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Conscious of the price and the fact that tonight she was definitely going halves, she said, ‘In here, I think.’
He nodded, scanned the menu again and looked at her. ‘Decided yet?’
‘Scampi and chips—and I’m paying for mine.’
He chuckled. ‘How did I know that?’
He went to the bar armed with her money and placed the order and paid, and then came back and handed her her change. ‘There you are, you stubborn, independent young woman.’
She smiled and pocketed the money. She felt better now. She didn’t want to feel she owed him anything. Not that he would take advantage, but there had been the odd occasion in her past where a man had felt he had a right to her body because she’d accepted a meal from him. It hadn’t taken her long to dissuade her erstwhile suitors, but it had left a nasty taste in the mouth, and she didn’t want to mess up their budding relationship—
‘Penny for them.’
She laughed. ‘Not a chance. What are you having?’
‘Same as you.’
Their eyes clashed, and she looked away, her heart hammering. Oh, Lord. It would be so easy to fall for him. She cast around for a neutral topic of conversation, and remembered her thoughts about his career progression.
‘Tell me about your work,’ she said, sipping her drink. ‘How come you’re still an SHO? I would have thought you’d be a registrar by now.’
He grinned wryly. ‘I would have been, but I changed horses in the middle of the race. Well, actually, I changed races. You know I wanted to do general surgery, like my father?’
She nodded. ‘Yes, I remember. You were keen.’
‘I was—until I started doing it. Then I felt curiously detached from it all. The patients come in with a problem that someone else has detected, you fix it, and they go away. You never see them again, never know how they are unless there’s a problem.’
‘But that’s good. If you don’t see them again, you’ve done your job.’
He shook his head. ‘Maybe—but it’s not the job I want to be doing. I want to find the problem, send them to get it sorted and follow it up afterwards at home.’
‘But that’s general practice,’ she said, a little bemused.
‘Exactly.’
She stared at him in astonishment. ‘But you’re going to be a surgeon.’
He shook his head. ‘No. Not any more. That’s why I’m doing paeds, why I’ve done obs and gynae, and A&E, and general medicine, and geriatrics—’
‘You want to be a GP?’ she said slowly, the penny finally dropping.
He smiled. ‘Yes—why not?’
Why not? She thought of the stress her father was under, of his partner who had found the strain all too much and taken the easy way out, leaving his wife and two young children to cope alone without him—
‘Why not?’ she said incredulously. ‘Because it’s an awful life, that’s why not. It’s dreadful. That’s why they can’t recruit GPs for love nor money. It’s stressful, it’s bogged down with paperwork, the hours are horrendous, it’s a thankless task—’
‘No. It’s not a thankless task. It might be all the other things, but it’s not a thankless task, and the hours are much better now. Nearly all GPs are in cooperatives, so their time on call is much better organised and less stressful.’
She snorted. ‘Talk to my father about it.’
‘I have—I did. He agrees.’
‘No, he doesn’t. Well, he might have done five years ago, but he doesn’t now. Why do you think he’s taking early retirement?’
Mark shrugged. ‘To enjoy the rest of his life while he still can?’
She snorted again. ‘Not my father. He’s a workaholic. No, it’s stress, I know it is.’
‘Well, whatever, it’s what I want to do, Allie,’ he said quietly, straightening the edge of his beermat with a strong, blunt fingertip. ‘I’m not cut out for hospital medicine, I know that now.’
She was stunned. Shocked, confused, utterly baffled by his announcement. He was going to be a surgeon. She’d always known that. It was who he was—wasn’t it?
She sipped her drink again absently, and then the barmaid called out a number and Mark stood up, coming back moments later with two fragrant, steaming baskets of scampi and chips nestled on absorbent paper napkins, two wooden forks and a selection of condiments in another basket.
‘Here—it smells gorgeous.’
It did. Fattening, wicked and absolutely lovely. She let her breath out on a quiet sigh, sprinkled salt liberally over her food with total disregard for her health, and tucked in.
A GP, for heaven’s sake—
‘Allie?’
She looked up, searching his face for any clue that he’d been winding her up, and found none.
‘What?’
‘What’s the matter?’
Was she so easy to read? She shrugged. ‘I just thought—I don’t know. I always knew you were going to be a surgeon.’
He grinned. ‘Well, I’m not. Believe me, I was shocked as well. You’ll get over it. The scampi’s good. Do you want some tartare sauce?’
‘Mmm.’ She tore the corner off the packet and squeezed it out mechanically, then stuck the little wooden fork into a piece of scampi and bit into it. He was right, it was good. She put thoughts of his career out of her mind and concentrated on eating and enjoying his company, but something had gone, like a light being switched off inside her.
It was only later, after he’d taken her home and given her another of those sizzling kisses on the doorstep, that she realised why.
They had no future, because there was no way she could spend her life with anyone who was going into general practice. There was no way she’d marry him if things went that far. She couldn’t bring children into the world knowing their father might not last the course. She’d seen at first hand the havoc it could cause in a woman’s life, and she had no intention of letting it happen to her.
Then she chided herself for being ridiculous.
You’re getting a bit ahead of yourself, Allie Baker. You’ve had two dates—and one of them didn’t even really count. Stop acting like he’s asked you to marry him!
She got ready for bed, climbed under the chilly duvet and snuggled down, and waited fruitlessly for sleep to come.
They had a new admission the next day, a little girl of seven from the cystic fibrosis clinic. Claudia Hall had been diagnosed with CF at birth, and was currently struggling with yet another deep-seated chest infection.
She was coming in for intravenous antibiotics to combat it, and Allie greeted her and her very pregnant mother affectionately. It was the second time she’d been in in the few months Allie had been on the ward, the last time to insert a gastrostomy tube in her stomach so she could have special feeds delivered by pump overnight to boost the amount she was able to eat, because her appetite was dreadful and she wasn’t able to take in enough to sustain herself.
Everybody thought CF was just a chest condition, Allie mused, and yet it affected the intestines just as much, causing havoc with the assimilation of food and secretion of enzymes. In fact if Claudia ate anything with fat in it, she took handfuls of enzyme pills to enable her to digest it properly. Between the enzymes and the tube feeds, Claudia had been gaining weight, but now she’d lost it again with this infection. Allie had hoped they wouldn’t have