A Passionate Love Affair with a Total Stranger (4 page)

When I opened my eyes again, Dr Nathan Gillies was looking at me over the clipboard with an ever-so-slightly malevolent expression. ‘So, Charlotte,' he said. The only people who called me Charlotte were Granny Helen, when she was being terrifying, and myself, when I needed a pep talk. Dr Nathan Gillies was enjoying this situation immensely.

‘So, Nathan. This is a nice surprise,' I said awkwardly. It was nothing of the sort and he ignored me.

‘You've fractured your tibia in two places. It's going to take a long time to heal. But the good news is that the operation was a success and you should be out of here in about a week.'

I stared at him, stunned. ‘I've broken my leg in two places?'

‘Yes. You also had a potential fractured skull, which
turned out to be OK. You've suffered quite a lot of soft-tissue damage, with various superficial wounds on your arms and legs from the rocks you fell on. Oh, and I suspected you may have fractured your pelvis, too, so I'm sending you for a CT scan shortly.'

‘So – and
you
operated on me?' I asked. He nodded curtly.

Even worse.

My mind was racing, trying to figure out the implications of a properly broken leg and maybe even a broken pelvis. Dr Nathan Gillies watched me with malignant amusement, knowing full well what was happening in my head. ‘No, Charlotte, you will not be able to run again this year. Possibly never. No, you cannot go back to work soon. And, no, I do not recommend that you transfer to a private hospital.'

I had yet to come up with a satisfactory explanation for why I had gone out with Dr Nathan Gillies for so long. Hailey had insisted that it was because of my obsession with men of medicine but I wasn't convinced. Deep down, I suspected it had more to do with the fact that he was so chronically unavailable, both mentally and physically, he was actually my perfect man. During our relationship I'd got all the nourishment I needed from work, and for four years we had seen each other three times a week (sex on Wednesdays), with my emotional state remaining entirely unaltered.

But today my emotional state was in grave danger.
Don't give in to the fucker
, I imagined Hailey hissing in my ear. ‘So … just to clarify, how long until I can get back to work, more or less?' I asked him.

He seemed bored. ‘I don't know. A few weeks. Longer if your pelvis is fractured.'

I stared dumbly. ‘
Weeks?
But … we're just launching Simitol! It's going to change the face of medicine!'

He interrupted me with an upturned hand. ‘Charley, this is non-negotiable. I'm sure John will be able to find someone else to do your job while you're recuperating.' Aware that this was just about the worst thing anyone could say to me, he positively beamed.

I felt my face crumple. ‘This is the most crucial time in Salutech's history,' I whispered. ‘I can't not be there. I just can't.'

Dr Nathan Gillies shook his head. ‘It's as I said, Charley. And I will be making sure John MacAllister is fully briefed, should you be tempted to return to work earlier than advised.'

I swallowed hard, my eyes stinging. This was too much. ‘How many weeks. Three? Four?' I whispered.

He put my chart back at the end of my bed and shrugged noncommittally. ‘We'll see.' He shot a shrewish look in my direction. ‘Speaking of John, what do you think? Interesting news, eh?'

I felt exhausted. ‘What? Us getting the health secretary behind Simitol?'

‘No. John and Susan Faulkner getting engaged,' he said, watching me intently.

I stared at him. ‘Susan Faulkner is married,' I said uncertainly. ‘It's just a silly little affair.' I didn't acknowledge the fact that John had been having this silly little affair for three years.

Dr Nathan Gillies smiled. ‘Not any more! John called
Fraser Cassidy earlier to tell him the good news. Apparently Susan's divorce came through yesterday and John proposed to her on the spot. I'm surprised he didn't mention it.'

I swallowed, bolts of pain shooting down the back of my throat. Dr Nathan Gillies pressed on, smelling blood. ‘At long last, eh? John's been begging Susan to leave her husband for, what, three years now?'

‘But …' My voice caught in my throat. I no longer cared what Dr Nathan Gillies thought. ‘But … he invited me out on a date … A date tomorrow night … It was going to be our first date together …'

Dr Nathan Gillies clipped my chart to the end of the bed with a triumphant grin on his face. Revenge, finally, was his. ‘I rather doubt that, Charlotte.'

