Fools Rush In
When the final session of the day comes around, Anna checks the conference programme. Brad is down for a talk about complications arising from treating those with high-use cannabis consumption. She looks at what James had earmarked and makes her own decision. Britain doesn’t have an oxycodone epidemic nor legalised cannabis, but in some cities the use rates of the drug are similar to America’s. There is some justification to her attending the talk.
She slides into the room at the back. His friends need not have worried, as there is a significant cohort seated in the auditorium. She’s about to walk down the rows looking for a spare seat when she notices two men in the back row gesticulating madly. Rob and Seth. As she nears, they stand and shuffle down a seat each, allowing her to perch on the end.
Rob is beside her. “Glad you made it,” he says.
“We’re playing Brad bingo,” he continues. “I’ve got the phrase ‘my good friend’, the steepled fingers and that thing he does with his hair. And Seth’s got the full-toothed smile, the strategic pause and the words ‘and another point’. If you want in, we’ll let you pick one from each of us. Winner has to bring a box of strawberry donuts.”
Anna shakes her head with a laugh to decline his invitation to the game but accepts the seat.
They are tightly packed together. Rob’s legs are spread slightly. His thigh rubs against hers as he shifts from time to time in his seat. It is inadvertent, but still Anna notices and she also notices her own lack of reaction.
As Bradley’s talk comes to a conclusion, the lights come back up and he asks the audience for their questions. The silence is complete humiliation. Two rows down, a guy gives a little snort in his sleep.
Seth raises his arm. “Given the FDA’s Schedule 1 drug classification makes a trial challenging, do you think pathological analysis is the best way forward?”
“Good question,” Bradley replies. “But as I said to my good friend, the Surgeon General,” he pauses, “I would prefer to save the patient before they die.” Rob nudges Seth twice. There is a little titter of laughter around the auditorium, and the sleeper two rows down jolts awake. Bradley expands on his answer to Seth’s question, but as it references US regulations, much of it is lost on Anna.
As Bradley finishes, she is ready with her own question. “Given the known increased risks of myocardial infarction among cannabis users, do you foresee increasing problems as the cannabis smoking population ages and more of them require major operations with long periods of sedation?”
Even from the back row, Anna can see him smirk. He is pleased she is there. Maybe this was a miscalculation. She is not trying to flatter him or suggest she is romantically interested in him. She sighs. This is another drawback of beauty. Networking is fraught with misinterpretation of interest. Some men, especially alphas, have strong tendencies to confirmation bias. They see what they wish to see and interpret the evidence to fit their preferred narrative.
Even as Bradley gives his reply, preceded by a full-toothed smile that has Seth chuckling, Anna is formulating her escape. Luckily, the first two questions appear to have triggered more. Half a dozen hands are raised. Leaning over to Rob and Seth who are tallying up their Brad bingo scores, she murmurs, “I really do need to find my boss now. See you later.”
She strides out of the convention centre, slowing her pace once she is outside in the harsh heat. Retracing her steps to the hotel, she messages James: On the way to the hotel. Are you free to meet now? Won’t take long .
The glass doors of the hotel shut behind her, sealing out the traffic noise and the heat. Quickly, she crosses the foyer. The doors of the elevator are closing and she smacks the button to hold them. As the doors draw back, Anna sees James and Bella, arms intertwined. James, at least, has the consciousness to look shamefaced, but Bella gives Anna a broad grin.
“We’ve had so much fun today,” she says. “James has explained all this stuff to me. He’s brilliant. He makes it all seem so simple and logical.” James blushes at her praise.
Anna would be happier for her friend if it had not literally been James’s job to do precisely that for her. She flashes Bella a distracted smile and says to her boss, “Can we have a word?”
He gives a brief nod. When the elevator stops at her floor, he passes a keycard to Bella and says, “Wait for me? I’ll be up in a few minutes.”
She leaves and the doors close behind her. James, clearly uncomfortable, keeps the silence. Anna is in no mood to help him out or ease the tension. He looks along the corridor and says, “Perhaps the coffee shop would be better.”
Together, they wait for another elevator. When they reach the lobby level, the doors open and James gestures for her to precede him. Anna heads for the hotel’s coffee shop area and they sit at a table. No one else is around. The display cabinets are shuttered and the machines have been closed down for the day.
“I’m sorry about missing our meeting today,” James starts.
“Meetings.” Anna is not about to let him off the hook. “Your itinerary had catch-ups at morning break, lunch, and afternoon.”
“Ah, yes. Meetings.” James flushes again.
