't normally go all manic if you're just a bit miserable. So how did you leave it?"
"With him threatening to report me."
"He’s not going to, though, is he?" she asked.
"I don't know," Kate said. "I don't think so."
"And are you going to report him?"
"I should, shouldn't I? But what's the point? They're hardly going to take my word over his."
"Bloody surgeons."
"Yeah, bloody surgeons," Kate said.
"Speaking of the forbidden things… Do you ever hear from Guy anymore, or Lee?"
Kate shook her head. "No, good riddance to the lot of them, I say.”
"Here, here," Sophie said and clinked glasses. "Not that Guy was anything like Elliott."
"No." Kate laughed at the mere comparison. "At least Guy could be a charmer. Elliott on the other hand…"
"Oh, I don't know. I wouldn't chuck him out of bed," Sophie said.
"Ugh. No!" Kate was horrified.
"You’re just mad at him. He can be a real love when he wants to be. He’s meant to be very kind to his patients. They all seem to love him.”
“Ha!” Kate found that very hard to believe.
"But Guy was gorgeous, you've got to admit.”
"Yes,” Kate conceded, “but unfortunately he had a little too much bedside manner. I doubt Elliott even knows what his is for. It probably dropped off years ago… with frostbite."
Sophie gave a wicked grin. “I dare you to find out.”
"I'd rather snog Derek," Kate said.
"Not Dirty-Derek from Cardiology? The human octopus? Ugh!" Sophie shivered and they both burst out laughing.
Flis and Jenny joined them from the dance floor, slumping down in the seats close by.
"You look better," said Flis, brushing her blonde curls away from her face. "They're not a lot of fun, are they, funerals?"
"No. I'm not sure anyone has ever described funerals as 'fun', Flis," Sophie said. "But it's not that. The girl's got surgeon-itis again."
"Oh, lord. Which one now?" Jenny said, perking up.
"Elliott," Sophie said.
"Elliott?"
"Not like that," Kate added quickly. "We had a run in today."
"Which one's Elliott?" Flis asked.
“Orthopaedics. Took over from Mr Grant.”
“Arrogant, self-righteous, pompous pillock,” Kate muttered under her breath.
The other three looked at each other.
“How much has she had to drink?” Jenny asked.
“Not enough, obviously,” said Sophie with a smile and she lifted Kate’s hand with her glass in back up to her lips.