Someone was playing ‘You Are My Sunshine' on a banjo in my cubicle. It was a very poor rendition, made still poorer when a thin, reedy voice started singing along about a semitone sharp.

‘For God's sake, Christian,' Mum's voice said. ‘The poor girl's in trauma.'

‘It'll help her,' Dad replied with certainty. ‘Tomatoes grow if you sing to them. Look, Jane! She's waking up! It worked!'

Mum, tall and tanned, broke into a smile. Looking at her standing above me, all strong and capable, I felt safe. Mum would sort this mess out.

‘Hello, my poor love,' she said gently.

‘Charlotte! My dear girl!' Dad bounded up, thumping his banjo down on the bed next to my healthy leg. Mum sighed despairingly as he swooped in and kissed me on the forehead. ‘Christian … will you please be careful with her?'

I laughed, then winced as a monstrous wave of pain shot up from somewhere below my hips. ‘Hi, Dad. Hi, Mum. Um, sorry.'

Mum smoothed my hair out of my face. ‘Charley, darling, there's nothing to apologize for.
We
're sorry. We got back as quickly as we could but you know what it's like, trying to make something happen quickly in India –' She
broke off, alarmed, as a series of beeps started going off somewhere above my head. ‘What does that mean, Christian?' she asked.

Dad peered at the machines. ‘No idea!' he said cheerfully. ‘But she's alive! Look at her, eh? Our fine little girl! Battling on!'

Mum shot a stern look at him and opened the curtain of my cubicle. ‘Nurse, could you please come in and help my daughter?' she said firmly. So direct and confident, Mum. Calm in a crisis. My best qualities had come from my mother.

Well, most of them, I thought, looking fondly at Dad, who had pulled the blanket off my leg and was examining the plastering with a face of great wonder. ‘Do you know what, Charlotte? This technique hasn't changed since I was a senior house officer! Not a jot! Oh, hello, Nurse. A few bells and whistles going off in here. Any thoughts?'

I giggled, in spite of the alarms. Dad was still wearing the swimming trunks he must have had on when they got the call.

The nurse strode over. It was the same moody one who had refused to euthanase me when Dr Nathan Gillies had left earlier. In the face of Dad's most childlike smile, though, she melted a little. ‘Nothing to worry about,' she said gruffly. ‘Just time for her next dose of Diclofenac.'

‘We used to eat Diclofenac on Friday nights when I was a registrar,' he said. The nurse blanched. ‘Oh, we had some merry old times!' he added, gazing happily into the distance.

The nurse retreated from the cubicle, clearly disgusted.

‘What time is it, Mum?' I asked.

‘Just gone half twelve.'

‘Oh, Mum, it's way too late … You guys should go and get some sleep. Come back in the morning,' I said weakly.

Mum took my hand. ‘Charley, dear, it's half twelve in the afternoon.'

‘What? How?'

Dad chuckled. ‘You've been in a coma, Charleychops!'

‘
What?
' I clutched the side of the bed.

‘CHRISTIAN!' Mum roared. She shouted rarely, but when she did, it brought traffic to a standstill. The ward beyond the curtain froze in abject terror. Only the timid beep, beep, beep of a machine convinced me that her blast hadn't turned them all to stone.

‘
Christian
, your daughter has gone through the most frightening experience of her life. Pull yourself together, man, and don't you
DARE
make jokes about comas.'

‘It was a figure of speech, Jane,' Dad said reproachfully, slinking back to the corner with his banjo. I caught his eye and smiled quickly while Mum rearranged my blanket. Dad spent his life being sent off to the naughty corner. I had hundreds of photos from family get-togethers of me, Mum, Ness and Katy sitting around the dining table with Dad relegated to the corner, hugging Malcolm or pulling a face of comic remorse behind Mum's back.

‘Yes, Charley,' Mum continued quietly. ‘It's Sunday afternoon. Apparently you saw your boss yesterday afternoon, then slept for fifteen hours!'