“You’re the boss. If you want to cancel them, that is entirely within your remit. But if you’d told me they were no longer scheduled, I wouldn’t have wasted my time looking for you.” To be fair, after the abortive attempt to find James at lunch and mid-morning, she hadn’t bothered in the afternoon.
Anna unfolds the itinerary James gave her at breakfast and places it on the table.
“That’s fair.” James seems to have recovered some composure. “I got distracted but you’re Bella’s friend. You must know how much she has been through lately.”
It is Anna’s turn to blink. She is a good friend to those in front of her but inclined to be negligent of those out of her immediate sight. Apart from liking a few social media posts, she has had minimal contact with Bella since they started working in hospitals and Bella departed for the north. Long hours and a pandemic haven’t helped, but Anna is not blind enough to her own faults to think her behaviour would have been any different without those excuses.
Social media posts are hardly an accurate representation of someone’s life. They are an illusion of contact. Still, Anna hasn’t been aware of any particular hardship in Bella’s life. She stays quiet but James doesn’t.
“She was so young and he was so much older. He took advantage of her. It makes my blood boil. I feel like writing to the General Medical Council.”
Anna has to suppress a laugh. It is so typical of James to think the solution is a strongly worded letter.
“But Bella thinks it better to let things lie, even though it’s affecting her career. Stuck in a dead-end hospital because she followed him out of love. Her consultant hardly seems to bother with his junior doctors.” James looks down at the table, obviously disturbed by the unprofessionalism of some of his colleagues. “He’s a bastard!” James’s voice is gruff with emotion.
Anna’s eyebrows shoot up. She has heard far worse from other colleagues, but James has always been restrained in his use of profanity.
“Her boss?” Anna queries, surprised. It is hardly unusual to come across consultants who are neglectful of their junior staff. It is one of the weaknesses of the training system. And one of the reasons she is grateful to have James as her training supervisor.
“No. Her ex. The one who fed her a pack of lies, persuaded her she was in love with him, and then refused to leave his wife. The one she followed to his current placement.”
“Oh.” It is all Anna could manage.
“So I was trying to help her today. Trying to pick up the shortfall in her training. I suggested some talks for her and sat with her to coach her through them. She’s very bright.”
Bright but easily distracted would have been Anna’s unbiased summary from their university days. In some ways, Bella reminds her of her very youngest sister, Phoebe. It is one of the reasons she finds Bella’s company easy. Her perpetual search for fun is familiar.
“Look, Anna. I promise you won’t lose out. I will schedule time at the end of the day to go over the proceedings, but let me help Bella get something out of this conference. She doesn’t have your advantages.”
Anna is a little bemused by what he has declared her advantages. She has worked hard to get where she is. No one has given her anything she hasn’t earned. Top marks, long hours, dedication, and tenacity. Bella is capable of all of those, even if they are not necessarily in her nature. Anna doesn’t find small talk with patients easy. It is not in her own nature to rabbit on about trivialities, but she has practised it because it makes her a better doctor. Anna and Bella started from the same point. The fact they were now in different places isn’t just sheer luck.
James glances at his phone as it buzzes with a notification. “It’s the conference dinner tonight. I really need a shower. Why don’t we walk over to the coaches together? We’ll see you back here in half an hour?”
He picks up his phone and departs. Anna sits at the table a moment longer. Then she folds up James’s itinerary. They have not talked about her sessions. Nor have they scheduled the promised times for Anna to get his input. She sighs. Maybe this is a taste of what Bella has to deal with – a boss whose attention is elsewhere. She checks her own phone for a message from someone despite the lack of a notification, just as she has done regularly throughout the day. But it seems James is not the only one who has his attention focused elsewhere.
At the duly appointed time, Anna returns to the deserted coffee bar. She has showered, changed, done her make-up, and put her hair into an elegant French twist. Her dress is sleeveless, modest in neck and hemlines, but a startling emerald in colour. Her sister Lily had press-ganged her into buying it, but she rarely has an opportunity to wear it. Bella and James are both waiting for her, standing together, holding hands. James seems unchanged from his day wear of collared white shirt and chinos except for the addition of a tie. A jacket is draped across one forearm. Bella looks magical, like one of Galadriel’s handmaidens, in a gold-trimmed cream silk dress. Together, they exit the hotel while Bella chats animatedly. Anna begins to understand how Bella could have packed in one cabin bag. All of her clothes are tiny and insubstantial.