Dad stretched out his arms and fingers and pretended to be a sloth from behind Mum's back in the corner of the room.

I found myself suddenly mirthless.

John. Of course. John was engaged. I was assailed by a terrible emptiness and had to focus hard on the dog-tag on my wrist for a moment. (1)
Don't cry.
(2)
DON'T CRY
, my head commanded sternly. I did what I was told but I wasn't sure I'd be able to keep it up much longer. My aversion to crying seemed less explicable by the minute.

Mum pulled up the other chair and sat down. ‘Now, dear,' she said briskly, getting out a pad and pencil. That businesslike voice meant she would Take Care of Things. Dad began to tinkle away at his banjo.

Mum shot a frustrated glance in his direction. ‘Now, Ness said you wanted to move hospitals. I think not, dear. It sounds like you shouldn't be moved for at least another week. OK?'

‘I told Ness that?'

‘Yes, she was here when you came round from your op. You told her that you wanted to move to a private hospital where you could get on with work.'

I smiled. ‘That sounds about right.'

‘Well, it's out of the question. These people operated on you so you will remain here,' Mum continued. ‘And when you're well enough to be discharged, you'll be coming back to East Linton with us. You will not be working during that time.'

I nodded, crossing my fingers under the blanket. If anything was going to help me deal with the wreck my life had suddenly become, it would be work. The great panacea. My own personal cure-all.

‘Also, I've spoken to Sam and transferred him some money to hire a cleaner while you're in hospital. I shudder
to imagine what will happen to your flat otherwise,' she continued.

‘Thanks, Mum. Good idea.'

‘Now, I know you've seen your boss but I did put in a formal call to the duty HR mobile at Salutech,' Mum said. ‘Everything's fine, there'll probably be forms to fill in but you're not to worry about that now.'

I felt a twinge of fear. ‘Did everything sound OK?'

‘In what sense, dear?'

‘In the sense that my job's never been busier or more important than it is right now. I'm really worried that they'll have to get rid of me, Mum.'

Mum shook her head. ‘Don't be silly. That would be against every employment law in Scotland.'

I rather wished I had inherited Mum's unshakeable conviction in absolutely everything she said.

Mum was the practice manager, receptionist and head nurse at Dad's general practice in East Linton, the pretty but functional little town where I had grown up. Even though Dad was the doctor I was fairly sure that it was Mum's no-nonsense bedside manner that convinced locals to reject the new medical centre in Dunbar and keep on coming to Dad.

‘As long as you're sure,' I said gingerly. ‘I'm just worried. I've worked hard, Mum.'

‘Yes, dear, I know. Hard work gets rewarded. Everything will be fine.'

‘And, if not, I'll bomb them,' Dad offered. Mum ignored him.

Please, please, let her be right
, I thought. The scientists at Salutech had spent more than a decade developing
Simitol, the first ever HIV vaccine. It was a breakthrough that no other pharmaceutical company had come close to, and after years of clinical trials, it was ready to go. Now, in the final few months before it was launched, it was my turn to take the reins. My job to make sure the government and medical industry were clear that Simitol was
the
most innovative product in the last twenty years. That it could actually prevent HIV, which, even in recent memory, had been a death sentence – and deserved long-term funding. I had to bottle up the support we had from patient groups and transmit it to our drug reps so that they could sell Simitol with total confidence.

Being responsible for the public face of a company while it changed the course of medical history was a gigantic feat for anyone, let alone a girl of thirty-two. Being bed-bound was simply not acceptable.
I
'd sack me.

‘Now, my love, can you please tell us what happened?' Mum said, taking my hand. ‘Why were you running down Salisbury Crags in sandals?'

A large pair of breasts arrived in the cubicle, followed by Hailey and then Matty. ‘Because she never stops bloody well running!' she said. ‘Hello, Chas! You poor thing, how're you feeling?' She kissed my parents.

Dad loved Hailey. ‘Ah, wonderful!' he exclaimed delightedly. ‘And you must be the famous Matthew! Welcome to the family, young man!'

Matty beamed all over his round little face. ‘How lovely to meet you, Dr Lambert,' he said excitedly, as if he were meeting Hailey's father, not mine. ‘Hello, Charley,' he said brightly. ‘Are you OK?'

‘Not amazing,' I mumbled. I'd put on a brave face for
John but it looked like that was my limit. ‘It's hard to say what part of me hurts the most.'
Probably my broken heart
, I thought sadly. Matty nodded sympathetically but was quickly distracted by the amount of electronic equipment behind me. Hailey, meanwhile, got stuck into the opened box of Milk Tray by my bed. What a fantastically odd couple they were. Hailey, small and curvy, looking like a slutty country-and-western singer with her long golden curls and a cowboy shirt; Matty, in hiking pants and a multi-function fleece, mirrored sunglasses on his head and probably a compass in his pocket.

I glazed over a little while my parents chatted to them, Hailey popping chocolates into her mouth as if they were grapes. I wished I cared as little about my figure as she did about hers.

Then it struck me: in the wake of John's engagement, my figure had ceased to matter.
Fuck my waist
, I thought grimly.
In fact, fuck everything.
‘You know what?' I interrupted. Everyone looked at me. ‘I'm
STARVING
,' I said. ‘Gizza chocolate, Hailey!'

Hailey was surprised. ‘I didn't think you ate chocolate,' she said.

‘I do now. Who brought them?'

‘Me,' Hailey said.

I giggled, stopping abruptly when bolts of pain attacked my throat. ‘Thanks, Hails. Kind of you to purchase a present that you could eat yourself.'

Dad roared with laughter. ‘She's always had an appetite, this one! I don't blame you, Hailey, someone's got to eat some chocolate round here! That crackpot organic diet Charley follows!' He rolled his eyes and winked at her.

At that point Sam ambled in, raffish and beautiful, poncy sunglasses on his head, a present under his arm. In spite of it being June, the present was wrapped in Christmas paper. ‘Hiya, Chas,' he said, as if he'd just walked into our sitting room. ‘What's up?'

Hailey gave him a despairing look. ‘What's up? She got carted off from your engagement party unconscious, Sam. That's what.'

Sam picked up the box of chocolates. ‘True.' As he pored over them, large green eyes alight with childish pleasure, I found myself smiling like an indulgent mother. Although he was the best-looking man in Edinburgh, I had never wanted to do any more than parent him: give his neck a good scrub; get some healthy food down him, that sort of thing. Sexually I wouldn't have touched him with a barge pole. Partly because he was a grubby pig with women but mostly because, having lived with him so long, I knew he was basically a big child in a beautiful man's body and that it would be tantamount to paedophilia.

The day I'd met Sam he was wearing his T-shirt inside out and – apart from his incredibly good looks – he was indistinguishable from the sea of nice boys who were shuffling around my halls of residence. They all had an air of having been cast adrift; lost without their comfortable homes and clothes-laundering mothers (but greatly comforted by the opportunities for unlimited drinking and sexual intercourse that university life was offering). Sam had been suffering a terrible hangover and had exited the lift too early by mistake; when he walked into Hailey's and my room on floor nine, he'd believed he was walking into his own on floor ten. ‘Oh, hi there,' he'd said, surprised
but unperturbed to find two girls on the floor, poring over an Edgar Allan Poe poem that they claimed to love but couldn't really understand.

‘Hello,' we'd bleated, slightly awed by the beautiful man who'd just walked –
voluntarily
– into our room. Sam eventually realized he'd made a mistake but showed no signs of departing. Instead he wandered over and opened the bottle of Glenfiddich that Dad had given me as a going-away present. He drank it on our sofa while trying to figure out – with an expression of genuine puzzlement – how he had slept with so many girls since arriving in Glasgow. ‘I really haven't been trying,' he mused, sleepy green eyes clouded with confusion. ‘I even went to the theatre the other night and some girl bought me a drink and pretty much stuck her wangers in my face. It was the weirdest thing …'