Anna may still be miffed with James, but Bella doesn’t deserve her grumpiness. And she is slightly amused by their budding romance. Maybe the short time she spent with Tolly has rubbed off on her, or possibly romance is contagious. She would never have thought Bella would pick a man like James, but her friend’s taste in men has obviously improved. Although every word Bella says seems to put James further in the doghouse.
“So James took me to this divine little coffee shop. I’m not kidding, their coffee was like nectar. When he introduced me to one of the conference speakers at lunch, I told him about it and he insisted we go over there. He’s running this trial and the results are fascinating. He was telling us some of their early indications. It may be a game changer.”
Anna is not sure which irks her more: missing out on the opportunity to network or the delectable full-strength coffee. She is running on only a few hours’ sleep and a whole lot of jet-lag. She is prepared to admit some of her annoyance with James may not be entirely his fault.
A line of coaches is pulled to the kerb, doors shut. A crowd of people mill around outside the conference hall. James leads them over to an official in a high-visibility vest who assigns them a coach number. Bella is on a different coach. She turns her eyes on Anna.
“Fine,” Anna capitulates. “I’ll swap.” There goes yet another chance to have a catch-up with her boss.
Officials stand by each of the coaches, checking delegates as they filter onboard. In a surprisingly short time, the crowd has disappeared; the coaches are full and, one by one, they swing onto the road. As Anna boards, she looked for the safest seat and spots a woman wearing a hijab sitting alone. The short journey is long enough for Anna to make a new friend, Zahra Tlaib, an emergency room doctor from Dubai.
The two of them join Bella and James for the dinner and Anna is grateful for Zahra’s company as her two friends are entirely wrapped up in each other. As the formal part of the dinner ends and the guest speaker winds to a close, Zahra excuses herself and departs. Anna sits contemplating her empty phone screen for a minute before she is surrounded by Brad, Rob, and Seth. The three keep up a volley of banter between themselves until Brad leans towards Anna and asks her to dance.
Alert to the danger Brad has the wrong idea about her, Anna shakes her head. But Brad is undeterred. She reckons he is seldom shot down and it probably hasn’t occurred to him it is possible. To be fair, in other circumstances, Anna would have been sizing him up for a bit of fun, but she cannot muster any enthusiasm for sex tonight. Well, not with Brad, at least.
“Great idea. Why waste time on the dance floor? Let’s get out of here,” he whispers.
“I’m sorry.” She takes care not to smile. “I appreciate the offer, but I’m not interested in you romantically.” Brad hauls backwards, an expression of shock on his face. His two friends fall about laughing.
Brad stands. “I’m going to get a drink,” he says and disappears.
“Oh, dear.” Anna looks at his departing body. “I hope I haven’t dented his ego too much,” she says to Seth and Rob. They laugh in reply.
“That’s an impossibility,” Rob says as he shuffles closer to her.
She forestalls any further problem. “I’m not looking for anyone tonight,” she says, prompting further laughter.
Rob leans closer to her. “Neither are we.” He indicates Seth and himself. “Seth is off women for a while and is trying out life with a dog. And I’m deciding whether to propose to someone when I get home.”
Anna breathes out a sigh of relief. Turning down Brad was awkward, but she’d been careful not to flirt all day. Perhaps it was a cross-cultural mix-up. Had he taken her lack of interest for British reserve? Rob and Seth move the conversation on. Without Brad, Anna finds herself contributing more to the conversation. Still, when the first coaches are announced, Anna chooses to be on them. She leaves James wrapped around Bella on the dance floor, waves to Rob and Seth, and departs.
It is not until she is safe in her room that her phone pings with the long-awaited message.
Sorry about this morning. My agent came by and I’ve been in meeting after meeting .
She debates leaving him hanging, the way she has felt all day. But reason prevails. A friend can leave you hanging for a day; a lover does not. Someone who was romantically interested would find a way. Texting on the toilet if need be. Tolly is clearly not interested, and it is not his fault she is crushing on him. It is a delicious irony. Just as she has offered friendship in return to men who have offered their hearts, she is now experiencing the same. She determines not to be petulant. His friendship is a prize, too.
No worries. I’ve been busy too. Just got back from the conference dinner .
There. That’s a friendly response.
They message back and forth for a while, Anna relaying some of Brad, Rob, and Seth’s stories, until she is forced to accept she needs sleep. Just as she snuggles down, he sends one last message.
I’ll be incommunicado for a couple of days. Perhaps I can show you something of LA when I get back. And if you think a helicopter is a grand gesture, keep an eye out this week .
Sure. That’d be great , she replies.
She’s been all cool and friendly. No one could doubt her nonchalance. If only her heart would get on board with her brain.